Guild Wars 2

I’m mainly a WvW person, but with ascended gear coming out I need to get my rings without spending 4 months waiting on laurels. I’ve done a few low level fractals, but I don’t feel like I’m really helping as much as I should. I’m running full zerk D/P SB because I only have a couple of exotic weapons so far. I’ve heard smokescreen was good, is there anything else?

I would suggest you stick with d/p SB as they are the best for DPS in general. You may want to try a build that uses some points in Acrobatics if you have trouble staying alive. Shadow Arts would work as well. Otherwise, ensure you are DPSing as 25/30/0/0/15 as it is the best spec for DPS in Zerker gear.

Remember that SB #3 is amazing for avoiding tons of incoming damage from all sources. It’s spammable and can help you kite things as well.

You team should be made aware that you can blind trash pulls for a much more easy time. Ensure you know that you may not blind Dredge, so that fractal is a little harder.

Lastly, make sure you use you utilities right and swap per fights. Us thieves have a wall which is good versus those golems/harpies. We have various utility skills to boost DPS so make sure you go over all of them and work out what would benefit you party the most.

Hope this helps!

Best advice is 25/30/0/0/15 and bring all your weapons, it’s only 6 but I switch them up all the time.

I personally don’t recommend going pure zerker (by that I mean zerker gear + deadly arts traits). You’re squishy as hell and you don’t bring enough to the team.

I’m currently running a 0/30/15/25/0 build, wearing full zerker, which works fantastically level 1-79:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlcmSPncy9E+5Ex2jeuTeyfwp9MuqVB

You get the same 10% damage bonus as you would running DA traits, without the useless (imo) slot choices. You’re gonna be dodging… a lot. All you really lose is the 250 power, which isn’t game breaking. What is game breaking is dying all the time because you wanted some extra digits on your crits.

Why 15 points in SA you might ask? Well, the 10 point slot bonus’ are amazing, seriously. You have the choice between 3 really fantastic options; IV (turns all your stealth abilities/combos into condition removal), V (OOC – allows you to stealth your team infinitely with BP + weapon swap SB blasts – seriously, people LOVE that kitten), and III (just in case your team needs a little extra regen). I advise switching between these (mostly IV and V) depending on what you’re expecting. The extra 5 points are for the previously mentioned perma stealth.

Quick Recovery and the Infiltrators Signet allow you more blasts over time with your SB, and allow SA V to grant perma stealth to the group (again, gotta be OOC to pull off those weapon swaps).

As with most builds, swapping weapons to be fight appropriate is key. If you know you can get up in melee range safely, S/P is the way to go for groups – D/P for single target. Blinds are your most valuable asset to the team, but know when you can safely get in and when you need to haul kitten out of there. Making sure your team is aware of the OPness that is blind is very important, keeping mobs grouped on your fields as much as possible. If the mobs aren’t stacked then you’re asking for a slap in the face.

Give it a try, personally I’ve found it hard to go back after using this build.

simple, you change to your alt guardian/warrior/mesmer, and go to fractals
easy as pie

First of all you have to learn how to stay alive, and that means learn when to evade. PvE is nothing like WvW. In WvW you have human players that make mistakes and have to think before reacting. In PvE there are scripted scenarios where bosses and mobs follow certain rotations and will attack you the second you leave stealth. In WvW you won’t get one-shotted, but you will be in PvE. Most of the attacks that one-shot you have very visible animations that makes it easy for you to dodge at the right moment.

I would recommend the 25/30/0/0/15 build for Fractals. I would also run S/P instead of D/P as main set. The damage is excellent against trash mobs and the blind field is simply amazing. You’ll be a walking god against all trash mobs, except for Dredge… Pistol Whip has an evade in the animation, which can be a life saver. D/P or D/D is both very strong weapon sets against bosses. The dps is crazy and your survivability is amazing if you know when to dodge.

I wouldn’t recommend any other stats than berserker. This is simply because thief is the best profession in zerker. We have our survivability built in to our weapon sets and traits – abuse them. The other reason for choosing zerker is because those hits that will one-shot you will do it regardless of what armor you’re using. We’re so squishy from base that there’s just no point in doing it.

We have utilities that are amazing for our offense as well as team-wide defense.

• Smoke Screen. Block projectiles for 7 seconds. Completely lock down any ranged opponent and blind melee mobs. Asura fractal. Also works as a combo field. Shoot through it to blind or blast it to get AoE stealth.
• Shadow Refuge. A very often used tool by most thieves. Need to skip certain parts of the dungeon? Need to revive a fallen ally? Need to heal up?(Combo field that steals life with projectile or whirl finisher, see a combo with Signet of Malice, SR and Dagger Storm here?) No problem!
• Signet of agility. Remove one condition on each team member and fill your endurance bar. Can be pretty useful in some encounters where you have to evade a lot.
• Shadow Trap. Open gates in dredge fractal alone. Just put shadow trap down-stairs, stealth and run to the button. Have your team go through the gate and then return by activating the trap.

These are just a few of our useful abilities, but these are the ones I rarely see used properly.

Just keep all weapon combinations with you and learn the traits and skills by heart. You have to change them all pretty often to do above average in fractals. Best of luck!

What would you say are the best runes to use?

Scholar runes give highest dps output, or otherwise ruby orbs give only slightly less dps but are a lot cheaper.

Also s/d weapon set can be more useful than s/p in dredge fractal, as they are immune to blind and often buff themselves with protection, regen and might, all of which you can steal for yourself with larcenous strike. Taking away protection from a mob or boss essentially boosts your party’s dps by 33%.

There are other ways to play than 25/30/0/0/15 and full berserk.

While I do agree that this is the best equip/trait combination for a lot of dungeons I do prefer a more defensive build for fractals since there are lots of situation where you will get hit no matter what you do (and if you manage to stay in melee without getting hit a single time you must be some thief god imo).

My Fractal build:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|8.5p.h2.8.5p.h4|5.5l.h1|1p.7e.1p.7e.1p.7e.1p.7e.1p.7e.1p.7e|2v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0.3v.0.2v.0|0.u12c.p56.f2.0|2n.2|57.5e.5d.5c.0|e

The survivability of this build is insane: 2800 armor, 16k+ health, lots of dodges (acrobatics 15) and blind on stealth.
At the same time your d/d or d/p dps is still very high because of the hidden killer trait (10k + with backstab) and if you happen to have warrior and ranger in your team you’ll still have a crit chance of 60-70%.

Cheers!

As NinjaSonic said, swap stuff round all the time. Once you know what the fights are like there’s no point taking on the dredge, the cultists, and the fire shaman all with the same heals, utilities, and weapons. The early fractals are not particularly difficult so learn the fights and try a few things out.

25-30-0-0-15 is really bad in higher fractals because you cant burst down bosses as well. 25-30-0-0-15 has a really good burst but bad sustain dmg and you’ll need sustain dmg for certain bosses.

I suggest to run 30-30-10-0-0 it deals MUCH more dmg than 25-30-0-0-15 if the fight takes longer than 10s

With 25-30-0-0-15 you’ll run out of initiative soon… you get 5% more dmg but you’ll lose 10% from initiative > 6 or more AA and less Backstab