Guild Wars 2

Update: It’s only the last charge (4th). The first 3 are still owned by the Thief.

Skale Venom has reverted to scaling with condition damage/stats of allies you apply it to instead of your own.

I am impartial to the Asura/Charr situation as I don’t play either. However, can I please ask that you take a look at the design of the medium armor? It has everything I detest about medium armor fashion in one package and doesn’t look or feel legendary at all, even in early precursor form.

1) Huge, asymmetrical shoulders
2) Oversized gloves
3) YET ANOTHER COAT

The set is the opposite of sleek and doesn’t stand out at all compared to any other armor set. Just looks like a weird version of Bladed armor. I am so, so sick of coats, and now the legendary armor is one too. Nothing special at all.

Thieves are now top-tier DPS in raids. Once you have the boons and stuff you need, bring it alongside the Tempests etc and you’ll be fine.

Either Dagger or Staff will work just by spamming autos if you’re lazy (easy 19k DPS), but you can go higher by using actual skills (Backstab or Vault).

When Staff gets the buffs it’s supposed to (patch details them but they’re not in-game), it’ll be by far the best for raids.

Deadly Arts 2-x-3
Critical Strikes 3-2-1
Daredevil 1-1-3

Berserker/Scholar, Staff w/ Force + Air or Accuracy

Channeled Vigor, Fist Flurry, Assassin + Agility Signets, Impact Strike

Keep the Bound bonus up active as much as possible, use Weakening Charge/Vault combos unless you have Quickness, in which case use some more autoattacks (WC + Vault aren’t affected by Quickness). Use Fist Flurry + Palm Strike on cooldown for DPS increase + CC. Not much else to it, really.

All chain skills (so every auto and a couple of utilities) will return to their first state or go on cooldown if you use something else. The only exceptions are skills that are explicitly designed in a “you can now use this skill” manner, like Fist Flurry → Palm Strike or Flanking Strike → Larcenous Strike, and those have specific time delays that appear on your status bar.

Confirmed, also tested this and got pretty much the same for Double Strike (which is about a 50% increase). Wild Strike is up by maybe 5% (could just be RNG), Lotus Strike is up by about 30%.

Biggest buff for us is the removal of most tanky amulets, honestly. This stuff is really nice, though.

Both comparisons are for traits in different tiers and thus make no sense, but more importantly Diamond Skin is just silly anyway. Nobody should have a trait like that, and I’d rather not Thief get one like it. It’s just poor design.

Anything can be balanced properly with telegraphs. There’s no problem with any concept as long as you execute it right.

Whether it’s Rifle, Longbow, or something else, it doesn’t matter. The simple truth is that this is the only profession that lacks good mid-to-long range options, and depending on how the game evolves that will hamper the profession more and more. On the other hand, if everything else is nerfed in to oblivion it might not be a problem at all.

Sadly, my recordings are corrupted :/ The biggest thing I would look at is what happens during phase changes, as 100-75% is perfectly fine and then it falls apart once she returns with Kernan.

I would suggest trying to repro

1) Effects of swapping characters. Our Mesmer was being singled out for a long period of time despite the kiter being a long distance away, but one of our Necros swapping out to Guardian suddenly fixed the behaviour
2) Large numbers of possible targets. We had 2 Reapers at the time, both of which were using extremely large amounts of minions. Maybe that breaks her AI somehow?

That was the point, though – the Necro is specifically using Flesh of the Master while in the kiting role (which is basically the tank for Sabetha). We don’t have any other tank. Everyone is DPS.

We’re managing Toughness values fine – everyone is in DPS gear and no Revenants use the Toughness upkeeps while the Necro who was kiting used Flesh of the Master so always had more than everyone else as minions never die. The thing is that this is very phase-specific. It only happened after Sabetha drops back down with Kernan, which means something is occurring over time or something else weird occurs during a phase shift that suddenly transforms her AI.

Update: We swapped one of the Necros for a Guardian, with the same amount of extra Toughness (0), and it suddenly worked correctly. Very strange.

Might it have something to do with the possible number of targets increasing? Both Necros were using builds with increasing numbers of minions as the fight progresses, and perhaps that eventually causes Sabetha’s AI to go berserk? Just a theory.

