Guild Wars 2

I’ve recently been using this build for Fractal 30-36 with major success.
Hopefully this helps Thieves out there get better so we get rid of the bad “no thieves” discrimination on gw2lfg.

Relevant stats
2300 Power
50% crit chance 244% crit dmg
16,000 health
2,500 armor

Food is plate of truffle steak & master maintenance oil.

The idea is to get high survivability without sacrificing damage; high armor gives 26% dmg reduction (twice as much as standard zerk/valk), 16k health to avoid oneshots and survive.
All this while sitting on 2300 power, 244% crit dmg for those huge numbers.

Main skills
- Smoke Screen: Use this to protect team from shooters but mostly just place it on top of mobs and then Heartseeker through it for stealth and thus AoE blind.
- Shadow Refuge: Mostly use this for stealthrezzing, but also causes AoE blind if you’re stealthed from it.
- Signet of Shadows: Another AoE blind plus runspeed when it’s not in use.
- Hide in Shadows: This provides both healing and guess what? Yet another AoE blind.

Usage
Every time you stealth you cause AoE blinds so the idea is blinding all mobs constantly through Smoke Screen + HS, Black Powder, Signet of Shadows and Hide in Shadows while also continuously dealing DPS.
Once you get into the rythm of AoE blinding+DPS it all flows pretty smoothly.
Swith secondary weapons to SB when AoE situations are present, use poison+cluster correctly for AoE weakness.

Remember Thieves aren’t only full DPS chars we bring a ton more support than most classes through our blinding/stealthrez/wall tools.
DPS should be just the cherry on top of all this.

Have fun!

I would like to try this build, but I’m curious about your weapon choices on the buildcraft link. You didn’t really mention your weapon usage, so why choose D/D and P/P instead of going D/P and Shortbow? I just don’t see the use of mainhand pistol and it seems there’s plenty of stealth already so Cloak and Dagger could be sacrificed for more HS combos.

Also, since you rely heavily on blinds, how does the build fare against bosses who are less affected by blind?

the dredge would like to laugh in your face ^^

JPapa.6325:

I would like to try this build, but I’m curious about your weapon choices on the buildcraft link. You didn’t really mention your weapon usage, so why choose D/D and P/P instead of going D/P and Shortbow? I just don’t see the use of mainhand pistol and it seems there’s plenty of stealth already so Cloak and Dagger could be sacrificed for more HS combos.

Also, since you rely heavily on blinds, how does the build fare against bosses who are less affected by blind?

D/D allows for DB as a finisher on Smoke Screen to spread more blind, plus CnD stealths which also causes AoE blind.
P/P allows for Black Powder AoE blind.
As for SB if you drop smoke screen and cluster bomb on it you will stealth so you get another AoE blind.
Weapons are not set in stone, what weapon you need depends on what encounter you’re about to face.

DanH.5879:

the dredge would like to laugh in your face ^^

Luckily Dredge is easy enough to not require blind
Choking gas+cluster finisher for AoE Weakness is the way to go there.

kitten are you getting some of these items? That amulet has like 2X of an exotic amulet.

just as an add to OP post:
Shadow refuge is an dark field :
will provide 170 lifesteal / whirl (DB / dagger storm) /target
Lifesteal /projectiles (pistol /shortbow)

I think I will try it, but if I don’t need SB for an encounter I will probably go with D/D and D/P or S/P since I think mainhand pistol is a bit lame outside of condition builds. Still haven’t heard much about fighting Dredge or bosses, where blind is either ignored completely or ignored mostly. However, I have no reason to doubt that this build has worked for the OP in higher level fractals, so I will still try it out with a few modifications.

JPapa.6325:

I think I will try it, but if I don’t need SB for an encounter I will probably go with D/D and D/P or S/P since I think mainhand pistol is a bit lame outside of condition builds. Still haven’t heard much about fighting Dredge or bosses, where blind is either ignored completely or ignored mostly. However, I have no reason to doubt that this build has worked for the OP in higher level fractals, so I will still try it out with a few modifications.

Hmm actually P/P isn’t to use mainhand pistol but Unload spam.
On bosses I get some nice 8-9k unloads, it’s pretty good damage overall compared to shortbow.