December 2022

Mercy Deadeye

Power Deadeye is a strong roamer that takes advantage of Shadow Gust and Be Quick or Be Killed to lock down and eliminate targets quickly. Deadeye benefits from the baked in mobility of any thief spec, however is is vulnerable to focus and gets countered by projectile block from builds like Tempest or Catalyst. As a roamer, Deadeye focuses on moving around the map and quickly getting kills. In order to do this, you need to lock down and eliminate your target as quickly as possible. Deadeye relies on a mechanic called malice to do damage. Whenever you mark a target, hitting them with an ability will generate stacks of malice. At maximum malice, your stolen skills will give you Stealth and Malicious Death's Judgment will do 75% more damage. Try to build malice as quickly as possible after marking…

DPS Spellbreaker

Spellbreaker is a strong damage profession in WvW, however it functions best in battles smaller than 30v30. In larger scale fights, it’s recommended to play the offensive support spellbreaker build instead.  However, in the right situations this build does provide large amounts of burst, cleave damage as well as boon removal and soft/hard crowd control. Support SpellbreakerRecommended Offensive Support Select difficulty Sword & Warhorn Hammer August 2023 This build utilizes powerful synergies between crowd control weapon skills, spellbreaker traits and utilities in addition to sigils to produce excellent boon pressure, damage and survivability. You will usually be trying to always remove boons mostly after you cast your Winds of Disenchantment, followed by damage if the situation allows. Placing Winds of Disenchantment  early in the fight is valuable so that you can focus on doing damage for the rest of the…

Power Weaver

The Weaver elite specialization allows for a versatile mobile source of damage, crowd control, and utility in a WvW zerg. Due to the high number of ranged skills available, you will be the main source of damage from a distance, and often the highest source of damage overall in the squad. Weavers also perform well in melee range, thanks to frequent evades and access to Conjure Fiery Greatsword. This is perhaps the most challenging DPS spec to play in WvW, however, once mastered you can be sure you will relish its capabilities. As with other damage classes, you’ll have the best overall damage output by casting your skills as close together as possible, and synchronizing your damage with boon removal and CC from the rest of your squad. The order of skill priority is Meteor Shower then Lava Font and…

Power Daredevil

The thief has the most access to Stealth out of any of the classes. This paired with strong burst damage and access to low cooldown mobility skills makes it an amazing roamer. Use your mobility from Infiltrator's Arrow and Shadowstep to rotate quickly around the map and provide value for your team. You can join a 1v1 fight and assist your sidenoder in defeating the enemy’s one, which is known as the “plus one” or quickly “decap” an enemy node (turn it neutral). Keep in mind that going for a full cap is usually pointless as you will struggle to defend the node vs an enemy sidenoder. Your main damage comes from Backstab. You gain access to this when you auto-attack someone while in Stealth. That’s why you should to always stealth yourself when joining the fight. You can blast…

Decap Druid

Decap Druid is great at holding out in outnumbered situations, it can easily decap enemy nodes with lots of sustain and condition cleanse. Build is relatively easy to pick up While this build is mostly a stall build with low kill potential, you can still take down an opponent if make use of Barrage and Jacaranda’s lightning field as it provides mass chip damage allowing you to steadily wear down an opponent. But the key skills of this build are Point-Blank Shot and Glyph of the Tides as they will keep enemies off the point, allowing you to easily decap. To land these more often it’s quite useful if you combo it with Immobilize (via Jacaranda’s Jacaranda's Embrace or Entangle), however Entangle is better saved for after you knock them off the capture point to allow more ticks. Another small knockback…

Protection Holosmith

Prot Holo offers very high sustain and lots of CC. This build gets its value from the boons and Regeneration output it can provide as well as the passive AoE damage that slowly wears down enemies. It is currently not the most common build, as its protection uptime was nerfed multiple times. The utility skills gain the most value when heat is above 50 (out of 150): Spectrum Shield ‘s cooldown is decreased by 25% Flash Spark gains Light Aura, decreasing condition damage by 10% Hard Light Arena ‘s radius increases by 120 and duration increases by 2 seconds Prismatic Singularity ‘s radius and pull is increased by 120 At the start of each match, you should use every skill in Engage Photon Forge to get a head start with heat, allowing you to access these buffs asap. This build…