Guild Wars 2

So I’ve been playing a thief in PvE since launch and I’ve been having a hard time trying to figure out what kind of stats I should be going after for my gear. I know that power, precision and condition damage are great for dps, but I want to find stats that will help my play style.

My Build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmaPXcS4E+JFxmidqT/DkVTBNxZ/hrC

The build is focused on using might to buff my dps and I’m able to doge much more often. I really like being able to dodge multiple times if I need to, while still being able to dodge again soon after and has kept me from dying several times. On the other hand, I get killed really fast when I do get hit, because my toughness is pretty low.

I tend to sit in the back and use my shortbow more because of this and it isn’t the best dps in the game (despite it being a versatile weapon). I know there’s probably something I can do to improve this, but I don’t know what. It would be good to have gear that would go with the d/d set so I could go into melee to adapt to the situation. Right now I feel like I’m stuck at range, pew pewing my bow when it might be better to go melee.

Right now I’m sitting at 13, 155 health, pretty low for a thief I know. Other stats:
Power 2092
Precision 1814
Toughness 944
Vitality 1152

I know if I want to go purely into one role I should go for all dps or all defense, but which would be better to go for?

If you’re only level 13 then I’d suggest traiting up towards power/attack. It makes it so much easier to quickly and efficiently kill your mobs. I leveled up to about 60 with condition build and it was a pain. I leveled the last 20 with crit build and it was much better. Maybe it was jut for me? Why not try it out? But it’s kinda hard since you’re so low on level and trait points….

Legitsu.3918:

If you’re only level 13 then I’d suggest traiting up towards power/attack. It makes it so much easier to quickly and efficiently kill your mobs. I leveled up to about 60 with condition build and it was a pain. I leveled the last 20 with crit build and it was much better. Maybe it was jut for me? Why not try it out? But it’s kinda hard since you’re so low on level and trait points….

I think that you misunderstood the OP, he was saying: “Right now I’m sitting at 13, 155 health”, he used comma as the game does, to divide the thousands from the rest of the number So he has 13155Hp and is pretty much surely lvl 80

Learn how to dodge and berserker gear is by far the best in terms of damage output. Which is what you want as a thief. You don’t need other stats to bring utility to a group. Hitting harder than any other class is your utility (outside shadow refuge and scorpion wire).

Oxygen.5918:

Learn how to dodge and berserker gear is by far the best in terms of damage output. Which is what you want as a thief. You don’t need other stats to bring utility to a group. Hitting harder than any other class is your utility (outside shadow refuge and scorpion wire).

That´s true of course, but some situations (and there is quite a lot of them) requires some survivability, which is hardly met with 10800 HP and basic toughness (f.e. CoF path 2 NPC defending part), and in some of the encounters, there´s just dmg you can´t avoid (or you will need to have much more than two dodges to avoid completely), so some survivability is very recommended in dungeons generally.
Also some servers are quite laggy often, and that completely destroys your ability to time the dodge/evade right and with GC build, you´re going to get yourself killed very fast in these situations…

STRanger.5120:

Oxygen.5918:

Learn how to dodge and berserker gear is by far the best in terms of damage output. Which is what you want as a thief. You don’t need other stats to bring utility to a group. Hitting harder than any other class is your utility (outside shadow refuge and scorpion wire).

That´s true of course, but some situations (and there is quite a lot of them) requires some survivability, which is hardly met with 10800 HP and basic toughness (f.e. CoF path 2 NPC defending part), and in some of the encounters, there´s just dmg you can´t avoid (or you will need to have much more than two dodges to avoid completely), so some survivability is very recommended in dungeons generally.
Also some servers are quite laggy often, and that completely destroys your ability to time the dodge/evade right and with GC build, you´re going to get yourself killed very fast in these situations…

First of all, you make up for lack of survivability through utility. Signet of agility provides me with 2 extra dodge rolls, and shadow refuge is self explanatory.

