Guild Wars 2

get 1-3 shotted by warrs, necs, mesmers

Getting 1 shotted and getting 3 shotted are 2 VERY differnt fights. I never get one shotted right now with 20k hp and like 2300 armor. I’m just thinking of giving up about half that armor for the crit dmg. Then I might get a few more kills without becoming a 1-shot magnet.

I just wanted to know if it’s worth using that as my ascended gear goal or if I should just suck it up and join the zerker bandwagon. maybe i’ll mix em and go fro 15k hps.

don’t use CA trait, i prefere ACRO cause of the effects

Currently I’m running CA/Acro/Trickery – I feel like CA 100% backstab crit gives me more spike dmg than mug. And Acro cond removals give me more survivability than SA line.

This is also partly because I don’t have the patience to keep restealthing. I go D/P for the in-combat benefits of gap closer/stealth+attack which is much easier to land than CnD. Off-hand is always sword. I love using the infiltrator step to close gaps and escape fights.

Does anyone run Valk stats in wvwvw? I am deciding what to go with in my journey toward Ascended gear. I’ve always resisted going full glass cannon because I get bored running from wps.

I just came back tot he game and before I just had Ascalon (soldier stats). I like the survivability but I cannot kill anyone by myself unless they’re terrible.

I’d like a build that is all-around useful without constant gear swapping. Now i go between the Ascalon and Zerker depending on how big the fight is and if I want to be in the thick of it. Zerker is for roaming on the outskirts.

I didn’t know IR was getting nerfed. That’s the cornerstone of my play style. I step in, go d/d and backstab, then get out if they didn’t die. I was also gonna ask the best tactic against a good warrior. If I can’t depend on FS I guess I need to go with s/ p and spam blind field? I never do well trying to backstab a well built and well played warrior.

I’m not great at 1v 1 so I generally just avoid it. But I want to get better. It just seems like s/p is a death trap once you run low on ini and can’t keep up smoke.

p/d 10 0 30 0 30 is very playable and probably the best in my opinion. lots of aoe bleeds and lots of survivability. id choose this.

I think I was planning to try that once I got a full set of cond gear… now I am trying to figure out the ascended stuff.

Looks like my build still works about as well as it always did. No need for a change, I guess.

Also, I’m just feeling out if there’s just one or two overpowered thief builds (compared to most other thief builds, not compared to other classes, #plzdontrant). I read something about perplexity and p/p?

Yes in dungeons I now recall I was s/p, shortbow. Most of what I recall from dungeons was: have hp/tough gear, use s/p for blind and cond removal. Use shortbow and/or p/p for ranged fights, and don’t be an idiot.

I’m a little more interested in the best WvW goals for now, though.

So, has much changed in a year? Are there any seriously overpowered FOTM classes I should just switch to, or is there a recipe for a well rounded thief I can follow?

Playstyle: Everything. With just a gear change I would like to be able to go from dungeon to wvw large battle to wvw small battles, and I like twitch and melee better than ranged. I generally ran with s/d, d/d and liberal use of #2 sword allowed me to get in and out of combat as desired.

Not really looking for spvp or tpvp builds, yet.

I also did not do the condi p/d build because I already had power gear =P. Just didn’t have the time or inclination to build the orange set of cond, and I didn’t see the point in running it with yellow gear.

Melee requires some toughness and hps, and good self healing and abusing your evades abilities like pistolwhip when needed. Some bosses just aren’t melee-able. Even smart guardians and warriors won’t try to melee some guys and you don’t get tankier than that.

Death blossom builds are not really tanky, they’re kitey. A s/p setup is the tanky-est you will get – and like has been stated, stack those self heals. Mostly malice, omnom pie or ghost if you need an extra boost. I get by with malice.

Should work fine. Doubtful he’s got a mob directly inbetween us. Even if he did, he spent 3 ini just like a HS and probably didn’t close much more ground.

