Guild Wars 2

SO Anet says that any class can do anything, and i wanted to know if that was true with making a more “tanky” thief. I currently use D/D daggers with Critical Strikes and Trickery, but i want to run TA Explorable and maybe other dungeons and very few people are set up for controlling aggro and being able to just “tank” small groups of enemies (i know you can’t just stand there and take a beating, but i get hit once or twice and i die doesn’t make me someone who wants to be on the front lines holding the mobs attention) and i wanted to ask if anyone has suggestions to making a more “tanky thief” and all.
Thanks

I have seen a tanky con damage thief in sPvP. He used signet of malice, I think it’s called and death blossomed a lot. Just remember there is no range or melee professions in this game, everyone can do it all. I suggested go in and melee when it’s safe and range when it’s not.

Two words: Black Powder. Probably one of the best tank skills in the game.

You have a few ways of playing as a more tanky thief. These are setup as both weapon sets to compliment the builds and the builds themselves.

I’ll go over the weapon set initially before anything else:

Sword is very highly recommended, you can build for Sword/Dagger and have Both Flanking Strike to evade attacks and move around your target quickly evading attacks, but also have Cloak and Dagger to open up with an attack that either dazes or blinds your foe.

You can also build for Sword/Pistol and have a large amount of control against your foe; With Pistol Whip, you have a short ranged daze with a large range hitting attack after; With Headshot, you have a ranged Daze; and with Black Powder, you have an AoE blind. But keep in mind this build is not effective against bosses or more Veterans at end game zones (Also Black Powder is not effective against Dredge).

Double Daggers are not a great tanky build but still somewhat effective as well, With Death Blossom, you have a very small evasion window but hit very rapidly so it can make Signet of Malice not a bad choice as a healing skill. However, this skill is not effective against world bosses (Bleeds stack up to 25 times and your bleeds will fall off very quickly, so it will have to be reapplied very frequently).

Dagger/Pistol works slightly better for tanking, you can jump into the fray quickly with Shadow Shot and place down Black powder to blind nearby foes.

Next I Will go into builds;

One of the primary tanky builds is Acrobatics, this build is setup to have more health, health regeneration, initiation regeneration, and dodge frequency.

As a little bit of a surprise, Shadow arts is very helpful for a more tanky build. It builds for both health regeneration and damage prevention. Most of the build is setup to go in and out of stealth very often, However if you are trying to keep things in your general location stealth is only used for a very short time frame (Example: Stealth so you can blind or daze with your Sword).

Trickery can help in complimenting other trait categories with more initiative, a 7% chance to proc additional initiative, boons on stealing, and dropping caltrops on dodge.

Critical Strike can really just help with critical strikes giving back initiation, signet recharge rate and initiative.

Deadly Arts gives venom recharge rate and weakening foes on poison.

One thing you cannot is, even though you are more tanky, you have to play for preventing damage all together, if you get hit in later zones, it will still hurt very badly (a high health regeneration with toughness helps, but if you mess up some bosses will still 1-2 shot you).

Eh… define tanky? The idea isn’t necessarily that you have to take damage, just that you prevent yourself from dying every time an enemy looks at you.

I’d imagine you could hold onto a Soldier’s Amulet or something, along with Meladru rune set or something. You’d just give up, in exchange, a lot of DPS output. But that’s if you want to go for the traditional idea of tanky.

I’d suggest more that the best way for a Thief to take is to prioritize stealth. Pistol/Dagger. Shadow Arts and what not. Keep vanishing and delaying.

When I was leveling with the first major wave of people from headstart I leveled my thief tanky and sort of became the server’s world event tank. Many fun times were had
I ran S/D and specced for poisons to be up often and to heal me. I preferred Cleric stats for tough/vit/heal.
Since 80 I’ve found a guild to WvW with and went more dps ;P zerker jewelry/weps and knight armor w/ divinity runes ftw

Sharpclaw definitely has the right idea.

Consta stealth with sword is def the way to go. Daze mobs in PvE all the time.

Short bow, caltrops, Signet of malice (the passive healing ability) and dagger storm… spec to good bleed duration and healing and u have a very effective tank for multiple mobs, the more mobs on u the better tank u are just make sure you spam cluster bomb and the mobs keep bleeding !! enjoy!

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/thief#2|10|3537|4001|4004|3989|4485|0|0|0|0|20|1731|1727|0|0|0|0|0|20|2353|1168|0|15|786|0|0|0|0|4|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

There’s my current build. Sword/Pistol for Black Powder lets you tank groups of mobs in melee range.

I much prefer S/P to S/D because Flanking Strike has to be timed perfectly to even be useful, whereas Black Powder is more of a keep-it-up ground-based debuff.

I partially agree with all of you who have mentioned black powder. It is extremely good in open world PvE, but OP mentioned dungeons specifically. Some mobs attack way faster than the field can put blind on them, and bosses will have that buff that makes blinds near useless. It’s good, but it’s only one tool in the toolbox.

While stealth-based builds can give high survivability for the thief, it also tends to make mobs aggro teammates instead. I don’t think that’s what OP had in mind either.

For keeping the mobs’ attention in dungeons, I believe spec’ing for increased initiative works best. This would give you more uses of skills that give you the “evade” effect, preventing all damage. Disabling shot (shortbow-3) is the most notable of these, since you can also use it to maintain cripple for kiting. After that, I’d grab the extra dodging trait and the two traits that give vigor for even more dodging. And to top it off, you can gear for vitality and toughness, but that’s pretty obvious for a “tanky” build.

plus heal, signet of malice, assassin’s reward, and the shadow protector thing to give you regeneration 5 sec anytime you go into stealth. you become a mitigation beast. also learn how to best apply combos like black powder then heart strike to get stealth, and best use of black powder itself. it seems attempting to be as well rounded as possible stat wise other than slight preference to toughness and vitality/+heal is best. you dont do any good dealing worthless damage.

and bountiful theft is another must have to give vigor for double dodge bar regen rate.

here’s how my setup looks just to give the general idea:
http://is.gd/CCtTTz

with a working flanking strike (some day hopefully)
and a certain vigor-oriented spec, u can make a good tanking thief

There are a lot of options available but I have a gripe with blind.

its one of our main sources of damage mitigation but without the ability to stack more than one blind at a time it only becomes useful in some fights. against large slow hitting solo enemies its perfect but in a room with slow ticking and aoe focused mobs of enemies it loses a lot of potency.

I’d invest in evasion and kiting as the best form of survivability at present as you can probably maintain a higher level of damage and be more useful in a range of situations using one of these builds.

personally when I want to be more tanky I don’t respec my damage focused and support traits I just opt for more tanky utility skills such as blinding powder.