Guild Wars 2

EazyPanda.6419:

So, anyone has any tips for a beginner scepter or dagger elementalist in general, especially in terms of basic weapon skills, attunment swapping, cooldown management etc? (currently my ele is lvl 35)
(btw, I haven’t even gotten into utilities and traits yet… Orz)

TL;DR: I suck at ele, can anybody pls give super-bare-bones-basics-of-basics-stuff for a newb ele? Even video tutorials makes my brain melt.

omg I almost wrote up this simple beginner guide to D/F FA build for dungeons/fractals. ANYWAY…. BLOOPER

As condescending as this might sound, scepter is only used for very specific things and its really weak outside of those things.

Dagger mainhand is a good base, especially for leveling. Mapping/leveling as Dagger/Dagger gives you good burst+stuns. Dagger/Focus is mostly used for defensive utilities and it really wants Fresh Air trait.

As a lvl35 I’d recommend Dagger/Dagger. Run around in Air, hit 4 (to zoom up to something), hit 3 and 5 at the same time, immediately hit Fire, 3, 4 and mb 5. That’s your basic burst.
After you plop Fire, u can go either Water (use 3 while standing in Fire), hit 4 immediately, feel free to use 5 to heal. If you follow up with Earth instead of Water, use 4 while standing in fire (Blast+Knockdown) then just do stuff until you can get back into Air.
Once you get back into Air, just keep mashing out with Lightning Whip. Basic things shouldn’t survive very long past this, if it gets to this point.

For utilities, pick up Arcane Wave (blast, autocrit, instant), Signet of Fire, Signet of Air for simple mapping.

For traits, just pick up whatever seems solid. (+10% dmg to targets within 600, +10% dmg while Fire attuned, Vigor on crit, ect ect) There’s a lot of things that can function well for casual D/D stuff.

Be social, play with your boyfriend, join his guild.

toxianguardian.4850:

Running with pug groups I often find myself dying alot to conditions that my party doesnt remove, or find myself missing that ONE thing(whatever it may be) that will make the run go abit easier, whether it be some CC or maybe a little Regen to ease big hits, etc.

So i’m here to ask what traits/gear i could be using to make my ele into a “I’ll do it myself” character.

I was thinking Celestial gear?

any help greatly appreciated!

Based on the things you want to bring, it really sounds like you should be trying D/F FA, definitely before going Celestial. You still do great damage and have good group survivability options.

Since FA attunement swaps often, you can make really good use of Glyph of Storms. It still has good burst with Glyph of Storm and Icebow. Brings big anti-protectile(air4), weakness(air2), invulnerability(earth5), reflects(earth4), personal condi cleanse(earth4) and has more blasts in its damage rotation than Staff, mo fury mo betta! It’s definitely a high damage support build!

Here’s the build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQJAodnMISLD20AWPAdEGQAwCHAqAHgR3AxpgMQNE-TBRBAB0s/QenAAAeAAUq+DA-e
If your team has a lot of burning, trait to +10% dmg in Fire attunement.
If you need more dodges over damage (aka, Mai Trin or such), then 66002 for vigor on crit.

Start Staff Earth.
Earth2, Fire2, Arcane Wave, Arcane Brilliance = 3 Blasts.

Also, if you’re fast and stacking might at the start of a fight = Earth2, Air during cast, Glyph of Storms, Fire during cast, Fire2, Arcane Wave and/or Brilliance.

Danicco.3568:

Wow thanks to this topic I finally solved my misunderstanding that 10% was 11%. Or sometimes 12.1%.

¬_¬

It only really looks funky when you try to pile all the dmg%s all at once.

In game scenarios its much more fluid and predictable increases.

Lets pretend that Im backstabbing something for 10,000 (target above 50%) and I have executioner trait (+20% dmg below 50% hp) I know as a player, when that target hits 50%, that backstab will start doing 12,000. This is because of the multiplicative modifier.
Multiple multiplicative modifiers may look complicated compared to 0% damage but it’s much more reliable to expect damage increases. (vuln stacks changing aside xD)

Also, calculating it is actually pretty easy too.

