Guild Wars 2

Hello!

I have been working on a stealing oriented PvE / Dungeon build for a while now, and would appreciate some feedback on how to improve it.

Here is the build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQNAqYVlUmaP3dy5E+5EB3Dni0m69gsj1saFoJA-jwBBIhDZkkOgZoFRjtgpIasqbY6YER1mbFRrGA-e

It seems a bit low in damage potential right now, although it functionally maintains ok condition damage, and is VERY survivable. It also provides functional party support in terms of ability to stealth and provide boons. The equipment is currently more of a wishlist, but I would like to know if this is viable before starting down the long road to procuring the gear.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

While its important to survive, its more important to DO something. Beeing alive doesn’t help your team in a dungeon.

Your damage is not only “a bit low” but downright non-existant. Switch to dagger/dagger.

Your support is actually really low, too. No matter how you play your thief, you’re always able to provide stealth, and those few boons are not that awesome, too.

If you wanna go support as a thief, you should take a look on venoms.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQNAoYVnkE1eaoJmmwfaig7BTh6T9UQ2xqp4m2E-jQCBIOCiUABikGMTqIasFMCRlPas6GYqVER1eFFRrGA-e

You could play them with the new Power/precision/healingpower, too, if you dont like condition damage.

Oh, and get a set of berserkers armor, dps is really important in this game. To be honest, I think a thief contributes the most to his group if he just goes full damage. Support just.. doesnt works that well in GW2.

Thanks for the input.

The primary idea behind the last build was to repeatedly flip between stealth and sneak attack for the pistol to stack bleeds/conditions for damage. Is this an ineffective tactic? I seemed to work well on most of the mobs I encountered. How does it stack up to D/D condition wise? Or are conditions simply a waste of time (when compared to direct damage) as a thief?

Second, my experience with venoms are…….lackluster to say the least. I have some difficulty keeping enough on my bar to feel useful while retaining handy evasive skills like roll for initiative. Any thoughts here?

Finally, is it possible to play a reasonably durable thief without heavy stealth use? I ended up using it because of the survivability it added, both to myself and my team. Are there any common options which might work as well / better?

Thanks again!

“being alive doesn’t help your team in dungeon” lol I don’t think that’s the right word to put it. So are you saying, being dead helps your team?. Lying on the ground more helps the team?. xD Anyways,

I met this guy yesterday, taught me a lot of things and was very very helpful. Pls check his youtube out, I highl6y recommend you to watch it. It is very very helpful especially for new players.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dnv1Jr68N4&list=UUdBwDo_F1wNOxZmgjn-KxvA&feature=c4-overview

Death Blossom is simply better if you want to apply bleeds. Its AoE and you dont have to wait 3 seconds and can just spam it right at the start.

Direct damage is indeed much stronger than conditiondamage (at least in PvE and Dungeons) but much harder to play. Most people say full berserker is the only viable choice, and while a good player should always use full dps builds, a unexperienced player would have much trouble beeing a glasscannon. With conditions, you always have some toughnes/vitality.

A build you may want to check out the good old “Hidden Killer” with Power/Vita/Crit. Thats berserker armour with vitality instead of precision. To make up for your low critchance, you invest 30 points in critical hits to get 100% critchanche on backstab:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQJAookUmaPnI2e0zdSUeGGNp9HuKA-jAyA4/AS+BoCgpvioxWcLiGreBTZSEV7OKiWNA-e

Damage is not that great, but better and more reliable than conditiondamage. Its the easy-mode of the current meta build. You use stealth to deal damage and dodgeroll to stay alive. “Feline Grace” is quite a nice skill. And thanks to a high vita, you dont die everytime you make a mistake.

Thats of course not the steal-based support build you asked for.

WilliCalifornia.1837:

“being alive doesn’t help your team in dungeon” lol I don’t think that’s the right word to put it. So are you saying, being dead helps your team?. Lying on the ground more helps the team?. xD Anyways,

Logic. It doesn’t work that way. “A” implies “B” is not the same as “not A” implies “not B”.

