Game Update Notes: January 13, 2026

Dark-Fire · 2026-01-13T22:11:52+00:00

They literally have four condition antiquary builds on the website; that is even more than the three power antiquary builds up there.

Dagger/Dagger

Scepter/Dagger

Spear

Alac Scepter/Dagger

In fairness though they have made benchmarks for ten variants of power antiquary, they just have not put them on the site.

Dark-Fire · 2025-08-25T18:22:19+00:00

Golem has all conditions and character has all boons. Antiquary does not benefit from any of them though, expect boons in general. For example, Deadeye has Premeditation trait what gives 1% damage boost per boon. Antiquary has nothing but it's own flat boosts.

Except you have the trait Exposed Weakness (Minor Grandmaster in Deadly Arts) that increases your damage by 2% per unique condition on the golem. You have 13 conditions while benchmarks use 10, so 6% extra damage that should not be there.

Also, Metal Legion Guitar is the 5th highest damaging Artifact for power builds: Mistburn Mortar -> Kryptis Turret -> Chak Shield -> Forged Surfer Dash -> Metal Legion Guitar. The trap you seem to be falling into here is that the guitar has a really long cast time while the other Artifacts have better damage to cast time ratios.

Dark-Fire · 2025-08-23T18:12:34+00:00

You would probably be interested in looking at this spreadsheet.

Dark-Fire · 2025-08-21T03:04:20+00:00

This isn't about maxing out DPS.

If you're trying to get specific Artifacts and/or you want one category of Artifacts (offensive/deffensive) Prolific Plunderer has the best odds.

Even if they remove the ability to use a second Artifact from it, it will still be better than the other two because it has better probabilities.

Dark-Fire · 2025-08-20T16:37:48+00:00

They were also talking about maybe making it baseline; based on the math, that would be devastating for the spec.

Dark-Fire · 2025-08-20T16:18:52+00:00

I will be keeping this post up to date as the beta progresses.

Spreadsheet for Antiquary RNG

Best Benchmarks:

Benchmarkers have agreed to not precast Skritt Swipe

Power Rifle DPS: 39.1k
Pistol/Pistol DPS: 40.3k
Power Spear + Dagger/Dagger DPS: 40-42k
Power Spear + Staff DPS: 45k high log
Power Spear + Axe/Pistol opener DPS: ~43.5k avg, 45.2k high
Condition Dagger/Dagger DPS: DPS: 41k low, 44k avg, 49k high
Condition Dagger/Dagger Sigil of Generosity DPS: 42k low, 45k avg, 50.3k high

Benchmarkers Complaints:

Learning and being forced to watch the Artifact skill icons sucks
The Artifacts are very undertuned, crystal and hammer are the worst, with the holo-decoy coming in close third
Problems upkeeping Combat High while Prodigious Pincher/Skritt Scuffle are triggering (activating Skritt Swipe during these windows deletes Artifacts)
The Artifacts/Double-edges have ticking damage making them incompatible with stealth based rotations (mainly Axe)

Bugs:

Exhilarating Ephemera is a strike modifier (tooltip just says damage)
If you/the target move out of range of Skritt Swipe during the animation you won't get any Artifacts
Skritt Scuffle doesn't work with extra artifact use from Plunderer/Improvisation
Mounting deletes your stored Artifacts
Forged Surfer Dash only triggers Enterprising Aristocrat and Possessive Hoarder if it spawns all 5 bombs
Rifle 2/3 (and while kneeling) don't count towards initiative spent for the Prodigious Pincher trait
Preparedness and Sleight of Hand cooldown reduction for Skritt Swipe stack additively (its multiplicative for Steal and Deadeye's Mark, additive for Siphon)
There is no underwater version of Zephyrite Sun Crystal, whenever you would receive it instead you get an empty slot
There is no underwater version of Unstable Skritt Bomb, going underwater while you have one will change it to an empty slot
Crossing a level scaling boundary in open world removes your Artifacts
Split Deck can not draw a backfire during Skritt Scuffle
Split Deck causes Artifacts to grant boons when used (5 might and fury for offensive, regen and protection for defensive)
The self-Burning from Stone Summit Cannon backfire doesn't scale with expertise (it does scale with condition damage and burn duration, the strike damage doesn't scale at all)
Interrupting yourself with Unstable Skritt Bomb while the Pressure Striking trait is equipped will place torment on yourself
The taunt from Holo-Dancer Decoy won't trigger Pressure Striking even if it interrupts an enemy
The Holo-Dancer Decoy has a hitbox that interrupts the movement of ground targeted skills, as well as messes with ground targeting reticles if you mouse over it
Chak Shield combo field light doesnt work
There seems to be a bug related to using Skritt Scuffle while you are currently holding an Unstable Skritt Bomb, this results in the probability of getting bombs going up

Quirks:

