Guild Wars 2

Use valkyrie if you don’t want to die on one hit.

Two ways thieves generally run PvE.

S/P for blind spam, or running d/d unicorn builds. The evasion on deathblossom is actually usable in PvE since mobs don’t make any attempt to time attacks around it. These builds excel at taking down masses of hard hitting enemies, surviving, and still putting down nice dps through sword cleaves or deathblossom bleed/poison stacks. These thief “trash bunker” builds are among the best at “room tanking” when you build them properly, but these builds tend to rely on scaling life on hit, cleave damage, and blinds which are not generally as effective in boss fights. You can still survive boss fights on these builds, but your DPS won’t be as good. Usually not a problem if your group already has many high single target DPS builds.

If you’re going all in for boss DPS though, d/d backstab is the way to be, but you’ll want to load your utilities with mitigation. Start with valk gear, and as you learn encounters you can skew more glassy as you get a better feel for where to prioritize your dodges/use utils to survive boss fights. This build is pretty flimsy in multitarget situations though, and its DPS suffers as dagger auto can only clease two targets, its other main dps attacks are single target, and you’ll be relying much more on your group to clear out big groups of mobs while you pick out any individual targets you think you can get away with. This build is a better choice in groups that already have a high number of AoE and group support builds so your aoe dps isn’t as needed, but your boss DPS helps the group out a lot more.

For open World PvE, Pistol 5# is everything you need.

You may have a problem with ranged enemys but nothing that luring then to a pilar won’t solve.

For dungeon, backstab D/D does the job, since stealth will most of the time reduce agro on you.

Lordwafflez.4163:

It seems that as soon as i go melee range, and get hit once i’m already dead, i’m presuming that i just suck, i know that thieves bring great utility with the shadow refuge, but what about actual fighting?

You haven’t told us anything about your build or what types of enemies are giving you trouble (world bosses, trash mobs, ranged, etc.). However I have the following general advice based on my experience playing thief in general PvE:

1. Start every encounter with short bow if you are facing multiple enemies. The auto attack is magnificent against 2-3 enemies
2. Switch to sword/X or dagger/X when you have the enemies at lower health and close the distance to finish them off
3. Against enemies that hit hard (i.e., enemies that can 2 shot you or 3 shot you), you need to back out as soon as you take a single hit. Dodge out, switch to ranged weapon and keep attacking until your health is full again. Then you can go back into melee fighting.
4. As someone else mentioned, use valkyrie, soldier or similar gear until you are good at using thief’s active defenses (dodge, evade, blind, etc.)

Keep in mind thief is in a weak place right now, but with practice you can still deal a lot of damage AND stay alive.

Reroll ele, be the true “Two spam” class. Have more of every thing then a thief, while be able to fight safely at range.

I find P/P to be the easiest way to PvE on thief. Great, consistent damage AND its ranged to boot. I honestly have no idea why people take melee with thief in PvE and then complain about getting rekt when you’re just asking to get slapped.

Strafe around the targets to make sure you’re always behind them.

Let someone else run in first if in a group as they will get initial aggro.

Use DD, when you cloak and dagger wait a sec before the backstabbing to make sure the enemy targets someone else if you had aggro.

Watch enemy build up animations, dodge big attacks like any other class, use death blossom or pistol whip to dodge without endurance.

Offhand pistol #5 makes every non champ non dredge laughably easy.

Know when you’ll need to use SP and DD, generally its trash and bosses respectively.

Be with a competent party, that means one with on demand cleanses, a guard for that sweet aegis, Warriors for that high might stacks etc so you clear smooth and fast.

Also don’t bother adding extra vitality or toughness to gear, high level fractals will one shot you even in soldiers so take the deaths, learn and get better. It’s how I learnt on ele (1.5yrs ago) and all my other classes, it doesn’t do you favours getting used to taking a few hits.

Practice, and patience.

Pistol offhand is extremely powerful with skill 5, black powder. Anything below bosses and champion will not be able to touch you when theya re blinded. With this skill, you can permablind them. It also mitigates a lot of damage for your allies as well.

Learn to swap weapons and utilities on the fly. Smoke screen is amazing for stacking stealh and blinding mobs, and blocking projectiles, but it’s useless is most boss fights. Learn which utilities, traits and weapons to use in different scenarios.

And learn to dodge. Every class can dodge, but not every class can afford to miss a dodge. Thief is one of them.

You might want to start off with pistol/pistol against bosses (which deals pretty respectable damage now), but as you gain more experience, nothing feels more rewarding then being able to go full zerk, Dagger/Dagger against some of the hardest bosses in the game.

Solo I tend to use sword/pistol a lot for clearing out trash mobs. Blinding Powder and Pistol Whip give a good chunk of survivability. The off-hand varies based on the situation between dagger/dagger for ST/stealth/team situations, dual pistols when ranged, and the bow when traveling or needing to mark targets in events.

I’ll probably end up with staff as my go to weapon when HoT comes out. It seems like a very good General PvE weapon for thieves, especially paired with twin daggers.

D/D/ SB
S/P/SB

Soldier Exotic/Ascended Set
Berserker Exotic/Ascendec Set

some useful runes and sigils to increase your DPS

More you don’t need as thief in PvE.

I played before ANet ruined Acrobatics and all everything in PvE with D/D-SB with Soldier Gear and neaver had really much problems at all.
Now where I switched to S/P-SB, I find it eaven easier…

Use Daggerstorm, its the most useful Elite, that is able to save your butt…thieves guild and basilisk are for pve just wasted skills, especially Daggerstorm when combined with the healing signet that heals for each hit you make… as it can instantly brign you from 1 hit to grave to max health back when you use it at the right time… and its just the best aoe dps you have as elite while giving you also some important stability for the cases in pvw, where its important for you that you don’t get at any cost cc’ed or where you must reflect a projectile …

As others have said, the two most effective solo PvE builds are:
D/D condi/hybrid with heavy DB use supplemented by Caltrops
S/P power with with heavy Blind PW supplemented with SoM

SB is typically the best secondary, but for boss encounters P/P or P/D might work better.

Thieves can be effective in PvP, but they are very defensively weak which forces them into very specific builds and playstyles to be effective. It’s kind of a problem, but one I don’t really see them addressing in the near future.