Guild Wars 2

Here’s #4 for reference, and probably a large portion of why Sind thinks rifle is bad: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/168162426?t=11m25s

Keeping it brief – 4 has too long of a ramp up before it does damage. 3 is consistent (might stacking), more powerful for initial burst, and harder to avoid (also tracks stealth past the initial cast). In order to do good damage with 4 you need to wait for malice and might stacks to build. In most situations it’s just not worth using because of the telegraph.

Fighting better players you can start with a 3 and then hold off for a second or two while they spam their dodges, then just 3 them to death fairly quickly. Against classes who can’t cleanse immobs quickly you can open with 2 and then 3 them down.

The power of 3:
https://clips.twitch.tv/LaconicLightYogurtSmoocherZ
https://clips.twitch.tv/CoyBraveWolverineKevinTurtle
https://clips.twitch.tv/RudeSeductiveSnoodTTours

Snowywonders.1378:

Most high tier players stopped playing cus they were banned , lulz

But, yeah.

Most high tier players quit before then, and the ones that were banned still play.

bluri.2653:

You literally queue ranked when everyone’s trying builds so everyone’s clueless, you don’t duel any current meta build (that you even know off since you say you been gone for two years) and you say you can 1v1 anything. I dont know how many times I counted that you would have been obliterated from the whole game by a normal DRD thief/DH/Rev/Condi S/D thief hell even core D/P thief would have done so.

But yeah, you can basically 1v1 everything when they die out of boredom and logs out.

I’ll happily be proven wrong when monthly AT comes up after expac launch and we’ll see if there’s any successful DE in any top team, I know I won’t be playing one but I’ll defo fool around with it in ranked

I’m not quite sure how much you watched, but I’ll humour you since you can’t have possibly watched all of it and you seem to be quite adamant about your viewpoint.

The game hasn’t evolved that much over 2 years – same builds are in the meta. Chronomancers, DP dash, Scrappers, Druids, Reapers, Tempests. Sure no one was playing them but it’s not that hard to speculate. There were a few Chronos playing, only druids I saw were in the HotM arena which has no LoS. The Chronos didn’t last that long. I only had trouble with S/D condi once before I started killing them all – you have condi clear on every utilility and your heal + #4 on rifle. It’s also fairly clear you didn’t watch/play the build that much if you think there’s any issues with DH, it’s actually a fairly easy match up as you burn their CD’s extremely quickly and you can clear revealed with your ult should they manage to land the chain.

I don’t play Shadow arts, so I don’t know why you even insinuate boredom/logging out. The burst is upwards of 30-40k in 4 seconds, and that’s not even with all of it landing. If the target has no immob clear you can open with a 2 and land every 3 following, killing most necros outright.

As for people knowing what they’re doing, I fought Toker on Rev more than once, Chaith on Holosmith (which you admittedly said in a seperate post is quite powerful and that Zan was doing quite well on), and Phanta on Weaver. I’m not sure how powerful Weaver is at the moment, since I think Phanta was still figuring out what he wanted to play at the time but one of the two times I actually got “obliterated” an entire game was when I was focused by Chaith, Toker, and a DP thief the entire match with another deadeye and teammates who died faster than either of us. Overall the quality of players varied widely. A few good players and a lot of people just messing around having fun, which was my intention when streaming. I enjoyed the spec and found it a nice change of pace and I myself was learning as I went – just as anyone else.

Sure D/P thief is a good counter, but you can deal with it – or at least I could after not playing for almost 2 years. There are definite strengths and weaknesses to the build – as with most builds – and the strengths in my opinion outweigh the weaknesses. If the game were even remotely competitive I wouldn’t be surprised to see a drop in DP thieves with the amount of cleave and power creep in the game. The spec inherently relies on your teammates having favoured advantages in their match ups to take advantage of your mobility. In the case where they don’t and the cleave is high you start to enter a place where you can’t team fight without dying and you can’t +1 fast enough. You’re definitely entitled to a different opinion and that’s your prerogative but any talk about what would happen in competitive play is speculation because it doesn’t exist anymore.

And finally, for the monthly Helseth already mentioned it but I can reiterate; most of the high tier players on NA stopped playing. Not sure what a monthly proves, especially on this side of the pond but from what I hear it’s really not that different over there. The game isn’t competitive at all currently.