Preliminary math lesson: Percentage whole numbers, when multiplied/divided start at the 0.0_ digit. So we logically know 1% of 100 is 1? Well, 100 × 0.01 = 1. We will be using this idea when calculating multiplicative modifiers. Increasing a base (100%) by +5% is equivalent to x1.05 (105%).

Start with 100 (100% base damage)
Add in 10% modifier = 100×1.1 (110% damage) = 110(%).
Throw in another 10% modifier = 110×1.1 (110%) = 121(%).
Lets throw in a 20% modifier = 121×1.2 (120%) = 145.2(%) damage increase.
At the end you can subtract 100 from the values (this takes away the % granted from base damage)
In this example, +10%, +10%, +20% = 45.2% damage increase.

Danicco.3568:

Thaddeus.4891:

That can work if you have a hard time playing. But I wouldn’t touch this kind of build with a ten foot pole if you have the slight ambition of a good damage build.

So what do you define as a “good damage” build? Out of the builds I posted, there’s only 2 points that aren’t allocated for damage (2 in Water, which could be more useful in 2 Earth for another extra 10% damage if you’re close to the target or Air if you don’t care).

Blasting Staff is also an increase in damage of Meteor Shower, which is plenty used…

You also replaced 2 utilities usually used for Glyph of Storms/Signet of Fire/Icebow to support your 2 trait point deviation.

DeusAnimo.1876:

Bluefox.9580:

“Chop” actually makes me think axe.

It won’t be an axe we already have a conjure for axes.

In fact we have conjures for Axes, Bows, Shields, hammers, and Great swords.

The only valid ones would be mace, torch, sword, rifle, pistol.

And I highly doubt that it’ll be another ranged weapon and therefore we can cross out rifle and pistol safely.

The closest thing related to these is the sword. Although I really wanted it to be the mace its becoming more and more likely that it will be the sword.

Before you guys really get into some blah blah blah irrelevant philosophical theory “Axe or Sword” thing, keep in mind these were datamined as Sword abilities. I think its safe to say that the single,double,triple chop attack chain would come from the Axe animations.

I feel Ice Spike could use some love, however, a blast would be far too powerful.

Ice Spike having a blast would be very powerful in sustain situations. With water1 spam on feet already being rather strong sustain, add in a Blast for Water3, more water1 trolling, W2, W5, E2, Dodge = 3 Blast Finishers on the Healing Rain alone, 4 total, while W1 filling.
The water→earth defensive/sustain swap is already powerful, opening up Water→Fire with the blast would make it strong in the same way that Earth→Fire already is.

It would also boost PvE since you could E2→W2→F2 and start with 2 blasts.

Since that Ele is less than 1 day old, all the gear is hand-me-downs, the Cele from WvW hand-me-downs filling in me being too broke to snatch a bunch of exotic zerk. Naturally, the Zerk Trinks are universal.

Since most Silverwaste content is in a group, I would heavily recommend running 66002 for the extra vuln stacking. You’d be surprised how little vuln people are packing in their builds (including most posted here) and it brings an astronomical increase to zerg’s overall damage.

I usually don’t do Silverwaste anymore but I popped in it to record a run with the action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYwvg2QpKvI
Gear in video: Zerk Helm and the rest Cele(Strength Runes), Zerk Trinkets, Zerk Staff(Force+Night sigils) all Ascended.
Traits: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fFAQFAGhMMaZ20w6ZACAJcgIDEXKzoSvB-e

With this set up, you can occasionally and safely leave Fire Attunement for lock downs. The damage you’d normally lose for leaving Fire Attunement can be filled with Lightning Storm and/or Ice Bows. Lightning Storm is notable since you alone will provide 25 vulnerability with it.

Hope this comes in time to help you out!

This bug is really difficult on green/white color-deficiency. I hope it gets fixed soon.

The good: Eles are currently one of the strongest professions in every aspect of play. One of the highest damage in PvE (with good AoE) Ele+Ele combos (LH+Staff) for might stacking, perma fire fields, able to burst 25vuln by itself. Meteor, Lightning Storm, Icebow having some insane burst. Sandstorm providing one of the better blinds (since it isn’t smoke it doesn’t conflict fields)

Cele D/D and Staff are really strong in SPvP and found often in tourny play.

