Guild Wars 2

I use Lyssa in spvp but haven’t used them in wvw yet. I typically play s/d with d/d or sometimes s/p, d/p. I am still using ruby orbs but have a set of trav runes I want to slot. I would really like having the condi removal with lyssa though so I could use d/p and s/p without worrying too much about cleanse.
I’m probably going to eventually get a set with Lyssa runes as well. I wish swapping runes was less costly than it is. I run a mix of zerk and soldiers like wish outlined in his ‘building a better d/d’ thread and I love that mixture.
Tough decision!

Hello! I ran a very similar s/p build for the last few weeks. The 30 in trickery is so much fun to run. I haven’t tried it with d/p yet, but I ran nearly the exact same set up as this with s/p as main weapon. I took Withdraw, Shadow Step, Sig of Agility/Inf Sig, Shadow Refuge. I don’t have Lyssa runes so I ran s/p over d/p and sig of agility. I’ll have to give this a shot with d/p as primary weapon!

I did exactly what you do for camp flipping and I found this build with s/p and those utils swapped in is my fastest camp capture time.

Thanks for sharing

I’ve purchased a set of these for wvw but haven’t made the switch yet. I’m excited to run without sig of shadows, but I usually just swap it out prior to combat anyway. I guess it will be one less thing to worry about if I get ambushed. The boon/condi duration boost is rather neat for when I run s/d, but I think I’ve already pushed the daze duration up as far as I can with a sigil of paralyzation. I’m not really sure how that calculates.

In addition to what I just wrote: I play the s/d build differently in WvW than I would in spvp due to tactical strike having it’s full daze duration. In spvp, I play with a more evade style, such as jumper’s build. In wvw, I find that you benefit from also using the CnD→Tact Strike combo, so I run the typical 10/30/30 set up for this as opposed to the 30 Acro double s/d Signet of Agility build

Hello I copied my post from the other s/d thread:

I ran s/d d/p combo in WvW for a very long time. I’ve recently switched to either s/p d/p like Incurafy or sometimes I use s/d d/d.

I run with the gear set up that wish outlined in his ‘building a better d/d’ thread and I love it! It’s an optimized mix of zerk/soldiers.

I found that d/p and s/d pair extremely well together, especially considering that tactical strike doesn’t have it’s daze duration reduced in wvw. This means that with a sigil of paralyzation on the sword you can match dazed and revealed very well. Between these two sets you have utility to deal with any number of situations. I run 10/30/30 with this setup. Like I said, since tactical strike has a higher daze duration, you actually benefit from CnD?Tact Strike and can use that in addition to #3 on the set. I run with DS: III, CS: III, VI, XI (or XII sometimes) and SA: IV, VI, XI.

For utils, I use Withdraw or Heal in Shadows depending, Shadow Step, Shadow Refuge, and either Blinding Powder or Sig of Agility. Basilisk as elite.

When I want to take a camp, I unequip the dagger offhand from sword and use s/p and switch to sig of malice and daggerstorm. If you pull right you can take the camp in around 30 seconds.

Hello I ran s/d d/p combo in WvW for a very long time. I’ve recently switched to either s/p d/p like Incurafy or sometimes I use s/d d/d.

I run with the gear set up that wish outlined in his ‘building a better d/d’ thread and I love it! It’s an optimized mix of zerk/soldiers.

I found that d/p and s/d pair extremely well together, especially considering that tactical strike doesn’t have it’s daze duration reduced in wvw. This means that with a sigil of paralyzation on the sword you can match dazed and revealed very well. Between these two sets you have utility to deal with any number of situations. I run 10/30/30 with this setup. Like I said, since tactical strike has a higher daze duration, you actually benefit from CnD→Tact Strike and can use that in addition to #3 on the set. I run with DS: III, CS: III, VI, XI (or XII sometimes) and SA: IV, VI, XI.

For utils, I use Withdraw or Heal in Shadows depending, Shadow Step, Shadow Refuge, and either Blinding Powder or Sig of Agility. Basilisk as elite.

