Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone. First , sorry for my bad english. But , i wanna play with my thief only pve ( fractal’s , raid’s and dungeon’s but, i have no idea what gear ( stats) are atm the best. Yeah , every day im looking on YouTube and another forums something about thiefs but is a one problem..most of build are outdated. One gear it was Viper gear ( condi , power , expertise and precision). What u think guys about this gear? Maybe someone of good thief who play frac , dung and raids can help me with this ? Please

Im playing higher tier fractals on a regular basis. First: berserker. You will always pick berserker stats on everything unless you know what youre doing and have a good reason not to.
partially marauder or even soldier has often been considered a good choice for beginners, but you dont really need it and its better to learn to play with a low health pool from the beginning instead of ‘easing in’ (just my opinion)
You take d/p or staff if you have daredevil and a shortbow as second weapon.
Other weapon sets are possible, but those two will always provide you with highest damage. Agian: You may pick something else, but only if you know, what and why youre doing it. The shortbow is not open for discussion. probably 19/20 thieves use it.

About the traits: take a look at the build at metabattle.com, but dont use it. Its crap, especially for beginners and people without perfect parties.
I strongly recommend you to take critical stikes for invigorating precision but thats a matter of taste.
You will always be wanting to take daredevil, if you own hot that is.
The last one will likely be deadly arts, but trickery might also be valuable.
Try to take all damage boni possible without dying over and over.
Your main role is dps+some break bar, and thats what you focus your build on, take as many defensive traits as you need but not more.

As for the skills: damage (sigils), breakbar(physicals), utility(tricks and deceptions) those are valuable picks that you can use, you can theoretically take wichever you prefer, you will likely experiment around and end up with the same, we all use.
Two beginners mistakes here: I took venoms for quite some time until I actually did the math and was like: ‘I do that whole damage on one autoattack’
And dont take dagger storm, it is a cool skill and seems pretty useful, I used it for long, but actually…you are again better of if you just spend your time autoattacking, rather take impact strike for faster break bars.

If you want any actual builds, i can send you links, but i would need to know if you own HoT or not. My suggestion again: go to metabattle, look at the build with a rational mind and think about what you would do to make it better suit your playstyle.

Edit: if you have problems with the skill or trait names, press right ctrl ingame and you should be able to find them.

Asrat.2645:

Im playing higher tier fractals on a regular basis.

Sweet, me too.

First: berserker. You will always pick berserker stats on everything unless you know what youre doing and have a good reason not to.

“Go zerker” is the lazy way to gear on GW2, particularly when you don’t give any explanations as to what those good reasons not to take it are.

I mean, it’s not that hard. My gear setup is a mixture of some Assassins and mostly Marauders. I sat down with the build calculator and just adjusted the ratio until I had 73% critical chance with all ascended and the signet bonus. I think there is a few jewelry pieces I took Berserkers on, because Marauders wasn’t an option. The option was Berserkers with Valkyries which is not the same as Marauders. Berserkers with Valkyrie results in a loss of precision which is not what I want; Marauders does not.

The reasons why I do this are pretty simple. 73% crit chance results in a 100% critical chance with fury up and attacking from the flank with Side Strike. Critical hits are your damage source with a Critical Strikes (go figure, huh) build and the trait line gives you a ferocity increase that is 10% of your precision. This is why I focus on gearing for crit chance and then laying on more power and ferocity once I get that 73%. You get more over all value for your buck then just blindly choosing Berserkers for everything which uses power as the primary stat.

The other reason is Mauraders is basically losing a very small amount of power and ferocity for a vitality and precision increase and more overall stats. I think a Berserker ascended helm comes out to be 153 total stats where as Maruaders is 168.

That small vitality increase is important in HoT, because there is a lot of things in scaled events that skirt the line of just flat out one-shoting you with your low base health pool and those one-shot abilities aren’t always telegraphed very clearly or noticeable in situations like with snipers in a large zerg in Dragon Stand.

Asrat.2645:

You take d/p or staff if you have daredevil and a shortbow as second weapon.

D/D gives you constant access to stealth for backstab at a cheaper initiative cost then heartseeker/black powder combo in D/P. I would, at best, keep a pistol on me for stealth stacking with another thief, but running it as my main damage weapon over D/D doesn’t make any sense.

Other weapon sets are possible, but those two will always provide you with highest damage. Agian: You may pick something else, but only if you know, what and why youre doing it.