In WvW Staff Eles are the premier backline controller. (Even Lava Font+Meteor control bodies)

Playstyle: PvE Staff is very easy to learn (Start Earth/Air for Earth2 or Glyph of Storms and then stay Fire for your whole life – some exceptions apply) and Cele PvP builds often have similar goals: control, pressure, sustain and similar traits.

Redundancy+Attunements: You’ll see a lot of similar abilities in your attunements, this means that you can have a variety of options that generally don’t always get locked out by attunement swapping. (Some exceptions)

The Bad: There’s really not much. While PvE Thieves often consider themselves squishy, they’re one of the better PvE survivalists with their huge amount of endurance gains. PvE Staff doesn’t have much survivability outside of what it provides to the entire group. D/F is often for defensive/utility. D/D Cele is kitable to a degree and Staff PvP is absolutely dependent on area control. These are weaknesses that can’t be shored by weapon swapping like other professions have. This is the biggest disadvantage to the profession as a whole. By contrast, even Engis get to ‘pick their attunements’ so the lacking-weapon-swap disadvantage of very unique to Eles.

Playstyle: Yes, part of the good. Unlike stuff like PvEGuard-MedGuards, the PvE-PvP playstyle doesn’t have much transferable skills. (Though, being solid WvW/SPvP Staff Ele often means you have some ability to break Fire Attunement without being completely useless). You’ll have to accept that your playstyle and role will drastically change throughout formats.

Redundancy+Attunements: Yes, it was also part of the good, it’s also part of the bad. If you’re the type that doesn’t like redundancy, Ele probably isn’t for you.

Both PvP/WvW D/D+Staff playstyles tend to aim toward similiar things.

The Build: The single most versatile weapon is the staff. Notably god in PvE, notably god in ZvZ/GvG, God mapper, shouldn’t kill anyone roaming but you can mass CC for roaming parties. D/x is also strong.

SPvP/WvW builds try going 00266 with both D/D and Staff to learn. The way you attunement swap and (ab)use Evasive Arcana is the difference between bad Eles and god Eles.

PvE: 6 Fire always. 66200 or 66002 Fresh Air if Dagger while Staff has a large amount of variations to the core build(66002, 64xx2, 62222).

It boils down to this: If you enjoy the redundancy and overlaps in playstyle mentality, you’ll enjoy the powerhouse Ele, if you don’t – then find something else while you’re ahead. Play to your strengths or you’ll be weak.

For all we know the Chronomancer (or whatever its called) could potentially replace all the illusion-effects on weapon skills with special mechanics. That would be huge changes that definitely makes up for just having an offhand.

cracks knuckles Okay here we go!
Elementalists are currently a very strong and rewarding profession:

In PvE/Dungeons/Fractals:
Staff = Top notch damage, FULL AOE, Fire Fields ALL DAY!
Lightning Hammer = Top notch damage, blind spam, blast finisher spam. Might stacking in between LHs.
D/F = Solid damage, great survivability, great utility.
Icebow = MORE AOE BURST <3!!
Earth attune[Glyph of Storms] = Long duration blind field, blinds faster than Black Powder, NOT A SMOKE FIELD. Cooldown is kind of long but it still has a lot of pros!

With all this power, they tend to have less self-survivability mechanics outside of D/F builds.

In WvW (notably GvG and ZvZ) they are one of the big dogs of backline. I’m going to provide a quick rundown of the totem pole here:
Melee train gets impacted/controlled by backliners. Gankers control/impact Backliners (either defensively [counter-ganking] or offensively by pressuring) Gank Backliners (Mesmer/Ranger) pressure backliners so gankers can choose to go on weakened/pressured targets.
Back to the Ele though: If your melee train is the cannon ball that bombs things, you are the cannon that makes it possible/better.

In SPvP, Eles are currently have one of the more universally dangerous builds with Cele D/x. Check out Phantaram’s stream, I see him using D/F often. D/D Celestial is also a good WvW roaming build!

To wrap it up: Eles are a strong profession in every aspect of play and worth learning!

