Guild Wars 2

Hi!

My question is simple. Which armor stats are better at the moment for the thief? Zerker or Marauder? (PvE and WvW, I know the meta in PvP is Marauder)

Cheers.

Zerker.

Because why not go full glass if you are glass.

Zerker always and forever from pre-launch until now has always been the best stat set for thief and probably always will be.

It’s up to you. Zerker clearly has higher DPS potential, but a bit of Vitality will let you stand your ground a little better, plus you’ll be a bit less fragile against conditions. If you want to run Marauders, I say go for it. The DPS loss won’t be all that calamitous most of the time. The only place you’d really notice it would be when roaming in WvW, where that extra bit of burst can be the difference between putting someone in the ground before they have a chance to react and letting them get their Heal skill off.

Personally, I hate full Zerker. You go down too easy. I run mostly Zerker but then mix in a bit of Valkyrie and spec to make sure I have perma-Fury to make up for it.

You might want Marauders if you’re also playing WvW or alter what you need to at least stay above or around 15k health. You wont do any damage if you’re constantly getting revived or repairing your armor.

Cheers folks for all the replies!

I don’t think Zerker is quite as meta as it used to be. Thieves go down really fast in HoT content and it’s definitely worth mixing in Vit and Toughness if you don’t want to stay down and not doing any damage all the time.

i yawn everytime i see ’’zerker’’ in the comments. I run with around 40% soldiers/knights and i still feel super squishy. I can’t imagine how squishy a full zerker would be.

Magi.

Crit build Magi.

DO IT.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Magi.

Crit build Magi.

DO IT.

For maximum 9s it’s Giver’s or gtfo.

hmm i have got
full valk armor
zerk ring, zerk/valk ring
zerk x2 earring
zerk/valk neck

backpack cele

shortbow soldier other weapons valk or zerk depends.

imo run the way u want no1 cares in WvW how u run tbh aslong u dont die in a flash and even if u do who cares ur game ur style enjoy it the way u want.

Zerker with some marauder here and there (aim for 15-16k HP).

Are you in a group with reliably fury uptime and a banner warrior while running the critical strikes tree?

If so, then marauder is wasting points by sending you over 100% crit chance while above 90% health unless you run the 7% critical damage while over 90% health trait instead of the 7% while striking from behind or the side in your first slot, which is not only cheaper overall (equivilent to 150 ferocity vs 7% crit chance’s 180 precision equivilent), but also less reliable.

Went 6 piece marauders, weapons also maruader, and then all serker trinkets. Also running scrapper runes since that 7% extra mitgation seems to help.

I was going to stick to serker but I felt getting over 15k life as being a good idea (and it was imo) while not sacraficing much in damage. Seems to be working.

I can buy a full set of ascended jewelry with laurels now but not sure what to pick. There is no valk so that’s out so I think I just save the larels and hope they add those to the vendor one of these years.

I run solo pretty much so that is why I don’t go the more popular routes that relies on other players and their buffs.

Swapping your weapons and armor from Berserker to Marauder will reduce your damage output by about 3% (with or without full buffs), while increasing your health pool by about 25%.

I am personally very happy to give up 3% damage for a 25% health boost, but if you really and truly do not need the extra health 3% damage is still more damage.

Well I’d start by saying that full zerker was never meta in www since even before people would mix valkyrie gears with zerker gears.
Now that we can finally have one set that give us the right amount of power prec and vitality, without the need of mixing up different sets, why don’t use it?
Full zerker is too squishy and not realy usable by thieves in any competitive mode, it’s more a thing for high health pool classes like warrior or dps necros, and even they prefer other different stats combination

Ensign.2189:

Swapping your weapons and armor from Berserker to Marauder will reduce your damage output by about 3% (with or without full buffs), while increasing your health pool by about 25%.

I am personally very happy to give up 3% damage for a 25% health boost, but if you really and truly do not need the extra health 3% damage is still more damage.

That’s about the same numbers I got during my calculations, but, thieves, like necromancers and one handed weapon using guardians are an exception. In ascended gear, a marauder weapons/armour thief running the critical strikes chain with fury and a warrior banner of discipline can actually end up losing more than 3%.

The critical strikes tree grants 5% critical strike chance while above 90% health, and 7% critical strike chance while striking from behind or the side.

