Guild Wars 2

This is really staring to bother me. My level 80 thief does quite well in PvE, but whenever I enter a dungeon, I find myself downed, dead, and insta-wiped a frustrating amount of times.

Just today, I spent almost the entire time dead trying to do the final boss fight of the Living Story. I’ve tried everything from food, to weapon combos, to runes, to builds, but I find myself unable to be effective.

I find its worse when enemies do large amounts of condition damage because I can’t remove enough of them fast enough, or long enough.

Anyway, if anyone can give me some advice of a few things I can adjust, I would greatly appreciate it.

Here are some screens of my stats.

I’m in the exact same position, quite frustrating.

Really ? I find myself invincible with all those evades and dodges… I die only when I make a mistake and don’t dodge or evade.

I went in 0/20/30/20/0 with PP/Sb, CC venoms with venom share, blind powder, and shadow refuge, traited to grant regen and remove condition.
Learn the AoEs, and time your dodges. You’ll be the main reviver, and if you know your stuff, have an easy time evading.
I brought Knight’s and kept a sword on standby

If you want to have no issues surviving, do what Dual did and invest in PP/SB. You won’t be dying much, but you also won’t be contributing as much damage as you could be to a fight. Quam pointed out that he doesn’t have an issue staying alive, but if you watched his videoes on fractals, you’ll see he favors the shortbow in a lot of fights to avoid taking damage while the naturally higher health/plate wearers do whatever they want. Again, shortbow is important if you don’t want to take a lot of damage but you’ll be hurting your damage quite a bit especially if you need to pull it out on a boss fight.

Dodging and avoiding damage is a lot more important to a thief then most other classes, combination of knight with ~400 healing power and SoM will allow you to have a lot sustain in dungeons being able to take some condition damage and mobs normal attacks with out much problems, but you can’t be lazy with it, I can drop health pretty fast if i’m not careful , when that happens i fall back to shortbow for a bit.

I go full PvT (power vitality toughness) with orrian runes. 30/0/20/0/20 all conditions with my shortbow. Pop poison fields, blast finisher, skale venom, caltrops on dodge, and dagger storm. Throw those down in a rotation that is comfortable until your heal recharges and heal up rinse and repeat

Biggest mistake most thiefs make is thinking that you should always play berserk D/D. There’s a time and a place for each weaponset, but don’t underestimate dual pistols:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlUmSO3eS+E/5Ex2DgmTe6zgsit/wVB-jAyAYLioRySEpCCZJviox2GKiGruGT5SEVbvLiWtMAVLA-e

Yes, thieves are squishy in dungeons. You have to have much more toughness and vitality and have emphasis on dodging rather than doing direct damage because you will find yourself to be a liability for your team

it’s because you’re using full zerker armor. my thief is usually the last to down in the living story dungeon.

I play as a full zerker with 12k hp.
Spec is either 25 30 0 0 15 or 0 30 0 15 25 depending on the mood.
Weapon sets are based on what the fight requires.
I find myself using s/p with d/d as the 2nd weapon set quite a lot. Sometimes replacing s/p with s/d, sometimes d/d with d/p, it all depends on the encounter.

You need to know when to dodge.
15 points in acrobatics for extra dodges and vitality, and signet of agility are both real lifesavers.
This gives you about 5 dodges in a row, and you can use weapon skills for extra evades in between to have a nice evade rotation if needed.
In a pug, I would certainly recommend having those 15 points in acro as a zerker.
It’s more than possible to be a full zerker and be successful without getting downed at all, let alone too much.

To help you start off, get a full zerker set with valkyrie chest and legs and practise dodging. The extra 2000ish hp from the chest, legs and traits combined will put you close to 14k health without losing the zerker’s most important stat – crit damage.
This will let you survive almost any aoe in the game so you can start learning when to dodge.

Don’t listen to people who say it can’t be done.
It can be done anywhere in the game, it just takes practise and it does pay off.

Op, you’re not going to like it, but the fact is that you’re just a bad player right now. That’s not a bad thing, you just need more practice. Practice makes perfect, not the gear or traits.

Dahkeus.8243:

Biggest mistake most thiefs make is thinking that you should always play berserk D/D. There’s a time and a place for each weaponset, but don’t underestimate dual pistols:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlUmSO3eS+E/5Ex2DgmTe6zgsit/wVB-jAyAYLioRySEpCCZJviox2GKiGruGT5SEVbvLiWtMAVLA-e

You’re right, there is a time for p/p. The ice elemental in dredge fractal… as long as you’re not the bucket puller, and as long as the boss is following you, and as long as you’re not using anything else but unload and possibly headshot to strip defiance. There is no other time where it’d be better than d/d or sbow.

