Guild Wars 2

I want to use my thief for scouting, recon, sentry and similar support tasks in WvW. (Weird, I know.) To do this I started by adapting a defensive condition PD+DD I had been using in PvP, with a 0/0/30/20/20 build, mostly dire gear and so forth. But I feel like it could be better.

My primary goal with this guy is to be able to move around fast, and escape if spotted. The secondary goal is to be strong enough to kill dolyaks and maybe, when I get better, flip a camp. Not looking to fight players with this at all, and fully expect that if I do get engaged by anything but a clueless uplevel, I’ll die.

Suggestions.. especially in terms of gear and utilities, most appreciated. (I think the traits are probably fairly solid, though happy to entertain ideas there too.)

I basically run the same build for every single game mode. Here’s the sPvP version:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsYVlYm6OncS6E/5Eh3DyO2wqVgmdP4qV1KA-TsAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNKYZxkCA

Since you want to be tanky, simply change the soldier’s amulet to zerker. After that, I’m sure it’ll easy for you to convert the build over to WvW.

I’m personally not a big believer of stealth. As far as scouting builds go, it’s probably going to have to come down to a decision between either staying in stealth a lot or being able to move quickly, and I personally prefer being able to move quickly. The first reason is that you’re obviously a more effective scout, since you’re able to scout out various enemy movements and kill dolyaks at a much faster speed. Furthermore, the mobility that you can use to get to various locations can also get you away from them very easily; I don’t know that I’ve ever been outrun by another build in WvW before. I’ve hunted down enemies easily and been able to get away from them easily as well. Also, while stealth might seem to be a really sweet thing to have on you for scouting, realistically speaking, zergs are virtually never going to see you while they’re zerging along as long as you keep a good distance (probably ~2000 on flat ground, and you can probably get 1500 or less when you’re on high ground). I’ve personally never been chased down by some splinter group from a zerg before, so that should encourage you.

The problem with P/D is twofold. First of all, its damage is rather pathetic. Against Dolyaks, you might do okay with caltrops, but against everything else you’re going to die, simple as that. I know that you stated that you’re not looking to kill opponents, but you can easily do more damage and remain just as survivable if not more survivable with the build I linked above with Soldier’s gear. Furthermore, however, and certainly more importantly, P/D has the second worst mobility of any thief weaponset (the lowest being P/P- at least P/D can get a movement buff with Acro VI and a little more mobility with its 3 skill). Personally, I would make a defensive SB build over a P/D build any day of the week. SB is universally useful, has much better mobility, a great mix of direct and condi damage, and is easily one of the best if not the best utility weapon in the game. I can promise you that you’re not going to flip a camp (in any realistic time frame, at the very least) with a P/D build.

Hope that helps. The best scouting builds really aren’t nearly as defensive as you made yours, and the S/D build I suggested is going to have far more utility in a large variety of situations than a lowly P/D build will ever have.

PS: since you seem to be trying to build defensively, though, I’d suggest swapping Roll for Initiative with Shadow Refuge in my build if you choose to use it. It’ll also give you a stealth if you ever need one for scouting, though Roll for Init is extremely useful as a stunbreaker, initiative gainer, debilitating-conditions remover, and mobility skill (the evade allows you to travel a fair distance, especially in combination with Withdraw).

You’re not “going to die”.

I run around scouting with Rabid/Apothecary P/D SB 0/0/10/30/30. Dolyaks go down in three rotations (about 12 seconds). You can clear camps by pulling the first few out with scorpion wire. Camp supervisors take about 40s. You can also win many duels. I don’t main thief and just use mine for getting eyes and yakslapping. It doesn’t kill fast, but it stays alive, and that keeps eyes on enemy movements and helps your world.

So, go for it.

Basic rotation against mobs is CnD, dodge (dropping caltrops on the target), sneak attack, approach. Swap dodge for Withdraw if your health gets low.

You need a shortbow. With points in trickery you can chain three Infiltrator’s Arrow and escape anything without even popping stealth. Even if caught, you’re pretty tanky and can take a few hits. A zerg can still trample you, of course.

