Re-gearing thief - What stats to use?
I wouldn’t touch Zealot, Power is ok but we have poor scaling with healing power. What heal on crit? You mean Sigil of Blood?
Yes Sigil of Blood. That and malice is what keeps me alive.
Do you know how, if I had Zealot on just my armor, would affect me? How marginal of a difference is it?
The only other option I can think of is something with Vitality. Since I do occasionally have issues with conditions, but that’s just with my skills being on cooldown.
(edited by Liquid Blade.6529)
Sigil of Blood may be an interesting option after the March update that allows you to use two “on procc” sigils. For now though, Sigil of Fire offers more DPS that also scales better with gear.
Don’t touch Healing Power as a Thief. It’s a nigh useless stats if you’re only healing yourself and scales very poorly.
If you’re doing Power damage, then Power must always be your primary stat. Power is by far and large the best DPS stat out there. Never sacrifice Power for any other stat. So any Crit-build you make is always going to have Power come first as a primary stat.
As for the rest, it’s about finding a balance that works for you.
I feel comfortable in PvE with about 15.000 HP. Less and I feel too squishy, more and it feels a bit unnecessary. It also depends on exactly how well you dodge etc. but 15.000 HP feels quite comfortable.
Same applies to Toughness. Get as much as you need without sacrificing Power.
Precision always feels a bit overrated imo, especially considering how much effective Crit-chance you can get from traits and Fury. I think 50% basic Crit-chance is good enough for any build but that’s not based on any objective data.
Crit-Damage follows the same logic and may not be a priority with the incoming changes. Get as much as you can.
All other stats are practically irrelevant to Thieves.
Don’t touch Healing Power as a Thief. It’s a nigh useless stats if you’re only healing yourself and scales very poorly.
Watch those blanket statements. It’s not that useful for the OP’s 25/30/x/x/x build, due to traits, but other Thief specs can leverage Healing Power pretty effectively.
Precision always feels a bit overrated imo, especially considering how much effective Crit-chance you can get from traits and Fury. I think 50% basic Crit-chance is good enough for any build but that’s not based on any objective data.
Just to add to this: it’s generally true that Power or Ferocity Crit Damage is a better investment than Precision from a raw damage perspective, but if you have an on-crit build and/or use Practiced Tolerance, that changes the calculus a bit. A standard S/P build with Sundering Strikes and Critical Haste can never have enough crit chance, for example, and Practiced Tolerance can net you an easy 1500+ bonus health, which is not bad for an Adept skill. That’s before even getting into upcoming Sigil changes.
If you’re going for damage and looking at your gear, don’t bother with healing power. None of the stat combos that offer healing power give you a good bonus to any dps stat. Either primary stat is healing power, or the healing power item doesn’t give power at all, only item to give healing power and crit dmg in pve is celestial and thief doesn’t work well as a hybrid.
If you want some sustain without losing your dps Valkyrie and cavaliar can work. Don’t go strict valk or cavaliar, you still need some crit chance to make use of crit damage but there are some nice ascended items for thief like
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Godrock_Amulet
Or
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vine_of_the_Pale_Tree
That still give precision and crit dmg and power, and a little bit of vitality. At level 80 that’s 180 health (10 health per point of vitality) per trinket. Thief has medium armor, but the lowest health pool (along with guardian and ele) so vitality naturally is more useful. Thief can get high crit damage very easily and with stat sets like Valkyrie and zerker and traits like Practiced Tolerance (7% of prec added to vitality) you can top off 17k hp without losing your damage. Go into acrobatics and you get even further.
Overall you can keep your dps and survivability in pve, dodging hard hits and recovery is just learned along the way and isn’t gear based really. Practiced tolerance is a really really good trait if you have a lot of precision and not much vitality, letting you focus less on vitality gear. You can mix in cavaliar with some assassin’s but even with 25 points into DA, power is only a secondary stat for assassin’s and cavaliar so you lose quite a lot of power. I’d recommend some zerker or valk if you have enough precision, where power is the primary stat. Crit dmg helps a ton but percent’s scale better off high base numbers. If you feel you die too easy, try 15 into acrobatics for the extra evasion and vitality instead of trickery.
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
I find toughness a difficult stat since, with current gear, I’m sitting at 2,500 armor, and I still get hit stupidly hard from some things. I feel like I need it, but I’m not sure what it’s doing.
