Guild Wars 2

I have a very hard time seeing other builds as viable than the one I am running. So I want to hear if someone else can enlighten me. I tried calculate and test damage. And I simply cant find a better alternative to the full berserker build.

The Thief is one of tree classes with the lowest HP pool. And there is quite a big jump up to the medium pool, since its much closer to the high pool. The pools are 10805, 15082 and 18372.

Condition builds seems to be nonviable in WvW. We all know the conditions can easily be removed(even AoE style removed), secondly regeneration, heals etc can easily outheal the condition. Lastly the skills applying condition damage is very limited.
Anet has mentioned tho that condition damage is a problem. And when they (maybe) fix it we might see whole new builds.

Toughness dont really work either since you need to sacrifice something else. Not to mention the issue with the lowest HP pool again.

So is everyone running full berserker until something else is really viable? Or is there another solution?

59% critrate, 280 crit damage(150+110) and 2275 power seems to be it. Kill before you get killed.

There were 2 videos with a few thieves vs the zerg, can’t find them tho. Maybe the zerg was noob, or they were really good, or both, but they did troll like no one else.

Best bet for WvW is as much stealth as possible. May not get many kills, but you can cause enough chaos that your teammates can move in and clean up.

I would note that I do very well in WvW. But only with my current build. My GF plays a warriour, and I tried that abit too. And there is just so much more viable options to go. But again, the base HP there is also almost 75% higher plus some extremely good utilities. It seems to me that our base HP is the key to the lockdown to certain builds.

i run a condition vitality build and down 3+ quite often in wvw stack em with full run of death blossom drop refuge then dagger storm and people melt i also have over 22k hp with the build and with proper evade and the evades fron DB i am uasually barely touched when i start stomping them only issue i uasually have is trying to get em all finished off solo but getting down is easy

Condition builds are very viable for the thief, mainly due to our resource system there is no CD. All purges, however, do have a long CD. This enables us to “feint” a small stack let them purge, then apply the main stack. Necros, guardians, and warriors alike all eventually succumb to the bleed.

The key, however, is to never allow yourself to be open to attack, don’t just stand in melee range letting them beat on you. LDB a couple of times and be rolling as soon as your feet hit the ground.

Below is the build I’ve been running (quite successfully I might add)

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mckzzc0zmbavombavmp9MfxokMVkq

I use superior sigils of earth on both daggers for the added bleed stacks and use the following rune set (the extra dodge rolling really helps)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_the_Adventure

Conditions are perfectly viable in WvW. Everyone might have condition removals, but they have cooldowns, and with so many people spamming conditions around, you are going to get some to stick and kill people if they are strong enough. If you are running a pure condition build, chances are you can apply conditions faster then they can be removed most of the time, unless your opponent went all out to counter that kind of build. Burst damage might do more upfront damage, but for those times where you and your opponents are doing the los dance on walls, around choke points, you or them are running away, etc; the condition spec shines.

Adaneshade.2409:

Condition builds are very viable for the thief, mainly due to our resource system there is no CD. All purges, however, do have a long CD. This enables us to “feint” a small stack let them purge, then apply the main stack. Necros, guardians, and warriors alike all eventually succumb to the bleed.

The key, however, is to never allow yourself to be open to attack, don’t just stand in melee range letting them beat on you. LDB a couple of times and be rolling as soon as your feet hit the ground.

Below is the build I’ve been running (quite successfully I might add)

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#Mckzzc0zmbavombavmp9MfxokMVkq

I use superior sigils of earth on both daggers for the added bleed stacks and use the following rune set (the extra dodge rolling really helps)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Rune_of_the_Adventure

Those sigils do not stack, when one triggers, the other goes on cooldown the same. In fact, any proc sigil does this and shares a cooldown, so it is wasted to put more than one proc sigil on your weapons. It would be more beneficial to get the sigil that stacks condition damage on kill.

There was no cooldown listed on earth sigils…..is there a hidden one not in the tooltip? If so it’s simply a matter of swapping out for an agony or the stacking +condition damage one. Either way the build has worked very well in WvW. DO NOT recommend for sPvP though as it does take a bit longer to kill your target and you can’t get a fight in there for very long without the opponent having backup soon.

thief WvW is full of possibilities, which I love. I don’t love that I have to spend a few silver each time I wanna change it tho :P

Started w/ a heavy crit/power build with 15 trickery for the extra initiative. Don’t forget to have a shortbow as your 2ndary weapon cuz of that 5 skill to get away/run faster.

