Guild Wars 2

I have been putting together my WvW build. Originally it was 0/15/30/25/0, with Shadow’s Rejuvenation.

Now, 0/20/25/25/0, with Practiced Tolerance would get me +1k Health, +2% crit chance, and +5% crit damage. Also -50 toughness, but the effective Health is still +2k.

Is it worth to give up SJ for these stats?

Hard to say I find SR a really good lifesaver it adds a ton to your survivability.

SR + shadow rejuvenation is like a 12k heal or 14k . its 18k to 20k if u have regen on stealth….i think the first 2 are find then condi removal.

That depends a lot on what weapon sets you’re running, we don’t know (we can presume but is not same) from your post that.

S/D, S/P build will usually have no need for SR as they base their survival on evade frames / mobility / control, where a P/D, D/D, D/P would spend way more time in stealth instead of being very mobile and evading all the time, so if they get hit, they will most likely need a backup heal (30s on HiS ain’t that good vs skilled opponents, compared to 15s on wihtdraw etc).

I think it depends on what weapon set you use and how much you stealth.

Shadow Rejuvenation = big heals per tick while stealthed.
Shadow Protector = 10s of regen that you keep even if you immediately leave stealth

If you run D/P I think SR is a must. 3 heartseekers in black powder is a ton of hp while you move in position for your next attack. And of course refuge is a full heal.

Anything with D offhand, SP is huge if you CnD a lot. CnD + (backstab, sneak attack or tactical strike) means simultaneous burst and healing.

I’ve tried numerous builds sacrificing shadow arts for trickery or acrobatics and I always end up going back to 30 pts in shadow arts.

I see, thanks for the feedback, I will keep it then.

I actually consider Shadow’s Rejuvenation pretty weak. Especially for a Grandmaster.
Over a full 4 second Stealth, it barely recovers as much as a single auto-attack from most enemies. Cloaked in Shadow is a better defense boost, but unless you’re going a full 30 in Shadow Arts then Infusion of Shadow and Shadow’s Embrace are both still better yet than that.

As for your specific question, going from 25>30 Shadow Arts is much more useful than 15>20 Critical Strikes. Mostly because the only good traits in Critical Strikes are either Minors or Grandmaster.
If you dip into it at all, you should be going all the way.

It’s always tempting to have greater survivability, but it comes at a sacrifice. ;P It’d probably be best just to experiment, and find what works best with how you play, and what goals you play with.