Guild Wars 2

Hey ya’ll!

I’m Pony Pony Run Run and today i’m bringing to you the realest Thief Support build you’ve ever seen.

First let’s explain a litle who i am and all that jazz. I’m Pony Pony Run Run from Far Shiverpeaks (EU). Been playing the game since the beta and rolling thief since that (took like 4 months break) i have 2134 hours on my thief, for some it may not be much but i find it enough to know what i am doing.

So let’s start with the build:

First of all i want to specify in what roles and game modes this build will be most efficient as it is, these will be the following:

• WvW : _Will work at its best in small skirmishes, small guild raids (20pers) and GvG where ressing and preventing a stomp is high priority.
• sPvP : It can work but you are definetly wasting one spot in the team as this build is based arround stealthing allies and we all know stealth doesn’t work well with the node capture mode. On the other hand if Anet were to keep going with the ongoing TDM i could totally see this a viable pick.
• PvE : C’mon let’s be real, no need for supports in PVE. Don’t waste your time using it there because your damage is completly null.

Okay so, here goes nothing:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vYAQNAoaVl0Mp7pVPx8J0PNRw9gpJFAeK86Y7UwVrC-z0BBIjCi0HBiABMBtIas1RFRjVpjIq2jjIqGA-w

Before going into details let’s explain the role that this build will be filling.

Your main goal is too keep allies alive when they are downed, blind hazard the battlefield, prevent stomps and mitigate incoming damage to your main damage dealers. Now let’s explain the “why” after every choice!

Weapon Choices:

Dagger/pistol: Stealth on demand, blind fields, Insta daze and god tier gap closers. That is all you want with this build. Knowing what you can do with this set is primordial to succeed with this build

Sigils: Energy and Hydromancy, with the new sigil changes this will allow you to get extra dodges and cripple the enemies at the same time.

Shortbow: You need to move arround fast to you allies to ress the asap so IA gets the job done. Poison field blast will apply weakeness which is an excelent damage mitigator. Blast finisher on demand has to be the best part of this, i’ll list later what you can achive with both this sets in synerygy. Use same sigils.

Traits:

Now here’s the real deal, I’ve been trying to force the new traits into some builds and it just didn’t feel right untill i stopped and looked at the thief from another whole prespective other than damage dealer. Let’s get going!

Shadow Arts: 30 points

• Shadow protector: This is amazing, it will help you ressing downed allies and will provide some pasive sustain to your allies when you stealth them.

• Cloaked in shadows: Not much to say, with the stealth abuse you’ll be doing an AoE blind is the best thing you can get.

• Resilience of Shadows: This right here is the star of our build, 50% damage reduction is a lot of damage reduction. It’ll allow you to stealth downed(or not) allies and safely resurrect them.

Acrobatics: 20 points.

• Vigrous recovery: Combined with withdraw it’s an awesome choice which will let you dodge a lot more combined with the sigils of energy.

• Quick Recovery: I feel like this build will be pretty ini hungry so why not, consider taking Pain response if you want some Condition cleanse. Either of them are fine.

It might be worth going deep to 30 points and getting the stability on reveal, i don’t know 1sec feels really underwhelming.

Trickery: 20 points.

• Mercifull Ambush: Now did i say Resilience was the star? This is the other star! Will give stealth to your downed ally which means he will have 50% dmg reduction AND 2k hp regen! plus it will blind enemies arround! Definetly a must have for this build!

• Bountifull thief: Steal buffs and share them with allies? and vigor? YES.

On the minor traits we have some extra initiative which is always nice in my opinion.

v v

Gear:

Answer is easy, Sentinels! You want to be as tanky as posible your goal is not to deal damage but to ress and blind. I pick sentinels over cleric as i feel the lack of vitality is bad on our squishy thieves. Feel free to try other stats tho.

Runes:

• Rune of Mercy 6/6: Now this is just the cherry over the cake, +150 toughness, take less damage while revivng (over the 50% from resilence), revive allies with 20% more health and revive allies 10% faster. Everything is self explanatory here.

