Guild Wars 2

I’m looking through my characters and I thought I’d try and level my thief up abit. Its the first time I’ve logged in on him since the patch update.

I’m looking for new builds for pve since the patch. But I’m struggling. There isn’t many people putting pve builds out there for the Thief.

Anyone recommend any builds I can play?

You didn’t say whatfor or what weapons you favour – but you can’t go wrong with DA, CS and Trickery. Although you might want to step away from DA for fractal level 34 or 35.
DA: Mug or Dagger Training, Panic Strike or Revealed Training. Executioner
CS: Flawless Strikes (Side Strikes works for D/D), Practiced Tolerance or Sundering Strikes if you’re mostly group playing, Hidden Killer for dagger mainhand, No Quarter for sword mainhand.
T: I like Haste but the ICD is too long to really make it work; got for Thrill of the crime instead, Trickster if you use some skills marked as tricks, otherwise Bountiful Theft and Sleight of Hand (depends on the situation, probably)

In PVE, I swap between two builds.

#1: Full berskerker gear. Deadly Arts 2/3/3, Critical Strikes 1/2/1, Trickery 3/1/2. Weapon set is whatever I feel like. Usually D/D + Shortbow, but D/P, S/P, and S/D all work well. Scholar Runes. Utilities is are Signet of Malice, Assassin’s Signet, Signet of Agility, Dagger Storm, then a filler utility. Usually it is Smokescreen, but Shadowstep and Shadow Refuge all make an appearance.

Alternates include using haste on flank + trick recharges with haste. Nearly any of the Critical Strikes adept major skills are good, and sundering strikes can also be useful.

The theme of the build is pure damage. It is rare to encounter a PVE mob that won’t go down after mug + Cloak and Dagger into Backstab + Heartseeker. The direct damage is really high. Sword works well for defensive variants, either using the evades on the sword skill or blinds on pistol off-hand.

#2: Venomshare build. Full sinister gear. Traits are Deadly Arts 3/1/1, Trickery 3/1/3, Shadow Arts 3/3/3. Weapons are D/D and D/P. Rune of the afflicted. This has two particular sets of utilities, depending on whether you’re in a group or not. Note: NPCs count as a “group”.

Skelk Venom, Spider Venom, Skale Venom, Filler Skill. Filler is either smoke screen for defense, or Needle Trap for damage. This is good for groups.

By yourself: Skelk Venom, Caltrops, Needle Trap, filler. Filler is either spider venom or smokescreen.

The reason being that the venoms need a team to scale up, but Caltrops and Needle Trap don’t need a team. There’s also another variant: Trapper’s Respite is best if you can pre-cast the needle trap. But, in sustained combat, Dagger Training will do more damage.

Even though the thief doesn’t have any burns, it actually does a whole lot of condi damage in burst. The best way to play this build is to pre-cast the venoms for your group. They linger for 30 seconds, so if used at the right time you can get two waves of venoms in the span of 3 seconds or so. You can also pre-cast traps in the right place, and will be able to use 4 needle traps consecutively. All planning aside, the build basically spams death blossom and then dagger autos until death blossom is off cooldown again.