Guild Wars 2

babazhook.6805:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

The problem is less that acro isn’t good (it is), and more that it doesn’t offer the same utility as DA. If you’re using dash, then panic strike and improv/executioner bring more to the build than the whole acro line.

Actually no. There the same level of utility in Acro when one considers weapon sets.

DA does not give added endurance thus dodges. DA does not remove conditions. DA does not lower steal cooldown. DA does not provide Regen. DA does not give INI gain. DA has no stun breaks and no evades. DA does not give swiftness.

Acro is a defesnive line after all and the type of utility it offers in that regard is superior to DA.

When you state IF you are using Dash you are making a straw man arguement. There a number of builds that will not use Dash and there are builds that may not use DD. I have a build that prefers don’t stop as I want Bounding dodger out of the DD line. Many builds will also want Lotus training and the acro line would address their lack of swiftness and immob breaks if they do take this.

I can accomplish the effects of panic strike in other ways, that does not mean Panic strike has no utility. (needle trap as example is superior to panic strike as is impairing daggers). The same follows with what dash offers. If I do not want it I can get the same effects with other means.

I might prefer extra condition cleanse out of the Acro line with PR over what DA or CS offers. In taking bounding i can make up for much of the damage loss of Executioner having added bounds that can do AOE damage and not tied to an enemies health being under 50 percent.

Improv is a very nice skill , but I can argue upper hand offers excellent utility in that it gives full time regen (superior to mug heal) along with Ini regen which can be significant. Don’t stop with an automatic Immob removal every 10 seconds without having to use a dodge to remove the same is also very useful.

The problem with Acro in its current state is there just not enough offered at each step in the ways of choices meaning there always one best choice for most builds. Those that are underused need slight boosts. If still not enough they can be tweaked more in the future but as a defensive line Acro is very close to being where it should be.

I’m well aware of all of this, I have an acro build in my sig haha I’m also not saying you should run dash, or acro, or anything for that matter, if you want to play acro then do it. It’s a good traitline and it works well.

Im not making a straw man argument, I’m simply saying something you said yourself only in reverse: if you take dash, acro is redundant. That doesn’t make it bad, I said myself it’s a good traitline, just unnecessary given certain circumstances. The same is true in reverse, because acro is a viable alternative to running dash. This is relevant as the majority of thieves run dash, so DA will bring more to their build. If anything you’re trying to discredit my argument by accusing me of the same logical fallacy you just used yourself, straw-man-ception.

I’d just rather see shadow arts get some love because acro is already in a good spot in my opinion, and is well used as an alternative build whereas SA seems to only sees use in troll builds these days.

The problem is less that acro isn’t good (it is), and more that it doesn’t offer the same utility as DA. If you’re using dash, then panic strike and improv/executioner bring more to the build than the whole acro line.

emkelly.2371:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

emkelly.2371:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

With the amount of reflects in game it would be perfectly fine since it’s tied to a 30 sec plus cd

reflects count as blocks dude. can you imagine popping that and then using unload twice. It’s fine for gubflame because you can’t spam it three times in a row. it’s not for unload because unload is spamable, grants might. So no

Reflects do count as blocks, but every bullet counts as a unique attack and would thus use one stack of the assassin signet buff, the same way they currently interact with it and venoms. So buffing assassin’s signet to make kittens unblockable would only guarantee one unload hitting, not repeated unloads like your post implies.

Even then, we’re assuming that they don’t go invuln to direct damage since the main classes you’d want to land this on (mesmer, warrior, guardian and scrapper) all have ways of doing that, or that they wouldn’t just dodge the next unload as soon as they see the signet cast.

Edit: Five hits. This censor is extremely picky haha xD

If you think reflects don’t count as blocks, i’d love tp see you try and block a killshot with your shield while using Shield mastery. And i’d lagh at you as you took full damage.

Also. there is a venom that also makes attacks unblockable. Just pointing that out.

I do think they count as blocks for projectiles, that’s why I said that in my last post. Reading comprehension FTW.

If I tried to block a killshot with shield on warrior, and the other warrior made his attack unblockable using the signet, it doesn’t matter whether I trait for the reflect or not as I’d take the damage either way, and if you play warrior you should know that. So your point was what, exactly?