Skills:

Heal: Withdraw

You really don’t want to be rooted. This heal combined with Vigorous recovery will let you dodge a lot more and escape some scenearios where you’d have been caught up!

Utilities:

• Shadow Refuge: I don’t think i need to explain it but just in case: Mass aoe stealth for an extremly long duration which can be blasted for Aoe Blind? Good for stealthing incoming damage to you blob and so on.

• Smoke screen: While underused i feel like this really suits well here, it’s a blinding field so any enemies that go through will be blinded and it can be blasted for aoe stealth! It also blocks projectiles. I feel like this skill has a lot of room to make some severe plays!

• Blinding powder: Easy reliable stealth and blind. It will let you ress, blind and escape if you ever get stunned as it will proc Resilience of shadows which will make you a god.

Elite:

I’m really unsure on what to pick here, i went for Dagger storm as the stability is really nice and it can cripple a whole blob, we definetly lack some stealthy Elites!

Now let’s list all the combos you can do with this Build in order to Aid you allies.

Blast + SR = AoE blind and spammable. If you break stealth as soon as you drop the refuge it will re-stealth you in the last pulse doing another aoe blind and giving extra regen (if you do not have it for any reason)

Blast + Smoke screen = Mass stealth which equals regeneration and damage mitigation! Keep that in mind!

Blast + Black Powder = Same as smoke screen

Black Pownder + Heart seeker = Individual stealth which will let you move arround being unoticed and help you stomp enemies.

Blast+ Poison field = AoE Weakness which is a great damage mitigator.

Conclusion:

Strong build overall, with a diferent style and a lot of gameplay to be developed on, i feel like the skillcap on this will be quite high as you need to combo a lot and have ally and enemy awareness in order to achive your goal and be useful to your team. Stealthing, blinding, weakning it all comes down to being able to read the enemy movements and comunicating with your allies. Keep in mind that pugs will normally autoattack out of stealth so the build will perfom better with teams where they know of your existence and can comunicate with eachother with ease.
Eventhough this is theorycrafting I do really see this build working as dmg thieves can be niche picks in WvW.

That is pretty much all, any feedback will be taken in consideration and i would love get some opinions of what the thief community thinks!

inb4 i didn’t pick a thief to be a kittening support

Also excuse my englando for it is not my native language and i’m too lazy to spellcheck

Lata

I use and will definately continue to use a more aggresive version of this based on the original “ninja nurse” idea.

After the patch it will be 0/0/30/10/30
IV VIII and Resilience of Shadows
I (cause this is where skillful playing happens)
V VII XII

D/P Sigl of Intelligence and Precision

Sb Sigil of Generosity and Torment

Gear will be a mix of Dire and Brezerker ajusted with other pieces and food to 42% crit chance approx. 70% bonus crit damage approx, 500 condi damage approx. 3.2k attack (all including guard stacks). Rest vitality and toughness.
Runes of the Traveller (most likely).

Hide in the Shadows, Roll for Initiative, Blinding Powder (this slot will see other uses depending on situation), Shadow Refuge, Daggerstorm

Hotjoins dont count

SPVP does not count face it, WvW is the only thing that matters, SPVP reduced a great game with awesome maps to fighting on a circle with 1000 diameter and mindless AoEspam on said circle, that is the reason why it is as boring as KITTEN. (infact KITTEN is way less boring). The dominance of S/x for thieves in spvp and the overall lack of creative builds stems from this, mindless cleaves make you win because everyone needs to stay on the point.

This is an interesting build, but it wouldn’t be really viable in larger scale skirmishes. I mainly play a Thief in one of the major WvW guilds on BG, and the problem I see with your concept is that we really don’t stop to rez people, and there are a couple reasons. First, Warrior and even Ranger elites are much better for rez’ing if you get a few people downed. Also, an even better way to get people up is to kill an enemy so they rally.

I think I’m kind of in the same boat as you, though. Thief is a great scout, maybe the best, but I haven’t been able to find a really great use for it as part of a zerg. I tried toying around with venomshare builds, and found them pretty underwhelming. Glassy builds are just too fragile and I get downed too easily.

