Daredevil - Power S/D
The community gave this build a rating, making it second-tier: Good
Focused on: Strike damage and Mobility
Designed for: PvP Conquest
Difficulty:
Normal
This build was last updated on November 20, 2024 and is up to date for the October 8, 2024 patch.
Overview
A direct damage based Daredevil take on the already slippery Sword/Dagger playstyle. This PvP build mixes high mobility with evade chains, boon stealing and consistent damage output to get the job done.
S/D Thief is often used against comps with several bunker builds, as its + chain can quickly work through the defenses of many high sustain specs thanks to the unblockable boon removal and high damage.
Skill Bar
Sword/Dagger
Shortbow
Utility
Skill Variants
Utility
- - you become weaker in combat but gain an extremely powerful mobility tool that turns you into a decap machine.
- - adds more burst damage to the build. Consider using right before the first projectile goes off in order to cut down on travel time/distance, making the skill harder to avoid.
- - good passive bonus and extra cleansing/evasion on active.
- - primarily used to chase down targets. If you need to break stun with it and don't want to remain right next to your opponent, you can use NPCs and other players as targets to teleport to.
- - a ranged pull on short CD. Good at closing gaps, interrupting skills and setting up bursts without spending initiative.
Template Code
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Specializations
Variants
- - this trait is great for dealing with condition pressure, but kind of forces you to run as you'll need the extra vitality.
- - trades mobility and survivability for higher damage.
Specialization Variants
Taking Deadly Arts instead of Critical Strikes is also a viable option:
Equipment
Sword
Dagger
Sigil
Sigil
Shortbow
Sigil
Sigil
Rune
Amulet
Relic
Equipment Variants
Relics
Runes
- - very similar to Vampirism, slightly lower HP for a bit higher crit chance. Higher risk/reward option.
Usage
General
- The thief's role is to almost constantly keep moving. and other shadowsteps make this build incredibly mobile. Decap unguarded capture points, +1 fights (rotate to outnumber the enemy team on a point, quickly ending the fight and then move on), interrupt foes with stability by landing , and gank targets in team fights.
- Dodge if you need
Swiftness or extra mobility in general while moving between capture points.
- The many dodges and evasions on weapon sets provide decent survivability for an otherwise very squishy profession.
Steal
- is the most powerful tool in a thief's kit and should not be wasted! Do not start fights with steal, keep it for the right moment (mainly to interupt important skills such as heals or elites).
- Steal refills some endurance, grants initiative, strips boons and provides a variety of boons for you and your team. Its most important function however is the instant, unblockable interrupt.
- Steal procs the damage bonus of , creating a burst window for you.
Sword/Dagger
The main set of the build
- Most of the damage will come from a combination of autoattacks and the chain.
- is an excellent skill for initiating fights or just closing gaps. It's recommended that you start fights with this skill from a place that break line of sight (LoS), like a wall or a pillar. This leaves you with an escape route via in case you get focused, and IR even provides some minor cleansing.
- Don't spam mindlessly. You will become easily predictible and locked in an animation while your enemy can set up burst. Find a balance between your autoattacks and flanking strike. Both this skill and its chain are unblockable. Larcenous Strike will be your main source of burst damage.
- Blocking foes are an exception. Since enemies are unlikely to dodge while using blocking skills, you're free to spam these and punish them with unblockable boon removal.
- is merely a filler for ranged poking in case going into melee range would be too dangerous and weapon swap is on CD, or if you want to get rid of
Aegis / 
Blind before jumping in. The bouncing attacks however aren't bad at all when it comes to clearing Mesmer clones.
- is strong in its own right. Being the only source of
Stealth in the build, this grants access to which can help with interrupting important casts (heal, stomp, etc.) when is on cooldown, and the stealth in general can help you lose aggro for a short while or even leave the fight entirely without being chased. The damage itself is quite good both on CnD and Tactical Strike, which means chaining these 2 could act as a finishing move as well. With Steal added to the mix in the middle of casting CnD this combo becomes less obvious and harder to avoid.
