Guild Wars 2

I have recently levelled my Thief to 80 and now need to equip him properly.
After doing some maths with the numbers from the wiki (“Comparison of numeric vs. percentage attributes” etc.) I have drafted a combination of equipment which I think would be a pretty good balance between offence and defence.

I am however faced with several questions:

• I know toughness plays a role in mob aggro and I have been warned that too much of it could make the mobs target me over the ‘Soldiers’, what amount of toughness is preferable for a thief?

• What amount of vitality does a Thief need to not go ‘splat’ as soon as he gets hit by a boss?

• And finally for those of you that want to bother rating my decision so far, how does this fare: Berserker’s Gloves, boots and shoulders, sentinel’s (Holy hell this costs a ton!) Helm and legs, Soldier’s or Valkyrie’s Chest (still haven’t decided due to toughness question above).
  And for trinkets: Precision major + toughness and power minor amulet with all rings and accessory slots being Berserker’s.

I thank you in advance for your answers, tips and advice.

Deciding on a trait path could give us a better idea of how to help you theory craft your gear set up.

The general idea for a balanced gear set is to ensure you’re not loaded one way or the other. So if your runnin 0/30/30/0/10for example you’re going to need vitality and power you don’t want to overload your toughness or your crit chance as you already have plenty from traits. Lightly supplement your strengths and power up your weakness due to lack of traits for a balanced armor set.

Again this will be mostly based of your utility tree (or vise versa)
Decide on a play style main utilizes major traits and weapon sets and progress from there.

Also if you’re going to forgo shadow arts you might want to debate adding some extra healing into your kit somewhere. And anywhere around 15k would be fine for hybrid build. Stacking more depend on how fast your fingers are for safety net.

Finall tip never get caught up in “whats” best. no such thing superior stats aren’t going to achieve more than superior skill. Do what you feel will be fun and you’ll have better results because you’ll enjoy it and it will be “your” build.

IMO the best way to master a thief is with valkyrie armor and berserker or valkyrie trinkets.
Reason: We have a very little health pool so we are vulnerable to condition dmg, toughness doesn’t decrease conditions so there is no reason to use that stat for a thief. If you want to be defensive: vitality will be your prefered stat.
You can use a full Valkyrie set too if you want your dmg will still be on a “good” level because of Hidden Killer (100% krit chance while in stealth).

I started with 0-30-25-15-0 many people like 0-30-30-10-0 more but I say avoiding dmg > healing dmg. So with 0-30-25-15-0 you will have a good amount of endurance and a good condition remove.

All in all: vitality > toughness → valkyrie armor, berserker stats → 30 points in CS → Hidden Killer.
The problem with toughness is you will pull aggro. Pulling aggro will decrease your dps not only because you have to evade but you want to be behind your target to double your dmg with backstab.

Anubarak.3012:

Reason: We have a very little health pool so we are vulnerable to condition dmg, … dmg will still be on a “good” level because of Hidden Killer (100% krit chance while in stealth).

If you’re relying on Stealth + Backstabbing for damage you’re going to stealth often and hence lose conditions often seeing as you can lose up to 2 conditions each time you stealth…

Thanks for the advice on a more or less 15K hp, but I still need to know how much toughness on a Thief is “too much” in terms of getting a mob’s attention.
The set of armour is not supposed to be super focused for one particular build but rather be a sturdy backbone applicable to the profession itself.

Youre making a big mistake by not using Power main stat in all your gear. Especially since youre talking about mobs and gaining aggro, meaning this is a PVE build. Personally in PVE, which I admittedly dont play very much, I always have 30 in one of the defensive lines (either shadow arts or acrobatics, depends what Im doing really) and I use Soldiers hat/legs, Valkyrie weapons, and the rest is all Berserker gear w/ Scholar runes, and I have never been 1 shotted. You will come super close, but if you take a big hit, this is enough to keep alive.

People who talk down about toughness in general are bad also. Toughness is the best way to avoid dieing from melee hits. Your heals are worth more when you stack toughness instead of vitality. Like look at it like this: If you had 14k HP, and your heal refills 7k HP and you added 3k HP to that, if something hit you for 10k youd be at 7k, then you healed up to 14k, then it hit you again dropping you to 4k, then you healed and now youre at 11k, then it hit you again youre at 1k… you would eventually die. Youre losing 3k HP every time it hits you. Now, if you added 30% damage reduction instead, it would hit you for 7k, then youd heal 7k, then it would hit you for 7k, then youd heal for 7k… etc, and be totally fine. This is an extreme example, but it easily demonstrates what Im talking about.

As for vitality being a counter to conditions… this is PVE, stuff doesnt spam conditions on you, and you have tons of condition cleansing. You’ll always have a sword on for PVE and can remove whatever that one painful condition the mob applied to you is, youre using hide in shadows which removes all the damaging conditions, and you can use the remove conditions in stealth trait or shadowstep if conditions are really a problem. Condition removal/avoidance is the key to living through conditions, not vitality.

wish.1027:

People who talk down about toughness in general are bad also. Toughness is the best way to avoid dieing from melee hits

You already mentioned it – you don’t play PvE that often, so please stay out of PvE topics. You have actually no idea of PvE. I bet you didn’t even run fractal 48+ or lupicus melee.

