Zerg support build?
Staff Ele has perma swift, a tport, mist form, and will beat the pants off a thief in the zerg for utility.
For thief as support I’d be using SB and */P with at least Tricky 10 (V). Shadow Refuge, Caltrops, and probably Blinding Powder.
Rather than support you might just use that mobility as a stomper, anti-stomper, and to get at their backlines.
One way you can play a thief that is really useful to the zerg is if you go down trickery at least 20 points and take thrill of the crime and bountiful theft. Both of those will stack tons of buffs on your allies, but leeching venoms with venomous auras is by far the best team-play thief build I have seen because your allies benefit from the leeching venoms, which means that they heal themselves when they apply the venoms that you share with them, so not only are you stacking a ton of conditions on the enemy, you are healing everyone as well.
I would go shortbow main + sword/dagger or pistol/dagger and 20 points into trickery for thrill of the crime and bountiful theft, and then after that it’s up to you how you want to play it. Probably 30 into shadow arts for venomous auras, leeching venoms, and master of deception, and then probably 20 points into deadly arts for mug and quick venoms. For utils I would do spider venom, ice drake venom, shadow refuge, and dagger storm.
(edited by Meyrink.6792)
@Meyrink – thanks for the input – that is great stuff. Gear wise since I’m on a T1 server should lean towards pvt/knights I’m guessing?
@Lanny – yeah I know, they are great at support it’s just the playstyle is kinda “meh” for me hence the search for something else. Thank you for your input as well.
Something along these lines maybe…
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQNAV8YlcmCNnay9E+5EB3jkC1n6pgsjVTBNtJA-jkzAYLAMWkJCBmKAl9mGbCMIlxioxqqFk1LY6ykawht5Q2dAPuyqMALbB-w
@Meyrink – thanks for the input – that is great stuff. Gear wise since I’m on a T1 server should lean towards pvt/knights I’m guessing?
@Lanny – yeah I know, they are great at support it’s just the playstyle is kinda “meh” for me hence the search for something else. Thank you for your input as well.
Actually, my understanding is that you should always pick berzerkers on a thief, or maybe mix in some valkyrie pieces, but try to run as much berzerkers as you can and get used to dodging a lot or avoiding damage in the first place. Personally I use some PVT but that’s only because I already made a big investment of karma into a full PVT temple set without first doing some research on what I needed to be wearing, but now I’ve learned from these forums that it’s zerks or nothing pretty much.
Although, if you are doing a condition build to get the most out of your venoms, you might want to ride with carrion gear instead of zerks because venoms don’t crit, so having a high power, crit, or high precision doesn’t matter. But that’s just if you want to max out your venoms, and this is just theorycrafting from me because I’ve never played a condition thief build before. I much prefer roaming in small groups and ganking people with backstab.
There’s some other gear set I can’t recall the name of too which is like, condition, toughness, and healing I think. Maybe apothecary? I’m not sure, but that might also be useful for condition spam and getting the most out of leeching venoms because of the healing power bonus.
(edited by Meyrink.6792)
Not sure if you can consider this support, but, when I run with the zerg on my thief I run signet of malice with shortbow main and dagger/pistol swap. Have dagger storm equipped, along with signet of agility, shadow step, and shadow refuge. Signet of agility gives you enough dodges to stay alive while your initiative is low, and signet of malice allows you to get off an entire dagger storm in the opponents zerg. Gear is zerkers or valks, but you want about 50% crit chance without signet (signet will almost never be active except for the start of the fight). Your “support” is just incredibly high aoe damage through cluster bomb and dagger storm, and once those are done you have the ability to get out and pick off the squishies or anyone with low health with dagger/pistol. I currently run 0/20/30/20/0. And don’t worry about squishiness. The buffed signet of malice is enough to keep you alive even in the middle of the zerg.
The problem with most thief support builds is that we have very few support skills with long buffs but long cool downs. Other classes have shorter buffs on shorter cool downs. Because of the aoe cap of 5, you can really only have 5 people buffed at a time, which isn’t great when you’re running with 30 people. Imo it’s better to just run damage, because we have the luxury of being able to run zerkers and still survive in the middle of the zerg with signet of malice and cluster bomb spam and dagger storm.
The final thing of note is you are literally spamming 2… no skill or high thinking involved. Honestly if you only want to zerg I wouldn’t suggest a thief
[TFI]
I made a thread specifically for this
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Build-Zerg-Thief-Builds/first#post2725440