(I bought Rabid to try out a different build and recommend Dire. Apothecary boosts the Withdraw.)

Arganthium: That looks like a great build, but not sure it’s really what I’m after.

Mabuse: I should have said that I’d die if I tried to duel a “regular” character with the sort of build I’m envisioning. Even with my limited experience I’ve been able to disengage and run successfully most of the time when I want to.

This is the sort of build I’ve been thinking of: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlUmiP3ey5E+5EB3Dny0m6V4rdPiKWpKA-jEyAoLBRyCE9BI7VEN2yYR0YV6ER16FMPeR0qlCgJlRA-w

The character is built for speed, defense and group healing support (I may run in a small group on occasion). Fleet Shadow is extremely addictive and I can cover enormous distances very quickly when using it with Shadow Refuge, especially in combination with Heartseeker.

I fully admit that the build may be way overboard on the defense, but I figure if I get comfortable with it I can swap in some berserker trinkets for more offense when the time comes.

Or am I all wet?

The above build would be more of a damage soak, not really for anything that would sustain you in any way. I’ll be back after I’ve theorycrafted a somewhat viable guild for you; posting here to remind myself where to link it.

EDIT: I think I’ll give you an older build I used to run. It’s a condition build, and while it may not have the vitality you get from your above build’s soldier gear, the healing power more than makes up for it and actually gives you a higher EHP. With it, you can either hold a zerg at a point for days, or hide in the shadows constantly, even applying your bleeds without having to leave stealth. Here it is:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmiP3ey8E+5EB3ji60m6p4rltTBWlPA-jUyAIOBRaBI5BgCBlHLiGb1sIas6Zioa1Nm5uIa1CBsYNA-w

Sure, skilled thieves can disengage and get away with pretty much any build. But if you’re running a thief alt for scouting (as I do) then I reckon a Dire D/P build is pretty handy. A defensive build is a good idea. After all, it’s mostly about getting your camera into position, not winning fights.

That said, you can certainly do supply denial, and win duels. I avoid fights with players mostly, though, since there’s no point in taking a risk that I’ll get teleported back to spawn. I’m more useful alive and looking for stuff. With this kind of tanky build, though, you can safely be pretty distracting until your friends turn up.

I do recommend Preparedness for quick triple teleport though.

For what it’s worth, I used to run a tanky teleporting bard in Rift. Did I kill other players? No. Did I win battles? Absolutely.

Thanks for the replies.

Viking Jorun.5413:

The above build would be more of a damage soak, not really for anything that would sustain you in any way. I’ll be back after I’ve theorycrafted a somewhat viable guild for you; posting here to remind myself where to link it.

Thanks! Look forward to it. And yeah, that would be a pretty soaky character, the idea just being enough to allow me to get away from a pursuer or small group.

Viking Jorun.5413:

With it, you can either hold a zerg at a point for days, or hide in the shadows constantly, even applying your bleeds without having to leave stealth.

How do you mean, by using CnD?

I’m running condition-based now and it just seems really slow even on the NPCs. But my gear is rather crappy (not even exotic) because I didn’t want to spend lots of gold until I figured out what I want to do.

Why the signet? Just for when fighting NPCs? It does make sense now that I think about it.

Mabuse, dire is what I’m running now and I could see that or soldier’s working. I just thought power would be more of a “direct approach” than condition damage since I don’t plan to be doing a lot of fighting.

What do you mean by “quick triple teleport”?

Qaelyn.7612:

Mabuse, dire is what I’m running now and I could see that or soldier’s working. I just thought power would be more of a “direct approach” than condition damage since I don’t plan to be doing a lot of fighting.

D/P is condi. It’s all about applying the bleeds, getting back into stealth, and then applying some more. I’m not aware of any successful D/P power build. In any case, try stuff out in the Heart of the Mists (the PvP lobby) before you spend gold.

Qaelyn.7612:

What do you mean by “quick triple teleport”?

15 points in Trickery gives you 3 extra initiative, allowing you to chain three Infiltrator’s Arrows from your shortbow.

