Guild Wars 2

In general it is not a good idea to go to FOTM with your d/d zerker backstab build… The damage is impressive yes but you die to 1/2 seconds up against the shaman’s ice breath… This makes it really annoying for the rest of your party with you. Now I know thieves can have very good dungeon builds but few seem to have the wits about them to consider building for a dungeon… :/ Kind of a rant… But do any thieves have a good fractals dungeon build they care to share? That way at least next time I get a thief with me… I can give him some advice at least in the way of traits for surviving. thanks.

jportell.2197:

In general it is not a good idea to go to FOTM with your d/d zerker backstab build… The damage is impressive yes but you die to 1/2 seconds up against the shaman’s ice breath… This makes it really annoying for the rest of your party with you. Now I know thieves can have very good dungeon builds but few seem to have the wits about them to consider building for a dungeon… :/ Kind of a rant… But do any thieves have a good fractals dungeon build they care to share? That way at least next time I get a thief with me… I can give him some advice at least in the way of traits for surviving. thanks.

Same for necros, power necro that spam 1st on staff for 90% of time is “No, no, no”
Let the “you elitist” shout begin!

Maybe you could suggest to the thief to range if they’ve got the shaman’s aggro focused on them, easier to evade the breath from further away. There is weapon switch, use 2nd weapon set if D/D is too risky, and when aggro is dropped, go back to backstabbing. Be prepared to continually switch according to the situation.
P/P is nice for single target damage, but SB may be more useful for clusterbomb and combo finishers if other party members are putting down fields like fire and water fields.

Pfft. A berserker thief is viable in high level fractions, just tell them to dodge more. And invest in acrobats.

They have some of the highest endurance regeneration of any class. Why are they getting hit!?

I do not believe Dagger/Dagger with Berserker gear is the true issue. Most likely either not knowing the encounter, not caring to know the encounter or just all around “baddie”.

With that said , I am only FOTM 6 on my thief , I plan on keeping my 0/30/25/15/0 build for fractals running full berserker. However, I do have a Valkyrie and Knight set kept in my backpack. That way I can test/swap in pieces.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.1g.h17.a.1g.h2|5.1g.h1b|1g.71j.1g.71j.1g.71j.1g.71j.1g.71j.1g.71j|1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.8g.67|0.u6ab.p15.f2.0|39.1|57.5g.5a.5b.0|e

I choose the Signet of Agility over the other signets. Mainly because it refills my endurance and removes a condition. Having the ability to dodge 6 times in a row is nice.
Both Shadow Refuge and Blinding Powder will stealth you and allies near you; which can hel kitten ticky situations. Shadow Refuge also provides “Combo Field: Dark”; when using the Short Bow inside, I gain Life Steal. If my health is low and my heal is on cool down; I dodge out, drop Refuge and plink away with the Short Bow to gain health.
D/P is neat concept. Black Powder(Combo Field: Smoke) + Heartseeker(Combo Finisher: Leap) = Combo Stealth
Then I follow up with a Back Stab.

For the Adept Trait in Critical Strikes, I constantly go between “Practiced Tolerance 5% of precision is converted into vitality” and “Side Strike +7% chance to critical hit when hitting a foe from behind or the side”; depending on whether I am going to be in a kiting fight (Dredge Fractal boss) or actually being able to stand behind the enemy.

Strength on the SB seems odd to some. But testing, I can pretty much keep up 10+ stacks of might with the bow out. I have a second bow slotted with Fire, just in case.

D/D is a defensive set because autoattack regens you endurance.

The thief in your group just needs to learn the boss. Zerker D/D thieves can melee him perfectly fine, even in the 40’s. And he probably didn’t die because of the initial blast of the ice breath. He may be 1 stack away from being frozen and the rest of the blast finished him off.
Honestly, if you don’t know the class and need to come to the forum for advice, you shouldn’t be giving anyone advice on that class.
Best advice you can give anyone is, stay ranged and bring snares

I play a Thief in fractals just fine, using a 0, 0, 10, 30, 30 build with dual daggers and shortbow set. I’m not a pro player, but I don’t see myself going down more often than others in my team.

I use dual daggers and dual pistols on my thief and i use rampagers gear going with condition venoms and caltraps bleed.