- This could be used on AI (clones, pets, minions) if all you need is stealth not the damage, as AI won't dodge it therefore the odds of getting a successful CnD off becomes higher.
Short bow
Utility weapon
- being a spammable blast finisher has high value for your team when it comes to blasting fields for Stealth or healing (although they'll have to provide the fields).
- Its chain skill is a solid cource of downed cleave, or even ranged burst if you pre-cast aimed at your feet, near the end of the animation and then detonate at your target.
- provides cheap and spammable evasion in case you're being focused by the enemy team and your defensive skills are on CD. Remains usable even while
Immobilized.
- Use on downed enemies especially if they are being revived - Poison decreases healing gained by 33% which affects resurrecting speed.
- is the #1 skill for moving around the map in general, cuts down on travel time between capture points drastically.
Utilities & elite
- is your best souce of cleansing, as it instantly removes 3 conditions. In addition to that, this also gives an entire dodge roll's worth of endurance which can be used as a last resort option for squeezing out more dodges when you're out of endurance and don't have time to heal. Keep in mind that the active portion of this skill is AoE! Try to use it near allies whenever possible.
- is easily the most versatile and one of the strongest skills in the build. It has 2 parts:
- The first half is a stun break and teleport, which already has countless applications. A few applications include teleport to safety while pressured, extending your reach in combat, or using the instant mobility boost to decap enemy points before using the 2nd part of the skill to leave just as fast.
- The second half is called . This skill becomes available for 10 seconds after using Shadowstep, and cures 3 conditions in addition to breaking stun again before returning you to your starting location.
- These can also be combined to safe stomp targets: begin stomping, away to safety, and then follow up with at the end of the animation in order to finish the target.
- is a defensive elite. The rather lengthy evade frame with increased movement speed makes it an excellent panic button when you're being focused by the enemy team.
- Note: skills like or are able to interrupt Dagger Storm, so don't be completely careless.
Related Builds
- Daredevil - Power S/D Roamer - WvW roaming version of the build.
Top Streamers
- Twitch: Sizer
- Twitch: Sindrener
- Twitch: Pain_Yamashiro
- Twitch: Zenyus
Ratings
Bunker meta is over, still works well against some matchups like any guardian support or bunker build but looses value against the faster paced builds which is where D/P tends to shine. Not bad at all but too situational for most games, plus it gets countered by the more common D/P which has higher stealth access and better reliable spike damage. Doesn't fair super well against Axe daredevil either. Good build, but requires a massive brain to pilot well. There's a setup better than this one though, taking accro (Down-middle-middle) over crit strikes or deadly arts might seem strange, but it offers more cleansing, a decent damage modifier, high regen uptime and alot of initiative gain, I've also been using Peitha over Fireworks, it's easier and more frequent to proc and does relatively the same damage. Funny enough, I've hit way harder running that version than crit strikes, but maybe I'm just bad at crit strikes. If you aren't gonna use accro and be a weirdo like me, deadly arts is always better than crit strikes l, it offers way too much utility for wasted fury and ferocity bonuses which add unnoticeable damage
IMHO, DP outshines this in just about every way currently. Sword 2 is a fantastic tool for roaming/decapping however - maybe a variant of this using SA instead of critical strikes as a focused decapper would "work" in some comps? It would still bring value to teamfights with boonrip on demand too.
Probably should be a 3 but this build is just so insanely fun. It doesnt have the damage, cc or sustain of d/p but it has more mobility and unblockable damage. As such, can be a better pick over d/p verse comps with many blocks. With anet looking to nerf uninteractive builds s/d might become relatively better over other stealth spamming thief builds.
This build is still fairly good. It was like the best dh counter in the game, but still works well into any guardian and holo-actually better than d/p does much of the time and it may end up meta if mirage does also, again the version is still eh- as trickster is fairly beta at the moment, it just ends up being severely worse but an ok match up into dp which is the only reason mods picked that up.
also you need to play shadow refuge in this meta, but still a good build
Nowhere to be seen these days, everyone plays DP or PD. That being said, it still works.
Comments
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