Lastly, the venom makes one attack unblockable, nerfed from two because venomshare was rather arbitrarily made baseline. If the other guy has stability, that means one bullet of one unload will hit, for around 800 damage, and the rest would be blocked. Whoop de fricking doo. Changing assassins signet to allow kittens would allow one unload through a block, but no more. So it’s still less damage through a block/reflect than a gunflame followed by rifle 2.

Once you’ve fully understood the argument, feel free to post again.

emkelly.2371:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

With the amount of reflects in game it would be perfectly fine since it’s tied to a 30 sec plus cd

reflects count as blocks dude. can you imagine popping that and then using unload twice. It’s fine for gubflame because you can’t spam it three times in a row. it’s not for unload because unload is spamable, grants might. So no

Reflects do count as blocks, but every bullet counts as a unique attack and would thus use one stack of the assassin signet buff, the same way they currently interact with it and venoms. So buffing assassin’s signet to make kittens unblockable would only guarantee one unload hitting, not repeated unloads like your post implies.

Even then, we’re assuming that they don’t go invuln to direct damage since the main classes you’d want to land this on (mesmer, warrior, guardian and scrapper) all have ways of doing that, or that they wouldn’t just dodge the next unload as soon as they see the signet cast.

Edit: Five hits. This censor is extremely picky haha xD

Blaqatak.1395:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Blaqatak.1395:

Jana.6831:

To help the OP to cap camps (because that was their question) – even that isn’t rocket science :P

Nope, but I was curious to see what people’s preferences were!

I found D/P + BP->Auto very slow. The S/P PW suggestion has massively sped it up and is super easy to equip when I get to a camp.

Fernshade.9016:

Gotta make sure to stack the camp though, and kill scouts first.

How do you get the two scouts to stack? Or is the solution to gib one and then stack on the other?

Either do that, or LoS behind something roughly in a line with the two scouts, so they run the same direction to attack you. They should end up pretty close together if you do it right.

Can you typically pull that off quickly?

Do swords show up once theyve aggroed, dealt damage, or received damage?

It’s a certain time after they’ve aggro’d or dealt damage I think, as towers have got swords just from me running past the guards and getting blinded before.

It’s normally pretty quick, I use infiltrators to aggro/return, place black powder and start autoing as they turn the corner, then pistol whip after flanking strikes trait wears off. That normally does the job.

Blaqatak.1395:

Jana.6831:

To help the OP to cap camps (because that was their question) – even that isn’t rocket science :P

Nope, but I was curious to see what people’s preferences were!

I found D/P + BP->Auto very slow. The S/P PW suggestion has massively sped it up and is super easy to equip when I get to a camp.

Fernshade.9016:

Gotta make sure to stack the camp though, and kill scouts first.

How do you get the two scouts to stack? Or is the solution to gib one and then stack on the other?

Either do that, or LoS behind something roughly in a line with the two scouts, so they run the same direction to attack you. They should end up pretty close together if you do it right.

Use continuum split and try again.

Proposed change: Change the assassin signet active effect to make the next five hits be unblockable and deal 10% increased damage. Maybe increase the cooldown as well to 60s, or the number of hits to three, or give it a cast time, whichever would balance it better.

Because it’s a signet, it is fully visible to the enemy when inactive, and obvious when activated, so there’s the same counterplay as the warrior signet with the same effect. This gives us back the ability to deal with enemies with silly amounts of blocks that we lost with the change to basilisk venom, without the balance issues that baseline venomshare causes, and let’s them do something more interesting with basilisk venom potentially.

Thoughts?

Jugglemonkey.8741:

stuff

Ps; you can see from the build editor that I run S/P. I often swap in cavalier rings to bring my armor to 2.4k, that does cut into your damage a little but it’s worth considering if you use dash, weakening strikes and scrapper runes.

Some of my guildies have asked about gearing a thief recently, and I’ve recommended they take zerker armor over marauder. Here’s what I recommended them, and my reasoning:

Build link

When gearing a thief, you should take the minimum defensive gear necessary, and have everything else as zerk imo. So the question becomes; what is the minimum health needed to function, and how can I get it while swapping the fewest possible pieces from zerk?

Base thief health is 11645 health. With no vit, I sit on 12577 health on a thursday night, so WvW bonuses give me 912 health. I’m going to round to 950 to account for the extra day of play.

Marauder weapons add 118 vitality, so 1200 health (rounding up). I have 6 infusion slots on armor and 10 from trinkets, 5 vit per infusion = 80 vit = 800 extra health. The mara ammy gives 710 health, the 100/70 power/vit food plus furious oils give 1700 health, the celestial backpiece gives 280 health and the zerk/valk earrings give 180 health each.