I also use the healing signet, which i don’t activate often because the 3rd skill on pistols combined with caltraps can heal you to full pretty quickly.

In dungeons i don’t use daggers much because i prefer to stay back safe and damage with pistols and conditions, however i will go in for dagger attacks when i think it’s safe to but i don’t use backstab or stealth i mainly stack bleeds with the 3rd dagger skill then use 2nd skill below 25%

Running 0/30/10/20/10, PTV armor with Ruby Orbs and zerk trinkets, meleeing all bosses (except Dredge Suit/Ice Elemental for obvious kiting reasons) at 40+ just fine.

jportell.2197:

In general it is not a good idea to go to FOTM with your d/d zerker backstab build… The damage is impressive yes but you die to 1/2 seconds up against the shaman’s ice breath… This makes it really annoying for the rest of your party with you. Now I know thieves can have very good dungeon builds but few seem to have the wits about them to consider building for a dungeon… :/ Kind of a rant… But do any thieves have a good fractals dungeon build they care to share? That way at least next time I get a thief with me… I can give him some advice at least in the way of traits for surviving. thanks.

No problem I’ll share mine. I’m a d/d zerker backstab thief in fractals 48. The damage is really impressive and it’s really easy to stay alive with all the extra evades built in with extra endurance on auto attack. I highly suggest it.

I guess there will always be some idiot suggesting zerker gear cannot be run outside cof1.

My 12k hp full berserker d/d ele does 50+ fractals just fine. So do our thieves.

Maybe your thieves are just bad. As you are for suggesting they run a less efficient setup.

At high lv fractals even 2k toughness won’t suffice anyways, since everything hits like a truck regardless and the way to live is to dodge, cc, and use reflection.

In this game you’re not really meant to tank hits.

Kain Francois.4328:

Pfft. A berserker thief is viable in high level fractions, just tell them to dodge more. And invest in acrobats.

They have some of the highest endurance regeneration of any class. Why are they getting hit!?

no offence sir but you obviously have no idea what other classes can do if you believe that. The class with the highest endurance regen is the engi. 10% end gain per tool-belt use with permanent 100% faster endurance regen + perma vigor up time. That’s right, 200% faster endurance regen 100% of the time. With an endurance on weapon swap sigil, you can use the swap effect on kit swaps so there should be no reason not to use it.

randomfightfan.4091:

no offence sir but you obviously have no idea what other classes can do if you believe that. The class with the highest endurance regen is the engi. 10% end gain per tool-belt use with permanent 100% faster endurance regen + perma vigor up time. That’s right, 200% faster endurance regen 100% of the time. With an endurance on weapon swap sigil, you can use the swap effect on kit swaps so there should be no reason not to use it.

Adrenal Implant is only a 50% endurance increase. It doesn’t stack with vigor. Toolbelt skills usually have long cooldowns.
All i see is vigor with 10% per toolbelt skill and perma swiftness.

Weapon swap sigil is something any class can do, so i excluded that.

A thief’s dodge returns endurance, so they can nearly dodge up to three times in a row regardless of endurance regen. Add vigor on top of that, because it stacks unlike the engineer’s trait, using the vigor on steal and vigor on heal traits and you will be the most frequent dodger. Using withdraw instead of hide in shadows because of the 15 second cooldown also helps a ton.
Vigor, and dodge costs 2/3 of it’s normal cost, and a instant casting heal skill that also dodges and removes snares. Also has perma swiftness. Quite a good bit better.

Plus they have Roll for Initiative which functions as a dodge, stun breaker and returns some initiative. And Death Blossom, not a real dodge, but evades all attacks while used.

Only issue I run into with Thieves is that most of them end up being pretentious jerks.

PolishSausage.1279:

Only issue I run into with Thieves is that most of them end up being pretentious jerks.

meh, it happens with every single class. None more than others from what I’ve seen.

magic fly.2041:

PolishSausage.1279:

Only issue I run into with Thieves is that most of them end up being pretentious jerks.

meh, it happens with every single class. None more than others from what I’ve seen.

Meh, for me it’s Thieves mostly. A lot of them just come off as thinking they’re hot kitten just because they have a million Get Out Of Jail Free moves and have lolburst damage.

magic fly.2041:

Adrenal Implant is only a 50% endurance increase. It doesn’t stack with vigor. Toolbelt skills usually have long cooldowns.
All i see is vigor with 10% per toolbelt skill and perma swiftness.

