Guild Wars 2

I am looking for thieves who have experience in high level fractals to comment and share build suggestions ect.

I Am looking forward to more fractals in the future and want to do them on my theif! Has anyone got past fractal 40 with a theif?

I haven’t advanced past 40, but I did fotm 10 like a million times and never have trouble unless it’s group related.

I run P/D tank. The only advice I’d really say is that don’t go glass cannon. Do a 20K hp stealth healing build with conditions.

I play a durable Backstab build with 20k HP.

15 Points in Deadly Arts for Weakness. It adds perma-Weakness to your target when using Dagger/Dagger and gives your Poison Cloud an AoE Weakness as well. A 50% reduction in auto attack damage shouldn’t be scoffed at in PvE.

30 points in Critical Strikes are pretty obvious for DPs reasons. I went with Critical Haste in Tier 2 because it synergyses well with Swords, Daggers and Shortbow.

25 points in Acrobatics for the extra HP and a lot of extra dodges which are extremely important in PvE.

Soldier Main set with Valkyrie Accessories + Fractal Rings. Berserker Weapons and Amulet because 20.000 HP seems to be more than enough. I’ve ended up with Beryl Orbs too.

I’m also looking for a good Fractals build. Still under 10 but I want to start pushing this up.

I’m currently running a D/D Bleed build using Signet of Malice, Signet Use and Hastened Replenishment to keep the bleed stacks high. Set as 0/20/0/20/30. I’m running 19.5k hps using Carrion gear and Nightmare runes. I really like this as it has evasion and a lot of dodge but I’m lacking condition removal.

I’m really interested in S/D but from my testing there’s a noticable DPS loss from D/D Condition or Backstab.

Suggestions appreciated.

Blood~

Dee Jay.2460:

A 50% reduction in auto attack damage shouldn’t be scoffed at in PvE.

It’s a 25% reduction of the mobs have 0% crit chance. The more crit chance they have the less it reduces damage.

Still not bad to have. Too bad it doesn’t work well on defiant mobs for some weird reason while protection is fine.

Dee Jay.2460:

I play a durable Backstab build with 20k HP.

15 Points in Deadly Arts for Weakness. It adds perma-Weakness to your target when using Dagger/Dagger and gives your Poison Cloud an AoE Weakness as well. A 50% reduction in auto attack damage shouldn’t be scoffed at in PvE.

30 points in Critical Strikes are pretty obvious for DPs reasons. I went with Critical Haste in Tier 2 because it synergyses well with Swords, Daggers and Shortbow.

25 points in Acrobatics for the extra HP and a lot of extra dodges which are extremely important in PvE.

Soldier Main set with Valkyrie Accessories + Fractal Rings. Berserker Weapons and Amulet because 20.000 HP seems to be more than enough. I’ve ended up with Beryl Orbs too.

I don’t see much precision in this setup. Considering that you say yourself that it’s a backstab build, I would imagine a fairly decent crit chance would be important, especially with all the crit damage increases, or are you running Hidden Killer instead of Executioner? I’m usually sitting around 1700-1800 precision and hovering around 45% crit chance, and any less precision seems to really have an impact.

67% crit rate “glass cannon” (in other games we call them DPS heroes) thief spec’d into stealth to clean conditions and heal myself with a super high crit rate up to 87% with fury, and omnomberry ghosts/signet of malice to heal constantly. Use dagger/dagger of course cuz i’m a thief and they do the best dps in the game with a shortbow in offhand to do massive PBAOE and ranged attacks for when they’re needed.. Pistol thieves go home, your dps sucks. blinding powder, ambush trap (or haste or smoke screen depending on where I am) and shadow refuge for traits. because someone always needs me to rez them. spinning ult is best for PvE. haste+spin+shortbow clusterbombs.

I played a very heavy Crit build until I got into the higher level fractals, at which point my 11k hp Thief was getting 1 shotted too often.

I recently switched over from pure Berserker gear to a mix of Emerald Trinkets (Precision/Toughness/Power), and the armor set from AC (Precision, Vitality, Healing Power).

With a S/P weapon set, Signet of Malice, Omnomberry Pie and Pistol Whip I can take a TON of punishment … I would even venture to say more than my 80 Guardian who is also built to take damage.