1200+800+710+1700+280+180+180=5050 health, bringing our base health to 16695, 17607 with the boost from WvW.

That’s right, 17.6k health without marauder armor. Even without the annoying to get stuff, the amulet (from HoT story achievements), infusions (80 laurels, lol) and cele amulet (I have this because I swap builds a lot, having a zerk backpiece and zerk/valk rings would work just as well), that’s 15817 health from easily obtainable gear. Doing this would also mean you could keep your exotic berserker armor and wait for the prices to go down: you get no vitality from it anyway, so concentrate on the trinkets and weapons first.

Marauder armor and the health boost is nice, don’t get me wrong. I have two sets of ascended armor on thief, one zerk one marauder. That being said, the armor gives you 2k ish health, and I’ve just shown how you can make that up in other ways. So if you only want to make one set of armor for every purpose, make zerk.

Cynz.9437:

Silverbolt.2301:

My thief has 6 legendaries, over 5.8k hours (a lot is from afking, but you get the idea), 4 FULL sets of ascended armours, 4 sets of ascended trinkets, an extra 10 ascended weapons, 160 slot bag, over 25.5k AP.

Here’s the kicker though: I don’t play my thief anymore. I have barely played my thief since sPvP Season 1. I usually end up playing my Ele, Rev, Necro, War, Ranger, or Mes in that order – MOSTLY Ele and Rev.

Thief is a kitten class and the devs don’t know how to fix it. They have proven time and time again that they don’t know what to do with the class, besides catering to the whining children in these forums.

If you truly want them to pay more attention to this kitten of a class and do something about it, show them in metrics…aka…stop logging into your thief characters; better yet, move all the important items over and delete the character. That will show up in their metrics (which they give a lot more kitten about).

Pretty sure it would just help them to achieve their goal: reduce amount of active thieves in game. I think it was made pretty clear when HoT came out.

Well, if I can’t play thief I’d just quit tbh. I’m the sort of person that plays what feels right, not what’s strong that month, hence my obsession with S/P. I’m going to go out on a limb that most thief mains left now are the same sort of player.

And for what it’s worth, I’d be happy to lose stealth to gain more blocks, protection or stability. People who ask/revel in nerfs to thief should be careful what they wish for.

Staff feels a long way ahead in damage, probably because vault hits more targets, but S/P does enough damage to get the job done. Depends whether you need more blinds and CC or more reliable dodges, and if you care about clearing things in the fastest possible time.

Daredevil endurance regen is the same as other classes. As Vincent said, it’s a tooltip error, nothing more.

Our endurance capacity is higher, which means it takes longer to get three full dodges back without actively doing something. That’s why we have more active regen. I don’t see a problem here.

Considering the recent patch and the general state of thief (especially if you don’t play D/P), this is a pretty stupid thing to cry about.

Practice. basically. You have to totally understand the other guy’s build to win on S/P, and as inchester said, best way is to play them and see. Find out what regularly kills you on class X, then do that to class X when you fight them.

D/P is much more effective overall just due to the blinds and better upfront damage, but S/P is fun still ^^

I’d welcome nerfs if it led to buffs to sets other than D/P, improve the build diversity a bit.

But let’s face it, you’re more likely to get struck by lightning then eaten by sharks.

I also use marauder armor and weapons with berserker trinkets and scholar runes, it’s a solid mix for a number of builds and 18k health with food is a very nice amount to be sat on. Exuberance are good, but honestly I think thief gets more out of scholar with the way our damage multipliers work.

Marauder isn’t much more expensive than zerk atm, you don’t get it in chests but if you’re crafting it it makes no odds really. If you’re going marauder it would likely be cheaper to make exotic marauder insignias, the cheapest ascended armor possible (last I checked it was rabid) then reroll the stats, you’d need to check that though.

I mix in cavalier trinkets for WvW as I’m stubborn and play S/P, but I have full zerker trinkets for D/P/PvE/when I’m feeling ballsy. It’s the simplest way to find that ideal balance I find. My build is in my sig.

You can run full zerk if you know the encounters, nothing has really changed there, and if you’re raiding you should talk with your group before considering any toughness, you don’t want to take aggro from the tank. Stack vitality if you want more survivability, I run marauder weapons and armor with scholar runes and zerk trinkets and that does me just fine.

