Guild Wars 2

First, let me say that Thief was my favorite class to level, and I have almost every class at 80. I experimented with many different builds, did lots of events in groups and solo pve and loved it.
The thing is, at 80, I’m finding it really hard to do any level 80 content, more difficult then any of my 80’s. I have 2 Q’s for any advanced thief players, to try and determine what needs to change with my build from a survivability standpoint.
1. Do theives need to build vit/toughness more then other classes? I have 10k hp and die in about 2 or 3 hits in dungeons. My warrior, on the other hand, is full zerks and I rarely have to worry about surviving.
2. Are there any useful traits to help stay alive that I might be missing?

Thanks

for dungeons i carry a sword,dagger, shortbow, and 2 pistols.

plan to swap between weapons sets to suit the needs of an encounter. Heal often- if using pistol signet of malice can give you very sustainable health. I wear a pvt,knights, valk gear mix with zerker weapons and accesorries and run a 0/30/0/25/15 build.

Use a damage food to compensate somewhat.

Positioning and knowledge of enemy abilities will save you. Move to avoid damage often- always be repositioning.

For certain mechanics swap utilities, ala scorpion wire to interrupt or smoke screen to deal with projectiles.

for
1. we don’t have to but it makes things easier imo, positioning is king though
2. SA and acro have very useful passive healing traits, trickery also has escape traits in the adept slot

Scoompoof.4657:

First, let me say that Thief was my favorite class to level, and I have almost every class at 80. I experimented with many different builds, did lots of events in groups and solo pve and loved it.
The thing is, at 80, I’m finding it really hard to do any level 80 content, more difficult then any of my 80’s. I have 2 Q’s for any advanced thief players, to try and determine what needs to change with my build from a survivability standpoint.
1. Do theives need to build vit/toughness more then other classes? I have 10k hp and die in about 2 or 3 hits in dungeons. My warrior, on the other hand, is full zerks and I rarely have to worry about surviving.

1. The main difference between a warrior and the thief is their armor type. Warriors wears heavy armor while thieves wear medium.
2. It seems that you are playing like a warrior when playing with your thief. You need to keep in mind your position and survivability. You need to dodge and evade all the time.
3. I personally run 2 pieces of Soldier (chest and legs) and 4 pieces Valkyrie only because I want a decent staying power
4. I never pick up Berserker’s unless I have to.

2. Are there any useful traits to help stay alive that I might be missing?

Thanks

Depending on your build, which I don’t know, I think stealth and stealth related traits will be good for you. Shadow Arts has a lot of survivability related traits.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

1. The main difference between a warrior and the thief is their armor type. Warriors wears heavy armor while thieves wear medium.
2. It seems that you are playing like a warrior when playing with your thief. You need to keep in mind your position and survivability. You need to dodge and evade all the time.

2. Are there any useful traits to help stay alive that I might be missing?

Thanks

Depending on your build, which I don’t know, I think stealth and stealth related traits will be good for you. Shadow Arts has a lot of survivability related traits.

lol, wait there. Thieves have only 10k base hp at lvl 80, while warriors have 20k. Defense is the main difference, not only the kind of armor they use

I agree with your point here. Thief is more dynamic, you have to run a lot and dodge, go stealth helps too

Valkyrie is really good because of the power/vit combination, and has extra crit damage. Put some points in Shadow Arts or Acrobatics for extra defense (if you like group playing, I strongly suggest Shadow Arts)

HELLruler.4820:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

1. The main difference between a warrior and the thief is their armor type. Warriors wears heavy armor while thieves wear medium.
2. It seems that you are playing like a warrior when playing with your thief. You need to keep in mind your position and survivability. You need to dodge and evade all the time.

2. Are there any useful traits to help stay alive that I might be missing?

Thanks

Depending on your build, which I don’t know, I think stealth and stealth related traits will be good for you. Shadow Arts has a lot of survivability related traits.

lol, wait there. Thieves have only 10k base hp at lvl 80, while warriors have 20k. Defense is the main difference, not only the kind of armor they use

So what is “defense” exactly? Where does the “defense” number used to calculate armor comes from?

Thanks for the input fellas! I took a fresh look at some more defensive traits. Shadow Arts traits are really useful and helped me a lot in the dungeon run I just did.
I decided to try Black powder on pistol and its really helping me a lot when there are lots of enemies (like cof path2 or a few instances in ta)
Going for a more of an in-n-out approach on bosses.
I’m doing a lot better now thanks to the tips. Moving around, stealth, and evasions are helping a lot. It’s def a different play style for me, but I’m liking it.
:D

30 SA for perma regen, heal in stealth, and condi removal when you are getting used to the thief gameplay.

If you are so used to playing a war you can easily just go berserkers S/P on thief and spam 3 for aoe damage and evade while doing it. It’s pretty boring but not much different than what a war does, stand there and dps lol. You also have access to black powder, inf. strike, and an interrupt with headshot. It’s a very useful set.