I took a bit of a DPS hit with the loss of Crit Damage, but I still crit just as often so I can proc Omnomberry Pie, and the 9 quick attacks from Pistol Whip can heal me for 3k+ depending on the number of mobs I am hitting, and the 66% chance on crit to heal from the food.

Utility skills I take are Roll for Initiative, Shadow Refuge, and Signet of Agility.

Elite Skill is Dagger Storm, this skill will allow me to AoE tank large groups of mobs with great ease, single target it is quite lackluster and usually ends up sitting off cooldown on boss fights, unless I am desperate for a Stability boon.

My build is 10/30/0/20/10
http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckmM9mobFLoobFLoax0GaoosqMaV

Deadly Arts 10:
Sundering Strikes: With a heavy Crit build you can stack the Vulnerability condition on multiple targets with Pistol Whips AoE very quickly.

Critical Strikes 30:
Practiced Tolerance: The 5% bonus to Vitality is surprizingly nice and adds about 1k health.
Combo Critical Chance: Passive 5% crit chance bonus using Pistol Whip, a no brainer for this build.
Executioner: 20% more damage for half of every fight is always nice.

Acrobatics 20:
Power of Inertia: Might on Dodge, very handy!
Assassins Reward: With the amount of Initiative you will be getting back from critical hits, this skill will end up healing you for a pretty good amount.

Trickery 10:
Thrill of the Crime: Might, Fury, and Swiftness on each Steal for you and nearby allies, very nice trait! The added 20% crit chance goes very nice with this build too.

Overall This seems to be a very solid and durable build, that has an amazing amount of self healing for maximum staying power, and with 20 points into Acrobatics you have a lot of mobility to move around if you need too.

Doomdesire.9365:

I haven’t advanced past 40, but I did fotm 10 like a million times and never have trouble unless it’s group related.

I run P/D tank. The only advice I’d really say is that don’t go glass cannon. Do a 20K hp stealth healing build with conditions.

I also run P/D bleedtank in fractals with around 20k hp, and can vouch for the viability of this spec. Its super survivable, and made moreso by packing caltrops, dancing dagger, a shortbow, and the 20% tricks and aoe stealthblind traits.

For mass fights, just C&D+Steal to something in the middle of the pack, use the stealth to drop caltrops, then break stealth with dancing dagger when its up or swap to shortbow and spam clusterbombs.

When the pack splits, or you’re in a bossfight keep on the P/D and hammer away with C&D/Sneak attack while dodging whatever big attacks/mechanics the fight throws at you.

I pack shadow refuge (because duh) and roll for initiative on my other slots. In harder fractals, a single landed stun can mean death, and RFI is a really nice package of stunbreak, big gap opener, and initiative refill.

I also pack mad king runes as each bird from the 6 rune effect counts as multiple attacks, which result in a massive additional heal after daggerstorm ends.

With this setup the only deaths I commonly ever worry about are certain hard hitting aoes (dredge stuff mostly) and disables I fail to dodge, provide a decent chunk of cc via cripple and blind application, have the amazing rez utility from shadow refuge, and hammer in constant high damage bleed dps, as well as combo-resultant perma-fire and poison with many groups to everything on the field with zero downtime.

I also pack mad king runes as each bird from the 6 rune effect counts as multiple attacks, which result in a massive additional heal after daggerstorm ends.

Its little tid-bits of information like this that keeps me coming back to the forums … thanks for the info, time to cash in on all the candycorn I still have in my bank!

I have a lot of Mad King runes laying around and use a set on my warrior. I been wanting to make a set for my Thief but I can’t decide what armor set to use. :/

My Warrior uses Rampagers and the runes do a ton of damage but warrior can get away with it easier by easily having a lot of defense+crit damage. My Thief would be really squishy and could really only add Def with rings and etc or Crit DMG only and be glass cannon.

Doggie.3184:

I have a lot of Mad King runes laying around and use a set on my warrior. I been wanting to make a set for my Thief but I can’t decide what armor set to use. :/

My Warrior uses Rampagers and the runes do a ton of damage but warrior can get away with it easier by easily having a lot of defense+crit damage. My Thief would be really squishy and could really only add Def with rings and etc or Crit DMG only and be glass cannon.