When fighting guard camps d/d is vastly superior to p/d when adding conditions and bleeds.

Death Blossom adds 3 stacks of bleeds on every nearby opponent when used.

Sneak attack adds 5 stacks on ONE opponent from hiding only. You can use ricochet but DB does not need stealth and the bleeds last 10 seconds rather then the 4 seconds from sneak attack.

Guards cluster and using DB you can inflict far more bleed damage with DB.

If you got a 40 percent boost to conditions you squeeze out even more bleed damage at 14 seconds when compared to the 5.6 seconds on sneak attack (14 ticks to 5 ticks)

I solo camps using Conditions in WvW and prefer DB. I will then switch weapons with a hyrdromancy to freeze, do the shadow strike if the INI there or just roll away if not.

Yes indeed, D/D, caltrops, Signet of Malice, and Death Blossom spam are a great way to clear groups of mobs. Players, not so much, but there’s always out-of-combat weapon switch!

Okay that all makes sense. I do want to be able to take camps as that seems a useful contribution. And my other build wasn’t close.

I realize now also that using condition reduction food is overkill when I don’t plan to engage in combat very much. I have enough ways of “getting out of dodge” when I need to.

Still unclear on the idea of using apothecary instead of dire. I get that the extra healing will work well with the signet but that seems to apply mostly for fighting NPCs where I’m not all that worried about being killed. If I get jumped by a couple of players it seems to me my healing will be overwhelmed regardless and having low vitality will make it easy for me to get bursted down.

Thoughts?

Thanks for the advice so far.

Toughness reduces burst damage, which makes you super tanky against anything but conditions. You don’t want dire, and here’s why: vitality is just a buffer due to your healing skill having a fixed, very low heal amount which doesn’t scale with your maximum health. Healing power scales with toughness, however, and you can simply Death Blossom over everyone, regaining your entire health pool while dodging. I once held a zerg of 17 at South Camp in our borderlands and killed 13 within the 10 minutes I was evading and applying caltrops, until my zerg game and wiped the remaining 4. The point of taking healing power over vitality is the fact that you’re dodging during your attacks anyway, and shouldn’t be taking much damage while you heal.

Also: you never, EVER, use Signet of Malice. Think of it as a warrior’s Healing Signet. It isn’t your primary “oh kitten” heal, which is why you have Shadow’s Rejuvination, making Blinding Powder your small heal, Shadow Refuge your massive heal and Dagger Storm is essentially Invulnerability in a zerg/group fight, or against someone who’s AI dependent. This is why you use Signet of Malice.

By the way, the DB/Signet of Malice trick appears in the Leaping Super Immortal Death Troll Legendary Unicorn Blossom build from way back. I used it quite a bit for levelling, but after a while decided I ought to learn some actual thief skills.

Mabuse.2879:

By the way, the DB/Signet of Malice trick appears in the Leaping Super Immortal Death Troll Legendary Unicorn Blossom build from way back. I used it quite a bit for levelling, but after a while decided I ought to learn some actual thief skills.

Which is why I’m suggesting (a variant of) it to him, since it’s fairly easy to use for beginners to be successful, but it does have a low skill ceiling once you get the hang of things. Needless to say, I got tired of being invincible.

Great stuff guys. Thanks a lot. I’ve actually done the DB/signet thing before and get the concept.

I will be happy to get “tired” of being invincible. I should have such problems.

So do you think I should go with that build you linked, Jorun (with some adjustments in traits to taste) or were you still thinking up something else?

My two main concerns…

1. I’m a little nervous about 12.8k health as it just seems I might be “burstable”, especially if I get jumped by another thief.

2. The DB method with the signet makes sense but requires me to be doing damage to heal. If I’m running from a zerg then I won’t be healing. But then I guess the regen while in stealth and so forth is there for that?

3. I’m a bit of a coward in melee, lol. But I guess I can spam hits with the SB too, yes?

I’m definitely going to try some variation on this. Thanks again.

My own current build is 30/0/0/10/30. I use Dire armor and Anti-toxin runes and withdraw as the heal.

