Guild Wars 2

Hi All,

I check the forums, searched on map or world, and nothing came back. I used my L80 on a Thief , and was wondering if there are any good builds to speed through map completion. I don’t have any class with map completion yet, so this one might be my first, and I know that Thief was recommended as one of the best for map completion.

Thanks,

If you have Daredevil, then you can easily just use the meta staff DPS build and swap Bound for Dash. That will give you 100% swiftness and short bow will also bump up your mobility. Pop in Shadow Step for even more mobility if you like.

Meanwhile, you’ll get plenty of burst and dps from using staff skills.

For map completion, you don’t really need to be too picky with your build as most everything will steamroll open world content anyways. HoT gets a little messier, but bringing a stun break or two is all you need. However, adding mobility will allow you to clear everything better and traiting Dash and bringing short bow will cover most of that for you.

High mobility builds that use Shortbow and Shadowstep are preferable to allow you to move around quickly.

Daredevil is also good for perma-swiftness, although if you prefer Acro is acceptable to also grant perma swiftness.

Also, having a high stealth uptime can help with avoiding things you don’t need to kill. Easier to grab a point of interest or a hero point in a cave if you don’t have to fight a lot of veterans to channel it.

I’d also recommend going a little tankier or evade heavy for HoT maps just because you may have to solo content that can hurt a lot more than in vanilla maps. (Assuming you go for HoT completion).

I would recommend a build that incorporates the following:

Thieves Guild elite skill. Having summoned allies to draw aggro is really important when you are doing 100% world map completion, at least against tougher enemies.
Signet of Shadows. Permanent 25% movement speed boost if you don’t want to worry about stacking Swiftness.
If you’d rather stack swiftness than rely on Signet of Shadows, use Runes of the Centaur in conjunction with Acrobatics line.
AoE damage. You will spend most of your fighting time against mobs. Short bow, cleave on sword, Caltrops all work here.
No need to go full glass. A little extra vitality (and even some toughness) is fine.

Shadow stepping is a little overrated for map completion, in my opinion. I mean, go ahead and equip short bow in your second slot and use that, but the Shadowstep utility is a waste of a slot to me. Shadow stepping only works when there is a valid path. Swiftness and Signet of Shadows always work. Just my opinion.

And not for nothing, but I did map completion on a ranger with a tank pet and that was easy as pie: just let the pet draw aggro and you attack from distance. Works on every single fight. I honestly would recommend Ranger over Thief if map completion is your only goal.