I did that just as much for fun as anything. 1v1 fights are boring to me. I might do them if I was built around it – like a p/d stealth build. But I’ve played that in pvp and i don’t think I would like it in wvw. sword gives the most mobility on the battlefield by far IMO.

wvw you can be survivable and useful with p/t/v armor/runes and some zerker gems and heavy use of infiltrator strike/return. You won’t omgwoneshot any level 80 in exotics unless they are bad, and some 1v1 oriented builds will just kill you, but you can’t be invincible. At least as a thief you havea good chance of running away from those few. If you want to be a 1v1 master I personally think the p/d carrion stealth build is the most versatile. SR becomes a great heal when you stack it with the heal steal and pistol sneak attack.

pve malice, blinds, omnom pie, you should not ever have much trouble unless you’re undergeared or standing and eating attacks.

ok I ran some tests myself with minor sigil of str on a cheap weapon and definitely saw might stacks appear a couple times right after crit haste procced =).

Next question is do the 2 types of consumable procs (aka the gear-icon, vs food icon) share a cooldown, or are they independent? e.g. skale venom consumable (not utility) and omnomberry pie?

So, I’m reading up on how sigils share a cooldown for on-crit effects.

Is this one single shared cooldown for all on-crit effects or only sigils?

aka, omnomberry pie, crit haste trait, and sigil of str – if crit haste procs am I blocked from the other 2 for the full 30 seconds?

Hah funny because I been kitting on path 2 CoF solo whit my thief up to 80% sometimes

I’d like to see this. Would be educational because I’ve never been able to last more than 10 seconds even with acro heavy build and using evade attacks like shortbow 3. They always land some burn inbetween attacks and it only seems to take a couple.

@ neclon: out of curiosity, why Shadow Protector? The Healing Power of thieves is generally not so high, so you might be able to support your groupmates better if you blind your enemies more often. Cloaked in Shadows would be good for that, though Shadow Arts T1 has other very useful traits as well.

That was an accident – meant to pick infusion of shadow

i don’t really have problems vs S/d thieves as an D/D thieves.
The burst is too low – C&D – dodge – Backstab and you win vs S/D thief

I have yet to get backstabbed to death unless I am just goofing around and swinging my sword out of boredom trying to hit the thief. That said, it seems like the best tactic to fighting a thief, is just to stay stealthed longer, and stay mobile. I had fun running a backstab thief out of ini with shadow return… drop circle, run and dodge straight and when he catches up, return – run other way, rinse repeat. Takes me a fraction of the ini he spends catching up =). If I had the patience and ran with better 1v1 utilities I would stick around for the fight, but it just bores me to 1v1 for 5 minutes.

I was trying flanking strike on dummies and couldn’t land it without being point blank – then realized what Adaneshade.2409 meant by going to their right. You literally have to put them at your 9 oclock if they’re running in a straight line and you can land it as they run because it shoots you into their trajectory? Of course if they are running toward you it would be the opposite. It also seems to just plain be buggier than usual against dummies. In a pve scenario it was much more accurate.

The problem with this is it only works if they are running in a straight line (or if they’re holding basically still you can try to use it point blank). If anyone has any other tricks please let me know. I guess after an infiltrator strike it might be useful, and/or when you have cripple up on them.

It’s a very fancy idea they had to truly twirl around your target, but completely unncessary.

Just make it shoot toward your target 300-400 units while evading, and then re-face the target and swing. The whole twirly dirvy thing was a fun idea, but it has failed. Basically if you put your target at your 9 oclock this is what it does, right? (unless you’re truly at melee then it works more as intended).

My point though is that any thief build, signet or not, will have haters in the dungeons. Sure thieves can bring some things to the table when they aren’t in the downstate, but a team will typically be better suited adding an additional warrior or guardian instead of the thief.