This is really confusing us. We are taking out Sabetha as we always have each week, but now she is behaving extremely weirdly.

We have one team member who is responsible for running at a distance to catch all the napalm, and every week before this, it’s worked flawlessly. This time, she decides to randomly ignore that person and fires ALL of her napalm at random members in melee range.

This usually happens as soon as she changes phase and re-appears after Kernan. We’ve been experimenting for a while now and cannot decipher why she behaves like this. She has been targeting our Mesmer who has 0 extra Toughness and isn’t the closest or furthest, and then sometimes targets the furthest. It makes no sense whatsoever. First phase has no napalm in the middle, and then post-Kernan phase has the middle COVERED in napalm and murdering all the melee with no change to gameplay.

Overall comp is Druid, Chronomancer, 2x Berserker, Engineer, Daredevil, 2x Reaper, Tempest, if that makes a difference.

Staff’s damage is very front-loaded and open, thus much easier to avoid than Backstabs, so Vault (and Staff in general) NEEDS to hit incredibly hard across the board to be useful. Backstab has the surprise factor on opening engagements and the unpredictability factor in sustained fights when you’re jumping in and out of view.

There’s not much you can do from a PvE perspective – there is always going to be a weapon that is best for damage, and it doesn’t really matter what it is. It’s the same way for all classes. When the massive power creep for everyone else gets nerfed, Thief will be fine. I honestly don’t think we need any buffs to go with the inevitable nerfs for others, aside from some offensive support (maybe make No Quarter AoE).

From a PvP standpoint, the important thing is that Backstab feels rewarding to land. Metas shift constantly, and we are currently in an old-style meta where everyone is both tanky and somewhat strong offensively. Essentially, everyone is some degree of an old DD Ele. In this circumstance, Backstab doesn’t feel rewarding. So really, it comes down to how other professions get nerfed in the next balance pass. They could do nothing with Thief at all and we could end up being fine, depending on how badly they crap over the others. Revenants are going to take the brunt of it, I feel.

I can see the heal visibly occur. It just doesn’t pop up in the log.

Agemnon.4608:

Invictorum.7643:

Muchacho.2143:

I’ve enjoyed reading this thread. I’m new to the game (just picked it up a month ago) and after watching your match this past week, you inspired me to give the thief a try. I’m only rank 30 in pvp so far, so obviously my experience won’t necessarily reflect that of people with higher MMR, but I’m having a fun time with your build. I love the mobility. None of the other classes I’ve tried give you as much freedom to move around the map. Any advice to somebody very new to the class?

Honestly, keep to Thief even during the times when it’s weak.
When Thief comes back up to a balanced state again? You’ll be used to outplaying everyone to win, so once you’re on the same playing field you’ll be a league ahead.

I really like that line of reasoning, but the problem is your team will be mad at you for running an underpowered or even simply non-meta class. Maybe practice dueling in guild halls?

Gonna have to be careful if you do that since:

1) Guild hall arenas don’t have any capture points or changing terrain. Mobility and moving around the maps are key components of PvPing as a Thief, so getting in to a “duel to the death” mentality might mess you up when you go back to Conquest
2) They’re in PvE maps, which means equipment and stats scale wildly higher compared to the controlled amulets. An ascended Warrior can easily land a 10k+ Arcing Shot on a semi-tanky target. Be mindful of what you’re wearing.

Raid perspective here:

Staff has higher DPS when being able to land the rotation (Bound -> WC -> WC -> Auto -> repeat or Bound -> WC -> Vault -> Auto x2 or Auto x3 to regenerate initiative -> Repeat, which is easier but less DPS). The caveat here is landing all 3 hits of WC can be tricky, but practise should negate it mostly. Had zero problems vs. any of the raid bosses.

If you’re having trouble landing all hits of WC, take D/D instead. The DPS difference between the two isn’t extreme, anyway.

That being said, Staff has other advantages over D/D. More reliable evade frames, strong mobility that comes in very useful on all 3 raid bosses, ranged blinds vs. annoying adds that doesn’t require you to swap to inferior Sword/x to get them, consistent Whirl Finishers for Burning, healing, condition removal and other things depending on fields, etc.

Fixed AND made range-reliable. Ezpz.

+1. This is absolutely absurd.