Fossilized Amber.1352:

I go full PvT (power vitality toughness) with orrian runes. 30/0/20/0/20 all conditions with my shortbow. Pop poison fields, blast finisher, skale venom, caltrops on dodge, and dagger storm. Throw those down in a rotation that is comfortable until your heal recharges and heal up rinse and repeat

Oh god, the horrible advice, it burns the eyes.

Yuujin.1067:

If you want to have no issues surviving, do what Dual did and invest in PP/SB. You won’t be dying much, but you also won’t be contributing as much damage as you could be to a fight. Quam pointed out that he doesn’t have an issue staying alive, but if you watched his videoes on fractals, you’ll see he favors the shortbow in a lot of fights to avoid taking damage while the naturally higher health/plate wearers do whatever they want. Again, shortbow is important if you don’t want to take a lot of damage but you’ll be hurting your damage quite a bit especially if you need to pull it out on a boss fight.

Very true. Most people won’t have any issues surviving using this style… but they will be doing less than the moa the ranger has following them around. It’s up to you to decide what’s more important. Going down 5 times but doing 10x the damage while you’re in downed state, or staying up all the time but doing less than a dead zerker would do. Not to mention you’ll be ranged the entire time so there’s the boring factor.

psykles.1573:

I play as a full zerker with 12k hp.
Spec is either 25 30 0 0 15 or 0 30 0 15 25 depending on the mood.
Weapon sets are based on what the fight requires.
I find myself using s/p with d/d as the 2nd weapon set quite a lot. Sometimes replacing s/p with s/d, sometimes d/d with d/p, it all depends on the encounter.

You need to know when to dodge.
15 points in acrobatics for extra dodges and vitality, and signet of agility are both real lifesavers.
This gives you about 5 dodges in a row, and you can use weapon skills for extra evades in between to have a nice evade rotation if needed.
In a pug, I would certainly recommend having those 15 points in acro as a zerker.
It’s more than possible to be a full zerker and be successful without getting downed at all, let alone too much.

To help you start off, get a full zerker set with valkyrie chest and legs and practise dodging. The extra 2000ish hp from the chest, legs and traits combined will put you close to 14k health without losing the zerker’s most important stat – crit damage.
This will let you survive almost any aoe in the game so you can start learning when to dodge.

Don’t listen to people who say it can’t be done.
It can be done anywhere in the game, it just takes practise and it does pay off.

This is probably the best advice in this thread. Zerker isn’t a bad thing, if you can stay alive (which you will be able to after a bit of practice), it’s the best thing. Another good build for insane damage and great sustain (but less dodges) is 25=30-10-0-5. Infinite cnd rotations.

With the vast supply of blinds and evades, you shouldn’t have a problem in dungeons once you know what you’re doing. Be sure to grab withdraw for the extra evade and very short cd heal. It isn’t the best heal in all situations, but it;s the best heal in most situations.

I would love to give you some advice, but I would simply copy-paste everything written by randomfightfan.

Fossilized Amber.1352:

I go full PvT (power vitality toughness) with orrian runes. 30/0/20/0/20 all conditions with my shortbow. Pop poison fields, blast finisher, skale venom, caltrops on dodge, and dagger storm. Throw those down in a rotation that is comfortable until your heal recharges and heal up rinse and repeat

holy kitten in a sandwich… thfk I just read…
Please try carrion armor (conditiondamage/power/vitality) and use D/D from time to time instead of SB.

I have 0 problems in Pve or Dungeons, Honestly Dungeons for me are easier as a thief than any other class, I have a fotm 30+ guardian that has a harder time in some dungeons compare to my thief.

Its all on the build/armor you need per dungeon, I have 5 completely different armor sets, I run a condition thief.

my build is 0/0/30/20/20.

I spec into having the most Init regen as I can, I use ONLY SoM and never pop it (Signet of Malice), I run D/D and SB for most, sometimes take out SB and go P/D for that extra damage on single foes.

I use mostly Carrion Armor for the CD and Health, then use mostly Apothecary Trinket set.

With my 800+ Healing Power and 1400+ Condition damage, spaming Death Blossom and stealth when in danger, I never die. I normally dont even go 1/2 down on health.

