Loperdos

Beta Sprite, on 23 May 2013 - 07:40 PM, said:

Yep, basically.  Also one could argue that it is an attempt to get away from the Assassin in GW1, which for some purposes, was very easy to exploit certain mechanics of certain types of builds.  But that's mostly conjecture, rather than anything substantial.

Lolanger, on 23 May 2013 - 05:49 PM, said:

Yep, D/P is quite good.  After playing on my ranged build for quite some time, I'm actually re-evaluating the possibility of running D/P again since I picked up an exo Zerker dagger just recently and was dinking around with S/D.  I like D/P quite a bit, in all honesty.  The only thing that you may run into issues with (and this may sway where you decide to put your heal skill) is that with D/P you don't have the on-demand stealth capabilities of D/D through CnD.  That being said, what I usually do is make up for the lack of on-demand stealth by picking up Blinding Powder, Smokescreen and iHouse for some extra stealths, as well as taking Hide in Shadows for an additional.  It may seem like overkill, especially with the ability to stealth from Black Powder (Heartseeker + Black Powder), but that's quite an init expensive way to pop into stealth.  That's where HiS, Smokescreen and Blinding Powder come into play.  Now, this type of setup is more difficult with your particular trait set (which happens to be quite a decent damage setup with the added survivability of 15 in Acro) because SA is where you pick up the CD reduction for stealth skills, but its still doable, given all the various ways you have to get into stealth, so you shouldn't have too much trouble.

Beyond that, your build looks good.  I can't say I'm a fan of Sigs all that much, but you can get some pretty impressive burst dmg from Sigs and backstap builds, so if that's what you are looking for, go for it.

You are correct, SoM is relatively bad if you aren't using a weapon-set that has a channeled skill like P/P or S/P, because you just don't hit fast enough with most normal attacks to keep your HP up...especially without Healing Power buffed...but as soon as you do that, you dramatically start to take away from your damage.

Final comment would be to be careful with getting reliant on blinds for survival.  If you find yourself in situations against mobs that are champs or above, your blinds will be relatively ineffective.  Plus, dredge are completely immune, so when you are running Sorrow's Embrace, you may run into some issues if you've gotten used to being able to stand still and just blind-tank.

Lunacy Polish, on 23 May 2013 - 06:05 PM, said:

Yep, this is what I use whenever I play with Withdraw.  The other thing I've discovered is that if you walk past the mob (turn off combat assist so you can walk through enemies) just a bit, basically enough to make the mob do a 180 and make it look like you aren't standing IN them anymore, then you can use Withdraw and still be pretty close to melee range (usually only a step or two out of range, from what I've found).

Dasryn, on 23 May 2013 - 11:18 AM, said:

The Jumper build is amusing to watch, and it does some respectable damage as well, its kinda ridiculous.  I've seen it in usage and was pretty impressed with it.  And I'm not generally one to invest too heavily into Trickery on my melee builds.

In general, D/D will offer you more pure damage, just because of the way its setup.  Its burst (yay backstaps!) is neither channeled nor init heavy, so you are able to pop it quite often, basically as often as Revealed will let you.  While I'm not especially a fan of Emerald gems, they do work pretty well and their stat spread is relatively decent for a direct dmg thief.

As for toughness, the way I approach it is just find yourself a happy medium where you aren't reducing your dmg because you are investing a lot into defensive skills, but at the same time not wholly invested in dmg so much that you are down every few seconds.  It depends on play-style and knowledge of the content, generally.  But I'm sure you know all this as it is.

@Phenn great guide, easy to read and follow with a good description of the various builds that run with S/D!  I think the Jumper build in particular is a good description because I don't think its a way that a lot of thieves think about traiting, so its rather underused and underestimated.  Great work!

jjolin, on 23 May 2013 - 02:44 PM, said:

Yes and no, because a lot of it depends on how you are traited.  If you are talking just straight up, untraited, then yes, Grasping Vines is a better skill.  The difference comes in when you pick up any of the traits for Devourer Venom.  You can make it so you get 2x stacks of might for 20s when you apply your venom (DA - IV, Venomous Strength), make it so the CD on venoms is shorter than the Grasping Vines (DA - VIII, Quick Venoms), add an extra hit to all your venoms (DA - XII, Residual Venom), lifesteal with venoms (SA - IX, Leeching Venoms, which just recently got a buff, iirc), and make it so whenever you activate a venom, all your allies gain the effect as well (SA - XII, Venomous Aura).

