Guild Wars 2

I recently leveled my thief to 80 and I want to start taking her to harder PvE content. I would love to hear any general tips, skills, and/or build advice that supports group play in places like high level fractals, Arah, and even Aetherblade Retreat.

Know when to dodge, know the boss mechanics, and bring aoe. Those dungeons love aoe. Go zerker if you’re confident, d/d sbow or s/d sbow or d/d s/p/d are your best choices. S/d only for the daze spam and evades.

Always depends on your party composition & their respective builds. Always ask. Your playstyle will(should) change depending on how good or bad your team is. Sometimes you’ll need to be a bit tankier to hang, sometimes it’s a waste to bring a tankier thief bc your gaurdian or necro is mitigating all the damage for you, so you’re better off bringing a good burst rotation.

1. d/d will give you best burst damage if you want to take down bosses faster. Some bosses don’t take blinds but some do, you’ll eventually learn off trial & error what to bring. If you’re going to run d/d burst spec then make sure to put blind on stealth in you trait tree as well as 2 initiative on stealth to accompany it. Keep s/b off hand if you need aoe/range for the fight, keep p/p ready in case you need extra heals for a fight as well. If you combo it with shadow refuse & hit 1, 3, 3, you get almost half your health back depending on your gear/healing pwr.

2. Tougher dungeons/areas you want pistol offhand. That black powder is OP for anything less than a veteran in PvE. Use the 1h sword for aoe melee damage i.e dredge in FOTM, pop #5 black powder & sit in it auto attacking. Make sure to use your black powder in the best possible spot to blind as many enemy’s as possible. With this weap set you also need to make sure to bring initiative gainers in traits as well as skills. Ex. 2 initiative on stealth, regain 2 inititiave every 10 secs for traits & roll for initiative, stealth heals, & that signet that gives 1 initiative every 10 secs. If you don’t spam, & auto attack every now & then to keep your initiative balanced, you’ll do fine with this spec/weap set. It’s definitely the easiest to play.

3. You can also go straight tank/healer, to help the gaurds if they go down, but a good team doesn’t really need that. You can also go tank/condi with d/d or p/p but bleeds are better left for the necro’s or rangers.

To be honest your best bet is to make a build that has good damage output as well as good survivability. Chances are the warr’s or the gaurds on your team might slip up in high level fractals & its up to you to stay alive, keep some stealth, & res them cleanly. The fact that you can do damage while you do this is just a bonus.

Also don’t forget if you’re putting 20 in acrobatics, make sure to change the #1 trait accordingly. Gain vigor on heal with give you almost 6 dodges until you have to wait, more if you add in signet for endure recharge. Not to mention when this signet activates, it gives your entire team a fresh endurance bar. Very useful for fights like fotm grawl shaman. You will be loved more than the gaurdian in your party if your constantly refilling everyone’s dodges. ( if you trait at least 20 in precision, you can reduce the cooldown of your signets. You pretty much have unlimited dodges when you do this.)

Sorry if that’s all over the place, but I hope this helps.

Glhf.

IMO, the single greatest thing you can do to increase your survivabiliity is put 15 in Acrobatics and slot III – Gain vigor upon healing.

Morbyd.3761:

IMO, the single greatest thing you can do to increase your survivabiliity is put 15 in Acrobatics and slot III – Gain vigor upon healing.

can never go wrong with this for sure, but if you’re comfortable enough without the endurance regen (usually from using signet and ini dodges), you can spec some into shadow arts for the best minor traits for the class.