Guild Wars 2

This build offers very good damage along with survivability and initiative regen. Check it out if you want to get away from the traditional stealth-based builds. The main strength is its synergy with EVERY weapon set and, as mentioned, not being overly reliant on stealth (which only really profits dagger mainhand anyways). It’s great for players who constantly switch out their weapons based on the encounter.

5 / 30 / 10 / 25 / 0
I can’t put up a link for it because I’m at work and all build calculators are blocked here. kitten the man. Traits detailed further below.

1) THE BIG PICTURE

Damage
The build offers enough survivability to allow you to play in full berzerker gear. This is not required but it’s definitely something you should aim for. You’ll have the following damage modifiers :
1) +20% damage when mob health is under 50%
2) +10% dmg when endurance is not full. Dodges are your life and should be used often enough to keep near 100% uptime on this booster.
3) +10% dmg when initiative over 6. Relatively easy to keep near 100% uptime because of the good initiative regen.

Survivability
-3 dodges
-Lots of vitality and increased boon duration from the Acrobatics tree
-No toughness = less aggro
-Good condition removal : agility signet, hide in shadows heal, sword #2, condition removal on stealth (optional)

Initiative regen
From Acrobatics IX and the 15 point minor trait in Critical Strikes. No need to stealth to regain initiative, so it’s very useful with Sword/Pistol and Shortbow which should be your main PVE trash mob weapons (AOE, blind field, infinite blast finisher, weakness combo).

2) THE TRAITS

Deadly arts : 5 pts
These are my 5 leftover points and are only used for the extra 50 power (MOARR DPS). Feel free to place them elsewhere. Acrobatics 30 for Quick Pockets or Trickery 5 are good options for more initiative regen, but it’s a bit of overkill.

Critical Strikes : 30 pts
The thief’s bread and butter and home of the awesome traits. For the majors I usually run III, VI and XI. Sometimes others…
I : 10 sec fury on a 45 sec cooldown. Not necessary if you’re rolling with banner warriors but useful on trash mobs otherwise.
III : +7% crit chance from the back (nuff said).
VI : 5% of precision converted to vit (and you’ll have very high precision).
XI : 20% extra damage when mob health under 50%

*XII : I rarely use this as it synergizes with a Dagger/Dagger backstab setup that should pretty much only be used on single target boss fights. Also my crit chance is high enough that it’s mathematically not worth using (anything over 62ish%, someone else’s math on the forums, seems legit!).

Shadow Arts : 10 pts
The 10 point major-trait offers some nice options.
I : This is what I use 90% of the time. Reduced cooldown on my Deception (best) utilities: Smoke Screen and Shadow Refuge.
IV : If extra condition removal is needed. Situational.

Acobatics : 25 pts
Every trait in this line up to 25 pts is pure gold. Swiftness on dodge, might on dodge, returns endurance on dodge (essentially giving you 3 dodges… and more might), auto initiative recovery every 10 sec, +10% damage.

3) UTILITIES

Most of the time I’ll run Sig of Agility (great active and passive), Smoke Screen (mmmm) and Shadow refuge, but I switch often.

Hide in shadows for heal + condition removal.

Elite = thieves guild or dagger storm if reflects are needed.

4) WEAPON SETS

Shortbow – Pretty much my default secondary set. More-than-decent AOE, infinite blast finishers, weakness spam, sick mobility.

Sword/Pistol – Used for trash mobs and SOME bosses. The 100% uptime on blind field and the integrated dodge of pistol whip allow you to face tank mobs (not bosses!) and cleave like warriors. The auto attack is a beast and all attacks hit up to 3 targets. Great mobility and condition removal with #2 skill.

Dagger/Dagger – Used for single target encounters. The auto attack damage is similar to the sword’s, but daggers pull way ahead with their Backstabs and Heartseekers (at low health).

Dagger/Pistol – Situational. I prefer Dagger/Dagger. As I said I only run dagger on bosses, and the pistol’s blind field doesn’t work too well there. Also, the cost of entering stealth (blind field + heartseeker) is higher than a simple Cloak and Dagger (dagger offhand). It does have it’s uses though when you want to stack stealth without having to hit mobs.

Sword/Dagger – Situational. Only used when I can steal tons of boons from mobs. Dredge fractal is your friend.

Pistol/Pistol – Situational. I only use it to look kitten or for easy-to-survive ranged encounters (like the end boss of the dredge fractal). You can switch around your Crit Strikes traits to be able to spam Unloads for hours on end. Load up your heal and utility bar with signets, get traits V and VIII for +10% dmg with pistols and 2 initiative on signet use. Proceed to melt boss’ face from afar.