I can’t argue this point, guardians and warriors are awesome for groups, especially if it comes to kiting (cof path 2 for example). But many glass cannon builds give thieves a bad name. When they stack some toughness/vit and understand the encounter and their class they can hold their own in any non-kiting situation.

So much misinformation – especially accusing signet thiefs of not understanding build synergy. FYI we have 2 very good traits in the crit tree for signets that encourage using them.

Signet use = initiative – which is the primary way a thief is useful in groups. Add signets of power to that and you get a dps boost from it as well. More #2 on fields = huge group benefits. Just the ability to spam your blast finisher more often makes you have all sorts of group buffability that you won’t find anywhere in your utility bar. You can use caltrops or you can get hard to catch and have it practically for free. SoS is a ranged aoe blind utility and when you’re using it anyway for ini and 5 stacks of might, you’re also getting a solid group benefit. And it recharges way faster than blinding powder.

I won’t argue caltrops and SR aren’t useful, I pretty much go with Malice, and Agility and SR and switch out the last one according to the situation. Often I’ll put another signet there if the situation doesn’t require anything but straight dps. DPS is universally useful. If you get caught with caltrops on in a ranged fight you are wasting a lot more space than the signet thief who at least can use his signets to do a little more dps.

COF isn’t that hard of a dungeon – and if a thief is rolling through in dps mode with 3 signets up, that really doesn’t indicate at all that he doesn’t know what he’s doing. If your group was sucking wind, you can’t blame it on the utility bar of the thief. 1-2 abilities very rarely make or break any encounter by themselves. If your group wasn’t sucking wind, and was rolling the dungeon, then you should thank the thief for maximizing his dps and increasing the run speed rather than carrying around utilities that don’t improve dps.

Do on-crit sigils stack with crit haste? Someone said they all share a cd of some sort so those might reset the CD on crit haste?

Way to balance thieves in wvw – If you have thief targeted when they stealth, then autotarget it when they come out (if you haven’t changed targets). Or let the target stay targeted but not be “trackable” by attacks. The biggest fail on the devs part with thieves is that they stay stealthed due to culling even when they should be visible. Tab spamming is your only recourse, but it’s a weak alternative.

Thanks for that post on sword tactics – like the one where you can move after first swing of flanking strike I did not know. I will have to try that build out sometime, but my first rendition went like this just to see if I can retain the ability to burst damage and still have survivability (please critique constructively if you have some):

http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckmzc9coLvRooFrvoaxfVacMaqVV
(kept the dodge quickness instead of a 20 pt stealth trait, that might be a mistake but i just love the little extra speed).

Like I said, I don’t have the option to buy new gear atm, I’m pretty poor. But I had already bought zerker gems. I have the invaders amulet, all AC p/t/v armor with 5 soldiers and 1 ice superior runes. Weapons are COF sword/dagger (zerker stats), and AC bow.

Unbuffed I have 17.1k hp, 1418 tough (2482 armor), 3,002 attack, 36% (41 with signet) crit, 69% crit damage.

I’ll have to practice with Flanking Strike. I’ve been trying to land it on Eles and Guardians when they throw up a lot of buffs. I have the practice with landing C&D and trying to get behind people (the bonus of sword being even if you fail you get the same damage and a blind). Wondering if the blind might be more useful on a mesmer.

I’m pretty decent at twitch, and I already love abusing infiltrator strike. I’m just slow on the theorycraft and I don’t really keep up with the patch notes. Is there a video or more in depth explination of why/how s/d can be miles better? I know with d/d once someone turns and fights I have a very little chance of finishing them off unless they’re in weak gear or pure glass build.

Do I try to land the back tactical most of the time? Or just shrug that and go for blind and if daze lands then yay? Or do I try to figure out how to land that frustrating #3?

I will probably switch to s/d d/d for a while to try this out but I’m really hoping to find a skilled s/d person with a vid or good solid breakdown of how to best utilize the weapon set. I just get the sneaking suspicion that it might help close the gap in my gaming style.

