Guild Wars 2

Yo dudes,

I’ve been toying around with some ideas for Thieves and I believe I’ve come up with something really decent.

Thief really struggles with two things:

- Viable Condition Removal
- Damage Mitigation/Sustain through damage

My proposed Daredevil build has a decent answer to these problems.

It also gives us complete control over many situations a Thief was never able to control!

Here is my Defender Daredevil build

So, using Trickster, we get Withdraw and Roll for Initiative which will now both clear 1 condition. Escapists Absolution clears 1 condition as well, so now a well timed Withdraw or Roll for Initiative will clear 2 conditions, so this adds a minor skill based factor to condition clearing. Both dodge rolls also clear movement impairing conditions too, so they’re very strong.

Because we use Withdraw and R4I, we don’t need to take Dash because it’s a little overkill but you can swap Bound out to Dash if you really do enjoy being overkill. You’ll lose some DPS for overkill movement condi clear.

Now, also due to Driven Fortitude, Withdraw and R4I can heal us if we time them well to dodge attacks and not just burn them.

So to recap this section:

- Both our Utility Dodges can Clear 2 conditions + all movement impairing conditions
- Both our Utility Dodges can heal us for 500 HP if well timed
- You can use Dash instead of Bound to go complete overkill for clearing movement condi

Now, we can go one step further with Bandits Defense. This skill opens up Runes of the Defender which heals for 4000 when you block and attack. Bandits Defence on a 15 second cooldown and the heal when block is on a 30 second cooldown, means we can ALWAYS get the heal for added sustain. Bandits Defense is also a stun breaker which is awesome. Also, if we don’t have Bandits Defense, we can Withdraw which will grant Aegis for blocking.

Something beautiful about Bandits Defense is it’s retaliation kick which is a perfect line up for our Elite skill. The Elite is clunky and hard to land on a moving target, so it opens them up for an easy 1,2,3 combo elite.

Because of our 3 main Utilities, we now have 3 stunbreaks, 1 is an evade, 1 is a teleport and 1 is a block. Meaning we’re now extremely diverse and allows us to control the situation to an intense degree.

Allllsooooo, they’re making it so Staff#5 Vault has a built in Evade at the start of the cast time and Weakening Strikes makes enemies hit us for 10% less if Weakened. Holy crab!

And I’ve not even started talking about the Shadow Arts Tree! Even more condition removal, plus our Steal grants us Stealth for some epic damage combos (discussed later on). But I’m sure you’re all familiar with the Shadow Arts tree so I wont discuss it too much.

So to recap the whole shebang:

- We have 2 Utility evades which will clear 2 conditions (Survival Ranger stuff)
- We have 3 Stun Breaks which are great for almost every scenario a thief can be in
- We have 1 Block and a Knockdown Retaliation on a 15s cooldown
- We have Strong CC chains through our Block Retaliation -> Elite skill combo
- Every attack we block grants 1s of Regeneration
- Every block (once per 30s) will heal us for 4000 HP
- Withdraw now grants Aegis
- Every Evaded attack heals us for 500 (1s ITC)
- Weakened foes deal a further 10% less damage to us
- We are immune to Movement impairing Conditions at the cost of DPS Loss (Bound or Dash)
- We have the option to Stealth through Dagger Pistol
- Due to the Shadow Arts Tree, we are even stronger against conditions
- We have access to panic stealth through Steal

Finally, Mango Pie heals for about 900 every 10 seconds its active!

Now, we’ve gone over the defensive mechanics, now lets look at our offense.

Staff naturally has some very hard hitting abilities. Staff#1.3 hits 4 times for a load of damage, and Vault hits almost as hard as backstab.

We can use a combo of Steal -> Weapon Swap > Backstab (Intelligence+Leeching) for around 8k burst damage.

Reflexive Strike (Bandits Defense Kick retaliation) is a 2 second knockdown which allows us to either: Vault on their face, Backstab them through the above combo, or use our Elite skill combo.

You can also, Blackpowder -> Weapon Swap -> Vault for a backstab level damage, which will now give you hookstrike, another skill you can chain your elite skill into!

Then finally, we can use D/P to go defensive, with blinds and easy stealth access. I feel D/P fits into a lot of builds quite nicely and I see it working well with this one.

The negatives is that you don’t have Shortbow #5 so you may struggle to escape fights you may lose due to outnumbered to ambushed or ect,ect,ect.

So there you have it guys. This is the build I will be running when HoT drops. It has a very “Survival Ranger”-ish feeling to it, which is fine because that’s what my ranger is specced to.

But more so I feel my build answers a lot of questions a Thief struggles to answer.

Feel free to ask any questions below and I’ll be happy to answer them!
Constructive criticism is always welcome.

meepeY.2867:

Here is my Defender Daredevil build

It looks fun! I may end up doing something very similar, but without access to smokefield.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAWVn0MBlOhFmC+OBkmiFYCzLMEHaDzfwSYLULBEAyAA-TVSDAB0dFAeRVFoU+d++DgoLAATQKoEMG1Kk4RAEAABgbe0be0bmQAmHDA-w

I tested defender runes in an S/P build, and they had their moments where they really shined!

It was tough to decide between the Escapists Absolution and Pulmonary Impact with S/P, but I think defender works even more awesome in a pure staff build where interrupts aren’t your focus – just due to all the downtime you have as a ‘brawler’ to go through your block rotations.

edit: I like your idea of playing up the stealth a bit. It allows you some more utility to use your staff knockdown or backstab. I also like your choice of Hidden Thief with your otherwise limited stealth options. That requires some amount of skill play for the weaponstows or detargets, etc, etc.

Getting rid of DA is a tough choice but looks like you made up for it and continue to make up for it just from your theme of sustain. Good job!