Guild Wars 2

Zagerus.8675:

Hey guys, just thought I’d post a few builds that I’ve come across and ran over the last few months, along with a few perks for each build. All of them incorporate ideas absorbed from other players. Consumables are down to preference of course but I stick with rare veggie pizzas for most things.

Furious Burster
- Good survivability in various scenarios/dungeons
- Decent vulnerability stacks
- Takes advantage of using burst skills
- Combines condi/physical damage well

WvW/Living World Zerg Supporter
-Excellent survivability and ally support
-High boon duration/decent might stacks
-Great for pugging harder dungeon paths like Aetherpath

The PvP version of this build is identical trait wise and has the Celestial Amulet. I love using this in tPvP.

Hotjoin Decapper
-Offers great mobility to consistently gank unsuspecting targets then run away
-Rampage allows for CC/knocking off of points in 1v1’s
-Rampage+Frenzy

Pretty much it, feel free to share your experience and builds as well!

The second one looks a lot like my 80k build. Very fun to use, although it has a weakness to direct burst.

Redesigning is not nessecary IMO, although the class could use a little more depth.

The glaring issues that the adrenaline decay left us with are of a higher priority though. Seriously, anybody that thinks the decay out of combat is a ‘fix’ must be kidding themselves.

-Berserker’s Power/Heightened Focus got nerfed hard, where they already weren’t that strong, and don’t even apply to burst skills anymore.
-Thrill of the Kill, which was incredibly weak to begin with, is now probably the most useless trait ingame.
-Building adrenaline by using Inspiring Shouts, Healing Surge, Signet of Fury (mind you, all underused traits/skills in the first place) or w/e when you anticipate getting into battle is kittened now, as you will instantly start losing it again, and it does not take long to lose it all.

There is more, but these issues are already so stupidly forseeable, that I can not wrap my head around the fact that they even exist.

Carighan.6758:

Again, how is it a rune-balance issue if classes have unbalanced access to interrupts and confusion?

Yes, we know Engineers can go wild with these runes. Weird how Rangers don’t, isn’kitten

(edit)
And ofc, why nerf an already weak runeset (for anything but small-scale) further? Seems rather unjustified, what makes your smallscale roaming so much more important than largescale balance or PvE?

Would you rather nerf the professions that can abuse these runes, hurting other builds of theirs in the process?

Never said small-scale roaming is more important then anything. But, as it is in that part of the game where these runes cause imbalance, it is used in this argument.

You could make Perplexity twice as strong as it is now and it still wouldn’t matter in largescale. Entirely different issue.

Perplexity is definitely not weak, but the truth is in the eye of the beholder. Many runesets work in certain situations, and don’t in others. That’s no reason at all to call the runeset weak. Yet, if the runeset works too well in it’s intended use, it should get nerfed.

These skills all need buffs, and this would be the way to do it.

Buffing Rampage skills damage by 100% would be insane though. Rampage already deals great damage. Instead, slightly buff the damage and the effects, and along with the cooldown reduction, it would be great.

A 4 condi clear+~305HP per second heal would be crazy too. It would make Mending rather mandatory. Keep it at 3 condi’s, and reduce the healing a bit to let HS keep it’s place amongst our healing skills.

Bull’s Rush, apart from obvious bugs, is actually a pretty good skill as is. Making it a 3 sec knockdown would be over the top IMO. Just increasing the damage by 100% is fine. Maybe increase the range to 1200.

I like the ideas a lot. Would fix many things all in one.

coglin.1867:

cheese.4739:

Two fun arguments used by defenders of plex:
- small scale roaming doesn’t matter
- conditions are utterly useless in big groups

Do you have evidence otherwise?

I roam on a small scale. Thus it matters.

They are not useless in big groups either, but they tend to overload on condition clears to make them invisible. Drop the clears, and conditions would completely take over. The problem here is that condition clears tend to extend to allies, which is why they are currently a non-issue in large scale battles.

coglin.1867:

cheese.4739:

So why try to justify use of a condition-based spec? Obviously it can’t be used for zerging, and there’s no point in running it for the pointless and unimportant small-scale roaming!

