Question: have you ever considered using Dagger/Pistol in your alternate weapon load-out?
You may not be able to wield it fluidly without initiative regeneration, but you can use it to maintain stealth when there are no targets to CnD off of.
I did find though that P/P will wreck shop on a D/P thief I was just messing around since I am P/D condi but when I swapped to P/P just to see how it works against it, I noticed it really throws them off and when they go in stealth you wait about 1-2 secs and pop your very own black powder shot and it totally jacks up their opening from stealth definitely the backstab misses rofl. Then when they try to stealth headshot. If your running a p/p build with high damage rolls this over. Caltrops on your position to help secure the kill.
I’ll have to caution against this recommendation. This may work well if you’re in a group against a lone D/P Thief, but it also makes you a sitting duck against more experienced D/P Thieves. Black Powder won’t protect you because good D/P Thieves are very familiar with its radius – they’ll stab you from outside the radius. You must depend on your allies to protect you when you go down.
Leave the P/P work to Phantasmal Duelists. I flee from any group that carries a burst Phantasm Mesmer.
PS: Be careful with Thieves guild as well; NPCs are good anchor points for unleashing a Dagger Storm.
If you use Dagger/Pistol and have the Fleet Shadow trait, you can alternate between stealth speed (you can stealth anytime with Dagger/Pistol) and dodge swiftness for virtually 100% swiftness.
In your post on reddit, I noticed that you mentioned switching back to full berserker gear. Are you still able to more or less perform the same role in zerg vs. zerg fighting that you have in this video due to your traits/utilities, or is it simply too risky with the further drop in toughness?
There has been no noticeable change in my survivability after dropping Toughness.
Umm why no shadow shot to close the gap? Its almost like your struggling to try and finish someone off because they are escaping and you heartseeker to catch up. I know your trying to land backstabs but you could maintain higher uptime if you just used shadow shot if they are melee then pop black powder.
Also precast steal black powder is good. You also have s/d as your other set but never use it infiltrator strike would save all the black powder heartseeker spam and allow you to kill some of these people much faster.
Its ok I guess I think alot of those kills came from people that haven’t faced d/p much in WvW
If Shadow Shot misses, the Blink does not execute. Heartseeker at least brings me closer to my target regardless of whether I miss or not. Not to mention that root.
I treat Shadow Shot as a last resort – to knock off that last 1% of health when I’m crippled and frozen.
I agree, I need to use Blinks and Black Powder together. I’m a bit too addicted to Blink Backstabs.
I normally use a lot more S/D – the video was intended to demonstrate D/P’s power.
Anyone see themselves participate in the video, or recognize any participants? If so, may I have an opinion on what it’s like fighting this build?
my personal favourite part is when the mesmer used decoy and you just pressed heartseeker and it automatically jumped to the actual mesmer when he popped out of stealth. no guessing required – just press 2.
also I guess you were fighting bads, since over in the thief forum they say you simple need to use CC/AoE a thief is dead. You need to fight some people with skill.
that damage is extremely low for a survival build.
/extreme sarcasm off
I was kind of hoping to see myself in that video, no doubt I would of died like all those JQ guys but it might of help me understand what I’m doing wrong against thieves. Tbh I’m not sure what anyone can do against that build. How many times have you lost a 1v1? or even a 1v2?
I never lose 1v1.
(Note that certain Phantasm Mesmers do not count as a ‘single-opponent’)
Heard from a friend from a friend from a friend that WvW participation rate, along with how ‘close’ the scores are between the three servers will affect rankings/tiers.
Slight change to build; just mixed in a few Berserker pieces with for more lethality. I concluded that most of my survivability comes from my traits and abilities, rather than my stats.
Now I have just enough Toughness to survive surprise butt-sex, and enough lethality to deliver surprise butt-sex.
Please do not use mos.millenium as a source for any further match-up discussion. They are still broadcasting under the presumption that ratings have been reset under the original glicko system.
It is probable that AreaNet plans to incorporate WvW population activity alongside performance to determine tier rankings. This will effectively secure SoR, SoS and JQ in Tier 1 for the next match-up, due to how well matched up we are.
