Daredevil - Staff Daredevil

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Overview

Staff Daredevil brings huge direct damage and cleave from while being a difficult target due to its evade frames. Excels in highly coordinated group play group due to smoke access, venomshare and burst.

Skill Bar

StaffHealingUtilityElite

Staff

Weapon Variants

Dagger/Pistol

Access to smoke field thanks to

Skill Variants

Utility

Keep on the bar, as it adds flat power for your bursts from both the passive and active.

another stunbreak plus brief block. Don’t forget you can reactivate for melee CC.
very versatile pick, its initiative refreshment can be specially useful to extend your burst frame if used offensively.
allows you to share Immobilize with allies, enhancing coordinated spikes. Bear in mind it has no cast time.
situational utility, worse than the previous listed stunbreaks, but clutch in GvGs where you can stealth a downed ally about to be stomped, giving more room for hand rez/usage of rez utilities.

Elite

Switch between and the first brings more group utility and shines the more organized your group is, the second adds survivability and cleave, must have when playing open field against blobs.
situational elite, useful when your group’s target is low and you can get him down fast enough eliminate with the 3rd hit.

Template Code

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Specializations

Variants

Increase in sustain but huge damage loss.

Equipment

6x

Superior Rune of the Scholar

18x

Mighty WvW Infusion

Consumables

feast option with additional power and ferocity.

Variants

Stats

If you want to theorycraft your gear setup to, for example, not rely on traits/fury uptime or add more damage, feel free to mix your setup with Marauder and Berserker's , remove for , add , etc.
Keep in mind that Valkyrie (or any stat that lacks Precision), for min'maxing purposes, is a worse choice, because you're losing ferocity from .
Use GW2Skills.net as a tool, to ensure you are being as efficient as possible stats wise.

Sigils

if you are a tryhard.

Food

increases active defense and uptime.
if you don't have access to feast option.
Defensive option vs condi pressure.

Utility

Best option with a competent group and a high time above 90% life.

Usage

General

Thief is a medium armor with low HP pool class which means that naturally it's very squishy.
To play this build we assume you have proper party support, are well positioned, and are able to anticipate enemies spikes/pressure. Understanding that you are a melee glass cannon and how to deal with that without being a burden to your group, is the groundwork.
- If you happen to down, figure out if its worth using towards your group or not, as your supports might have already started casting rez utilities on your body, but the enemy pressure might be so big you will get cleaved out before it lands. Communicate with your group and decide fast.
The build revolves a lot around evade frames from dodges and skills. Therefore, any sort of ground CC, like or will cuck you if you touch then without Stability. Be ready to stunbreak.
- passively grants flat precision, and its activation condi cleanses and gives an extra dodge to yourself and allies. Use it proactively when allies are caught due to Immobilize or reactively for self sustain.
Good awareness, skill timing and sync'ing your burst with your group spike are essential to master this build. Don't mindlessly spam all your skills, deplete your initiative, to look good on the meter. Staggered damage will just be outhealed by the enemy group.
Initially, you want to play this build with Fast cast with range activation and Lock ground target at maximum skill range, this will help you get used to range/radius boundaries, and give some room to aim the AoE before releasing the hotkey.
Optimally, switch to Instant cast activation, this will skip the AoE preview on the ground and land the skill as soon as you press the hotkey, avoiding downtime. It also affects
Constantly switch weapons to proc . This will allow you to use more often with less downtime from initiative. Also gives you emdurance thanks to energy sigil.
Hit harder, look at your modifiers and boons, play around then.
- Dodge () and activate mid dodge. This will grant a massive power boost from signet plus 15% modifier from Bounding Dodger.
- Having Fury provides massive ferocity thanks to
- Constantly pacing and using your initiative increases the amount of stacks, another modifier.
- Hitting enemies with Weakness increases your damage thanks to .
- Being above 90% HP when going for your burst is a must, more crit chance and crit damage from and .
- Be on stack, having Weakness or Blind on you can be a killer to your damage.

