Guild Wars 2

I am always a fan of coming up with new things and thought about how viable it would be to use a thief in frontline purely for damage purposes. This is what I came up with.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQJAVWn0MB9OhFmCGPB0PhFqiau63+xvLBCgGwLDShBA-T1SBQBVS1jIcFA23+DXRJBmUDZBPAA9oLgLKxyoyBIpEEAHCASBUkIL-w

Personally I still don’t think it would be viable since its pretty selfish, relies on guardian stability and forces another valuable frontliner out of a party.

tbh it looks good but as you said its pretty selfish because it doesnt really provide boons or protection for your fellow frontline. just stick to the ganking role, which imo is waaay more fun

I like Pain Response, Uncatchable, and Sleight of Hand but mostly for that build I think Upper Hand and Staff Master make a nice feedback loop. You have to keep pace with your endurance to initiative use though and it felt more reliable against large groups and zergs. Against smaller groups and roamers I was sometimes just left alone with nothing to evade to be burst focused and that build needs to be fed stuff to evade.

Pistol offhand on weapons switch has been handy also, I know it’s a tough call but it’s a reliable stealth and ranged interrupt, staff #3 and Vault are enough to bug out with and you can stealth once your’e out of aoe. I’m sure someone who can do the maths can give you a legit build, that’s just what I’ve simmered down to after switching stuff out as needed, could depend on your servers tier also though.

This build reminds me of my own. I prefer Unhindered combatant. As for the gear I found as I run full Ascended Marauders with Daredevil runes. Judge all you want but that guaranteed crit after a dodge is nice.

With that said. Pve is almost no issue. You should be able to get out of anything nasty spots with no problem. Love the HoT content with my daredevil.

If you need to crank out more damage without changing your gear to much change to deadly arts and Crit strikes. You will notice an increase in damage almost right away.

front line thief is not worth it because the dps is not there. i tried it many different version staying alive is not my problem in zerg fights just nothing compare in dmg to what short bow brings to a zerg fight.

if you want to be useful in zerg fighting the way you do it. is you jump in to middle of a zerg spam choking gas everywhere then shadow step out. ingame it may look like you did nothing. but you triggered everyone passive con removal. simple zerg fallow up attack is crushing to other team.

I’ve run a front line thief, it is a challenge because we are entirely reliant on other classes for stability and resistance. At best you can become a front line that sets up picks for the rest of your group and disrupts large groups of people with blinds/weakness. All and all without support from other classes you can’t stay in the heat of the battle, your in, your out, which lends its self better to meta builds.

I ran a staff frontline build a while ago, that was centered around making picks with hook strike, disrupting people with cc/blinds/weakness, and crowd surfing via dodges & vault. It was pretty effective, and neted lots of loot. But ultimately it was useless for anything other than zerg play as it lacked burst to kill most classes.