Only Arah and Fotm do I have this problem and time to time will die in those 2 dungeons (mostly just against certain foes/bosses)

With my thief I love the Boss Lupis in Arah SO MUCH, I havent died on him yet as a thief, and I melee him 90% of time.

As A zerk thief, I find dungeons are not fun at all, my friend is a GREAT zerk thief in dungeons, but I cant do it.

I’ve attached some images above.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

I’ve attached some images above.

Most of your armor and trinkets are terrible. You should upgrade to something with consistent stats. It won’t help your survivability (unless for some reason you go pvt… horrible idea esp on thief) but you will bring something to the group. When you upgrade, you’ll also probably want to grab practiced tollerance in crit line. 7% crit chance really isn’t that good when you have 80% crit chance with fury (zerk gear) and the vitality trait gives over 1k hp free. Also there is no reason, none at all, to put more than 10 points into the power line if you’re not going to put 25 points into it. Take out 5 points from trickery and put it into da. If you really need 1500 range steal, use an extra shadowstep or hs first. You will never need it in dungeons and I’ve never felt the slightest need in wvw.

Also, lose the rune of the thief. The 10% bonus is VERY nice, but the other 5 are useless. You’ll get more damage out if you go ruby orbs b/c those actually have power and crit damage. Don’t go scholar b/c you’re still not used to dungeons. And you said you’ve been playing since the game came out. What’s with the armor… seriously. You have 1% boon duration on multiple pieces and everything is mix n match. There’s even tough, healing, condi trinkets… If you didn’t know, that’s among the worst possible stat combos in the game. It’s only mildly viable as a troll condi build that does nothing for anything.

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

This is really staring to bother me. My level 80 thief does quite well in PvE, but whenever I enter a dungeon, I find myself downed, dead, and insta-wiped a frustrating amount of times.

Just today, I spent almost the entire time dead trying to do the final boss fight of the Living Story. I’ve tried everything from food, to weapon combos, to runes, to builds, but I find myself unable to be effective.

I find its worse when enemies do large amounts of condition damage because I can’t remove enough of them fast enough, or long enough.

Anyway, if anyone can give me some advice of a few things I can adjust, I would greatly appreciate it.

Here are some screens of my stats.

You need some better gear it will make you a lot more tankier.

Here’s my gear and I’m not using any ascended pieces at all.

I can facetank a lot of stuff with S/D in dungeons. Like Faux I usually don’t go under half health. I use shadow return when it’s hot and heal and go back in.

The first thing to do in PvE dungeons is kitten each fight before you start and pick a plan of action. Change your utilities and weapons around to suit that and maybe your traits as well. The basic part of the plan is melee or ranged, or the timing to switch. With ranged you can generally get by with a shortbow and use smoke screen for missile defense. That should be enough to keep you alive in ranged fights if you use evade/cripple skill 3 at the right times and you get the cluster bomb for big group damage. For veteran/trash melee you should move to a safe edge of the melee group, put out some blindness for defense, then let the weapons roll out simple damage while you are watching for evades/dodges. Swords are good for dungeon trash with the cleave. If smoke is ineffective because mobs are running about then you might have a bad group or you need something different like caltrops or venoms to group the mobs up into a killing zone. For bosses you need to be much more careful since blind is ineffective and you just need to dodge out of the line of fire or be elsewhere.

With no trait points in either acrobatics or shadow arts you will be short of defense. You’re missing out on endurance, vigor, regen, condition cures, venom leech, etc and you’re probably better getting those trait benefits than trying to make do with utilities and food.

Thanks to all of you so far for the advice (except perhaps those who for some reason feel the need to talk down to me like I’m an idiot).

I have questions for many of you, but to start, I wanted to ask…

Excalibur.9748:

You need some better gear it will make you a lot more tankier.

Here’s my gear and I’m not using any ascended pieces at all.

I can facetank a lot of stuff with S/D in dungeons. Like Faux I usually don’t go under half health. I use shadow return when it’s hot and heal and go back in.

What gear would you recommend? I’ve made/purchased some of the best gear I could afford/find/wear.

Where should I get better gear?

Crazylegsmurphy.6430:

Thanks to all of you so far for the advice (except perhaps those who for some reason feel the need to talk down to me like I’m an idiot).

I have questions for many of you, but to start, I wanted to ask…

Excalibur.9748:

You need some better gear it will make you a lot more tankier.

