Guild Wars 2

I recently hit 80 and now got enough ressources to craft some exotic gear… but I’m wondering which one I should focus on? I intend to mostly focus on pug WvWvW roaming / keep defense and soloing/exploring/farming in PVE.

I was thinking to focus on Shortbow and Sword/Pistol, altho I’m open to adjust my 2nd set of weapon.

I’d like something that’s balanced and not just a glass canon. For now my spec is mainly focused on deadly arts/critical strike/trickery with heavy use of signets/haste.

I was thinking of getting some berzerker piece complemented with maybe 1 or 2 valkyrie piece(s) to get some defensive stats and a mix of power/precision/toughness and thoughness/vit/crit for the accessories.

Any insight on my draft plan would be greatly appreciated.

For condition builds, carrion gear(power/vitality/cond damage) is good for a mix of offense/defense. Same with Shaman pieces(cond damage/healing/vitality).

For non-condition damage, power/precision/vitality gear is a nice mix, I think there might also be toughness/power/prec.

The pure damage pieces are berserker(power/prec/crit damage).

main sb ranged? offset sword pistol?

I’d recommend going for venom orientated damages so that way you can use the standard poison and the leeching venoms trait etc and apply them quickly with your pistol whip that lets you get power and condition duration trait points

I don’t recommend getting venemous aura as it’s twitchy and overrated by far and it’s only the existance of abuse from it in spvp that has it placed so far into the shadow arts tree to the point where it’s not worth the points to get it for the garbage range on the share or the healing power and toughness which are as most will tell you highly inferior to simple vitality due to scaling. so acrobatics is far more appealing due to you not using bleeds (our best condition damage) however the critical tree does offer some great burst damage if you end up preferring s/p. however in your case I’d say try acrobatics. but NOT past 20pts in it because a trait line that tries to on one hand give you more endurance but reward you when you run out of it is moronic so you could try out 30/20/0/20/0 and see how that works out for you in terms of dealing enough damage to feel like you should be there, and being flexible enough to peel with s/p when needed with your immobilise shadowstep 2 skill on s/p

an alternative I’d recommend looking into would be 30/0/20/20 for the extra stealing, which can help keep bosses with self buffs nerfed. allies buffed and of course if you choose alternate traits. offer you a free stealth and blind aoe when you take a large hit of 20% or more hp (in dungeons etc that’s far too often to overlook) and also giving you that much needed extra 3 base initiative

It all comes down on what build you want to play and what your main focus is.

I have up til now tested carrion/rampager/berseker sets, and various mixes of those.

The main issue for thiefs is to have decent vitality and damage, that only comes from the carrion set. But! it also forces you into dagger/dagger or pistol/dagger (which im currently running)

Ask yourself what is your main goal with the game. Do you want to run with the zerg, guild group wvw, solo wvw, pve. There is currently no viable option that lets you excel at all different aspects of the game.

Ask yourself what weaponset you want to use, try the different ones and learn how they all use different skills to synergize (skip pistol/pistol cus it just sucks)

The most popular builds atm are aimed for small scale spvp or wvw. Both lack survivability and trade that for huge burst (glasscannon). If you want that go berserker, maybe mix in a few parts of vit/power/tough so you endup with more than 12k hp

Viable speccs for that is the sword+pistol or dagger+dagger, tactics are either shadowstep´+pistol whip or cnd+backstab. You will most likely never use dagger #3 as your bleeds are crap.

If you want to be tanky there are 2 routes either dagger+dagger and using solely the bleed aoe as your stabs and such will be crap full carrion set will net you ~20k hp.

Pistol+ dagger works also, better for singletarget dmg and makes you really tanky. My build with ~25k hp will be linked in the end. main focus is to use steal+cnd at the same time and then try to restealth as much as possible to get lots of #1 pistol from stealth attacks stacking up a more damaging bleed than what you get from death blossom. No, burst but room for lots of defensive traits which will help you in bigger fights.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYAQRAqa4YlUmiNHey5E9JFxmCeCU/DfVrAN7ZcVtC;TwAg0CnoqxUjoGbNuak1s4YQxmiJGA

current build, using carrion gems instead of runes for armor though.

Start chosing what you wanna do and then chose your weapon set. Chose your traits and then your armor based on that.

Cuteypie: Great answer. I’m open to try either D/D or P/D but I see myself focusing more on the Shortbow in WvWvW as I always tend to find myself defending keeps and I find that its the weapon I end up using the most. I tried checking your build out but you link doesn’t work, and when I just copy/paste the unlinked shortcut, I get a build that doesn’t match your description and is missing some traits.

I’m definitly interested in a more tanky build, but with enough damage to rank me badges as well. I’m not looking into 1v1 burst too much.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYAQNAqYVlUmaNHdy9E95EhPDyOW9D0s7BXtq8B;TsAgyCuoiyElIKbUuokRt+YMycBA

There, sorry about the other link. My full carrion pistol/dagger build focusing on defensive “bumbibear” playstyle.

A shortbow build might benefit from more power and crit though since its more upfront dmg and less over time.

I seem to do fine though, another thing is that conditions are not lowered by toughness, so eventually when more ppl are toughing up to counter all the burst builds you will still do decent dmg.

Bleeds tick for ~115-120 and poison for ~280. Change venom for poison if you arent worried about being kited.

cuteypie: sounds like a fun build, but with all the walking involved in WvWvW I’d like to fit signet of shadows in there… off the cuff I’m thinking of pulling shadowstep out for SoS.

How do you setup your gear to complement that spec? (which exotic pieces/accessories) do you fully go for power/condition damage/vitality? or do you spread some precision/toughness too?

If you are a very skilled thief like me and want to win most fights without the fragility of glass cannon you will use sword dagger. It wrecks in small group, solo, and mass ovp. I havetaken on and beaten 3v1s with it. Message me for my build.
Ign Nighthound