That said, I’ll probably give your build a try anyway. It looks like it would be very effective in small skirmishes, but I do have my doubts how well it will work in ZvZ play.

So this is what it all boils down to? Thief being a nurse?

Q.Q

Wraith.9426:

This is an interesting build, but it wouldn’t be really viable in larger scale skirmishes. I mainly play a Thief in one of the major WvW guilds on BG, and the problem I see with your concept is that we really don’t stop to rez people, and there are a couple reasons. First, Warrior and even Ranger elites are much better for rez’ing if you get a few people downed. Also, an even better way to get people up is to kill an enemy so they rally.

I think I’m kind of in the same boat as you, though. Thief is a great scout, maybe the best, but I haven’t been able to find a really great use for it as part of a zerg. I tried toying around with venomshare builds, and found them pretty underwhelming. Glassy builds are just too fragile and I get downed too easily.

That said, I’ll probably give your build a try anyway. It looks like it would be very effective in small skirmishes, but I do have my doubts how well it will work in ZvZ play.

I completly agree that it wouldn’t really be viable in ZvZ since most of ZvZ are unorganized fights (in the sense that a lot of kitten is going down), i created the build with my mind set on gvg and small fights where you are able focus on the job.

I know how melee trains work, no one stops to ress but you wouldn’t find yourself on the melee train as that would reduce you fight awareness. Imo this should be played as a battlefield roamer, taking advantage of the enemy position for blinds/debuffs and awareness of damage spikes or downed allies/enemies.

About Ranger/warriors being better, let’s say Warriors and rangers ressing potential starts at 100 while Nurse thief starts at 75, once rangers/wars have used the elite they are reduced to 0 while thieves will still be at 75, but you do have a fair point as do i, i belive. And yes you can kill other enemies but it’s not always there will be a downed enemy in gvg or small roaming. Ressing or asuring the stomp will be your job and key to victory i believe!

Venomge.7142:

So this is what it all boils down to? Thief being a nurse?

Q.Q

Absolutly not! Imo this is just another build that will come up, D/P S/P or S/D and D/D will still be a viable pick!

Seems like a cool build with lots of potential, i might use a variation of it in my graids, i’ve fought guild that have certain people to spam aoe blinds (in gvg) and it get be pretty scary.. this would be great for reviving your eles too.

aLovedhater.4096:

Seems like a cool build with lots of potential, i might use a variation of it in my graids, i’ve fought guild that have certain people to spam aoe blinds (in gvg) and it get be pretty scary.. this would be great for reviving your eles too.

Glad you like it! Yeah blinds can be scary sometimes, while sometimes it may make an autoattack miss sometimes you can blind a earthshaker, a miss is a miss!

And yeah the idea behind this is to revive those ranged backlaners that get focused by the enemy strike team!

Would be interested to see this in action…

OKAY SO

I just tried this in TDM and its so kittening godly.

It was a 10v10, and even 5 ppl attacking me while ressing could not get through the 3,5k armor and 50% dmg reduction, and the ress speed, oh the ress speed.

Rune of mercy got a HUGE buff and now is a ressing beast, time your resses to deny stomps and get Benevolence sigil. I was finishing all my matches with 140+ points (which is alot for DM) and i had a win rate of 75%, unless my team was made of scrubs this build was completly out of this world and i love it.

Changed Dagger MH for Sword, more stuns, Soldier amulet and hydromancy sigils.

Will try to make a video tomorrow!

so anymore updates to this build? im very curious about it and want to see if its worth doing

Laeki.6523:

so anymore updates to this build? im very curious about it and want to see if its worth doing

Yeah totally!

It works perfectly in small scale fights, it’s amazing. As long as you have good teammates you’ll never lose.

Run this in a couple of GvG and ppl in my guild started to call me Mobile Banner Pony! And it’s so fun to play, map awareness is key! But it has it’s limit. There is a point when there is just way too much CC in the area for you to ress someone! It works wonder in TDM too as long as your team is not completly kittened!

I’d totally try it if you are interested in the playstyle (it’s pretty cheap also)