As for build, staff with daredevil, deadly arts and critical strikes works nicely. Invigorating precision (critical strikes grandmaster), scholar runes and bound (daredevil grandmaster trait) work really nicely together to keep you healthy and damage boosts active. Daredevil is for damage and dodges and deadly arts for executioner mainly.

Playstyle wise, auto and staff 2 are best for DPS, make sure you dodge enough to keep the 10% damage up from bound (and make sure you hit the target when you land), and use staff 3 and 5 only for breaking root, clearing trash mobs and for dodging big attacks. The numbers are big on staff 5 but DPS wise staff 2 is the best damage per initiative point spent on a single target, vault with 5 targets is a very nice heal with the traits listed though.

And welcome back ^^

Hi

More or less the title: I just rolled a rev, I main thief, and I mostly roam WvW and occasionally PvP. What three tips can you give that would most help a new player find their feet?

This is the build I’m planning on running for now:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAsemnvN2gS6JvQRVlbosryPUYW5IKYs8EllNFSNG1oH2D8gPsNAH4BA-TlCEABdoPgFVfSUNAAOUAps/QCPAAtU+JoSQIOBARcEAIFQR6sA-w

Thanks for any and all replies ^^

I took marauder armor and weapons, zerker trinkets, then started mixing in cavalier gear until I found a balance I liked, as you’re basically swapping excess precision for toughness then. See the S/P build in my sig for the gear I’m currently using for WvW.

That said, yeah for PvE I swap all the cavalier gear out for berserker, the toughness can mess with your group’s tank.

Try signet of agility instead of blinding powder if you want to swap that out, I swap that last slot between bandit’s defence and blinding powder personally.

I can only safely fight condi mesmers on my condi dodge build, as I have escapists absolution, trickster, and pain response, plus mesmer is generally weak to condis anyway. I honestly don’t think shadow’s embrace cuts it in this meta, as that 3s waiting for the condi to cleanse is enough time for a good condi burst to kill you, so active cleanse is better imo. Or just kill them faster than they can kill you.

Against reaper, kite and stealth when they’re in shroud, and CC them when they leave it, as long as you avoid trying to go toe to toe with them you should be fine. I find deadly arts better than shadow arts for most fights, improv with pulmonary impact and draining sigil make most fights vs reaper easy as long as you avoid that shroud and cleanse early.

Essence Sap is very strong vs Revenant, the skull fear with draining sigil and pulmonary impact is amazing in outnumbered fights and the boons from Consume Plasma are very good all around. The ele one can be strong, but with shouts and trooper runes it’s easily outplayed now. Honestly the only one that really feels lacking for a power build is Throw Gunk, in a condi build it’s pretty kitten strong though.

Helterskelter.8490:

Doesn’t look like Thief is in a very fun place at the moment – I’m considering trying out a caster type class. Either Ele or Mesmer maybe

Thief can still be fun, as long as you like D/P basically. It’s a lot better than it was 6 months ago though, HoT really did a number on thieves for a while.

My main builds are in my sig. The S/P build is my own take on things, but the condi build is pretty close to meta. I’m odd and I don’t use dash much (a daredevil grandmaster trait that every other thief seems to use), hence why I take acro over deadly arts, but otherwise the trait choices are pretty self explanatory. You pretty much need daredevil and trickery, but the other slot is pretty optional.

Most people run deadly arts, trickery and daredevil, with D/P. Think old glass D/P thief with extra dodges, and you kinda get the idea of how most people play nowadays.

Just some thoughts, no particular order:

The meta might be different for your matchup, but in mine everything and their mother spams immob at every opportunity, you don’t look too pressured in comparison. I find don’t stop and withdraw necessary for that reason, and I run energy and geomancy sigils on both weapon sets to make up the lost endurance from channeled vigor.

Krait runes are kinda overkill imo, the bleeds you’re applying from death blossom are already long duration and you reapply so often it’s hard to cleanse. Thief condi is more about rapid reapplication of condis than long duration these days I think, and I can already get 20+ stacks of bleed without krait runes so I’d rather have a rune that gives me another condi proc or benefit besides just longer bleeds.

I use plex runes with scorpion wire personally so I have a good burst on top of the bleeds for attrition. Bandits defence is fine but requires more setup, generally, and scorpion wire with trickster, pain response and escapists absolution traited means condi basically can’t kill you. I remember fighting a condi mesmer on this build while totally ignoring a perma stealth trapper thief because he just couldn’t touch me.