Armor- Knight/berserker 50:50 with diwinity runes power/prec/vit/crit dmg accessories.
Food:omnobery ghoust(60% chance on crit: lifesteal )
Superior sigil of blood
S/P+caltrops with signet of malice and you are immortal

One single pistol wip heal you for 990HP vs one target(signet of malice) and 1050 HP food+sigil , 2970 HP vs three targets +1050HP food + sigil=one single pistol wip heal you for 4030HP vs three targets.

Caltrops(10s duration every 30 sec) heal you for 110HP vs one target per sec=1100HP vs one target,5500 vs 5 targets.

And dagger storm= over heal you for 8 sec.

Mathias.9657:

If you are so used to playing a war you can easily just go berserkers S/P on thief and spam 3 for aoe damage and evade while doing it. It’s pretty boring but not much different than what a war does, stand there and dps lol. You also have access to black powder, inf. strike, and an interrupt with headshot. It’s a very useful set.

Against an inanimate object or “tank and spank” situation, S/P is indeed the best choice. I call S/P #3 my mini-100blades.

The reason why I love thieves is all of these suggestions are pretty viable. I go 0/30/0/25/15 and use s/d,s/p,p/p with my shortbow always on standby. Don’t neglect your blinds, we can spam blinds and spread them quickly and they really help on tough pulls. I pretty much always slot SR when I’m running with a group even if only to save downed teammates.

My gear set up is a mix of zerker, valk, ands knights. I never liked going full zerker as a thief plus you can get away with the mix in WvW

Signet of malice is key.

I don’t use as much toughness/vitality as some of these suggestions, but caltrops+poison field from shortbow proc signet of malice heal and when you have 3-4 mobs in it you get topped off pretty quick.

Omnomberry ghosts are amazing for staying alive too, especially when you use rapid attacks like pistol whip or unload.

You just need to learn to evade key attacks, position yourself correctly and use blinds when fighting trash. Good thieves dont compromise dps for survivability, they stick with the 25/30/0/0/15 build. If you cant play with it then you may aswell just play a warrior and let someone whos better at thief play it or practise more.

spoj.9672:

You just need to learn to evade key attacks, position yourself correctly and use blinds when fighting trash. Good thieves dont compromise dps for survivability, they stick with the 25/30/0/0/15 build. If you cant play with it then you may aswell just play a warrior and let someone whos better at thief play it or practise more.

You’re the 2nd person, after me, that I’ve seen who put 25 into DA and post it.

I would never advocate using pieces of non zerk gear on my thief though.

spoj.9672:

I would never advocate using pieces of non zerk gear on my thief though.

That would only mean that you’re a high level Thief player and can handle the ’zerker gears well, but to those who are just starting their Level 80 adventure, ’zerker would be their source of many frustrations.

spoj.9672:

You just need to learn to evade key attacks, position yourself correctly and use blinds when fighting trash. Good thieves dont compromise dps for survivability, they stick with the 25/30/0/0/15 build. If you cant play with it then you may aswell just play a warrior and let someone whos better at thief play it or practise more.

I heard this game is so hard that only pro gamers are allowed to play certain classes. Give me a break…

Strayhand.8216:

spoj.9672:

You just need to learn to evade key attacks, position yourself correctly and use blinds when fighting trash. Good thieves dont compromise dps for survivability, they stick with the 25/30/0/0/15 build. If you cant play with it then you may aswell just play a warrior and let someone whos better at thief play it or practise more.

I heard this game is so hard that only pro gamers are allowed to play certain classes well. Give me a break…of that KitKat bar.

There, I fixed it.

Ok, thank you for being clear in what you want to know. That being said, you can do whatever you want to increase your survivability as long as it makes sense and is viable in your preffered playstyle and role.
So to better answer your question, are you looking to be a dps in pve? If so, one way you can increase your survivability and maintain good damage is to throw 15 points into Acrobatics and grab Power of Inertia and the minor trait after that.

This gives you more dodges than usual, and therefore makes you more survivable while not reducing your dps (by much lol). You do not NEED ptv gear to imcrease your survivability. in my opinion in gw2, you can do any dungeon as a glass cannon, if you know 2 things, how to avoid all types of damage or at least counter them, and which mobs or bosses have “one shot” mechanics.

With the knowledge I provided for you I hope you can best answer your own question as you see fit. Gl in PvE!

freelancecoma.8629:

Ok, thank you for being clear in what you want to know. That being said, you can do whatever you want to increase your survivability as long as it makes sense and is viable in your preffered playstyle and role.
So to better answer your question, are you looking to be a dps in pve? If so, one way you can increase your survivability and maintain good damage is to throw 15 points into Acrobatics and grab Power of Inertia and the minor trait after that.

This gives you more dodges than usual, and therefore makes you more survivable while not reducing your dps (by much lol). You do not NEED ptv gear to imcrease your survivability. in my opinion in gw2, you can do any dungeon as a glass cannon, if you know 2 things, how to avoid all types of damage or at least counter them, and which mobs or bosses have “one shot” mechanics.

With the knowledge I provided for you I hope you can best answer your own question as you see fit. Gl in PvE!

Keep in mind that every time you dodge is a loss of DPS. Shadow Arts, not Acrobatics, gives Thieves the survivability without sacrificing DPS.