Steal, stolen skills and related traits

will be used as a gap closer.
- Make sure you are within 600 range from your current target, if you happen to cast Swipe and he moves out of range, it will cancel the skill and put it on a short CD.
- is a insta cast gap closer, so you can queue another skill, like and steal midway through its animation. Does NOT work with anymore.
- Stealing to get some initiative/endurance back can be very handy for reposition purposes.
is the best stolen skill you can get. Use it offensively to melee cleave or defensively during regroups, into light fields, to cleanse allies. deals massive single target damage, but is a projectile, for boons, for CC pressure, etc.
- All the other skills aren't as strong as the listed ones, yet situational. Read the tooltip and use then accordingly.

Venoms, Shadowstep and Dagger Storm

and are the ones you will get in touch more often.
Venoms are effects shareable to allies that inflict specific debuffs into enemies, here Immobilize and Stun respectively.
If both are taken, try to use then together, so their cooldown gets sync'ed and the CC share is stronger.
The effects lasts for 30s and the skill cooldowns are around 40s, that means you can precast venoms and swap off for another skill for example
is the best stunbreak/mobility skill you can have.
- Despite having a big cooldown it behaves as a double stunbreak, since your also stunbreaks and cleanses you.
It can be used as an enabler, closing the distance between you and the enemy to land your burst.
Defensively to reposition yourself away from any pressure.
To land safe stomps.

Start Stomp channel
Max range away.
when stomp channel is about to end.

is your last resource to survive. Evade frame and movement speed increase. Can be used offensively as the daggers deal a good amount of damage, but it will often get nullified by projectile hate. Use for self sustain mostly.

Sword/Dagger + Pistol

In open field fights, you should be camping Staff; but go into your off weapon set to
- Provide 2 smoke fields with , so your group can blast and stealth.
- Get your stacking sigil procs.
- Extra dodge from sigil if needed.
In regards to sword/dagger, both have very strong single target skills in openers, which can be very clutch into GvGs and RvRs due to its play making potential.
- adds a 1,200 range shadowstep that Immobilize on hit. Paired with and followed up by , for example, you can down someone even before the groups collide.
- can CC lock and deal considerable damage to a target. Be mindful it roots you in place, despite the evade frame.
- Dagger will be picked if you are confident into landing a good plus spam.

Staff

Staff is where all your hard hitting skills are. You range from burst damage with to sustained damage with Staff autos, with somewhere in between.

is your bread and butter damage in this build. Landing successful hits at the right times without compromising yourself is the goal here.
- You no longer can precast and land a port skill like steal or shadowstep.
Due to its 600-range, Vault can still do damage and be used as a gap closer or reposition tool.
Since the skill has a slow animation, NOT affected by Quickness either, you need to predict where the enemy is moving to.
In that scenario, using multiple vaults in sequence, to generate downstates, is often a bad choice, because your enemies are mobile, and the moment you vault into an area with enemies, the next second they are no longer there.
That doesn't apply to situations where your enemy is caught with Immobilize or CC, or you are already cleaving downstates. Landing Vaults in sequence is fine there.
- Be mindful that if you down enemies with a 1st Vault and land your 2nd Vault immediately, you will likely hit the invulnerable frame and deal no damage.
is irrelevant, but make sure you read the tooltip, might be situational at some point.
is the strongest defensive tool in the Staff kit and will see a lot of use. It removes Immobilize and grants a brief evade frame.
If you aren't planning to do a coordinate spike/burst anytime soon, and have room to replenish your initiative, PRIORITIZE over a or for survivability/evasion. Its initiative cost pays itself really quick.
deals higher damage than Vault if the 3 hits connect, yet it's more single target heavy, fitting perfectly into steal/shadowstep combos.
Precast and follow up with . Adds venoms on the mix for an even stronger lockdown.
- You get the spent initiative back due to .
- Keep in mind you are stuck into animation during its channel. If you are not close to your target's hitbox, or don't have a target, it will move you.
For general cleave, autos will be very handy. A full chain provides great damage and inflicts Vulnerability into enemies.

Videos

YouTube:
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