Hope that addresses everything. I have no intention of returning to the game when there’s nothing to even play for but I thought it would be fun to try the demo weekend and it was. Only intention of this post was to show people a different perspective on the elite spec that was more positive than what I was seeing people say in forums/streams – I think the spec is viable if you play well and I found it a lot more fun than playing D/P since 2012.

Cheers,
Caed

For anyone who wants deadeye gameplay I streamed the past weekend. Ex-pro player, just messed around during the demo – hadn’t played in about 2 years but the spec felt fairly strong once you get used to the initial clunky feeling and ignore the occasional “no line of sight” message in open fields. Extremely high burst and sustain damage, decent survivability (go as far to say good if you position well), and as a thief you always have mobility. Can 1v1 basically anything, and +1 from range. Kill time is usually around 3-4s.

Cheers,
Caed

https://www.twitch.tv/narcarsis/videos/past-broadcasts

To give a little more context to why they made it unblockable: They’re unable to seperate the blind part of the skill from the melee attack. It was easy to abuse reflects pulling opponents to you against their will and attempting to stab you (not allowing them to dodge or cast abilities right after they were pulled). There was no counterplay to it in sPvP where you could pull a bunker guardian (they used to run reflect wall back in the day) and then steamroll them, and shortly thereafter, their team.

Hope that makes a little more sense.

Zodi.8932:

This entire season is literally decided by your first 10 placement games. That’s a monumental flaw.

Despite an 8/2 placement I was placed around 1500 (also gold). I’ve climbed to 1900 and will likely hit legend the next time I play (I still find the game boring for the most part). While the balance is horrid, the MMR system and matchmaking has been working fairly well. The season is not based on your first 10 placement games.

Staff would work fine, just depends on your team comp and how you run the map.

If you want to contribute don’t give people false advice based on your own ineptitude ^^

Azukas.1426:

Just please actually use facts.

Thank you

i·ro·ny
noun
A state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.

Azukas.1426:

Thank you for bowing out.

Take care.

Your misinterpretation adds to my point.

Azukas.1426:

:sigh:

Instead of just saying I rest my case I’m going to address a few things to fully end this.

First I will agree with all the teams/players BETTER than you who I base that FACT off. I trust I don’t have to list them?

Impact strike while a great skill means very little with all the blocks invulns passives etc that are out there. Thus its not a reason to thief a game up.

Again you take more shots at pro league players. I dunno what your issue is with them but like I said the best teams/players disagree with you. I’ll put stock in the actual people who are winning and not quitting/getting kicked.

May your day be glorious

Ignorance is bliss.

Azukas.1426:

They switched to the only comp viable. You were too stubborn to realize that. The fact that every single pro team switched to it including the best teams and players confirms that statement. Was it favorable to abandon a comp for another during a season…maybe not but the alternative solution of staying with a significantly weaker comp was worse.

Also I never said anything about you not being around nor does your busy life sway any feeling of cares in me….we’re all busy fyi. The shot at all the players in NA pro league was uncalled for though.

Have a nice day.

“Only viable comp” – They switched to the easiest comp. Players make the game, not classes. The only exception to that would be warrior, which provides nothing over another class.

Staff Thief kills clones as fast as they’re produced, cleaves downs, and had more than enough survivability in Season 1’s meta. Impact Strike also would have ended fights instead of letting the same person get ressed over 5 times in a single fight. There’s always more than 1 viable comp, despite how efficient that comp may be. You can call me stubborn all you want, I play more than one class and had no issue swapping if I thought it was necessary for a win. The majority of the player base swaps to the easiest class to play because it has the least room for error – but that doesn’t mean it has the largest payback when played optimally. The issue arises when their reluctance towards challenge inhibits their ability to comprehend the game from a strategic standpoint.

Don’t expect people to know better since there’s a large assumption that everyone in Pro League knows what they’re doing.

Azukas.1426:

Narcarsis.5739:

I got to Legend with Berserker Amulet on Thief. Pretty sure the class is fine.

Pretty sure Anet has already stated players are being carried by MMR. Not taking anything away from you but it’s a fact anet has confirmed it.

That being said if thief is so fine then how come you are no longer in the pro league after being kicked off Spoookie b/c you refused to not play thief. Also all pro thieves are playing Revs?

Nothing personal or against you as a player just you state things w/out having any facts to back it up.

