Guild Wars 2

LethalConcept.4593:

Been playing variations of D/P and having tons of fun, what are your guys opinion on DP compared to D/D? With a primary focus on backstab and getting the trait with 100% crit while stealthed, you could forgoe some precision gear to go more vit/toughness heavy gear since you get guranteed crits in stealth for backstab. Any thoughts?

A guildie plays d/p with the Hidden Killer trait and lots of valkyrie gear so that his backstabs always crit. He seems to enjoy it quite a bit, but as mentioned earlier, utilizing auto-attack to apply pressure is effective and costs zero initiative. By running a lot of precision, and instead taking those traits in a survivability-based tree, you’re boosting the damage on your auto-attacks quite a bit.

That said, I run all zerker gear except my head and legs (they just aren’t efficient for trading crit dmg % for other stats), where I supplement my 30 SA and 30 acro with PVT gear. I still end up over 3000 atk, I’m still critting tons, and my crit dmg is some where around 80% (unsure off the top of my head right now).

Tbh I don’t think anyone is just straight up trading inf.arrow for inf.strike or vice versa. AoE in any type of zerg fest is limited to 5 enemies either way, and to make short bow worth using, a thief has to be essentially in melee range anyway; the arcs on cluster-bomb are just too slow.

With sword/dagger on the other hand, you’re still hitting three targets with your heavy-hitting auto-attack, and you’ve still got c+d. This comes with infiltrator’s strike and it’s return. My style dictates that in a large zerg fight, I’m much more effective zipping through the enemy back-line and flanks to annoy and distract everyone from what they should be actually doing.

If I want to range, I use an alt. Thief is so much more satisfying when you’re annoying everyone and downing people until your group plows through them.

Volatility.6729:

Presto.4726:

snip

D/P S/D 0-10-30-30-0 sounds really interesting. Couple questions (im debating dusting off my thief alt):
- whats your general strategy for 1v1/1vX?
- ever consider Hard to Catch or Fleet of Foot vs. health in stealth?
- which runes/sigs? Would u consider something like energy/hydromancy on S/D for chasing/fleeing? Force/air on DP?

For 1v1’s I generally find that if I’m not vs.ing another thief, they generally can’t keep up with the amount of dodges/stealths that I can do. Everyone has been trained now to start dodging like crazy when a thief goes stealth, and with fleet shadow + dagger pistol, it’s easy to stay behind them/stealthed until you’re ready to attack. After that, I try to stay on top of them with pistol 5 as much as possible, mixing in auto-attacks and stealths. D/p is expensive on initiative, so you have to find a balance. Using 2,3,4 skills as necessary, to either gap close, or interrupt.

In 1vs.Moar I usually try to choose a squishy target, and keep dipping in and out of stealth as much as possible. It becomes a lot easier when they start to spread out to look for you. I generally end up trying to burst a few rounds of auto-attack and a few backstabs to down a player, and if I can’t down them, I’ll go back to stacking stealth for 20 or 30 seconds until I’m ready to go again. I only use blinding powder and refuge defensively, but I’m pretty liberal with withdraw.

I find that people generally don’t have a ton of time to stack conditions on me, because I have the removal every 3 seconds while in stealth. If I take too many that I don’t feel like I can fight through, I’ll just remain in stealth a little longer. I find that d/p is a great set for a thief with more of an opportunist mindset.

I like sigil of para on sword, and sigil of air/fire on my pistol. I keep bloodlust on my d/p dagger until I hit 25, then i switch it to my s/d set. My other dagger has a sigil of force.

LethalConcept.4593:

Presto.4726:

snip

Main reason for using Shortbow is because it has an amazing teamfight potential with the 15 in DA, with the poison weakness combo in WvWvW, but im guessing your main role with D/P S/D is roaming? What would you do in a defend the keep scenario? Do you just pick off targets?

I can see you forgoing the 20% recharge on Deceptions with the extra control and survivability S/D gives. Headshotting a major skill is an awesome feeling, i feel ya.

Also a question, do you use Withdraw? if you do, would you find it worthwhile to drop a trait for the Gain Vigor on heal?

I generally play roaming and small group play. Generally if my small group ends up near a zerg v zerg fight (or I alone), I pick targets off their sides and back ranks. I still keep a short bow in my bag for different situations, but I generally prefer to just build siege when I’m doing keep defense. If there are enough people to make siege worth it, then I’m golden; if I feel like there aren’t enough people, then I have no problem stepping outside the fortification to apply pressure in melee.

As a whole, I feel like a thief’s main role is to either burst single targets, or be a major distraction either way, and other weapon sets do this better for me than a short bow. I still have a lot of love for infiltrator’s arrow, but in general I find melee fighting in this game far more effective. You’re right though, I rarely if ever use s/d #3 skill. Auto-attack is beast anyway

I do use withdraw, but generally speaking, I’ve got enough dodges to go around as it is. If I’m in trouble, I pop blinding powder first, and then chain withdraw off that, so that I’m far enough away to go back to stacking stealth until my health regens. I’m running a very glass build with scholar runes, so I get back up to health pretty quickly and the dmg increase is worth the wait.

I run your second build, traited the exact same way, except I switch sword/dagger in for short bow. I found that after I got used to d/p I rarely switched over to my shortbow anymore unless I was spamming cluster bombs; sword #2 just works better for me when targets try to escape, as I like to keep my signet passive up as much as possible.

I can’t even play without fleet shadow trait anymore, it’s great for getting behind targets AND keeping your swiftness up getting across maps

I honestly don’t find with the way d/p works you need the extra 20% deception recharge. Most of the time those two utilities are used as defensive escapes for me anyway. We already have tons of on-demand stealthing with proper initiative management (and in my case c+d on my second weapon set adds another stealth). If you use the #5 on pistol well, you’re already being very annoying with blinds either way.

I also find lately that as I get more and more used to d/p, my game-breaking skill is whether or not I headshot the opponents heal. I feel so much glee in my chest when I can feel their heart breaking on an interrupted heal