Guild Wars 2

Hey all, this is kind of long, but if you want to just skim it I’m not going to cry. Looking for any constructive criticism for improving my stats and strategy overall.

—Build Links—
v2: http://tinyurl.com/dyrqat5
v3: http://tinyurl.com/c3gmvn4
These go to GW2BuildCraft.com, I’m using tinyurls because I know the forums tend to chew up this kind of link.

—General Build Direction and Explanation—
The basic idea is to have a nice, solid middle-of-the-road build. I want to be survivable but still pretty stabby. I am treating Precision as a dump stat because I have Hidden Thief for guaranteed backstab crits. Instead I am building P/V/T with a bunch of Soldier armor, and then supplementing my CritDmg with Valkyrie upgrades and trinkets.

I am running D/P for the MAD BLINDS YO, and SB with hydromancy because it’s great for when I need to break away from a fight that’s going badly and outpace anybody chasing me.

I’ve slotted Shadow Refuge because it’s an amazing “panic button” move for any situation, as well as being great for stealth stomps. It’s an especially nice crutch to have because I’m not terribly good at stacking long stealths off of Black Powder.

I have Scorpion Wire because it’s great for pulling somebody who’s running, or somebody who I just want knocked down and in my smoke field.

Infiltrator’s signet because I love me some initiative spam, and having a second shadowstep to set up additional easy-mode backstabs is nice.

I plan to stick with Valkyrie exotic accessories, because I’d rather have straight Valk than the Beserker/Valk upgrading to ascended would force me to take. The others are a mixture of Soldier and Valkyrie again.

Coriander Crusted Meat Dinner because it’s decent +CritDamage and also really really cheap on the Trading Post. The Hardened Sharpening Stones are just for special occasions because they are PRICEY.

—Combat Strategy—
Generally I will initiate with either Scorpion>BlackPowder or just run up and BlackPowder. Often times I’ll have a stealth move on my F1 stolen from a mob before the fight, so if I’m just running up I go stealth to avoid scaring them off.

From there, I just loop Backstab > BlackPowder > Autoattack x4 > HeartSeek > repeat LIKE A BAWS until downed.

If they start to run off I shadowstep with Steal or Infiltrator’s strike to land the next backstab easily and stay up in their business.

—General Feel and Gameplay—
Hidden Thief has been a great quality of life change for me, since I couldn’t hit decent damage at all without it, and I’ve been treating Precision as a dump stat forever. I can 1v1 just about anybody no problem, and they’ll go down in 3-5 backstabs, usually 3 or 4.

I can survive in a 3v1 easy and unless they get organized and start chaining CC on me I can almost always kill one person before I need to bail and reset the fight. I can survive mobs of around 6 – 8 people all trying to kill me if I’m playing fully defensively, but it’s unlikely I’ll kill anybody like that. (Basically I stop backstabbing so I’ll never have the revealed debuff, and then Black Powder > Heartseeker every time I’m visible.)

I still feel pretty survivable, and I stab things pretty well; but how can I stab things BETTER? Let me know if you have any ideas!

i belive your build will fail against
D/D – Elementailists : – you lack hp regeneration and your burst is 6000 damage every 4 seconds-they can heal that
1.bunker guardians/ cond bunker engineirs – same reason
2.condition mesmers – your stealth (condition clean ) is black powder + heartseekers 3.that already hurt at 10+ stacks of confusion -specialy since you don’t have hp regeneration.
you should also consider alternative weapon with bloodlust/perception
you cannot sustain any battle that last more then 3 minutes, since you got no regeneration- and you cannot burst any tanky build , since your damage comes only from backstab – in best situations 1 every 5 seconds.

Hey Rayya, thanks for the feedback!

D/D eles are an issue because they’re tankier + have heals, right? (I don’t know that much about eles because I haven’t had time to play as one yet.) I’ve fought a couple and noticed I managed to stab them pretty good, but then they tend to run away or reset the fight. I think I’ve killed a D/D ele once or twice but they may have been terrible or an uplevel? I don’t remember.

I was hoping most of my sustainability would come from the Blood Sigil on my pistol and the fact that I’m either healing off the Signet of Malice passive or spamming it every 15 seconds.

Generally I don’t stay in a fight for more than a minute or two, if I haven’t won by then I bail with shortbow and rely on out-of-combat healing to save my noob kitten. Are you saying that with regeneration I’d be able to stay in a fight indefinitely without dying? If so, what is your recommendation as the best way to get regeneration? Will it still be any good without being built into Healing Power at all?

Is there anything I can really do against bunker / attrition builds with this strat / stats, or is not being able to fight them a tradeoff I’ll have to deal with?

D/D elementalists can’t continuously heal 6000 damage every 4 seconds, that’s impossible even with full healing power gear. They will still counter this build by having tons of untargeted slows such as Earth #2 and Water #3 + high mobility with just about everything. It’s very hard to land backstabs on someone who keeps slowing you, not to mention they can reset the fight at any time (although to be fair so can you)

I also run a similar build but 0 30 30 10 0 (for the regeneration in stealth) and while it does a pretty good job of keeping my health up, I still have to run away sometimes. Against bunkers it’s just means neither of us will die.