Thanks

I was kicked? I left the team because they were too stubborn to see logic and decided to counter comp themselves against a team who had experience with it. So your “facts” aren’t facts, they’re your interpretation of something you have no idea about. If you also want to bring up the fact that I’m not around I go to school with a full course load and work full time. The game isn’t very complicated, and most the players in Pro League are there because others have moved on (speaking for NA).

Next time you bring up your fact book you might want to make sure it’s accurate first.

I got to Legend with Berserker Amulet on Thief. Pretty sure the class is fine.

Last in, first out.

People should be able to play multiple classes but then again people should do a lot of things. Like stop complaining on forums about things they dislike – especially when they don’t put any effort into trying to work around it.

Yet they won’t, and hitting legend isn’t exactly difficult so let them have their work-around. As a side note I hit legend with one class – the only reason I played games on Ranger/Revenant was to take a break from Thief and get the achievement. People who don’t can do what I said above. Just hope you have fast load times.

Very simple fix: When you’re about to win a game log onto another class.

You’re welcome.

If we want to use a realistic number for backstab the result will be closer and the difference even more insignificant.

I’m not sure I agree that over-complication and unnecessary verbiage make something more definitive but that’s irrelevant.

If Ensign is correct, as it looks like he may be, the new Critical Strikes damage would be 25,614 compared to the 22,233 of Daredevil – which is still less damage than one Bound and still not worth the trade off in my opinion.

Also Deciever I’m not sure who taught you math… You seem to over-complicate simple math and you could make everything easier for people to follow (Just as suggestion). You can cover the same thing with a lot less.

Based on your average hit without Ferocious Strikes and Flawless Strikes of 7,016:
We can ignore Scholar and Force bonuses as they were consistent throughout your tests.

7,016 / 1.94 = ~3,616 base damage
Additive: 3,616 * (1.94 + 0.17) * = ~7,630
Multiplicative: 3,616 * (1.94) * (1.17) = ~8,208

Your average with both modifiers fell along the multiplicative range and that would suggest Ensign is right. However I will find out my own numbers later and just plug them into an excel spread to find out what I get. My previous post explains more on that.

Ensign.2189:

Narcarsis.5739:

Quite simply, I don’t think you are correct but there is no way to prove either theory after the removal of steady weapons.

Ferocious Strikes is actually quite easy to test – an AoE attack only rolls damage once when you cleave (but rolls crits independently), so just wade into the test golem pile with a cleaving weapon (I used the shortbow) and look for a hit that crits two different golems for different amounts – it’ll happen when one was above half and the other below half. You’ll find that the bigger crit is 10% larger than the smaller one, within rounding errors.

Flawless Strike takes a bit more work since as you said there aren’t steady weapons now, though again it’s not too hard. Shoot things with the trait and without it for a couple minutes and compare the average damage done per hit, it doesn’t take too long to get the ratio to converge tightly enough to distinguish between a real 7% boost and a real 4% boost to an arbitrarily large Z-value (I used 10).

Yes, I have tested both of these, and you can too. They behave as described.

Narcarsis.5739:

1. I don’t think many people have the patience to gather a larger sample pool to further reduce the variance between crits, and 2. I know I don’t and I have trust issues ^^

I have enough experience doing these sorts of tests that setting them up and running them doesn’t take me much time, and 2) I totally respect trust issues. Try the cleaving weapon as described above in the golem pit – it takes very little time, a minute or two at most, and is really definitive – no statistics necessary.

I won’t be able to for a week as I’m out if the country for break, but I will when I return. I’ve also spoken with a Dev who’s unsure about which way it works but believes it works as you’ve described – the reason being is that they don’t know if they do percentage critical damage outside of ferocity since the patch that introduced it but the wording is ambiguous and both calculations are plausible. They’re out of the office until January though so they won’t be able to confirm anything for a while as well.
I do know that the way I calculated them is how it used to work before the ferocity patch but I never really considered that they’d change it. I’ll have confirmation in a week or so as long as they’re not too busy with other work.

Fairly sure it is additive to existing critical damage and not multiplicative in general but I also prefer proof so as I said I’ll ask.
I don’t exactly trust your math and I don’t feel like arguing the same thing again. If Vincentiii wishes to that’s his prerogative.

Edit: spelling, on my phone.