In WvW toughness is an important stat but in PvE you don’t want to have since you can dodge ALL attacks… The only thing toughness does in PvE is pulling aggro and it doesn’t matter how much you have. If you are the one with the highest toughness and in range of the enemy you’ll get aggro.
If there are 4 other thieves in your team and you are the only with only 10 toughness more there will be a high chance for you to get attacked

Toughness isn’t the best way to survive – dodging is the best way

edit: btw wish, what you are talking is true but you totally forgot that there are not that many attacks you get hit from.
Vitality scales much better from incoming dmg then toughness does and you only need enough defense to tank at least one attack. I calculated all that stuff, you need more toughness to tank one attack eg by lupicus then vitality. Your goal should be not to get hit at all and having enough defense to carry one hit. This isn’t WvW

Anubarak.3012:

lupicus melee.

Im so awesome at PVE, I dont even know what this is. But thats besides the point. What I do know is that if youre running high level fractals or anything decently difficult, you will have a “tank” generally a guardian, who has lots of toughness, way more then I suggested using, so you’ll be perfectly fine. And if you wouldnt be perfectly fine gearing for exactly enough defense to avoid being 1 shotted in the best way possible, then it was a failure of a group and it doesnt matter.

I might not know PVE, but I know math, and math says
32 + 72 + 48 + 97 + 97 + 338 + 218 + 157 + 157 = 1216
121 + 121 + 182 + 182 + 363 + 242 = 1211
Even wearing the 3 best pieces of defensive gear as Soldiers youre only 5 armor above the least tanky a warrior or guardian can possibly be. So them holding hate off you by having more armor than you shouldm’t be something you need worry about.

wish.1027:

What I do know is that if youre running high level fractals or anything decently difficult, you will have a “tank” generally a guardian, who has lots of toughness

In high level fractals you are one hit even with pvt..
The only thing that safes you is aegis and other skills that make you invulnerable.
So this tank (mostly we don’t even have one) isn’t full toughness. One of our guardians is full zerker except one packpiece for pulling aggro.

Anubarak.3012:

One of our guardians is full zerker except one backpiece for pulling aggro.

Why would you give up the best slot to put berserker gear into compared to defensive stats? he should of went with the hat.
Back:
56 Power 35 Precision 5% Crit Damage
vs
Hat:
45 Power 32 Precision 2% Crit Damage.

If you can’t even get something as simple as ‘which single eq slot do I dump for defensive stats’ correct, I have to question everything you say.

That’s a very interesting sum wish, so this means I basically don’t have to worry about breaching some kind of toughness limit.

Anubarak, maybe you’re the kind of ninja that never ever gets hit and always has an elite team of skilled players standing by 24/7 to form a group to wherever it is you’re planning to go, but the rest of us (99% of the playerbase) have nor that team-mate support nor that fabled skill.

I think I’ll go for a Soldier’s chestpiece to not lose on power as wish suggested and still have a bonus to vitality and toughness.

What weapons do you guys use?

Pariah.8506:

and always has an elite team of skilled players standing by 24/7 to form a group to wherever it is you’re planning to go

Not really v.v mostly there are just 1-2 other good players online, so we started to solo or duo dungeons. I can’t even remember when my team was full the last time

Pariah.8506:

And both of you, thanks aside, it’s thAn not thEn when making a comparison

thx, (as you can see) my english is very bad but I`m willing to learn more.

My weapon set depends on my enemy, many people asked me about that so I wrote a guide (but o/c in german)
But mostly it is s/p and d/d. In underground facility fractal I use s/d for boon stealing and shortbow for the trash. In arah I only use s/p for trash and d/d for bosses

Pariah.8506:

I think I’ll go for a Soldier’s chestpiece to not lose on power as wish suggested and still

Thats totally not what I said.

Soldiers hat+pants, then body > weapons if you need more defensive stats. Each point of crit damage costs more stats in those pieces than others, so you switch those ones first.
hat/legs > body > weapons.

I meant what stats do you guys put on your weapons?

wish, I know about the crit dmg + % vs. stats as I said above and that crit dmg should be preferable on gloves, boots and shoulders while legs helm and in a lesser case chest are for defensive stats.
What I meant is that I’ll go for Soldier’s instead of the contemplated Sentinel’s chestpiece to not lose on power and still boost vitality and toughness.

Always full zerker… I have 7 different Daggers, 4 swords and 4 shortbows, I use sigil of the Night (in CoF, Snowblind, Volcanic, Sorrows Embrace, Underground Facility, CoE… and so on) sigil of Undead/dregde/elemental/outlaw slaying and smothering for specific enemies, bloodlust on sword and shortbow against trash

All in all I have each weapon set against each enemy in the game but always full zerker. With my 10.8k HP there is no vitality and no toughness on my thief

Pariah.8506:

Soldier’s or Valkyrie’s Chest (still haven’t decided due to toughness question above)

This is basically what you’re worried about? Well one piece with high Toughness will not be enough to pull aggro from a Soldier Class.

If you ever get aggro, simply dodge through your Soldier buddy and he’ll get the aggro right off you.

What you need to worry about is your damage output — too often too high, like those ’zerker gears will do, will generate more aggro than your Toughness pieces.

Sir Vincent (the Third): I was more interested in learning the mechanics behind the toughness ~ aggro system and making sure my entire reasoning behind my ideas about what armour pieces to get weren’t entirely wrong.

I think I figured out what armour pieces I’m getting, thanks for the advice everyone. But of course if anyone still wants to add something to what has been said I’ll still be keeping an eye on this thread.