Here’s my POV of the final raid boss. Survivability isn’t even close to a problem. Everything you do is some kind of evasion and you get endurance back easily, otherwise the Druid instantly put me to 100% if I did get hit. I struggled to find anyone who could take out the cannons at the speed I was doing it, too.

It was the same with Vale Guardian and Gorseval. DPS is super easy to land when you know the WC hitbox, survivability is, as mentioned, not a problem, and mobility + CC is great. Any Herald past the 1st one is kind of a waste. The Glint heal is nice in that you can keep DPSing when there’s a huge threat incoming, but you can also Vault-evade through that threat so… /shrug

Yup, this is unfortunately the case It’s a bit of pressure off of the duration spreads, though. Now I have 100% of both Poison and Bleed without too much sacrifice in to Viper.

Current setup is now Rune of Krait, Sigil of Venom + Malice (to max bleed and get some more Torment and Burn/Confusion from finishers), Viper’s Head/Chest/Legs/Daggers, Sinister everything else.

I already hit 100% Poison duration with Rune of Thorns, Viper Chest + Legs + Daggers (Ascended) + Food + Toxic + Sigil of Malice, which puts Poison at 133% and Bleed/Torment at 55%. Pretty sure it’s the best spread I can get, especially with that amazing 250-300 condition damage buff from Rune of Thorns.

Edited in that initiative regeneration completely stops while using Aim, as was the original intention. Thanks for pointing it out, because that would of course be broken. Also forgot to put in that it is meant to pulse Revealed, so you cannot use it in Stealth.

As for Shadow’s Reflex, this is meant to operate like Last Stand in the sense that it has a separate CD to the true skill, which goes past 90+ seconds compared to the true 40s counterpart.

Also edited in to ignore numbers. Cooldowns, effect durations, that sort of thing, are just placeholders, random numbers I have thrown in for the sake of tooltip descriptions. Think of only the concept level.

Thanks for the input, however.

Thanks for sharing my screenshot

One thing I should point out is that Potent Poison does in fact stack with 100% condition duration. With Spider Venom at 6s base poison up to 12s with 100% base duration increase, Potent Poison will then bump it up to 16s, which is pretty much exactly a 33% increase.

In raids I have been putting myself in the group with the Chronomancer. Alacrity can bring your Venom cooldown to an effective 19s, meaning that you would only lose 3s of Poison uptime.

That being said, I’m still tuning. While that is ideal, the Chronomancer cannot always be supplying Alacrity 24/7, so I’m considering adding more Viper pieces (I currently use chest, legs and daggers while everything else is Sinister) then swapping in and out some sigils to get more Bleed duration. Currently with food, Malice + the Viper pieces it’s still 55% so not terrible. It’s a tough call to make.

Traits:

Minor

Stalker Training
Your Steal ability becomes Mark and Execute. Gain access to Rifle and Stance skills.

Hit and Run
Gain increased movement speed. Increased initiative regeneration while moving.

Movement speed increase: 25%
Initiative regeneration: 25%

Seize the Moment
Deal more damage to foes that are not directly targeting you, and take less damage from attacks that are not directly targeting you.

Damage increase: 10%
Damage reduced: 15%

Adept

Sabotage
Deal Vulnerability to targets that you are flanking.

Vulnerability (8s)

Jeopardy’s Redirection
Transfer conditions from yourself to your foe when you Mark them.

Conditions transferred: 2

Corrosive Detonation
Execute removes boons based on how many stacks were accumulated.

Boons removed: 1
Stack Threshold: 5

Master

Perfect Form
Stances recharge faster. Activate Shadow’s Reflex when disabled.

Recharge reduced: 20%

Expert Marksmanship
Deal more damage based on distance. Aim costs less initiative.

Initiative cost reduction: 1
Damage increase at 0-900 distance: 5%
Damage increased above 900 distance: 10%

Acute Awareness
When you force foes to drop target on you, gain Stability.

Stability (5s)

Grandmaster

Weakness Exploitation
When you hit a foe with Vulnerability, gain Might.

1 Might (15s)

Marked for Death
Mark lasts longer. Foes affected by Mark take increased damage from all sources.

Damage Increase: 10%
Duration Increase: 33%

Plan B
Shadowstep skills have increased distance.

