Guild Wars 2

I’ve been brainstorming builds here, and came up with a good build that focuses on staying stealthed for as long as possible, with as short of a cooldown as possible, as well as Mug + steal cd reduction, using double dagger, it’s more of a backstab build.

http://www.gw2builds.org/create/bwe_1/thief#0.0.3.0-1.2.8.13.2-10.15.20.0.25-5.7.6.3.10.11

10 Deadly Arts – Only for Mug and the slight boost to power:

I’ve looked over all unlockables in the Deadly Arts tree, and most seem lackluster. Sundering Strikes stacks to 25, each stack increases damage taken by 1%.. good on paper, but not in practice. Most targets die quickly in spvp and WvWvW.

Most other skills in Deadly Arts are lackluster, and take too much commitment to the tree to be effective (the 25 trait is good, the 30 traits are quite lackluster IMHO)…. So I feel anything over 10 in Deadly Arts is sacrificing extreme amounts of flexibility you could have in other trees.

15 Critical Strikes – Thieves live for critical hits and +crit damage.

Keen Observer -The 5 point trait is amazing, a free 5% crit when at above 90% health. Thieves open first with stealth, and it would prove to be very beneficial.

Side Strike – The 10 point trait is also very beneficial, +7% crit when attacking target from the side or behind.

Opportunist – The 15 point trait, amazing. 20% chance to get an initiative on crit, excellent for initiative regeration on longer fights.

I feel also, anything above 15 Critical Strikes is pumping more into the actual passives the tree offers, with nothing much to show. The 20 traits are lackluster. The 25 and 30 traits are ridiculously good, but require too much investment into the tree to prove useful in a WvWvW scenario, because you are sacrificing tons of survivability for single target burst….allthough it would be an excellent 1v1 build.

20 Shadow Arts – Shadow Arts is an AMAZING survivability tree. Passive + healing and toughness, and amazing traits that are good on paper AND practice.

Last Refuge – 5 point trait. A free passive blind when your health drops at or below 25%, this has saved my life numerous times and has also been a tide turner.

Master of Deception – 10 point trait. Deception skills recharge 20% faster. Helpful for stealth, and utility. Allthough, I am not 100% sure, but I believe this only works on Blinding Powder, Shadowstep, Shadow Refuge, and Smoke Screen according to:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Deception_

But still, faster AoE blinds, and more AoE stealth + heal from Shadow Refuge is a plus, as well as stun break + teleport, as well as ranged projectile protection is pretty sweet and well worth it IMHO.

Meld with Shadows – 15 point trait. 1 second longer on stealth means for easier backstabs, longer Cloak and Dagger stealth, longer Shadow Refuge stealth, and Shadow Trap stealth + Hide in Shadows stealth, makes for some crazy long stealth chains. I also utilize Hidden Thief 20 point, unsure if it gives you an extra second of stealth on that one though. (Can someone confirm/deny?)

Hidden Thief – 20 Point trait. We are utilizing Mug to its full extent here, so may as well get stealth from it for 2 seconds (as I said above possibly 3, unsure if Meld with Shadows works with it).

25 Trickery – Again, we are utilizing Mug, 25 Trickery offers the cooldown reduction on steal TWICE, (passive + trait) plus initiative gain while stealing and more.

Kleptomaniac – 5 point trait. 3 free initiative on stealing, in a Mug build is great.

Instinctual Response – 10 point trait. Blind + stealth when you take 20% health in an attack. More lovely stealth chains :-)

Preparedness – 15 point trait – +3 max initiative, good for maxing openers on targets.

Trickster – 20 point talent – 20% faster trick recharge. According to GW2W – this effects haste which is all you really need it for. Also, I am unsure if this effects steal/Mug. (Confirmation would be great!)

Lead Attacks – 25 point trait. Increases damage by 1% per current initiative you have. Superb for backstab openers, and Heartseeker as well as sustained damage.

I feel this is a pretty solid sPvP and WvWvW build, and would like it if you all would offer input, suggestions, changes, etc in all forms. Constructive criticism always welcome!

Thanks! :-)

Well I tried your build in some random spvp but I adjusted it to my liking – I took infusion of shadow over master of deception. I used haste, blinding powder and shadow signet. I got A LOT of hate whispers using your build and it was pretty effective in quick join spvp. Anyway, if you could maybe make your build in one of the many fansite build editors and link it here that would be much easier to show everyone.

1 question, 1 comment.

1. Does last refuge (health drop below 25% hp forces a blinding powder) and instinctual response (another BP if you take more than 20% hp in an attack) work even if you have stealth immunity from coming out of a stealth? As a thief you don’t want too many stealths because of that.

2. Hidden thief trait (steal stealth’s you) is useless if you have a ranged weapon in your mainhand. You steal, stealth, then whatever that weapon’s number 1 ability immediately fires off…but that’s only for ranged. Melee weapons dont do it…it’s weird.

Sounds pretty good. I think it’s hilarious that Whargoul received hate messages for it. Yet more evidence that the hatred of thieves is a blind rage just because they were outplayed. This is a very busy build and sacrifices harder-hitting finishers for some damage avoidance and utility, should be good.

The build is kind of like this:

http://www.gw2builds.org/create/bwe_1/thief#0.0.0.0-1.2.8.13.2-10.15.20.0.25-5.7.6.3.10.11

@Rimarlk Yes you are right, but you don’t wanna SPAM stealth skills. You want utilize every cooldown you can.

So you can stealth open on someone, then wait for them to hit you for 20% of your health to stealth you, then you still have your other stealth that you would have used, still avaliable on cooldown, so you can milk the immune to stealth a little more.

Or stealth open, backstab > backstab > Mug gives stealth > go from here wherever you wish.

I wanted to add that I personally used Signet of Malice with this build and it worked really well with the daggers but I feel any of the heal skills work well with it.

Hey Martym what gear stats are you using? I used knights amulet with zerker gem and divinity armor runes. For weapons I used force mh air offhand. I was pretty tough cookie with roughly 20k hp and all the stealth.

@Whargoul

Hehe, you wouldn’t believe me, but I am only level 57 at the moment. I’ve just been really tired of honestly, sucking as a thief, and running garbage builds. So I spent about 4 hours straight today brainstorming trying to better myself, and this is what I came up with, so I figured I would share it with the higher levels, to see if I am on the right path.

But as far as gear goes, I feel I have room to say, because I do understand stats really well, but currently I’m limited to lower level gear stats. I feel pretty effective running power precision and +crit damage gear at the moment.

I am hoping when I get higher, to be able to incorporate condition damage gear to the said above, so I can utilize Death Blossom bleeds more.

I think Death Blossom is awesome, and is a very efficient way to kill higher armored targets, you can bleed them, and kite them with Dagger Throw + Heartseeker away/double tap dodge away kiting for melee.

Anything else you could add, I will be all ears. I’m always wanting to get better and feel there’s always room.

Thanks for the responses.

(Almost level 58 woo!)

Edit: Also thinking about incorporating some +heal stats if I have room to, without sacrificing too much damage. I figure with the 20 shadow arts giving +heal, I may be able to run Signet of Malice effectively, to get a small steady stream of heals coming in.

But the thing with that signet, is I feel if I don’t go Critical Strikes 20, for Signet Use -20% recharge on signets, I may be kittening myself…. So I may need to do some tweaking on the build.

But I feel running the Signet of Malice with a similar build with all the stealths, I wouldn’t kitten myself too much on stealths, losing Hide in Shadows to the Signet of Malice.