Guild Wars 2

So, I was theory crafting a perma-evade thief and this is what I got:
Perma Evade Thief

The idea is to rotate between Dodges, Vault, Bandits Defense, Withdraw, and Smoke Screen to evade, block or blind every attack. Using the equation in Wolfram Mathematica:
Endurance gain per sectond: a = (50/20.75 + 100/30 + 10/13.5 + 8*3/8 + 10 + 50/14.5 + 50/10);
Specifics: (Steal+Sig of Agility+Bandits Defense+Vault+Base endurance regen+Rune of Adventure+Sigil of Energy)

b = 50/a;
c = .75/b; (Percent of time spent evading with dodge)
d = 4*2/3;
e = .5/d; (Percent of time spent evading with Vault)
f = 1.5/13.5;(Percent of time spent blocking with Bandit’s Defense)

g = e + c + .75/15 + 7/30 + 2/40 = 0.939813

or 94% of the time you should have some version of active defense up. Note that Smoke Screen makes up 23% of this time. So against bosses, you would not get near this up time, but you would not need it as most bosses do not attack often enough to get past your normal evades. I can certainly see this build used by players learning to solo upper level fractals or dungeons.

There is also a version using Viper’s for a condi and D/D version of the build. But it cannot get near as much up time in evades due to spending 1.8/4.55 seconds AAing with daggers to maintain endurance regen. It may have a higher damage output though due to uncatchable+lotus training dealing huge bleed stacks.

Edit: checked Max endurance regen rate with vigor+food+endless stamina, it is 10 per second, not 8.75.

Yea, there’s lots of potential for endless evades…

…but there’s not much reason to ever go for it, especially in PvE. =P

Just not a reason to take it in PvE, even if you are soloing Champions, particularly when it comes out to trading out Trickery for Critical Strikes, since if you gear correctly, you can maintain 100% crit chance solo with the fury uptime it provides.

Most champions and elites can be defeated with a combination of dodges and blinds from staff with just all the endurance regen built into Acro and DD to begin with. It’s only on very specific ones like Champion Bladedancers and Shadowleapers, because they have unshakeable which reduces their blind chance and they are capable of putting out more constant, damage pressure than any other standard champ in HoT.

Like Channeled Vigor is a hell of a heal and with Bandit’s Tenacity, it’s worth two extra dodges, all on a 16 second cd. You run Trickery to get a CD reduction on Withdrawal, which is a weaker heal and one extra dodge on a 14.5 CD. The projectile reflect on Dagger Storm is situationally useful to a small percentage of PvE champions; in all other situations, it pales in comparison to Impact Strike that shatters 2/3s of an unscaled champions break bar for half the CD. Same with Smoke Screen and the blind on it is overkill with having them build into the staff.

So what do you get out on Trickery, really? Big DPS loss for CD reduction on skill choices that are subpar in PvE, more initative, some irrelevant buffs on steal and a daze on steal that barely puts a dent in a break bar.

You also built the whole thing around evades and didn’t take Escapist Absolution for condi removal on evade with a 1 sec ICD, which is incredible in just the Acro/DD/CS build I run as a staple for soling.

(I am going to probably start running your food choice though in my Acro build. I forgot that exists and the +40% endurance rate is more valuable to me than the power based food I am using that suffers heavily from diminishing returns at my current power level)