babazhook.6805, but without DrD thief’s mobility suffers greatly. While roaming in WvW, it’s essential to have a permanent swiftness for catching up with a fleeing target or for getting away from the incoming zerg. Without DrD all your mobility is just the expensive teleport on SB. Or you need to waste a slot for a speed signet. Every time I try to take DrD away from my spec combo, I feel like my thief has been crippled.
I play 5 different thieves and know how it feels to go from one with high swiftness access to one without. That said a thief that traits Bounding Dodger or Impaling Lotus does not get that swiftness access either and do fine so a few points.
As stated Acro does have swiftness. I myself do not take it on the p/d build so do not have that as a source but Acro does have other benefits that DrD does not offer if you go that course.
Alternatively you can take TOTC over uncatchable if you really want swiftness that badly. Again I do not do this. I just live without it. How to catch someone that flees ? I use P/d #2 . Granted the range 900 and it relatively slow but I get a three second Immob off it. Mixing this with the SB port I can catch up to a good number of fleeing foes. Now there certainly classes that can escape but that no different then me playing my Necro and having a druid escape from me. It is what is. I have learned to let it go.
If fleeing a fight the SB is enough. I use Shadowtrap and two other traps along with trappers runes so as I flee I drop drops which stealths me. This also leaves an Immob trap behind me which generally snags the people chasing. I also use shadowtrap and this has allowed me to escape zergs countless times. Drop it and flee in one direction. They pursue and trip it and I port behind and go in the other.
There another thing integral to my build that helps me here and that long condition duration. One would think it would be of little benefit in a pursuit but trust me it works. Many classes have cleanses that rely on active blocks or evades or for something like the mesmer shattering their clones. When they are fleeing after a condition bomb landed these cleanses are ineffective. I have landed bombs on people only to see them run away. They can get halfways across the map and drop and I follow at liesure to finsih them off.
Finally hidden thief trait allows faster movement while stealthed than you get from swiftness. There one slot I can free up in my build If I wish and you can put in SR there if you really want to escape that bad. Thats 15 seconds of stealth movement at a speed 50 percent greater then swiftness.
Looks like a fun build, what kind of stuff are you using ?