Ascended marauder weapons and armour with berserker trinkets results in a precision of 2058, or 63.44% critical strike chance. Fury raises it to 83.44%, a warrior banner and the 7% when striking from behind or the side results in a critical strike chance of 99.89%

Which means that, while above 90% health, you have 104.89% critical strike chance, wasting the stats when in that situation. You could take the increased critical damage while above 90% health instead, but, then you’re relying very heavily on remaining above 90% health, as well as wasting some of the bonus stats you gained from running marauder in the first place (21 to be precise) which widens the damage gap between the two.

If you’re playing without a banner warrior, critical strikes tree, or spotter ranger though, it’s awesome.

The thing a lot of people don’t realize is that Vitality is extra useful for a thief precisely because of how low their health pool is. Since the return you get from Vitality is the same regardless of class, Thieves can increase their health pools by a very significant amount with a moderate amount of vitality. Like Ensign said, it’s generally worth sacrificing 3-5% damage for 25% more health. Especially with the difficulty of HoT’s content.

I personally think Marauder is totally worth it.

Eponet.4829:

In ascended gear, a marauder weapons/armour thief running the critical strikes chain with fury and a warrior banner of discipline can actually end up losing more than 3%.

This is a really important point and something that you need to keep in mind when you start pushing precision above berserker levels – at some point you’re going to hit 100% crit with buffs, and then you’re just wasting stats. This is really sensitive to team composition (the warrior is pretty ubiquitous, spotter rangers less so) so be cautious if you really want to min-max around it.

Eponet.4829:

You could take the increased critical damage while above 90% health instead, but, then you’re relying very heavily on remaining above 90% health, as well as wasting some of the bonus stats you gained from running marauder in the first place (21 to be precise) which widens the damage gap between the two.

Not sure what you are referring to about wasted stats in this case. It’s definitely true that side strikes is going to push you over the 100% crit threshold frequently, particularly if you are running marauder. However, when you are at full buffs flawless strike is a much bigger buff to damage output than side strikes – it’s a multiplicative damage buff that gets better at high crit change, while side strike is linear. Even if you can maintain 100% uptime on side strikes (which is not easy at all – how many fights do you stack for again?) you’d still be better off with flawless strike if you can keep the bonus up 2/3 of the time; if you aren’t behind your target consistently flawless strike just keeps looking better. There are certainly good reasons to run side strike, but the difference between the two is not large.

A couple other notes:

If you are running a lot of marauder gear ferocious maintenance oils are your best friend. The weakness of marauder is the loss of ferocity, which is relatively difficult to buff – ferocious oils shore that up, and scale up with the vitality you are getting from the marauder gear. This isn’t relevant for running dungeons where you have a dungeon specific potion, but for fractals and raids this makes a big difference.

Along those same lines, propping up ferocity through other sources is generally important with marauder. Critical strikes is more important for a marauder build – you really want practiced tolerance and no quarter to keep your per-crit damage high. Having a revenant around helps you relatively more. In ideal circumstances the DPS loss from marauder weapons and armor drops down to just over 2%, which is utterly trivial for a 25% health boost.

Right now in wvw i am currently running full marauder w/ daredevil runes staff s/b. works very well and i can 1v1 most. thats when i can find people tho. new bl’s suck.

can’t bother to craft another full set of ascended marauders after my ascended zerkers

If you have daredevil runes go with valkarie or marauder… you won’t need the precision as much as the dodges will help with that. Otherwise zerker because really that’s all the thief is really good at. In pvp condi can be ok sometimes, but that’s increasingly rare. While in pve condi is useless.

Another thing you can throw into the mix are the traits/runes/foods that reduce damage directly. (I speak of wvw here)

So as example daredevil trait line you get the weakening strikes which has the fumble (50 percent less damage half the time) along with the still not tooltipped 10 percent less damage from weakened foes.

Throw scrapper rune on top of that and take 7 percent less damage from enemy 600 or less away from you.

Take unhindered combat and you get another 10 percent reduction after a dodge so while these conditions met we now got 10 and 10 and 7 before that fumble on the weakness (keeping weakness time high can be very telling)

There also a food in HOT that decreases damage taken by another 10 percent.

That a whole lot of toughness equivalent there and better mitigation then protection. I think in fact that without the scrapper runes the 10+10+10 is about equal to the mitigation from the protection boon.Obviously all the conditions will not be met at once all the time but if you can maximize the same this can add considerably to survival.