Again, thanks.

After looking through a bit more of the forum, and some other resources, it would appear that steal is not terribly popular, at least as the focus for a build. Is this the case? I love its mechanic, but I am somewhat concerned about its viability. Any thoughts as to what its place is within the current meta? Is it worth investing in?

In the aims of understanding the class better, can you suggest some other viable builds that are non-stealth, or non-steal (emphasis on non-stealth. I would love to explore the thief-acrobat style of gameplay)? I have been considering using the trait that adds might with signets to generate a large might stack for backstabbing. How effective is backstab in PvE? Does it do enough damage to make it useful against the high HP dungeon mobs?

Again, thanks for your assistance!

Steal is nice to have, but nothing to center a build around, yes. Of course you can do that, but there are better ways to play a thief. Everyone has to find their own personal balance between “beeing usefull to the team” and “play how I want”.

Since I can’t know whats the most fun for you, I will focus only on the “beeing usefull” part. Thats a thing I didn’t like about the video linked here: It talks a lot about YOUR personal playstyle, but thats as usefull as someone saying: Do whatever you want, as long as you’re having fun.
Thats not wrong, but yeah, awesome, very usefull, that’s why I visit a forum.

Okay, on stealth: In PvE combat, stealth is useful for 1) dealing damage via Backstab and 2) for those “oh, sheeet I messed up” moments. But for general survivability and sustain its borderline useless. If you stealth yourself in a dungeon, the mob that just wanted to hit you now attacks another player. But you need to migate damage, not outsource it. And while you’re invisible, you are 100% useless. Well, you can rezz people, but beeing a walking rezzbot is still pretty bad^^. You only want to be invisible for the shortest possible duration.

So yeah, don’t dissapear. Dodge! And 15 points in acrobatics do help with that.

Another mechanic to migate damage is blind. Here is an easy step-by-step guide on: How to kill most non-elite mobs in this game:

Step one: Autoattack.
Step two: Use Blackpowder (pistol 5) every 5 seconds.
…
The end.

Now for backstab. In dungeons, you shoud focus on sustained damage. Not one big fat op backstab, but many slightly smaler backstabs EVERY 4 SECONDS. In shadow arts, you have acces to a trait, that restores 2 initiative everytime you enter stealth. Boom, here you go, endless backstabs. Use dagger/dagger BS for singel targets and sword/pistol with the already mentioned blind field for multiple weaker mobs. Or just use shortbow. Depends on your team.

Did you really watch the link I posted?. It will really open up your mind when after you watch his videos.

Okay I just watched the “GW2 – How To Build Class”-Video you recommended. Here is what it says:
-Choose your playstyle.
-Choose traits that support that playstyle.
-Choose gear to balance what your playstyle is missing.

I mean srsly: You want to play with signets but you need somebody to tell you that it MAY be a good idea to pick traits that improve signets? Really? And if you want to do more damage, you should use gear that adds some power? I am not impressed.

If anything, this video suggest to use one type of utilitys and stick with them (since you have choosen them as YOUR playstyle and invested traits to improve them). And thats a terrible advice.

You should choose utilitys based on the situation you’re in. Some Utilitys are realy strong in one situation, and useless in another.

The video has more of a RP aspect than a real advice on builds. Everyone who plays the way they want, are already doing the things he said in the video. Sorry, i don’t really see why it is so revolutionary.

Edit: OP, if you want a more steal-centric build, you can go 10/30/0/0/30 in full zerk, still does pretty good dps compared to the meta build.

As thief you should go full zerk in PvE. Thief is NOT viable to play condi damage in PvE. The damage is just terrible compared to a zerker build. Full condition is allways a terrible idea in pve except for a few classes but eventhen zerker would have been the better option.

Btw, thief uses all the weapons, mainly Sword/Pistol + Dagger/Dagger