As a member of a server that recently hit T4, I noticed this roaming phenomenon. Tier5 and below, competent roamers will fight 1v1. (Roamers that are bad at fighting will avoid them like described in this thread or only engage with hard disengages available)

In Tier4 and Tier3 roamers seem to hit a “CALL PARTY” if fighting 1v1 and if a 5v5 fight starts to look troublesome they hit the “CALL ZERG” button. Since we’ve hit t4 if a roamer actually fights I generally know there’s a 10+ group around. It troubles me since it seems people won’t leave towers/keeps unless they have at least an entire party to hold their hands.

When we were T5 and below, roamers can /bow people and have a fight that people won’t interrupt with good results. Even commanders would generally leave these alone (except for the occasional horrible dueler the zerg poops only /bow’ing roamers for diplomatic immunity scouting – I zerg them in the face)

I have yet to actually get a single non-appointment /bow duel in. Solo roaming is very alive under tier4.

The utility of having a Shortbow is really nice since it lets you safely clear Clones/Phantasms. Having a few Phantasms up and spread while trying to pressure the Mesmer through them with a melee set can put you in a rough spot. Also, short range Cluster Bombing can prevent any loss of pressure from a pressured Mesmer utilizing stealth.

I would also like to 2nd the suggestion of anything with x/D can be strong vs Mesmers. In WvW you can take your time but in a time-sensitive environment like SPvP you’ll need to be putting enough pressure to prevent a Mesmer from feeling safe enough to neutralize or contest a point (if you’re going to stealth a lot) from a 1v1 point of view.

S/D+Bow feels very strong against Mesmers to me but a well-placed shatter-burst can still put you out of the safe zone. (Maybe that just throws me off my game though)

mugen.4763:

Hey guys, this is a build I’ve been running in dungeons and general PvE. Sorry if a similar build has been posted before. This build has decent healing while being full zerker.

sacrificing a little bit of dmg

doing decent dmg.

For people who want to know the healing potential of this build, when ur health is at 50% about 2 pistol whips will heal u to full.

While I’m not going to tell you not to run the build, I will say that you’re missing a lot of damage for some really negligible healing. You’ve actually given up almost all of the damage from traits that a Thief would normally have.

Assassin’s Reward and Invigorating Precision are both really weak and you give up, not just a little bit, but A LOTTA bit of damage in the process. Signet of Malice+PW on 3 targets is making most of your healing in the first place and Assassin’s Reward is especially weak here.

Not having Sundering Strikes in a PvE S/P build is also a big miss, it stacks a lot of vuln with PW and is a big help to whatever group you’re with. 26000 is a good start for strong damage. 3 Acro is also a big survivability boost for the investment and 56000+3 in general is high damage. It works really well as you can dodge away from threatening damage while using PW’s backloaded animation to keep it’s DPS sustained while having a high safety uptime.

PW+SoM covers a lot of baseline healing (especially when cleaving), however Mug can be used well for additional burst healing. With the nature of SoM, Caltrops is also a nice heal, especially in something like CoF P2’s Assassin room where you can get around 7000 healing tops. (I honestly feel Thieves have some of the best sustain in the game during this fight bc of SoM+PW+Caltrop, throw in Daggerstorm if you’re worried!)

I’ve always been super disappointed in Assassin’s Reward and I was hoping Invigorating Precision would be good but that was another major disappointment.

If you want a high damage and high sustain S/P build this is a trait spread that will be solid in FotM50.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQJAsal8MpypFOxxJsPNBNBt9wXQE0NBBovjA-TxRBABR8AAuS5HN7PgneAAOBAUq+jZKBBA-e
If you don’t need Mug’s sustain, obviously use 5% dual damage. Please change utilities/weaponsheal as needed to help your group!

-Sometimes creative use of stealth+shadowsteps are useful in stomping. In WvW you can sometimes get a stomp with a small group on you by putting the edge of SR on a body and using Shadow step to the other edge of SR and returning.

-Shortbow5 and steal before the shadowstep. Uses Mug for sustain. I normally would advise using a wide “V” pattern to force opponents to shift their eyes.

-Dagger offhand. D5 then stepping is a good trick to have.

-Pistol offhand. Black Powder then stepping is often better than BPing and stepping a heartseeker as the BP can often be high enough pressure to force a reaction. (Forcing sudden reactions often means forcing people to make mistakes)

-Dagger mainhand. Backstab THEN step. You only need stealth to start a backstab, not finish one. Especially useful when you lay down SR against a high pressured target and they run away thinking they have 4 second head start. Nope.