Distance increase: 300

Utility skills: Stances

Heal) Dark Escape (25s CD)

Heal a small amount and gain Super Speed. Heal for more based on how far you move from your original location.

Healing: some small number
Distance threshold: some medium number
Distance threshold: some medium number
Distance threshold: some large number
Super Speed: 5s

Utility 1) Deadly Paradox (20s CD)

Regenerate Initiative at a massively increased rate, disabling your auto attacks.

Initiative regeneration: 400%
Duration: 6s

Utility 2) Shadow’s Reflex (50s CD)

Evade attacks. If a foe disables you in the duration, you briefly evade the next few attacks.

Evade: 1s
Breaks stun
Evade: 2s
Duration: 8s

Utility 3) Malicious Abrasion (50s CD)

Gain increased critical hit chance. When you critically hit, remove a boon.

Critical hit chance increase: 25%
Boons removed: 1
Duration: 6s

Utility 4) Unseen Fury (40s CD)

Perodically blind targets around you while gaining immunity to blind. Blinded foes cannot block you.

Blind: 2s
Interval: 1s
Unseen Fury (8s): Unblockable while targets are blind.

Elite: Bewildering Stride (60s CD)

Gain Protection. You drop target and cannot be directly targeted while moving.

Duration: 8s

This is a culmination of a few ideas I’ve had myself about other specs in the past plus ideas from these forums. In particular I want to thank Zacchary for some ideas on Rifle. Feedback is welcome! Numbers can be ignored, threw in random placeholders essentially.

The Stalker is a heavily single-target focused Elite Specialisation that can deliver extreme punishment from a distance, its highest asset being its ability to magically enforce targets for execution by allies. They take full advantage of situations where they are not being directly targeted, and can enforce that situation when making their escapes. They gain access to Rifle and Stance skills, and their Steal becomes a new technique called Mark.

Mark

Place a magical imprint, marking your target for execution and impairing their escape. Your mark is highlighted on the mini-map for allies. Attacks on your mark charge Execute. Steal effects are applied on your next attack eg. Mug.

Cannot remove Chill or Cripple
Teleports Fail
Range: 1,500
Marked for Execution (stacking debuff up to 25)
Duration: 10s

Execute

Activate your mark.
After a small delay, it detonates, dealing more damage for attacks previously made against them.

Damage: some number
Bonus damage per stack: 10% in PvE, 1% in PvP
Range: 1,500

Rifle Skills:

1) Deliberate Shot (slow)

Shoot your target, piercing foes. Deal more damage if you hit your selected target first.
Restore initiative if your target is Vulnerable.

Damage: some large number
Bonus damage: 10%
Initiative gain: 1
Initiative gain cooldown: 2s
Pierces
Range: 1,500

Stealth 1) Suppressing Fire

Ambush your foe with rapid fire, dazing them from the concussion of each shot.

Damage (x12): some number
Daze: 1/4s
Range: 1,500

2) Elusive Shot (initiative cost 4)

Strafe quickly to the side while firing, forcing foes to drop their target on you.

Damage: some number
Evade: 1/2s
Range: 1,500

3) Focus Fire (initiative cost 4)

Deliver powerful shots that make your target Vulnerable.

Damage (4x): some number
Vulnerability (2)
Range: 1,500

4) Backup Plan (initiative cost 3)

Set an escape point.

Backup Plan (20s): Use Escape to shadowstep to your Backup Plan location

-> Escape (initiative cost 7)

Shadowstep to your Backup Plan location, cloaking yourself.

Stealth: 2s
Range: 1,500

5) Aim (4 + 2 initiative/second)

Cancel Stealth, movement and initiative regeneration to concentrate. Aim at your target. Deal more damage with Snipe the longer you cast Aim.

Revealed: 1s
Aim (stacking buff): Snipe deals more damage.
Interval: 1s

-> Snipe

Take your aimed shot, piercing all defenses.

