Guild Wars 2

I’ve ran up against a couple interesting thief builds in the past week or two. Mostly they are just annoying, and do too little damage to matter. With such a small sample, however, I thought perhaps I had just faced against some bad players, and wanted to find out of these builds are viable.

The first runs shortbow and does very little besides spamming dodges and shortbow #3 (since the patch). It is near impossible to time your abilities to land the first time you run up against one of these, so they usually take very little damage unless they get CC’d.

The second spams shadowsteps from the utility and sword #2 to move large distances, as well as (somehow) getting a decent amount of stealth and using the daze on tactical strike to slowly build up damage on target. This seemed to fair a bit better against me by escaping most things I tried to do and ditching my teammates by teleporting around so much; but still felt like it was just wasting my time.

The dodge build from the thief (i found myself running 0/0/20/30/20) does terrible dmg
BUT, between the 3 stealth you run and insane amount of dodges and 15 seconds of vigor. You are difficult to catch do low damage tho. It is not good at point holding. 1v1 you will eventually lose and 1v2 at least you are distracting 2 ppl.

I play a lot with a team that wins paid tournaments quite often. The first build I talked about is NOT viable in Tournament style. The second build on the other hand…If you are running sword dagger IS viable. The sword “2” skill is very good it tele-ports you to the target rooting them for 1 second and allows you to tele-port back breaking stuns and removing 1 condition. How this build works: I run 10/30/0/20/20 Utilities I run are Shadow Step Signet of shadows and Stealth Cottage(aoe stealth). Mostly this is an outlast build with decent damage. You will be relying on your Dancing dagger to deal damage. This build is not super bursty but can be done. Cast 4 then 5 then Steal(with Mug) Auto attack to deal about 2-3k dmg and 2 second daze. This does some decent damage. 2000 Dancing Dagger, Cloak and Dagger 3k-5.5k, Steal 2-4k, Auto attack 2-3k If you are running Air and Fire Sigils on weaps thats another 2-5k dmg. So around 19,000 max damage. Unfortunately the sword skills are somewhat slow so odds are the target WILL get the heal off. This build is decent in team fights.

I do not run this build I run Dagger/Dagger although I never use backstab. Stealing right at the start wastes 3 initiative. My team runs a combo field team Dancing dagger has a 33% chance to proc combo’s but has 3 chances.

I run 0/30/20/20/0 and zerker gear. It’s a mix of damage and sustainability with plenty of dodges, shadowsteps and stealths. S/D + SB. It’s one of my favourite setups for WvW.

10/30/0/20/20

nuff said.

Sco.9615:

10/30/0/20/20

nuff said.

Interesting. I’m only able to use 70 trait points.

Auesis.7301:

Sco.9615:

10/30/0/20/20

nuff said.

Interesting. I’m only able to use 70 trait points.

You must not be a very good Thief then…

My build that I run is 30 30 30 30 30. Works wonders.

I’m running 10/30/5/0/25 right now using S/D .

It’s quite fun and imho you bring a lot into a teamfight.
Dazing /& rooting people in bad spot + dancing dagger spam if they cluster .

It does not have the punch out ability like D/D but the setup definitly has it viability in certain setups.

I find a bow spec I tried out today to be incredible when paired with a necro on point defense.

30/30/0/0/10 full zerkers + sharpening stones + food + bloodlust stacked to 25 (from my shortbow) + 5% damage and 5% crit chance on my daggers = 3,742 ATK, 71% chance to crit + 104% crit damage.

Eicherjw.3926:

30/30/0/0/10 full zerkers + sharpening stones + food + bloodlust stacked to 25 (from my shortbow) + 5% damage and 5% crit chance on my daggers = 3,742 ATK, 71% chance to crit + 104% crit damage.

awesome! but if some one so much as releases a smelly one your way, you are dead.

I do not need to insta kill /insta die kind of specs, I like to outlast them, i have moderate dmg but high survivability

For fighting in mid to large scale fights, this style of build actually works. Your damage output suffers so unless you have good control skills, small fights will be more challenging.

Pointing out the obvious: Dodging negates 100% of all damage (except of course existing conditions). This includes aoe damage and of course siege. The more people attacking you, the more valuable this type of mitigation becomes. Unlike past games where dodge was almost always just RNG based (or non-existent), here we can control that timing (making it 100% avoidance if timed properly). Add in the fact that projectiles have travel time and can be seen, aoe’s leave big circles, and many threatening abilities have some kind of audio or animation cue. Dodge is overpowered.

Synergize with Vigor/Endurance gains and condition removal (I like signet of agility and vigor on heal/vigor on steal).

Add in a little bit of stealth (hide in shadows, refuge) – dagger offhand is always an option. I prefer pistol and forgo the stealth traits, but it’s an option.

Abuse shadowstep and shortbow combo spam.

Volrath.1473:

Eicherjw.3926:

30/30/0/0/10 full zerkers + sharpening stones + food + bloodlust stacked to 25 (from my shortbow) + 5% damage and 5% crit chance on my daggers = 3,742 ATK, 71% chance to crit + 104% crit damage.

awesome! but if some one so much as releases a smelly one your way, you are dead.

I do not need to insta kill /insta die kind of specs, I like to outlast them, i have moderate dmg but high survivability

I actually have high survivability based off of play style. I don’t aerg dive unless it’s to dagger storm. I usally dodge a lot, C/D , blinding power, ect.

Great info guys. I actually gave 0 / 30 / 20 / 0 / 20 sword/dagger knights/zerker a try. Being able to steal => daze. blinding powder => daze, hide in shadows => daze, and CnD => daze ensured that nobody could ever save themselves in a team fight. The detection on tactical strike is EXTREMELY forgiving and shadow return (sword 2) has unlimited range, which is quite the trick. The autoattack damage with this setup is also very high (guardian high), so while I missed bursting, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought.

I did find myself always using immobilize before CnD, which made it easy but felt a little noobish.

ens.9854:

while I missed bursting, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought.

A neat thing about S/D is that while against single targets there isn’t a great ability to unload damage as soon as you move to two targets you can use Dancing Dagger, which is like dropping a maxed-out heartseeker on two targets and is incredibly fast in terms of activation time.