There is two variations of this build, both using the same gear, but with slight differences in traits and utility skills; one for staff and one for pistol/pistol. I switch between the variations in game based on what weapon I plan on mostly using in a fight.
Staff combat, as a whole, is relatively simple, so I am not going to focus much on it. Rather, I want to talk more about P/P, because this variation of the PvE build is what will allow you to solo the majority of champion mobs in HoT. At the end, I will post a link to a video of impressively garbage quality that will show the fighting style as I solo the champion arrowhead in AB.
Now, I say the “majority” of mobs, because certain ranged units, primarily shadowleapers and bladedancers, are very difficult with any build, much less this one. That’s not saying much though, because they are most overpowered mobs in HoT with attacks with very little telegraphing that can one shot you. I think the best I have done is an elite; champions take forever and if you mess up even once, you just die.
How does this work?
Well, monsters, even in HoT, are very predictable. The difficulty of PvE in HoT isn’t via any improvements to their AI; they still attack in slow, highly telegraphed patterns that range from roughly 1 attack a second to 1 attack every 2-3 seconds on the bigger, slower mobs. What they did in HoT was just substantially increase their damage and equip the mobs with varying mechanics that are very annoying to deal with at first, but simple enough that once you understand how they work, those mechanics become trivial.
Despite the abundance of posts by thiefs talking about their inability to survive in HoT due to this, this is actually really good for the class, because with the addition of Daredevil, we now have all the tools we need to evade those attacks without eventually running out of endurance.
With that, the P/P variant of the build focuses heavily on high damage, high mobility and high evasion to be used with kiting to defeat various champion mobs.
The downside to this build is that it just gives you the tools; there is a degree of skill involved in the form of the learning the mobs AI patterns and mechanics. While you are learning the fights, you will be punished very, very hard for your mistakes.
P/P Variant of the Build
Traits
Daredevil
Daredevil is pretty essential for this. It gives you a large enough pool of endurance to properly manage the mobs and Unhindered Combatant is just insane. With Acrobatics, it gives you more than perma swiftness uptime, damage reduction and a very smooth dodge animation with a longer reach that you can use very precisely. Brawler’s Tenacity reduces the cooldown of your very important physical skills and grants a small amount of endurance on skill usage. Escapist’s Absolution removes a condition evade which is the only source of condi removal you need with this build. Minor traits provide small healing on evades and a large endurance boost on steal.
Critical Strikes
This is your source of damage.
Flawless Strikes over Side Strikes begin you can’t consistently hit the flank while kiting and you don’t need the critical hit chance. You have full health with this build, because there is often two states when kiting champions in HoT: full health and DEAD.
Practiced Tolerance is a huge flat boost.
No Quarter is very important; it’s what allows you to maintain 100% critical chance while soloing. If you have geared correctly with a 75% crit chance, Unrelenting Strikes will proc fury which will then push you up to 100% with the boost from Keen Observer. This then results in No Quarter giving you 100% fury uptime as long as you land a hit every 2.5 seconds (2.5 seconds is the max delay required to extend the duration of the 4 seconds of fury from Unrelenting Strikes to 10 seconds which makes it equal to it’s own cooldown). Beyond that, it gives you +250 ferocity while you have fury; since you have fury all the time and are critting 100%, this results in a 16.6% flat damage increase.
Acrobatics
The synergies between this and Daredevil is what makes this work the way it does. This is your source of sustain, evasion and endurance regen.
Instant Reflexes is great, because if you get hit or even worse CCed, if it doesn’t flat out kill you, it will take you below half health which procs traits. Any subsequent attacks within 2 seconds will be evaded and that will proc all your other trait synergies in the form of condi removal, healing and vigor.
Hard To Catch is your get out of jail free card; it’s a procced stunbreaker on a 30 second with an instant endurance bar refill.
Assasin’s Reward is your main form of sustain; it’s there to heal any damage that Channeled Vigor couldn’t heal if you missed a step and took a heavy hit. The sustain isn’t as great as Invigorating Precision, but dropping No Quarter for that, particularly when solo, is a heavy damage loss. The last patch made this even better, because even if you miss or are out of range with your pistol skills, you still get the heal.