-Dagger/Pistol3. While stealth use 3 and mash 1. You’ll perform a backstab instead of the normal dagger hit. The normal dagger hit does more damage when not on the back though.

S/D Feel free to use that Steal or whatever to stick those 3rd hit AAs against kiters and FS and LSs.

S/P. In PvE I make HEAVY use of Pistol Whip’s backloaded animation! PW→Dodge→Walk in during PW animation for safety or Shadowstep right before (or after depending on situation) the whip hit for sword evade frames.

-Shadowstep Return is a strong way to keep you safe from typical cleaving, enhance with stealth if needed.

A key thing with using steps to create pressure is to NOT BE PREDICTABLE. These are things to have up your sleeve. BP+Heartseeker and stepping Shadowstep+Infil Signet+Steal won’t make you an MLG 1 shotter all day.

Sarrow.2785:

Anyone else managed to make some use of some underused traits?

While not an SPvP thing, I do toy with is: If you run WvW SA builds, you can switch to Resilience of Shadows with a zerg and pressure on back liners and other high-pressure builds. This sort of pressure takes away pressure from your frontline even when you aren’t distracting it away. Higher impact in the shorter fights is the idea.

I have seen the occasional tactics warriors in SPvP and the res speed is pretty surprising.

If you want super MLG numbers hit record when you know you have an isolated squishy or isolated upscaleds. Good luck in there Burning Ember, I’ll see you around.

Infiltrator’s Return won’t always be an effective condi cleanse since cover condis will make you waste your own time.

A fun way to go about the S/P roaming is to just use a Panic strike PW burst build with Improvisation, Infiltrator’s Signet, Devourer Venom, SR. You might be surprised how many people you can catch. lol

If you’re going to put 2 points in SA for condi cleanse you might as well just run S/D instead. At least you’ll also be harder to kite. >_>

You have to have a hostile targeted. Jump immediately after starting sword2. There won’t be a return circle, you sword2.2 and you don’t go anywhere. (If you have no target or targeting friendly, the return circle will plop when your jump lands)

From a control point of view: Staff Ele has similar CCs to a staff/hammer Guardian in it’s air/earth attunements.

Static Field, Gust, Unsteady Ground, Shockwave. (A5, A3, E4, E5)
Ring of Warding, Banish, Line of Warding, Zealot’s Embrace. (H5, H4, St5, H3)

Of course, there’s some additional and differing utility beyond this. However, CC-wise these are pretty shared with the biggest difference in Static vs Ring.

I think the type to run 00266 cele staff in SoloQ is probably similar to someone running a bunker Guardian in SoloQ.

OP sure is asking a lot of questions. I think people whine about LB Rangers because the meta they are used to playing has shifted.

This is only my opinion… but it seems high bursts are in instead of the “bruiser” meta (D/D ele and Hambows with CCs and bursters to supplement)

We (or at least I do) see things like Double Ranger and if theres a 3rd burster (Mesmer/Thief/mb Lich Nec) then I’ve had a hard time running anything durable. Even the rotations are different. Zerging the DPS death squad far, flipping, then leaving to control mid→home with opportunistic far flips seem to be strong.

Now for the whining. People have been crying about Skyhammer for the longest time. A map that is very easy to die on and generally awareness can either keep you alive or get you killed. Now with a random ranger (or a necro if you’re 1v1ing a ranger) can mean instant death. So now the things people dislike about Skyhammer (awareness-based random stuff showing up and getting you killed quick) is happening on every map.

In my SoloQ games I often feel like having bad rangers (who aren’t good at opportunistic random plowing) compared to the impact that better rangers have is quite noticeable.

Does a sudden meta+rotation shift mean everyone is a whiny noob? No, but this is the forums – a place for people to whine.

Most of this is a L2P issue because the meta has shifted. Learn the new meta.

I usually don’t enjoy watching Rangers, no particular reason though. I like watching good AND entertaining people from any other professions though.