Also try shadowstep or the movespeed signet, both of them are pretty good.

Hey Sunflowers, thanks for the feedback! Trading fight-resets back and forth seems to be how it usually goes when I fight attrition builds, and it just continues like that until somebody gets zerged or makes a stupid mistake and dies. I think my response to that will have to be to just keep improving my rhythm and overall skill level so I can wait until they make the stupid mistake first, rather than making one myself. One build can’t do EVERYTHING well, right?

I like to swap around my second utility slot (the one which is by default Scorpion wire in WvW and Ambush Trap in PvE), so as per your suggestion I might start using Shadow Step for roaming. Having three skills that are a shadowstep / stunbreak seems just too trolly not to do.

That said, I’ll probably always use Scorpion Wire for when I’m running with a zerg, because it’s just SO GREAT at ruining peoples’ day.

as an personal sugestion, change some armors to berseker or knight or w/e
in my oppinion the hotspot for tanky thief is betwen 15000-17000 hp ,with 17k hp as maximum. i see no point to have 20.000 hp if you can heal maximum 12-13k in 1 minute. With an 0/30/30/10/0 i can stay in combat against D/D tanky elementalist even 1 hour if fight takes that long since i can heal 350 hp/sec stealthed and like 6500 from Hide in shadows

Hm. Well I’m not really sure I want to go Beserker’s, since I just am not a big fan of Precision at all. My feeling is that my luck with random chance / RNG is godawful, so I’m not going to count on crits unless I have a 100%+ chance of getting them. – This is why I’m building around Hidden Killer.

If anything, I would like some Cavalier armor, so I can trade some of that excessive vitality for more Toughness, but they only make accessories for that set, and not armor. -_- I’d also like to pump up my critical damage a bit more, but I’m not sure how I’d really do that other than just wanton swapping of Soldier > Valkyrie.

Don’t have time to say much, but here’s what I have to say:
Lotsa inconsistency within the build. For example, you run a bunch of stealth traits, and yet only have 1 stealth utility, SR. I might get it because you’re able to use BP/HS for stealth, but that doesn’t grant you two init, and its stealth is too short for it to be any use for SA IV. Then you run Signet traits, yet only run two Signets. Then you have SW thrown in their for… Well, I honestly have no idea.

So, for now, I’ll just have to suggest swapping utilities and some traits so you have more of a clear purpose, rather than try to use a bunch of unconnected utilities that interfere with one another.

Hey Arganthium, thanks for weighing in!

Let me explain my individual trait choices and then you or somebody else can tell me if it still seems totally stupid.

Hidden Killer – This is the foundation of the build, because I refuse to rely on Precision for crits. I basically never see non-guaranteed crits go off no matter what I build. o_o I am using this plus Prowess to boost my damage so that I can focus on P/V/T otherwise.

Signet Use + Infusion of Shadow + Quick Recovery – These are here for helping with Initiative spam, which I sort of need to use BP+HS as often as I want to. Also great for sprinting away from zergs with my shortbow.

I did test HS+BP+Infusion of Shadow, and it does appear to work. Here’s what I did:
– Temporarily switched out Quick Recovery so it wouldn’t interfere.
– All tests done starting with full initiative (12).
– Used BP > HS > HS > HS, stacking stealth three times off one BP.
– Tested this three times. When finished, initiative was at 6.
– Used BP, stepped out of the field, used HS x 3 without stealthing at all.
– Did this as close as possible to the same speed as previous test.
– Tested this three times. When finished, initiative was at 1.
So it does appear to make a difference.

Signets of Power – I don’t actually like most of the traits in the Critical Strikes line. I’m only in there for Hidden Killer. This trait is the closest one to being useful for my build, and the 5 stacks of might are very nice for when I use Infiltrator’s to land my backstab, or when I’m just spamming the heal signet every 15 sec.

Shadow’s Embrace – I’ve yet to find a more reliable or spammable condition cleanser. I think this will be part of every build I make forever.

Descent of Shadows – I am a noob who falls off cliffs now and then. This has saved my life more times than I care to admit. It’s also great in all sorts of situations for WvW.
– Being chased by a zerg? Jump off a huge cliff. I will either die to fall damage (no armor penalty) or survive and anybody following me who hasn’t got their fall trait on dies.
– Getting diced up near a ledge? Jump —> fall damage --> cleanse a condition, in case you were crippled / chilled —> baaaail.
– Doing keep / tower defense? This is GREAT for jumping off the walls and then shadowstep-backstabbing somebody.

So I guess what I’m saying is that I realize these traits aren’t OPTIMAL or min-maxed fully, but I think they fit my playstyle better than more sensible choices might. I am however, always open to suggestions! For example, that Scorpion Wire you seemed a bit offended by is the slot I often like to switch around. I’ve been running with Shadowstep in that slot tonight (as suggested earlier) and it’s been pretty darned nice.