Question is: does anyone think s/d is superior to d/d for wvw 1v1 1v2 type scenerios? Or is backstab the bread and butter?

I run an odd setup, s/p for roaming, d/d for killing. I have a lot of p/t/v and to make up for lack of precision I use hidden killer to ensure backstab kills. I use sword to close and then retreat.

I am mostly p/t/v cuz i can’t afford more than one set of exotics, and the ones I have I got from dungeon tokens. If I get a 2nd set it will probably be condition for p/d setup.

Biggest enemy of most backstab thieves = retaliation. Also, stealing their buffs helps mitigate the damage. The hardes thitting thieves will stack up 15-20 might with traited abilities, and if you steal it you take 30% or so of their damage away.

Blocks, blinds, and aoe condition fields that do decent damage and/or poison and the occasional CC ability to throw off the thief, but also keeping them at a distance helps. The thief will probably only have 2 activated stealth abilities without being close to you. And dont turn and run.

Finally have some vit/toughness and self healing. If you are running around as a glass cannon in WvW or don’t use decent self healing abilities you deserve to get instagibbed.

Well I tried out this evade tank thing (10/0/0/30/30) and it’s kinda hard to kill but a good ele bunker or good guard bunker takes it out without too much effort. The self healing they have just out-performs what you can do to heal yourself.

Main problem is thief has to be hitting someone to self heal and any decent ele or guard will be hitting you back harder with aoe or retaliation.

I do love stealing retaliation from guards as they just sit there looking dumb thinking you’ll kill yourself =).

Why some one would be still using D/D?

It’s situational. Most of the time I’m running with 10-20 people, not in and out of huge zergs. With very little crit %/dmg, to down people I need the highest burst damage which is d/d backstab combos. Very few fights of this size are people clumped together in a useful formation for cluster or auto attack from SB, and even if they were I just wouldn’t do enough damage to be a threat to anyone but a lowbie or very poorly geared 80.

For sieging I use SB. For just about any other huge fight, it’s range is too limiting. I just use S/P, shadowstep in and out of the zerg and do better burst damage than SB provides with its limited range. If I want to tag targets to get bags, I just use daggerstorm in the middle of them.

I use D/D to take down roamers/runners. Most of the time, I’m using my shortbow, but I wouldn’t want to miss D/D as my second weaponset.

I still don’t think OP’s idea of having 2 melee sets is a good idea.

It took me a while to come around to trying to get around without SB, and it is a little simpler to move around with SB and hit things, but now that I’ve done it I will never go back. My in-hand weapon is S/x and infiltrator return has saved me way more times than infiltrator arrow. If I’m travelling really far I’ll go S/d, and SB. s/d is my getaway – C&D, pick a mob and infiltrator step, infiltrator signet to it and then C&D again and be gone. Inf return if they catch you.

And finally: i just prefer melee. SB is boring so maybe there’s a bias in my reasoning. But I rarely die, I have swiftness up most of the time, and I leave people in the dust. The SB carrying infiltrator arrows can just keep up with me if there’s any mobs on the road to utilize shadow stepping.

^ works well with p/p too. I usually run malice, and unload is a good heal supplement. You also get the multi hit healing from the stealthed attack but need condition stats to make it ideal.

Knight is not P/T/V in wvwvw. Only dungeon gear and wvw badge gear gives that.

I posted a build that is viable in pve and wvw with 1 set of gear. You lose some damage, but I down people regularly. I was plying with a guard and we dropped people 2v4 without much trouble. Retreating and stealthing is still absolutely necessary for survival even with heavy p/t/v stats on a thief, though. We just don’t have the utility to stand head to head without using our thief mechanics.

If the thief was hacking why did he do such little dmg? Why not 10k per backstab? If I were hacking I would be full glass cannon build at least =P.

