Guild Wars 2

Hi all, I’ve been playing around with a build that I’m going to call my STEALth build.

Essentially, it’s loads of easy stealth fueling either death blossoms or pistol sneak attacks

The build is 20/0/20/0/30
In deadly, I have:
-sundering strikes (vulnerability as a cover condition)
-Improvisation (+10% damage after steals and can recharge skills)
In Shadow I have:
-Infusion of shadow (extra init on stealth)
-Hidden Thief (stealth on heal)
In Trickery I have:
-Thrill of the crime (buffs on steal)
-Bountiful theft (vigor on steal + steal boons) – good for small groups / long reach to tp into zergs for dagger storms and death blossoms.
-Sleight of hand (faster steal recharge + daze)

Now with all of these it’s actually enough with P/D build to do a variation on perma-stealth the stealing gives free stealth and initiative, which allows you to get more stealth spam with black powder if you want. You also have a bigger initiative pool. The downside, is you’ve invested a ton in condition damage, and you don’t do any damage with conditions (it’s possible to do a critical strikes variation for this purpose).

So I’ve tested this out a bit, and it works out ok with shortbow, d/d and d/p to do decent power/condition damage. I don’t have all rabid gear yet, but that’s what I’m going to work towards. I’m also thinking melandru runes, to flesh this out as a condi tank.

As far as skills, I like
Signet of Malice – with both death blossom and sneak attack, this is a solid consistent heal, and with enough toughness you can tank pretty well (not to mention the frequent stealthing).

blinding powder – great all around skill
signet of shadows / shadow trap – more mobility, shadow trap seems to be working similarly to how shadowstep used to work, as a solid escape. It’s a bit buggy though, so you want to be careful of your placement.
roll for initiative / haste – I want a trick in here to get recharged from improvisation – haste is more useful with d/p since initiative is never an issue.
dagger storm – more bleeds and heals with signet of malice.

Anyway what do you guys think? It’s still in development phases, but I think it’s got potential in wvw. Maybe in pvp too?

i had an idea like this but mine is 10 30 0 0 30. i might take 10 out of crit line for 10 in SA for the condi removal. but will have to see. im running rampagers with it and d/d and s/d. still testing many things.

ok a few new ideas…for a zerg bombing build
you can do this combo:
with signet of malice on heal
Select a target in the middle of zerg
Precast shadow trap from far away (2k) from zerg
Start channeling caltrops
infiltrators signet
steal to the middle of a zerg
caltrops drops
death blossom spam
dagger storm
destroy shadow trap

been trying it out on the pvp dummies and I can kill most of them without them even getting to react.

tested it out in a keep defense. I snuck around behind the zerg, put down my shadow trap a good distance and condition bombed in. managed to get out alive, with about 5-10 guys distracted by me, and when the whole thing was cleared, I had 10 loot bags.

I tried a few other times too. Once on the steps of hills, I did this and got knocked off the stairs. As I fell, I shadowtrapped back to safety just in time to get a few loot bags and watch the guys retreat. I’m not taking credit for these victories, my server is kicking butt right now, and it’s hard to find a fair fight, still it’s probably useful to have thieves distracting parts of the zerg.

I’ve also had episodes where shadow-trap doesn’t work at all….very buggy skill.