I solo camps all the time and unlike those that like to draw one or two enemy away at range then kill it, I will try and draw a number into a tight cluster and kill them all. The camp falls much faster. Some camps are setup a little different then others and in some the supervisor has quite a bit of gap between the others so I can leave that one for last.

When in camp clear mode I do not even have a stealth on the skill bar. I just throw on venoms and get the might to build, hit the cluster all at once , steal and if the venoms reset due to improv load the venoms again and double the might stacks.

Your condi damage is now running at around 2500 and your white damage is also boosted significantly by the might. Torments tick around 800, bleeds around 2200 and the poison over 300

Withdraw is a immob breaker and another dodge and assassins retreat allows great mobility on the field.

With Pizza the condition duration is at 80 percent.

I did try SOM with apothecary for a while and the issue I found was dealing with the conditions you get in WvW and those moments where there just not enough targets around to get enough heals off your attacks.

With the high HP of dire (22k with mine in WvW) if I am clearing a camp and down to the last guard or two and an enemy wanders in to prevent the flip, I can survive his attack. With SOM your heals will not keep up with the damage.

Just last night, half asleep , I was flipping a sentry camp when I was hit by a thiefs backstab. Before I even realized there another on the scene I was hit again. In Apothecary I would have been dead. As is I rolled out using withdraw and we battled until he left the scene.

Qaelyn.7612:

1. I’m a little nervous about 12.8k health as it just seems I might be “burstable”, especially if I get jumped by another thief.

The toughness will help a little. But yes. Thieves are like that.

Qaelyn.7612:

2. The DB method with the signet makes sense but requires me to be doing damage to heal. If I’m running from a zerg then I won’t be healing. But then I guess the regen while in stealth and so forth is there for that?

If a zerg has damaged you, it’s almost certainly going to kill you. Stay at >1500 range, or gain range fast with your shortbow. Pop Shadow Refuge at enough range that they can’t reach you fast enough to knock you out of it while you’re in there gaining health and stealth. Shadowstep can get you range instantly, also.

Qaelyn.7612:

3. I’m a bit of a coward in melee, lol. But I guess I can spam hits with the SB too, yes?

You won’t last long or get many heals from the SB. Don’t forget, DB is an evade. You’re entirely safe during most of it.

Thanks Mabuse.

babazhook: I think the difference is that your build doesn’t have the secondary heals of the more defensive ones we’re talking about. The Shadow Arts line provides significant additional healing and condition removal.

On runes and sigils: would scavenger runes be a good choice? I know there’s a bug when you get killed but I don’t plan for that to happen very often. (EDIT: Just realized it’s not a great choice when using a passive heal!) Also wondering about maybe a sigil of energy since there’s plenty of bleeding in the build already.

ETA: What is the advantage of extending steal range in a defensive build like this one?

0/20/30/20/0 with PVT armor and zerker everything else. DD + SB

I roam quite a bit, go havoc, and zerg occasionally.

Heal using Withdrawl, BP, ShS, and SR as utilities.

Swap between BV and Daggerstrom for elite.

Christ, what have people been suggesting?

Qaelyn.7612:

Great stuff guys. Thanks a lot. I’ve actually done the DB/signet thing before and get the concept.

I will be happy to get “tired” of being invincible. I should have such problems.

So do you think I should go with that build you linked, Jorun (with some adjustments in traits to taste) or were you still thinking up something else?

My two main concerns…

1. I’m a little nervous about 12.8k health as it just seems I might be “burstable”, especially if I get jumped by another thief.

2. The DB method with the signet makes sense but requires me to be doing damage to heal. If I’m running from a zerg then I won’t be healing. But then I guess the regen while in stealth and so forth is there for that?

3. I’m a bit of a coward in melee, lol. But I guess I can spam hits with the SB too, yes?

I’m definitely going to try some variation on this. Thanks again.

1. No non-GC/burst build should ever have less than 15k health. If it does, you’re doing something wrong, especially if you’re trying to be a defensive scout, as you’ve said.