As for the specific CoF encounter, I run it as a guild, and with 2 other berserker (104% crit damage) thieves. Do you know what we do? We don’t cheese it – we kill stuff as it pops. And we never go down, let alone come close to failing. It’s, in fact, how the encounter is supposed to be dealt with! This is what I meant by “thieves utility is in their damage”.

As for lag, it’s personal. I have no issues, but if you do, then of course you should adapt.

Oxygen.5918:

First of all, you make up for lack of survivability through utility. Signet of agility provides me with 2 extra dodge rolls, and shadow refuge is self explanatory.

As for the specific CoF encounter, I run it as a guild, and with 2 other berserker (104% crit damage) thieves. Do you know what we do? We don’t cheese it – we kill stuff as it pops. And we never go down, let alone come close to failing. It’s, in fact, how the encounter is supposed to be dealt with! This is what I meant by “thieves utility is in their damage”.

As for lag, it’s personal. I have no issues, but if you do, then of course you should adapt.

If you have a group that can take that amount of mobs down so fast, I envy you m8
Unfortunately I don´t know what is causing the lags I´m experiencing sometimes, I ruled out my machine and connection, so it is probable some problem on the route to server (so I can´t do anything about that… ).
However I don´t have much lower dmg that full berserker Thief does, crit dmg is the same, power as well, and because of my playstyle, most dmg comes from my backstabing, which always crits (traited). I miss only the non-stealth crit chance (have 22% if I remember correctly) and the Executioner trait (that one is the only thing that bothers me a little :-) ), but the survivability makes it up for me (I´m glad to have it, because I´m running WvW with this build also, only with altered traits and utility skills and I feel like I can hardly be downed, because I can survive much more than a standard GC build).
It´s just that every player find their way to enjoy the class, right?

Quarantine.3702:

So I’ve been playing a thief in PvE since launch and I’ve been having a hard time trying to figure out what kind of stats I should be going after for my gear. I know that power, precision and condition damage are great for dps, but I want to find stats that will help my play style.

My Build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmaPXcS4E+JFxmidqT/DkVTBNxZ/hrC

The build is focused on using might to buff my dps and I’m able to doge much more often. I really like being able to dodge multiple times if I need to, while still being able to dodge again soon after and has kept me from dying several times. On the other hand, I get killed really fast when I do get hit, because my toughness is pretty low.

I tend to sit in the back and use my shortbow more because of this and it isn’t the best dps in the game (despite it being a versatile weapon). I know there’s probably something I can do to improve this, but I don’t know what. It would be good to have gear that would go with the d/d set so I could go into melee to adapt to the situation. Right now I feel like I’m stuck at range, pew pewing my bow when it might be better to go melee.

Right now I’m sitting at 13, 155 health, pretty low for a thief I know. Other stats:
Power 2092
Precision 1814
Toughness 944
Vitality 1152

I know if I want to go purely into one role I should go for all dps or all defense, but which would be better to go for?

Hello,

let me start off by critiquing your build.

Your current build seems to lack focus and you have points spread out all over the place. I assume you’re playing a Crit-focused build. Yet you haven’t gotten the top tier traits which are actually pretty good (next to the passive stat-boost).

Instead you have points in Trickery which increase your Initiative. That’s fine and all except that Bleed builds (Death Blossom spam) tend to be Initiative intensive, not so much Crit builds. Especially not if you’re using the Shortbow a lot of the time.

Thrill of the Crime while a good trait in solo play, is often redundant in group situations. You already get Swiftness and Might on Evades and Fury can be gained via a trait. Overall I think the Trickery tree doesn’t really add much to a Critical Strikes build.

The Sundering Strikes trait in the Deadly Arts tree is also a lackluster trait since it doesn’t really do much for your DPS. Vulnerability in general is a pretty crappy Condition and only “nice to have”. Nothing you should ever spec for though.

As for Survivability, after you’re 15 points into the Acrobatics tree most extra survivability will comes from your gear choices. Now some people here like to preach DPS > all and that you’re best off running full Berserker gear with 10.500 HP etc. but I can’t echo that sentiment. Especially not if you intend to delve deeper into the Fractals of the Mist.

