Solo Thief armor stats...

Currently, for PvE, I run Berserker's stats on my armor, with 6/6 Superior Runes of the Scholar -- are there going to be any instances when I'll want other stats? Since I'm doing the Arah PvP Reward Track, I was thinking of getting a set of Accursed armor with Power/Precision/Toughness just to have something that will let me take hits a little better, but I'm not sure if it'll ever actually be useful. I'd like to start building a set of armor for solo-farming dungeons. Thoughts?

If you want a set to help you take hits better, especially for solo where you're not getting team buffs (aka not crit capping), Marauders is the way to go. Power/Precision major stats and Ferocity/Vitality minor stats. For us squishy thiefies a full set of Marauder's ends up being about 50% more HP for 10% less dps, which gives you the hp pool needed to survive for Invigorating Precision to keep you up.

Though if you don't want to go Marauder's because it's harder to get, then Knight's stats (the Accursed armor) is an okay backup. Just keep in mind that while you're increasing your EHP with the toughness, the more dps you lose the more sustained healing from Invigorating Precision you're losing as well.

I think every thief should have a set of Marauder, it's just a very well rounded stat combination that works in a lot of places. Personally I'd skip Scholar runes for Marauder and maybe put something like Strength or Pack or anything with more utility.

However a thought crossed my mind. How about Trailblazer for a more d/d condi type Daredevil gameplay? There's a lot of evasions in that type of playstyle and Trailblazer gives you Toughness and Vitality. Please note that I haven't actually tried this yet, but I just started pondering it. Maybe even Dire-stat for budget reasons.

@saloja.7920 said:I think every thief should have a set of Marauder, it's just a very well rounded stat combination that works in a lot of places. Personally I'd skip Scholar runes for Marauder and maybe put something like Strength or Pack or anything with more utility.

You mean every thief that does any sort of PvP or WvW. That might be helpful in these cases. The majority of players, and that includes thieves, plays PvE exclusively though. No thief in PvE ever needs marauder stats.

No thief in PvE ever needs marauder stats.There are a lot of one-shot situations for an au naturel Thief especially in the new content. Having that little extra hp would help to keep you up. Remember that a dead dps equals 0 dps.

It used to be that I would take Valkyrie weapons just to have little survivability stats in my equipment. I recently got a Chorben's Weapon Chest (not quite sure why I got it, to be honest) that got me the ascended dagger and I was pretty happy with that for that reason.

@saloja.7920 said:I think every thief should have a set of Marauder, it's just a very well rounded stat combination that works in a lot of places. Personally I'd skip Scholar runes for Marauder and maybe put something like Strength or Pack or anything with more utility.

However a thought crossed my mind. How about Trailblazer for a more d/d condi type Daredevil gameplay? There's a lot of evasions in that type of playstyle and Trailblazer gives you Toughness and Vitality. Please note that I haven't actually tried this yet, but I just started pondering it. Maybe even Dire-stat for budget reasons.

Marauder runes over Scholar runes? I've never even seen Marauder runes... are they something I have to unlock that are account-bound?

Marauder > Berserker on Teef all day!

You get 60% more HP while losing 12% of damage! That's a good exchange (I would never call it a "tradeoff") for a 11k base HP class.

@Auturgist.8256 said:Marauder runes over Scholar runes? I've never even seen Marauder runes... are they something I have to unlock that are account-bound?

My message was maybe a bit unclear: I meant that I wouldn't take Scholar runes for my Marauder set, rather than something with a bit more utility [than Scholar]. There are no Marauder runes.

Personally I do have a full Berserker set with a full Scholar runeset, but I just get blasted away with one mistake in most open world bosses that scale at all.

I would think that Scholar runes on a Marauder set would be great because the increased health would make it easier to stay above the threshold for added damage.

@Auturgist.8256 said:I would think that Scholar runes on a Marauder set would be great because the increased health would make it easier to stay above the threshold for added damage.