2. Who the heck are these people that are saying that Lowell’s build is any good for scouting? It’s one of the worst scouting builds physically imaginable, as a matter of fact. As you mentioned, you’re definitely not going to be making pretty little jumps in the air that make you move 90% slower and give you one of the worst evades on a weapon skill in the game when you’re running from a zerg, and if that’s what you do, you certainly aren’t going to survive. Are you trying to have a scouting build or a PvE build? Because if you’re going for the latter, sure, Lowell’s build will help you out. But as far as scouting goes, you’re going to be an absolutely godawful scout. You’re not going to hold any zergs back (in fact, no build across any class is going to do that, except maybe a few Guardian builds which can only do it for a few seconds anyways). You’re just going to end up going through a storm of blades as soon as your opponents see you in their path and you’re going to disappear immediately. Even in 1v1s, your build isn’t going to work no matter how good you make it unless you’re playing against some super-noob who got the game thirty minutes beforehand. You’ll have very little mobility and stealth as compared to other builds that can get a lot of both. You don’t need to punish yourself that much in order to get damage and utility out of a thief.

Dedicated stealth builds and dedicated mobility builds are going to be infinitely more useful than any condi build (including P/D condis, but to a lesser extent than D/D condis) will ever be. If you’re looking for good healing, you can get it out of any regular stealth build, and there are many mobility builds that can heal you for a decent amount as well.

3. If you’re worried about melee then you’re going to either want to stick to a P/D or SB build, or you’re going to want to use a S/X build. Sword builds are great for hit-and-run scenarios. They tend to be best with mobility builds, however.

Are you “type scouting” or voice/mumble/teamspeak.

With type scouting you may need a good amount of stealth in order to be able to stand still long enough (12 secs) to type your message.

With voice scouting, all you really need is mobility with some limited stealth.

Basically, though, I believe you should take SB + D/P. As for point spread, this isnt a good build for dueling/fighting at all (though you can certainly yak slap with it), but..

15 acro +15 trickery gives you all the mobility you will ever need. Perma swiftness (swift on dodge + withdraw vigor + thrill of the crime) and a great amount of ini (for the shortbow mobility and d/p stealth).

So x/x/30/15/15 will get you everything you wanted, spend the last 10 points where ever you want (more HP from 10 CS or 10 Acro would be my suggestion).

Arganthium.5638:

2. Who the heck are these people that are saying that Lowell’s build is any good for scouting?

You can see who we are. I’m going to stop right there, because the rest of your paragraph agrees with everything else we’ve said, and you must have missed the part where we started talking about efficient camp clearance, which is basically PvE. Calm down.

I’m sure the OP would welcome and explanation of the “dedicated stealth build” and how to use it to achieve his goals.

Oh man, now we’re all over the place. That’s okay, it’s educational to hash this stuff out.

Arganthium, I wasn’t going to use that “unicorn” build. I’m looking at some variation on the build Viking Jorun linked: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Fen.gw2skills.net%2Feditor%2F%3FfYAQNAoYVlcmiP3ey8E%2B5EB3ji60m6p4rltTBWlPA-jUyAIOBRaBI5BgCBlHLiGb1sIas6Zioa1Nm5uIa1CBsYNA-w

If there are specific issues with that build, can you tell me what you think they are? I do already think I will lean a bit more on the vitality side, but I see the advantage of buffing healing power.

If you know of a better build, please share it!

Just to summarize, my goals with this build are:

1. High mobility, to move around very quickly as needed.
2. Easy disengagement and avoidance of player combat.
3. Ability to yakslap, tag keeps, and eventually take camps on my own.
4. Be able to hold out in a fight against players for a period of time.

Roughly in that order.

I realize there are different ways to accomplish these goals and I like hearing what you guys have to say on it.

I use voice comms whenever possible but sometimes type into chat. I still need the stealth right now even with voice chat because I’m new to WvW and don’t always know the landmarks or how to describe what I’m seeing.

My goals are very basically the same, so I’m all ears (or eyes) as well. However, builds which require lots of twitchy thief practice are less useful, because I don’t spent a lot of time on my thief.