It’s mostly my ability to heal quickly that keeps me alive in those situations. However, I can see that healing power probably isn’t useful.
Though, I thought healing power only affected yourself – basing that off giving an ally regeneration is healing them through their own healing power.
I’m confident enough to say I’m a good thief. So dodging is second nature. But I’m not near perfect.
What I can gather from this conversation is Vitality is something I should look at the most, because I already have mid Armour without stats.
With Practice Tolerance though, I miss out on either 1) Gain Fury at 50% health or 5) 10% damage with pistols (only use on certain bosses though). I’m just concerned how I can keep decent fury, if I were to say not go 15 into trickery.
The fact that everyone shys away from non-power main stats worries me. I’ve seen that Full Assassin is slightly less (or slightly more with Ascended?) than Berserker damage. However, Could Assassin’s be more useful if I’m pooling around different stats?
For example: Valkyrie weapons, Assassin Armor, Berserk (with vitality) trinkets. That would give me predominant power, but assassins would pick up the crit chance due to the lower amount of prec on trinkets and none of valkyrie.
I find toughness a difficult stat since, with current gear, I’m sitting at 2,500 armor, and I still get hit stupidly hard from some things. I feel like I need it, but I’m not sure what it’s doing.
It’s mostly my ability to heal quickly that keeps me alive in those situations. However, I can see that healing power probably isn’t useful.Though, I thought healing power only affected yourself – basing that off giving an ally regeneration is healing them through their own healing power.
I’m confident enough to say I’m a good thief. So dodging is second nature. But I’m not near perfect.
What I can gather from this conversation is Vitality is something I should look at the most, because I already have mid Armour without stats.
With Practice Tolerance though, I miss out on either 1) Gain Fury at 50% health or 5) 10% damage with pistols (only use on certain bosses though). I’m just concerned how I can keep decent fury, if I were to say not go 15 into trickery.The fact that everyone shys away from non-power main stats worries me. I’ve seen that Full Assassin is slightly less (or slightly more with Ascended?) than Berserker damage. However, Could Assassin’s be more useful if I’m pooling around different stats?
For example: Valkyrie weapons, Assassin Armor, Berserk (with vitality) trinkets. That would give me predominant power, but assassins would pick up the crit chance due to the lower amount of prec on trinkets and none of valkyrie.
Assassin’s is the alterantive to zerker ONLY IF you lack precision. Precision is the primary stat on assassin’s, and for some builds it helps a lot. Crit chance is a lot easier to achiev on thief than power, because the cs tree is full of goodies while the DA tree is more filled with maybe’s. I wouldn’t go any further than 15 into DA unless you’re a venom spec, just because of how much CS boosts your dmg. You can always mix things up between zerker assassin valkryie cavaliar, w/e but zerker is stronger than assassin in the end.
And 2500 armor is ok, but don’t bother going futher unless you intend to lose even more dmg. Always experiment and find a healthy balance but I personally never go further than 2300 armor to keep my dps high. That’s coming from traits/trinkets to supply toughness, still maintain 100%+ crit dmg.
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
(edited by NinjaEd.3946)
I find toughness a difficult stat since, with current gear, I’m sitting at 2,500 armor, and I still get hit stupidly hard from some things. I feel like I need it, but I’m not sure what it’s doing.
It’s mostly my ability to heal quickly that keeps me alive in those situations. However, I can see that healing power probably isn’t useful.Though, I thought healing power only affected yourself – basing that off giving an ally regeneration is healing them through their own healing power.
I’m confident enough to say I’m a good thief. So dodging is second nature. But I’m not near perfect.
What I can gather from this conversation is Vitality is something I should look at the most, because I already have mid Armour without stats.
With Practice Tolerance though, I miss out on either 1) Gain Fury at 50% health or 5) 10% damage with pistols (only use on certain bosses though). I’m just concerned how I can keep decent fury, if I were to say not go 15 into trickery.The fact that everyone shys away from non-power main stats worries me. I’ve seen that Full Assassin is slightly less (or slightly more with Ascended?) than Berserker damage. However, Could Assassin’s be more useful if I’m pooling around different stats?
For example: Valkyrie weapons, Assassin Armor, Berserk (with vitality) trinkets. That would give me predominant power, but assassins would pick up the crit chance due to the lower amount of prec on trinkets and none of valkyrie.