That’s about it. Please critique, comment or troll below.

twoscoops.6913:

This build offers very good damage along with survivability and initiative regen. Check it out if you want to get away from the traditional stealth-based builds. The main strength is its synergy with EVERY weapon set and, as mentioned, not being overly reliant on stealth (which only really profits dagger mainhand anyways). It’s great for players who constantly switch out their weapons based on the encounter.

5 / 30 / 10 / 25 / 0
I can’t put up a link for it because I’m at work and all build calculators are blocked here. kitten the man. Traits detailed further below.

1) THE BIG PICTURE

Damage
The build offers enough survivability to allow you to play in full berzerker gear. This is not required but it’s definitely something you should aim for. You’ll have the following damage modifiers :
1) +20% damage when mob health is under 50%
2) +10% dmg when endurance is not full. Dodges are your life and should be used often enough to keep near 100% uptime on this booster.
3) +10% dmg when initiative over 6. Relatively easy to keep near 100% uptime because of the good initiative regen.

Survivability
-3 dodges
-Lots of vitality and increased boon duration from the Acrobatics tree
-No toughness = less aggro
-Good condition removal : agility signet, hide in shadows heal, sword #2, condition removal on stealth (optional)

Initiative regen
From Acrobatics IX and the 15 point minor trait in Critical Strikes. No need to stealth to regain initiative, so it’s very useful with Sword/Pistol and Shortbow which should be your main PVE trash mob weapons (AOE, blind field, infinite blast finisher, weakness combo).

2) THE TRAITS

Deadly arts : 5 pts
These are my 5 leftover points and are only used for the extra 50 power (MOARR DPS). Feel free to place them elsewhere. Acrobatics 30 for Quick Pockets or Trickery 5 are good options for more initiative regen, but it’s a bit of overkill.

Critical Strikes : 30 pts
The thief’s bread and butter and home of the awesome traits. For the majors I usually run III, VI and XI. Sometimes others…
I : 10 sec fury on a 45 sec cooldown. Not necessary if you’re rolling with banner warriors but useful on trash mobs otherwise.
III : +7% crit chance from the back (nuff said).
VI : 5% of precision converted to vit (and you’ll have very high precision).
XI : 20% extra damage when mob health under 50%

*XII : I rarely use this as it synergizes with a Dagger/Dagger backstab setup that should pretty much only be used on single target boss fights. Also my crit chance is high enough that it’s mathematically not worth using (anything over 62ish%, someone else’s math on the forums, seems legit!).

Shadow Arts : 10 pts
The 10 point major-trait offers some nice options.
I : This is what I use 90% of the time. Reduced cooldown on my Deception (best) utilities: Smoke Screen and Shadow Refuge.
IV : If extra condition removal is needed. Situational.

Acobatics : 25 pts
Every trait in this line up to 25 pts is pure gold. Swiftness on dodge, might on dodge, returns endurance on dodge (essentially giving you 3 dodges… and more might), auto initiative recovery every 10 sec, +10% damage.

Good build but i prefer 0 / 30 / 20 / 20 / 0 as surrounder

Not many players know, that you can use more than 2 weaponsets. + 1 for that. All in all, this is a very good guide. I will recomend this.

I run 0/30/15/25/0 – I love to pug, and you need as much stealth as you can get if you want to skip with pugs

Okay, lets see. critique: sorta check; comment: check – is something missing? … ah!
ommg thiefs are bad tehy die allthe time you should rerooll warriorz they deal 50000k 100b and are muhc much beter.

…yes, this should do it.

For acrobatics I actually prefer to forego Shadow Arts altogether and run Signet of Malice + Dodgetrops synergy from Trickery. Trickery also gets you all-around more initiative and more access to boons so you can utilize that boon duration from Acrobatics. I’m not a fan of doing Shadow Arts unless you’re going to do it right with x/D or D/P for heavy stealth.

The major adept traits in shadowarts are huge. CD reduction on my best utility? Anyday. And even with this build, you want to D/D almost every single boss in the game. Can’t do that without + 2 Ini on stealth.

Tulisin.6945:

For acrobatics I actually prefer to forego Shadow Arts altogether and run Signet of Malice + Dodgetrops synergy from Trickery. Trickery also gets you all-around more initiative and more access to boons so you can utilize that boon duration from Acrobatics. I’m not a fan of doing Shadow Arts unless you’re going to do it right with x/D or D/P for heavy stealth.

Using Signet of Malice in this build instead of Hide In Shadows leaves you with only 1 way to remove conditions (Sig. of Agility). No thanks!