PS; I do appreciate the irony of what I said if that is the case =]

Very well could be wrong, I’ll ask a dev to confirm because 1. I don’t think many people have the patience to gather a larger sample pool to further reduce the variance between crits, and 2. I know I don’t and I have trust issues ^^

Either way thanks for bringing it up Ensign ~

Ensign.2189:

Narcarsis.5739:

Seems like I’ll explain this again as people still fail to discern the difference between Critical Damage and Damage modifiers.

Relatively minor nit – the ferocity changes from Practiced Tolerance and No Quarter behave exactly as described (they stack additively with your base ferocity / critical damage) but the multipliers from Flawless Strike and Ferocious Strikes work multiplicatively like other damage modifiers (except only on critical hits).

The critical damage multiplier (while above 90% health and target above 50% health) you want to use (sPvP, marauder amulet) is thus 256.2% (1.1*1.07*(150+(560+205+250)/15)).

You may now return to discussing whether or not critical strikes is good for dumpstering mouth-breathers in hotjoins.

That’s not how critical damage modifiers work – those included despite the ambiguous wording. They are additive to your critical damage regardless of whether you see the change in your stats our not (because you won’t, they’re conditional bonuses. Quite simply, I don’t think you are correct but there is no way to prove either theory after the removal of steady weapons. If a dev could comment with the answer it would be appreciated.

It’s funny you claim that when both those Amber players have more achievement points than most hardcore pvp’ers and several fully ascended characters to boot. I wouldn’t make posts in ignorance.

CS: (((2604 + 5000) * 2.346) + 1986) * 1.2 = 23,790
DD: (((2604 + 5000) * 1.873) + 1986) * 1.37 = 22,233

Rounded to whole numbers, and using your numbers.

DeceiverX.8361:

As for missing the damage increase on mug – honest mistake. I assume this is what you’re referring to by “manipulating the data”. Either way, the math checks out to D/D dealing more damage with CS than DD. You’re talking margins less than your original statement through the modifications..

You left out a 10% modifier on the DD calculation. Changes the result.

PS; you also forgot that both Exposed Weakness and Lead Attacks affect Mug – which may raise the damage difference to around 1,000.

DeceiverX.8361:

(2604 + 5000) * 234.6 * 1.1 * 1.1 + 1986.56 = 23571.73064

((2604 + 5000) * 187.3 * 1.1) + 1986) * 1.17 = 20653.449804

Yes, if you remove a multiplier to suit your argument. But in reality that number you removed is only used to inflate your math. If you decide to use the real numbers you come back down to a difference of around 800. Not sure why you’re attempting to manipulate the results but if you’re that intent on running the build feel free.
As for Cloak and Dagger, D/D has been inferior to D/P since 2012 – however I speak both from sPvP and a place where the utility of D/P outdoes the marginal instant damage increase from D/D.

DeceiverX.8361:

By “extremely burst-oriented D/D builds” I’m pretty much referring to signets or NQ stab. 17% from DD is better on builds which do not put such emphasis on critting, such as the D/P meta which builds closer to sustain and pressure +1’s. NQ itself is a 16.67 damage gain on crits, and PT on marauder is an additional 14%. Daredevil absolutely can’t compete damage-wise with CS assuming the CS build is played and built for burst damage (like it should be; it’s crit strikes). Even without NQ for HK, Ferocious Strikes pushes another 10% modifier on targets over 50%, which again, will be a lot of people in the regard of sPvP due to lower power and overall higher defenses on average than WvW due to the nature of the format.

You’re also not performing the modifiers correctly. DD gives a 17.7% increase by how the scaling works whereas CS would provide a 25.5% modifier without NQ, and a 46.3% modifier with it.

Paired with SoP and Assassin’s Signet, CS wins by miles, pushing out what’s almost a 70% damage modifier on 10-15 stacks of might, which estimates around another 20% more damage pre-calculating.

Like I said, DD has massive support gains and yea is definitely an upgrade from most other build paths, but a burst-based D/D backstab build will see damage downgrades by a large margin trading out CS for DD due to the lack of crit support. DD offers less damage potential than DA (albeit this is close and potentially can favor the DD given a bound crit offsetting Mug if ignoring Executioner’s benefits for a stab execution), less crit support and subsequently damage from CS, and the utility from Trickery isn’t replaceable.

Seems like I’ll explain this again as people still fail to discern the difference between Critical Damage and Damage modifiers.