Assassin’s is the alterantive to zerker ONLY IF you lack precision. Precision is the primary stat on assassin’s, and for some builds it helps a lot. Crit chance is a lot easier to achiev on thief than power, because the cs tree is full of goodies while the DA tree is more filled with maybe’s. I wouldn’t go any further than 15 into DA unless you’re a venom spec, just because of how much CS boosts your dmg.
That’s interesting. I understand 30 in CS, just because. Well duh. It has heaps of benefits.
25 in deadly arts is for the condition damage, damage boost (which because most of the time a mob has a condition, it works. Then it’s a straight 250 into power. If you don’t put an extra 10 into DA, where do you put it for the extra Omph in your build?
On your statement on Assassins, are you saying that it (like a fair amount of other things people say about thief), is not that good for a thief, since we already have plenty of Precision boosters?
I find toughness a difficult stat since, with current gear, I’m sitting at 2,500 armor, and I still get hit stupidly hard from some things. I feel like I need it, but I’m not sure what it’s doing.
It’s mostly my ability to heal quickly that keeps me alive in those situations. However, I can see that healing power probably isn’t useful.Though, I thought healing power only affected yourself – basing that off giving an ally regeneration is healing them through their own healing power.
I’m confident enough to say I’m a good thief. So dodging is second nature. But I’m not near perfect.
What I can gather from this conversation is Vitality is something I should look at the most, because I already have mid Armour without stats.
With Practice Tolerance though, I miss out on either 1) Gain Fury at 50% health or 5) 10% damage with pistols (only use on certain bosses though). I’m just concerned how I can keep decent fury, if I were to say not go 15 into trickery.The fact that everyone shys away from non-power main stats worries me. I’ve seen that Full Assassin is slightly less (or slightly more with Ascended?) than Berserker damage. However, Could Assassin’s be more useful if I’m pooling around different stats?
For example: Valkyrie weapons, Assassin Armor, Berserk (with vitality) trinkets. That would give me predominant power, but assassins would pick up the crit chance due to the lower amount of prec on trinkets and none of valkyrie.
Assassin’s is the alterantive to zerker ONLY IF you lack precision. Precision is the primary stat on assassin’s, and for some builds it helps a lot. Crit chance is a lot easier to achiev on thief than power, because the cs tree is full of goodies while the DA tree is more filled with maybe’s. I wouldn’t go any further than 15 into DA unless you’re a venom spec, just because of how much CS boosts your dmg.
That’s interesting. I understand 30 in CS, just because. Well duh. It has heaps of benefits.
25 in deadly arts is for the condition damage, damage boost (which because most of the time a mob has a condition, it works. Then it’s a straight 250 into power. If you don’t put an extra 10 into DA, where do you put it for the extra Omph in your build?
If I go fully into CS, I get executioner. 20% extra dmg + 100%+ crit dmg is huge and is what lets me dish out heavy hits without standing around too long. Pulling off heavy hits means a general loss in sustain so the sooner I can get it off and dodge out the better.
Major traits can always be adjusted, but when looking at the stats of each tree CS is much more attractive with crit chance and dmg. I don’t have full ascended yet and without power food or anything into DA I can top 3k attack. I run a lot of valkryie pieces as my personal flavor because I can get enough crit chance from traits and zerker weapons. As far as defences go, I’m usually prone to stick with 15 into acrobatics even with D/X because it can help me avoid the train of a zerg as well as getting out of large AoE fields.
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
What is your crit chance if you’re hitting 3k attack? I’m at about 2.2k
I did just look at building something on a gw2builder. I got Assassin weapons/Valkyire armour and Berserker trinkets. That gives me a good 50% crit (more with traits/Sig of Malice), and 15k health. I could even go Zerk/Valk Trinkets, but I’m not sure if I want to drop below 50% crit chance for what I like to do with procs (notably the Shuddering strikes and the haste on crit trait).
In terms of power, that’s mostly pure power, so I wouldn’t even feel pressured to put any points in DA. Is that the kind of thing you yourself are interested in?
In wvw/pve without foods, oils, world buffs (just after reset) or any outside influence I get
3014 attack power
46% crit chance
2180 armor
17,205 health
108% crit damage
I have a cavaliar amulet so I can bump the armor to 2306 and just lose 41 attack power and 3% crit chance (same crit dmg). With foods/oils its a whole different story, atm Im messing with hidden killer because I figure 20% of a non-crit BS seems a bit silly, I want to make sure my BS is consistent and with force and fire sigils, it can hit rather hard even against hefty targets like guardian/warrior. It’s risky to play but I utilize blinds/evasion and stealth to throw my enemy off and try to maintain stealth long enough to get a BS off and kite them some more. I don’t risk spamming aa too long or they may get a combo off on me, I like to dance around them as much as I can and prepare another BS.
