Guild Wars 2

Either for exploration mode or PvP, I’ve sorta been wondering this as I’ve scratched my way to level 80 with almost full strong/zerker gear. The current build I’m using is 25 deadly arts, 30 critical, 10 shadow arts, and 5 acrobatics, so I at least get +100 tough/Healing Power and 50 vit from traits, and get 5% of my precision as vit as well (about ~80 vit with 1600 precision): so, total of about 100 tough/130 vit.

I’m usually invisible half the time in PvE due to cloak and dagger/backstab spam, so I don’t tend to draw much attention. The last dungeon I did, CM story, I was pretty much able to attack liberally without much issue, only having trouble on the golem. Still, I’m wondering how much I should invest in tough/vit gear to off set the zerkers I’ve been accumulating.

I think it’s too early to see what is best. For WvW, I am pretty sure stacking vitality is going to be the way to go, as toughness comes on the gear. The health gets a substantial buff from orbs, and since we can often break out of combat for the out-of-combat regen, it just kind of makes sense.

But really there’s no balance yet, and unfortunately no dueling where we can test skills in a static manner. The dummy targets are ok but don’t take bleeds or certain other effects which do factor into DPS and survivability.

It’s really going to depend on what style of thief you want to play (or continue playing). If you want to keep popping in-and-out with a quick hit-and-run approach, it may not be something you look for and, honestly, just having more vitality could be the answer (depending on what drops you end up finding as you play).

Also, as said before, it’s still very early on and, without dueling, it’s very hard to do much in the way of number crunching on the subject. The best possible answer, right now, is stack until you feel comfortable during your “brief” 1-on-1s.

You dont need any. As long as your specced right and play dagger dagger, short bow you should never be hit. I take on 4 to 5 people on in WvW solo and win or get away if I start losing. You can also dive into a zerg and survive longer then anyone if you manage your cooldowns, innit & energy well. deathblossom, dodge ftw.

Personally I spec’d pretty heavy into Acrobatics. Gives me a ton of HP and the ability to dodge whenever I feel like it. I’d suggest switch Acrobatics and Shadow Arts around at a 10/5 respectively.

Unless there is something in Shadow Arts you really like, Acrobatics you can get Power of Inertia (might on dodge) or Vigorous Recovery (vigor on heal <— nonstop dodgerolls and my personal favorite).

For sPvP I’d recommend a decent amount of Toughness at least. I tried a pure Crit/Power build the other day and took 0 extra toughness, and while I did a lot of damage, I rarely had enough staying power to finish them off, or survive much beyond the first enemy.

I spec’d back to having 1800 toughness again and it just feels so much better wading into melee with my daggers and sword. If I get stunned and smacked on a few times I no longer crumple to the ground.

The ten Shadow Arts was for Infusion of Shadow, primarily for PvE content so that CnD only has a 4 initiative cost (making it pretty spammable between stealth cool down timers). Granted that’s primarily for PvE content, I’d likely have to fiddle around with a build for something right for PvP (perhaps with a less crit mindset, although 100% backstab crit chance is so nice).