Guild Wars 2

This topic came up several times within the past month and I know I personally posted on 4 different threads on the “how to level a thief” topic alone. I figure if we experienced thieves can all weigh in, this will be helpful to all. Hopefully enough people contribute for this to become a post it

I’ll try to be organized in this “mini guide” of sorts

First Impressions
When someone first rolls a thief, there are several things some people notice immediately (I know I have):
*This isn’t exactly what I had in mind when I wanted to play a ninja class…
*I think that centaur just gave me a love tap and found out that my muscles are SQUISHY!!! This must be why I just got downed.
*I keep dying so much that I’m getting frustrated, how am I supposed to level to 80 when I can’t even level past my 30s?!
And last but not least
*This class is actually really quite fun!

General Things to Avoid
To begin with, it is very important to establish that end game thief playstyle is REALLY different from beginner thief. I cannot stress that enough. Most of our end game builds are extremely gear dependent. With proper gear getting a 5-7k backstab off in wvw for example is expected. Without the proper gear but the same exact build, you’ll be lucky to do 2k. This applies to PvE as well.

Said another way, trying to go burst dagger/x (particularly d/d) for a thief under level 40 is going to be an exercise in frustration. Not only are the gear not adequate at that level to support a backstab with decent damage, the stealth buffs that we rely on to help with survivability aren’t available yet.

Two Most Effective Ways to Level
The burst Sword/Pistol method
Pretty straight forward way to play. Equip a sword main hand, a pistol off hand, all gear should be power/precision and (when level 60+) crit damage. Invest in acrobatics, critical strikes and a little bit in power in terms of traits. Remember to turn off auto targetting sometimes you want to drop black powder just to create a combo field – more on this later.

The prominent skills of this weapon set are:

• Autoattack, 1 skill: I’m not kidding this is generally where most of your DPS is coming from.
• Infiltrator strike, 2 skill: The bread and butter of the sword main hand. Target an enemy and press it once and you will teleport to target, hitting and immobilizing him. Press it again and you will teleport back to where you originally were, and as an added bonus, cleanse a condition on you. Both an excellent offensive and defensive tool.
• Pistol whip: Used to be an amazing skill, now the damage has been nerfed so hard that it’s ehhh given how much initiative it costs. First hit will daze targets in line of sight, then you will be rooted in place as you unleash a flurry of hits. During this time you will evade everything as you are hitting things. Should be used situationally given its heavy initiative cost.
• Head shot, 4 skill: Situational use in PvE, very useful in PvP and WvW. Basically shoot a target to interrupt, this is unnecessary in PvE – you can just dodge the big hits rather than having to interrupt. But vs human targets it’s awesome.
• Black Powder, 5 skill: This is an amazing AoE skill. Drop a smoke combo field around you where all foes within the radius becomes blinded! This is one answer to the AoE issue that plagues thieves. Just blind everything and hit them while they cannot hit you. Also of note, the smoke combo field has some special utility for thieves. For example, a leap finisher (such as heart seeker, #2 skill in dagger) through the smoke field will stealth you, leap through the field several times to stack stealth duration. Blast finisher (cluster bomb, #2 skill of shortbow) on the smoke filed will give AoE stealth to all your allies.

Playstyle:
The idea of this build is to dart in with infiltrator strike (sword #2 attack), drop black powder (pistol #5), autoattack. At this point it is up to you if you want to drop another black powder and keep auto attacking (if the mob is about to die) or shadow return back (sword #2 again) if you want some distance or want to cleanse a condition. Simple as that.

Pros/Cons:

• Main pro is that you’re going to pretty much be able to avoid most damage while you dish out some hefty DPS between your black powder and evades from pistol whip. Of course if you are facing dredge who are immune to blind… things get a little dicey and you basically have to abandon using black powder on them.
• You aren’t exactly invincible in this playstyle even if you’re not facing dredge. Black powder pulses once per second to blind targets. This means that if a target is hitting you more than once per second, you will take some hits.
• AoE is still somewhat of a problem, while all sword hits do cleave damage it’s not adequate to deal with crazy amounts of mobs coming your way. For this, have the shortbow as your alternate weaponset, cluster bomb is excellent for AoE!

The Condition Dagger/Dagger Build
Unlike the burst variant of this build, you do not use stealth offensively and you do not care about back stabs in d/d condi at all. The one reason why you are in stealth is to avoid aggro and to reposition yourself defensively. All your gear should have condition damage (and up to you for the other stats, i recommend power). Invest early in trickery (particularly “uncatchable” trait that drops caltrops every time you roll) and acrobatics (particularly, “power of inertia” which gives you a might stack per evade. Might increases condition damage).