D/D gives you more damage potential than D/P. It even gives you an evasion off your initiative you can leverage if you run out of endurance.

The shortbow is not open for discussion. probably 19/20 thieves use it.

It’s entirely open for discussion now that staff is in consideration. I keep shortbow in my bag for stealth stacking, but I actually run P/P as my secondary over bow with staff. There is a number of reasons for this, mostly, because it deals with weaknesses in my staff build. My AoE damage with staff is superior, I don’t need shortbows mobility with staff’s mobility, most of the time when I want ranged damage it’s in single target situations, it gives me a ranged CC for break bars and black powder gives me my only access to stealth that I have with staff from using it with Bound.

I strongly recommend you to take critical stikes for invigorating precision but thats a matter of taste.

More than a matter of taste. It’s a strong heal with a zerker build, but taking it over No Quarter is a big DPS loss in a zerker build. Once you hit that 73% threshold, you are talking about permenant fury uptime for the 100% crit. Fury gives you 100% and the 100% keeps fury up non-stop. All of your attacks crit for like 240-245% damage with the build I will post below.

The last one will likely be deadly arts, but trickery might also be valuable.

I used to think the same, but some posts on the forums have changed my opinion. I think Deadly Arts is great if you run D/D, but if you run staff, all you really get is a 10% bonus on a target with a condition and a lot of clunky traits. Your lack of reliable access to stealth in staff makes Revealed Power almost worthless. Executioner makes it tempting, but the end result is something too glassy to be practical. Death = 0 DPS.

The new Acrobatics has a lot more synergy with Daredevil and Critical Strikes for a zerker staff build. You get a 15% damage bonus when at full initative, so you get potentially a stronger damage bonus than Deadly Arts and a whole lot of mitigation and sustain. Taking Assassin’s Reward frees up No Quarter over Invigorating Precision in Critical Strikes which is a big dps boost. Hard to Catch is a very useful stunbreaker that also refills your endurance bar for more Bounds. The 2 seconds of evasion proc at 50% synergizes with Daredevil, resulting in multiple procs of the heal and condi removal on evasion.

Try to take all damage boni possible without dying over and over.
Your main role is dps+some break bar, and thats what you focus your build on, take as many defensive traits as you need but not more.

This is counter intuitive if you are recommending taking Critical Strikes and Deadly Arts since they offer very little in the terms of useful defensive traits.

As for the skills: damage (sigils), breakbar(physicals), utility(tricks and deceptions) those are valuable picks that you can use, you can theoretically take wichever you prefer, you will likely experiment around and end up with the same, we all use.
Two beginners mistakes here: I took venoms for quite some time until I actually did the math and was like: ‘I do that whole damage on one autoattack’
And dont take dagger storm, it is a cool skill and seems pretty useful, I used it for long, but actually…you are again better of if you just spend your time autoattacking, rather take impact strike for faster break bars.

Not a whole lot of usable information here. My staple set of utility skills with a Staff build is Channeled Vigor, because it’s too strong of a heal/endurance recharge not to take, Fists of Flurry for break bar, Bandit’s Defense for a stun breaker on a very low cooldown and potential access to another CC for break bar, Signet of Agility for the additional precision and a source of condi removal and endurance recharge and Impact Strike which can decimate 75% of a champion’s break bar.

Break bar annihilation trumps pretty everything in most PvE content. My other setup is where I take all the stealth skills from deception when I am skipping content or doing HP or MP runs.

Anything else I think is situational and comes down to understanding the mechanics of specific fights.

If you want any actual builds, i can send you links, but i would need to know if you own HoT or not. My suggestion again: go to metabattle, look at the build with a rational mind and think about what you would do to make it better suit your playstyle.

Here is what I run. I think the total stats with Fury up and attacking from a flank comes out to be 100.37% crit chance with somewhere between 240-245% crit damage. That comes to be a lot where anything that isn’t a veteran or higher just dies.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAW6an8lCVmiFmCGOBkmildCbeB+ArgbBgaTbqbHMD+BA-TRSBQBP4iGUIdPA4JJcl9HlYmRJYGVGERlGgz0QCV/hUARsMC-e

(Edited: The calculator doesn’t factor in stats on ascended marauder earrings so I had to use exotic to get it close. Maruader’s amulet over Berserkers isnt really worth, given how much of a pain it is to acquire.)