The setup that benefits from them is a tanky condition based setup, using d/d (blossom) SB (clusterbomb at melee) or P/D (C&D>snakattack) with caltrops and daggerstorm, a well as 20-30 points in both defensive lines. This leverages your gear (usually carrion or a carrion/apothecary combo) th rely on massive heals from the aoe or multi-hit synergy of these sets with the heal-per-attack from signet of malice. Basically, you soak up less damage than the warrior, but also heal more. I wouldn’t reccommend MK runes on glassier white or crit damage thief builds as there’s not enough toughness in them to benefit as much from the low power but high volume heals, and the +bleed and condition effects from the set don’t synergize well.

The +power on such builds is just a nice bonus, as those builds are commonly getting little to no power from gear/traits, but the real reason to take them is the extra bleed/condition duration and the heal from the synergy of birds/malice.

nothing wrong with P/P unload crit spec. very high dmg at 900 range with omnom and signet of malice. very high hit volume = very high health return.

vital shot and body shot sucks but 10k + unloads is not somthing to scoff at !

I glass cannon in 60+ Fractals. It works quite nicely. Full berserker gear + ruby orbs + fire/crit sigils, 15/30/0/25/0.

Survivability is more based on you knowing how mobs generally react around your party, more than anything. If you play with the same party constantly, you get really used to it.

My opinion on condition builds is that they are simply worse than direct. I played P/D Carrion for a while, from around difficulty 15 to 30. They do less damage and don’t gain survivability because they operate in melee range for the most part. Direct can safely fire a shortbow 99% of the time and do tons of damage while spamming blast finishers, use dual pistols effectively if you can’t be bothered to aim cluster bombs at a single target, and do tons of damage with dual daggers when it is safe to do so.

nothing wrong with P/P unload crit spec. very high dmg at 900 range with omnom and signet of malice. very high hit volume = very high health return.

This is the truth. 14k unloads are pretty common for me (my group generally has 25 might / 10-15 vulnerability the entire time). That’s not even counting the 4-5 omnom procs on top of it, which is another 1.5k dmg.

Pinch.4273:

I glass cannon in 60+ Fractals. It works quite nicely. Full berserker gear + ruby orbs + fire/crit sigils, 15/30/0/25/0.

Pure insanity, I love it.

You must have a very well coordinated group. Ranged glass cannon (also popular for PvE in the elementalist variety) Is commonly only effective as your ability to stay at range however, and, as you said, this is far easier when you can rely on your group to effectively keep you out of the fire.

A regular group can make anything work as long as they know both their own and each other’s builds (proper use of combos is OP)

That said, this also operated under the assumption that things don’t go wrong, which is where your group and mine differ.

We don’t have 25 constant stacks of might, perma-vuln, or a single guardian. Aggro pings most commonly between my thief and our DPS warrior. In short, we expect everything to go wrong all the time. It does. It’s a kind of barely controlled chaos that we’ve adapted our builds around. There’s very littel planning and a lot of reacting. We win encounters consistantly, so we never felt the need to up the efficiency. At higher levels, sure, everyone knows the content, but a lot of people either don’t have a consistent party or simply don’t have as meticulously designed a party as yours.

I have no doubt that your setup works in your situation, but I think an objective ruling that tanky condition thieves are objectively “worse” than ranged GC is only situationally true. In your situation, it seems this is the best call. In mine, I can virtually guarantee my lack of ability to tank would get people killed.

Different strokes for different folks and all that.

From everything I’ve heard, about 50 you’ll get one-shotted by everything regardless of how much health and armor you have, so you might as well go full dunk mode – the best survivability is speeding up the fights.

Ensign.2189:

From everything I’ve heard, about 50 you’ll get one-shotted by everything regardless of how much health and armor you have, so you might as well go full dunk mode – the best survivability is speeding up the fights.

Yeah, pretty much. The HP can save you, but getting downed doesn’t really matter when your party can res you in a second or two most of the time. I’ve never really seen a snowball of deaths.

Here’s a couple of pictures I took about a month ago for anyone interested:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/20706034/pics/gw2/gw015.jpg
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/20706034/pics/gw2/gw017.jpg