Guild Wars 2

I’d like to focus on a scouting build for WvW. I’d appreciate any advice on builds, weapons, runes, strategies, etc. I just barely got to level 80 with my thief so I don’t know much about it.

What I think I need:
1. Speed (e.g. would skills such as shortbow 5 be good for this or are there better techniques)
2. Long term stealth (I hear thieves can stay stealthed longer if they hit random mobs)
3. Survivability (in the form of escaping from combat)

What I don’t care about:
1. Killing people.

1: Shortbow+Init signet and init regen traits from trickery and shadow arts.
2: No such thing as long term stealth. We thieves have a cap on how much can be stacked and any attack from stealth will trigger revield, preventing stealth for a 4 second duration. Critter smacking is viable to an extent, chaining it being tricky due to the distance between them and smacking normal mobs will trigger combat speed slowing you down.
THE best you might be able to get is 18 seconds from a full shadow’s refuge stand in, letting the time tick down a bit so you don’t hit the 12 second cap on stealth. Then loading up with hide in shadows “4 seconds” and blinding powder.
3: Full acro and shadow arts line for survival. You will be uncatchable with the trickery tree’s extra ini and shortbow, along with the signet and extra ini regen in stealth, using blinding powder and hide in shadows to trigger such

full acro full shadow 10 in trickery. SB and d/p for invis or d/d for leaping distance. shadow step. Signet of shadows. shadows refuge. hide in shadows. (no other choice) ignore the initiative signet as its garbage for this build. would u rather be invis or be running while visible? :P u cant use intiative skills and stay in stealth. best option is SS to SR to HiS to a bunch of heartseekers away. siometims its better to run thru a zerg as they wont see it coming. for instance run away a few steps while invisig then turn on them and run thru.

Travlane.5948:

full acro full shadow 10 in trickery. SB and d/p for invis or d/d for leaping distance. shadow step. Signet of shadows. shadows refuge. hide in shadows. (no other choice) ignore the initiative signet as its garbage for this build. would u rather be invis or be running while visible? :P u cant use intiative skills and stay in stealth. best option is SS to SR to HiS to a bunch of heartseekers away. siometims its better to run thru a zerg as they wont see it coming. for instance run away a few steps while invisig then turn on them and run thru.

He’s going to need to be able to keep up with an enemy zerg if he’s looking to be a scout, in which case he will need init for infiltrator arrows so he can hug around the outside and watch them.

What about gear and runes?

D/P + Shortbow,
+2 ini on stealth, +2ini/10s, SR, SS, SoS(traveling)/RfI/Smoke Screen

Use shortbow to have fast excess to cliffs and to overall fast traveling.
Use D/P 5-2-2-2 through the same smoke field with auto-targeting turned off. Refill your ini with SR, SmScr(+2+2+2) or Rfl than your are low on it.
You are in perma-stealth scouting there.
You can be spotted by seeing your smoke fields, but you can easily go away.
No actual gear is needed, coz thief’s survivability mostly is not gear-dependent.
GL&HF scouting.

BTW you _should_care about killing people, coz some of them will annoy you, while you are scouting for income and can’t leave your position. This is where you need gear.

I am thinking about a condition trolling thief… 0/0/10/30/30

1. Believe me or not, d/d 2 without auto targeting works far better than shortbow 5 in terms of speed. With the trait “gain swiftness when dodging”, no profession can catch you except thieves and eles.

2. Stealth won’t save you from zerg or ppl that want to kill you, but good position will. There are many “scout” spots on all 4 wvw maps, you need to go into the field and find them out.

3. try d/d 2 without auto targeting when disengaging…

Ping.5739:

I am thinking about a condition trolling thief… 0/0/10/30/30

1. Believe me or not, d/d 2 without auto targeting works far better than shortbow 5 in terms of speed. With the trait “gain swiftness when dodging”, no profession can catch you except thieves and eles.

2. Stealth won’t save you from zerg or ppl that want to kill you, but good position will. There are many “scout” spots on all 4 wvw maps, you need to go into the field and find them out.

3. try d/d 2 without auto targeting when disengaging…

D/D 2 can work faster in terms of speed in certain situations. But take the ruins on the borderlands maps for an example, you can infiltrators arrow up onto the archway as long as your standing on the bridge. Or those large, holed walls leading to the supply camps on the bottem left and rights of the map? You can infiltrator arrow up to the straw roof IF you shoot at the low-joints.