Weapon swap sigil is something any class can do, so i excluded that.

A thief’s dodge returns endurance, so they can nearly dodge up to three times in a row regardless of endurance regen. Add vigor on top of that, because it stacks unlike the engineer’s trait, using the vigor on steal and vigor on heal traits and you will be the most frequent dodger. Using withdraw instead of hide in shadows because of the 15 second cooldown also helps a ton.
Vigor, and dodge costs 2/3 of it’s normal cost, and a instant casting heal skill that also dodges and removes snares. Also has perma swiftness. Quite a good bit better.

Didn’t know it didn’t stack with vigor but the tooltip in the trait thing says 100%. Also There are multiple toolbelt skills with 20s cds and some are pretty good. Also when you think about how amazing the other trait choices are, acrobatics really isn’t that good of a trait line. Sure the extra dodges are GREAT and vigor on heal is also awesome… but I’d rather ini and condition removal on invis with fury might swift and possibly vigor on steal for everyone in my pt. That’s significantly better than 1 more dodge on me imo. If only mug wasn’t as good as it is I’d go for vigor on steal but as it stands my build doesn’t have any access to vigor

Lastly I was pretty sure we were talking about straight dodges through the endurance bar here. If you wanted to include withdraw then you should have also included roll for ini and weapon abilities like sbow 3. In that senario we do have the most dodges followed very closely behind by eles. But in a pure endurance bar stand point, we aren’t that great.

PolishSausage.1279:

magic fly.2041:

PolishSausage.1279:

Only issue I run into with Thieves is that most of them end up being pretentious jerks.

meh, it happens with every single class. None more than others from what I’ve seen.

Meh, for me it’s Thieves mostly. A lot of them just come off as thinking they’re hot kitten just because they have a million Get Out Of Jail Free moves and have lolburst damage.

go to gw2 lfg and look up cof exp. Sadly they’re invading coe and ta as well

Zenith.7301:

I guess there will always be some idiot suggesting zerker gear cannot be run outside cof1.

My 12k hp full berserker d/d ele does 50+ fractals just fine. So do our thieves.

Maybe your thieves are just bad. As you are for suggesting they run a less efficient setup.

At high lv fractals even 2k toughness won’t suffice anyways, since everything hits like a truck regardless and the way to live is to dodge, cc, and use reflection.

In this game you’re not really meant to tank hits.

hey if you can pull of being a zerker and not die ever then that’s just dandy… no issues… I am not the type to refuse a party joiner but usually when a thief joins I have some qualms…
In this particular group there were two mesmers, necro, zerk warrior (all COF gear), and the paper thin thief…. One that was the most survivable was the necro, after that it was me (usually died ressing the war or thief) then the other Mesmer…. bottom of the barrel were the two fully zerked people….. It wasn’t even the boss of the first frac that had me worried… THE FIRST ENCOUNTER… These two went down so incredibly fast…. We just were kind of appalled… First was thief (dead the entire first fight) then the warrior… So if you are good enough to avoid damage as a fully zerked class that’s fine. Keep in mind that d/d eles have good healing outside of their heal skill even if they are zerked out… Thieves have more evades… Which this guy clearly did not trait for or he didn’t know how to make use of it.

jportell.2197:

Thieves have more evades… Which this guy clearly did not trait for or he didn’t know how to make use of it.

Just want to let you know that the evade on d/d is junk. It’s 1/4s and the evade time doesn’t even start when you start the ability. If you want great evades without traiting for it, use sbow 3 and withdraw.

randomfightfan.4091:

jportell.2197:

Thieves have more evades… Which this guy clearly did not trait for or he didn’t know how to make use of it.

Just want to let you know that the evade on d/d is junk. It’s 1/4s and the evade time doesn’t even start when you start the ability. If you want great evades without traiting for it, use sbow 3 and withdraw.