When I want to take a camp, I unequip the dagger offhand from sword and use s/p and switch to sig of malice and daggerstorm. If you pull right you can take the camp in around 30 seconds.

Cheers!

I’m so disheartened from this match-up. It seems no matter what time I log on to try to roam and flip camps, I just can’t accomplish anything without running into at least 3+ people preventing me from completing any objective.

I know the purpose of the randomized matching, but this week just seems to have destroyed morale.

I’m not crazy about this match-up. While it’s fun to really work on being able to fight 1vX fights, it gets tiresome when that seems to be all that there is. Oh well, I just don’t think this can possibly be fun for CD either.

I haven’t seen many people from either side gloating/laughing/corpse jumping when I get zerg-stomped though, so that’s nice.

I love using shortbow offensively. If you can shotgun clusterbombs onto people’s faces you’re going to do insane damage. Try using Sleight of Hand and steal and clusterbomb. Anything that can immob/stun and if you are essentially on top of someone and bomb them, they are going to hurt- moreso if you practice detonating on them as well. I think of it as an additional melee weapon that I can also use from range.

I got one from killing Dredge about a month ago with only about 30% MF (not sure if that matters, don’t do much fractals.)

The real cost is getting the crafting to 500. The actual ascended recipes don’t really require much, but I dropped a ton of gold getting to 500.

I spent so much on ore/wood getting just Huntsman to 500, and I stocked up on a good bit ahead of time. I’m not sure how/if it’s expected for most people to be able to do this? Even if the prices drop a bit over time, it’s still going to be extremely costly. I had figured we would get more XP for the ascended refinements, but nope :o

Wow. That’s ridiculous. I can’t even really think of anything else to add… ha

I did the 5 Gambit on Deadeye with my Thief before being aware that Crowd Favorite was as silly as it was. You can still manage to do it with Squeamish instead, you just need to practice and get used to having lower damage.

My build involved Sleight of Hand, Infil Sig, Shadow Shot (both Infil Sig and Shadow Shot have 900 range), and Steal on 21 sec cool down. Thieves Guild helps a lot as do blind fields/pistol whip.

Geiir.7603:

10/30/0/0/30 S/P here. Works wonders in sPvP. The amount of dazes, interrupts, teleports and immobilizes are insane! Really control build with a ton of damage ^^

For PvE I run 25/30/0/0/15 S/P. works wonders too ^^

That’s what made me fall in love with it too! In WvW I found that people don’t really ever expect S/P anymore and don’t really have any idea how to deal with the non-stop daze, especially once I got down some methods to minimize the amount that I telegraphed pistol whips.

I now run 10/30/0/0/30 in WvW, PvE, and sPvP.

I use S/P and Shortbow, although I’m leaning towards removing shortbow. In sPvP I use Berserker, and in WvW I use nearly full berserker with some valk pieces thrown in. Definitely showed me that I was rusty on dodging and evasion (hadn’t played much in last three months) but once I got back into the swing of things I love the build.

So much daze! Biggest thing for me was learning to time my skillset evades with dodges in order to maximize evasion time.

For WvW, I can solo cap camps way faster than any condi or shadow arts build I previously used. It’s all about pulling and pistol whip.

The problem with relying on dyes for cash that is I get tired of spamming the forge. I wish we could just ‘save’ a recipe and make it without having to manually place the parts in the forge!

I never seem to get good dyes from the pvp ones either. All my rare dyes came from pve ones…

Having done both WvW and sPvP/tPvP I also wish there was a way to have my glory transfer over. I’ve already completely geared my thief for WvW but I would have had FAR more fun doing it with glory as I prefer PvP to PvE completely. Glory→Gold/gems would be ideal, but until then I guess I have to settle for dyes. The problem with that is I get tired of spamming the forge. I wish we could just ‘save’ a recipe and make it without having to manually place the parts in the forge! /lazy

Wow you know what, I didn’t notice this but it totally makes sense. I did tournies for like 5 hours on Sat. and since I was bunkering, I was barely getting many points per game but was relying on the 200 from wins. I noticed my rank bar didn’t move very much throughout the night despite us winning a good portion of games…

Thanks for pointing this out!