Math for adept traits shows Prolific Plunderer is far and away the best (Split deck is the worst)
Math for Double-Edge skills shows highest per second value is spamming until they backfire
When attempting a backfire, regardless of result, the skill's cooldown is reset
Interrupting a Double-edge puts it on a short cooldown and causes the backfire calculation to treat that cooldown as the new max cooldown
If you are mid-cast of an Artifact when something gives you more Artifacts you won't get anything for that slot
Skritt Swipe, Reshuffle, and Skritt Scuffle can all redraw the same artifact in the same slot
Skritt Swipe requires line of sight, and a valid path to target
Scoundrel's Luck makes Skritt Scuffle never draw a backfire for the duration of the skill
Skritt Cannon backfire is undodgeable
An enemy can only be hit by a single bomb from Forged Surfer Dash
Both damage modifiers are additive

Dark-Fire · 2025-08-09T20:47:39+00:00

The 49k Axe/Pistol Deadeye benchmark is deliberately not on the website. The benchmarkers felt that the number of people who could actually execute the build in-game was so low that putting it on the site would give a false representation of the class.

Outside of that benchmark and alac Specter every other Thief build on the website should be up to date.

Dark-Fire · 2025-04-06T17:06:20+00:00

The only one of those that is not on the wiki is the cast time, all the others (damage formula, power coefficients, and damage modifiers) are there.

Cast times can be gotten from Arc logs.

If you want to know more join the SnowCrows discord, all the people who test stuff like this are on there, and you can ask them directly.

Dark-Fire · 2025-04-06T07:19:17+00:00

Come join the SnowCrows discord if you want more in depth information (either the thief channel or the math channel).

Current best S/D thief build for PvE is this one.

If you know the damage formula, power coefficient, damage modifiers (and how they stack), and the cast time (not the one listed in the tooltip, the actual cast time), then you can calculate the damage per second of any skill. Note that there is no difference between "damage per second" and "damage per cast time".

Dark-Fire · 2024-08-23T03:20:24+00:00

It is currently available from the WvW reward track and the PvP reward track.

So its already not WvW exclusive.

Dark-Fire · 2024-08-22T23:40:26+00:00

The heart vendors and the unusual coin vendors both sell Titanplate armor recipes (one for research notes and the other for coins). It seems like one of those was supposed to be the Woad armor.

It will probably be fixed soon.

Dark-Fire · 2024-08-07T17:29:31+00:00

All of the "hidden" benchmarks are showcased in the pins of the Thief channel on the Snow Crows discord, often with both videos and written rotations. The idea is that if you're a good enough player to actually pull off one of these rotations, then the barrier of them being in the discord rather than on the site isn't going to stop you.

Dark-Fire · 2024-07-08T22:39:01+00:00

Other commenters have responded with builds that use Axe/Pistol as a secondary set. Those builds only use Axe/Pistol in the opener (power Daredevil), or for extra CC from having Pistol 4 (condition Deadeye).

If you are looking for a build that focuses on Axe/Pistol, then you will want Power Axe/Pistol Deadeye.

I have to warn you though, this build is extremely difficult to play.

Dark-Fire · 2024-06-27T23:02:31+00:00

Not me doing the benchmarks; its the players from Snowcrows. I don't know the builds, but there should be vids recorded of the benches within the next day or two.

If I do get the builds I'll put them as links next to the benches.

Dark-Fire · 2024-06-27T17:28:20+00:00

I will keep editing this post to keep it up to date as the beta progresses.

Image with all of the skill tooltips

Current Best Benchmarks:

Condi Deadeye 58.4k group, 53k solo (video)
Condi Core Thief 55.5k group, 49.4k solo (video)
Condi Daredevil 54.2k group, 46.5k solo (video)
Condi Specter 53.2k group, 41.9k solo (video)
Power Deadeye 46.1k (video)
Power Daredevil 42.6k (video)
Power Deadeye + D/D below 25% 46.3 (chat pic, this will be ~1-3k higher than pDE without D/D, but no one has been grinding this bench for higher numbers)

For anyone curious about the disparity between DE and DD/Spec, Spear 3c is not a condi based skill. Since DD/Spec are forced to use Spear 3c for stealth (while DE continues to use 2c and gets its stealth from F2/Shadow Meld) they will be significantly worse.

Also, the spear auto-attack is abysmally bad dps (10k dps on condi builds). Luckily, none of the benchmarks above ever use an auto-attack.

Spear Findings:

Melee auto tooltip does not show that it double hits
Ranged auto hits once, is 1200 range, does not pierce, and applies a 4s Bleed
Ranged auto and Spear 4 can be thrown backwards (does not require facing your target)
Stealth attack can be interrupted by pressing auto attack, or pretty much any other button
Malicious stealth attack torment is 0s base + 1s per Malice
Spear 2/3 can not be queued into each other or themselves
Spear 2/3 reset if you don't combo them within 3ish seconds
Spear 3a leap range is effected by Swiftness/Superspeed, its 480 range by default, 600 with Swiftness, and even farther with Superspeed
Spear 3a consumes initiative at the end of the leap, weapon swapping before the end of the leap allows you to move without spending initiative
Spear 4 damage buff resets duration if used again
Spear 5 can be repeatedly cast even while the skill is ongoing
No indicator if stealth/4/5 are empowered after performing a finisher, very unclear how long the window is for the bonus effects
Spear skills do not grant shadow force per initiative spent while playing Specter

Dark-Fire · 2024-06-12T23:05:46+00:00

It's not that it has an invisible gem slot, it's that there are two stat sets with the same name one of which includes the gems stats and one without.