Here’s my gear and I’m not using any ascended pieces at all.

I can facetank a lot of stuff with S/D in dungeons. Like Faux I usually don’t go under half health. I use shadow return when it’s hot and heal and go back in.

What gear would you recommend? I’ve made/purchased some of the best gear I could afford/find/wear.

Where should I get better gear?

My gear and traits:
http://www.twitch.tv/sakraycore/b/426677121

For armor you can buy off vendors in PvE with karma (Balthazar, Dwayna etc). For jewels and trinkets get them from the black lion trading post.

I use signet of agility for the living story dungeon in place of infiltrator signet for the group condition removal.

I’ve run lots of dungeons on my Thief and find the class to perform very well there. You’ve been given some good advice from the previous posters and I’d like to add my perspective about dungeon running with one. The Thief is a very mobile class that can bring a lot of DPS, along with blinds and stealth. However, it is a low toughness/vitality class. Also the way the dungeons are set up currently, it tends to be a DPS race, since you can’t tank the big hits that you’d want to anyway so you want to burn down the mobs before they can 1-2 shot you or you make a mistake and miss a dodge. This is why DPS and dodges/evades are so important in dungeons and why most builds focus on them.

I think some of the problems you are having is because your build, gear, and traits aren’t really optimized for dungeon running. Your damage, crit chance, and crit rate are just too low to do enough DPS to burn down the mobs before they burn you down. Also, you don’t have a lot of dodges/evades in your build, which contributes to your survival.

First, I’d suggest changing up your gear to be more DPS focused, with Berserker stats on the weapons and trinkets, gloves, boots, and shoulders. The rest of the armor can be Soldiers, Knights, or Valkyries (depending on what defensive stats you value most). Depending on how well you know the encounters and dodge, you can add in more Berserker armor. I’ve never found condition damage or healing power to be that helpful on a dungeon Thief build. I’d also suggest going with ruby orbs and jewels in every slot.

Next, your traits are heavily weighted for DPS which would be find if you weren’t having survival trouble, but may not be the best set up for you currently. Keeping 30 in CS line gives you a good base for damage, getting at least 20 into Acro gives you more dodging for survival and initiative regeneration, and getting at least 10 into SA will give you access to the great adept traits that will give you more survivability (blind on stealth, condition removal on stealth, initiative in stealth are especially good). There are a lot of ways to build, but you could try the old standby dungeon build of 0/30/20/20/0. When you can run that with full Berserker gear and good surviviablity, then consider going back to the 25/30/x/x/x spec.

For utilities, SR almost never leaves my bar in dungeons since my group expects me to have it. After that, smoke screen is very useful against projectiles, Infiltrators signet for the passive initiative regen and active stun break (Thieves are especially vulnerable when stunned I’ve found and have poor access to stability), Signet of Agility for the passive precision boost and active condition removal. For heals, all are situationally useful, but I tend to have Withdraw up most of the time.

All of the weapon sets are situationally useful (except P/D since this is not a condition build). I usually run with D/D for single target DPS and on switch either S/D (the new skill 3 can be amazing against some bosses) or S/P for multiple targets. I’m usually in melee range 99% of the time (dodges/evades/blinds/stealth and knowing the dungeon mechanics will allow you to do this) unless the boss has mechanics that force me to range. When ranging, I find that neither of our options are especially great (compared to our melee options), so pick which ever one you are more comfortable with.

Berserker gear can be crafted, bought from the TP, or from dungeon tokens (COF is easiest). Knights can be crafted, bought from TP, or from dungeon tokens (SE is easiest). Soldiers can be obtained from the Karma Vendors in the Temples of Orr. Valks can be bought from the TP, and there may be other ways to get it.

I hope this helps and good luck!

Firstly, your weps – congrats on your RNG luck!
tho from the rest of your gear, I’m guessing they’re RNG too (Forge/Laurels), and that you’ve probably not got a lot of cash to drop on a fresh set of armour/Runes. What you have seems more random than hybrid.

Not to worry, I suspect it’s more down to playstyle, utility and trait setup, than gear. I haven’t done this dungeon yet, but I would take something other than Prayers to Dwayna/Kormir. Their cooldowns are too long and they provide no other utility.

Also, take a stunbreak!