We’ll use standard PvP base critical damage as our starting point (Marauder’s Amulet).
Critical damage is at 187.3%

Practiced Tolerance gives us an additional 13.7% critical damage. Adding this with the 10% from Ferocious Strikes and the 7% from Flawless Strikes, and the 16.6% from No Quarter we arrive at an additional 47.3% critical damage – leaving us at 234.6% critical damage. We’ll use an arbitrary number for a Backstab crit (since we’re dealing with percentage modifiers this won’t make a difference for the sake of explanation). Let’s say our backstab is going to hit for 5,000.
On Critical Strikes under perfect conditions we’ll arrive at a critical hit of 11,730 (5,000 * 2.346 = 11,730).

Now if we move on to look at the damage gained from Daredevil we’ll use a damage modifier of 17%. With the base critical damage of 187.3% we’ll calculate the damage of the same backstab.
Using Daredevil our backstab should arrive at a critical hit of 10,958 (1.873 * 5,000 = 9,365 * 1.17 = 10,958).

Now, both builds will likely include Mug, and as something you mentioned we should factor in Steal damage when talking about a burst.
We can use a lower number on Mug of 1,500. Since Mug cannot crit we’ll add 1,500 directly to Critical Strikes Backstab and come to 13,230 total.
As for Daredevil, the Mug will do 1,755 (1,500 * 1.17 = 1,755) and bring us to 12,713.

At the end of it Critical Strikes only does 500 more damage.

There are a few things to consider on top of that;
1. I didn’t calculate might from a signet build because I don’t think that build is viable against better players. However 10-20 stacks of might will make a noticeable difference in damage between the two.
2. This is under perfect conditions. You have to be above 90% health (won’t last long against good players) and your target has to be above 50% health (this is more reasonable).
3. This is using Dagger/X and not Staff – Using Daredevil with Staff Master pushes the damage modifier from the trait-line to 27% and far outdoes Critical Strikes in damage.
4. The direct damage from Bound itself is not calculated as we’re only looking at burst under a perfect scenario. This damage will outdo the already negligible gain from Critical Strikes when looking at a longer period of play.
5. You already mentioned it but I will add it here as well; the utility of Daredevil adds far more than only damage modifiers, while Critical Strike provides nothing further.

All in all I still would take Daredevil over Critical Strikes in any serious one-shot build aside from troll gimmicks.

Already works how you describe. The only two teleports are Portal and Spectral Walk.
Everything else is affected by player created obstacles. The game Judy’s assumes that if we have instant run speed we’re smart enough to run around an object rather than into it. You can see the affect of player made obstacles with Ring of Warding (Hammer Guardian) and Ring of Fire (Off-Hand Dagger Ele) as you can’t Shadowstep out of these without the negative affect.

Windows 10 64 bit
GW2 32 bit client

DeceiverX.8361:

DD is only a true downgrade for extremely burst-oriented D/D builds, in which case it neither supplies the damage from DA, the crit chance from CS, or the utility from Trickery to be replaceable without substantial damage or reliability losses.

From an sPvP standpoint DD > CS for burst. The 17% damage modifier will outdo the critical damage modifiers from Critical Strikes. You don’t gain additional critical chance in the form of stats anymore.

bluri.2653:

thief+shatt mes still favourite duoq by far, also the best winrate with it for all the duoq’s i’ve done

Most success I had was Viper Rev/Staff Thief.

As for the winrate it should be around 85-90%, didn’t really think of keeping track after the leagues dropped. Might be able to find a log part 10 games somewhere but I don’t know.

I thought the Leaderboards were old, might be mistaken though.

Edit: Yea, the leaderboards weren’t reset with the league divisions – those are fairly inaccurate of people’s performance since the patch. Also thank you (for the congrats) ^^

Shinobi.3240:

SenthRawr.7843:

Shinobi.3240:

Update:

Still only playing thief in ranked arena.
Winrate dropped down to around 53%.
150 games played by now – Sapphire Tier 4

If your teammates know what to do you are still effective as a thief.
It´s just not as forgiving as most of the other classes.
A good ping is also neccesary to make it playable.

How are you all doing so far? Still getting a lot of complaints from other players?

Best regards!

Shino

Any chance to link up your build plus any tips?