Utility Skills
Channeled Vigor Huge heal and endurance bar refill on a 16 second CD. Very essential. It might seem like the Signet of Malice is a better for a kiting build, but the thing about fighting in HoT is that you have swings in your health bar if you miss an important dodge. In those scenarios, Signet of Malice isn’t going to heal you fast enough to make a difference if you miss another dodge. You need a big spike heal on a short CD and you can use Assassin’s Precision to top off the difference.
Signet of Agility I can justify dropping the power signet for utility, but the crit chance boost on this comes out to be something close to 10%. You can’t hit 75% without this without substantially changing your gear. It needs to be on your bar on all times and it doubles as a third source of a complete endurance bar refill as well as a condi removal.
Assassin’s Signet In the video, I use Bandit’s Defense which I didn’t really need. Sometimes I use it if I anticipate needing a stunbreaker or I am going to be pressed for endurance (The 12 second CD on Bandit’s Defense means you can tap it up small endurance spikes in addition to Impairing Daggers). If you don’t need that for the fight, the power boost is better; the problem with thief ranged weapons is they are poor DPS in comparison to staff or dagger mainhand.
Impairing Daggers It does a heavy amount of physical damage, immobilizes, poisons and restores a small amount of endurance on a 20 second CD. Really useful when kiting. I am not sure if Slow condition has any significant impact in PvE; from using it in practice, it doesn’t seem to do anything to disrupt the mob’s AI patterns.
Thieve’s Guild Mostly, because there is not any better options when kiting and they tank for you to give you a breather to refill some endurance and reset your CDs. Basilik Venom might seem like a good choice as a way to break a champ’s bar from range, but solo, it doesn’t do enough break bar damage. Even with 2 Headshots, it’s not enough and the champ will just out regen you, making it a useless elite.
Staff Variation
When I know I am not going to be kiting much and mostly using staff, I run this. Differences are Bounding Dodge instead of Unhindered Combatant, because it’s generally better for melee combat. Different utility skills for surviving in melee combat.
Gear
The magic number is 75% crit chance with the Signet of Agility and your food buffs active; this sets you at 100% with Fury and Keen Observer. Once you get this, then you min max power and ferocrity.
I achieved this using a combination of Assassin’s, Berserkers and Marauders.
I’m of the opinion that Marauders is now a better choice for Power PvE Thiefs over Berserkers. The gear gives you higher overall total stats (168 stats to 153 stats on an ascended helmet), the vitality helps with thief’s very low hp and it has a higher percentage of precision, making it easier to min max the 75%.
I did another gear set in the build editor using only Berserkers, Assassins and different food buffs to get to that same 75% crit chance. The end result between the two was like a loss of 5% critical damage for a gain in 4k hp.
That’s a lot of hp for a minor offensive stat loss and can make the difference being one-shotted and surviving.
Gameplay
Conceptually, it’s very simple. You kite and you shoot and you spam Unload and that’s about it.
In practice, it can be much harder, because how you kite and how you manage your endurance will change based on the type of mob you are fighting.
I’ll provide an example.
The Impressively Awful Quality YouTube Video
You’ll have to cut me some slack on this one; first time recording gameplay footage on this rig and I had a lot of issues with FPS and frame drop. I was able to produce something watchable, but it’s quite horrendous. If you can stomach your way pass it, it should how this works in practice.
This is me fighting the Champion Arrowhead in AB on my daredevil. I don’t have full ascended on this toon; missing 5 armor and 1 pistol. I tried to do this late at night, so I could solo without anyone joining in, but some necro showed up toward the end and got herself killed. I tried to revive her , but I almost dropped the fight trying.
Like I said, very simple as far as the concept; you just have to know your opponent.
Case in point, Champion Arrowheads are hard, because 1 of their 3 attacks is a cone attack that does a lot of damage. This attack is a wave, so there is difference in when the attack will land based on your distance from him. If you are far away from him when he does it, one of two things can happen. You’ll attempt to dodge when he telegraphs and your dodge will finish as the wave reaches you. Or two, you’ll dodge, but be at the max width of the cone and not able to get out of the way.
To handle this, you kite the Arrowhead in a triangle pattern. I intentionally gain distance from him and then let him get close. This triggers his cone attack when I want it to be triggered and then I evade inwards to his side, avoiding the cone completely.
Once or twice, I drop a dodge and get hit with the cone and you can see it takes away like 75% of my life.
A number of mistakes, but it gets the point across.
(edited by MadRabbit.3179)