(3) goes well with Signet of Malice / Toughness / Healing
(4) can be met by exchanging SoM for either Withdraw or Hide in Shadows
Toughness increases the effectiveness of healing (and your base healthpool), the combination ‘works’ for all situations. The difference is the number of targets to trigger SoM – when facing players while roaming you’ll usually only face very few at once and SoM becomes less effective. For camps SoM and caltrops are strong. For sentries and yaks it doesn’t matter much anyway.

(1) & (2) are primarily met by dagger #2 or shortbow #5 and stealth utilities, or dagger #5

Okay, so at least for now, I’ve got a build fairly similar to what Viking Jorun posted, except the gear is a bit different:

- Shaman weapons (only yellow for the moment)
- Settler’s armor with runes of the undead (because those runes are cheap)
- Settler’s trinkets with apothecary gems.

This seems to give me a nice balance of toughness, healing power and condition damage. In WvW right now I have about 3100 armor, 1060 healing power and 1350 condition damage.

Also puts my vitality up at a more comfortable 15k-16k; a lot less than the 21k I had before but a bit more breathing room.

I just went scouting around a bit. Actually ran into a full zerg and was able to escape which was amusing.

I also killed a few NPC sentries. I found this took longer than I expected because, well, we’ve been talking a lot about doing damage with Death Blossom, but I can only do that a few times and then what? I can stand there swiping with my daggers but my power and precision are both very low so the autoattacks don’t do much. This is part of why I was wondering if I’d be better off with a power build.

Switch to the shortbow and kite?

Seriously, not sure what to do when the initiative is gone as it seems to go painfully slowly.

Thanks.

You death blossom, stealth, caltrops, dodge under the enemies to proc Uncatchable, come out of stealth, rinse + repeat. It should be a lot smoother now with the December 10th update’s initiative regen buff.

Okay, that is sort of what I was doing.

Is this really faster than a power build where I can autoattack for much more damage? Asking honestly, I don’t know.

Also… is it just seeming slow when I fight one opponent? Because the DB and so forth would work on multiple enemies at once while dagger swiping won’t, so maybe that’s why it seems slow?

Keep in mind, my own builds traits and the skills I pick on the toolbar are very flexible. I change these out on a regular basis based on all manner of things.

Some nights the chances of meeting an enemy outside the NPCS are slim and the traits and utility skills I use then are very different then when I know there a chance of encountering others.

The traits/skills I use when running with the zerg in EB are different then when running in the home borderlands. If seiging a castle I will pull out of the battle and change my traits and switch over to the shortbow. A person that decides to stand on the castle wall is DEAD if I load that crossbow up with venoms and then drop a poison field followed by a cluster bomb yet I am free to disengage if I get in trouble.

Prior to engaging in a battle I will kitten the scale of it at a distance and switch up a number of skills based upon what I am seeing.

In WvW the only real constant is p/d , d/d, and a bit of the shortbow along with the Withdraw for my heal.

The 30/0/010/30 is recent as I wanted to test the effects of more condition duration without food along with panic attack and or the residual venom. Prior to that it was 20/0/0/20/30 and that worked very good as well, had lots of mobility and HPS. It was more defensive then the current build which is more offensive.

I really do not stick long to a single build. I like changing them around sometimes going stealth and sometimes mobility. I have every class to 80 but just have way too much fun with the thief and it is 90 percent of my time.

Guidelines and others insights are all well and good but I have little use for the “You must use this build…” type posts. Feel free to experiment and tinker and find a build you have FUN with.

Qaelyn.7612:

Okay, that is sort of what I was doing.

Is this really faster than a power build where I can autoattack for much more damage? Asking honestly, I don’t know.

Also… is it just seeming slow when I fight one opponent? Because the DB and so forth would work on multiple enemies at once while dagger swiping won’t, so maybe that’s why it seems slow?

From my OWN experience, yes I find it faster. Simply because on a Condi Build you can hit and bleed multiple targets at once wheres on a direct damage build it much harder.

For a single target direct damage is faster.

What I do like as an added bonus to the Condi Damage type on multiple enemies is the rallies you can get.