I don’t mind fighting anything that will actually contest a point in a 1v1 or team fight. (Kiting off point to avoid serious disadvantage is cool though)

Pretty much any kind of “Only works in duels” and WvW roaming builds that beat up idiots and run away from everyone else is just boring to fight.
“Oh look, this SA D/D Thief is going to engage on me, guess I have to make him Shadow Refuge when his Cloaked in Shadow+CnD doesn’t carry, since he’s SRing right in front of me I might as well move on to an actual objective so both reset hp instead of 1 (and wasting my time). Good thing these playstyles/builds have such low presence on objectives means they’re largely useless in SPvP. (Except D/D Eles…)

If I’m playing Bunker Guardian, I generally dislike having to 1v1 MM Necros.
If I play Condi Engi (mostly likely in WvW) I generally dislike having to 1v1 Condi Necros.

Shalla.3967:

Quoting the patch notes:
“Cleansing Ire:
Updated the description to clarify that conditions are only removed if the burst skill hits.”

Combustive Shot on Warriors is still clearing conditions without having to hit any enemies with it, despite of this “change”.

Quoting the patch notes:
Adrenaline Burst Skills:

Using these skills now causes adrenaline to be spent even if the skill fails to hit.

Sounds like the same bug that caused Combustive Shot to drain adrenaline on a miss pre-patch.

With 2 people there are 12 (not 7) NPCs to rescue. When I ran around and found them all we easily finished it up.

1-3) @Tower, ninja retreat them after Tendril+Roots finish or else #4 will die. Feedback on non-root works great here.
4) In water south, catch him before Vile Thrasher spawns.
5+6) South at cave, if you’re fast you won’t even have to kill the 1 wolf.
7) Head north near the main road. If you’re fast catch before Wolf spawns.
8) North along water, if you’re fast catch before Husk spawns.
9) Go back past 7, this NPC wrecks the Tendril he fights and has long invuln, best to send the non-opener here to finish the Tendril though!
10) Keep going north, follow the cliff counter clockwise. Kill the Husk
11+12) Keep going counterclockwise around the cliff, I don’t know if any enemies even spawn at these 2.

The only reason GoM really beats DR is because the DR zerglings get demotivated ridiculously easy and the only people that stay around are roamers that just pick on bad people. As a new commander, when I commanded and my zergs have been outnumbered by both DR and FC (for example) the only way I’ve kept EB was demotivating both servers while defending. I’ve spent more time roaming though.

Having a more relevant night crew and people more resilient to demoralization isn’t exploiting. Thanks for your great sportsmanship, Ithilwen.

I always ran Fire on it, it likes to bounce and cleave so it’s always gotten to double dip into the AoE and extra oomph. I don’t only use it as an “OH KITTEN” weapon, so I’ve been considering running something other than Energy on it now.

If you want to take advantage of SA’s sustain, you’d be letting stealth drops and CnDing over and over. It does take quite a while to bring someone decent down in SPvP with this, but picking on Zerkers in WvW is really easy. Backstabbing is great for just finishing someone off with D/D SA build, but trying to do it a lot and getting yourself revealed leaves you somewhat SOL-ish. D/D has a really weak evade on 3 and you will likely not have good access to Vigor to help compensate. (Running 0/30/30/10/0 for Vigor on heal, likely HiS, isn’t that amazing with revealed)

It feels somewhat gimicky, but it works if you just casually outdamage people’s heal. It’s really trolly in duels since you don’t have to quickly kill someone and you don’t have any objectives to contest. Just be an annoying mosquito.

D/D with Acrobatics, I think ppl were just spamming evades, but you could just use S/D and get more out of it…

Thief is definitely not weak overall, it has a ton of potential and a lot of techniques that can help performance a lot. It can be extremely unforgiving compared to a lot of other profs and a bringing out it’s potential requires a decent player to contribute.

It doesn’t take a good player to spec 30 Shadow Arts and run away not attacking and get the free stealth at 25% and get away/heal up, but most SA thieves you see (generally in WvW) won’t be killing people unless they’re low levels anyway.

More offensively built Thieves require player mechanics for survivability. The prof itself brings a lot of player-based things to the table.

As a Thief main (even when Im not playing Thief) I generally dislike seeing Thieves on my team in SPvP, because most of the time they either go squish and feed or they just run around a whole lot and not do much.