This happened all the time in gw1 with Hero Battles especially. Moreso when gw1 accounts became extremely cheap.. It is a bit unfortunate for people starting out to get placed against more experienced players but honestly if it gets anet some money to actually fund pvp then it’s probably a good thing :p

Kaon.7192:

Very nice list.

The only thing I would add to it would be the ability to make complete custom builds and allowing us to swap between them on demand when not in a match.

I miss this so much from gw1. It’s such a pain to keep swapping builds. Don’t know why the template system isn’t in place!

That was an excellent read.

Edit- You touched on what I think is one of the biggest issues with soloQ and that is hotjoin not being a representative preparation for tournie play. Your points about zerging should be stickied at the Tournie master. :P

I never used it until last week. I turn it on while playing my thief and find that it helps me be more mobile at a faster pace. It took some getting used but I like it.

I still leave it off when playing Guardian or Ele because I like to still see exactly where the AoE ‘bubble’ is, but with my thief I’ve definitely noticed it has improved my mobility speed.

JoopFOX.9510:

I lost with a low-ranked PUG against a 40+ glory ranked premade, and I instantly dropped from 60 to 55 %. And I have played over 150 ranked games. So yeah it fluctuates.

This was my experience all yesterday too- Three matches in a row against premades and I dropped 5% each time :/

I’d love a martial staff type weapon for thief!

mursie.3681:

I think solo que’ing entirely on a glass cannon thief is truly an inspirational move. For a class that relies heavily on your team to facilitate alot of what you do… I really find it enjoyable watching and waiting on pug allies to do…. anything really.

Routinely, as I play matches… i can’t help but hear that benny hill theme playing in the background.

Ha I’ve been doing this. I find that even though it’s absolutely devastating to my rating % it’s improving my ability as a thief since I have -no one- to rely on in 90% of my matches.

I only ever soloQ due to having a weird schedule and I was at 60% last night and after a few unsuccessful matches I’m down to 40%. I understand that if you lose you will drop in %, but this is becoming very disheartening. I really want to play to enjoy the game but it’s getting harder and harder and when you play a bunch of matches with people trying to zerg like hotjoin or having someone quit halfway through, and then LOSE what seems to be large percents, it’s really difficult to keep motivated.

I actually -want- to improve through soloQ until I can eventually stabilize myself enough to be on a team with a matching schedule, but this system is pushing me away. I guess the answer is just ‘suck it up’ and deal with it if you ever want anything other than hotjoin..

this would be amazing – As a gw1 player with pvp chars, I was very upset to find this feature missing in gw2.

I really enjoyed watching! That looks like it was really fun.

tagnut.8621:

How do you have to pve for wvw equipment??

You of course levelled 2 crafting professions as you levelled up right? Cause i’m sure that was worth around 3-4 levels of exp for me – that meant I hit 80 with a full set of exotic jewellry and weapons. I then used invader gear – yes back in the old days – as I’d saved up karma from just levelling. This i replaced with exotics and runes from the ah bought with gold from wvw as i gained it.

I didn’t pve for any of my gear – it really wasn’t hard to get and took no time at all.

I was exaggerating a bit with that. On my three level 80 chars I got most of my gear from karma and then did exactly what you did for other exotics. I should have been a bit more specific about why I enjoy the amulet/jewel system (and I recognize I’m in a minority with that!) I like being able to switch to a new build without having to buy new gear/runes. The tradeoff is, as others mentioned, a lack of diversity in stats and equipment, but I prefer switching to new builds and having them optimally runed/geared and that takes a whole new gold investment. I have plenty of gold from wvw and pve, so that’s not necessary the issue, but I play with people who really -only- like to wvw and when they want to try a completely new build they are faced with having to re-gear again. An example is a thief who wants to switch from power/crit to a carrion based build. While it’s not -insane- to have to get the gold again, if you want to do it quickly it does require some time investment as opposed to being able to merely switch amulets/jewels. I’m not complaining – I’m fine with how it is, but could understand the benefits from having the spvp stat system.

