Guild Wars 2

Should i be snagging Valkyrie or Berserker for WvW? Or a mixture of both?

offense is best deffense boiii

What most people do is taking 3 valk / 3 berserk on armor and the rest berserker. What happens is that you have a 15-16k lifepool and a bit less crit chance. It kinda imitates marauder amulett and normally your crit chance is still at least 45% which is enough.

I’m running valk with runes of the pack at the moment – runes of the pack mean that I don’t have to worry about my crit chance.

ETA: But that depends on the weapons and traits as well, of course.

When stacks are gone with the HoT release, Valk will be the preferred power armor for average players IMO. Without stacks heavy zerk leaves zero room for mistakes. I have switched to Valk on my armor and zerk on my jewelry. Now if I were 30 years younger with my old reflexes, I might still try full Zerk but full Zerk requires exceptional skill or exception caution to use.

The DPS curve on crit chance starts to diminish past 40% and really falls off past 50%. This is of course opinion but a couple thousand extra hitpoints wins a lot more fights than 5% or so more DPS.

zerker with some soldier trinkets.

I go zerk with armor and a bunch of different pieces of trinkets. With limited play time and only playing WvW I had to make a long term choice of armor once I started cranking out Ascended, there’s no way I can afford to change my mind more than once later on. Everything else is pretty easy to switch out.

Straegen.2938:

When stacks are gone with the HoT release.

What exactly do you mean by “Stacks” I haven’t read much into HoT

WvW guard stacks. As in the bonus stats you get after you’ve ranked certain WvW skills and killed a few guards

berserker with wurm runes

valkyrie with pack runes

my gear

notice they all have a small difference in power, precision, critical damage and most importantly vitality

I think I’m in the same spot as you OP.

What armor, weapons, sigils, runes do we need in order to be more than viable? Right now I have full exotic with rare accessories since I can’t find zerk/Valk accessories. I want to get the best gear I can have pre-ascended so if I die in a 1v1 I know it’s my fault and not my gear. I hate how annoying it is to track down gear from like 10 different methods just to WvW properly without a gear disadvantage. Metabattle is not up to date anymore.

Can anyone make a list of the best pre-ascended gear you can possibly have and how to obtain it?

Edit – not to mention WvW abilities and ranks where a new player is further screwed by that applied fortitude crap. I don’t know why I even bother to try WvW as a thief new player, so many kitten disadvantages before you even step foot in combat.

Sorry for hijacking and going on a rant. I might just make this into a new thread lol

Showbiz.9725:

I think I’m in the same spot as you OP.

What armor, weapons, sigils, runes do we need in order to be more than viable? Right now I have full exotic with rare accessories since I can’t find zerk/Valk accessories. I want to get the best gear I can have pre-ascended so if I die in a 1v1 I know it’s my fault and not my gear. I hate how annoying it is to track down gear from like 10 different methods just to WvW properly without a gear disadvantage. Metabattle is not up to date anymore.

Can anyone make a list of the best pre-ascended gear you can possibly have and how to obtain it?

Edit – not to mention WvW abilities and ranks where a new player is further screwed by that applied fortitude crap. I don’t know why I even bother to try WvW as a thief new player, so many kitten disadvantages before you even step foot in combat.

Sorry for hijacking and going on a rant. I might just make this into a new thread lol

Guard stacks will be gone next week.
The gear and runes you chose depend on the weapons you use.
A friend of mine swears on a mix of valk/cavalier, I run: soldier’s, valk, zerker all 3 gears with zerker trinkets and weapons, there’s not much difference between all of them. Him and I are both running D/D btw. For S/D I would always chose full zerker’s.
BUT balance is rather off at the moment, so there is no real “fair” 1 vs 1 – as a thief you have to outskill your opponent, which might have always been the case but has gotten worse since in June as a lot of our viable traits were either removed or nerfed or moved into the same tier so we can’t take them anymore. Also the June patch brought powercreep of other classes/build which so far got buffed with the patch after (except mesmer who were slightly nerfed – and maybe ele – not so sure about that because I rarely meet them).
I hope this helps you.
And to both of you: say at least what weapons you use in wvw so it’s easier to help you =)

Edit: Grammar

Edit²: Craft the accessories or buy them from the TP. For zerker’s: Ruby Orichalcum…, for valk: Beryl Orichalcum…

Full Berserker Armor/Weapons/Trinks – only if you are going with a group/zerg and stick with your group/zerg.

High Vitality Armor – if you are using Trickster (trait) and Withdraw as your heal.

High Toughness Armor – if you are using regen based heal or Shadow Arts.

Soldier Chest/Pants, Valk the rest, Berserk weapons and trinkets – Solo Roaming – Power based

Dire Armor – Condition based

That’s my 2 cents.

Sorry, I use D/P and Shortbow in WvW right now. I want to start with that since it seems to be the most well rounded.

