Guild Wars 2

been gone for a while saw they changed a number of things on the 14th, was wondering what and if any new builds arrived.

the buff on fleet shadows makes me swoon tho, always loved that one.

Most still run that glass cannon backstab build. There are a few P/D condition builds and fewer D/D condition builds. I personally run a S/D control tank thief of which I’ve only ever run into one other than myself.

I run a vampire thief, 10/30/0/30/0. All valk/berserker armor. Sword/pistol with signet of malice, shadowstep, infiltrators signet, signet of agility. Blood sigil on my sword and air on my pistol. All ruby orbs (although I’m eyeballing that new rune of altruism and will replace the lost crit damage with the new fractal rings/back piece, don’t really need more than 100 crit damage). Using omnomberry pie for the 66% chance of lifesteal on crit. Whenever I’m attacking there’s a flurry of healing rolling off my character (very much like a large bleed stack). Each pistol whip can heal between 4k-7k depending on crits and the amount of targets I’m hitting. I have around 18k health and as long as I’m hitting things I never drop below half health.

It works quite well in WvW as not many people can handle burst dps and healing at the same time and has plenty of ability to chase down anyone but really good d/d elementalists (damn chill gets me everytime). In PvE (mostly fractals) I’d recommend dropping 5 points from acrobatics and putting them in deadly arts so you can use poison cloud to spam area weakness, not to mention poison cloud ticks activate signet of malice so its extra healing (same with caltrops btw). Otherwise, same playstyle though if you keep sword 2 up you can sub out all your stun breaks for more group orient things as sword 2’s return breaks stuns. If you ever need quick stealth to rez a team mate just drop black power then 2 cluster bombs for 5 or so seconds of stealth. The 2 initiative 10 second trait in acrobatics coupled with the initiative on crit and signets giving initiative mean you never run out of initiative.

d/d p/p cond build thief here.

I like how it works..

the 50% speed in stealth trait from the acrobatics line will discourage the usual glass build of 25/30/0/0/15

50% speed is a big number to miss out on

people are still playing with it tho

expect more hybrids to suit your play style soon

The majority of thieves will stay glass cannon untill ANet decides to change it. Aslong as you are able to kill a person with a single chain (CnD-Pre — Steal — Backstab — HS — HS — HS) most people will play it because its easy.

I’m a P/D cond thief.