I can only speak for myself, but I am not “justifying” anything. Even in battles in which conditions matter, perplexity runes are not over powered. In my opinion, they are average. The only ones complaining about them, in my opinion, are those who are going to die to a condition build, regardless of the ruins i use.

Try me.

coglin.1867:

cheese.4739:

If it gets nerfed or completely reworked, it shouldn’t affect those who ran it previously – they should obviously be able to just shrug their shoulders and get on with the game, safe in the knowledge that their non-zerg build has exactly the same effect on their world’s WvW performance as it used to.

I agree. The thing is, if your aware that players will be capable of doing so, then your obviously aware that the runes are fine, and all you are arguing for, is a limitation in diversity, simply because you find confusion annoying, not because you actually feel it is too strong. Otherwise, you would never have said such a thing.

The thing is, that capable condi players will be able to shrug it off, while perplexity spamming cheese lovers won’t.

Actually, capable condi players already don’t play perplexity due to how simple and unchallenging things become.

Had #2 also, funny running around like superman.

Hambow, Axebow and swordbow all work.

Bow ftw.

Try something funny;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAseRjMdUGaXImdwJaAmgCbnPBnT7AYA09EA-TVSEwAAeAADOCAaVCW4QAsU53K1f4oPA2+DOOBABAOAY4hHe4hHuUAMpMC-w

Absolutely destroys people.

More balanced is something like this;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQNAseRjMdUGaXImdwJaAmgCdnPBfw10OA09EA-TlCEwARVqQ4IAsVJohDBATlVsU/pj+AAPAgY7P84EAEA4AghHe4hHe4SBwkyI-w

Bit more toughness, defensive traiting and more power at the expense of quickness and crit chance/damage. If you insist on using double swords, which, from an aesthetic point of view I can totally understand, swap out Dogged March for Missile Deflection. Reflect OP, yo.

witcher.3197:

dominik.9721:

Play 04406 gs longbow with cele amu and geomancy /doom sigill. Its the only gs build which is viable in pvp atm

0 in strength and 4 in arms is more of a WvW thing afaik. PvP one is 4 in strength 0 in arms.

Although, in PvP, you would be able to stack a lot of might when cleaving.

dominik.9721:

Comeon guys it’s not that easy to evade you make beliefe of.
Ofc a S/D thief in a dueling arena giggles when he sees this animation but this shouldn’t be the benchmark.
To notice a pindown in a tpvp match is quite hard and I guess good reactions should get rewarded.

So I’m against a buff, allthough I understand your points.

Completely agree.

Although, arguably, Anet overnerfed this skill by inserting both the casttime increase and the animation at the same time. Proper nerfing would have been one of these, or perhaps a 1/2 second casttime and see if the skill was ok then. I personally don’t think Pin Down would be OP if the casttime would be 1/2 second.

Ralkuth.1456:

Let him be guys, he’s just sharing the build that works for him.

Don’t get me wrong, I did not intend to insult. Takes some courage to actually post a build here.

He asked for my thoughts, and I think the build can actually improve a bit. Though in general, it is not very suited for PvP imo.

End of the day, I hardly PvP anymore, unless it’s trying out some trolly spec in hotjoin.

Black Teagan.9215:

Only if your whole build and playstyle is around that one skill, apart from that it’s very powerful in hotjoin and dangerous to yourself.

Fixed.

Seriously though, GS has good cleave, off course. But cleaving with HB means you are standing still and thus get cleaved/bursted yourself. It has a very niche spot in PvP IMO, a niche better filled by other classes.

Drizzy.1268:

He asked for roaming stuff.
Doom sigil ok, but celestial and geomancy on lb for wvw, really?

All aboard the easy application of 6 seconds of poison train.

