Open World Solo

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

1 hour ago, SeTect.5918 said:

Havoc gives strike damage bonus which isnt effective on trailblazer, and its Max. 15% strike damage bonus. Staff master gives 120 power on 1000 base power which is perm 12% strike damage bonus, but i just took staff master because of the endurance anyway, so more dodge. 

For the thing with uncatchable, yes. Sry i forgot to change it because i used the deadeye as template, so i didnt have to change the armor fully New.

So yes uncatchable is the better one.

Staff Master doesn't grant endurance w/o staff being wielded.

[SeTect.5918]

3 minutes ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

Staff Master doesn't grant endurance w/o staff being wielded.

Alright my bad then. However u can use whatever u want then, the builds still do good. However i think it doesn't make a lot of difference which one u choose. One is 12% perm and one is 0-15%.

[saerni.2584]

I'd just throw out there that Deadeye benefits from a decent crit rate so even if you want to try the celestial torment build you may want to sub in some Rampagers for better crit rate to ensure you hit your malice rotation on Maleficent Seven. 
 

You can also try a Viper's Torment variation which has decent healing sustain like the Celestial Torment but much better condi damage and crit rate. 
 

Honestly, you will top out damage in many situations with a Viper Torment setup. I was testing some open world builds (I don't really PvE seriously so I thought I'd give it a go) and I was typically between 13-16k DPS. That's in a pug group where the average person had 4k DPS and only a couple topped 10k. 

[Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497]

5 hours ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

Sustain is the ability to keep yourself in good health during a fight. Depending on who you ask, this includes healing, toughness and damage reduction; or just healing.

You missed the joke.

Edited September 22, 2021 by Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497

[Rezok.2709]

You are complaining about thief solo survivability while running celestial, a stat line that is clearly not great for thief in any way. I think you might want to look into the strengths of thief instead. Thief doesn't work with a bit of everything.

Look at the Critical Strike trait line, you got a trait that heals based on your crit damage. This means stacking power, precision and ferocity becomes your defense. In contrast to your celestial build, this will heal way more than your healing stat can ever do.

You also have Signet of Malice, healing 134 per attack. This sync great with P/P, where you do 8 shots with Unload, that's 1072 healing. Unload also easily does 15k damage, meaning you heal 3000 (if you have fury, which you can easily keep 100% uptime on).

This means you heal +4000 for every Unload. With Deadeye Maleficent Seven you also constantly get enough initiative that you never have to do anything but spam Unload, and you get permanent Vigor, Regen (around 130 per second) and Protection to further help survival. Or run rifle and do Death's Judgement for 30k hits / 6000 healing.

Honestly, at this point you can facetank most things, only weakness is you have low HP, so if something can literally one shot you, it is troublesome. But even this can be off-set just by picking up a bit of Marauder gear, just enough to where you never get one shot but still get insane healing.

[Salvatore.3749]

On 9/19/2021 at 7:48 PM, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

I swear.

Doing all these group events, champion and legendary bounties on thief, solo. Some really require damned lot of effort in terms of LoS and timing (and resource management). Then you see all these videos about viper scourge soloing bosses just walking around casually and spamming skills, tanking through stuff with barrier while transmuting condies.

Tough to be a thief, huh. Maybe we could get something on par with mirage and scourge in End of Dragons, eh.

EDIT: for the curious, I'm running celestial gear with a hybrid build. Torment runes with Spider and Skale Venom.

Others have pointed out invigorating precision and marauders is better, I agree. Take that trait, and take signet of malice or skelk venom for heals in OW. I try to use builds that heal me while attacking, as thief's best method of survival is being able to consistently play aggressively. 

If you like using venoms, I would also suggest trying a condi focused build with carrion or trailblazers armor. Then take leeching venoms trait with venom skills. You only need runes of krait, mirage, tormenting. adventurer, nightmare or divinity (as last resort). It just depends on how you want play your thief. 

For PvE, I prefer condi since not everything has the ability to remove conditions and your attacks are more efficient if they hit. 

 

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

3 hours ago, Salvatore.3749 said:

Others have pointed out invigorating precision and marauders is better, I agree. Take that trait, and take signet of malice or skelk venom for heals in OW. I try to use builds that heal me while attacking, as thief's best method of survival is being able to consistently play aggressively. 

