Guild Wars 2

I am quite new to the game and i have chosen a thief as first char. I’ve been reading this forum a lot and researching to find a good way to make a decent build for PvP.

As many of you must have must experienced at first, i was quite in shock the first times i tried to pvp, mostly due do the hard nature of the profession current design. My first attempt, was, of course, D/D pve burst build and I was hoping to deliver some nice killing blows. Boy, was I naive! I was a glass-cannon and i was easily broken down to pieces at the first attempt to make a shot.

Since then I’ve been in a constant strive to understand the profession better, studying it, experimenting with its traits, weapons, utilities and gearing modes (runes, sigils, amulet etc). Obviously, i found myself cracking my head open trying to balance the tradeoffs i would have to make in order to get a functional thief that i felt comfortable with. I am impressed with the pains i had to go to find a way of making the most DPS as possible while maintaining a minimum of survivability.

Now i come to seek your opinion on the result of what i think might be a balanced set of choices, although it seems to me that a stealth class shouldn’t strive much to get their DPS going as it currently is. So I’m kind of thinking: “I know that I’m a noob. But am I really doing something real wrong that I’m not aware of?” I get the feeling that i should be doing a lot of damage, whereas I’m not.

So here it is my build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAoa4al0Mp7plOx6J8PNBORxbL0B+FFaHAr2CC-TphFwAAOBADeAAGOIAMOCAw3fYaZAA

First of all: welcome to the thief glad to see more people choosing thief, even though we have a date with the nerf bat regularly.

First off I want to say that pretty much all shadow arts traits are close to useless in sPvP. When you are in stealth you won’t contest the point you are fighting on, thus being at no use while you are in stealth. Therefore stealth is used more offensively in sPvP than in WvW. I use it to set up burst, sneak around unseen or to position myself – not to heal or hide.

A popular build currently are the panic strike 6/0/2/0/6 build. I want to recommend it since it has ok condition removal, good control and good damage. I want to tell you right now that thief is squishy. We will die if focused in any team fight. Therefore it is our job to control the fight, stay on the sideline and wait for the right moment to strike. It is hard to learn, but when mastered, one of the most rewarding professions in the game!

Secondly: have Shortbow as your second set. The control, AoE damage and positioning tools this set give you is so valuable that it is almost mandatory on all sPvP builds!

Improvisation: this trait is too unpredictable, which is why it is rarely used. I would rather take dagger training over that trait.

i will write more later when I get back from work.

Please do. I am also another player getting into thief PvP, and I’d be glad to hear a viable build in detail, now that the patch has hit.

Geiir,

Did you pay attention to the build i made ?

I didn’t spend the points I did on SA to hide and heal. I didn’t even got it’s healing GM trait. I did find, however, the trait that gives you stack of power when you gain stealth quite interesting, since my objective with this trait is to increase burst damage and to be able to pop in and out of stealth quite a lot. That’s how i think this build is going to work. A lot of backstabs, blinds and stealth.

I don’t see very much how SA is a complete waste for sPvP, for it gives me no perma-stealth. I would be popping in and out of stealth a lot, but not indefinitely stealthed, so i guess i can still contest a point.

I am trying to increase my damage, since it is mostly lost (when you drop from the 6/6/0/0/2 burst direct damage) if you want to survive (either going acro or trick or w/e).

About the Short bow. I surely think SB is a good weapon to have on a second hand and i definitely see its uses even withing this build. But there are some questions concerning it as a choice:

1. Currently, i am concerned only with winning a simple 1v1 fight, which sometimes i just get face-rolled, depending on my foe class and build. How is short bow going to give me the boost i need then, if its main utility is AoE dmg?

2. If, as a thief, i see myself taking an interest in using a AoE dmg weapon, i begin to wonder if I am playing it right. Because in my conception of what a Thief should be, he shouldn’t be AoE damage downing a mob. He should be striving to go to places where enemy defense is at 1v1 level to take it down as quickly and as efficiently as he can. That’s why stealth mechanics are there for in the first place. You’re no thief on a mob, you are a thief on 1v1. Thiefs, conceptually, are to be ganked if they play a mob. I’m not saying that thiefs are worthless against a mob but if your main purpose is to take out numbers i guess there are other classes better suited for this job.

Yes, I saw every point of your build.

I know you didn’t pick the heal on stealth trait, but I was just mentioning it since there will probably be quite a few other new thieves that read this. There was no offense intended.

However, Shortbow can be used in duels, especially against thieves. Many top thieves use it more than daggers actually. Thief is unfortunately not the king of 1v1 in the current meta. What we do have is extremely good mobility which let us move quickly around the map. We can decap their home and a few seconds later be back on mid aiding the team fight. Dropping AoE poison will help a lot in the team fight, even just auto attacking with Shortbow or using cluster bomb in a team fight can do amazing damage.

But as I understood it you want to be a duelist? sPvP is not about 1v1. It is about scoring points by holding nodes. Yes, killing do give points, but it is far more important to help out in a team fight than winning that 1v1. If you want to participate in the duel servers, then your build may do quite well, but in a conquest map it is not optimal. I do however give you credits for trying your own build! That is something many thieves fail to do, which also takes away a lot the experience needed. I’ll continue on my previous post with tips and build ideas ^^

Mug, adept trait in deadly arts, is better than sundering strikes btw. The heal and extra burst damage is invaluable.