Are you saying you want the amulet/jewel system? I would totally love that as I spend most of my time in wvw/pvp but have to do pve to get equipment for wvw… I know people like using their pve gear in wvw though, so I’m sure most won’t go for it.

More importantly I’d love for pvp skill balances to roll over to wvw…

daydream.2938:

Its incredibly hard to have much over a 500 record solo Quing. its much easier if u play ele or bunker guardian, bc u can kinda carry w those. Not that other clases are not good. but a ele roamer or quality bunker makes a huge difference in solo Q.

I’ve noticed this too – I was doing soloQ on my thief and managed to sit at around 500, but decided to use my guardian more because it’s far more reliable when playing with a pug. Oh well, nature of the system I suppose.

Klinch.2964:

The PvE/WvW only guild I’m in is doing spvp to get the 10 laurels for monthly. Now that they’ve actually had some more incentive to play spvp, we are all having fun doing ranked matches.

Rating actually works pretty well, we are getting matched with other teams around our skill level. Matches have been pretty close most of the time!

That’s pretty cool that it seems to be working well for you. I’m not sure what’s up with my MMR, but I haven’t had a single close match in over a week. I’m curious , what is your win/loss record? Since doing soloQ mine is above 50% wins, but I’ve noticed really abyssmal matchmaking lately. I’m not sure what to think so I’m genuinely curious.

I felt like doing some hotjoin today instead of tournies (frustrated with soloq at the moment) and I must say this: for everyone complaining about lack of a ‘death match’ style format, do hotjoin on a Sat. afternoon. There is no sense of conquest whatsoever; zerg v zerg deathfest!

;/

chrisk.4320:

Are you gonna fix solo queue vs premade ?
That would be nice otherwise a leadeboard is useless

Yes please! Also fix that bug where queuing for a tPvP game queues you for both sides, ending up 4v5.

Ah I’ve been wondering why I’ve been in multiple 4v5 games.

I agree that something more interesting could be done, but I also don’t think a leap away is good on an auto-attack. If I’m training someone to death with bleed spam, I certainly don’t want to keep leaping out of range of my target.

I love the idea of P/P and hope it becomes a bit more competitive soon!

I was able to defeat a few in recent soloQ tournies on my thief. I run a p/d & shortbow build and stayed in the node with caltrops/poison field and mainly kept them poisoned and used the Healing Seed that I was able to steal. It was a long, boring fight and landing CnD to heal conditions was hard, but you can conveniently land it on the pet.

When I play P/D in tPvP I’m usually throwing down caltrops in a node so I don’t mind having some distance between my enemy while I kite them with auto attack until I either can reliably close distance for a CnD or I have a secondary target melee me and I can land a very easy CnD.

I don’t really use #3 that often, but I think one of the most common complaints I see about P/D is that people seem to have some initial difficulty landing CnD on opponents while still having to maintain kiting range.

I think Taril’s points are spot on. There are tons of passive increases, so if they chose to make it 10% instead of 5% the damage increase would possibly be way too much. Also, I think that since it impacts the already high damage of backstab/heartseeker it would have to remain as it is.

It’s hard to say how a hybrid would work out. In my pvp/wvw experience, I’ve found that I need to either be able to do enough damage to instantly shut people down or I need the durability/staying power of a full condi build.

I think that a hybrid, while in theory seems like it would be a good blend, would ultimately have difficulty fulfilling either role. I’ve entertained the idea in the past but I always end up going either 25/30/0/15/0 with S/P or S/D in WvW or 10/30/0/30/0.

When I do condi, it’s P/D and full Carrion gear in order to make the condition duration/damage worthwhile.

Blending gear types is a great idea, as I run the ‘standard’ mix of Soldier/Valk/Zerk on my thief, but I’m not sure of the advantages of trying to do everything on one build.

Also – since you were asking what eq sets to look for, let me clarify my post.

Zerk – Power/Prec/Crit Dmg. These scale very well in accessory slots as the Crit Dmg boost is huge. There’s lots of info in threads about the math behind it.

Soldier/Invader – Power/Vit/Tough.

