Guild Wars 2

I’m almost at 80 and currently running a D/D condition build. I was hoping to try out something different once I’ve hit 80 though.

I love dungeons and boss Group Events. I also do a fair bit of WvW with my guild. I haven’t even tried sPvP yet but it sounds fun. Popping in and out of stealth killing stragglers in WvW is the reason why I made this character.

Any suggestions?

if you’re killing stragglers, any dagger/dagger burst build works wonders, though the CnD/mug/backstab build kills the fastest. it will also more than likely get you killed if you hit a bunker built 80 with it. and in dungeons, survivability is really important.

you could use valkyrie armor and weapons, with berserker accessories and hidden killer from 30 critical strikes for automatic back stab crits and some extra survivability, or go 0/30/30/10/0 and get knights gear. low health but high toughness and good crit chance as well as every stealth having a significant heal. low crit damage though so use ruby orbs, or berserker accessories if you want to increase the build’s damage, or valkyrie to gain some health at the expense of crit chance.

if you decide to go full glass cannon for picking people off, I would recomend having a different build/gear set for dungeons. most bosses can drop a thief in 1 shot if he/she doesn’t have much toughness/vitality

I absolutely love P/D in dungeons with Shortbow as secondary.
I use 10/0/30/15/15 with Caltrops, Shadow Refuge and Roll for Initiative or Blinding Powder for utility. Some people shy from this as they prefer melee combat but I find it has a great balance between melee (to drop caltrops and use C&D) and ranged.
You can apply good consistent damage through bleeding and Poison (trait for +33% poison duration), you can also generate some decent might stacks by dodging and stealth. Best of all, you can heal in stealth with the T3 SA trait and provide good team support with Shadow Refuge.

I’m a 77 thief. I’ve been messing around with a P/P & SB mix as a 0/30/25/0/15

Mixture of toughness/shadowy and extra initiative. Only thing is the constant internal debate about whether I want the extra 3 initiative or the healing in stealth. If only we could have 5 extra points ;p

Yup same way, 10/30/30, using extra init, 20% signet cooldown, and 5% precision to vit, that extra 1.5k health is significant with so much toughness. Using toughness accessories with prec to boost the vit, berserk gear slotted with pow/crit%, and power/5% damage sigils. The heals arn’t bad either, incorporated mug as well. Basically you are death incarnate…..no joke.

This build. That’s a complete and detailed write-up using all of the fantastic resources the wiki has to offer, so it would be pointless to copy it here.

It’s a fantastic WvW, PvE, and Dungeon build. It gives you great survivability, great support/utility/mobility, and great control. It also gives good sustained damage; your burst is nonexistent, but you get good sustained AoE damage. Most importantly, you have a tool for every situation. This build comes with excellent melee, ranged, AoE damage, gap closers, stun breakers, condition removal, interrupts/stuns, group stealth, self-healing, and boon removal.

I can’t stick with any other build because I’ve never found another that has all of the above. I’ll enjoy the new build until I run into a hammer warrior and start missing all my stun breaks, or run into a condition necro and start missing my gap closers and condition removal. At some point I always run into something that my S/D build could counter easily but my new build can’t handle.

The one thing this build isn’t fantastic for is sPvP. The recent patch hit this specific build really, really hard. I think I can still make it viable, but as it is my damage is too low and I’m working on a variation of the build for sPvP. You can still use this build very successfully in hotjoin, because it doesn’t take a perfect build to pugstomp. However, this is barely good enough for free tournaments and currently not good enough for paid tournaments.

Gungnir Grimm.7123:

if you’re killing stragglers, any dagger/dagger burst build workED wonders

Dancing Daggers:
Now does less damage than the auto attack on the shortbow, hits one more time, cripples, and costs 4 init.

I use P/D – D/D condition with lots of vit and toughness thrown in. 10/0/30/30/0. I don’t even move a single trait around for PvE and do really well. ~21K health and ~2500 armor you aren’t squishy at all. Only way it’s not useful is if you have lots of bleed players in your PvE team and are always at 25 cap.

TheAmpca.1753:

Gungnir Grimm.7123:

if you’re killing stragglers, any dagger/dagger burst build workED wonders

Dancing Daggers:
Now does less damage than the auto attack on the shortbow, hits one more time, cripples, and costs 4 init.

I’m assuming backstab and other melee ranged techniques will be used, most stragglers don’t have swiftness up, and aren’t heavily grouped. dancing daggers isn’t the only burst damage that was/is worth using on people taking into account a thieves ability to close/immobilize