Traitwise, you have very little for defense (Acro or Shadow).
Interesting that you don’t use SB; I personally find the Lotus Poison (DA Master) + SB 4 to be some nice mitigation vs mobs.

here’s a useful guide for gearing up in general: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/69432-gearing-up-at-l80-a-semi-comprehensive-guide-to-endgame-gearing/#entry1997432

That’s about how I feel at the moment and is the main reason my thief is not really my main anymore though It might be just because I’ve not learnt to properly utilize my thief and know they have a bad reputation so get kinda self conscious about doing badly with them. Whenever I dungeon with my thief I feel like I’m only there to save downed players. I feel more useful on a Ele or Mesmer. I guess I’ll try some of the tips in this thread.

You have to really like thief to bring them to dungeon.

I see no reason to bring a thief over a guardian for instance for most dungeons. Anyways, I like the thief though…. I don’t think it’s that horrible, we have a bad rep mostly because all thieves feel like they have to run full zerk.

Excalibur.9748:

You have to really like thief to bring them to dungeon.

I see no reason to bring a thief over a guardian for instance for most dungeons. Anyways, I like the thief though…. I don’t think it’s that horrible, we have a bad rep mostly because all thieves feel like they have to run full zerk.

Nothing at all wrong with full zerk. The real bad rep comes from all the bad thieves that think they need to run full zerk but they can’t handle full zerk (or pvt even, thief isn’t forgiving in dungeons) and die a dozen times per boss fight. If a thief player wants to do dungeons but can’t handle them, they need to get SOME defence, run the dungeons over and over until they don’t die, then swap out the defence for more zerk. Pretty soon they’ll be able to do any dungeon with full zerk (or mostly zerk, just enough tough to survive 1 big hit from most bosses). In a skill based game where you can avoid all attacks with skill, the better player who has the most damage should always win (unkitten th are good enough to negate all damage, then there’s a fight that will never end).

In my arah runs, I would prefer a unexperienced zerker thief over a unexperienced pvt thief any time, even if the zerker dies 5x more. At least he would have noticed his mistakes.
The pvt guy on the other hand would have done nothing, gained nothing and learned nothing…

Excalibur.9748:

You have to really like thief to bring them to dungeon.

I see no reason to bring a thief over a guardian for instance for most dungeons. Anyways, I like the thief though…. I don’t think it’s that horrible, we have a bad rep mostly because all thieves feel like they have to run full zerk.

Black powder can make a full zerker group pretty much invincible on trash pulls.

Shadow refuge is a free revive.

Smoke screen is a smoke field which blocks projectiles on a short cooldown.

No class, not even a guardian, can compete with a thief’s blinds and evades.
Guardians become more useful than thieves on bosses where aegis becomes more reliable than blind and they can keep high uptime on group protection and retaliation.
Not that many guardians do actually provide these benefits in a pug.

Tactical strike is a 2 SECOND DAZE.

Larcenous strike steals 2 boons from a target and hits as hard and usually even harder than other class’ abilities.
The list can go on and on and on.

psykles.1573:

Excalibur.9748:

You have to really like thief to bring them to dungeon.

I see no reason to bring a thief over a guardian for instance for most dungeons. Anyways, I like the thief though…. I don’t think it’s that horrible, we have a bad rep mostly because all thieves feel like they have to run full zerk.

Black powder can make a full zerker group pretty much invincible on trash pulls.
Shadow refuge is a free revive.
Smoke screen is a smoke field which blocks projectiles on a short cooldown.
No class, not even a guardian, can compete with a thief’s blinds and evades.
Guardians become more useful than thieves on bosses where aegis becomes more reliable than blind and they can keep high uptime on group protection and retaliation.
Not that many guardians do actually provide these benefits in a pug.
Tactical strike is a 2 SECOND DAZE.
The list can go on and on and on.

You’re really not helping our class as much as you think you are. We will never get buffed for PvE if everyone (and only thieves seem to think so whereas everyone else think we’re trash tier for everything except for roaming) think we’re alright….

For the living story dungeon (actually hard PvE content) for example, guardian brings a ton more utility than pretty much all other classes.

You only hear people wanting heavies only but never thief only…

Excalibur.9748:

psykles.1573:

Excalibur.9748:

You have to really like thief to bring them to dungeon.

I see no reason to bring a thief over a guardian for instance for most dungeons. Anyways, I like the thief though…. I don’t think it’s that horrible, we have a bad rep mostly because all thieves feel like they have to run full zerk.