There’s gimick builds (just about everything people do with d/d for instance) and there’s flexible builds. Initiative system alone can punish bad decision making because you can waste your init by using a wrong ability or simply dump them for no reason. (That Incinerator x2 that blew 5 heartseekers trying to chase me and I only needed 2 dodges to take 0 damage from all of them)

Not to sound like “IF UR GOOD ANYTHING IS NOT WEAK” however, Thief has a really high skill floor and an even higher skill ceiling. It’s literally as strong as it’s player and boy can it be strong in good hands. Unless a player has a very analytical approach, solid reflex, good on-the-fly decision making, they will probably be better off on a Mesmer.

D/D has weaker approach backstab than D/P. D/P can approach stealthed thanks to Infiltrator’s Signet, Shadowstep, Steal during Heartseeker animations (Useful tricks like Heartseekering away just to Shadowstep behind during the animation, hit with HS and Backstab) If you really need to secure a backstab, hit backstab and during the animation use Steal/Signet, even though you break stealth from mug you’ll still land the backstab. The animation for backstab is fast so practice for a few minutes to learn how to do it.
Generally, more Shadowsteps allows for more Backstab play, especially with D/P on-demand stealth.

D/P also has a strong stick with 3 that (for +1 init over HS, blinds, faster, farther range, less telegraph and approach not wrecked by cripple/chill) does good damage to targets above 50% (also handy for clutch counter-counter-stomping for allies when initiative is low).
Even the 4 has some good uses: Notably it’s incredibly useful at stopping Guardian Staff4 healing, Thief Hide in Shadows and non-stab stomps.
Pistol offhand also has a legendary stomp securing skill, I really miss Black Powder whenever I run S/D. 5 also grants potential area denial, forcing the opponent to react. It’s just incredibly good for PvP!

D/P has so many good options that for a low skilled Thief it can allow them to make a lot of mistakes and waste init. <- Woe to the only profession in the game without skill cooldowns to throttle/force options and more cooldowns from swapping. D/D only seems superior to D/P in the hands of less technical Thief players because it’s fairly mindless.
“Am I scared to go melee?” Hit 4 or use Shortbow.
“Am I in melee and scared?” Hit 3.
“Is target running away? (back turned)” Steal/Shadowstep, CnD, Stab
“Is target below 50%?” Spam 2 huehuehuehue
“Is target above 50% and I don’t think I can maneuver for a stab?” If yes, hit 3, rinse and repeat.
“Do I want to blow 10 initative for an easy backstab with a footslogged approach?” Hit 4, then hit 5, stab.

The only real notable advantage that D/D has over D/P is it can pop out a faster (“less telegraphed”) and cheaper backstab, which is nice for PvE but D/P’s better backstab approaches, unevadable(guaranteed) stealth and incredible options make it easily one of the best for PvP.

I think 10/30/30/0/0 is good for people learning thief play. Not sure why you go with d/d+s/d but you stated that the thread is for your personal reference and any critique is justified by “playstyle”. So thanks for the thread.

DatPieGuy.6540:

So basically, my question here is, is it viable to switch out the pistol offhand in the trickery build to a dagger and run that in a tournament environment?

Compared to D/P, D/D’s stealth is not guaranteed, not gap closing, doesn’t blind, free #2 damage, can’t be used out of combat and is melee range with only Steal and utilities to gap close (and using 4 to cripple then footslog or 2).

D/P has stomp/revive/heal interrupt on 4, Blinding gap close on 3(also cheaper clutch stomp-counter-counter for ally when u dont have 6 init), stomp secure on 5, things that D/D doesn’t. Running D/D in TPvP is just an excuse to spam 2 because “Dude, there’s not much else I can do!” You can spam evades with Shortbow.

Blinding Powder alone is a tremendously useful ability in TPvP in many ways. Sure, you can run D/D but you can run just about whatever and do stuff in yolo queue so go ahead. :P

Ebs.6280:

Can you go into more detail about these builds? Like what mayor traits do you use?

Since there hasn’t been a reply yet, here’s the versions of each 3 I usually run.