I burst using basilisk to cut through a block for the interrupt and plex rune proc, then steal and swap weapons immediately for more confusion and cover condis from geomancy sigils. Weakening strikes gives another cover condi for free, even with 20% crit chance it procs often due to the number of hits you get from lotus and death blossom.

Something I notice is that you don’t make use of shortbow. Energy and geomancy sigils are a big part of my build, and lotus training dodges through choking gas from shortbow does a hell of a lot of damage. It allows me to save ini for D/D and endurance/agility signet for shortbow, making resource management much easier, and gives you substantial chase ability.

D/D condi is pretty strong as a duel/roaming build, power builds you’re just straight up better off taking D/P instead unfortunately.

bearshaman.3421:

D/D would work fine, especially in a condi build of this with #3 skill counting as an evade and putting out respectable bleed to multiple targets, as well as taking Lotus Training and other stuff. I would of course use staff as the other weapon, and maybe keep a pistol or two to swap out with.

If you’re already going for lotus training, shortbow is actually a better swap than staff imo. Reason being the poison fields from choking gas work really well with the projectile finishers of the daggers from lotus training, it’s a hefty chunk of extra DPS and makes cleansing the bleeds that much harder.

While the thief is all about evasion, passively evading 20% of the time is not a good thing. It needs to stay active for the good of the class imo.

lighter.2708:

problem is
you don’t dish out enough burst damage and you don’t have enough utility if you take acrobat over trickery or deadly art

Tbh, panic strike is the main thing I miss. You don’t realise how many kills that trait gets you til you play without it for a while.

That said, the main thing you’re swapping is executioner and mug for bound and swindler’s equilibrium, in terms of burst damage. It’s more of a bruiser type build though, so it isn’t focussed on burst so naturally lends itself better to sword and staff than dagger. It depends on your playstyle which you’d prefer, that doesn’t mean it’s not viable.

rennlc.7346:

Bad? I don’t know. It’s almost universally worse than DA, Trickery, and DD though.

It depends on your outlook. I run bound with S/P for the stealth access, so two big problems with my build when roaming are swiftness access and immobilise since I don’t have dash. Acro with pack runes and withdraw deals with both of those problems nicely, and it gives me a free stunbreak, endurance refill and condi cleanse to boot.

Things I miss out on: Mug (made up for with draining sigil), panic strike (made up for with careful used of sword 2 and shortbow sneak attacks), and improv/executioner. Executioner makes no difference to a lot of fights imo, as if I can’t get you below 50% it does nothing and if I can then odds are I can kill you anyways. Improv would be nice, but stacked against the listed benefits of acro, I can live without it. For minor traits, I have weakness on sword auto and from daredevil anyways, the poison is nice but is pretty minor, and 10% damage when the enemy has a condition is made up in DD taking bound over dash.

Of course, this is all based on a sword build. D/P has built in stealth, no need for bound, and less access to weakness, so it probably benefits more from DA. It still works well with bound and acro though. Like I say, it depends on your outlook. I tend to play tankier thief builds as I don’t like to gank especially, and I can still hit for 6-8k on pistol whip not counting bound and interrupt damage with 2.7-2.8k armor and 16k health, I don’t see a point in making myself any glassier tbh.

I like the old DA Trickery DD combo for D/P and condi trapper, but for sword and for condi dodge acro is better than DA in my opinion. The former builds use dash and the latter use bound and the condi dodge respectively though, so my choice of acro has a lot to do with that. See my sig for my S/P build to see what I mean.

It’s probably something to do with the motion of the character: you travel in a parabola until the last part, where you suddenly accelerate straight down towards the ground. If the flight path was truly parabolic the range would probably be 600 units.

It’s viable with bound and pulmonary impact, although you do have a lot of trouble vs things with lots of stab application (Rev, Engi, DH in particular) and Engis with all the damage reduction on stun food /traits etc.

The most annoying tradeoff I find is the choice between trickster (cleanse and reduced cooldowns on immob breaking skills) and bountiful theft (boon steal to allow burst opportunities vs stab heavy opponents).

The guaranteed crit is applied after the damage part of the dodge, so if you just bound repeatedly at the target then all but the first are guaranteed to crit. Mug used to consume the crit but I don’t know if that was patched, and be aware that air/fire procs will obviously also consume the crit which could mess up your backstab attempt. That should be less of an issue if you’re playing a low precision build though.