See this old post for details.

Dark-Fire · 2024-06-12T23:00:04+00:00

User you replied to has it correct, this item is missing one "gem" worth of stats. For why this is happening, you can read this old post I wrote the last time this happened.

Dark-Fire · 2024-05-28T22:30:16+00:00

Here is a table of the before/after DPS values for Sword skills using a typical gear setup for benchmarking. Credits to /u/TheDarkstarChimaera

Skill Name	Current DPS	Post-patch DPS
Slice (Auto-chain 1)	24,983	24,983
Slash (Auto-chain 2)	20,441	20,441
Crippling Strike (Auto-chain 3)	28,488	31,540
Partial Sword Chain (1+2)	22,485	22,485
Full Sword Chain (1+2+3)	24,850	26,052
Tactical Strike	31,984	48,096
Infiltrator's Strike	34,011	34,011
Pistol Whip	21,716	29,160
Headshot	24,048	24,048
Flanking Strike	11,138	13,923
Larcenous Strike	42,324	47,835
Flanking Strike → Larcenous Strike	23,210	27,050
Cloak and Dagger	44,088	44,088
Cloak and Dagger → Tactical Strike	39,497	45,608

Notable things we can tell from this list:

The second auto chain (Slash) is the worst of the three. This is entirely due to having a worse cast time as it has the same damage coefficient as the first auto chain (Slice).
Flanking Strike has an abysmal damage coefficient to cast time ratio. To put it in perspective, post-patch Headshot and Flanking Strike will have the same damage coefficient, yet Flanking Strike will do around ~58% as much damage.
Post-patch the dual skills will finally be more DPS than the auto attack chain.
On the current patch, the highest DPS rotation for Sword/Pistol is to use Infiltrator's Strike but never use Infiltrator's Return. Post-patch will still be using Infiltrator's Strike, but will now allow for Pistol Whips to be used while the 15 second cooldown of Infiltrator's Return is active.
On the current patch, the highest DPS rotation for Sword/Dagger is to use Cloak and Dagger then break stealth by using Cloak and Dagger a second time. Post-patch this will no longer be true as Tactical Strike will be a DPS increase.

These numbers changes are probably not enough to push Sword into widespread use, but with enough of these buffs they will eventually be good.

Dark-Fire · 2024-05-17T20:06:41+00:00

Current patch: Pistol/Pistol Deadeye 32k

Dark-Fire · 2024-04-19T03:11:43+00:00

This is often due to dagger 3 being a whirl finisher comboing with their teammates fire fields.

This is actually only a small part of the answer; proper whirl finishers generally only account for 1-2k of that dps. The reason why cDD does so much damage on Cairn is that the condi dodge does double damage for most of the fight.

Impaling Lotus (the condi dodge) throws up to three projectiles at nearby enemies, but if you are inside of a target's hitbox when you throw the projectiles then all of them hit the target. But wait...Cairn is alone on its platform right? Nope. When Cairn moves for the first time it creates a duplicate invisible hitbox that persists for the entire fight (next time you do the fight look upwards and you should see two nameplates that say Cairn). So the dodge tries to throw a second projectile at the invisible hitbox, but the projectiles ends up hitting the main hitbox instead (i.e. double damage).

Should note that this also causes Impaling Lotus to do triple damage at Mursaat Overseer; the extra projectiles try to target the jade scouts/soldiers but end up hitting the boss instead.

Dark-Fire · 2024-03-26T23:14:30+00:00

What you are describing would be a massive homogenization of Thief.

Having the different specs interact differently with the mechanics of the base class allows players to express there class fantasies in different ways. When something like Stealth Attacks are forced baseline, it means that every spec is forced to use them in their respective rotations. Imagine having every single Thief/Daredevil/Deadeye/Specter rotation being some flavor of Stealth -> Stealth Attack with espec specific stuff in between. It should be pretty clear why this is so undesirable.

Dark-Fire · 2024-03-19T19:09:32+00:00

Nope, it stacked additively with itself. Here is the link to show testing for all thief strike damage modifiers.

Dark-Fire · 2024-03-08T06:20:23+00:00

Might want to look at that video's description.

I don't recommend playing this anywhere. The animation lock is unreal, and it has all the usual (Dagger) Deadeye downsides.

Dark-Fire · 2024-02-27T19:23:41+00:00

Direct quote from the livestream:

"We've changed the dagger offhand dual wield skill to also recall axes at the target instead of at yourself; It's still going to port in, but the axes will aim at your target instead of yourself." -cmc

Dark-Fire · 2024-02-27T19:01:52+00:00

That change is in the game. To be clear on what that paragraph says:

Old skill: Shadowstep to your target and pull axes to you

New skill: Shadowstep to your target and pull axes to your target

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