Now I’m running a completely different setup which does NOT work solo, but it is extremely useful with some allies.

Shortbow mainly with double dags for one on ones- Set your skills to have Devourer Venom, Signet of Shadows, Scorpion Wire. Elite skill: Basilisk’s venom

20 Shadow Arts: Infusion of Shadow & Hidden Thief
30 Acrobatics: Fleet Shadow & Fleet of Foot & Hard to Catch
20 Trickery: Thrill of the Crime & Instinctual Response

Basically, you’re reallllly hard to catch. You’re a scout, an initiator into a big group then you GTFO using evade to get the Expeditious Dodger proc and your 12 different ways of teleporting around. You have the scorpion wire which is amazing combined with your basilisk’s venom followed by the devourer venom to snag someone off the top of the wall or away from their allies and lock them in place.

Your steal cloaks you so your next attack will immobilize, and you’re faster moving while stealthed. Add on top of that your 3 with the shortbow or 4 with the daggers to slow people down, and noone gets away from me unless they dodge the basilisk’s venom

The big downer though is of course, you won’t do a single bit of damage (okay maybe a little condition dmg but not really), so you really do depend on having allies with you to finish the suckers off. This will work well if you have comms with a small gang. you ctrl t your target and announce you got it tackled or something (Eve reference, this is totally an interceptor)

And this is a totally different WvW build than my buddy’s. Honestly I think you could go 10 different routes with a thief. I just focused on speed and stealth. Heck I think you could make a dank aoe support/healing thief with the right setup.

What you want to use depends very heavily on what you’re trying to do in WvW. Are you running around with the horde getting in horde duels? Condition damage is poor in general here and raw damage king, so Berserker’s in a good choice. However, you have the lowest base health pool which means that you scale better with Vitality than other classes – and getting more durability on your gear allows you to get away with being more aggressive. At the same time, Berserker’s scales well with itself, and when you start diluting your gear it loses its shine.

Not to say pure Berserker’s is bad, just that you’re only really good for instagibbing poorly built Elementalists and Rangers and terribly played Mesmers.

In smaller squad fights and taking camps conditions are huge. Condition damage might be an underpowered stat but Thief still scales with it reasonably well, and your conditions have time to work when people don’t drop instantly.

The strongest dueling specs are durable and stealth heavy and make great use of condition damage. They don’t explode anyone, but are nigh impossible to kill and can wear down anything this side of a tank Guardian.

I would say that Berserker’s and Invader’s are the strongest sets for a Thief at the moment, but Rampager’s and Carrion aren’t too far behind and would be right up there with a modest buff to condition damage; there are good reasons for sprinkling some Valkyrie pieces into the right set as well. It certainly isn’t Berserker’s or bust, and I’d personally go full Invader’s over full Berserker’s if I had to mix and match.

i run full carrion cause its the kitten for condition and vitality

I play my thief with the following traits, armed with as much berserkers gear as i can (most important attribute = +% crit damage)

10 deadly arts(for mug)
30 critical strikes (signet of power/practiced tolerance, side strikes, executioner)
20 shadow arts (hidden thief + your choice)

last 10 points are up to you. i put them into trickery for thrill of the crime

one thing I have learnt is not to trait based on what stats you want. i.e. just because you feel bursty doesn’t mean that you need to really invest into deadly arts, and no amount of investing into shadow arts is going to make you tough enough to survive high incoming damage. just choose the trait ‘specials’ according to how you want to play your thief. which is why i explain the choices i made above

the traits chosen are primarily used to do the following

steal in (gives you stealth and does about 3k damage on a crit)
activate assasin signet
backstab (>5k on a crit)

whatever you want to do from here is freeplay. you can conserve your initiative to just 1 him to death, or you can 2 him. if theres a few other enemies around you can spam 4. the dancing dagger is actually a pretty underrated skill but it is crazy good as an burst ‘aoe’. i can deal up to 7k damage on EACH target with a full initiative bar just spamming 4.

i also need to mention that when you steal in (and are stealthed), activation of the signet immediately autoattacks your backstab, so you don’t have to 1 yourself. whether this is intended or not, its worth noting so you get your timings right. IMO it makes things easier

slot skills
refuge is the most important skill you can have in WvW. although the tooltip says it lasts for 6 seconds, it actually does so for 10 seconds. 10 seconds of cloak + heal + lifesteal combo for all your teammates is invaluable. i find myself using it a lot to set up a cloaking field for ressing ppl during sieges

ulti = spin. extremely useful as an oh kitten button, and if the enemy doesn’t know better and continues to shoot you, they are in for some serious trouble.

hide in shadows for survivability

signet of shadows for the speed buff (i never actiavte it)

in zerg vs zerg, you can either try to do some flanking (d/d) and kill softies (rangers are my favourite) who are not with the zerg, or if you wanna do frontal, go with the shortbow and just spam 1 (hitting 3 targets for 1.5k each) . 2 isn’t worth spamming that much because the projectile takes too long to travel. you can use 4 to support your zerg for combos.

if your zerg is rushing in, spam 2 on yourself. your projectile explodes almost instantaneously so you can do massive aoe.