But he NEVER EVER swapped his weapon swap the entire time… Not even on the ice elemental part where you pretty much HAVE to kite the damage from the fires… It’s just simple out of all the thieves I have run dungeons with there was only one that I was surprised with how survivable he was… Now I am not saying that everyone is way above thieves in survivability but it seems that thieves are more notorious for not building to survive runs than any other class. … But the ones that think they are invincible with no toughness and don’t even attempt to kite at all is what drives me nuts… Now I know thieves can have tons of built in dodges with the acrobatics trait line and a signet plus weapons… But he just made absolutely no attempt to avoid damage of any mobs… And it was frustrating… Now if anyone has a good dungeon build that is survivable for dungeons that is not the crazy zerk builds that I could give if I am noticing someone is dying more than helping the group… It would be great…

How is this not similiar to when you’re playing with pro zerker warriors? They do same thing.

Question for OP: this thread wouldn’t have happened to be prompted by a level 26 run recently, would it?

(Not that there aren’t lots of bad players out there)

There is a full zerker thief I run FotM 48 with whenever she’s around, and she’s incredible. Most of the time she spends it at range, except the few instances where the enemies are so stupid that she can wail on them in melee range for absurd damage (like the svanir boss, who is a total loser). It really is a tricky class, but it has an exceedingly high return if you’re particularly talented at it.

I use this build. It works fairly well. If I need range I swap out the D/D for a bow. The build is mainly about S/D and stunlocking enemies with daze.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.1g.h2.8.1g.h14|c.1g.hd.8.1g.h14|1c.a7.1c.a7.1c.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7.1g.a7|2s.0.2s.0.1g.67.1g.67.1g.67.2s.0|a3.0.u46b.u29a.0|39.2|57.5b.5i.5h.5w|e

Does the hate for zerker gear ever stop?!

Thieves with Signet of the Shadow, for the movement speed, are more annoying in instances. That’s what I call terrible.

I understand that the Signet of Shadows is not necessary in instances, except that suddenly moving slower throws me off.

What do you recommend instead?

Just to add more fuel to your tirade, sometimes I swap it out for blinding powder.

FirstBlood.7359:

Thieves with Signet of the Shadow, for the movement speed, are more annoying in instances. That’s what I call terrible.

You might be amazed how much dps I mitigate by moving 25% faster in combat on my Necromancer.

Also sometime I’m running at full speed with Shadow Refuge at it’s full range in order to stealth a party member who is downed before they bleed out / get dps’ed to death.

Sounds like the issue is not the build, but rather the person behind the keyboard.

Dear jportell,

I understand that you’ve recently had some bad luck with some thieves in dungeons. Although you have every right too feel upset, you should still refrain from lumping an entire group of people into a category due to the actions of a few. That kind of action doesn’t help anyone, it only hurts the gaming experience for both parties. If a player is playing a class, and has played that class for a long time, I’d suggest just trusting in the player’s abilities… Sometimes they’ll surprise you.

I was taking the post to say that the OP has had some terribad thieves in dungeons who are running a high crit rate backstab builds. He would like some suggestions on things he could recommend to help these guys improve (for example, get some toughness). His suggestions may or may not be accepted, but if the thieves are really doing that poorly, they may be receptive to suggestions, no one likes to spend the dungeon in the down state.

I doubt he would comment if you were playing an pwning the entire dungeon and I hope he would not require a gear ping.

Rising Dusk.2408:

FirstBlood.7359:

Thieves with Signet of the Shadow, for the movement speed, are more annoying in instances. That’s what I call terrible.

You might be amazed how much dps I mitigate by moving 25% faster in combat on my Necromancer.

Movementspeed is useless in instances, because all encouters can be mastered by smart positioning and well-timed dodges. Let’s assume the thief is hitting Subject Alpha in melee. Why would he need additional movement speed? Subject Alpha doesn’t kite players. Let’s assume the thief is fighting Giganticus Lupicus from range. Why would he need additional movement speed? Every dodge or shortbow 3 brings you in safety.

There’s no great idea behind Signet of Shadows/Signet of Air. Most players use these skills out of laziness. To me, it’s a dead slot that could be used to help you and your group.

FirstBlood.7359:

Movementspeed is useless in instances, because all encouters can be mastered by smart positioning and well-timed dodges. Let’s assume the thief is hitting Subject Alpha in melee. Why would he need additional movement speed? Subject Alpha doesn’t kite players. Let’s assume the thief is fighting Giganticus Lupicus from range. Why would he need additional movement speed? Every dodge or shortbow 3 brings you in safety.