Damage: some big number
Bonus damage from Aim: 15% per stack
Unblockable
Pierces

After finishing the raid twice now, I can unfortunately safely say that it would still be useless. Taking Shadow Arts means your direct damage is inferior to the point of being dead weight, and if you take Venomshare for conditions then you can’t sacrifice a utility for a Stealth skill and a very temporary benefit. I would never, ever use that trait. There is no room to spec specifically in to being support alongside the designated Druid or the DH using Hammer to give everyone Protection. The rest of the team MUST be designated DPS and offensive enhancement or you will hit enrage. Offensive support is the biggest thing Thief needs to be competitive. Defensive support needs to catch up to such an enormous and overhaul-esque extent that it would never be viable vs. other choices.

Meh, we already have Phalanx Strength which lets a Berserker give everyone easy 25 Might along with very good DPS plus banners, all the stat auras like Empower Allies, Spotter, Assassin’s Presence and so on. I don’t see an issue with giving benefits to 5 targets.

Unfortunately, RoS is useless in any form for raids. Shadow Arts is not a traitline any Thief will take for them unless you are Venomshare, and even then you won’t be Stealthing much if at all. Defensive things aren’t really for us. Damage reduction should be left to the people putting out Protection and the Druid healing everyone back up.

I posted this as a comment but I wanted to make my own thread so that this is more visible.

You only need to make a few small changes since our damage is fine and we have good utility in certain situations, especially the mobility to get to Sabetha’s platforms and the Vale Guardian’s circles. The solution is to make a few of our boosts a bit less selfish. You don’t have to do much to grant the Thief offensive group support.

Exposed Weakness: Change to “foes afflicted by your conditions take 10% more damage”. This means that EVERYONE does 10% more damage to the target, not just you. Pretty much most if not all of our main damaging skills apply a condition, whether it’s a damaging one or just Vulnerability/Weakness/Cripple etc. Through this, we can have viable offensive group support.

No Quarter: Change this to “Landing a critical hit while under the effects of Fury grants extended Fury duration to allies. Your Fury grants increased Ferocity.” Functionally the same, except now your 2s Fury is AoE and has the Ferocity buff.

Now we have the options for a 10% group damage buff, Fury uptime that can let you fill in for a Revenant plus 250 Ferocity for your group if you can maintain that Fury. Almost nothing about the class has changed, but we have the kind of offensive buffage that a raid will be looking for.

Of course I realise that this version of EW is basically the same as the DH spear trait with no cooldown. I would suggest to implement one or the other, not necessarily both. I would prefer the change to NQ.

You only need to make a few small changes since our damage is mostly fine and we have good utility in certain situations, especially the mobility to get to Sabetha’s platforms and the Vale Guardian’s circles.

Exposed Weakness: Change to “foes afflicted by your conditions take 10% more damage”. This means that EVERYONE does 10% more damage to the target, not just you. Pretty much most if not all of our main damaging skills apply a condition, whether it’s a damaging one or just Vulnerability/Weakness/Cripple etc. Through this, we can have viable offensive group support.

No Quarter: Change this to “Landing a critical hit while under the effects of Fury grants extended Fury duration to allies. Allies affected by your Fury gain increased Ferocity.” Functionally the same, except now your 2s Fury is AoE and has the Ferocity buff.

Now we have the options for a 10% group damage buff, Fury uptime that can let you fill in for a Revenant plus 250 Ferocity for your group.

Instantly, Thief is desirable.

Laosduude.1690:

Auesis.7301:

Killed VG just fine using Staff Daredevil in a DPS slot, huge damage and CC from Physicals. Close to killing Gorseval right now with Venomshare – easy 15k+ DPS with Alacrity from our Chronomancer and nice CC from Basi.

Seems like you forgot everyone else can dps a lot better than the current state of thief with even better survivability. This won’t change until anet does anything which is most unlikely. Just because you did it doesn’t mean it’s the most optimal option because if you killed the boss, that’s because the rest of the group consisted of the better classes supporting all roles and keeping personal dps

Better survivability than dodging everything? I was the only one in the group that never entered downed state and probably had the highest Scholar uptime. The AoE damage aura ticked for a pathetic amount that the Druid was healing up in less than a second. A proper Staff + FF rotation has pretty much the best damage in the game when it comes to burstiness, which is what matters against Gorseval since the encounter is constantly shifting. Same with Vale Guardian to a lesser extent. Good part about CCing for us is that we don’t lose DPS. A Revenant needs to move to Staff out of Sword, which is an enormous DPS loss, while Fist Flurry + Palm Strike is enough for 2x Weakening Charges worth of damage. That, plus the Gorseval fight permanently Reveals everyone, which allows Staff to have +200 Power at all times.