Not useful in WvW, but hey, if the top twitchers use it in PvP…

killahmayne.9518:

Longbow Rifle Warrior!!!!

or

Hammer/Mace Warrior

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJAUTjMdUGanHuewJigkgC9onBlwpAQZVU6p+BA-TlCFwAoV/p0+Dm1E4XJIgHAggLAgjDBgVlfZ0Bs4IAQGA9xA-w

OP if rifle applied bleeds.

dominik.9721:

Yes a warrior with 18 stacks of might and fury deals way higher dps than a guardian who has nearly no acces to might. At the same way warrors dps is even stronger than thief dps.
If you would play at least a bit ambitinous pve you wouldnt need a proof.
Its petty clear.

Thats the reason why warriors dps is weak in groups compared to other classes because EVERYONE has 25 stacks of might there.

Well I am not claiming things I don’t know enough about. I do not play PvE as it bores the kitten out of me, but I do see you making claim after claim about warriors being second in solo play.

Question, how does the solo warrior stack might?

akaCryptic.2389:

Sigil of Rage instead of Sigil of Fire – for superior 100b combo
Endure Pain over Berserkers Stance – I do swap them often depending on my enemy
Sure Footed over Dogged March – Lemongrass Poulty + Cleansing Ire + Berserkers Stance are way enough against those condis
Vigorous Focus over Warriors Spirit – I’ve been told 25% speed gets written over by 33% swiftness. If this is the case WS is not a viable trait but I’m not 100% sure…
For food I’d prefer other things but theyre all expensive xD so anything will do I guess

You are not entirely correct here.

Rage is not per se a superior HB, as HB with Air/Fire will have incredible increased damage when both sigils proc (and they will with such high crit chance). Rage might speed things up, but your opponent can still stunbreak. Chances are, Air/Fire have already procced before then without quickness. Thus, the damage is similar, whereas Air/Fire has better sustained DPS.

EP>BS on this build, I completely agree. It is already quite strong against condi’s thanks to reliable cleansing with longbow, whereas it has a glaring weakness to direct damage (0 blocks, only 1 blind and 1 evade, no hard CC). However, condi’s in WvW are insane, so one might do best taking all stances. Especially since Bull’s is broken.

You take dogged march to ensure escapability. 40+33 is a good decrease on mobility impairing condi’s, whereas 40% isn’t.

33% from swiftness does overwrite 25% from WS. This does not make WS a bad trait at all though. You still get the 25% at all times, making you travel faster. It is immune to boon stealing. Though, obviously, in combat, you would not need it if you go Pack runes+SoR.

Which brings me to runes of Hoelbrak, which I consider to be far superior on this build. Not only do you get another -20% on condi’s, you also get 30% might duration. 20 seconds of might will now be 26, which is in fact very important, as it allows you to maintain 6 stacks each from sigil of battle and longbow 3, for instance.

On a sidenote, I in fact do support 0/4/6/0/4 instead of 4/0/6/0/4, because it also nets you added Fury uptime. -20% cooldown on GS is huge, as it increases both mobility and Whirlwind uptime, which is where most GS damage comes from. Might on crit would then synergize very well with Hoelbrak. And your GS burst gets ~75% crit chance?

Silv.9207:

Then, use that F*** skills and don’t say that 100B is a bad skill in spvp.

It is awful in PvP.

Because might and fury are all that matters when it comes to DPS?

Anyway, where is the proof? You are just assuming warrior is second best, where they might be lower. Or higher.

0 condi cleanse apart from generosity, which is only 1 every 10-15 seconds… Anything condi will eat right through you.

Also, I don’t understand why dolyak… You will generally be eating a lot of damage, so offensive runes would work better then a little regen.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJAURjMdUFaZIehwJagqgC9iHANwpsWdPEExOA-TpBFwACeAAtPCALOEAt2foaZAAXAAA

This would allow better condi cleanse through GS burst and swapping weapons. Leg Specialist does not add enough on this build to matter IMO, as you don’t use it to land a burst (like with Axe or Hammer). And in PvP, if your opponent wants to get close, he will.