There’s no great idea behind Signet of Shadows/Signet of Air. Most players use these skills out of laziness. To me, it’s a dead slot that could be used to help you and your group.

I disagree with you, and here is why. Many skills used by enemies, projectiles in particular, can be dodged simply by moving. The faster you are, the closer you can be to the enemy and still dodge these skills factoring in the width of the projectile. Here, I even did the math for you; by moving 25% faster, you can be 20% closer to the attacking enemy and still walk-dodge the skill (particularly relevant for your example in GL!). This is even more relevant if you strafe back-and-forth to dodge a projectile skill, because by moving faster you throw the attack further off center, reducing the percent chance the enemy actually hits you in between your strafes (I tried doing this analytically but it resolves to a complex trigonometric function I’d need to numerically determine, yuck). A good example of where this is really valuable is when you’re trying to melee the Grawl boss in Fractals on a high level like 48, where increased movement speed translates directly to a more accessible melee target without hurting your own ability to dodge its arrows. And thus, by being able to dodge without expending a dodge or skill (or initiative in the Thief’s case), you save those dodges and skills for when you really need them

tl;dr: I’ve mathed this out and it’s legitimately valuable if you know how to use it properly in combat situations against specific enemy types, including certain bosses. If your team is not doing a lot of moving for a specific event, needless to say it isn’t valuable and you should change utilities (good players do this anyway).

That thief just doesn’t know how to dodge, it seems. For my thief, for any dungeon as well as fracs, I run a 10/30/0/15/15 build. In dungeons, it’s shortbow/sword/pistol. In fracs, it’s any weaponset except for anything with dagger offhand. Some levels I run shortbow/pistol/pistol, some I run shortbow/sword/pistol, and I always run pistol/pistol/dagger/pistol for Jade Maw end boss (not through the trash getting there though).

Gotta adapt as the situation calls for it!

Sovta.4719:

jportell.2197:

In general it is not a good idea to go to FOTM with your d/d zerker backstab build… The damage is impressive yes but you die to 1/2 seconds up against the shaman’s ice breath… This makes it really annoying for the rest of your party with you. Now I know thieves can have very good dungeon builds but few seem to have the wits about them to consider building for a dungeon… :/ Kind of a rant… But do any thieves have a good fractals dungeon build they care to share? That way at least next time I get a thief with me… I can give him some advice at least in the way of traits for surviving. thanks.

Same for necros, power necro that spam 1st on staff for 90% of time is “No, no, no”
Let the “you elitist” shout begin!

Not that I’m condoning that behavior, but the reason they’re prob spamming 1 so much is because they have horrible life force generation in their build which necros need to get into death shroud, so they were trying to build it up (staff 1 generates LF and pierces, so if they line it up right it hits multiples which = multiple damage and multiple ticks of LF regen… The More You Know…) so tell them instead learn to make a build to generate more life force so they can use death shroud to eat that agony more lol.

Kain Francois.4328:

Pfft. A berserker thief is viable in high level fractions, just tell them to dodge more. And invest in acrobats.

They have some of the highest endurance regeneration of any class. Why are they getting hit!?

The cues for the shaman are some of the most readable in the game, you have so much time to set up for them it almost puts me to sleep. if they’re constantly getting hit they have no business first of all in that high of a fractal where it would matter, and second of all, playing a pve thief. And I hate that it makes me sound like an elitist but I’m about as far from it as you can get, but there’s no reason for them to get eaten up like that, especially on that boss.

I don’t play a thief but I did do a L30 fractal the other day with a berserker thief and he was pretty awesome. Was EXTREMELY helpful on the dredge fractal (granted this fractal still sucked and I hate it). He may have been an exception to the rule but I’d run again with him anytime in high level fractals.

I noticed that both of the Zerker Thieves I regularly do fractals with started to swap in a bit of Toughness and Vitality when we passed 30. They just found they were a bit too flimsy without it. It doesn’t matter how good you are at dodging, eventually you will make a mistake, and full Zerk is just a tiny bit too unforgiving at the higher levels. Saying that you can make it to a fairly high fractal level just running Zerker, they seemed to be fine up 30 and even 30+ they still could do very well.

