I was thinking Pistol/Pistol but the problem lines with how much reflect there is currently. It sucks to unload and die to your own ability On top of that, I lose my stun and about 10-15% damage differential. Also, soldier drops a considerable amount of damage. I’m focused on Assassination over extended duels, it’s why I give up my survivability. I’m also confused why it seems like I’m tackling too many objectives- HiS for free engage, ID comboed into infi strike is usually very potent (as well as more combos), tripwire because blockspam in spvp made me want it, SR for jukage and baits, Basilisk because its simply the best elite we have.
I land Pulm fairly often and its focused on burst engage- using abilities in an unconvential manner to make it harder to predict how the opposing player will need to respond, causes opposing player to blow cooldowns because they aren’t sure how to respond. If nothing else, it makes a passive go off that I don’t have to worry about. Again, spvp focused not sure how to transition into WvW. But when I did go (however briefly) it was a lot of squishy players especially in EotM. Any stun applied will be countered by an instant cast 1s daze which is just as good imo. SR is for baits, I encourage someone to play dumb and waltz in seeing as Shortbow immobs and I usually toss out 2 of those shots before it registers reveal which means 4s immob. SR is my backup insurance, if I can’t first round em swapping to Shortbow for the triple crit and mind games is usually my way of finishing people off.
No one suspects the banana (Zenith skin). It’s rather hard to find a utility to give up, ~~the build is a burst-stun mind games kinda build~~. Anything to assist there would be something I’d take in a heartbeat, but shadowstep is a one trick pony seeing as people load the return these days.
Omnom having an icd is unexpected an sad. But it still adds damage which is the goal. Is there any other food type that allows me to proc damage?
Disclaimer: I am not trying to be aggressive, I just have to be sure of what I’m doing.
Tl:dr- S/p is less for pulm and more for the sheer damage and follow through, pulm is icing along with Draining sigil. HiS is for the engage and less on sustain approach, ID is for combo orient+dodge baits, tripwire breaks blocks and its the block meta, sr is for mind games and baiting, basilisk remains the best elite. Build is burst-engage (ask for description), mind games, and just tons of giggles. Is there a better dps food than Omnom that still provides a damage proc?
I definitely get the reflect concerns. Recall I was recommending P/P soldier’s on an interrupt concept; your primary source of damage would be from Pulm impact over unload, and you might have the durability to maintain it better. Reflects aren’t used as often in WvW, though a tempest would make you hate yourself. On the converse, though. P/P is absolutely amazing relative to the rest of the weapon sets available against DH’s, and right now DH’s are carrying the roaming scene in WvW. Going into melee against one is suicidal because one trap alone will kill you in under two seconds.
I recommend Shadowstep because it’s going to be more helpful in a variety of cases. Your biggest fears right now are GF warriors, DH’s, and hammer Revenants, all three of which are capable of one-shot killing you at range. sPvP has extremely low damage output values compared to WvW. Expect 20k Gun Flames frequently, 18k True Shots, 10k trap ticks, 18k CoR’s, Scrappers 100-0’ing you in under two seconds, permanent revealing effects, and 16k Rapid Fires. Good players know what to do against SR, and the aforementioned skills will track through stealth if casted before you enter. In my personal experience playing against skilled players in WvW (EoTM also is the bottom of the barrel for skill), SR is a deathtrap (Almost every thief who uses SR against me dies in SR, and almost every time I’ve run it, I’ve found myself dying within it to skilled players). Shadowstep can let you port while the gun flame/TS/CoR/RF/etc. are all mid-flight, and there’s no counterplay to being out of range to kill, either letting for an escape or a re-engage on your terms.
I say you’re trying to do a lot because I’m really not seeing anything that makes this build difficult to deal with or have battlefield persistence. A lot of your competition is going to hard-counter you directly, and a lot of your killing/combo potential is pretty target-dependent to succeed. The build covers a broad spectrum of abilities, but none of them seem particularly devastating. Holistically they are, but realistically I don’t think you’re going to combo against most players as hard as you think you will.
S/P also just does a poorer job at assassinations than D/D from a pure damage/burst perspective, especially if not hasting the PW. You’re running the same condition cleanse as DA/CS/Tr signets (or worse) with what’s objectively lower and slower burst. I run the signet build mentioned, and my engages are usually close to 30-35k damage in under a second against any berserker build caught off guard. Without protection, anything in the game running without extra toughness or vitality straight dies before BV’s even over. If they’re built more durable, though, which is pretty much every condi build out there (dire gear is absurdly tanky), you’re in for a struggle. This is why I recommend that if you’re not really, really invested in PI, drop it for the cleanse, because that mesmer will turn around and will load you for 19 stacks of confusion, some torment, vuln, some blinding, cripple, and burning, and you have no way to deal with that. I run Trickster on Withdraw for this reason; CiS doesn’t cleanse everything, and its animation is slow, especially if you’re already being locked down. Again, this is why I stress Shadowstep over SR. If you were in SA, I could see an argument either way due to SE, CiS, and sword 2 taking care of cleanses while stealthed. Without it, though, I pretty much see a utility that while yea possibly making you more unpredictable, makes you very easy to kill if your burst doesn’t succeed, and having no contingency options to get out and live hurts you a lot when in more challenging situations. It’s why I run D/D + S/D over shortbow; the disengage on IR is faster, cheaper, longer-distance, and cleanses a condition while still giving me some killing power and utility, whereas the shortbow’s escapes cost more, are slower, and leave me in a turtling state with not much killing power.
WvW is FAST, particularly for assassination roles. It’s for the most part kill on engage or be killed if you’re playing that archetype. Squishies against me often die from Mug and CnD damage alone dealing an upwards of 16k blinking in from 2100 range. 10k PW’s over the course of a second and a half might be a huge deal in sPvP, but it’s nothing in WvW.
If you’re playing for assassination, it’s this need to really focus on minimizing the amount of time needed to reliably kill someone over the combo damage potential. You might not be running a stunbreak or stability, but they definitely are, and odds are, it’s off cooldown. It’s why I mentioned the context for this build as well, be it running solo, periph in a blob, or in small group play; I can definitely see it in the latter two, as your allies can cover for your engages and force enemies to blow CD’s before you lock them down. In a pure 1v1 against what’s in the “solo roam” trend, you’ve got a lot stacked against you.
I suggest you duel in Obsidian Sanctum or join a good WvW guild with a guild hall arena and mess around with some of their members which have roaming, periphery, or havoc characters and some experience behind them to get a feel for the way the format plays. I don’t really think I can explain the mentality or pacing any better.
Also, there is no proc food better than ghosts. It’s why I suggest just running raw power, particularly for skills with high coefficients like Mug, PW and PI. It’ll scale better after a few attacks within your combo and will do you much better over a fight. I can only really recommend the ghosts on builds that crit a fair amount but don’t build for it and are more or less built on sustaining and slower attacks; there aren’t many builds that fill this criteria.
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