Thief WvW question

Thinking about trying WvW because PvE became borefest for me.

My question is: is staff/sb viable? Or d/p and staff? Which stat should i use? What thief do in WvW? Will i'll be shunned because i probably die horribly when first try WvW?Thanks in advance.

@Pansoul.9436 said:What thief do in WvW?

Killing enemies out of groups, ganking, stabbing, did I mention stabbing? And yeah taking camps and killing Yaks ! YAYKS !

S+D and D+P are still more viable builds over everything... spamming Vault with staff is boring and shitty

Rifle thief pew pew 1shotting people from range

Build for stealth as deadeye, equip dual pistol, proceed to pop everyone with #3 at 2.5k per hit. Unless people expect you around, most will be downed in an instant especially if you use binding shadow. Reset immediately if they catch you, its unstoppable if you have another thief build the same way and roam together and use call target. 2 Sos thief did this yesterday all day long, its very hard to recover after they managed to open on you.

i tried the glass cannon p/p deadeye. at first i love it because i just kept spamming 3 till player they're eat the dirt. but quickly got bored because kept spamming 3 and if they got me i'll usually ended up dead because i still doesnt know when to disengage. more or less the same with rifle.

when i used staff, 50% chance i win because i just spam vault like a noob i am. even then i still got hit by enemies. and when i tried with d/p its hit ridiculously hard even with AA. maybe because my stat since its full zerk. didnt tried s/d though, let alone s/p.

also which stat should i use for roaming and its rune for weapon and armor because i felt like im wearing nothing at all.

P/P gets hard-countered and shut down easily in the PvP formats and its success varies harshly by matchup. Daredevil is typically a superior spec for this as well. P/P DE is honestly more or less a PvE setup.

Vault isn't a full dodge and can be interrupted.

S/P is basically the melee version of P/P with a few less counters but is harder to pull off successfully overall.

A major contributing factor is stats. Berserker gear just won't work in WvW for most builds except SA permastealth rifle deadeye. Marauder or half berserker+half Valkyrie is the way to go.

Spamming generally isn't a valid tactic on the thief because you truly will be completely squishy if you get hit and don't have initiative to save yourself when you need it most.

Rune choice is largely preference. Some will say durability, some will say daredevil, some will say scrapper or pack, others strength or scholar.

The metabattle.com builds aren't bad if it's your starting point. There have also been a few pages-full threads on builds and there are some fun videos posted here from other thieves in this forum for spvp and wvw. You can slow down those videos and sometimes they explain their plays a bit and you might see some scenarios there that match up to what you're having a hard time with. I could tell you what I use or what I think are some of the better builds but that might just be useless for you, I think you should try some builds from those two kinds of sources and slow your game play way down to just try some stats and skills reading their tool tips and take the time to understand why a lot of thieves ended up using certain stats or skills more in general.

I think both the staff daredevil and dp deadly arts builds on metabattle.com are good builds to start with and play both evenly because they're kind of a different muscle memory pace where dp has some nice controlled decision making and precise timing and staff has more fluid chained movement. Find a big squad to run around with for a bit for some security and just try stuff on people reading the tool tips and think about playing both for kills and for working off of and in support of your groups then watch some thief videos to catch familiar moments as sort of a replay for yourself but without the in-the-moment buzz. Watch a few videos from other classes and maybe tinker around with them for a few minutes yourself and you might catch things about to happen a little faster when you're out there.

Mauraders plus food and utilities puts your power and health in a good starting spot and Dash has a lot of movement dominance packed into a trait choice that doesn't take a skill slot so that might be helpful at first to feel out the scale of fights in WvW until you feel confident enough to change a piece or two of gear or to mess around with your build more.

No weaponset is shut down if you pair it with a suitable offhand set. Outside PvP SB is not as required as some seem to suggest. Indeed with all of the AOE out there it just as accurate to say that something like D/P can get shut down in WvW. While spamming a skill is not the best way to win a fight if you do take a set that has more of that spam integral to it (such as p/p unload) , the utilities you pair with it are more important. IE things like RFI. Withdraw and even shadowstep become your go to for defensives as they do not use up INI. Something like S/d requires less of these types of utilities as you tend to have more INI wherein you less focused on using a single skill and have a decent #1 and have those ports.

One of the single largest differences between a DE build and a D/D or core build is the steal. Steal at range can offer significant advantages and you can always be sure you can use the thing rather then be prevented from using it because an area you might port to loaded with enemies or red circles. By the same token the older steal has excellent gap closing and is a great way to run down someone fleeing or even used as an escape when in trouble.

Much of how you decide to make your build is dependent on the role you play. If it as a solitary roamer on a lower tier server where you expect to meet single enemies or very small groups of the same certain weaponsets are superior to others. If there more group play others can gain an advantage. It my opinion you should pick one set to start with , get a build you comfortable with, refine your skills and once you gain some amount of confidence with the weapon used try another weapon loadout.

With most of what's played in roaming right now, P/P is countered pretty hard.

Power shatter mesmer runs reflect on dodge, spellbreaker runs reflect on block + spellbreaker elite, SA rifle deadeye pretty easily OHKOs P/P, S/D acro thief can disengage and has favorable initiative, and lb sb runs triple immunities and has great disengage with most meta beastmode abilities and bursts with LB. Power crit-immune nuke weaver is also starting to emerge as a prominent build, too.

All of these work amazingly against a thief with a lack of stealth access as well.