@OP, I understand what you’re saying in terms of your own personal play style. But in line with creative criticisms I have several things I want to point out.

The things that stick out the most to me is your major trait selections. I see your reasoning for descent into shadows, but to take that trait you are giving up selecting might on dodge or vigor on heal. For every 1 time you will need to use descent of shadows you will easily use might on dodge or vigor on heal about 10x, descent into shadows is extremely situational.

Btw your signet of malice will recharge in 12s not 15 since you took Signet use. Therefore consider this synergy, every 12 seconds you trigger SoM, giving you 8 seconds of vigor, 5 stacks of might and get 2 initiative back. With all this vigor, you dodge roll all over the place to get 2 secs of swiftness per roll and of course avoid damage and rack up some more might. That seems a lot more efficient than taking quick recovery and descent into shadows. QR I won’t harp on as much but descent of shadows hurts my soul.

Alternatively you can avoid the entire awkwardness of signets in the first place by taking the 3 and 6 traits from critical strikes line, i.e. 7% increased chance to crit when hitting from the side or back. Yes hidden killer will give you 100% crit but you’re not going to only attack from stealth, you need to get off auto attacks too. The turning precision into vitality is self explanatory.

This allows you to take Hide in Shadows rather than SoM. One BIGGGGGG flaw in your build is the ability to recover from a hard hit, SoM cannot heal for much. It cannot cure conditions, the only saving grace for it is the short cooldown. HiS first of all cures several conditions and for the ones it cannot cure, well you’re in stealth anyway so that will take care of it. Also, its a free stealth.

Regarding gear choices and whatnot, it’s hard for me to gage because you included the food buffs which I don’t know how to remove. Typically in the kind of build you’re opting for, someone already mentioned you want to be in the 13-17k vit range, most opt for something 15k. Rather than vitality you’re better served putting points into toughness once you’re over 15k vitality.

To summarize, I agree w/ Arganthium, your build has too many things going on and has a lot of inefficiency as it is.
- Do you want to run a signet oriented build, as you are implying with your choices in CS? Then you should optimize it and bolster your survivability with a lot more ability to dodge. You can do this by taking vigor on heal, you will have 8s of vigor and SoM is off cooldown in 12s, basically meaning you that you can spam dodge 4x in a row, probably 5, with a very short cool down and then do it again. And you can further optimize that by taking might on dodge. Now, you are streamlined. When you aren’t perma stealthing you will spam SoM every 12s when it is off cooldown, giving you 2 initiative, 5 stacks of might, 8s of vigor, + another stack of might and 2 secs of quickness when you dodge.

- In terms of how the d/p build is “conventionally” run, it is usually not signet based, like I said. That isn’t to say using signets is wrong, but if you want to use them, streamline it, and if not take out SoM and the signet traits, replace with HiS.

That’s all I got for now. Hope I presented my arguments in a constructive way rather than bashing your build or your playstyle.

With this build http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.1g.h1b.a.1g.h1|5.1g.h4|1g.7j.1g.7j.1g.7j.1g.7j.1c.7j.1g.a7|2s.0.2s.0.3s.0.1n.67.1n.67.1c.67|0.a3.u45b.u69a.0|2e.7|59.5b.5a.5f.5v|e

I survive as well as you thanks to Assassin’s reward + shadow rejuvenation, both traits which you don’t have and I deal more damage (check the effective power). You start the fight while stealthed (BP + HS + HS + HS → repeat) so: backstab → chain → BP + HS → BS → repeat.

Plus, I see you are using signet of malice: that’s not the right healing skill for a D/P. Try withdraw (my favourite) or Hide in Shadows (if you can’t renouce at the extra stealth). Also, I really suggest you fleet shadow: each backstab will be easier to be landed.

Hi guys, thanks for the feedback!

@Silver: As much as I like Descent into Shadows, I think you’re right, I could probably be using my acrobatics line better. Today I’m going to try Vigorous Recovery + Power of Inertia with a slightly modified opener:
SoM -> dodge rolls -> HS+BP+Infiltrator’s -> begin backstab loop

That should get me up to 13 might for my first backstab, and then keep me hovering around 4-6 for the rest of the fight (from rolls) and back up around 13 when I pop signets to shadowstep+backstab.

Edit: Yeah just for the record that worked pretty great. I was just playing WvW for like 3 hours and all the might I was stacking was really nice. I was just ENDING people when I managed to land the backstabs correctly.

@Frenk: Your build, while perfectly sound, would require me to re-do all of my armor! (The main difference between your build and the one I was running before is that you’re wearing a lot of Beserker’s and I’m wearing a lot of Soldier.) I’m a bit of a filthy casual and haven’t got the gold to buy a whole new set of exotic armor right now, but I will keep your suggestions in mind for if I decide to move away from signets entirely.