I play my thief with the following traits, armed with as much berserkers gear as i can (most important attribute = +% crit damage)

10 deadly arts(for mug)
30 critical strikes (signet of power/practiced tolerance, side strikes, executioner)
20 shadow arts (hidden thief + your choice)

last 10 points are up to you. i put them into trickery for thrill of the crime

one thing I have learnt is not to trait based on what stats you want. i.e. just because you feel bursty doesn’t mean that you need to really invest into deadly arts, and no amount of investing into shadow arts is going to make you tough enough to survive high incoming damage. just choose the trait ‘specials’ according to how you want to play your thief. which is why i explain the choices i made above

the traits chosen are primarily used to do the following

steal in (gives you stealth and does about 3k damage on a crit)
activate assasin signet
backstab (>5k on a crit)

whatever you want to do from here is freeplay. you can conserve your initiative to just 1 him to death, or you can 2 him. if theres a few other enemies around you can spam 4. the dancing dagger is actually a pretty underrated skill but it is crazy good as an burst ‘aoe’. i can deal up to 7k damage on EACH target with a full initiative bar just spamming 4.

i also need to mention that when you steal in (and are stealthed), activation of the signet immediately autoattacks your backstab, so you don’t have to 1 yourself. whether this is intended or not, its worth noting so you get your timings right. IMO it makes things easier

slot skills
refuge is the most important skill you can have in WvW. although the tooltip says it lasts for 6 seconds, it actually does so for 10 seconds. 10 seconds of cloak + heal + lifesteal combo for all your teammates is invaluable. i find myself using it a lot to set up a cloaking field for ressing ppl during sieges

ulti = spin. extremely useful as an oh kitten button, and if the enemy doesn’t know better and continues to shoot you, they are in for some serious trouble.

hide in shadows for survivability

signet of shadows for the speed buff (i never actiavte it)

in zerg vs zerg, you can either try to do some flanking (d/d) and kill softies (rangers are my favourite) who are not with the zerg, or if you wanna do frontal, go with the shortbow and just spam 1 (hitting 3 targets for 1.5k each) . 2 isn’t worth spamming that much because the projectile takes too long to travel. you can use 4 to support your zerg for combos.

if your zerg is rushing in, spam 2 on yourself. your projectile explodes almost instantaneously so you can do massive aoe.

^^^
Pretty much how I play. Only difference is that instead of hide in shadows, I will use blinding powder or scorpion wire, depending on the situation.

People tend to forget that this game is about damage PREVENTION. Especially as a thief. We are squishy as anything else out there with low hp so you can’t expect to walk into a fight and not get manhandled if you dont have any damage prevention on your bar. And for thieves, damage prevention = stealth. I would NEVER step foot in WvW without shadow refuge.

Small tip for shadow refuge, is after 3 or 4 seconds, it becomes invisible to enemies, the circle goes away on the ground and the icon disappears, so if your standing in it stealthed, no one will know your there unless they AOE that area and see the damage. Also, watch your stealth buff while your invisible. I’ve found that as soon as it starts blinking, you can run out of the safe house circle and you WONT break invis. This is how I escape all my close calls. I’ll pop shadow refuge, run around the circle dodging enemy attacks until they run away (out of sight, out of mind I guess lol) and then when the stealth buff starts blinking, I run away, healing if need be.

I’m only in yellow gear / orange weapons and green jewelry but I fair quite well out in WvW. With ~65% crit chance and 79% crit damage my backstabs can crit for up to 9k and my heartseekers will hit for up to 6k on low health victims. I mostly see myself as “The finisher” when it comes to group fights, stand back and maybe use a bow or dancing dagger until someone runs to the back of the pack (aka is low on health) I’ll hit blinding powder and stealth into the big group, shadowstep to him, backstab and heartseeker him until he goes down, then if need be, I will use my heal to stealth again and use that time to finish him, then run back to the pack. Rinse and Repeat. I find this style of play to be super fun and very effective. We have stealth for a reason, use it!