Prominent skills of this weaponset:
The 3 and the 5 skill, basically. Heartseeker (2) and dancing dagger (4) have no use in this build.
Death Blossom, 3 skill: The core of d/d condi build. Leap and hit all targets in an AoE while evading all damage while in the leap animation. Each targets get 3 stacks of bleeds per death blossom. Spam this until you run out of initiative and watch things die.
Cloak and Dagger, 5 skill: Use this defensively when you are in trouble and need to stealth. It costs 5 initiative which is quite expensive, so use it wisely. Stealth in this build is only meant to allow you to deaggro and gain your stealth buffs from the shadow arts tree. You are not looking to backstab in a d/d condi build, although you could if some moderate damage. There are, however, 2 offensive uses of stealth in this build: Dropping caltrops (utility skill) and dropping the choking gas (short bow 4 skill). More on this later.
Caltrops, utility skill: Along with death blossom, caltrops is your other bread and butter of this build. Toss caltrops in an AoE that applies 2 stacks of bleeds every second for 10 seconds that lasts for 3 seconds.

Playstyle:
Since this is a rather initiative heavy build, managing your initiative is very important. Likewise, investing in initiative recovery is highly recommended, such as “quick recovery” in the acrobatics trait (2 initiative every 10s), or the slot skill infiltrator’s signet (1 initiative every 10s). Since you will need to invest at least 20 into trickery (this trait line has the condition damage) you will also get some steal and initiative recharge buffs, such as kleptomaniac (recover 3 initiative when you steal) and preparedness (+3 initiative so you have 15 initiative rather than 12).

In a mob, start with DB, drop caltrops, DB 3 more times, steal, DB once more, evade and run around to avoid damage and watch things die. Very fun way to play.

Pros/Cons:

• DB can be very funky in terms of where you land. I have DB-ed off of a cliff and/or got myself stuck somewhere that I couldn’t climb out of more times than I care to count. Be careful in uneven or narrow terrain.
• The curse of all condi toons is the lack of single target DPS. It is great for AoE but against bosses you will kill things a lot slower. The tradeoff is a lot higher survivability.
• Don’t get end gear for the d/d condi thief, they do not perform well in dungeons where it is all about boss fights. See above about single target DPS. Also, because of the bleed mechanic of GW2, 2 condi characters will cancel one another out since the max bleed stack is 25.

Closing Thoughts
This is the first guide attempt I ever made so I’m sure I completely messed up several times, I apologize. I personally used both these builds when leveling my thief. Both are very effective although I grew bored of the sword/pistol build quickly. I enjoyed the d/d a lot more due to the more active playstyle. But in terms of validity both these builds are solid. I hope this answered some questions for new thieves and was helpful!

What I recommend in terms of specifics for the S/P build:
End goal: 10/30/0/30/0, for a balanced offense/defense build.

• First 10 traits, you’re level 20, spend on deadly arts, get “mug.” The reason for this is that up to level 20 you can easily DPS things down, so more power the better. Mug adds some nice damage and healing, nothing major but useful.
• Next 10 traits, you’re level 30, in acrobatics, take “Power of Inertia.” This will give you some vitality but more importantly might and swiftness (from minor trait) on evade. Invest in critical strikes after this until level 40.
• Next 10 traits, your level 40, unlock the master tier. Invest 20 in acrobatics (take power of inertia and quick recovery) and 10 in critical strikes (Take “side strikes.”).

Once you get to level 40 and the master tier is unlocked you can pretty much play it by the ear. The traits you want are:

• Mug from deadly arts.
• Side strikes, Practiced tolerance, Executioner from Critical Strikes
• Power of Inertia, Quick Recovery, Assasin’s reward from Acrobatics.

Alternate S/P trait allocations:
10/30/0/0/30, for a more bursty build with less defense.

• First 10 spend on trickery, get flanking strike.
• Second 10 spend on critical strike, get side strikes. Invest in power after that up to level 40.
• Once you reach level 40 and unlock master tier, invest 20 into trickery, take flanking strike and thrill of the crime, side strikes from critical strike. Invest in power after that up to level 50.
• Lv 50, take mug, invest in critical strikes after that.
• Lv 60, unlock grandmaster, 20 in trickery (flanking strikes and thrill of the crime), 20 in critical strikes (side strikes and practiced tolerance) and 10 in deadly arts (mug). From this point on invest in critical strikes first to get executioner by Lv 70, and round it out with taking slight of hand from trickery at Lv 80

Slot skills:
Heal (Either Hide in Shadows or Withdraw), Shadow Refuge, Assasin’s Signet, Shadow Step.

For the D/D build:
End goal: Some combination of Shadow arts, acrobatics and trickery, this varies by preference. I personally recommend 0/0/30/20/20.