People that think Thief has bad survivability don’t know how to dodge, and with Daredevil, which is the top DPS anyway, there is no excuse. Evasion may not be sufficient with some other kind of undodgeable debuff in another fight, but the first 2 raid bosses have no such thing, and others will be responsible for healing you anyway.

Killed VG just fine using Staff Daredevil in a DPS slot, huge damage and CC from Physicals. Close to killing Gorseval right now with Venomshare – easy 15k+ DPS with Alacrity from our Chronomancer and nice CC from Basi.

No. It’s about time we have another choice of a true power-orientated weapon that doesn’t even attempt to hybridise with any kind of stat budget delegated to condition damage.

If you want to play conditions, you have plenty of choice already.

Nightmare Court Faceguard
Strider’s Tunic
Seeker Gloves
Leystone Leggings
Vigil’s Honor Boots
Lightward’s Battlestaff

Neither are completely sustainable, however if we move away from the numbers and think about what happens in practise, you’re not going to be able to just execute that rotation over and over without doing SOMETHING else, whether it’s moving out of an AoE/avoiding an attack or helping the team with a raid mechanic etc. Even moving away for a couple of seconds will almost put you back to the beginning with your initiative and endurance can easily be sustained with Endurance Thief + Channeled Vigor if Staff Master doesn’t give you enough even in long rotation phases.

It’s not difficult at all to land all 3 hits of WC. If you can’t be bothered to learn positioning, then go for D/D because it will be better for you.

Also bear in mind that Revealed Training will only affect the autoattacks as CnD + Backstab cannot be used while Revealed. Staff Master will affect all attacks during its rotation.

Raid perspective:

Staff will slightly outdamage Dagger on one condition – you can land all 3 hits of Weakening Charge consistently. Takes a bit of practise on learning the skill hitbox but otherwise it’s not that difficult. I got the hang of it after a couple of hours in the beta and took it to the Vale Guardian. Managed to hit him every time with no issue.

Bound -> 2x Weakening Charge -> 1x auto chain -> repeat

Other advantages of Staff include:

- Constant breakbar pressure (Weakness counts as a soft CC)
- Easy access to evade frames while dealing high AoE damage simultaneously using Vault (albeit still a small DPS loss)
- Easy repositioning during raid encounters where it is required eg. Vaulting in to the anti-wipe circles at Vale Guardian without needing to swap to Shortbow and reducing DPS considerably during the swap cooldown, also no need to blow a utility slot.
- Weakness itself for mitigating damage of adds and on-demand ranged blind that doesn’t require keeping an offhand Pistol around
- Vulnerability application
- More cleave

Main advantages of Dagger:

- Very simple rotation while being quite competitive with Staff (Dodge -> CnD -> Backstab -> Autos -> Repeat, no repositioning needed for Weakening Charges). Just easier in general.
- Aggro management with CnD Stealth (doubtful this will mean much since raids are emphasising importance of Toughness for tanking, allowing someone else to force aggro on themselves).
- Poison for situations where healing needs to be mitigated in a raid encounter (but out of 9 other team members someone is bound to have it covered, plus you can use Steal to apply it instead and that should be enough.)

I’m going to assume it’s just a toss-up between Staff and D/D depending on what you’re up against. I had no problem nailing the Vale Guardian constantly with a Staff rotation that would definitely outpace Dagger, but another boss in the raid might not allow for that. Should just be an encounter-by-encounter basis.

Fractals perspective:

Mostly the same opinion as with raids, but in Fractals I haven’t found any opportunities where Staff didn’t perform properly.

I’ve put together a build for Staff in this guide here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkihf_cpJaY

It’s almost as if a Reaper has been thematically designed to be a slow-moving powerhouse and thus shouldn’t easily pursue a profession designed to be mobile as its sole source of survival outside of Stealth.

But what you are describing definitely sounds like teleport hacking. Seen plenty of that in PvP recently.

It was supposed to be 10% more reduction according to Karl.

DD has absolutely enormous CC potential. Impact Strike -> Uppercut is enough to wipe out almost an entire breakbar alone. Add Palm Strike to that and the bar is gone, or use Bandit’s Defense to block something and get equal results.

