Before I begin, I want to state that I’m NOT claiming this to be an ‘original’ build. I’m sure someone else at some point came up with an idea for a similar build such as this. I’m just sharing this build because this is my variation on it and I wanted to see if anyone had any feedback to help improve it. With that said, let’s get into it!
So this is a thief build I’ve been working on. It focuses on stealthing, healing and has a secondary focus on initiative regain (so you can use more weapon skills and heal faster). It also focuses on getting the most out of the ‘steal’ profession skill. The armor on this build is pretty decent (a little over 2900), so it provides good protection. Using Smoke Screen and Cluster Bomb together is a potent combo – it grants stealth, healing, deals decent damage, and also grants might.
Pros – a lot of healing and stealthing, this build really takes advantage of the ‘steal’ profession skill, dodging and stealthing as well (you gain might every time you stealth), you also gain swiftness and might when you dodge, and when your endurance is not full, you deal extra damage. And of course, this build has decent armor and vitality (which is good, since the thief is on the lower end of the base health pool). The build is tanky, but it still has 52% crit chance, 171% ferocity and 1783 power, which is further improved by the might stacking of stealthing, weapon swaps and dodging.
Cons for this build/profession – the deception skills that grant stealth are not available for underwater combat, so I had to opt for skills that evade and grant initiative regeneration. This made the build incredibly weaker underwater. Overall, I found the utility skills available to thieves underwater to be lackluster. So, you know, try to avoid underwater combat as much as possible, especially if you’re up against a guardian or ranger, both of which have awesome underwater combat abilities. This build is pretty selfish as it doesn’t have a lot of ally support. If you want, you can switch out a trait for Shadow Protector so you grant allies regeneration when you stealth them using Shadow Refuge.
Notes: Try to stagger between your utility deception skills, your weapon skills and your dodges so you don’t get caught between cooldowns
This build – this profession, really – requires you to be quick on your keyboard. Try not to overthink things; this will only slow you down, which is something the thief can’t afford. Don’t worry if you can’t get a hang of this build/profession right away. Personally, it’s one of the more challenging professions for me to play. And even though I’m better at it than I was before, I still have a long way to go. Also be careful on initiative use, as always with this profession. The stealthing grants you extra initiative regen (2 each time you stealth), but still be cautious.
Speaking of stealthing, make sure you wait until the last possible moment to use Backstab (which you should always open with after you go into stealth…this should be easy since you move 50% faster while in stealth), seeing as how each second of stealth grants you 327 healing. It also gives you breathing room to regain initiative.
If you’re really in a jam, go into stealth and retreat…the Fleet Shadow trait enables you to move 50% faster, as stated before, so running away should be easy for you. If you need to put further distance between you and an enemy, you can always use the SB to shadowstep away.
(edited by LionChain.7694)