Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone! I’ve been doing quite a bit of WvW recently, and quite a bit solo, so I’ve decided to upload a video demonstrating what the thief is capable of in WvW. First, some links. Then, some explanations for the people who don’t want to watch the build video.

TL:DR at the bottom!

Build Links:
-Build Itself
-Build Video
-Footage Links

Alright! The build is thus:
5 points in deadly arts
-I need a way to apply as much poison as possible, and there aren’t many other options for the last 5 trait points. Honorable mention to 5 more points in Shadow Arts for the extra stealth duration (which works wonders with Shadow Refuge).
15 points in Critical Strikes
-Opportunist is so good that I can justify putting points into CS just for that. The fury when enemies hit 50% is also excellent. Also, crit damage % is hard to come by, so this helps a lot!
10 points in Shadow Arts:
-I have a lot of deceptions on my hotbar, so getting the 20% cooldown reduction does a great deal. Shadowstep is amazing, and Shadow Refuge is just as useful.
20 points in Acrobatics:
-Everything about this line is good. Swiftness on dodge, Dodging restores 20% of endurance, vigor when your heal skill is triggered, heal for every initiative used. Nothing to complain about.
20 points in Trickery:
-Stealing now gives us 3 initiative, fury, might, swiftness, vigor, poisons the target, and steals two boons and gives it to us. Our allies benefit from all of these things as well (including pets if you use Thieve’s Guild)

Our food of choice is “Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew.” Might every time we dodge and 40% faster endurance regen puts our dodging ability over the top. Imprecise testing puts me dodging five times every time my guardian buddy could dodge three (not including heals/utilities).

And finally, some abilities. The build itself is designed around high mobility, and the weapon choices, utility choices, and elite choice all play into this theme.

Sword+Pistol
-Auto-attack leads to cripple: nice.
-Infiltrator’s Strike is great for holding people long enough for your team to catch up.
-PISTOL WHIP is the focus of the build. Properly timing your whips so that you do maximum damage with maximum disruption takes practice. Once you’ve reached that point, however, you’ll find yourself interrupting heals and other “strong” abilities constantly. It’s worth noting that you can steal while pistolwhipping to keep people in range. (In fact, pistol whipping first, then stealing is optimal, since you regain init).
-Headshot has limited uses, but they do exist. Mostly, if someone moves out of range while you’re immobilized and tries to heal, you can shoot them in the head and interrupt it.
Black Powder is excellent. You can use it to solo supply camps if you stack the NPCs properly! I also recommend throwing it on downed people so that they can’t disrupt your finishing blows (especially Rangers, Warriors, Guardians, Necros, and Engis!).

Shortbow
Trick Shot does good damage at range, especially against exactly two bounce targets to the primary target (it bounces back!).
Cluster Bomb serves many purposes; usually it’s good to hit clusters of enemies if you’re right next to them. Especially if they enter a Shadow Refuge or otherwise go invisible. Remember: The closer you are, the more quickly you can fire it.
Disabling Shot is tricky to use. Normally, if someone closes to melee switching to S/P and Pistol Whipping is preferable, but if you notice a large enemy zerg behind that person, using it once and then running away is recommended.
Choking Gas is very difficult to use. The main problem with it is keep people in the poison field. I’ve used my sigils to mitigate my reliance on this move, and for more consistent poisoning for the first 15s or so of a fight.
Infiltrator’s Arrow is the reason I have a shortbow equipped. This skill allows you to move while immobilized. It also blinds anyone at the location you started at. This allows you to run from any class in the game without fear that they’ll catch up. Far and away the most important skill with a bow for our build.

My weapon sigils are simple: A Superior Sigil of Ice on my sword, a Superior Sigil of Doom on my pistol and shortbow. Constant poisoning is key, and doom gives you poison every time you swap weapons. Always start the fight with shortbow for 1 hit if you can, then swap to S/P and get the free poison going. Combined with steal, that’s 15s of poison for free. Use it well! The sigil of ice is just to give a chance to snare on hit, which is always nice. :)

For healing, I tend to use Withdraw for several reasons:
1 – It breaks immobilize. At the moment, it’s partially broken, as you begin rolling before the immobilization is stripped from you. You’re still immune even while you’re not traveling. As a result, you only move about 1/3 the distance you normally would. Immobilize, chilled, and cripple are the things that most commonly get me killed. Being able to strip them every 15 seconds is a tremendous advantage.
2 – It heals more in 30 seconds than any of the other healing skills we have access to (at least as a Sylvari, maybe one of the other races has a better HPS than it, but I doubt it).
3 – It’s a very long roll. Using this properly we can run even more quickly when things go pear shaped (which happens very frequently solo).
4 – It’s an instantaneous heal. You can’t interrupt it, which means that people use a lot of daze/stun timings don’t get a chance to crush your heal.

In environments where Withdraw is unsuitable (read: JUMPS!) I recommend Signet of Malice. It has the better HPS, and the extra healing isn’t half bad if moderated carefully!

Signet of Shadows
The reasoning behind this is very simple: No other class even comes close to our base movement speed (except elementalists). Being able to chase people down and retreat at will is vital to soloing in hostile environments. The use ability on it is useless. I recommend never using it as a rule of thumb. There will be a point where you’re skilled enough to know when you HAVE to do it, but I don’t recommend trying to cross that bridge too quickly. Movement speed is the strongest stat in the game: TAKE ADVANTAGE!

Shadowstep
Another amazing skill. Properly using this skill will allow you to engage multiple people and come out alive if the fight doesn’t go well. It’s worth mentioning that you break stuns IN BOTH DIRECTIONS!!! This means that you can get knocked down, Shadowstep back to your feet 1200 units away, get hit with ANOTHER immobilize, Shadow Return back, and run the other way. It’s likely that everyone used their mobility skill to get to your knew location 1200 away, and that they won’t be able to catch up as you get farther and farther.