I’d say the biggest problem is people will either dodge or stunbreak your stun, which will decrease your DPS to very low levels. This is why Hambow is so good. Your opponent is forced to stand in your longbow burst, which keeps up DPS at all times. You also stack might like crazy on hambow. This build stacks maybe 4 might aside from SoR?

No crit chance, no crit damageaside from traits, no conditions, Signet of Might is incredibly situational and thus best not taken… Really the only thing this build offers is mobility, but then, any GS build offers that.

IMO HammerGS is a great spec, but not for PvP.

Is warrior the second strongest solo class? I don’t think so.

I liked it. Mace Shield is still alive!

I’ll probably have a duel or two on MaceShGS in my next one too.

I… don’t know how to react.

Swap out MH sword for Axe, and sigil of geo for energy, and you have a great build.

Constantly talking about other classes gets you nowhere. Warrior was perfectly fine, even a little underpowered DPS wise, before the nerf. There simply isn’t a reason not to revert it.

Try to fix other classes in topics that focus on, well, other classes.

Those 5% damage nerfs did further damage warriors that like to do content solo, where banners often don’t even matter enough to slot one.

Who does speedruns?

The bottom two towers on the borderlands probably gave me the best times in WvW.

Bottom left because you can arm it to the teeth with siege, then start trebbing bay to get the enemy zerg to come after you, then defending the tower for hours on end with like 4 guys.

Bottom right because the enemy often trebs it from hills until all walls are down, then defending it with a few AC’s and just a couple guys fighting off the waves of enemies that just don’t stop coming.

Had a couple good 5vZergs with my old guild too.

Junkpile.7439:

Good player vs bad player

So true.

Also, Mesmer > MaceShGS Warrior.
Medi Guard > Power Warrior.

Chaith.8256:

Proposed: Gadgeteer: Gadgets grant additional powerful effects.

• Personal Battering Ram – Hit up to 5 enemies, removing stability from those affected.
• Utility Goggles – Prevents conditions from being applied for 5 seconds. (No longer grants immunity to blind for 10 seconds)

These two seem vastly overpowered. An engineer that has a guarantueed AoE stability removal? No thank you.

Just making it AoE makes this skill quite strong, can compare it to something like a warrior’s stomp (no stun break but only 25 sec cooldown and a very quick casttime).

Utility goggles basically being a 5 second Berserker Stance with Fury, a stunbreaker, 10 stacks of vulnerability and reveal skill all in one? No thank you.

Maybe give it an immunity to blind and poison?

I guess Anet not putting Perplexity into sPvP is balancing for their target audience then.

Too bad WvW players are not the target audience.

I don’t think one has to play perfectly or even ‘good’ to post a vid. The editing was good, the music was pleasant, I liked it.

There are already enough vids out there of warriors that play near perfect.

I think he meant 5% increase when under the effects of might, like Strength runes.

Yeah, these need a lot of balancing.

The Sharp Blade trait is so OP I can’t even… Condition warriors need zero love, it is already the unsurpassed warrior spec in 1v1 capability.

The 20% increase damage on stance is also insane. Seriously. We can trait to have like 40 seconds of stances a minute… Thats a ~13% overall damage increase…

The last suggestion for Discipline is overpowered as well. AoE knockdown if I have stability on me while bursting? Hambow says hi.

It’s good fo you to try and help warrior as a whole, but suggesting such things will only make people QQ and hate warriors.

Refreshing to have somebody take criticism the way it is meant.

I’ve played hammer GS since launch, my favorite spec to this day. This is what I have been running lately;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJAQJASRjMdUGaXIWhQKagqgC9iHAPg6eoxj9UbAA-TlCEAB7eBAY4BAElyrtUCykSEWU/RijAQb6CA4QAEz+DBAOAY4hHe4hHuUALpMC-w

Builds up to around 10 might stacks (6 from sigil, 2 from runes and another 2 from GM minor trait in Discipline) which can be maintained by frequently swapping. Along with all stacks, you will be peaking at ~3100 power.

