Easily one of my favorite builds in PvP – Stronghold during the entire BWE3 is the Marauder stat P/P and Staff full Physical Skills Daredevil.
Best part, is with the newly announced changes, its going to be further improved!
With the trait changes, the build now makes even better sense, as some of the traits before were trade offs, but since the build primarily wishes to stay between 600 to 900 range from foes, the Evasive Empowerment to Havoc Master change makes it less desirable, freeing us to take Brawler’s Tenacity without conflict.
Similarly, the damage reduction on Unhindered Combatant synergizes well with the healing provided from Invigorating Precision, making it even easier to maintain your health over 90%, which is vital for this build’s Scholar runes and Flawless Strikes.
The goal of the build is to use the massive mobility and disengage afforded by the Dash dodge, endurance gain and low cool-downs of the Physical skills, and lastly the staff 5 for further mobility and Endurance gain thanks to Staff Master. The result is a build that has MORE mobility than the same build with short bow 5, thanks to staff’s slightly lower cost and endurance return, at the cost of not being able to shortbow 5 up certain shortcuts.
This build relies on kiting melee foes and getting into favorable mid-range against long range foes at break-neck speed, and relying on the disengage from the dodge and staff 3 or 5 to maintain distance. Bandit’s Defense is your go to anti-engage skill, immediately flowing into Fist Flurry to counter attack on a successful knockdown.
You then decide to continue into the Elite chain IF you think you can kill the foe (swapping weapons to trigger Intelligence sigil to make all three hits crit) or disengage with a dodge backward into an Unload.
Unload is clearly the mainstay damage of the build, but never underestimate the powerful spike potential of a Pistol 2 Immobilize into a Staff 5 100% crit smash. If you get the jump on the foe and land most or all of the first unload before you get dipped below 90% health, your damage will be massive. 12,000+ Unloads were not an uncommon sight, and healing was decent enough to keep the Scholar runes and Flawless Strikes going. Now that the actual heal is VERY fast to complete, it will be even easier, and -10% from all incoming damage types will vastly help as well.
The Utilities all serve a great purpose:
Impairing Daggers is excellent for landing a double unload if they don’t have an invulnerability/projectile defense/immobilize removal, but landing them can be tricky. Wonderful for disengage as well.
Bandit’s Defense is your amazing get out of kitten free card which also sets up the massive, and now easier to use, damage from Fist Flurry, which then dazes to set up Impact Strike or a dash dodge away into an Unload. The damaging Utilities often serve a great place as a filler skill when you have blown your initiative, and they act as the go-to melee offensive when a foe think’s they’re closed in on you for the kill.
Marauders leaves the build with enough health to react, while the higher precision maintains the build’s consistency with critting better than berserker, which would likely be too susceptible to burst damage anyway.
Conditions are a problem with the build. If Escapist’s Absolution becomes base-lined into the Minor traits like everyone is hoping, then we may finally have a good option there, but not taking Staff Mastery hurts the build’s mobility significantly.
But yes, I’m happier than I’ve ever been that Power based P/P thief finally can be playable and viable! Condi P/P is also looking good too. What a time to be alive!
going to test it thoroughly on release though!