Valkyrie items are a good way of improving both your DPS and your Vitality. Mix that with a few Soldier (Power, Toughness, Vitality) and/or Berserker items until your reach a comfortable level of squishiness.

As a rough guidelines I’d recommend at least 16.000 HP for doing most explorable dungeons. More if you’re not confident or tend to take a lot of damage, less if you’re very confident.

Personally I’ve been running with a 15/30/0/25/0 build for months now and am very capable of dealing damage and staying alive. Gear is mostly Soldiers on my main set while I exchange my Accessories between Valkyrie and Berserker depending on content.

Counter-intuitively, I find that hybridizing my thief is the best way to play him, at least in PvE. Being so squishy, thieves can benefit tremendously from moderate amounts of Vitality and Toughness, but if you focus on them too much you end up lowering your offensive capabilities by more than you are improving your defensive ones, which isn’t a worthwhile trade-off.

I would say trait primarily offensively for the things you like doing with your thief (trait into Trickery and Deadly Arts if you Steal a lot, but otherwise I’d focus on Critical Strikes) when you’re playing, and hybridize your gear between all 4 primary stats. Focus on condition damage a bit if you’re caltrop heavy and like using pistol MH or D/D, but avoid it otherwise. You need to pick a traitline to go to 30 with as the best traits are at the 30 mark. As general advice, make sure that your traits have synergy with themselves and the weapons/skills you are using the most.

Your skillset might actually be the biggest problem. My advice:
Stick with HiS for healing unless you’re using S/P
Caltrops are really, really good in PvE and will help you fight multiple mobs.
Thieves’ Guild is much better than Daggerstorm in most PvE situations.

Thanks for the feed back guys. Have a couple of questions though.

@Dee Jay.2460, do you find that you’re getting enough initiative back with your build? The main reason that I went into trickery was to get the 3 extra base initiative because I wasn’t getting enough back. At least that’s what I found. It also gives a lot of benefits to stealing and just makes it a better class ability. Base stealing I find is pretty underwhelming.

To clarify my build, for the most part I switch between Daggerstorm and Thieves Guild, Daggerstorm for when there are a lot of mobs, Thieves Guild for single target dropping. I do similar things with my other skills, taking caltrops when I need to do group damage. I get that both are fairly situational and at the end of the day you have to adapt your skills for given situations.

Lastly, if I were to pull out of Trickery entirely then what would the return be like for initiative? I know that there are other traits that will restore initiative in other lines, but is it worth the trade off considering that I would be losing the stealing benefits?

Right now I’m at level 5 in the Fractals dungeon and I have noticed the significant passive dmg on some levels. I also have noticed that I’m dropping a lot more than in other dungeons where I could easily avoid dmg by sitting in the back and avoiding major attacks. More base defence is going to be a given. Agony is going to force some toughness concentration once I get there, if not just to avoid it initially.

About going 30 points into a trait line, I take it that Critical Strikes is the way to go? I understand that it gives a lot of extra dmg output, but what are the best traits to be using with it? I see about 80% of thief builds posted (might be an exaggeration) going high into Critical Strikes, but the basic traits just don’t really seem too beneficial. I have a hard time convincing myself to go into Critical strikes when I barely use my d/d set while there are several traits that are mainly focused on daggers and pistols. Given that I use a shortbow, what would work best in this line?

Well Initiative is always one of these very subjective things. It is a resource and thus is meant to limit our ability use in some form or another.

With a Backstab build you’ll be getting most of your DPS from Cloak and Dagger + Backstab mixed with auto-attack, all while training to stay above 6 Initiative.

The Revealed debuff already limits how much you can spam C&D so once you add in a little movement into the encounter you really shouldn’t be starved for Initiative. It only really becomes an issue below 50% HP, when you could start spaming Heartseeker. But then you just use it less frequently and try to stay above 6 Initiative.

My point being, while having 3 extra Initiative is definitely nice, it’s not worth 15 point into a tree that otherwise offers little in return. Especially in PvE where you can’t just dump all your Imitative into a target and call it a day, 12 Imitative really isn’t that much of a limit.