For comparison, here is an all Assassin’s and Berserker’s build min maxed to get as close to 73% crit chance as I could. If the calculator was representing ascended marauder earrings correctly and not forcing me to use exotic, you be basically losing 4k worth of health for nothing. (The former build is missing like 10-20 power, 1-2% crit chance and 4-5% crit dmg from the exotic earrings). There is no power loss between the two builds, because the additional vitality stats scale up your power via the food.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAW6an8lCVmiFmCGOBkmildCrbHMD+BbBgaTbaeB+ArgA-ThRBABPcRDua/R5Xh6eA4JJYmSQKV/hMA6LA-e

(Edited To Add: I actually looked up my original build plan and I forgot about Keen Observer which gives 5% critical chance increase at over 90% health. As a result, if you can manage your health, dropping Side Strikes for Flawless Strike and shooting for 75% crit chance is a DPS increase. You can get the extra few critical hit chance percentage point in the build I posted just by swapping the food from Butternut Squash to Truffle Steak; no gear change is needed.)

Wooow dude. First of all: you really took a long time to comment on everything i wrote. I appreciate that and i willl later go and check some of the things youve said, especially about acro. Might learn a thingy or two.

But for now: of course you can play non-zerker builds. But for a beginner it might be easier to recommend zerker instead of: marauder on a,b,c, valk on d,e and g and f has to be zerker. Its just…you cant do anything wrong with zerker gear.

d/d as far as I know the heartseeker backstab ‘rotation’ is dead since the AA buff, so really all you need is main hand dagger. You rarely have to stealth mid-fight now so whats the use of cnd? personally I like d/p for its utility. The black powder works awesome on trashmobs and headshot helps with the breakbar. Shadowshot is just fun to use.

The shortbow…you might be right there, but i dont think so. not only is it a great mobility and movement tool, it also has saved my life in high level bossfights a lot. p/p might be better damage, but that one evade and shadowshot make a huge difference on molten or mai trin.
The lack of information on the skills is true but intentional. I did not want to go into too much detail there. I usually swap them around, depending on the situation, and again: i didnt want to give a new player too much to worry about. they are probably the least important part of our builds, used mostly as utility outside of fights, cc or passive boni.

What im generally trying to do here is promoting certain ‘strong’ choices without just sticking to the meta. I believe a good way to start is close to the meta (not too close tho, you might get infected) and then work on your own build while you start understanding it. What you recommend here is very specific and very detailed.
Could be seen as positive, but could also cause problems.

And about no quarter: sry but from my observation, most teams provide you with a 90% fury uptime all the time. Its one of the easiest boons to aquire and share and invigoration precision makes the vital diffference between a thief and a little crybaby that keeps going ‘im so squishy’
Id rather have invigorating precision and replace the whole acro line, that does purely defensive stuff with good old DA.

Oh and m8: the two builds youve listed are identical, exept for one featuring only zerker and the other one mostly marauder. The zerker has higher: crit chance (food i suppose), crit damage, power.

Hey guys , im rly grateful for u guys that u say your opinions and tips for thief. Asrat im just now going to GW2 and exact look on all on my thief. Yes i have full game with DLC. You know , I am player who wants to help in team, even if it would be at the expense of smaller dmg. GW2 is rly another game of all games. And for me is to hard to make a rly good gear for any class. MadRabbit for u too rly thanks for opinion and i pay attention on your suggestions. Asrat , its make a problem that i add u in game and if i have any problem then i ask u in game ?

Asrat.2645:

Its just…you cant do anything wrong with zerker gear.

Except lose 4k health for really no reason.

But hey, your opinions are your opinions. I provided my suggestions and I don’t want to get pedantic.

Yeah. its always good to have input from people with diffent opinions. If your stuff works for you, thats great. Never felt like I needed that healthbonus but im far from beeing an authority on that area.
And feel free to add me if you want, im always glad to help, even if I may not be completely qualified ^^

Asrat.2645:

And about no quarter: sry but from my observation, most teams provide you with a 90% fury uptime all the time. Its one of the easiest boons to aquire and share and invigoration precision makes the vital diffference between a thief and a little crybaby that keeps going ‘im so squishy’
Id rather have invigorating precision and replace the whole acro line, that does purely defensive stuff with good old DA.

You be taking a DPS loss and a defensive loss from doing that if running staff.

Even if your group provides you with permenant fury, No Quarter gives you an extra +250 ferocity when fury is active which comes out to be somewhere between like 14-20% damage increase on crits and if you min/max your gear correctly, then you would have 100% crit change so you get this damage increase all the time.