Honestly I think something is screwed up on JQ right now.
Since the reset I’ve been sitting in queue for literally 1 1/2 hours a map and when I get in there we have 40 players MAX on the entire map and it’s like we’re outmanned.
Are you guys on SoS and SoR having this problem?
The presumption is that when people log out of WvW without going back to open world / Lion’s Arch, they still count as being inside WvW. Which screws up the queues.
@Iohanna.4863
do you ever use Roll for Initiative instead of infiltrator’s signet? they both return the same initiative back but you get extra stun break instead of shadow step.
Extra stun-break? Infiltrator’s Signet is a stun-break.
This…is actually a fair point. Thieves are only going to get stronger with the incoming AOE nerf, and this modification should help re-balance Thieves.
D/P Thieves do not need Signet of Shadows. We simply take up Fleet Shadow and stealth our way across the map (alternate between dodge swiftness and stealth).
You’re suggesting SoR are pretentious and showing doubt in TC in the same sentence? Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe it’s not…
More importantly I’m saying that SoR has demonstrated far more maturity on the forums than certain members of TC for these past two weeks – who have become increasingly sensitive to any remark from SoR.
That chat log. Is that really how you guys feel about us SoR?
No, some of our more casual players and some of our transfers haven’t gotten into the swing of how we do things yet.
Most of us are upset that you gamed the system last week, but at this point it’s more a matter of not wanting to deal with how tedious playing against you has become than it is any sort of malice.
It’s a different story with a second server our size or larger in the mix as it gives us more options, but when it’s basically two servers with comparatively no presence — and the bigger server mocking us on the forum — then it just isn’t fun.
Look, understand that I don’t mind losing when we’re outnumbered. That isn’t the problem, and you’ll note that the majority of folks on TC didn’t complain against BG. The problem is the attitude we’re being given by an ungracious winner. You’re training on us? You’re begging us to come out so we can train your recruits? Do you not see how that is insulting? People bragging about a scoreboard is fine because at least that’s something we all expect to see and something we know is going to happen. This nonsense SoR has been posting isn’t fine.
If you guys were being cool about it then we’d probably have no problem. It really boils down to that. You should be ashamed of yourselves for treating us this way. It has nothing to do with it being a game and everything to do with being decent people. You were decent people until you were in power — what happened to you guys?
It’s just too much effort to care too much about anything this week when we have to deal with this sort of nonsense. We’re still going to play but don’t expect us to put up with your crap.
Personally I’d say shake it off. People like dominating, and they like letting everyone know they’re dominating. I doubt we could resist being pretentious if we were in their shoes.
Precision, Toughness and Condition Damage are good stats for a standard 0/0/30/20/20 Bleed Thief (Pistol/Dagger + Dagger/Dagger). Carrion is not optimal because Vitality is a dump stat for any Thief with stealth condition removal (toughness will save you from burst).
If you put Sigil of Earth on your pistol or dagger, you will apply bleeds when you crit.
Last week SoR repeatedly exploited culling to defeat TC’s zerg. They would all run away until their models unloaded, then all rush back together dropping everyone before they even appeared on our screens. They would constantly drop portal bombs on us. Yes, their coordination should be applauded, but if these are the kind of pathetic ‘strategies’ needed to stay competitive then I sincerely hope that TC drops back down the league tables so that we can actually get a fair fight.
Find fault within yourself before faulting somebody else.
Everything’s fair in war, so long as the rules are not broken.
Thanks. Well in conclusion i will just get both zerkers and knight sets and try them.
Just one thing, u are using both scholara and exquisite jewels right? I believe u use only 5 scholars runes and the last slot is for the jewel right? This is because the 10% on 90%+ hp damage is pretty useless?
The Thief benefits the most from +10% damage when health is above 90%. The Thief is the only class that can choose its fights, as well as maintain full health during a fight.
If you have almost 3000 attack like I do, +10% damage is +300 power. That is quite significant and not at all useless.