More likely it was either 1. 2 thieves, or 2. there is a way to land backstab without getting revealed if the timing is perfect and you come out of stealth during the backstab animation. Then shadow powder and backstab for a 2nd. #1 is the most likely – some thief that used shadow refuge and hide in shadows to get close and help his friend.

How, exactly, does s/d strip boons?

Thief does fine in pve with some defensive stats and decent dodging skills. Stack some vit at least, if nothing else. If you plan to melee toughness is important, too. Thieves with a shortbow can spam 5 blast finishers in a row and with decent ini return can just keep stacking aoe combo finishers. I would almost always have sword in the other weapon set for condition removal unless I know conditions were not an issue (some boss fights its more important to stay ranged and double pistol is probably a bit more useful than bow in those fights).

So I’ve landed on a build I really like that’s different from the typical thief. This whole build translates well into PvE and is pretty versatile in group/zerg based WvW. I’ll give the build and the synopsis after. I call it the shadow stepping thug – light on stealth, heavy on defense and decent burst.

Weapons 1: Sword/Pistol (power, tough, vit, this is your swinging away in the middle of a battle set)
Weapon 2: dagger/dagger (zerker type stats, this is your burst set)

Armor (P/T/V with 5 soldier runes and 1 rune of Ice)
Trinkets (Knights or Valkerie types – or if you have the badges get the exotic PVT and stack some more of that if you want)

Traits for WvW
Power: 10 – Mug
Crit: 30 – Signets of Power, Critical Haste, Hidden Killer
Shadow: 0
Acrobat: 10 – decent of shadows
Tricks: 20 – thrill of the crime, bountiful theft

Stats: 20k hps, 2000 power, 2400 armor, 18% standing crit (25% with daggers – I depend on food, hidden killer, and fury to boost crit crit, although you could swap in zerker trinkets and still be very tough to kill).

Signet of Malice, (swap slot here usually assassins signet), sig of shadows, infiltrators sig, and either basalisk or spin to win for larger fights

Base tactics: shadow step around the battlefield to stay hard to hit, and close gaps. Every fight starts with infiltrator step and if you’re in the thick of it make sure to use the return before it expires and renew it to get back in the fight or run and get out of combat to regen if you’re low – spam this to remove conditions.

1. Getting in and out of large zergs: infiltrator step, infiltrator signet, daggerstorm, hit remaining signets except malice, pick a target with some buffs and steal. infiltrator return away when spinning is almost over if you’re getting hit, otherwise take a few swings at people and shadowstep back before your 15 seconds are up.

2. Heaviest hitting burst combo with long range closing ability and a built in escape:
1. target enemy, infiltrator step (wait for return to load), switch to daggers, use malice, assasins, shadows, infiltrator signet, hit C&D+steal, backstab for 7-8k usually against most targets. Mug 5-6k, C&D like 2k.

3. More typical combo for a bit more damage spread out: get closer for the first step so that infiltrator signet is in range. Use it for the first C&D + backstab, autoattack for the full chain, then C&D+steal and back stab again. The 2nd one will take buffs from them and often you steal their stability if they popped it. If you land both backstabs most targets are down and if they’re not, you now have 2x normal crit (+20% from the fury on thrill of the crime) to finish them off with auto attack and heartseaker and the very common crit haste proc.

4. annoying people like other thieves using spin to win: load pistol whip and steal – takes their stability and then stuns them – they’re usually being targeted by something so they go down fast. Same for eles using their earth shield and teleport tactic.

I rarely die to any thief jumping me, and don’t often even need to run away unless there’s more than 1. I got 1shotted only once by a maxxed out glass cannon who I believe was using the above signet technique to get to 20 might because I had 2600 armor and got hit by a 9k backstab.

But, again, this is not a soloer build. It’s meant for battlefields where stealth isn’t all that important or useful other than what C&D provides for breaking targeting and landing backstabs.

For PvE, switch to executioner, and signet use, and the power trait that gives vuln on crits or something.

