Showing Posts For Raithe.5712:
Well – plenty of survivability if you are running with a zerg and farming…Which pretty much eliminates the need for you to actually put down any kind of offensive pressure.
I’d say that you seriously lack survivability in a small group or 1v1 setting b/c you cannot create any kind of pressure. No matter what you do with a thief, you will never get a viable bunker build out of it. A good bunker has some sort of method to spike damage and you just don’t have that in this build.
IMO of course.
First – thanks for the build concept. Love it.
I’ve been running 06350 now for the past week and its great. I’ve even run it in sPVP just to get cycles on the rotation and build muscle memory. Overall, I like it better than my pre-patch d/d build but the play style does change.
First off – I am full ascended, and all infusion slotted and have access to applied str and fortitude. This build is so hyper leveraged to power that I suspect even the seemingly small difference between full exotic and full ascended is noticeable.
I run 1 piece zerk armor (helm) and the rest valk. All zerk weapon and zerk trinkets. Just under 20k health for wPVP with buffs and power/precision food which is where I think this build shines.
Playstyle: Well, obviously Mug is gone and so is the big initial opening approach to combat. I play relatively defensively early in engagements now and build might stakes. The extra dodge really helps with this. I keep blinding powder slotted and signet of shadows. Once I got used to relying on the dodges I don’t miss the SR’s (refuge and rejuve). I still abuse the hell out of blinding powder – just can’t give it up but when I run in groups I will slot Refuge instead if there is no class giving consistent run speed. Otherwise I slot SR over the signet.
Incidently – Does anyone else use blinding powder/sb for rooting fleeing players? I love it.
Another aspect that changes in play style – from my experience – is the value of SB cluster bomb. With 15-20 stacks of might there are all sorts of useful times to switch out to bow and drop clusters. For this reason I run sigil of battle on my SB for the +3 might on swap (bloodlust is the other sigil). I run accuracy/strength on my daggers.
Trait wise I am using:
Furious Retal, Practiced Tolerance, Executioner
Shadow Embrace, Infusion of Shadow
Power of Inertia
Infusion of shadow has good synergy with First Strikes.
I was a hidden killer d/d thief for a long time. But Executioner just plays better with this build for me. The burst is deeper into a fight, not front loaded so executioner has much greater leverage than with the old mug based play style.
I find I am weak versus the same classes I was before – Condi Necro and Engineer. Engineers seem a bit more manageable now with the extra dodge and better DPS after I’ve built might with the SB.
Regards
just try them all! it’s only a few sp to retrait. a week on each should let you know what fits you more, since you know the feeling of your thief.
You have a good point. And I have tried both. However, to fully test it as I have specced here I will need to make several new pieces of ascended armor and that is no trivial expense.
I’ve my own opinion based on what testing I have done. Now I am trying to solicit the community to see if I have missed anything.
I find fleet of foot to not be needed in most cases. It does make landing a backstab easier, but I honestly prefer the fall damage trait(I mostly wvw) in Acro. If I don’t take that it is mug though, because it’s either that or VR in acro, which with Hide in Shadows isn’t as useful (1/3 uptime on vigor roughly from it).
tl;dr – go with mug, unless you are just awful at landing backstabs in the 4s frame (15in SA).
I am fine at landing backstabs in the general case. Certain classes, and very good players lower the percentages though. Good players move a lot and some classes have more mobility than others or more impairment effects.
If I landed backstabs 20% more often in those scenarios, it is a pretty big lift in damage…..
Block on invisibility does not break stealth. The problem arises that even if you could predict the backstab and block, evade etc. It doesn’t matter as if the thief misses or fails on these attempts he can still keep on trying without any consequences.
Next is blind field plus leap. Problem is that as the thief leaps into and enemy and hits the player this does not break stealth. Hopefully I don’t need to explain why this is bad.
This is the only problems I have with the class. Hopefully I don’t get replies of how about I need to learn to play or such. Since I think that if most of the community has these complaints then it must be true.
Ok, you lose the ability to Magically block some guy who is stealthed BEHIND you, and I’ll give up my retries while stealthed.
Below is my current build and gear (Mug – Shadows Embrace) and a change I am considering to incorporate Fleet Shadow into my build. No buffs/food are included in the build links.
On the surface this is a trade between 100 power and additional speed/mobility while stealthed. It is hard to directly value additional run speed while stealthed and this is my dilemma.
I am not considering changing to other builds. There are several good ones. And some that are better than d/d in many ways. I like d/d, however and I like a balance between offensive and defensive capabilities.
Thoughts and any experience appreciated with respect to the two builds below.
Current Build & Gear – 10/30/30/0/0 d/d Mug Shadows Embrace
· Power – 2133
· Attack – 3163
· Crit Chance – 50%
· Crit Bonus – 107%
· Health – 14865
Alternative – 0/30/30/10/0 d/d Fleet Shadows Embrace
· Power – 2048
· Attack – 3078
· Crit Chance – 55%
· Crit Bonus – 107%
· Health – 14685