While this is true, why I don't use Scholars on Marauder is that I use Marauder in situations where I'm likely to take a lot of damage or some damage very often. This in turn translates to the 6/6 bonus being unavailable most of the time.

@Auturgist.8256 said:Currently, for PvE, I run Berserker's stats on my armor, with 6/6 Superior Runes of the Scholar -- are there going to be any instances when I'll want other stats? Since I'm doing the Arah PvP Reward Track, I was thinking of getting a set of Accursed armor with Power/Precision/Toughness just to have something that will let me take hits a little better, but I'm not sure if it'll ever actually be useful. I'd like to start building a set of armor for solo-farming dungeons. Thoughts?

honestly...i'm questioning toughness as a stat

its so bad due to the high dmg meta where toughness doesn't feel like it does anything to help (math wise i know it does usually removing 33% of dmg, but it never feels like it)

Vitality on the other hand is the only defense vs condi dmg, and you can see it helping vs crit dmg.

so seriously. go marauder. switch up scholar for strength if you want longer might. or pack if you want more crit chance

@saloja.7920 said:

No thief in PvE ever needs marauder stats.There are a lot of one-shot situations for an au naturel Thief especially in the new content. Having that little extra hp would help to keep you up. Remember that a dead dps equals 0 dps.

Thanks for the reminder (/sarcasm). I still don't see the point in Marauder stats, why not use some Valkyrie gear? I actually use a Valkyrie staff and accessory in fractals most of the time, it gives me more than 14k health without losing any damage at all (because of precision coming from fractal pots). Even in open world content, I would prefer that over adding toughness to my build. It just draws unwanted attention from mobs that can get you killed more likely than a one-shot. Also, I hate to say this, but if you don't stand in AoEs or in front of mobs in open world, you don't get one-shot at all. I rather slot invigorating precision and use health leeching food to keep me alive.

Marauder just adds vitality, no toughness involved.

@saloja.7920 said:Marauder just adds vitality, no toughness involved.

Looks like I mixed it up with Wanderer's stats and made Power/Toughness/Vitality/Precision or something out of it ^^

Thanks for the correction. I agree, Marauder or Berserker + Valkyrie works fine. You can get the same result with them. I just chose to add Vitality with Valkyrie because it requires less gear changes, and I already have a legendary staff and accessory.

@Faaris.8013 said:Looks like I mixed it up with Wanderer's stats and made Power/Toughness/Vitality/Precision or something out of it ^^Right'o!

I did talk about Trailblazer earlier which does have Tough+Vit, but that was musing on a whole different scenario.

Wurm runes (+7% of vitality into ferocity) pair well with a marauder set.

@Faaris.8013 said:Thanks for the reminder (/sarcasm). I still don't see the point in Marauder stats, why not use some Valkyrie gear? I actually use a Valkyrie staff and accessory in fractals most of the time, it gives me more than 14k health without losing any damage at all (because of precision coming from fractal pots). Even in open world content, I would prefer that over adding toughness to my build. It just draws unwanted attention from mobs that can get you killed more likely than a one-shot. Also, I hate to say this, but if you don't stand in AoEs or in front of mobs in open world, you don't get one-shot at all. I rather slot invigorating precision and use health leeching food to keep me alive.

Wait... what does Toughness have to do with mob aggro?

The most often selected Armors for powerThief in PVP tend to be Marauders, Assassins, and Valks. Toughness is not often taken for thief as thief has a number of ways to avoid taking insane burst direct damages. Your usual killer is going to be condition damage. You'd want to take toughness if you're fighting someone who's incredibly hard to get off of you, and are able to hit you fast and hard. Taking Berserk is a good way to ask for trouble.

All damage you'd normally receive is DIVIDED by toughness. This means that arguably, having higher toughness against direct damage is far better than having more health against the same damage. But consequently, anything that ignores armor will kill you very quickly.