You can also swap in berserker gear to boost your burst. I just love being tankier, though, I rarely die in group or zerg combat unless we’re just all being wiped out, and I down people with the backstab combo if they don’t focus on me or stun people with pistol whip when they’re about to finish off teammates.

I also take out catapults attacking towers by jumping down by door, triple shadow stepping to them, taking swings and then infiltrator return back to rinse and repeat.

Finally I saw queues in 3 of the 4 battlegrounds for FA and I’m proud that we had such strong participation this late in match. I hope not to land on huge queue times, but I do love to see multiple large groups doing things in each map.

Little math for FA commanders: we are clearly outnumbered by TC over all the maps, if not also by Yaks Bend.

If we have 250 wvwers, and they have 350 and 300 respectively, we spread out over all the BGs and we are outnumbered in every one. If we focus on one map, we can at least be 166 vs whatever they bring there and dominate 1 map with a few left to defend what we haev in another map.

Or in the current situation we get pushed back to almost nothing on all the maps because we’re spread too thin.

haha, all green after all day being half red and half green – whether it’s intentional or not, yak is definitely helping tc win.

oooh big hit to the ego today for FA. I hope our wvw participation doesn’t disappear like it has in the past when this type of thing happened. We’ll see. Once we’re safely in 3rd place I hope we can rally up and take advantage of TC and Yak clawing at each other for 1st =).

p.s. Based on last week, TC is the stronger server between FA and TC. Poor strategy attacking the weaker of the 2 servers. Just ensuring they win in the long run. The benefit of a 3-way fight is supposed to be that the stronger server gets put in check by 2 enemy. Yak either thinks FA is stronger or just doesn’t want to go for 1st place? Baffles me.

Such bullkitten. The WVW currently is in a pitiful state, zerg wins and no skill involved essentially.

Not sure what server you’re on, but sounds like defensive siege isn’t used properly. 1 catapult behind door = no meleeing door and no rams can be built. Couple arrowcarts on the walls and a cat or treb in a place they can’t hit it with regular attacks means 4 people can stop an extremely large force unless they are super effective at flash-dropping and aiming siege. Yes they will eventually take the keep, but with good defensive siege, there should be plenty of time for reinforcements.

In the end the force with superior numbers has the advantage. And if both sides play smart of course they’ll win. That doesn’t make it a zerg. It makes it a large scale battle.

so… your idea of good pvp is where 5 people can beat 30? There is no way that works out where it makes sense. Even if the 30 weren’t running a zerg, your scenerios would backfire.

Maybe those 5 people take a tower because the other team isn’t running in a zerg. Well, guess what? If the other server has a grp fo 30 people and they all split into 5 man grps and take towers, you just got 1 and they got 6. You still lose even without a zerg running into you.

5<30 That’s just simple math and no game is going to be fun if 30 people can’t beat 5.

I don’t think I’ve seen worse strategy than what FA has displayed today. Flipping towers and keeps, leaving wooden forts behind and then cointinuing on to siege fortified stuff. They take 3 keeps to our 1… made our whole BL blue and then the map completely emptied of FA, no one left there and the doors werent even reinforced, yet.

No wonder they flipped the whole map in a matter of 20 minutes. If no one sticks around to stock supply and keep the map we’ll never hold anything long enough to get points from it.

ykyk.2740:

FA’s oceanic/Asian prime time is every bit as scary as CDs, TC is nearly wiped off the map entirely at this point.

That’s the 2nd all nighter I’ve pulled, and been up until 3am previous nights. I’m a NA central time prime time person but this match is so close I can’t make myself logoff.

We took the 3 keeps in TC because they remaining TC seemed to have blinders on in EB and weren’t checking their BL until it was too late. They took them back easily enough.

Regrets of Sini.6083:

I am disappointed, but not surprised that nightcaping will be ultimate decided of this matchup.