The only troubles I get is being pummeled with condition damage which forces me to pull off and recover most times. I have enough vitality to soak up a burst or small flow of cleaves from the train if I get caught, yet can hit the backline real heavy. In pve I often don’t use thief for anything but fractals and I’ve basically retired that so my build for there is a bit lost. I know in dungeons thief has to constantly swap out major traits to stay on top, there is no 1 build for them in there.
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
I wouldn’t touch Zealot, Power is ok but we have poor scaling with healing power. What heal on crit? You mean Sigil of Blood?
We actually have great scaling on Healing Power (our heals practually fully depend on it). Why do you think our heals do absolute sh** without Shadow Arts’s Healing Power? Considering how Apothecary armor literally turns Thief into a god I’m pretty sure Zealot could make some good builds. It’s also the only good healing power setup for Thief outside of condition builds that would be strong. I feel like it was made specifically for this class.
(edited by Doggie.3184)
Assassin’s is a good set to mix in when you’re looking to squeeze the last bit of oomph out of a really optimized dungeon build. Basically when you have 25 stacks of Might on you Precision becomes pretty attractive to make sure that you crit every single time, instead of merely almost every time.
Without the big stacks of Might Assassin’s isn’t all that attractive.
In WvW I would ignore toughness entirely and just mix in some Valkyrie for vitality. Simply put, you don’t have the sustain to really make toughness work for you (at least, not anywhere near enough to compete with a class that has real sustain) and 90% of your deaths will be from getting run over by a blob (where it won’t matter) or from picking a fight with a condition tank that you can’t win (where it won’t matter).
Zealot is basically junk for the thief, even if you’re going for max sustain in PvE you’ll scale better with toughness than healing power.
I wouldn’t touch Zealot, Power is ok but we have poor scaling with healing power. What heal on crit? You mean Sigil of Blood?
We actually have great scaling on Healing Power (our heals practually fully depend on it). Why do you think our heals do absolute sh** without Shadow Arts’s Healing Power?
The difference between a zerker and a healing (clerics?) amulet was going from about 300 to 400 heals on Rejuv. I call that poor scaling. If you want to improve the effectiveness of your heals, toughness will contribute more to your ‘hits-per-heal’ then healing power.
Our healing scales are on the low end, for everything.
The only good heal we can constantly keep up is Shadow’s rejuvenation and that also scales horribly with healing power. The thing you have to keep in mind about healing power is what you’re losing by investing into it. If by going full healing power on a thief, you can go settler’s or cleric’s. Either 1 you’re damage will be aweful, and you still don’t have the beef that a guardian in full clerics does, because their healing power scales really good. The regen stacks and scaling should be slightly increase (no wack a mole) for thief, to where people see similar effects from the offensive support of thief vs support from ele or guardian. Not necessarily giving boons left and right and water fields, but we have venoms, which are hefty investments. Make the investment more worthwhile.
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
Again: healing power is not appropriate for the OP, because he is 25/30/x/x/x.
But it’s not a worthless stat for Thief as a whole, you just have to be in the right spec for it. While the individual ratios are not great, making a judgment on HP by looking at ratios without looking at time/stacking is like buying a car just based on its color.
Anyone in 30 Shadow Arts who uses Rejuv and Leeching Venoms will want to think real hard about adding a piece or two of Apothecary’s or Cleric’s to their build. Both traits have poor individual ratios, but can be activated quite frequently.
Likewise, anyone with 30 Acrobatics who has Pain Response and uses SoM and Assassin’s Reward stands to benefit from a piece or two of Cleric’s, or the new Zealot’s affix. None of those abilities have high ratios, but an Acro Thief has high Regen uptime from PR, and constant small heals from AR and SoM.
You don’t need to 1) be as good as a Guardian, 2) give healing to allies, or 3) stuff your entire set full of Healing Power gear in order to make the stat worthwhile for your personal situation.
