Guild Wars 2

I tried to run CM Story Mode a few times post patch, and I have found that the group spends more time rezzing me than they do actually fighting. I am not built to tank, as I prefer to be the single target DPS machine/de-buffer all of my class mechanics suggest I am supposed to be. I use my pistols when in dungeons so I can stack vulnerability and/or blind, depending on the situational need. Melee means a quick and pointless death, and I find the short bow skills quite boring.

On the first fight, I was being one-shotted by the rockets the golem fires even when I was standing BEHIND a bush or pillar. The only thing that seemed to block the incoming rockets was the central fountain, and even that seemed to only work occasionally. He was firing them so quickly that I burned through my dodge and it didn’t have time to come back up. I’d be having to dodge his grab as well, as he seemed to want to target me primarily.

We managed to beat the door guard just fine, but then the new ambush just leveled us, along with the fight that followed. The bombers who can spam their VERY LARGE AoE dmg/knock downs were insanely frustrating, and in the confines of the narrow corridors, it was difficult to see if there was a RRoD on the ground. If I missed just one, it was pretty much instant death for me. For the record I am level 80 and have full 80 yellow gear, which should allow me to survive a couple of shots from something. I read mobs target the person with the highest AC. We had a warrior in our group who was level 45, but I guess even with the scaling I was still a “bigger threat”.

A lot of people on the forums seem to think I should build my character differently, with different gear to boot. I enjoy being a glass cannon when I can actually do my job. What I don’t enjoy is that I now have to choose between my normal “fun” build and another build which I am required to farm up money/mat’s for, and will have to pay for every time I want to go between a dungeon and WvW/PvP. If it takes about 5 silver to change your build each way, plus the cost of the inevitable repairs, you are looking at a good 20-30 silver for every dungeon run, AFTER you’ve acquired another set of gear.

What can I do as a thief to make myself more useful to the group without changing my build? I use my AoE stealth/heal whenever I see a good moment, I summon my Thief buddies for added DPS and to give the mobs more targets whenever we are getting rushed, or during boss fights. I’ll lay down traps if there are good places for them, but it all amounts to me getting killed in just a few seconds, and watching the fight from the floor.

TL:DR
Do I need to build myself as a tank in order to be successful in a dungeon? What skills should I be using in a dungeon to help me not get downed in the first few seconds of a fight? Is there something about Story Mode dungeons I am just not understanding, and if so, what advice can you give?

don’t build yourself in one extreme or another. You’re not trying to top the “dps charts” or tank the whole instance. This game is for hybrid gameplay and requires hybrid gameplay.

What spec do you recommend? What gear is optimal? Should I focus on Vitality or Toughness? Should I stick with pistols or accept I need to use my bow? What skills do I need to be using?

im also having similar problems as a thief. it seems as tho i run a similar build to B.L. focusing mainly on crit/power. However i started to stack vit so i can be a lil bit more durable. just a thought

Not much of a theory crafter, but….

If you spec into vitality also bring toughness… a large/r hp pool that melts like ice cream on a hot summer day does not help at all if you get focused or hit with a bigger attack.

This would naturally also give you more healing if done through traits, so think about passive healing through the signet maybe, or focus on stealth for condition removal & from stealth stuff like backstabbing (I don’t suggest going all in to toughness and vitality with your traits though, get some of the initiative bonuses from the bottom trait line at least).

Yeah it is a “tanky” spec, but with right trait selections you can make out a good supportive build, or even switch between durability focused or support focused major traits and skills between bosses.

Alternatively, spec for sharing venoms to your party and rotate basilisk venom from every party memeber for ~10s petrify (take advantage of the low cd for an elite), this means 30 point investment into the appropriate line though.

The gist of it, if you bring mainly toughness and vitality through traits, then invest into another set of stats or effects through your gear and sigils/runes. Don’t go all out into damage or durability (unless your group composition supports that, dumb example: guardians aegis can save even the most squishy spec, if said guardian is willing to share at the right time).

Just remember that, in this game, you are responsible for everything related to your health in a fight. You are responsible to heal yourself, to avoid damage or mitigate them and do damage.

If you make a radical single minded build, you will be able to excel in one area but will definitely lack in all others. This will ask for a lot more skills from your part as a player to compensate.

Remember, there isn’t a tank here, grabbing the aggro, or a healer keeping your skin safe… You are the only one to blame if you don’t have the resources to take care of yourself.

Now about suggestions… Toughness over vitality if you can remove conditions and can maintain some sort of regeneration, Vitality over toughness otherwise.

Also, always have stun breakers and oh kitten skills…

On my staff elementalist, I only have one utility based on offense. The other two are purely defensive. As an Elementalist, I really don’t care if I’ll have to drop my dps to protect myself.

Another thing I really like are skills that give some sort of ranged protection… As a thief, smoke screen comes to mind. It is REALLY great and coupled with pistols, you can inflict a lot of blinds all around all while being completely immune to projectiles.

Hey Man as a thief i feel ur pain. At lvl 80 I had 12K HPs , and at CoF exploratory where im lvl 75 i have 10K HPs.

I went with a signet crit build ie 10/30/30/0/0 and felt i was doing ok. I wasn’t dying more then the others. Make sure you get a second health skill , I use shadow refuge, and a second condition remover, signet that gives u precision if good for that.

However when the dev expected me to have 15-25K health https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/The-CoF-Buff-My-opinions/158017
I was shocked. I check around and other classes had a ton more health then me. Thief have the lowed base health in the game. We r supposed to be slippery.

I spec 10/20/25/15/0 now and switched over to jewelry and runes with vitality on them. I’m at 15K HPs now, hope that helps.

fortytwo.3485:

Hey Man as a thief i feel ur pain. At lvl 80 I had 12K HPs

How ?!