It’s not likely to be decided that way. We have a lot of primetime players who have pulled all nighters – this is not an off-peak player thing like a huge asia guild taking undefended keeps. It’s easy to find excuses. It’s just as easy to say “I am disappointed, but not surprised that TC superior WvW population will ultimately decide this matchup rather than straight tactics, strategy, and skill.” But, the fact is TC is not winning because of that. They’re winning because they have 1-2 guys guarding their supply camps and reinforcements always close enough to get there to flip the camp or defend it. Numbers help, but a mindless zerg would have been stomped off the map and in 3rd place by now.

It’s much more likely to be “decided” by the fact that TC can take all those keeps and get them upgraded before primetime hits, making them hard targets. High numbers of players favor the defending when it’s close in pop. You can bomb siege with sheer numbers, making capping nearly impossible. Bumrush a supply camp and run it back to a keep to set up more defensive siege which cannot be easily removed.

If Yaks focuses on FA when we’re not in first it’s just them rolling over and admitting they have no chance at 1st. But that’s only true if you only want 2nd place. If you go for 1st, you push them down and the gap closes for everyone.

It only makes sense for TC to push harder on the 2nd place person. It encourages Yaks to hit FA and solidifies their lead. We just have to see how gullible the masses are.

except it’s not really a free for all. They’ve been losing ground – there’s softer targets in eb and probably TC border (it’s been green so long i’m suprpised no one has at least tried to ninja a keep there).

Hitting the first place people 2 on 1 only makes sense. So when TC and Yaks were hitting us while we were in the lead it was only good strategy. But why the heck is Yak still trying to take our borderlands when TC is pulling ahead? If it was a soft target that would make sense, but you’ve been banging your head on it for a couple hours now. It’s not good strategy from any standpoint.

I swore I wouldn’t stay up til 5am this time… but we were in the lead and at ~100 delta and I couldn’t help but stick around for the wvw-wide rally. GJ FA.

Dacutter

p.s. if you eat lots and lots and lots of fiber, do you start dumping siege like some commanders I’ve seen?

Unlikely I’d be a huge help in zerg pvp. I found small skirmishes where we could focus fire I was pretty helpful, giving venoms to people and being generally too tough for just one guy to focus down.

In a zerg venomshare’s radius is too small, and the majority of your healing comes from just exiting battle or the self heals. Being able to burst someone down and kill them is way more useful than a few little heals or medeocre damage boost. You remove that person’s damage, pre-healing anything they would have done.

Spin to win with some crit behind it gives it enough damage to actually down people.

actually biggest problem was no burst whatsoever. I gave up making this fun in wvw. I went 10/30/0/15/15 and i like it. I still have over 19k hp, and the burst potential is back up where I can kill people again with hidden killer, and fury, plus 15-20 stacks of might from signets. crit line traits are just so awesome, I don’t think I’ll ever have a build with less than 30 in crit again.

I think this gives me enough survivability – I just lose group healing… having to spend 30 pts in a trait line that is, otherwise pretty useless for meager grp healing is pretty lame.

Ya biggest problem is I just seem to do about 1/6th the dmg I did and I’m only 2x as good at taking hits. If that makes sense. I’m still playing with traits – I just found out shadow refuge stacks me up to 6-8 might by itself, then I get 2 for each C&D, 2 for venoms. I am running 12-14 might most fights – but my dmg output is still soso.

+healing is soso. It’s useful in dungeons where your healing over time can add up to a lot, but in wvw getting 15 more hp per hit from malice, and an extra 50-60 hp from venom steal isn’t going to keep you alive when you lose 10k health in 2 seconds.

I think stealth is my only option for withstanding a long fight. It’s the only way I can hope to survive long enough for my healing to kick in and be useful… guess I’m doing most of my damage with auto attack =/.

i guess i am power/vit on everything except accessories which you can’t find that for. I put vit on those, but I’m thinking you’re right – should probably go tough (and get some precision in the bargain, instead of crit dmg which is completely useless without crit).