Here is the build i am currently using. I always try to adapt to the meta.
Will see what i face in ruby division.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAqaVn0MB9OhFOBmOBkmiFYCzLNEHaDzfwSYLULBEA2NA-TpBFABiXGohjAgR7PQwJAYhDBAAPAAA

The build Caed is running works well too if you have experienced teammates.
Grats on legendary division btw! 61% winrate. Thats impressive.

I just experienced that a lot of people run far and fight the druid for 10 minutes on their capped point or struggle at home with attackers. So i aimed for highest mobility to assist and turn the fights in our favor.

With a coordinated team you can probably reduce the amount of condi cleanse and go for the on interrupt traits instead.

Best regards!

Shino

Not sure where you got that win percentage from. Unless it was a typo maybe.
Hi, I’m Caed and I play Thief… Just a little.

Hit legend last night. Mostly duo queue until diamond, then did a 4 queue with friends for ~30 games. Staff/SB (build in stream info) with some variations of traits. Only got a comment once on a loss about thief and it was from someone on a 5q vs my duo.

Overall it’s possible to duo until legend, but I wouldn’t suggest solo queue. The queue times are too long and you tend to have less control over the outcome of the match compared to playing with a friend. You may run into premades but you can always win if people know what to do. Don’t blame losses on other players, whether or not it’s their fault. There’s always something you can do better in a match – find it and fix it. The only way you’ll improve is if you accept that instead of pushing blame to other people – even if they throw a match.

Elyndis.2130:

My experience with thief has been perfectly fine. People don’t rage – they just let me do my job.

Basically this.

Diamond, most through duo queue with friends.
If I solo queue it’s about 1 hour 30 minutes to get a queue and its against a 5 man. Duo queue has been fairly fun though just messing around with friends and enjoying the AIDS people play.

EazyPanda.6419:

Hey Caed, I’ve noticed in your streams that you normally use Bound+steal to initiate on your target.
Why not use Weakening Charge + steal, which has higher burst damage, applies weakness, and results in an extra dodge?

There are times where I want to follow up more quickly. If you open with Weakening Charge you need to dodge after to regain the 10% damage bonus from Bound. Starting with Bound allows you to follow up with other skills more quickly. Also Stealing at full endurance results in nothing, using the dodge early gives you something back on your open. And finally, it depends partly on whether Weakness affects what I’m fighting.

Not quite. I don’t mind playing other classes – I didn’t agree with counter-comping ourselves. I learned Revenant regardless, and I play more than just Thief. That’s part of the competitive game (being able to adapt). But shifting into a comp that the other team already has an advantage over wasn’t something I was willing to do. In the end they ended up mirror comping a team who already played the comp and had experience with it. PZ only changed one person, whereas Spookie changed 3. Not enough time to get used to a comp change that drastic against a team that’s been running the comp for a month.

SpeedKills.8923:

did you quit pro league?

I stepped off my team after disagreements about team composition and the best comp to run in our match this previous Monday. I wasn’t on the same page as the rest of my team and I felt like I didn’t belong. They had a sub prior to my leaving and I wish them luck in the upcoming matches.

Agemnon.4608:

Thank you very much for the input. I thought not taking shortbow would be at least be viable but my reasoning for potentially switching it out for sword/dagger is if you need the initiative to get away you likely won’t have it so I was thinking from a purely combat perspective and didn’t think about decapping points.

I’ve decided on Deadly Arts, like I said the Critical Strikes was influenced too much from PvE familiarity and I only take it over Deadly Arts there is to make up for a precision and crit deficit from a crusader helmet and a couple of zealot pieces, but a marauder trinket in PvP invalidates that reason since it gives good enough crit and ferocity especially with eagle runes.

Staff master looked very attractive but the dodge removing a condition looked important since burn and others put on too much pressure, but thinking about it I think it’s impractical since one condition isn’t worth it especially since the really nasty stuff is always somehow low on the priority list and conditions always come in batches, rarely ever just one. So yeah staff master it is.

I took dash over bound because of just how much CC there is but bound looks great for gap closing and damage.

Just keep in mind those are just my preferences – the more you change towards my preferences the more you’ll find your build being the one I posted. I just gave my thoughts on what you took, but you should always run what works for you. I play fairly aggressively so I prefer the damage over the defensive, I also don’t think that there’s much reason to run that build over another class because it doesn’t provide much aside from mobility. If you’re killing people though, stick with what works for you.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

Is there any pro-players ever complain about the “bug” on Withdraw where its CD increased by 3s but the healing didn’t get the buff they said they will do?