A naked thief in heart of the mists without any traits has ~17k that, and can be put up to ~19k if specced into vitality. For the record, as far as I know elementalists have the lowest base health (necro’s and warriors have the highest, I think).

Edit: never mind, forgot to unequip my amulet.

When fighting any major enemy with area-effect attacks, DO NOT MELEE THEM. You should only melee champions who you can tell are facing you so you can dodge out of there and get behind them again. 90% of the time your best bet is a shortbow. With it you can cause poison and bleeding.

One of the last major traits for the thief is called venomous aura. This is incredibly useful and makes you a major asset to your team. It means every time you activate a venom up to five people around you get it too. Combined with basilisk venom which turns an enemy into stone for 1 second, you can lock up any enemy in the game for up to 5 seconds!

If you’re not that far along, don’t worry you still have skale venom which works wonders even without sharing. It causes vulnerability for 5 seconds and weakness for 15. It can make a huge difference in a fight, making a thief as useful at cushioning enemy blows on your friends as a guardian while also making them take significantly more damage every time someone hits them.

Crise.9401:

Edit: never mind, forgot to unequip my amulet.

Just curious what amulet do you have ? and its stat.

Yeah I didn’t spec into Vitality tree at all before, and now have 15pts in it.

For the fire golem I suggest standing next to a pillar so you can duck out when he starts firing. Those rockets don’t have a strong tell but they travel somewhat slow
Also strafing around him will at least make sure you don’t eat the whole barrage of them (and die instantly). He typically does the rocket thing after every other ‘special’ (flame whirl, laser beams).
Make sure you have a cripple/chill/immobilize to get away from melee mobs and a blind/knockback/daze/stun or something to peel off ranged mobs (or get better at LoS).
I also disagree about the ’you’re responsible for your death’ thing since the reason we have groups for dungeons is so you can synergize and help each other out. Rotating CCs and defensive cds among the group members is far more effective than everyone tanking their own mob.

fortytwo.3485:

Crise.9401:

Edit: never mind, forgot to unequip my amulet.

Just curious what amulet do you have ? and its stat.

Yeah I didn’t spec into Vitality tree at all before, and now have 15pts in it.

I was testing in heart of the mists so I had a crazy high vit/toughness amulet. Although, if people spent five minutes looking at the default template builds for sPvP they do realise that even there the build is using that amulet instead of using precision or condition based amulet for example, despite being focused on damage dealing otherwise (if I recall correctly, mine is tweaked).

Edit: I also think that people should generally think about balancing stats, in most MMO’s if I am going for damage I tend to make sure at least 30% of my gear is something akin to what a tank would wear. I don’t like the notion of minmaxing and being a glass cannon (especially since most those other MMO’s do not have dodge rolls).

Edit2: Soldier’s Amulet is the name of the amulet, it is exotic PvP gear wonder if an equivalent can be crafted in PvE.

Party helping? People blocking ranged attacks? Protection up a lot, regen there (when you don’t die in one hit), weakness up, etc.?

I mean, even if you do everything right, if your party isn’t applying enough support all around, you’re gonna have a bad time.

I’m not sure about other Guardians or people, but I almost always have either Wall of Reflection, Shield of the Avenger, or my D-Golem (Asura ftw) out for blocking ranged if I know it’s coming. Sometimes all of them. I’ll also have Hold the Line! (protection+regen) up for when I know people take big damage.

It may be a combination of faults, or one or the other, I don’t know. 33% damage reduction is a lot, as are glancing blows.

And yeah, I think you’ll benefit a lot more in this game from a variety of stat makeups than one straight build for purity. If you’re performing every role, it kind of makes little sense to try and fulfill one with your stats. You can try, but yeah, what happens is usually less helpful overall.

Shortbow + 15 points in the power tree makes you the strongest weakness debuffer in the game. What you do from there is up to you!

Thanks all for the feedback, I’ll be trying out a new build sometime in the next couple of days and if it works dramatically better, I’ll be sure to either post in this thread or make a new one explaining the differences. Right now I am enjoying running around the world doing boss events to help build up my money supply (and my morale :P )

I’ve touched on this a bit before in response to some comments about my HP, but I do love me some theorycrafting, so here goes.

My gear is a mix, I prefer the valkyrie/berserker based things and try to keep everything balanced fairly well. I’ve attached an image of all of my stuff. The superior runes of strength/Orrian are sorta placeholdes, I was debating whether I wanted to try 2pc Orrian + 4pc Ogre or just move on to the 6pc Ogre, still deciding that.

Fire/Air sigils don’t seem to share any sort of ICD, so I think they’re pretty powerful personally. I like the Sigil of strength/bloodlust but the fire proc looks cool, so I’m sticking with it

As far as a trait loadout, I keep going back and forth between Shadow Arts / Power based builds (25/0/30/0/15) and Acrobatics builds (0/0/25/30/15) and I’m undecided on which I prefer yet. I really like both and will probably continue to play both – the damage output seems relatively close as long as you make sure you dodge often to keep your endurance down, and having an additional dodge is very nice as well – but something about acrobatics makes me feel like it’s a better focused spec for PvP and a shadow arts/power based build works better for pve. I seem to do okay with either though.

As far as helping the group, Thrill of the crime is huge and helps burst scenarios a ton – I prefer to melee so that i can cloak and dagger + backstab often which keeps things chain blinded.

Both shadow arts/acrobatics builds will give you solid survivability due to the toughness/vitality in their respective trees. If you spec Deadly Arts / Critical Strikes you can probably plan on dying alot – glass cannon builds aren’t going to be high survivability, if it was designed that way the profession would be ridiculous.