Sword applies Weakness far too slowly and to only 3 targets. Staff applies an infinite amount of Weakness to 5 targets while also dealing the highest damage available to the profession with the same skill. Against a lot of adds in raids this will be invaluable.

DD itself has so much evasive capabilities that you can tank pretty much anything by just not getting hit.

Condition-wise, Lotus Training provides a large boost to condition damage, and with Alacrity + Adrenal Mushrooms (which are bound to appear in raids) Venomshare will be an absurd amount of DPS.

Dungeon meta…LOL. Who cares about dungeons now? Dungeons are worthless with HoT. This coming from someone who has spent thousands of hours in them. Raids and high Fractals are all that matter to Arenanet now.

Stealing in to it restores 50 Endurance from the GM minor, which might remove your 10% bonus when endurance is not full with Staff Master. For PvE at least, it’s probably better to just learn the distances and hitboxes and use Steal to get Endurance back if you’re desperately low.

clown.7148:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYzs5r8oMak

He showcase both D/D and Staff PvE-

Not very well. He admits in the comments that Staff is better but harder to execute, while in the video he claims it’s identical or could come close but it’s just a novelty. That’s a pretty big disparity.

The key principle is that if you can land all 3 hits of Weakening Charge consistently (which doesn’t take a lot of practise), Staff is better. Else, Dagger is better.

I use it all the time while in venomshare and it shatters breakbars…

Using them right now.

It’s actually not that difficult to land all 3 even on the small Chak once you get used to it. You need to start the skill a few feet away from the target so that you pass through it at about the half-way mark. Once you’ve got it down it becomes second nature

I just recorded myself smacking a dummy a bunch of times and looked at it down to the exact frames. The sequence from the first frame of the first attack to the same frame in the next chain is absolutely, definitely 2.14 seconds per rotation. I was the one that put up the 2.04 on the wiki, and I’ve found why that was what I ended up with – I used the wrong timecode (frames) like a moron.

So yeah, its auto chain is still only 7 milliseconds slower than Dagger. It hits for roughly 2.5% less than Sword (which is at 2.52s per chain) and 25% more than Dagger.

Couple that with Weakening Charge + Vault’s ridiculous scaling plus Staff Master/Havoc Master/Bounding Dodger and Staff is just completely unmatched for damage.

That’s pretty much the best for DPS already.

Deadly Arts x-x-3

Critical Strikes 3-1/2-1

Daredevil 1-1-3

You can use either Sundering Strikes or Practised Tolerance since Staff gives a lot of Vulnerability and these days reaching 25 isn’t hard at all (especially in future 10-man raids). Using PT is something like a 200 boost to Ferocity which is really nice.

Full Berserker/Scholar as always.

Bound in to combat -> Weakening Charge spam + autos until endurance is about to refill to maximum -> repeat. Essentially prioritise keeping the Bounding Dodger trait active and use WC as much as possible while keeping your endurance below 100% for Staff Master. Replace WC with Vault situationally if you need the evade or enemies are concentrated in a good spot. I love using Vault in Volcanic Fractal against the Elementals that spawn at the end. Completely demolishes them even at 100.

As for the first 2 traits of DA, I’ve found myself using the 2 trap traits and having Shadow Trap on my bar while roaming around the open world. Being able to access 15-20 Might is really helpful and it also makes a nice way to access the knockdown. Mug is still a fairly nice healing + small damage boost. Revealed Training obviously gets very little use in this setup.

When in a group and you have no need for the Might from the traps, you can use Fist Flurry in the 3rd slot with the DPS signets and use that with Impact Strike/Uppercut to take down breakbars on bosses. Those 2 skills alone can almost break a boss.

Both Power and Condition Daredevil is insanely good. Highest power damage available through Staff 2 spam + Bound, huge condition burst and decent sustain condition damage from Venomshare + D/D + Lotus. Palm Strike and Impact Strike->Uppercut is such insane CC vs. breakbars that you can practically break it yourself. Has anyone ever actually looked at how much a Launch takes off a breakbar?

DD is the best thing that ever happened to Thief for PvE. Took it up to Fractal 100 with no issues and loved every single run.