So, yes, when you are untraited, Grasping Vines is better, but once you start traiting for a venoms, even just one or two, the benefit of Devourer Venom rises above Grasping Vines.  Plus, if you use any other venoms, those traits benefit them as well.

Hope this helps!

EDIT: The other thing to keep in mind is that while the immob on Devourer may only be 2s, you hit twice, so you get a total of 4s immob, making it a bit more comparable to Grasping Vines' 7s immob.

sfbrh, on 21 May 2013 - 01:23 AM, said:

First off, I will preface this with the fact that I've only used Venomshare for a short while on my thief, definitely not extensively, so take what I say in stride.  But I figured that your post should be responded to.

Second, I took the liberty of putting your build into this PvE buildsite: http://gw2buildcraft...8.5b.5s.5t.5u|e its a pretty good one that I use often.  The other thing I did was switch your build on GW2Skills over to PvE, since that's what you are asking about (it changes a little bit): http://gw2skills.net...JRUtBHzbQEVDA-e

Now, my thoughts.  I'll start with Sigil choice.  I'm not sure that Superior Sig of Strength is really your best choice, given your low crit chance.  Since the Sigil only pops 30% of the time on crits and you only have a 40% crit chance, you are looking at only about 12% of your hits will actually generate Might (feel free to correct my math, I make no claims of being great at it).  If you could help me understand why you chose this particular Sigil instead of something else, I think that would be helpful.   I realize that you have some decent might stacks from both your venoms as well as from your dodges and you seem to want to try and stack more, but I'm not sure that Sig of Strength is really worth it on this particular build; you may benefit more from a different one.

My second question is about your venom choice, which again, take in stride because the beautiful thing about thieves is we have SO many utilities that work, and its just a matter of switching them out depending on the content you are facing.  Skale venom is awesome, no doubt there, but I'm curious as to why you picked Spider venom over either Devourer or Ice Drake.  Poison in PvE is generally not a great condition to rely on because a lot of mobs don't really heal too much, plus the damage is generally sub-par.  Compare this with either the immob or the chill on Devourer or Ice Drake, and they have a lot more uses.  Granted, the duration is kinda short on both of them, but with 2 attacks and 3 attacks, respectively, plus the extra attacks you get from any allies in the area, you can pin down pretty effectively.  The only thing you have to worry about then is if a mob as Unstoppable on it, but then you just swap out the venoms for something else.

I can honestly say that I'm not really a fan of Divinity Runes.  Not only are they expensive (just over 9g at time of posting), but their effectiveness is minimal on a thief build.  They are just too spread out to be really useful.  If you are using them for the crit dmg increase, it would probably do better for you to just plug in Ruby Orbs and call it good, they will increase your dmg by a noticeable amount.  If you want to up your crit chance in order to keep the Sigil of Strength around, look at maybe Eagle runes, they are a decent prec-based alternative.  If you are using them to increase your defense by a little bit, it would probably suit you better to pick up something like Emerald Orbs (much as I'm not a fan of toughness on a thief, it does have its place from time to time).

Finally, I think with your traits, you've run into the perfect example of why thieves don't generally run venomshare builds too much.  They are truly a niche build because you basically HAVE to trait so deeply into both DA and SA in order to be effective.  This leaves you with a pretty serious dilemma.  Do you sacrifice one of the best (if not THE best) trait line that thieves have, Critical Strikes, in order to make yourself an effective venomshare build? That question is largely personal preference and what works with a group that you run with.  There's nothing inherently wrong with a venonshare build, so to speak, its just that the way we are *required* to trait to make it effective goes against the main damage line of our profession.  Also, they look fine for a venomshare build, except you may get more usage out of the reduction in CD on your venoms rather than the 5% dagger dmg bonus.  I'm not entirely sure because I don't have a chance to sit down and test currently, but that's my thought.

Added side note, your switch over to a backstap build will be...well...lackluster.  Without a high crit chance and crit dmg, your backstaps are going to do very little damage (compared to other backstap builds, that is).  The other way that some builds supplement this is to trait the 100% crit chance on attacks from stealth, but this is not possible on your trait setup either.  That's the other unfortunate thing about the venomshare build, is that you can't really switch over to another type of build with it...you are kinda stuck.

I realize as I reread my post that it could be read/taken that I'm trying to dissuade you from using a venomshare build. That is not my intention at all.  I merely am attempting to point out some limitations to that particular type of build.  Tbh, I want to like venomshare, its a really cool idea, but it really pigeon-holes you into doing a specific set of things a specific way.

Hope this helps!