I’ve asked Viking about his choice of celestial and it was just a few pieces to make AR in his eyes, viable. Zeolots might be acceptable in small amounts but most damage comes from crit dmg being drastically high, and with that, high crit chance to make use of it. If he is 25/30/x/x/x he can’t really invest into any trait line for good sustained healing anyways, so 15 in acrobatics would simply be the best for the additional health and dodges. Boon duration might help offensively(might stacking, or fury from CS) but 25/30 doesn’t give any protective boons so it will basically be dodges/evades.
Personally for dps, I wouldn’t go any further than 15 into DA but near 100% up time on conditions boosting dmg by 10% may be a way to indirectly boost his crits (higher base from that and 250 power). Only reason I advise not going so deep into DA is you already have 30 in CS, unless you like to play pure glass it’s not worthwhile especially for something as vulnerable as s/p without good evasion or condi removal (no reliable stealth from 15 in SA, no PR from 15 in Acrobatics). You need some way to maintain good initiative as well as steady recovery and 25/30/x/x/x has no method to that.
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
Thank you guys for the feedback.
I’ve been staring at different stats to use based on the responses, and it’s made me change the traits around as well. I’m still going to have 30 in CS. But thinking in terms of survivability , Acrobatics or Trickery has it’s own advantages. I don’t say Shadow Arts, because I have no use for it with how I like to play thief.
Because of that, I’m dropping any consideration of healing power, since I can see that I would need some investment there for it to work.
With the following gear I’ve gotten: hp=16k, power=2129, crit chance 62%, armour=16.5% reduction.
The gear being Cavalier weapons, Assassin armor, Berserker/Valkyrie trinkets.
Traits: 15/30/0/20/5
I don’t feel like I need to invest more into toughness, since there’s quite a large diminishing return in the % reduction after the initial boost from the weapons. Health, is much higher than any of my usual-ness. Runes/Sigils I’ll wait until the update comes out, since I need more time to think.
What do people think of those traits though? 20 in Acro allows me more health, dodging and pain response, though, if I went 25 into Trickery, I could boost my damage up by 15% with “increased damage per initiative”, which works well with 30 into CS. Which with the additional traits feels more beneficial that 25 into DA.
Thank you guys for the feedback.
I’ve been staring at different stats to use based on the responses, and it’s made me change the traits around as well. I’m still going to have 30 in CS. But thinking in terms of survivability , Acrobatics or Trickery has it’s own advantages. I don’t say Shadow Arts, because I have no use for it with how I like to play thief.
Because of that, I’m dropping any consideration of healing power, since I can see that I would need some investment there for it to work.With the following gear I’ve gotten: hp=16k, power=2129, crit chance 62%, armour=16.5% reduction.
The gear being Cavalier weapons, Assassin armor, Berserker/Valkyrie trinkets.
Traits: 15/30/0/20/5I don’t feel like I need to invest more into toughness, since there’s quite a large diminishing return in the % reduction after the initial boost from the weapons. Health, is much higher than any of my usual-ness. Runes/Sigils I’ll wait until the update comes out, since I need more time to think.
What do people think of those traits though? 20 in Acro allows me more health, dodging and pain response, though, if I went 25 into Trickery, I could boost my damage up by 15% with “increased damage per initiative”, which works well with 30 into CS. Which with the additional traits feels more beneficial that 25 into DA.
You can try that, or 25 in acrobatics. Either one (minor trait) isn’t 100% power each time but the major traits along the line have their uses. If you like steal and how their traits flow with it you can go into trickery, or if you like the evasion and extra vitality you can grab acrobatics. The only thing I dislike strongly about trickery is that it has condi dmg as the trait line stat. Other than that the traits within it are really good and have many uses.
break. I feel like they should be back by now..”
What do people think of those traits though? 20 in Acro allows me more health, dodging and pain response, though, if I went 25 into Trickery, I could boost my damage up by 15% with “increased damage per initiative”, which works well with 30 into CS. Which with the additional traits feels more beneficial that 25 into DA.
You can try that, or 25 in acrobatics. Either one (minor trait) isn’t 100% power each time but the major traits along the line have their uses. If you like steal and how their traits flow with it you can go into trickery, or if you like the evasion and extra vitality you can grab acrobatics. The only thing I dislike strongly about trickery is that it has condi dmg as the trait line stat. Other than that the traits within it are really good and have many uses.
Yes. The condition damage bonus from Trickery is similar to why I was shying away from DA, with it’s condition duration (only real condition I’d use is vulnerability). I suppose depending on my situation (Dungeons/Fractals vs WvW/Roaming) I would swap between the two trait lines.
Thanks again.