If you are not confident about maintaining near-full health during your engagements, consider Ruby Orbs.
As for damage, is there a big gap? How much is ur critical damage without zerkers?
I guess ill have to grind for both zerkers and knight sets.
It is crucial that you use Knight’s armor/weapons alongside Ruby Exquisite Jewels + Scholar Runes / some other DPS oriented Runes. Offensive stats are much more well-scaled in these slot items.
My traits / overall combat strategy are a bit like this, but I’m building Vit / Tough / Power rather than Tough / Power / Precision & Crit. The idea is that I won’t be as bursty, but I can have 20k HP and FAICETANK LIKE A BAWSE.
Do you forsee any far-reaching consequences to this approach that I’m missing? I’m wondering if I’m maybe gimping myself a bit by completely ignoring Precision and critical hits for the most part. (Under 1000 Precision at level 80.)
You better hope the enemy doesn’t figure out that you don’t do a lot of damage. Or you gotta rely more on your traits for damage.
The addition of just 2-3 guilds from the Crystal Desert is a 33% increase in the Toast’s dedicated WvW force. Someone got excited and thought “Tarnished Desert”.
If You, My Friends, are on the server Tarnished Coast or Stormbluff Isle, please read my post. If you are our friends on Sanctum of Rall, this is not for you.
Tarnished Coast, do not despair! We are friends, do not despair! Stormbluff Isle, do not despair!
To the Tarnished Coast.
We find ourselves in a position. An unenviable position wherein we seemed to be locked in a battle against, yet again, a superior force who has the unenviable position of having a wealth of power and a dearth of wit. This is not new for us. It is clear that SoR intends to be great and who is anyone to stop them? We wish them well. But lets discuss us.
What, my dear Toasters, do we have to lose? We have everything to gain. Ours is not a community based upon winning. Sure it’s great, but haven’t you seen the signs? Where is the Golem God? Why is everyone mad? We have nothing to gain from winning and everything to lose from it. Let these Sanctum folks head to tier 1. Who cares? Imagine the friends we make on our way all the way down. Imagine the friends we make back up!
They pretend community. We have community. Let them have t1 or t2. We have a better game.
speaking for myself, jeyen tal
Well spoken, but do not presume SoR lacks a great community.
glass cannon = 30/30/0/0/10 + bersekers, you are using a bunker build my friend
no offense, but i do way more damage than you do on fractal mobs 30+ !
but yeah, glass are not viable anymore, bunkers are, nice videos too
Indeed, what I meant by ‘comparable’ is that my Power, Precision, Critical Damage and other sources of damage are still threatening enough to be considered a ‘Backstab DPS’ build. (5-9k critical Backstabs)
Sigil of Fire, Force, Bloodlust and Paralyzation (on Sword)
Omnomberry Pie and Sharpening Stones
With sufficient toughness and access to stealth, any zerg is simply a collection of 1v1s.
This build is the ultimate 1v1 duelist for those who dislike risks. She may not be able to kill enemy bunker builds, but she herself is a bunker who will almost never die. Yet her DPS is comparable to that of a glass-cannon.
Hence as the ultimate 1v1 duelist, she is also the ultimate ‘Phantom of the Zerg’. She is that one backstabbing Thief that you simply cannot shake-off, regardless of how many CCs / Nukes / Conditions you throw at her.
Does SoR not show up during the day, or is their lead just so huge that they don’t care? I was looking forward to attacking their stuff on EB but SBI took away that option.
I imagine the SoR regulars are giving themselves a well-earned break.
We might want to publicize them more too. Make sure every single Toaster knows about them. Spam map chat in Divinity’s Reach and Lion’s Arch, and so on.
What greyblue is describing is unfortunately true.
Enemy tower/keep walls do not apply the revealed debuff even if you’re supposedly breaking stealth to C&D the wall. Culling becomes irrelevant; the Thief never leaves stealth.
Weapons with auto-attack chains can be used to check for hiding Thieves, but you’d need nothing less than a 10 man group to forcefully evict a skilled Thief. This is clearly not working as intended.