Black powder can make a full zerker group pretty much invincible on trash pulls.
Shadow refuge is a free revive.
Smoke screen is a smoke field which blocks projectiles on a short cooldown.
No class, not even a guardian, can compete with a thief’s blinds and evades.
Guardians become more useful than thieves on bosses where aegis becomes more reliable than blind and they can keep high uptime on group protection and retaliation.
Not that many guardians do actually provide these benefits in a pug.
Tactical strike is a 2 SECOND DAZE.
The list can go on and on and on.

You’re really not helping our class as much as you think you are. We will never get buffed for PvE if everyone (and only thieves seem to think so whereas everyone else think we’re trash tier for everything except for roaming) think we’re alright….

For the living story dungeon (actually hard PvE content) for example, guardian brings a ton more utility than pretty much all other classes.

You only hear people wanting heavies only but never thief only…

Short version: thieves are fine, learn to play.

Long version
————————

You’re doing even more damage to the class by saying they’re not fine in the hopes that the devs overbuff them. People will see your cries and believe them then hesitate to have a thief in the group.
The devs KNOW the class is in a good place, and so do the players who can utilitize it to its full potential.

A good player will change their weapons and traits based on the encounter that’s in front of them.

All classes in this game are good and useful and if anyone thinks otherwise then they’re either not the most skilled of players, people who don’t/can’t pay attention to what’s put in front of them, or very new to the game still and don’t need any advice from people like you.

I HAVE seen people advertise looking for a thief before, but clearly not as often as heavy.
You know a group is pro when they’re looking for a thief though !

psykles.1573:

You know a group is pro when they’re looking for a thief though !

or they’re just desperately looking for someone to make running through trash mobs super easy.

I’m looking at the OP’s build, and I"m sorry but it just looks like random crap to me. I think the mistake here is that you don’t know how to make builds. Thankfully I have a cat asleep in my lap and nothing better to do, so I’ll help out.

When making a build, ultimately you want to have a certain goal to achieve that lets you win a fight. I often call this the “win condition”. For D/D zerker thieves, their goal is to mug then backstab an opponent before they fight back. For P/D thieves, their goal is to keep at range, popping in and out of stealth while conditions wear the enemy down. For S/D thieves, their goal is to constantly blinds/stun the opponent while stealing boons and bashing them. For shortbow thieves, the goal is to spam evades and poison fields, making the thief nigh impossible to fight.

Looking at your build, you’re all over the place. Your weapon choices don’t point to any real goal, your trait choices are random at best. You don’t have enough power to do direct damage, you don’t have enough malice to do condition damage, you don’t have anything remotely close to survivability in stats, you’re using the human racial skills which are inferior to pretty much everything. The build hasn’t even pulled off a “jack of all trades” right.

So my advice is to pick something, and then go with it.

A)Condition damage or direct damage?
B)Survivability or More Damage?
C)Stealth, Evasion, or sustained heal in healing skills?
D)Defensive utilities or offensive utilities?
E)Condition cleanses, Stun Breakers, Both or Neither?

And so on, building your… build up toward an ultimate goal toward what you want to do. Now, for two examples, I have two builds on my thief that couldn’t be any more different: a carrion condi/damage thief, and a pure zerker thief. I’ll put up their builds, and how they work. Unfortunately my main build tool is down, and my backup build tool is lagging like heck, so I’ll have to freehand it:

Condition build:
Armor: Full Carrion
Runes: x6 Superior Rune of the Centaur
Weapons: Dagger/Dagger, Pistol/Nothing, all Carrion
Sigils: Suprior Sigil of Force/Superior Sigil of Agony, Superior Sigil of Force
Trinkets: Full Carrion
Traits: 25/0/15/0/30
Mug, Dagger Training
Shadow’s Embrace
Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft, Ricochet
Utilities:
Hide in Shadows, Caltrops, Shadow Refuge, Roll for Initiative, Dagger Storm.
Note: utilities are not set in stone. Sometimes Bountiful Theft is replaced with Trickster in places where enemies do not have boons to steal, and sometimes Ricochet is replaced with Trickster when fighting bosses or single enemies.

Overall goal: Use bleeding damage combined with good direct damage to kill enemies. Using Death Blossom spam + caltrops I can reach 25 stacks of bleeding on a group of enemies by myself, while also avoiding a large sum of their attacks. Then, I vanish in stealth and then engage at a distance using Pistol/Dagger. The combination of Cloak and Dagger + Sneak attack allows me to stack bleeds on multiple enemies while also spamming the fastest and largest amount of projectile finishers in the game. The combination of high swiftness uptime + high vigor uptime allows me to dodge and kite extremely effectively, while I can use stealth for cleansing conditions and for offense. This build has enough power that Heartseeker and Backstab still do plenty of damage, and the dagger auto attack also does damage via sustaining poison. At 17k health, this is incredibly durable (for, you know, a thief), and is capable of bringing down people in PVP and WVW through sheer attrition alone. You can solo champions with this build.

