rifle build?

[weaponwh.9810]

whats a good rifle build for open world, especially taking down vetern/champion type mob, solo if possible

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

@"weaponwh.9810" said:whats a good rifle build for open world, especially taking down vetern/champion type mob, solo if possible

If you're not bothered about kill speed and just want an easy time vs champions and veterans (single target), try this;http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PawAQxrlNwAZbsO2JW2P/vKA-zVRYDBZIG1c5nSTSgwEBZqAaZI4nDQA7h3SVmRA-w

It's similar to the build I use while soloing keep and tower lords in WvW, so it ought to be able to solo anything in PvE if played right. I have no idea how much you know about deadeye so I've written this assuming you know nothing for the sake of completeness, forgive me if it's patronising by explaining stuff you know.

Rotation; mark > rifle2 x4 > dodge > death's judgement > repeat. In more detail, you use spotter's shot/skirmisher's shot (rifle 2) to build malice to full which gives boons and ini back (maleficent seven, deadeye grandmaster trait), stealth with either dodge roll, mark (the shadow arts trait hidden thief gives stealth on mark), withdraw (the shadow arts trait concealing restoration gives stealth on heal) or stolen skill (the stolen skill grants stealth as long as you have 5 or more malice) and use death's judgement to dump malice and do damage.

Healing; Invigorating precision (critical grandmaster trait) heals you for 20% of your crit damage as long as you have fury, which you will from spotter's shot (kneeling rifle 2) and as long as you keep building and spending malice properly as described above. Vampirism runes heal you whenever you kill something, useful if that champ has trash mobs you need to deal with. I also like scholar runes and adventurer runes but vampirism is probably the easiest to use effectively if you're learning the class.

Breakbars; Rending shade (shadow arts grandmaster, applies fear around your char when hitting a stealth attack vs a foe with no boons, requires short range tho), smoke screen (utility, applies blind on AoE) combined with pistol whip (sword pistol 3), headshot (pistol 4), basilisk venom (elite, can be shared to allies if you have them) and malicious tactical strike (sword sneak attack) give you loads of ways to break a breakbar when you need it, while also keeping protection off your target (rending shade).

Cleansing; death's retreat (standing rifle 4), the return on sword 2 and the return on shadowstep all clear conditions, and are excellent kiting tools. If you find conditions are still an issue, swap hidden thief for shadow's embrace in shadow arts. You lose the stealth on mark and have a longer cooldown on smoke screen and shadowstep, but you get condis cleansed every time you enter stealth. Antitoxin runes also work nicely with this setup, but honestly are a bit overkill if you try not to get hit with condis in the first place.

Damage reduction; you have 33% reduced damage while revealed, which when you get comfortable with the build is basically all the time you're revealed using rifle 2. You also get 5s of protection from getting full malice; this is one of the reasons it's important to keep dumping malice efficiently. You can extend that duration to near permanent by changing your rings to diviner stats, your runes to fireworks and by taking a sigil of bounty over a sigil of bloodlust; this makes you more squishy in terms of actual health, but gives you 7 seconds of protection per malice buildup, so you might find managing boons easier this way. If you do that, consider swapping twin fangs for assassin's fury in critical strikes for basically perma 25 might.

Damage avoidance; you have 1500 range on rifle, plus permanent projectile block from sniper's cover (kneeling rifle 4) and smoke screen. Smoke screen is also a pulsing smoke field, so between that and the smoke field from black powder (pistol 5) you have a ton of blind vs enemies without break bars. You have built in evades from withdraw and roll for initiative (heal and utility skills), plus pistol whip (sword pistol 3) is also an evade despite the tooltop not listing it; the initial stun does not evade, but the flurry does. Adventurer runes work nicely with withdraw for an extra evade's worth of endurance on your heal, but you can also regenerate your endurance quickly with malicious tactical strike (sword sneak attack) so you may find them redundant. Play with both, they're not expensive compared to scholar although that is obviously the best DPS choice.

With the amount of health, CC and healing you get from this, the build is practically bomb proof if you just focus on building and spending malice with death's judgement, and try not to get hit by stupid stuff. Hope this helps :)

[weaponwh.9810]

is this condi or power build?

[Jugglemonkey.8741]

@weaponwh.9810 said:is this condi or power build?