I cannot get Exotic Berserker or Valkyrie accessories. I don’t think they exist…cannot find any. I think I can buy Exotic Soldier’s trinkets/accessories but I think it would cost like 300k Karma. Anyone know if you’ll be able to get trinkets a different way in HoT next week?

Also which food/utility consumables? Furious Sharpening Stone does not seem to be available on the TP at all.

Another question…how do you guys buff your movement speed? It seems that no one really uses Signet of Shadows as a Thief in WvW. Not having 25% movement speed seems like a big deal as a melee.

Showbiz.9725:

I cannot get Exotic Berserker or Valkyrie accessories. I don’t think they exist…cannot find any.

I have these on me but I made them myself from Jewelcrafting, so that’s one way to get them.

If you have Laurels lying around, you can also purchase the Ascended versions from the Laurel vendor.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Showbiz.9725:

I cannot get Exotic Berserker or Valkyrie accessories. I don’t think they exist…cannot find any.

I have these on me but I made them myself from Jewelcrafting, so that’s one way to get them.

If you have Laurels lying around, you can also purchase the Ascended versions from the Laurel vendor.

I have 400 Jewelcrafting…what are they called?

Showbiz.9725:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Showbiz.9725:

I cannot get Exotic Berserker or Valkyrie accessories. I don’t think they exist…cannot find any.

I have these on me but I made them myself from Jewelcrafting, so that’s one way to get them.

If you have Laurels lying around, you can also purchase the Ascended versions from the Laurel vendor.

I have 400 Jewelcrafting…what are they called?

The Berserker is a Ruby Orichalcum and the Valk is Beryl Orichalcum.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Showbiz.9725:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Showbiz.9725:

I cannot get Exotic Berserker or Valkyrie accessories. I don’t think they exist…cannot find any.

I have these on me but I made them myself from Jewelcrafting, so that’s one way to get them.

If you have Laurels lying around, you can also purchase the Ascended versions from the Laurel vendor.

I have 400 Jewelcrafting…what are they called?

The Berserker is a Ruby Orichalcum and the Valk is Beryl Orichalcum.

Oh, actually these are on the TP for about 5g right now. Not that bad. I must have been searching the wrong thing.

Side note, I just got a Grizzlemouth’s Weapons Chest (Ascended chest) randomly from ranking up in WvW. How rare is that? And how much gold/time would it have cost me to craft, lol. So random. Rabid doesn’t seem too good for Thief though

Here is a build we are having some success with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoaVl0MhSnYZTwtJw/EH8ElPKyiqgXCZwGoPzfIAA-TlCBABGp8D99Hg4BBIxRAUCCwJAIF9NMcIEew8nOq/sxBMgUAsqzC-w

I have adjusted it slightly for exotic rather than ascended armor. The trick is adjusting it so that the crit chance is near 50% to land a backstab. It does trade quite a bit of damage to run Trappers but Trapper runes are some of the best runes for survival right now since it turns the heal into a condition removal/stealth every 15s. Bonus is the control aspect of the traps and the near 100% uptime on swiftness. The extra stealth also yields more backstab attempts so the overall damage is still high.

Showbiz.9725:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Showbiz.9725:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Showbiz.9725:

I cannot get Exotic Berserker or Valkyrie accessories. I don’t think they exist…cannot find any.

I have these on me but I made them myself from Jewelcrafting, so that’s one way to get them.

If you have Laurels lying around, you can also purchase the Ascended versions from the Laurel vendor.

I have 400 Jewelcrafting…what are they called?

The Berserker is a Ruby Orichalcum and the Valk is Beryl Orichalcum.

Oh, actually these are on the TP for about 5g right now. Not that bad. I must have been searching the wrong thing.

Side note, I just got a Grizzlemouth’s Weapons Chest (Ascended chest) randomly from ranking up in WvW. How rare is that? And how much gold/time would it have cost me to craft, lol. So random. Rabid doesn’t seem too good for Thief though

You can change the stats to whatever you need, just buy the appropriate exotic sigil on tp and mystic for it with other mats, you can find the recipe on the wiki.

Showbiz.9725:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Showbiz.9725:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Showbiz.9725:

I cannot get Exotic Berserker or Valkyrie accessories. I don’t think they exist…cannot find any.

I have these on me but I made them myself from Jewelcrafting, so that’s one way to get them.

If you have Laurels lying around, you can also purchase the Ascended versions from the Laurel vendor.

I have 400 Jewelcrafting…what are they called?

The Berserker is a Ruby Orichalcum and the Valk is Beryl Orichalcum.

Oh, actually these are on the TP for about 5g right now. Not that bad. I must have been searching the wrong thing.