Pure damage build:
Armor: Berserker
Runes: x6 Superior Runes of the Pack
Weapons: Sword/Pistol, Shortbow
Sigils: Superior Sigil of Force/Superior Sigil of Energy, Superior Sigil of Force
Trinkets: Full Berserker
Traits: 25/30/10/0/5
Mug, Improvisation
Furious Retaliation, Critical Haste, Executioner
Master of Deception
Utilities:
Hide in Shadows, Shadow Refuge, Assassin’s Signet, Smoke Screen, Thieves Guild
Note: Utilities and traits again are not set in stone.

Overall Goal: Use the blind field from the off-hand pistol along with the sword’s auto attack to do very high damage to up to 3 enemies within range while-face tanking up to 5 enemies. In PVE the blind field is awesome, letting you fight anything that isn’t a champion or above at point blank range indefinitely. The sword’s auto attack is powerful, causing AoE Weakness on whomever you are fighting. Pistol Whip and Headshot are used to interrupt troublesome attacks before they land, and Headshot is also great for removing defiant stacks from champions. Infiltrator’s strike is used to remove conditions when necessary and also to stop really fast moving enemies. When things are too dicey, the shortbow is swappd out, which does high damage to multiple targets at range while also providing plenty of escapes, AoE poison + weakness, and the most spammable blast finisher in the game. When your opponent hits 50% health is when things get really interesting, since at this point you get fury and executioner activates, making your damage climb that much more higher. With this build, you can plow through enemies like they were nothing while making Zerker Guardians/Warriors jealous of your mystical immunity to damage. I have not used this build in PVP.

Another note: both of these builds are a bit on a budget. I can go with better sigils and runes if I had the coin for them, but I don’t.

Anyway, you see how that works? I have a plan on how to win, then I make my build based around that plan, and then once that plan is fulfilled I keep building up related things on the side to get better and better until you eventually produce a monster of a build that does scary things, like maintain 25 stacks of AoE bleed without Rare Veggie Pizza or face-tank enemies in zerker gear.

psykles.1573:

Excalibur.9748:

psykles.1573:

Excalibur.9748:

You have to really like thief to bring them to dungeon.

I see no reason to bring a thief over a guardian for instance for most dungeons. Anyways, I like the thief though…. I don’t think it’s that horrible, we have a bad rep mostly because all thieves feel like they have to run full zerk.

Black powder can make a full zerker group pretty much invincible on trash pulls.
Shadow refuge is a free revive.
Smoke screen is a smoke field which blocks projectiles on a short cooldown.
No class, not even a guardian, can compete with a thief’s blinds and evades.
Guardians become more useful than thieves on bosses where aegis becomes more reliable than blind and they can keep high uptime on group protection and retaliation.
Not that many guardians do actually provide these benefits in a pug.
Tactical strike is a 2 SECOND DAZE.
The list can go on and on and on.

You’re really not helping our class as much as you think you are. We will never get buffed for PvE if everyone (and only thieves seem to think so whereas everyone else think we’re trash tier for everything except for roaming) think we’re alright….

For the living story dungeon (actually hard PvE content) for example, guardian brings a ton more utility than pretty much all other classes.

You only hear people wanting heavies only but never thief only…

Short version: thieves are fine, learn to play.

Long version
————————

You’re doing even more damage to the class by saying they’re not fine in the hopes that the devs overbuff them. People will see your cries and believe them then hesitate to have a thief in the group.
The devs KNOW the class is in a good place, and so do the players who can utilitize it to its full potential.

A good player will change their weapons and traits based on the encounter that’s in front of them.

All classes in this game are good and useful and if anyone thinks otherwise then they’re either not the most skilled of players, people who don’t/can’t pay attention to what’s put in front of them, or very new to the game still and don’t need any advice from people like you.

I HAVE seen people advertise looking for a thief before, but clearly not as often as heavy.
You know a group is pro when they’re looking for a thief though !

Obviously I only want the best for my class. Other classes already view us as one of the weakest for PvE, ZvZ, etc. Everything except for roaming and 1v1.