But even then they regularly swapped to either pistols or shortbow when they needed to. There are too many fights you just can’t afford to be in close for like Bloomhunger, Grawl Shame etc.

Brave Sir Ryan.1240:

Question for OP: this thread wouldn’t have happened to be prompted by a level 26 run recently, would it?

(Not that there aren’t lots of bad players out there)

Nope by a level 10 run….

jportell.2197:

Brave Sir Ryan.1240:

Question for OP: this thread wouldn’t have happened to be prompted by a level 26 run recently, would it?

(Not that there aren’t lots of bad players out there)

Nope by a level 10 run….

What he meant by lvl 26 was 26 or bellow. Basically means the same thing but at least this guy was cool enough to realize he needed to work his way up. With experiences like that he’ll probably realize he needs a change of build for fraks so when he gets to higherevels, he’ll be prepared

I thought this was going to be a post about how thieves should never do dungeons or something. /shivers

Anyhow, agreed. Zerker D/D burst builds are near worthless in these environments.

randomfightfan.4091:

jportell.2197:

Brave Sir Ryan.1240:

Question for OP: this thread wouldn’t have happened to be prompted by a level 26 run recently, would it?

(Not that there aren’t lots of bad players out there)

Nope by a level 10 run….

What he meant by lvl 26 was 26 or bellow. Basically means the same thing but at least this guy was cool enough to realize he needed to work his way up. With experiences like that he’ll probably realize he needs a change of build for fraks so when he gets to higherevels, he’ll be prepared

Actually he kept bragging about how amazing he was and getting mad that we wouldn’t res him after the 6th time fully dying (because of the downed penalty). So I honestly don’t think he learned anything… He also pinged his “4 pristine relics” followed by “I know what I am doing you guys all suck”. So no he prolly will not change his build but he will also not get into that many groups and possibly kicked (I actually had people request to kick him) I am never the kick people type and even then tried not to but he did not figure it out when we asked if he had any ranged options and he just said he was fine…

jportell.2197:

randomfightfan.4091:

jportell.2197:

Brave Sir Ryan.1240:

Question for OP: this thread wouldn’t have happened to be prompted by a level 26 run recently, would it?

(Not that there aren’t lots of bad players out there)

Nope by a level 10 run….

What he meant by lvl 26 was 26 or bellow. Basically means the same thing but at least this guy was cool enough to realize he needed to work his way up. With experiences like that he’ll probably realize he needs a change of build for fraks so when he gets to higherevels, he’ll be prepared

Actually he kept bragging about how amazing he was and getting mad that we wouldn’t res him after the 6th time fully dying (because of the downed penalty). So I honestly don’t think he learned anything… He also pinged his “4 pristine relics” followed by “I know what I am doing you guys all suck”. So no he prolly will not change his build but he will also not get into that many groups and possibly kicked (I actually had people request to kick him) I am never the kick people type and even then tried not to but he did not figure it out when we asked if he had any ranged options and he just said he was fine…

Lol in that case then that player is hopeless. Hopefully he realizes that him dying constantly isn’t ALWAYS his team’s fault. Some people never learn though

FirstBlood.7359:

Rising Dusk.2408:

FirstBlood.7359:

Thieves with Signet of the Shadow, for the movement speed, are more annoying in instances. That’s what I call terrible.

You might be amazed how much dps I mitigate by moving 25% faster in combat on my Necromancer.

Movementspeed is useless in instances, because all encouters can be mastered by smart positioning and well-timed dodges. Let’s assume the thief is hitting Subject Alpha in melee. Why would he need additional movement speed? Subject Alpha doesn’t kite players. Let’s assume the thief is fighting Giganticus Lupicus from range. Why would he need additional movement speed? Every dodge or shortbow 3 brings you in safety.

There’s no great idea behind Signet of Shadows/Signet of Air. Most players use these skills out of laziness. To me, it’s a dead slot that could be used to help you and your group.

The problem to me is people who don’t change out their skills to fit the situation. There are times that signets that increase movement speed are good; pulling levers in the Dredge Fractal or any running/avoiding part come to mind off the top of my head.

If you are not doing that then yes, you should have a more relevant skill in your toolbar, but if you need a speed boost more than anything else and don’t use it you are just as irresponsible IMO.