Molch.2078:

And even with this build, you want to D/D almost every single boss in the game. Can’t do that without + 2 Ini on stealth.

I can backstab a boss all day while staying over 6 initiative thanks to alternative stealthing methods (see below) and the initiative regen I get from traits.

Stealing the yellow item (most commonly stolen item).
Heatseeker through Smoke Screen, low cooldown + long duration
Shadow Refuge
Heal skill

HS + smokescreen is half the time (boss over 50% hp) a huge dps loss.
Steal is luckbased and the rest has high cd.

Molch.2078:

The major adept traits in shadowarts are huge. CD reduction on my best utility? Anyday. And even with this build, you want to D/D almost every single boss in the game. Can’t do that without + 2 Ini on stealth.

Acrobatics is a different defensive doctrine than stealth-based defense. Your stealth-inducing utilities cease to be your “best utilities” when you’re relying on dodge for offense and defense instead of stealth. By leaning heavily on stealth via utilities and investing in Shadow Arts this fits more into the category of a hybridized build than something Acrobatics-based.

twoscoops.6913:

Tulisin.6945:

For acrobatics I actually prefer to forego Shadow Arts altogether and run Signet of Malice + Dodgetrops synergy from Trickery. Trickery also gets you all-around more initiative and more access to boons so you can utilize that boon duration from Acrobatics. I’m not a fan of doing Shadow Arts unless you’re going to do it right with x/D or D/P for heavy stealth.

Using Signet of Malice in this build instead of Hide In Shadows leaves you with only 1 way to remove conditions (Sig. of Agility). No thanks!

A good point, which is why Acrobatics-heavy builds tend to favor S/x to grant access to the additional condition removal. That said, the constant healing of properly synergized SoM makes most condition damage much less of an issue so you’d mostly be saving your condition removal for things like multi-stack Confusion.

The thesis of this post is that Acrobatics is an “alternative to traditional stealth based builds”, and this is very true, but the OP just spent 25 points in Acrobatics and then continues to rely on stealth for everything via heal/utilities.

Tulisin.6945:

Acrobatics is a different defensive doctrine than stealth-based defense. Your stealth-inducing utilities cease to be your “best utilities” when you’re relying on dodge for offense and defense instead of stealth. By leaning heavily on stealth via utilities and investing in Shadow Arts this fits more into the category of a hybridized build than something Acrobatics-based.

(…)

The thesis of this post is that Acrobatics is an “alternative to traditional stealth based builds”, and this is very true, but the OP just spent 25 points in Acrobatics and then continues to rely on stealth for everything via heal/utilities.

Yes, I myself rely on insane amounts of dodges to stay alive. But the group utility that Smoke Screen and Refuge bring are too good to pass up (especially Smoke Screen). Investing in acrobatics doesn’t mean I can’t get the benefits from stealth (I’d be a fool not to). Maybe the title causes confusion but meh, I’m not here to argue semantics.

I guess the best way to rephrase it is that the build doesn’t rely on the +2 initiative on stealth major trait (awesome for dagger mainhand but kinda gimpy for sword and bow). And since I use all 3 of these weapon sets a whole lot, I planned a build that worked equally well for all of them.

Tulisin.6945:

Acrobatics is a different defensive doctrine than stealth-based defense. Your stealth-inducing utilities cease to be your “best utilities” when you’re relying on dodge for offense and defense instead of stealth. By leaning heavily on stealth via utilities and investing in Shadow Arts this fits more into the category of a hybridized build than something Acrobatics-based.

But a dodgeroll doesn’t hurt your enemy. + 2 initiative when entering stealth is not really defensive, it’s an offensive attribute which allows you to attack more often with Backstab.
I think Molch wanted to mention that you lose DPS with this method

Anubarak.3012:

Tulisin.6945:

Acrobatics is a different defensive doctrine than stealth-based defense. Your stealth-inducing utilities cease to be your “best utilities” when you’re relying on dodge for offense and defense instead of stealth. By leaning heavily on stealth via utilities and investing in Shadow Arts this fits more into the category of a hybridized build than something Acrobatics-based.

But a dodgeroll doesn’t hurt your enemy. + 2 initiative when entering stealth is not really defensive, it’s an offensive attribute which allows you to attack more often with Backstab.
I think Molch wanted to mention that you lose DPS with this method

It does if you’ve traited dodgetrops, one of the things I was advocating in the first place. You can also run food + Acrobatics + might duration rune synergy to get huge amounts of Might stacks via dodging. Dodge can absolutely be synergized into an offensive tool.

I’m not arguing that the build in this thread is bad. I’m sure it is quite effective, it just isn’t really the non-reliant-on-stealth build it claimed to be.