That is rather ummm interesting.
First things first: If you want to take conditiondamage, do it right. maybe you just didnt change it in the editor, but you do not use berserker gear for condi (naturally) either sinister or viper. Double dagger is the right choice, but you would take venoms/venomshare as skills. Also pressure striking and bewildering ambush are hardly considerable for pve.
Also: codi Thief have their place, sometimes, in raids and in pvp but in general you do not want to go with that. There are a lot of other classes that farly exceed your condi but, since the latest buff, few that can match your sustained direct damage.
Deadly trapper+Shadowtrap might seem a good idea for a solo player, but there are builds out there that focus entirely on providing a full stack of might for their team, and vulnerability is also applied by a lot of sources.
The caltrops are entirely useless, even on a condi build, just look at the dmg numbers, you do at least 6 times that damage on one AA hit.
Roll for initiative is controversial. I t can proove useful but in general i would recommend a signet, haste if you dont like signets or shadowstep since, without the daredevil, you lack emergency condi removal.
Basiliskvenom is ok, it doesnt do much, but it helps with the break bar and thievs guild aint exactly a game changer.
Haha yes I have just realised that I didn’t change the gear stats! Most of my stats in game forces on precision/Power, I don’t really have any top class lvl 80 gear yet so will be working on that. So perhaps rolling with more of a direct damage build would be more suitable? In terms of our group role are we just dps/sustained dps? or is there a bit more to it than that?
P.s sorry if these are noob questions, Ive just returned to the game and honestly cant remember much about the thief traits/builds haha
There is actually a lot of viable variants, so it comes down to what you want to focus on and whether or not you have Daredevil.
The builds listed on metabattle are purely glass cannon and are trying to get the most amount of damage out of the traits, but at the expense of sustain and no condi clear. They are focused on organized group play where you are running doing a team run with a composition that makes up for those weaknesses, but outside of that, I don’t find the builds to be very ideal.
I tried a lot of variants and the one I ended up settling on focused on bringing AA damage and lots of CC for shredding break bars to the table while still having some degree of survivability in the form of personal healing, condi cleanse and a stunbreaker on a 12 second CD. The main weakness of it is the lack of swiftness for skipping content, but outside of that, I find very situations in which I am at a disadvantage.
There is not much of a rotation to it. If you proc quickness from Haste trait, then you pool your initiative for the 15% dmg bonus, dodge for the 10% dmg bonus and just auto attack. Vault and Weakening Strikes are for large groups.
As far as break bars, you wait for all CDs to expire and then use all of your abilities at once to fully drop the bar. If you use them individually as they come off CD, the regen on the break bar will counter.
Your sources of CC are…
Daze off steal with a reduced cooldown.
Stolen abilities (Boss mobs seem to give you a higher chance of stealing a CC ability. The knockback branch one takes a huge chunk out of breakbars)
Stun after hitting all Fists of Flurry.
A stun and a knockback in the Impact Strike combo.
Access to a knockdown after successfully blocking with Bandit’s Defense.
With all of this, in fractals, I don’t have much issue handling break bars on my own, making CC optional for other group members, allowing them to focus on group support or just pure damage. The majority of your sources of CC are from physical skills and taking the reduced cooldown trait over the 7% dmg increase means they will all cycle off cooldown before the break bar fully regens.
Hi thanks both of you for your responses! I currently don’t have the Dare Devil traits or HoT but I suspect I will do sometime in the hear future,
so sounds like condition damage is a good way to roll for groups? in the mean time the sort of build which i am currently running is something like this:
Forgive me it’s bad Im sure it could do with improvement but It’s mainly based around using D/D or D/P and popping in and out of combat using the shadow step/steal moves. Ive been using this in dun runs and fractal recently but I do feel quite squishy, would either of you recommend swapping to S/D?
Hi I’m a returning player (level 80 Thief) and have just been introduced to dungeons and fractals for the first time. Does anyone have any suggestions or tips as to what weapons, builds, and rotations are good for this type of group play?
I have always been a solo style player up till now so Im new to the grouping thing haha
Hey looking for an English speaking guild on the Gandara server,
I’ve been AFK from the game for about a year and looking to get back into it! My main is a lvl 80 thief and I also have two alts: A lvl 28 Ranger and lvl 20 Guardian. I am currently levelling the Ranger to lvl 80. I’m quite a casual style player but Im just looking for a guild which kind of covers a bit of everything