• First 10: Invest in trickery, take uncatchable for the caltrops.
• Next 10: Shadow arts, Shadow’s embrace, and then invest in trickery until level 40
• Lv 40: 15 in trickery, 10 in shadow arts, 5 in acrobatics.
• Lv 50: 15 in trickery, 20 in shadow arts (infusion of shadows + Shadow’s embrace), 5 acrobatics.
• Lv 60: 15 in trickery, 30 in shadow arts (Shadow rejuvination), 5 acrobatics.
  *Lv 70 onwards: Round out your traits, 0/0/30/20/20, you want thrill of the crime for trickery, power of inertia and quick recovery from acrobatics.

Slot skills: Heal (Hide in Shadows), Shadow Refuge, Caltrops, Shadow Step, elite is Dagger Storm.

Amazing, best post i have read in a while for a thief that is still leveling =)

I was worried about getting to higher levels, as i wanted to switch to something more bursty for lvl 80.
Thanks to your sword / pistol build i ll be able to avoid getting to 80 with only condition gear^^
Just a question though, is the damage from the auto swing of the sword enough if geared power / preci? It s hard for me to tell, as when i try it with my condi gear it lacks the punch needed.

Thanks for the great post, can we get a sticky for new thieves?

Nice work.

Well, it’s important to realize that in this game grinding mobs is probably the slowest way to level up. WvW is a great way to level, you can also get some quick levels with crafting. Doing quests and map completion stuff will get you levels pretty quick. As far as builds go, you’re pretty much going to reroll your build completely each time you can retrait; get what you need for each level tier, don’t aim for what you need at level 80 when you are level 25, because you are just going to die a lot then.

In terms of staying alive, always be moving, use your dodges, stealth out and regroup when you need to. Always have shortbow handy, learn to use infiltrator’s arrow (5). Recognize the value of shortbow autoattack, since it bounces between foes it is a very powerful AoE attack that you can spam constantly everywhere while running and dodging.

This is two months old guide, but if the original writer sees this, I’m happy.

Thanks for writing this guide! I had serious problems playing my Thief because I just couldn’t figure out how to not feel like I’m made out of wet paper swinging wet noodle. Then I by accident found this thread and made me realize how wrong I tried to play my thief.

Now I’m enjoying thief more than ever, which makes this guide, at least in my eyes, huge succes! Especially considering that I was about to delete my thief.

Thank you!

Thank you for this guide. I basically have been playing my Thief/Guild Wars 2 off and on since its release and I only have a level 54 thief to show for it (I don’t play much). I basically just went right in and did a dagger/dagger precision/condition build and while I enjoyed bleeding guys with caltrops my Thief seemed to do very low damage and just felt very squishy.

Thanks to your Sword/Pistol build I am just rolling through mobs and enjoying the game a lot more compared to before. Although I have no idea how I will make my guy at 80… I am loving this leveling build.

I feel like over the 4 months this really hasn’t been given the respect it deserves. I played Guild Wars on and off since release but only in the last month or so started to really take real interest. I struggled to find a class I really enjoyed, Having the same issues as most beginner thieves until I found this guide. I am really loving the thief, and just the game in general now. Thanks very much!

Hi.
Can someone tell me with wich build did you find it easier to level with?

I started with the S/P build but moved to D/D at about lvl 50 because I found it more fun and closer to what most people finds work best for end game play. I think after exp with these builds I’ll probably end up some thing along to line of the D/D build even for my lvl 80 setup as I really do like it.

Nice guide, surprised I never saw it. It might be 5 months old but it’s still applicable to today. I’ll add this to my “Guide to Thief Guides”.

can someone help me out?
i’m doing s/p balanced build based on Silver’s great guide. but i’m bit lost on which trait to take on which level, bit confused what to do on and after lvl40.

“Next 10 traits, your level 40, unlock the master tier. Invest 20 in acrobatics (take power of inertia and quick recovery) and 10 in critical strikes (Take “side strikes.”).” ???

shall i retrain and reset my traits like 20 in acrobatics and 10 in critical strikes, and forget deadly arts?

thanks a lot

Great guide man! Have played thief since beta and I can say that this is how I would level a new thief if I was to do it again. If you want to stack conditions on boss mobs (solo target dps) I’d go with P/D since that set is way more focused on single target condition damage. If you get Richochet from 20 in Trickery trait line you’ll even be able to dish out a fair amount of AoE damage too.

JohnnyEasy.4528:

can someone help me out?
…
shall i retrain and reset my traits like 20 in acrobatics and 10 in critical strikes, and forget deadly arts?

thanks a lot

Your traits are reset when you train with Master’s Training Manual. Skill 20 in acrobatics and 10 in critical strikes and none in deadly arts.

Helped me huge amounts.
S/P ftw.
Short bow for infiltrators arrow, helps when rushing.

Starting a thief, is this still mostly valid? Not sure what’s changed in the game in the last year(s).