30/20/0/0/20 Condi
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQJArYjMa96Fbib87JEoH9CuAiRKOmghSB8kOA
Applies strong condi, fears do damage and Plague blind spam is insanely strong in team fights. You can change the #7, I’ve been running with the more slippery utilities since people are starting to realize more to tunnel these builds first and the mobility and juking can be somewhat surprising to see from a Necro combined with the CC – a bit of a personal touch. Use Flesh Golem if you’re playstyle is smaller fight roaming instead of winning big team fights and snowballing, it’s basically another (uncleansable) Condi that spams cripple and has a knockdown.

30/10/0/0/30 Power
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAndWjMaV6ZaibM8JEoH5St4MRFGGqHrD68hA-TMADLWfMhA
(edited a little)
A thing in particular to note is that this build has very strong Deathshroud and Lich ranged damage that hits for several thousand along with the axe2 hitting for 5.5-5.8k in SPvP. Feel free to deviate from the well version. If you aren’t using Deathshroud for raw nuking, at least flash it for Fury.

Another aspect of this build is the wells. They put a lot of pressure on anyone sitting on objectives. Bunkers are usually durable because of good boon application (and often AoE boons), so punishing boons and applying vulnerability to anyone chilling on point combined with strong ranged nuking makes this build very good at pressuring (and allowing your team to take) objectives.

20/0/20/30/0 or 20/0/30/20/0.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBIhZakQrbvWzVjePBIpIaqnUwN4QKAQaA
Either build is essentially a 20/0/20/20/0+10. It excels at 1v1, 1v2 and 2v2 fights. I run this with Soldier amulet for home bunker. It has a combination of strong raw body(bodies?), high sustained damage, good sustain and even a CC-chain featuring a lot of immobility! It’s very strong, feel free to run Rock Dog for even more presence. Weak team fight though. The Dagger mainhand is very essential here since the thing packs so much of a punch, it alone sustains nearly twice as much damage as a SPvP Zerker Thief’s dagger1 autos. With the minions helping, using the Warhorn4 feels very comfortable to use and Warhorn5 is as strong as always and it even procs Siphons on AoE. I haven’t been overly impressed with the Bone Minions so I run Spectral Wall to help fight debunkers.

This build is also incredibly strong if paired with a Spirit Ranger.

Every one of the necros attacks should put a stack of bleed on us, reduce CD on Consume Conditions and MAYBE up our damage to compensate for the bleeds(nerfing, remember?), rename the class yolomancer and rename minion master as swag master – lets see how many necros stick around.
:3
:V

I’ve been feeling a little subpar on a Condi build lately so I tried MM. Dag/Warhorn+Staff SoldierAmy Rock Doge 20/0/20/30/0, I kind of felt it could’ve been optimized more and I’m kind of glad to see the skeleton was posted here. I have been pretty satisfied with MM in TPvP I think the “MM Noob GTFO” comment is slightly out of place. The only time I’ve experienced that was on Skyhammer once the other team had 3 engis all doing nothing but trying to Magnet cheese the entire match and they raged about a “Cheesy MM AI no skill build”.

I found it’s pretty beast in small fights (1v1, 1v2, 2v1, 2v2) and when you force people to fight near your minions, especially when you wait to land some good immobilize/CC chains. It starts to feel weak when you start entering bigger team fights or if you get hit hard by 3 guardians/warriors or just in general a ton of durable bodied AoE.

This profession has very strong skills in the utility slots to give up the second weapon slot. Knowing that you’ll need to get used to using F1-F4 abilities. Keybinding 6-0 into something like Shift, Q, E, R, T (that’s my set up) helps a great deal as well.
As for builds that are beginner friendly I’d say are the ones that aren’t running triple kits and even a little as possible since Engineers with lots of kits have the luxury of swapping even more freely than Elementalists (not to mention we can flat out choose our individual “attunements”)
Probably something with Elixirs would be good, since you can just choose to use them as you want the buffs instead of having to make the decisions of opportunity cost (time) involved with multiple kits.

You could also run around with a Rifle and Flamethrower for a little bit. 2 knockbacks, immobilize, aoe blind and good burst with Rifle3, 5, Flamethrower2 doubletap. Good control, damage and ease of use!

Hey look buddy, I’m an engineer, I solve problems. Not problems like “What is beauty?” because that’s philosophical. I solve practical problems and those problems get solved by my hobosack. If my hobosack doesn’t solve my problems, I use more hobosacks.