There is essentially nothing you can’t do to help as a thief. You can effortlessly kill yaks/sentries and with some practice you can solo camps.

When running with a group/zerg you can also do huge damage and disruption, as well as take out priority targets such as those attacking your siege.

As far as my equipment, I run a mixture trying to approach what I use in PvP (Soldiers/Berserker). My typical build is 25/30/0/15/0 or 10/30/0/30/0. I run soldier’s backpack with valk jewel, soldier’s rings with zerk jewels, and rest accessories zerk. I run some soldier’s/invaders eq until I feel like I can survive enough, and then fill out the rest with zerker.

My survivability in fights doesn’t come from traits, as I don’t run any Shadow Arts. I rely on Acrobatics. My prime set is S/P or S/D, so there’s way more survivability in that set. You may want to consider trying it – perhaps go to a pvp hotjoin and mess around with the set a bit to see if it meets your playstyle.

If I’m using 25 in DA, I take Mug and Sundering Strikes/Combined Training. If I switch to D/D or D/P, I switch the second to Dagger Training. You definitely want to take Mug, the damage is too insane to pass up.
In Crit Strikes I always take Furious Retal, Practiced Tolerance, and Executioner.
In Acro I take Fleet Shadow if I’m using D/D or D/P. Otherwise I take either Power of Inertia (if using sig of malice or hide in shadows) or the one that gives Vigor on heal if I’m using Withdraw.

Using 30 in Acro instead of 25 in DA is a tradeoff and depends on how comfortable you are with surviving based on evades. Since I run S/x usually, I have Infiltrator’s Strike and I always have Shadow Step, so I’ve grown used to these for evasion.

Cool vids!

Also to SilverWF- not sure where in original post it said anything about viability in WvW. It mentioned holding points in PvP, which it seems able to very competently do.

I would also suggest WvW. If you don’t have any zergs running you can always hit yaks/sentries/camps. The karma is small but adds up if you do that until you can run with a group to hit towers/keeps.

I would be very into this. Please send me an invite. I run a very small guild and while we are happy and successful we are completely unable to do these bounties.

I have a thief, ele, and guard at 80 and do a lot of WvW so I can give you some info. from my experience. I mained ele for quite awhile but decided to switch to thief recently since hearing that the upcoming 3/26 change will contain character bound progress.

Thief is great for the playstyle that you described, as you can sit mid-zerg/front-zerg and use clusterbomb for some great damage. If you decide to play solo, thief is also fantastic for that as you can easily solo supply camps after some practice. The upcoming stealth fix shouldn’t influence your decision – it just means thieves can’t spam cloak and dagger to repeatedly stealth. This really won’t impact the playstyle you describe. None of my builds are going to be affected by the change if that gives you some perspective.

If you are into any sPvP, I’d recommend making a thief and checking out some builds so you can see if you would like the class before committing to it, but I must say that I like having both a thief and an ele for WvW. Hope this helps and sorry if it’s a bit unclear, I’m tired

I get a lot either when I do staff Ele or SB and S/P thief. I’m in the middle of group fights and cluster bombing/evading, and I notice I get tons of loot drops.

Also, I keep autotargetting off and just place clusterbombs in melee range to maximize the scatter. Switch targets as much as possible and skirmish downed players instead of just going in for the stomp to ensure you get tag status.

Hello – I have a rather different approach that I’ve been fine tuning the last few days. I still don’t have it 100% down, but figured I’d share anyway as it is an alternative to some of the strategies out there.

I do SB and S/P. I know S/P isn’t super popular anymore, but I find it very useful for camps. Scouts are your prime target, so I tend to pull them by opening with SB #4 for the poison field, and then cluster bombing a bit. I have been using Thieves Guild once I pull the Vets together, and bombing into that field. You’ll have most of the Vets dead at this point, so then move on to what’s left. I use S/P and focus on maintaining Black Powder if you are getting hit, or using Headshot to interrupt the Supervisor’s heals. I don’t spec into Shadow Arts (I probably should…) so I need to focus on dazing and blind.

I’m sure condition builds are more effective, I just like making S/P work!