I played the runes last time I played staff and they were quite nice, shame that the effect was essentially single target though (it only guarantees a crit on the first target hit with an attack that cleaves, not on all targets).

Straegen.2938:

The fundamental problems with D/D is that it has nothing that competes with Shadow Shot in D/P and CnD misses are often deadly particularly in the heavy block/invuln/evasion meta. It certainly doesn’t help that Dancing Dagger sucks.

CnD should cost 4 or 5 and be unblockable. Dancing Dagger should have an Immobilize component.

The only problem I can see with this is that CnD has a damage component, whereas shadow shot damage can be blocked leaving just the blind and port. That said, D/D would need to trait for the blind on CnD and it’s still melee range, so maybe the damage is a fair tradeoff.

Justine.6351:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

I was messing with this build the other night, I was also skeptical but the bleeds really do stack up rather quickly. A lot of fights ended rather quickly as people ignored the bleed then found themselves down, it’s deceptively strong damage if you can get an ancient seeds proc with a rapid fire and the bleed utility. I found scrappers almost impossible to damage with it, that might be a class matchup thing more than anything though. Mesmers and thieves were a lot of fun to hunt though.

And I main S/P thief, it’s an underrated build. Bound and pulmonary impact with draining sigil really opened up the build into something more than mindless 3 spam. I find D/P thief about as interesting as meta druid though, so maybe I just like being odd.

That’s weird, do you remember what kind of scrapper it was? I haven’t really found them to be a counter.
I haven’t really found any class in particular that hard counters this, but I have run into a few roamers with a crap ton of sustain and condi removal where we couldn’t kill each other unless one of us made a mistake. Those were mostly ele’s and wars though.

I could see a marauder scrapper with defender runes being a tough fight for this build, but they’d still have to do a kitten good job of managing their condi clears, and they’d still have a hard time closing the gap on you.

It’s more about the reflect from my experience. Failing a pbs/rf on a scrapper draws the fight out even longer. That probably has more to do with the fact the scrapper I have is like 3hrs old at max unlock though.

Yeah, it was a hammer power scrapper, so reflects. He was running elixir gun and toolkit, and didn’t seem to use gyros, but either way the reflects and blocks made it hard to do any damage to him before he closed the gap. I know from playing my own scrapper I can pretty much ignore longbow rangers as long as I avoid the knockback shot, and I’m not the best ranger to begin with lol. He was chasing me with a druid when they eventually got me, and the druid was nearly dead from bleeds. I should probably have focussed the scrapper more on staff instead of bow, but I’d only been playing the build a half hour by then lol xD

The build has potential though, especially if, like me, you dislike greatsword and started playing ranger for the bow. The mobility from the staff and skirmishing grandmaster trait is fantastic, and I love the range on the bow already.

I was messing with this build the other night, I was also skeptical but the bleeds really do stack up rather quickly. A lot of fights ended rather quickly as people ignored the bleed then found themselves down, it’s deceptively strong damage if you can get an ancient seeds proc with a rapid fire and the bleed utility. I found scrappers almost impossible to damage with it, that might be a class matchup thing more than anything though. Mesmers and thieves were a lot of fun to hunt though.

And I main S/P thief, it’s an underrated build. Bound and pulmonary impact with draining sigil really opened up the build into something more than mindless 3 spam. I find D/P thief about as interesting as meta druid though, so maybe I just like being odd.

Pistol whip doesn’t need splitting IMO. It’s a stun, evade and solid damage all in one, and it roots you in order to balance the good points. I play S/P with bound and pulmonary impact, using these to pressure with autos and immobs is the bulk of my damage and I save pistol whip for a finishing move when I know it can’t be mitigated. It’s perfectly viable, it’s just not easily spammable like shadow shot and it has a different pace to D/P that you have to get used to.

Concerning sword mainhand itself, I still don’t know why it didn’t get a damage increase but dagger and staff got two increases in recent patches. The aftercast change was brilliant as it made using quickness much better overall, but considering the speed of the dagger auto you’d think the sword would do more damage per hit.

I’m killing most things with full dire plex mesmer atm, you only need to land one good shatter burst to delete most classes and you have heaps of survivability. I have 50 hours on mesmer so it’s definitely not my skill carrying me lol :P

If you want power, running zerk/marauder with shield and defender runes works well too, although it is a lot harder to kill things than with condi I find, if only because you’re so much more squishy.