Side note, I just got a Grizzlemouth’s Weapons Chest (Ascended chest) randomly from ranking up in WvW. How rare is that? And how much gold/time would it have cost me to craft, lol. So random. Rabid doesn’t seem too good for Thief though

Ugh, why Rabid…Carrion would have been perfect.

Padd.1479:

What most people do is taking 3 valk / 3 berserk on armor and the rest berserker. What happens is that you have a 15-16k lifepool and a bit less crit chance. It kinda imitates marauder amulett and normally your crit chance is still at least 45% which is enough.

Which 3 pieces of Valk do they take? Since Chest, Pants, Helm have higher stats than Gloves, Boots, Shoulders…

Also do you mean most Thieves get 3 pieces of Valk armor and every single other slot is Berserkers? Including weapons, earrings, amulet, rings, backpiece…and the underwater gear?

With world buff (not wvw stacks) food/stone. My thief sits at around 2630 power, 50% crit chance, 208 crit dmg, 14k health and 2330 armor. My armor is mostly ascended berserker with valk pants. Weapons are 1 assassin and 1 berserker. Trinks are a mixture of pvt/valk/berserker/cavalier. It’s all ascended too with wvw infusions too.

My Thief has a bit of toughness and vitality while still having a good crit chance and ferocity. (Sigil of accuracy is for pve)

So while on this subject, I an getting back into WvW on my S/D Teef mostly doing Havoc and running with zergs every so often, I have berserker ascend for chest legs and feet should I keep those and do Valk or Knights for the rest?

BlaqueFyre.5678:

So while on this subject, I an getting back into WvW on my S/D Teef mostly doing Havoc and running with zergs every so often, I have berserker ascend for chest legs and feet should I keep those and do Valk or Knights for the rest?

If you’re going to stay with a group, going all Berserker will be fine. If you’re going solo-roaming, you need to think about survival stats.

Ok, normally my havoc group is me and 2 Mesmers one is Power and the other condi PU, sometimes I roam on my own taking camps, but just for info what’s better for a normal S/D across build? Valks or Knights ?

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Ok, normally my havoc group is me and 2 Mesmers one is Power and the other condi PU, sometimes I roam on my own taking camps, but just for info what’s better for a normal S/D across build? Valks or Knights ?

IMO, it depends on what heal skill you choose. If you’re taking Withdraw, more HP is better, thus Valk is your best pick. If you’re taking Hide in Shadows, or traiting for Shadow Rejuv., more toughness is better — it just works well with SA, thus your best pick is Knight.

I personally like Withdraw and hated stealth build, so I have a combination of Soldier and Valk for armor; and Berserkers for weapons and trinkets.

Ok I usually use Withdraw, was thinking of using HiS to see if I like it, after work I will post my build.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Ok I usually use Withdraw, was thinking of using HiS to see if I like it, after work I will post my build.

Just keep in mind that by using HiS that you are going to spec for SA and that you will have high toughness, otherwise it’s a mediocre heal skill.

Ok, will keep that in mind, it was just a thought.

using full valk armor, with berzerker trinkets.. even the berzerker trinkets are not needed so much tbfh. fury up time during a fight is pretty much perma..

using berzerker weapons tho

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaVl0MhSnY3TwyJw/EHwElPNOj2YfBL3gqTgAIDA-TVTBABFpEzS1fURTwVKFwSZBK6BaVJIR7PMxDAYhDBACm404IAAwJAIAACA38m3MkCwcdVA-w

using this same build on S/D also and D/P aswell its close to meta or it might even be meta since thiefs dont have that much choices left in WvW..

but nowadays i play mainly P/P in WvW and works perfectly fine with the above build..

Get legendary armor.

I have been sense day one been using Zerk all with d/p.

In solo
If I cant win I just disengage and leave.

In Zerg
I stealth to a weak player blow them up and spike, then move to the next.

I tried Dire when it was Pop
I tried perp when it was Pop
I tried Valk d/d when it was Pop
I tried S/D when it was Pop

And Zerk D/P just feels right to me.

Sometimes you just have to play what is fun and feels good to you.

reddie.5861:

using full valk armor, with berzerker trinkets.. even the berzerker trinkets are not needed so much tbfh. fury up time during a fight is pretty much perma..

using berzerker weapons tho

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaVl0MhSnY3TwyJw/EHwElPNOj2YfBL3gqTgAIDA-TVTBABFpEzS1fURTwVKFwSZBK6BaVJIR7PMxDAYhDBACm404IAAwJAIAACA38m3MkCwcdVA-w

using this same build on S/D also and D/P aswell its close to meta or it might even be meta since thiefs dont have that much choices left in WvW..

but nowadays i play mainly P/P in WvW and works perfectly fine with the above build..

Too much wasted damage potential trying to get to 50% crit rate. All you need is 30% and Fury will take you to 50%, then you can allocate more towards damage or survivability….in other words, Rune of The Pack is unnecessary.