Acro provides a flat 15% dmg increase with full initiative which you maintain with auto attacks.

So like if you take DA as staff, you get potentially a 20% dmg increase when a mob is below 50% and a 10% dmg increase on a target with a condi.

So DA gives you potentially less DPS than Acro and if not, then the two are equal. The difference is Acro doesn’t give you a bunch of useless and clunky traits that don’t work well with staff like Revealed Power.

Asrat.2645:

Yeah. its always good to have input from people with diffent opinions. If your stuff works for you, thats great. Never felt like I needed that healthbonus but im far from beeing an authority on that area.
And feel free to add me if you want, im always glad to help, even if I may not be completely qualified ^^

It’s not a matter of working for me. It’s a matter of mathematics. You may feel that you don’t need the health bonus, but it doesn’t change the fact that you are taking that 4k health bonus loss for really no reason. Marauders provides more overall stats than Berserkers and as a result, I provided two builds that illustrate the differences in stats. The offensive stats are nearly identical, but you get 4k more health from Marauaders.

You can go wrong with Berserkers. It’s sub par in a lot of ways.

Traitlines:

• DA has a 10% mod plus 20% below 50, which averages out to 20% total. Mug is another DPS souce (and heal), as is Revealed Training if running D/D.

• DD has a 10% mod on dodge, 7% melee range mod, and 10% mod on staff. 17% if running D/D, 27% if staff.

• Trick has a maximum 15% mod and lower Steal cooldown, which means more Mug.

• CS has a 17% crit mod, A 5% (10 over 50), and a ~15% depending on precision. We need to apply the crit damage to flat mods for a comparison (assuming 250% with CS, 215% without).

• Acro and SA have no mods.

DA: 2.5*20% or 2.15*20% = 50% or 43%
DD: 2.5*27% or 2.15*27% = 67.5% or 58%
Trick: 2.5*15% or 2.15*15% = 37.5% or 32%

Final effective mods:

250% + 117.5% = 367.5% DA DD CS

215% + 133% = 348% DA DD Trick

It seems DA DD CS is the way to go. As for the gear, zerk is objectively the best DPS. If you feel like you need some health from marauder or valk etc., that’s fine. The extra stats on Marauder are nice, but it is weaker if you only look at DPS. Another build to consider for PvE is viper/sinister venomshare if you want a change of pace.

Edited to correct CS information. I don’t remember the mods being that high.

@ MadRabbit
1. You give up quite a lot of power and ferocity for your build so you damage WILL be lower compared to someone playing berserker gear. It will be easier to use because of the vitality, but i would rather advocate for newer players to take as many berserker pieces as they are comfortable with and take soldier or marauder for survivability until they are comfortable with less health. Then its easier to switch those pieces than to take different gear altogether.

2. Getting 100% critchance on your own isn’t really usefull out in the open world if you are giving up so much damage for it and if you have a spotter ranger or a warrior with banner of discipline in your group (which is the case in raids or many dungeon groups which in the only places where it really matters) you will be wasting that buff. You basically will be critting more often when on your own, but your crits will do considerably less damage.

3. Taking Acrobatics over Deadly Arts is a huge damage loss as every enemy will have at least one condition on them even by just autoattacking them on your own and to call executioner clunky is quite unreasonable as it will increase your damage for 20% over half of every fight. Additionally Mug gives you some nice additional damage and a heal when you need it.

4. Acrobatics doens’t give 15% damage buff while at full initiative, you are thinking of trickery. And while that is a nice buff especially since the autoattack damage was increased it probably won’t be up for the whole fight so is even more inferior to Deadly Arts. So really taking Acrobatics is more of a hindrance, i agree with Asrat that you should switch to Invigorating Precision if you need more survivability.

5. You can survive on HoT maps in full berserker gear without problem if you pay attention to your enemies, if you want an easy time in the open world i would suggest playing ranger

Full zerk, with 8 precision infusions(you can get the wvw ones since you get exactly 8 offensive slots on a full ascended set). That way, with spotter(druid/ranger buff) and banner of discipline(warrior buff) you get 100.08% crit chance, so you’re capped. You dont need any extra health on thief. With 3 evades and 2 vaults(if you get staff), you can dodge absolutely everything. Dying as a thief is purely a L2P issue. Might be hard at first, but you’ll get used to it, and then you’ll see that you’re incredibly strong