Guild Wars 2

hello every body

so im trying to try get this wvw going on with thief and nead little bit of advice

so im nearly done with a ascended armor but have no idea what to do with the 3/3 setup of the zerker valkyrie armor what pieces to make zerk and what to make valky

so i heared D/P is best with SB but what sigils what runes to work towards
and what kind of builds are trickery to kill and such(and what are the skils i must look out for other classes)

cheers in advance

You basically copy the current sPvP D/P SA build and use the stats combination you found on other threads.

You don’t have PvP experience? You’re in for a rough ride buddy. Air/fire sigils are base for your D/P. I prefer leeching and energy on my SB, since I use that when I need to gtfo. Pack runes are an all rounder, but vampire also works.

As for basics to watch out for (I’m an sPvP main, with a smidge of WvWvW experience):

Mesmer is usually your biggest threat. Their initial combo goes along the lines of:

Mirror blade + blink right into your face > shatter > mind stab. If you’ve avoided this, you’ll have to deal with the usual SW/T. SW2 summons a clone that leaps at you. They then dodge once and swap places with the clone that leapt at you, which subsequently immobilizes you. After this, they usually flurry + shatter again. Torch and their utilities all grant them tons of stealth, so they’ll try to stealth instagib you a lot of the time. Naturally, you have more stealth and more mobility, so take your time shredding them.

Burn guardians. Their combo is even simpler than mesmer’s, but just as deadly:

Burn guardians (guardians in general) have a million and one tells and are reeeeeallllly slow. Unless you wanna wait a million years to wear down their blocks while hopping in and out of stealth, get used to your SB.
Generally, burn guardians are an easier kill than your age old power medi because they either sacrifice their GS for SW/F which would mean a lot less AoE or they sacrifice focus for torch which means their only form of mitigating damage comes from shelter, VoC (virtue of courage), and RF. All of these blocks come to a grand total of 5ish or so seconds of block. After that, they’re essentially defenseless. Your steal should strip their second round of stability (assuming they chose that over the AoE burn on proccing their passive burn), after that its smooth sailing.
^to get to that point, you have to dodge their initial burst. They usually open with SC/TT which is usually chains>smite>activate zealots flame from here, they have two options of attacking
1st is the flame toss into GS whirl (assuming GS and not SW/F). If you didn’t dodge this, you’re already dead. If they have SW/F, you’ve been given a little bit of a grace period for dealing with their burst, but still dodge their sword flurry.
2nd is when you aren’t facing idiots. They’ll usually activate their ZF and keep the fire burning on them as they whirl into you. The full duration of this burn combined with the second one they get from critting (which isn’t impossible if they’re running valor) will, again, kill you outright. Problem a lot of people have is dodging the initial scepter immobilize. If you dodge that, dodging the rest will be cake and the fight will practically be yours.
General rule of thumb for guardians is to always open with scepter. General rule of thumb VS guardians is to watch them carefully, wait for that first wave of their scepter hand and then dodge because the scepter immobilize is basically two waves of the hand. The skill completes the cast on the second wave of their hand more or less. Once you’ve dodged the chains, they can’t reliably land their smite, they can’t reliably land their fire so they’ll be forced to open earlier with their GS. Once you see the swap to GS, you know the whirl and teleport are coming so you should already be dodging/steal thing to cleanse w.e burn might be coming your way. Once you’ve dealt with these, guard is complete cake thanks to 0 mobility.
Oh and I think this is a given, but don’t stand in their flaming circle :P.

Ranger and necro are both food. Just dodge ranger’s entangle and if you see the ranger refusing to budge from one particular spot, he’s most likely got traps there. Slap him with SB OR you can force the traps with shadow step and then shadow step back to cure conditions and break the stun. Afterwards, the rest is easy business since they have 0 defenses after this. For necros, dodge the fear and dont hit them when they have spectral armor up so you don’t feed them LF and run if they ragelich, come back when its over.

Vs eles, its a little easier since stats are different here, but you usually want to avoid the following skills:

-ride the lightning + updraft. Dodge this and they can’t land burning speed. Usually, most d/d Eles are brainless, so they’d already be going to burning speed you, but you’ve already dodged. They then try to hit you with drakes breath, but you should’ve already bp>hs+steal>bs them and follow up with auto attacks. The damage from this makes them panic into water, which is perfect. Once they’ve healed, hit them with the stolen item to chill the hell out of them and continue stabbing away/dodging as you see fit. At this point, they have earth ready and air is almost back up. If they continue pelting you with water autos, they’re planning to swap air and use shocking aura and that weakness. Here, you have two options, kite with SB or stealth and get venom ready to interrupt and clean them up. I’m not counting fresh air or staff since they’re both food for stealth.

There’s warrior and engi, but their builds are too diverse for a general rotation or treatment and I gotta go.

Best of luck shanking people.

Blood is a good alternative to Fire on D/P these days imo. Good for survability / damage.

Here is the best guide I could find on playing a thief effectively in WVW:

Step one: Log the thief out.
Step two: Create Mesmer.
Step three: Buy cheap condi gear for Mesmer.
Step four: Roll most thieves by pounding your nose randomly on keyboard.
Pro Tip: You can use your feet/toes freeing up your face/hands to eat a sandwich playing a Mesmer and remain just as effective as a skilled thief.

Life is hard these days for a thief especially when an untrained monkey with a Mesmer is a formidable opponent.

Funny thing is Condi Mesmers are one of the weaker mesmer specs currently. But yeah currently thieves are in a pitiful state that it doesn’t matter, but I either run my thief with 2 other mesmers or we run in a pack of 3 mesmers, one for each spec PU power, PU condi and so on…. the fear is real…..

Consider trying out P/P + D/P the unload skill was buffed in September by 26% per shot and hits like a truck. It’s basically ranged 100B from stealth.