Shadow Refuge
This skill is amazing. First, it heals you. This is marginal. Of considerably greater relevance is the stealth duration. You get 3s of stealth for every second you spend in the refuge (totally about 12 seconds). This allows you to use finishing blow in the middle of a small group, wait for your heal and endurance to recharge, and then go bolting away with Infiltrator’s Arrow and max initiative. It’s pretty awesome.

Daggerstorm
This is a matter of choice. I choose to use Daggerstorm for several reasons, but there are compelling points for Thieve’s Guild as well, so I’ll list them here, and let you decide.

-My observation is that a majority of players use ranged weapons for whatever reason. It could just be that I have weak server opposition (I do), or it could be something else. Either way, ranged weapons don’t work against DS, so it’s pretty nice to have.
-The cooldown is up every fight. Thieve’s Guild is usually up every 1.5 fights for me, which means I sometimes forget to use it if it wasn’t available to begin with. A person problem, but relevant to me.
-DS is better in larger fights (5v5+) because the daggers bounce, causing massive damage. Because these daggers fly out randomly, getting in the middle of a large group and deploying it maximizes the damage to an area, whereas Thieve’s Guild is better for single targets.

Finally, for armor I like to keep a nice mix. Three minor pieces (Hat, Gloves, Boots in my case) of “Kight’s Gear” (Power/Tougness/Vitality). Three pieces of “Berserker’s Gear”, which gives Power, Precision, Crit Damage %. 6 Superior Runes of Divinity in all armor.

Accessories are a bit strange, but not overly so. A Ruby Orichalcum Amulet of the Berserker with an Exquisite Ruby Jewel, two Beryl Orichalcum Earring of the Valkyrie with two Exquisite Ruby Jewels, and two Beryle Orichalcum Ring of the Valkyrie with two Exquisite Ruby Jewels. This allows for a nice balance of Precision, Power, Vitality, and Crit Damage%.

I hope this guide was helpful, and look forward to hearing feedback from the thief community.

PS – Scorpion Wire should be good, but it’s busted. Please fix it.

TL;DR
5/15/10/20/20 (I,I,III,X,V,VII – Top to bottom, left to right)
Sword/Pistol + Shortbow
Pros: High Mobility, Decent Damage
Cons: No 1-shots (usually…), no sustained poison, no ambush trap (it’s really quite good!)

Thanks for the guide and videos. I appreciate all the effort you put a into it.

Subscribed.

what is your crit chance without buffs? What are your goals with that build? Are you planning to disrupt gameplay and semi tank?

- if one of your cons is no sustained poison then you’re better off taking off 5 on deadly traits imo.

-How is scorpian bugged btw?

Pretty good hybrid build but it’s somewhat incomplete.

If pistol whip is your main damage then you definitely have to lower trickery and as stated, signets will be your main utilities so trickery shouldn’t be so high unless you maxed it for the final trait glyph (which is worth it). Lowering trickery to say.. 10 and and putting the 5 fromdeadly to CS and putting the remaining 10 from trick to CS to maximize it is definitely worth it for decent damage imo.

Pistol wisp build without haste is a broken pistol wisp build.

@Baldie – Right now, my crit chance is around 40%, should be around 50% once I’m fully geared (not including fury). As far as the five points in Deadly Arts are concerned, I’ve found that proper timing is key. Having sustained poison is nice, but being able to apply poison when I need it (or more precisely, when I expect them to heal) is much more important. If people don’t see poison on their bar right away, they don’t purge it, and it scales down their heal. The sigils of doom help with this, and 15s of poison is usually enough to kill people.

Scorpion Wire is bugged for a few reasons.
1 – I’ve been obstructed in the middle of an open field. That sucks.
2 – Sometimes it just knocks them down for one second, and doesn’t even move them.
3 – I’m not convinced it has 900 range. I’ve noticed that it starts to taper off as it approaches the end of its range, but I’m unsure if this is the reason it gets obstructed in the middle of nowhere. Starting it slightly higher would fix it (assuming I’m not just wrong. Without the ability to duel it’s kind of hard to tell).

Honestly, I’m not fond of the signets. Assassin’s Signet only does its bonus damage on the first hit of pistol whip (and unload), Infiltrator’s Signet just doesn’t do enough (1 init in 10 seconds is terrible. The extra shadowstep might be nice, but it doesn’t break stun, so it’d be questionable), and Signet of Agility, while nice, doesn’t do as much for me as Shadow Refuge or Shadowstep. I don’t like builds that force you to commit all of your DPS into the signet activation. If you’re against someone who plays with your boons at all, it can be disastrous. This is also the main benefit of Bountiful Theft; if you’re fighting good boons (protection from guardians, might from other thieves) you can steal them, and turn the tide really quickly.

I used to be more along the lines of 10(mug)/30/0/15/15, but I just felt like I needed a little something more. Bountiful Theft has DEFINATELY been worth it, once I’ve gotten used to having it.

@username.4932 – Well, the whole build is based around dodging. If I wanted to use haste, I’d have to take all of the points out of acrobatics (remember, it takes all of your endurance and shuts down regen) and become a glass cannon. That’s not what I want.

@kubetz – Thanks!

I have yet to find a good player who will sit through half a pistol whip let alone the full thing.

Interesting food choice though, I’ll have to try it.

Raitoken – Gotta use steal to close range. Also, the chill proc chance helps quite a bit with it. By the way, you can do a dodge roll inbetween the pistol hit and the sword swings. Usually dodging straight ahead will work best, since they’ll try to move away from you.