If you like using venoms, I would also suggest trying a condi focused build with carrion or trailblazers armor. Then take leeching venoms trait with venom skills. You only need runes of krait, mirage, tormenting. adventurer, nightmare or divinity (as last resort). It just depends on how you want play your thief. 

For PvE, I prefer condi since not everything has the ability to remove conditions and your attacks are more efficient if they hit. 

 

Ditching Trickery or Deadly Arts loses you a lot of damage in Bewildering Ambush/Potent Poison. Might not manage the 10-minute timer in tougher bounties.

Edited October 1, 2021 by NorthernRedStar.3054

[Salvatore.3749]

True! That's a good point. In PvE, I use core thief  for condi builds so I take Deadly Arts, Shadow Arts, and trickery, but I like the Marauder Daredevil setup OW Roaming. I think it's best with Critical Strikes, Trickery, and Daredevil since I make use of fury and the physical skills more. 

PvE feels so dry to me as a thief. I hate saying that, but I mean it at time because it feels like it's talents are diminished when there is so much going on in OW.  B

Bounties are a good example of why it feels a little diminished at times, thief just doesn't seem to do enough during certain bounties. I could take my ranger and deal higher condi damage to bounties faster or take my Guardian to support those around me in a Champion legendary bounty. 

[Asum.4960]

Honestly surprised no one is recommending Shortbow (Choking Gas Spam) for general solo condi Thief. 

 

This has decent DPS, sustain, cleave, great CC - works well with Viper's, Trailblazer or even Celestial, although probably recommend Trailblazer for tougher solo stuff. 

 

It's no Renegade or Scourge etc., but it generally does well enough. 

 

For single tough Targets condi DE might be slightly better and D/D DD might be more Static Target DPS, but this has a lot more QoL and general gameplay use and is fairly relaxed and fun to play, just spamming finishers (Lotus Dodges, Shortbow AA's and Impairing Daggers in the Choking Gas field). 

 

Imo Shortbow is far superior to D/D and P/D for solo play if you want to go condi, except for very niche scenarios.

 

 

Edited October 5, 2021 by Asum.4960

[Rezok.2709]

On 10/5/2021 at 5:11 PM, Asum.4960 said:

Honestly surprised no one is recommending Shortbow (Choking Gas Spam) for general solo condi Thief. 

I absolutely love SB since it have become an actual condi weapon. The AA bleed on poisoned targets is actually pretty strong, and if you play DE the stealth attack is 3x bleed on a lot of enemies. While I'd honestly like 2 to just get a rework completely, I think it is in a better spot as an actual DPS weapon than it's ever been.

[ASP.8093]

4 hours ago, Rezok.2709 said:

I absolutely love SB since it have become an actual condi weapon. The AA bleed on poisoned targets is actually pretty strong, and if you play DE the stealth attack is 3x bleed on a lot of enemies. While I'd honestly like 2 to just get a rework completely, I think it is in a better spot as an actual DPS weapon than it's ever been.

Cluster Bomb is great, though. Blast finisher, reasonable damage, one of the best spammable AOE options for Deadeye.

[Obtena.7952]

Thief is a bit of a tough nut to crack on this but does have capable builds for 2 of 3 main tasks in OW PVE.

1. Bursting Trash - nothing compares to Deadeye for bursting a trash mob. I doesn't even get a chance to touch you. Even core has a highly capable trash bursting build. Admittedly, while bursting trash isn't that exciting, it's some of the most common encounter you will fact.

2. Soloing Bounties, etc - Thank Lord Hizen for this one: http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?PawAoijlZw6YQMKmJOuW1vOA-zRJYkRJfZ0YI0bB49BIclwrBEfaA-e His video on Youtube for Deadeye PVE explains it sufficiently. It's good stuff though personally, I don't like the idea of using condition DPS on a class that excels at direct DPS to do it. 

3. Multiple mob encounters - Thief is not great here. This is the kind of content you seen in Dragonstand and thief does not stand out in performance with it's peers. Best I've managed is Short Bow loaded up with a few of the many healing traits available but it still suffers from a lack of useful utilities for this kind of content. 

Edited October 7, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Zacchary.6183]

3 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Best I've managed is Short Bow loaded up with a few of the many healing

You really only need Signet of Malice for healing and as much aoe procs and hits as you can spit out to maximise the passive. I use this for cleaning trash (also amazing for tagging) and it isn't hard to take on upwards of 7 things at once even if the damage is not optimal. For bosses I switch to this.