There's nothing really wrong with taking high toughness builds however, unless you're fighting condi. Toughness builds are often augmented by Shadow Arts, and Deadeye. I've used Knights, and Crusader to pretty strong effect with Deadeye. In PVP.

For PVE, a lot of people will tell you to just go Berserker and get good. But I want to point out some flaws with this thinking.

1. A lot of the enemies HoT and PoF expansions can deal a shit load of damage to you in short notice. Many can actually one-shot a thief.
2. A lot of the enemies have some form of absurdly long CC and agro range.
3. There are a lot of areas where there is a massive shit storm of mobs. Dealing with one or three won't be an issue for a thief. But when the thief is swarmed by a mix of ranged, melee, AOEs, and CCs... you will really feel your lack of defensive stats.

I'd recommend taking Marauders. Which will see you safely through a good chunk of content. That's what I currently use.If you're doing Solo Dungeon runs, survivability becomes far more important. Because you'll be taking a shit storm of damage... you want something with healing power, or defenses. Preferably, toughness as you'll find yourself getting hit pretty god damn hard without it. To put it in perspective, a dungeon boss has chunked my 11,000hp arse in zerks for 9000 damage.

Knights would have reduced that to 6777.

CommanderKnightsValksCrusader

@Auturgist.8256 said:

@Faaris.8013 said:Thanks for the reminder (/sarcasm). I still don't see the point in Marauder stats, why not use some Valkyrie gear? I actually use a Valkyrie staff and accessory in fractals most of the time, it gives me more than 14k health without losing any damage at all (because of precision coming from fractal pots). Even in open world content, I would prefer that over adding toughness to my build. It just draws unwanted attention from mobs that can get you killed more likely than a one-shot. Also, I hate to say this, but if you don't stand in AoEs or in front of mobs in open world, you don't get one-shot at all. I rather slot invigorating precision and use health leeching food to keep me alive.

In some PvE content, Toughness determines how badly you piss enemies off. In some Raids, enemies will attack characters with the highest toughness stat. This does not necessarily mean everything follows this rule. As a large majority of enemies are based on proximity, and who attacked what first.

I prefer mix and matching armor types to get each stat to a level i find offers the best balance with protection versus damage. As example, I find having a wee bit more toughness then the base of 2118 serves me better then more health versus that toughness even with all this big hitting attacks out there. A lot depends on how I see the build working. The Rifle DE I use s example has all manners of damage miitgation in WvW (scrappers runes, iron sights CIS in stealth , damage reduction food with 2600 base toughness) because the way I fight with him I am GOING to get hit while stealthed. Agro is of no concern here as he stealths a lot. On the more dodgy types I lean more to vitality over toughness.

So, I bought a Mist Talisman today and saw that one of the options when selectings stats is "Berserker's and Valkyrie" and instead of granting +110 Power/+74 Precision/+74 Ferocity, it grants +110 Power/+56 Precison/+18 Vitality/+74 Ferocity... and I feel like a small amount of crit is a fine sacrifice to make for some more health. Thoughts?

@"Auturgist.8256" said:So, I bought a Mist Talisman today and saw that one of the options when selectings stats is "Berserker's and Valkyrie" and instead of granting +110 Power/+74 Precision/+74 Ferocity, it grants +110 Power/+56 Precison/+18 Vitality/+74 Ferocity... and I feel like a small amount of crit is a fine sacrifice to make for some more health. Thoughts?

I wouldn't use the expensive trinket to add health to your thief. Better use a ring or accessory that is pure valkyrie and swap items as required. You can use a LW S3 ring/accessory for Valkyrie and buy berserker trinkets with relics. For normal open world play you probably don't want additional health but rather as much crit chance as possible to kill quicker. You could change the stats on your mist talisman, but I guess the effort will keep you from doing it regularly.

I ended up going with pure Berserker's since I plan on making my first crafted set of Ascended armor Marauder's for the versatility.