I run acro with bound so I don’t get killed by the first immob I take, but there’s not much reason to use it over DA if you’re running dash tbh. It could be bandit’s defence but you’d see them knocked down for at least half a second, nobody’s reactions are good enough to make it look instant.

Sometimes when I play traps I jump the gun and accidentally cancel the cast of my first trap, you sure you’re not doing that? Also bear in mind the trap will miss if you’re blinded, so if they hit you with 3 or 5 as they engage then that might be why it’s not working.

Ah, awesome, thanks very much ^^ I got as close to your stats as I could and the damage was markedly better, it’s surprising how much ferocity effects dagger builds tbh. I’ll get full valk armor next time I play and see how that works too.

I was planning on running DD in place if SA for a more mobile build, the blind on stealth is really good but I’m not sure it’s worth dash and a better condi cleanse trait tbh. I didn’t have many issues running it last time I was in a blob v blob, maybe SA is stronger for 1v1 situations?

I’m having a hard time giving up trickery as well, with marauder armor and TotC I found I had enough crit chance to take no quarter over hidden killer to make up the ferocity and still reliably crit on backstab, while bountiful theft helps with removing protection before a burst. It does mean I miss out on deadly arts though, which probably isn’t worth it. It might just be me being too used to 15 ini that’s throwing me off, so will play around with that.

Thanks for all the comments ^^

Pretty much the title. I’m looking to play D/D power as I’m bored and nostalgic, but backstabs with my current gear (mara weapons and armor, zerk/cavalier trinkets) aren’t as good as I hoped for. I got a 5k CnD and a 7k backstab on a longbow ranger earlier, I’m assuming he was glass as they normally are when not playing druid.

I’m thinking mara weapons, valk armor with scholar runes and zerker trinkets would be best, I kinda just want to check if it’s worth it before wasting a load of gold again :P

This is what I’m thinking of playing:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVl0MhCnYpTw7Jw/ELEF2WWa0EAmrf9vCoXQ4HUEA-TFCEABurJYLlgAcIAI4JA4i6PmrHwgTAAT7PK/IEggxA-w

Thanks for any replies ^^

I use it for my condi build atm, it’s better than refuge when traited in my opinion. You do have to be careful where you use it, but it’s pretty strong if you use it right.

I got one shot by an ele last night on my condi build. 20k health and 3k armor, dead in less than a second from full health. I know ele is a lot easier to see coming (I was distracted fighting a DH, kinda my own fault lol) which is why it’s more balanced, but it does beg the question of why can they do it but we can’t.

Mostly what other people have said, valkyrie or marauder armor mixed with zerk trinkets tends to give the best results for WvW. Which you choose should depend on what weapons and traits you play: if you play CS and dagger mainhand, valk armor will give you more damage on a single crit. If you play something that uses multiple small hits, like S/P or P/P, marauder will work out better due to the higher crit chance.

I use marauder weapons and armor, with zerker amulet, cavalier rings, one zerk one cavalier earring and zerker backplate. That gives 2.3k power, 57% crit chance, 202% crit damage, 16-17k health and 2.5k armor, this with agility signet and before food and bloodlust, which works well for my S/P build talking acro/Trickery/DD. If I want to play dagger I’ll play CS over acro, honestly I don’t see the point in building glassier than this right now.

I can’t play WvW atm, it’s lagging out every second or two, sometimes for 15s or more. Been playing PvE all night no issues, the second I go to WvW it’s unplayable. Needs to be fixed, I’m so angry at it right now and it’s totally destroying the point of playing for me.

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/5315331865 – Speedtest done immediately after I ragequit. It’s def not my end lol xD

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsaVl0MhCnYpTw3Jw/ELUF1c1/9jfXPFABpXGkClAA-TlCEQB+T9HC8EAkiSH3pNAgnAAzpDIH7PsFlgMRZEAOEABAQAM0JO0JO0J2EnYSciFCQwWA-w

This is what I’m running for S/P atm, it works just as well with D/P though. Acro was originally taken to make up for not taking dash, but it’s a surprisingly good line defensively and I still do plenty of damage while being able to kite two players. I tried scrapper runes, they work nicely too.

I use exuberance runes on my mesmer and I have 2.85k power, 23k health, 45% crit chance and 202% crit damage without furious maintenance oils, it should work nicely for thief too. Try marauder weapons, a mix of valk, zerk and marauder armor with zerker/valk trinkets, you should be able to hit 20 health.