This subforum is populated by thieves primarily so it really won’t really change public perception. The public perception is formed primarily in reaction to PuG thieves, and you just know they’re performing badly.

Look here if you don’t know what I’m talking about. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/I-present-Vote-for-the-worst-Results/first

Yes that is the true public perception of our class, and it’s pretty much accurate. The reason thief class gets nerfed over and over is because of people like you who think our class is fine, then it gets nerfed over and over. Warrior class gets buffed every patch because they always cry how underpowered they are for PvP.

If you want more surviability then you should probably spec out of deadly arts for more shadow arts or acro. Better yet drop critical strikes as well. Here is what i run for PvE since Sky Pirates update:

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/teryn-delmar-supportive-pve-support-10781.html

Before the update I would run this (which I also use in PvP):

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/teryn-delmar-offensive-offensive-pvp-pve-wvw-10780.html

Reason I changed was to offer more support to my group mates. I had little trouble staying alive before, but with the extra heals/endurance and vigor its no prob at all. That saffron chicken soup is pretty key tho for condition removal – either that or use shadowstep in place of black powder.

k, this looks like a fun exercise; I’m gonna go with 2 assumptions:
1. OP wants to run with S/D + PP (not optimal, but that’s all part of the fun – and you do have some lucky skins for them, shame not to use them)
2. OP doesn’t have a yakload of gold

so here’s some simple changes that shouldn’t break the bank. Later when you get more money you can optimise as per everyone else.

Skills:

• first, exchange Prayer to Dwayna with Hide in Shadows.
  The other thief heals are good too, but this build will make use of Shadow Arts.
• exchange Prayer to Kormir with a stunbreak – either are good, but since we’ll trait for Deceptions, lets go with Shadowstep.

Gear – armour:

• replace Thief runes with Ruby Orbs. You may have enough in your bank if you’ve been mining Orichalcum. Beryl Orbs will suffice too.
• ditto your trinkets, can put Ruby/Beryl jewels, though this is a larger expense.
• your armour really needs a change – see everyone else’s posts above – but let’s assume that’s a medium-term goal for now.
• Save your laurels for ascended stuff – replace that Settler Amulet with either Distinguished Circle of Logic, or Syzygy. With your RNG-luck, save up for the MF-utility.

Hopefully your weapons are Berserk, or at least have Power as primary stat.
The most popular sigils are gonna be expensive.
Force (dagger) + Accuracy (sword) go well together, will hopefully be affordable. An on-crit sigil such as Air, Rage or Blood will do nicely too (only one per wep set tho, or they’d share cooldowns).
For the pistols, well I don’t think they complement S/D so well but we can try something cheesy with them. Let’s give both of them, Perception Sigils (yes two stack). Normally kill-stackers are not a good idea in dungeons, but with 2 of them you only need to kill 13 things to max out.
If you don’t trust to your longevity, then try a Stamina sigil on one (you may prefer Purity if conditions are eating you), and something more offensive eg Force on the other .

Traits:
Crit Strikes 30 is good.
You’ll want Executioner, and initially Pistol Mastery + Combo Crits will be helpful (can swap them out later, when you’ve maxxed your Perception stacks).
Any of Practiced Tolerance, Critical Haste, Flanking Strikes, or Furious Retaliation will be good too, plenty of options to play with in this tree.

Put 15 points into Acrobatics, for the extra dodge. You’ll need it. Power of Inertia is probably the best choice for minor trait here.

The remaining 25 points go to Shadow Arts (actually only need 20 but idk where else the other 5 could go – another trait in Acro would be fine, but the extra might on Stealth is nice)

• Master of Deception goes perfectly with your utility choices.
• Since you said that conditions gave you grief, Shadow’s Embrace is a must.

Basically, blast with both pistols until you max your stacks, then switch to S/D to melt face. Swap back again to pistols after you’re downed.
P/P for single targets (#4 helps vs defiance), S/D for mobs.
You’ll rely on stealth a lot more than your current setup.
You’ll also need to dodge/kite a lot (mouse-turning helps).
Use one dodge just before each encounter (for Might), saving at least one for actual dodging.
You’ll only use Steal as gap closer or for another skill to play with.

• caveat: this is mostly theorycraft – I can’t remember when I last ran P/P meself.
  (more optimal would be to run P/P + SB, and swap to S/D + SB – but that’s another expense)
  Hopefully will give you some ideas!