The one I gave was a power build, it's generally more efficient to run power on thief in PvE. You still have around 21k health, roughly 50% damage reduction and you heal both by damaging and by killing stuff, so it's not squishy by any means.

[Multicellular.3746]

@Jugglemonkey.8741 said:

@"weaponwh.9810" said:whats a good rifle build for open world, especially taking down vetern/champion type mob, solo if possible

If you're not bothered about kill speed and just want an easy time vs champions and veterans (single target), try this;

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PawAQxrlNwAZbsO2JW2P/vKA-zVRYDBZIG1c5nSTSgwEBZqAaZI4nDQA7h3SVmRA-w

It's similar to the build I use while soloing keep and tower lords in WvW, so it ought to be able to solo anything in PvE if played right. I have no idea how much you know about deadeye so I've written this assuming you know nothing for the sake of completeness, forgive me if it's patronising by explaining stuff you know.

Rotation; mark > rifle2 x4 > dodge > death's judgement > repeat. In more detail, you use spotter's shot/skirmisher's shot (rifle 2) to build malice to full which gives boons and ini back (maleficent seven, deadeye grandmaster trait), stealth with either dodge roll, mark (the shadow arts trait hidden thief gives stealth on mark), withdraw (the shadow arts trait concealing restoration gives stealth on heal) or stolen skill (the stolen skill grants stealth as long as you have 5 or more malice) and use death's judgement to dump malice and do damage.

Healing; Invigorating precision (critical grandmaster trait) heals you for 20% of your crit damage as long as you have fury, which you will from spotter's shot (kneeling rifle 2) and as long as you keep building and spending malice properly as described above. Vampirism runes heal you whenever you kill something, useful if that champ has trash mobs you need to deal with. I also like scholar runes and adventurer runes but vampirism is probably the easiest to use effectively if you're learning the class.

Breakbars; Rending shade (shadow arts grandmaster, applies fear around your char when hitting a stealth attack vs a foe with no boons, requires short range tho), smoke screen (utility, applies blind on AoE) combined with pistol whip (sword pistol 3), headshot (pistol 4), basilisk venom (elite, can be shared to allies if you have them) and malicious tactical strike (sword sneak attack) give you loads of ways to break a breakbar when you need it, while also keeping protection off your target (rending shade).

Cleansing; death's retreat (standing rifle 4), the return on sword 2 and the return on shadowstep all clear conditions, and are excellent kiting tools. If you find conditions are still an issue, swap hidden thief for shadow's embrace in shadow arts. You lose the stealth on mark and have a longer cooldown on smoke screen and shadowstep, but you get condis cleansed every time you enter stealth. Antitoxin runes also work nicely with this setup, but honestly are a bit overkill if you try not to get hit with condis in the first place.

Damage reduction; you have 33% reduced damage while revealed, which when you get comfortable with the build is basically all the time you're revealed using rifle 2. You also get 5s of protection from getting full malice; this is one of the reasons it's important to keep dumping malice efficiently. You can extend that duration to near permanent by changing your rings to diviner stats, your runes to fireworks and by taking a sigil of bounty over a sigil of bloodlust; this makes you more squishy in terms of actual health, but gives you 7 seconds of protection per malice buildup, so you might find managing boons easier this way. If you do that, consider swapping twin fangs for assassin's fury in critical strikes for basically perma 25 might.

Damage avoidance; you have 1500 range on rifle, plus permanent projectile block from sniper's cover (kneeling rifle 4) and smoke screen. Smoke screen is also a pulsing smoke field, so between that and the smoke field from black powder (pistol 5) you have a ton of blind vs enemies without break bars. You have built in evades from withdraw and roll for initiative (heal and utility skills), plus pistol whip (sword pistol 3) is also an evade despite the tooltop not listing it; the initial stun does not evade, but the flurry does. Adventurer runes work nicely with withdraw for an extra evade's worth of endurance on your heal, but you can also regenerate your endurance quickly with malicious tactical strike (sword sneak attack) so you may find them redundant. Play with both, they're not expensive compared to scholar although that is obviously the best DPS choice.

With the amount of health, CC and healing you get from this, the build is practically bomb proof if you just focus on building and spending malice with death's judgement, and try not to get hit by stupid stuff. Hope this helps :)

This was a very helpful post. Thank you. There were some good tweaks in here on what I had been running.