WereDragon.6083:

Ping.5739:

I am thinking about a condition trolling thief… 0/0/10/30/30

1. Believe me or not, d/d 2 without auto targeting works far better than shortbow 5 in terms of speed. With the trait “gain swiftness when dodging”, no profession can catch you except thieves and eles.

2. Stealth won’t save you from zerg or ppl that want to kill you, but good position will. There are many “scout” spots on all 4 wvw maps, you need to go into the field and find them out.

3. try d/d 2 without auto targeting when disengaging…

D/D 2 can work faster in terms of speed in certain situations. But take the ruins on the borderlands maps for an example, you can infiltrators arrow up onto the archway as long as your standing on the bridge. Or those large, holed walls leading to the supply camps on the bottem left and rights of the map? You can infiltrator arrow up to the straw roof IF you shoot at the low-joints.

Agree, but most of the time enemy zerg wont create such situation for you. It’s either you following the zerg while they are moving or the zerg chasing you.

I use D/P
I Use 0/20/30/20/0
I have gain inititive faster in steal
Gain 2 initiative every 10 secs
Reduced fall damage and stealth from falling
Precision turns to vitality
Heal in stealth

Basically I can travel around the map in stealth
I’ve sat at camps for 5 mins or so watching groups
I’ve followed zergs in stealth

I use sb aswell just to climb cliffs

I’ve a mix of valkyrie knight and zerker gear
I have about 16khp
1470 toughness
can only backstab for about 5k crit
about 40% crit chance
70%crit damage

I’ve even sat in hills in stealth taking down siege

On mobile so sorry for basic setup

Personally in WvW I dumped SOS signet as it doesn’t stack with swiftness. I went for mobility and used S/P and SB for this mode. Also focused on using Dodge, going into Acro for Feline grace, expeditious dodger and Fleet of Foot removing cripple as well as power of inertia stacking might. I use the truffle and meat something stew to add further regeneration of Endurance and stack further might. Just to ensure I had plenty of dodging I used the Signet of Agility – for extra crit and the endurance refill and condition removal – great for two reasons – obviously refilling endurance when you’re out to get you dodging again and removing conditions ie. if someone’s hit you with a chill or something. Using infiltrators arrow/strike and shadow steps I found this extremely mobile and swiftness can be up for a good period of time, much faster than using SOS over distances even. I was very difficult to catch.

I came up with a “set up” for a Thief scout some time ago, which gives you maximum speed and stealth:

Shortbow
Hide in Shadows – Signet of Agility – Smoke Screen – Shadow Refuge
15 Acrobatics – I 50% less falling damage (makes a huge difference in WvW when crossing terrain)
15 Trickery – V gain swiftness when you steal (this will also give you 3 more maximum initiative, and give you 3 initiative when you steal)
Bowl of Orrian Truffle and Meat Stew (gives you +40% endurance regeneration)

Speed: use steal to gain 10 seconds of swiftness (you don’t need a target to trigger this), dodge roll to gain swiftness, use Signet of Agility to gain more dodges, use Infiltrator’s Arrow in between. Together with the food, you should have permanent swiftness.
Stealth: combo Smoke Screen with Cluster Bomb to gain stealth (make sure Cluster Bomb doesn’t hit any mobs or foes), use Shadow Refuge after that stealth has run out, and then use the Smoke Screen combo again after the stealth from Shadow Refuge has run out. Together with Hide in Shadows, you should be able to get around 30 seconds of constant stealth, provided that no one interrupts you.

Your second weapon set, elite skill, and the 40 remaining trait points, you can add as you wish.

Cost.6917:

D/P + Shortbow,
+2 ini on stealth, +2ini/10s, SR, SS, SoS(traveling)/RfI/Smoke Screen

Use shortbow to have fast excess to cliffs and to overall fast traveling.
Use D/P 5-2-2-2 through the same smoke field with auto-targeting turned off. Refill your ini with SR, SmScr(+2+2+2) or Rfl than your are low on it.
You are in perma-stealth scouting there.
You can be spotted by seeing your smoke fields, but you can easily go away.
No actual gear is needed, coz thief’s survivability mostly is not gear-dependent.
GL&HF scouting.

BTW you _should_care about killing people, coz some of them will annoy you, while you are scouting for income and can’t leave your position. This is where you need gear.

With this same set-up, you can blast your smoke field with your shortbow (d/p 5 > sb 2). You can get 3 stealth blast finishers out of it.

The only problem is you have to stay out of combat. But if you chain it you can keep Dolyaks stealthed forever

edit; the guy above me said the same thing but more detailed.