Guild Wars 2

Hey thieves,

I’m a PVP player and I want to venture into WvW with a D/P + SB setup. I believe this setup can adapt to almost any scenario. This is a cookie cutter build of PVP: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlUmiO3eS5E/5Ey2jKUo4JvHk1YZWaFoJA-TsAg0CnIKSVkrITRyisFNsYJysAA

I noticed that many WvW Roaming builds spec into Shadow Arts, but I don’t really know which trait line I’d give up for that (trickery or critical strikes). I’d really appreciate some advice from experienced WvW roamers.

tl;dr: Need advice for Roaming D/P build.

Give up trickery

How’re you going to deal with all the conditions without shadow arts? Trickery is good but without condition clear you’re an easy target.

Trickery is great for PvP but is not as good for roaming. As mentioned, some points in shadow arts is a must.

Look at it this way…. in PvP, you kill fast and die fast. If you die, your run back takes 30 seconds and you are back into the fight. In WvW, if you die, you have a 5-10 minute run before finding any action.

Well, even crossing an entire Borderlands map takes less than 3 minutes but the point remains.

Longevity is far more valuable and far more important than in sPvP. And Shadow Arts gives you that longevity thanks to passive heals and condition removal. It’s not by chance that almost every popular WvW build speccs 30 points into Shadow Arts.

i noticed you only have ToTC for speed buff and no traveler or SoS.

Getting around in WvW will be a chore unless someone else is providing your swiftness.

Try your build in wvw, I think it is working fine. You can handle tankier classes a lot easier, and trickery allows you to jump 4 times through blackpowder. The condi remove from SA is nice, but not necessary. You can use the -40% condi duration food, it is really working fine. You can also run this build with scholar runes, but you have to be a lot more careful.

But if you wanna give up a traitline, it should be trickery.

How about giving up the 10 points in Deadly Arts for Mug and put it in Shadow Arts for the cond removal?
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQBYCZ7RFuT8EXBny7BZNWmFA

0/30/30/10/0 is usually what people classify as the “meta” build for WvW roaming. Lots of stealth, packs a punch still, and pretty good mobility/vigor depending on what you put in acrobatics.

10/30/0/0/30 still works, but you’re pretty much outmatched in 1vX scenarios because it has like no sustainability and is inferior at disengaging.

just try the build
if you are good in pvp you will have no probs because wvw players are usually bad Kappa

The build works fine in WvW. Here is the version I personally run in WvW so you can see my gearing.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYUQNAoaVlUmaPHdS5E/5Ey2jdqC5JvHk1YZWaFoJA-j0CBYfERjEFBjsIRUBgZmCR5maslhFRjVXDT5SIS7K1W0FRrGA-w

I know many other good PvP thieves such as Caed, Falchii, Muffinz, etc. all run the same/similar build when they play in WvW.

Obviously it is not as forgiving or cheesy as Shadow Arts, so you need to be mindful of the inflated numbers in WvW. However, it is definitely usable as-is, simply with a higher skill floor than SA, and IMO a much higher overall potential than SA if played right. Just find a nice gear setup you are comfortable with.

What Reikou said. Trickery DP is viable in WvW, however where it shines is 1v1 and not 1vX, imo, as it lacks sustain. Still, don’t listen to people who tell you to give up trickery.

Definitely viable. Lately I’ve actually been running DP trickery with Shadowstep as my only Condi clear, i.e. standard DP trickery traits, Ogre Runes, Withdraw for heal, and I can usually drop even heavy condi builds in 1v1s before they can drop me.

The build has amazing burst potential, so the deciding factor in most fights is whether or not you can bait out defensive CD’s before executing your burst and whether or not you can make good use of your interrupts to ensure they can’t recover from that burst.

Thanks to the significantly higher crit dmg cap in PvE, winning against condi builds as a burst build with very few condi clears is not as daunting a task as it is in tPvP at the moment. Not sure how much this will change once the crit dmg nerf comes into play though.

That said, if you’re looking for large-scale/outnumbered fights, having a few more condi clears and a few more points in SA definitely helps.

0/10/30/0/30.