Guild Wars 2

So, as a small pre-amble, I have no interest in P/D conditions anymore, or D/D Glass cannon. Neither spec is fun for me personally, so I’m going in a different direction.

Here’s the link – (I’m not sure why, but you’ll have to copy/paste it into your browser)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAsaVlYmyOnbS5E95Ex2jdqTeqVgmdP4qV1KA;TsAA1CnoSykkIJbSukkJNo4YxECA

So, the Idea is S/X (P or D, I haven’t decided yet. If flanking strike worked correctly, it would almost definitely be D). The key to the entire spec is Inf Strike – you basically never start a melee without it. When your target escapes, chills you, knocks you back, hits you with a painful condition, or the fight becomes an AoE fest, you Shadow return, reposition your starting point so you’re not Returning into a kittentorm, and go again. Most of your other skills are situationally useful at best – HS when your target wants to heal, or to interrupt a long cast time, Black powder for stomping, and the occasional pistol whip when you really want to DPS your target without eating 3-4 AoE abilities. Shbow as the second weapon, for obvious reasons. It seems to work out fairly well.

I guess I’m more curious about the heal and utilities – I like withdraw over HiS for the root/snare break, and it works well with vigorous recovery, and the overall point of the spec (High mobility, never standing in 1 place too long). Scorpion wire seems effective for pulling your target out of a group, and setting them up for a DPS train. Ambush trap felt a bit silly at first, but its generally pretty useful – Your moving around so much, trying to pop in and out of range to avoid damage as much as possible and as you’re doing this you have a pet applying constant pressure, and its occasional use of scorpion wire can be nice. I’ve always preferred Inf Sig as my stunbreak – passive init regen, quick CD (for a stunbreak), and a gap closer. Its alot less necessary in a spec like this (seeing as you should almost never start a fight without a shadow return available), but the passive init regen, having an emergency stunbreak for when you screw up, and the ability to close insane gaps when needed (Inf sig->inf strike->steal for 2400 range) has me keep it around. Thieves guild for obvious reasons.

So, there’s my spec. Any observations, or suggestions for improvement?

With sword you dont really use much of your ini. Ever thought of getting lead attacks in, 15% damage increase.

If you took haste as the stun break, you can get a massive dps boost in a vital moment to down that one really important person in the fight, or use it to break a stun to save your life (tho its cooldown is long.)

I really love the sword thief, but yet to find a build that works in spvp since the pistol whip nerf. It has such potential but other builds out there do more support damage and survival.

Wolfield.9812:

With sword you dont really use much of your ini. Ever thought of getting lead attacks in, 15% damage increase.

If you took haste as the stun break, you can get a massive dps boost in a vital moment to down that one really important person in the fight, or use it to break a stun to save your life (tho its cooldown is long.)

I really love the sword thief, but yet to find a build that works in spvp since the pistol whip nerf. It has such potential but other builds out there do more support damage and survival.

I’m honestly finding this spec to have decent survival – the caveat is you shadow return out of combat the second you start to take damage. It can be a bit slow, but your opponent will miss alot of their big CD attacks, and people tend to panic/get frustrated when they blow 4 or 5 CD’s and barely touch you. good ranged can be a bit of an issue, I was thinking about maybe trading Scorpion wire for Smoke screen…

Concerning Haste; Maybe. It sounds like it has potential, but I feel its much to easy to counter with block/immune/stunbreakers.