It's not that P/P can't find success so much that it's very easily hard-countered by what's commonly being played. OP can play whatever he wants relatively successfully if he tries hard enough, but that doesn't mean I'd recommend playing P/P as a solo roamer in terms of promoting what will make him most likely to succeed.

Staff + SB is the set i use and work pretty good, most people doesn't know or bother to interrupt vault but the not that recent nerfs coming from pvp hurts that weapon set a lotD/P + Staff is good too but i really want to have SB in my weapons because of crazy ports / anti rez #4 spam / surprise #2 bombStats : good choices for power damage are zerk, valkyrie, marauder, crusader depending of runes, weapon set and traits, it's mostly about taking enough stats you need to survive then maximize damage potentialRoles : mostly pve roam (takings camp & sentries, killing yaks) and killing people in <5/10 format but you can build some zerg-proof build (SB #4 spam as condi, DE focus party, DD zerg vaulter to name a few)For the last question : maybe yes but you shouldn't care : people love to trash talk thieves

Forgot about the last question - thanks ich.

There are a number of jerks in WvW that will be super arrogant when they beat you regardless of how new you might be to something. Given the thief's reputation, this will be more common than on other classes when in small-scale. Ignore them while you learn, and if they don't auto-block you after talking trash (because most people who do this have emotional problems such that they can't handle the truth of a response), just agree you're not very good and tell them you're new to the class and learning it. In the off chance they turn it around, they might give you some pointers. Not much else they can say so long as you keep it civil. As tempting as it is to give it back to them, it never accomplishes anything unless you consistently start beating them into the dirt every time you see them. As a new thief, it's unlikely to happen, and these same people usually tend to call whole guilds to come kill you after that :p

I do recommend trying something a little out of your comfort zone and to keep experimenting over time while trying new things. Don't play the safe/easy/cheese builds that float around for as long as you can tolerate and really analyze why you die when you do (Marauder stats are really almost necessary for most players at this point, though); just keep pushing the envelope as much as you can. You'll become a much better player that way.

@Pansoul.9436 said:Thinking about trying WvW because PvE became borefest for me.

My question is: is staff/sb viable? Or d/p and staff? Which stat should i use? What thief do in WvW? Will i'll be shunned because i probably die horribly when first try WvW?Thanks in advance.

@Pansoul.9436 said:i tried the glass cannon p/p deadeye. at first i love it because i just kept spamming 3 till player they're eat the dirt. but quickly got bored because kept spamming 3 and if they got me i'll usually ended up dead because i still doesnt know when to disengage. more or less the same with rifle.

when i used staff, 50% chance i win because i just spam vault like a noob i am. even then i still got hit by enemies. and when i tried with d/p its hit ridiculously hard even with AA. maybe because my stat since its full zerk. didnt tried s/d though, let alone s/p.

also which stat should i use for roaming and its rune for weapon and armor because i felt like im wearing nothing at all.

all weaponsets are viable in some way in WvW, each has strength and weaknesses. optimally your backbar should have different weaknesses. for instance i wouldnt advise to go p/p + rifle because both only have projectiles wich are fairly easy counterable and we do not have much access to unblockable to compensate this enough.

aside from that a build you run is far more then the weaponset and the choice of stats. trait and utility choice are at least equally important. to help you best it would be helpfull to know what exactly you plan to do with the thief in WvW and if you have a favourite weapon set or traitlines etc. then we can help you finish your build around this. without those informations i can just give you some questions and vague advise what your build generally should have.

what is it you do when you roam ? more specific:are you running around solo , duo or in a small group? - if not solo what classes do the others play or random?are you running around simply looking for some opponents to beat up?or is yor main objective to secure supply routes and prevent enemy structures to build up and maybe capture some towers/keeps with a sneak cata?

one thing you will allways need is tools to disengage this can be in form of mobility or stealth or both so you will allways need some of that. it is important that you have an uninterruptable way to disengage. this can be for mobility shadow step or for stealth blinding powder. if your disengage abilities can be interrupted they often will.

if you are not solo you should ofc adjust to the needs of your group , AoE stealth to prevent stomps, boon rip etc.

if you just want to fight you only need little stealth to avoid larger groups or none at all if you got enough mobility. if you want to manly go for camps/dolyaks etc and avoid fights if not neccessary, then i would advise to go for alot more stealth learn were you get marked and either avoid being marked or use those marks to sent your opponents on a false trail.

i think you might get shunned by your own server if you run thief in your blob, but in roaming the people that will insult you or try to show their disrespect rarely are able to do anything on their own and do that to pretty much anyone they encounter so it has nothing to do with your thief or being new to it, so dont really take it personal, dont let em provoke you . if you are better tho you they might start telling you that you cheat - those chats can get interesting.

D/P and Staff work pretty well together if you're confident you'll be seeing a lot of 1v1's. Acro/Trick/DrD for the perma vigor and enhanced endurance regen, and D/P would be your off-set here mainly for openings, escapes, or target re-assessments. If you're using Vault for anything other than potential mobility, then you're playing the build wrong. Staff Thieves are successful due to Staff3 and Bound.

Thank you all for the answers and tips. i really appreciate it.

i ended up using d/p+sb with marauder equipment except trinkets with Trick/Crit/DrD for clearing camp and Acro/Trick/DrD while duo with my friend. and i'll change to staff for clearing camp or when im duo with my friend just for the lolz. unfortunately s/d didnt really clicked for me so i just ignore it for now, let alone s/p.

Thank you again for all of your support.