Brawler’s Recovery over 2 points in strength (Greater Fortitude) as I value the trait more then 2k HP, and the might from the minor trait offsets the loss in power somewhat.

Impact+Merciless Hammer=30% flat damage increase on your burst rotation, which should be critting with sigil of Intelligence. Anything glass will die to a Hammer stun rotation.

40% crit chance is a little higher then what I used to run, but I can’t go back to SoR instead of Rampage, and the loss of Fury is felt.

Carighan.6758:

That’s entirely normal to me.
Hell, I’d say a game is broken if you can pick a class and yet despite that, your skill is the only thing which matters. That means the class is 100% meaningless. It very very much should have an effect, and very very much should push you to play together with others to cover up your weaknesses.

Fixed.

Just because you are used to MMO’s working in a certain way does not mean GW2 should fall into the abyss of dullness with them.

The meaning of MMO is not that you have to team up with other people, but that other people play the same game as you in the same world you do. In fact, why is small scale WvW encouraged by Anet (small objectives, Siege Defense, etc.) if not to account for this part of the game by balancing as well?

I would reverse your statement and say that a game, no better yet, GW2 would be broken if despite skill, a player could defeat another player solely based on which class one chose. GW2 has been trying to break through this stigma since launch.

Now, I am going to contradict myself here by saying that off course, one can also build to counter another build, vastly reducing the amount of skill needed to fight the players you ‘hardcounter’. However, in roaming, one must account for all builds one is likely to encounter. This is where part of the imbalance of the perplexity runes comes from. You can simply equip this and lift your condition spec over the top, being able to best every other roaming spec out there.

Another reason for Perplexity being so stupid is the fact that it is so easy to use. 3 stacks of confusion without lifting a finger, and for the 5 stacks you only need to interrupt, which is ridiculously easy in this game to pull off for pretty much any class.

If one combines this with lots of condition specs already being easy to use, and confusion arguably being the strongest condition ingame (burning might do more damage but has less duration and less panic-effect, and I’m not talking about Fear), Perplexity allows for a serious imbalance.

Koroshi made a few vids where he tried the perplexity runes and explained why they are so incredibly broken.

But the same condition lovers always hijack these threads saying how small scale WvW is not important and there should be no balance to this part of the game. Apparently, those who claim that others try to make arguments by saying they represent a wider group of people, represent a wider group of people themselves on the basis of which they know that small scale roaming is done by so few that it should not deserve balance.

/end sarcasm

I would actually go further then this and estimate that small scale WvW is done more frequently then large scale. Especially by those who favor WvW over the other game modes.

The ‘get imbalanced or die’ attitude is pathetic.

At least now they are admitting their responses are stupid.

Berserker gear. This is the optimum gear for all PvE content. Learn how to dodge stuff. Even Dungeons, which may seem hard right now, are actually quite easy when you learn how to dodge the important stuff. Also, if you don’t take zerk, you are crippling your party a little bit.

If you can not manage to survive in this gear just yet, take a little knight’s gear (Toughness>Power=Precision).

Until you have the nessecary means to get what you want, buy lvl 80 rares off the tp.

To get the (exotic) gear you want, there are a couple ways. You can buy it off the tp, but zerker exo gear costs like 5g buy order a piece. Another way is to run dungeons. The easiest dungeon there is to run and get zerker gear from is CoF (Citadel of Flame) imo.
If you play WvW, you get badges of honor, which you can use to buy gear with as well (along with a little gold). However, it takes quite a few badges, and you should not venture into WvW until you get a little more familiar with your warrior. Once you do, just search through the topics here to find roaming vids, or just youtube zerg vids.