Pistol whip has an evade frame, it’s not on the tooltip though. You know, because that would be helpful lol xD

I honestly think S/P is in a good place, it’s just outshone by dagger in the roles thief is expected to fill. S/P is a strong set when used with bound, pulmonary impact and acro/DD/Trickery, the main issue is that the bulk of your damage will come from interrupts and dodges instead of the sword 1-3 skills, so why not take a dagger and get access to backstab for the engage? It’s a really nice set for duelling tho, my favourite actually, the mobility and stunlock can really mess up some classes.

Thinking about it, it makes me wonder if S/P isn’t where it should be and D/P is overtuned like most of the meta is. Depends on your PoV really.

Then again, thief isn’t meta, so do whatever the hell you want and if someone complains, reroll warrior

Forum bug, sorry for the spam.

NuhDah.9812:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

glorius.1235:

S/P paired with PI is fun to play, especially against said engies.
I know that the set is not considered to be skillful and it has many issues especially with the PW aftercast, but man, I’ve been shredding Reapers/DHs/engies with this set lately

It is also quite fun to watch the average Thief player shadowshot-spam you and teleport into your swingity-swingy 80-0 themselves in the process

I had some issues with the dagger’s projectile speed though – but I guess it won’t be tweaked since it’s an already spammable interrupt on a relatively low cd.

Not sure what you mean by it not being considered a skillful set, I’d say it’s just as skillful as D/P atm. When I play S/P I rely on bound and pulmonary impact for pressure just like with D/P, using pistol whip in the same openings as backstab. I dislike stealth camping and prefer bound to dash tho, so take what I say with that in mind.

Anyways, yes, pulmonary impact strikes will do a huge amount of damage to anything with a channeled, easily interrupted skill. Pressure until he swaps from flamethrower and loses stab, headshot to proc the protection trait then steal it with bountiful theft as you burst. You’ll have a few seconds before he gets stab or protection up again (assuming condi runes not durability) so make the most of it.

Can you tell me what utility and elite abilities you use besides distracting daggers? (I guess shadow refugee is out of the question since that’s the “stealth camping” you dislike – I usually use the DD skills -> block, fist furry and impact strike)

Sure because I prefer bound, I like to run acro/Trickery/daredevil with withdraw, signet of agility, shadowstep and roll for initiative. Withdraw, acro (all bottom traits) and roll for ini are there because without dash you can be immobilised too easily without them. Distracting daggers I find isn’t needed, you already have interrupts on pistol whip for melee, headshot for range and on steal for when you’re setting up a burst. Shadow Refuge is a liability because you can’t dodge in it with bound without getting revealed if an enemy chases you in. You can actually have a surprising stealth uptime with bound, run blinding powder instead of roll for ini if you want more stealth. 3 dodges plus a blinding powder in a black powder will give you the same stealth as a Refuge, and endurance is easy to get back for thief.

I run air and draining sigils on both S/P and D/P. Draining in particular is amazing for interrupt builds, 1k health steal with no internal cooldown. Placing black powder, dodging then stealing mid dodge can hit for 10k if you’re lucky (air plus draining plus bound plus pulmonary impact proc) and it leaves you in stealth ready for a backstab or a pistol whip.

I hope that helps a bit

glorius.1235:

S/P paired with PI is fun to play, especially against said engies.
I know that the set is not considered to be skillful and it has many issues especially with the PW aftercast, but man, I’ve been shredding Reapers/DHs/engies with this set lately

It is also quite fun to watch the average Thief player shadowshot-spam you and teleport into your swingity-swingy 80-0 themselves in the process

I had some issues with the dagger’s projectile speed though – but I guess it won’t be tweaked since it’s an already spammable interrupt on a relatively low cd.

Not sure what you mean by it not being considered a skillful set, I’d say it’s just as skillful as D/P atm. When I play S/P I rely on bound and pulmonary impact for pressure just like with D/P, using pistol whip in the same openings as backstab. I dislike stealth camping and prefer bound to dash tho, so take what I say with that in mind.

Anyways, yes, pulmonary impact strikes will do a huge amount of damage to anything with a channeled, easily interrupted skill. Pressure until he swaps from flamethrower and loses stab, headshot to proc the protection trait then steal it with bountiful theft as you burst. You’ll have a few seconds before he gets stab or protection up again (assuming condi runes not durability) so make the most of it.