This change happened way back in June of this year.

I think if the pro-players complains about this, it might get the fix it deserves.

It’s been mentioned several times.

omgdracula.6345:

I was just curious if you could explain the mechanics of using Black Powder. I know its a smoke field, but how can you combo it with certain skills? Sorry if it’s a dumb question I just don’t understand how that all works.

Also I see a lot of thieves using d/d in ranked pvp. Any idea why?

Anything that you can do on D/D you can do on D/P – and then some. That’s why you won’t find it in PvP.
Black Powder can be used with Headshot (projectile finisher) to apply a blind after your daze, potentially negating two attacks. You can use it to stealth with Heartseeker or Bound (leap finisher), or you can team stealth with Blinding Powder or Cluster Bomb (blast finisher).

rennlc.7346:

Hey, Caed. Congratulations on the victory over Final Form. It was a very entertaining and exceptional performance by both you and the rest of the Spoookie roster. Something Shnicky said about you in the post-game interview he did with the commentators was “He knows when to play staff and he knows when to play D/P”. Could you elaborate on the type of maps, match-ups, compositions, and/or perhaps even players you would switch to D/P against?

D/P is a lot more of a hit and run or assassin type of gameplay. It’s better to play against burst comps when you can team stealth and you have the option of picking people off quickly. When fighting bruiser or bunkers you won’t kill people fast enough on D/P and your sustain is weak in comparison. Occasionally you could swap to target a specific player as well but it’s risky to focus on 1 person when the game is 5v5.

Serious Thought.5394:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsaVn8lCFmiVmCemCkmiFYCzLNcGaDzdwT4KULBEAyAA-TJBFABCcKAue/hqKDAwTAAA

Made full post, but I figured I’d ask here too- anyway to make this instagib harder? So far the V-F1-3 combo 100-0s players.

The only way to get more damage outside of a rune swap is to drop Panic Strike for Revealed Training and dodge out of Black Powder while engaging. This could backfire though if they can just walk out of your Pistol Whip. Wouldn’t exactly recommend Assassin’s Signet but if it’s more damage you want that would add to it (I’d take Signet of Agility over Assassin’s).

Agemnon.4608:

What do you think of this build?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsYWn0MBFOhlOBemCkmildCzbKEFuCbBgazBa+A+AvgA-TZRBABR8AAivMwGHCgZ2fAgzAAA

I haven’t actually tried it out in practice but I like sword and dagger primarily for the daze stun chains and shadowstepping utility (besides swords simply have the coolest skins in the game) while the eagle runes are to reduce the opponent’s chances of recovering. If I get the opponent below 50% then getting a 6% damage increase would burst them down even faster thus widening the gap between our respective hit points. It’s also when interrupts should be kept in mind since they’ll eventually try healing back above the 50% threshold.

Staff is the raw DPS plus blinding weapon, vault isn’t a problem since I have ground targeting locked to target so I don’t have to juggle moving with targeting as I’m holding down my mouse buttons. I have switch to chill since that slows their cool downs.

I’ll think about swapping out critical strikes for something else though and I only use it in PvE to make up for the crit and ferocity loss from a crusader helmet, zealot shoulders and pants, and marauder chest and boots (nearly all accessories are berserker however). Since in PvP I’d go marauder as I think I’d have enough crit to justify dumping critical strikes. Is acrobatics still a joke? I might also dump sword/dagger for shortbow if that’s optimal.

And last but not least…how would I deal with druids? Goal mostly being interrupts until team can burst them.

I wouldn’t run without shortbow in PvP. As for traits I’ve explained above the difference between critical damage modifiers and damage modifiers. That being said I’d take Deadly Arts over Critical Strikes (yes, Acrobatics is still lacking). Personally I think the build you have lacks enough damage to be useful. You give up Staff Master (both defensive and offensive trait) and Bound (not only direct damage but a damage modifier). Dash isn’t a dodge I’m fond of (also outlined above).

As for dealing with Druids you have to have bound and you have to make sure you land everything. Vaults, dodges, auto attacks, etc. If you miss anything you will likely lose pressure to be able to kill them. Make your dodges count (evade an attack and land damage on them or you will fall behind). Also make use of the Healing Seed.

Just my 2c.