If you do dungeon runs, make sure to bring Banner of Discipline unless another warrior brings it. Otherwise, take Banner of Strength. Take Endure Pain if you need the panic button. Swap out defensive utilities for offensive ones (For Great Justice, Signet of Fury) when you get more comfortable.

As for PvP, Hambow is the most popular warrior build and for good reason. Somebody posted a very nice hambow tips and tricks vid a few days ago, it should still be on the first pages of the forum here.

If you are facing a condi heavy pack of roamers in your current match-up, try Balanced Stance+Berserker Stance+Signet of Stamina. SoS is the middle ground between Endure Pain and Berserker Stance, as it allows you to dodge more direct damage (condi’s too off course) but also gets you the full condi cleanse.

I agree with Burr that Mace shield already gives you a lot of direct damage mitigation, along with the already high toughness on this build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fJEQNApeRjMdUGaVIGewJaAlgCdHcBh+x2OAUmFjOA-T1CCABGqPILlBkpEkhjAQkq/4whAAgHAgWK9qTDzFnAgc2fIAACwNbz28mBMchLchLchTKAmUGB-w

This is what I’ve been using, works like a charm.

I’d get Melandru runes if I would play it more often though, probably.

Shadowpass already fixed a lot of issues..

Some additions.

Why are you using double bloodlust? Complete waste. Hydromancy, Battle, Force, Air, Fire, they are all better options to replace one of the bl sigils with. And there are more.

Also, double Energy Sigil will be a waste after you take Fast Hands. This trait is the most mandatory trait in GW2, it defines warrior more then adrenaline does.

I don’t get why you would want to go this defensive on GS+AxeSh. This is a very offensive weapon set. You will hit like a wet noodle with only 173% crit damage, average crit chance with low fury uptime and lowish power, and you don’t bring any group utility to the table other then cleansing.

Get a hammer or a longbow instead of Axe if you want to shout at people

By the way, if you want to run an offensive AxeSh but are not comfortable running full zerk, try running knight’s+zerk. ~200% crit damage is decent enough and allows for ~3k armor.

Narkodx.1472:

My problem with this thread is the assumption that Warrior is “broken” in PvE

The only thing that is “broken” in PvE is the condition cap and the support options of a Necromancer

Bringing the warrior from 6th? DPS to 4th? DPS or whatever the hell it is does not seem like a priority AT ALL

Buffing OH Axe and the Leap skills surely seem like better avenues to explore with minimal consequences on the overall game balance

I’m not convinced that easy to land and hard hitting skills like HB should EVER get buffed – Nor do I understand how the 5% nerf should be undone by a 25% buff

Berserkers Power works as intended IMO

Warrior is in a great place in every facet of this game – can we help out our Necromancers in PvE?

This completely illustrates what I said earlier, and there is a lot of misinformation in this post too.

dominik.9721:

Nobody would complain about buffing Greatsword dps in PvP or WvW but this thread is only about PvE and that’s the last gamemode where warrior needs increased dps imo.

You base that solely on the presumption that warriors intended use in PvE is to buff the other player’s damage.

So let me ask you, why is a Guardian able to outdamage a warrior, if his intended use is to be a support class? Nay, Guardian is supposed to be the support counterpart heavy armor class…

Elementalists get insane buffing options in Might and Fury, along with groupwide defensive support as well. Then they bring a boatload of combo fields and finishers to keep it up during fights. Why do they outdamage warriors?

Thing is, warrior actually is better off in PvE then in the other game modes. However, that just goes to show the current state of the warrior.

Miku, it comes down to this. Due to an insane wave of warrior QQ after they got from complete garbage to decent in PvP, so many uncalled for nerfs were poorly implemented (as the spec that turned the tables was hardly touched) that all area’s of the game are influenced by it.

However, that change from garbage to decent has made people so incredibly afraid of warriors in general, that instead of trying to learn something about the class, they rather say warriors are easy to play and ridiculously OP.

It is this mentality that you see coming up in any post that tries to make a point about buffing warriors.

Nobody would say HB and WW needed a 5% damage nerf, nor for SoR to have it’s durations reduced. This is just something they threw at the masses to calm them down, which it did somewhat.

It is just simply not the time yet to try and balance the warrior.

I’d say just do it and see where it goes?

DejaVu.9825:

Adrenaline is good as it is. Finally after 1 year I have to “engage” lightly when I use warrior.

What?

Again, such a relaxing vid. Great music again!

The fight against the engie and thief in which the warrior jumped in really showed great skill with hammer GS.

That last fight was incredible. Not only the engie you managed to stomp just 1111111111’d, but look at the charr guardian. I think somebody let their grandma play again…

EotM should be excluded. Also, I would like to see something implemented that you are only rewarded a badge (or more badges) for a kill if you have done significant damage to that target (both before or after downing it).

Right, warrior is kind of about melee. Even our best ranged weapon is in fact best used in melee range.

Have fun with your new pick!

ofLegends.9853:

Just feels boring AF. I’ve looked around the forums and read the guides, and compared to mesmer, which has 1,092,872,198 guides stuffed with information and different builds, “use the weapon you like” etc., and then with warrior it’s like “well if you want to DPS in a group just do this berserker build, use greatsword, etc.” (I’m paraphrasing). GS is not fun to use, and after comparing the warrior guides with that super long mesmer one I was reading, I feel like they’re not very versatile at all, and you can’t truly play the way you want to and still be viable in a group.

There are indeed many ‘tricks’ to playing mesmer, so if that’s your thing, go for it. I actually started this game out with a mesmer, only to switch to warrior the same day and never look back.

But let me ask you, how many truly different builds does mesmer have for any game-mode, that’s viable?

People tell you to use GS (or Axe/Mace) in PvE because those two sets are the best weapons to use in PvE. This does not mean you can not find another somewhat viable set, it will just be less good. The same goes for mesmer, and they have arguably less viable builds then a warrior.

I do feel that warrior takes less reading up on guides to be able to play. Trust me though, if you play it long enough, there are a lot of details you can master to become truly good at playing one (not talking PvE, because that bores the kitten out of me).

I’ve recently fallen to the dark side. Made me a might stacking celestial P/D thief with D/P secondary and a few twists. I find it quite relaxing, actually. It feels kind of like playing PvE, but against real players.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAqY4alsMp7plOx8J0PNhMRxdOkC3g3bRY8haFAA-T1SDABM8AAeT9n20CMiOgKODAdp8DENDLoEM59HG4gAAgJoAAHAM8wDP8wJFAELjA-w

Start in D/P, interrupt with skill 4 to put 5 stacks of confusion, auto-attack for some poison, go into stealth and switch to P/D (5 stacks of might already). You go up to 10+ stacks and stay there, getting your power up to 2400+ (2500 on D/P) with stacks and condi to 1500+.

Fun might stacking combo; Black powder > Blinding Powder (blast finisher gives you and surrounding allies 7 seconds of stealth) > Heartseeker for a total of 10 seconds of stealth. I tested it, and you start out with 2 might stacks, but gain 2 more every time one of the durations runs out (so after four seconds you are at 4 stacks, and after another 3 seconds you get another 2, totalling at 6 might stacks). If you start out this way, then switch to P/D you have 9 stacks of might already.

The differences between celestial and dire made me go for celestial. You get ~250 less toughness and vitality, but gain a lot of power, ~30% crit chance, ~30% crit damage, and a chunk of healing power (you regen 365 HP/sec in stealth).
Damage wise, Dire gear will not outdamage celestial sneak attack until the fourth tick of the bleeds. This means that celestial gets more immediate damage through the higher direct damage, and, if your opponent cleanses before the fourth tick, more damage overall. In outnumbered fighting, where opponents get more condi cleansing, this helps.
If your opponent does not cleanse, Dire outdamages Celestial by 10% after the sixth tick is done.

P/D remains ridiculous.