However I agree that it depends on the play style because I can see a high level of play style that can take advantage of Power of Inertia and turn a dodge into DPS boost. Unfortunately, someone has to practice it to perfect it, but if the OP is willing, he can take that crash course and skip the rest of learning process.

Vincent! My maan! Lol good to see you, and absolutely! You are 100% accurate in that statement.

I was merely trying to give a simple example for the sake of the forum topic.

that is why the “holy trinity strat” imho is the most potentially effective for pve in Gw2. Please note this is my opinion only, however, I believe I formed It based on what I know as “facts of gw2 pve” and "facts of pve in other mmo’s. Thats all I got for now. Lol.

Lmao to verify, vincent and I do NOT have a homosexual relationship. I called him “my man” as a term of endeerment, because he has earned my respect. This can mean whatever he wants it to. To me it means I consider him an intelligent player, and someone who is a respectful person. So I sincerely hope my respect for him is valued by him cus I feel he deserves it. That means (assuming he also respects me in a similar manner,) that we have mutual respect for eachother. Just makin sure no one gets the wrong idea about either of us haha.

freelancecoma.8629:

Lmao to verify, vincent and I do NOT have a homosexual relationship. I called him “my man” as a term of endeerment, because he has earned my respect. This can mean whatever he wants it to. To me it means I consider him an intelligent player, and someone who is a respectful person. So I sincerely hope my respect for him is valued by him cus I feel he deserves it. That means (assuming he also respects me in a similar manner,) that we have mutual respect for eachother. Just makin sure no one gets the wrong idea about either of us haha.

Alright.

Lol Zacchary, you humble me so effectively haha

freelancecoma.8629:

Lmao to verify, vincent and I do NOT have a homosexual relationship. I called him “my man” as a term of endeerment, because he has earned my respect. This can mean whatever he wants it to. To me it means I consider him an intelligent player, and someone who is a respectful person. So I sincerely hope my respect for him is valued by him cus I feel he deserves it. That means (assuming he also respects me in a similar manner,) that we have mutual respect for eachother. Just makin sure no one gets the wrong idea about either of us haha.

Respect among Thief players here are mutual and it’s a given, no need to mention it. And of course, you’re the only one who can disrespect yourself. So, if I am disrespected, I probably deserved it.

Thanks to all of the feedback, and some extra in-game help from a few if you guys, thief has become a lot more viable for me. I grossly underestimated Signet of Malice. I found using caltrops, poison field, and Cluster bomb detonations can keep me at 75% to full health with ease.
Shadow refuge is one of the moves that blew my mind very early on, and its usefulness in dungeons makes it a staple utility for me. I remember seeing that when I was leveling my Guardian during beta and saying “wow” out loud.

Scoompoof.4657:

1. Do theives need to build vit/toughness more then other classes? I have 10k hp and die in about 2 or 3 hits in dungeons. My warrior, on the other hand, is full zerks and I rarely have to worry about surviving.

it’s only the dev team fault here !!!
we have been nerfed so hard, ANYTHING is better than thief in pve these days.

Sir Vincent III.1286:

spoj.9672:

I would never advocate using pieces of non zerk gear on my thief though.

That would only mean that you’re a high level Thief player and can handle the ’zerker gears well, but to those who are just starting their Level 80 adventure, ’zerker would be their source of many frustrations.

He’s in rT → he’s OP :P
Anyway I prefer 30-30-10-0-0 because 25-30-0-0-15 is only better when you are using sword more than dagger (usually you want use sword only for trash) or when the fight is shorter than 10s.
When you really calculate the dps you’ll notice that you run out of initiative very soon so you lose 10% dmg or backstabs at all.

+ 5% dmg at the first 2-3 backstabs but -10% dmg the rest of the fight or 2.5 AA chains after 1 backstab.
But sry for offtopic^^"

Sir Vincent III.1286:

HELLruler.4820:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

1. The main difference between a warrior and the thief is their armor type. Warriors wears heavy armor while thieves wear medium.
2. It seems that you are playing like a warrior when playing with your thief. You need to keep in mind your position and survivability. You need to dodge and evade all the time.

2. Are there any useful traits to help stay alive that I might be missing?

Thanks

Depending on your build, which I don’t know, I think stealth and stealth related traits will be good for you. Shadow Arts has a lot of survivability related traits.

lol, wait there. Thieves have only 10k base hp at lvl 80, while warriors have 20k. Defense is the main difference, not only the kind of armor they use

So what is “defense” exactly? Where does the “defense” number used to calculate armor comes from?

Oh, sorry, theres a stats called “defense”, so that got messed up. Defense means hp pool, armor, and damage avoid mechanics like block and dodge and going invulnerable and cond removal for this game

Thats it. Warriors have more base hp and armor, they have blocks. The rest both classes have. The kind of armor is part of “armor” lol

TL; DR dodge, choose the right weapon set, have balanced party composition.

GEARS

I carry two armour sets with me:

1. Berserker with divinity runes
2. PVT with Wurm runes

My trinkets, back piece, and weapons all have berserker stats.

Armour set 1 is my main which I wear almost always in PvE. Set 2 is my WvW roaming armour but I do use it in some high level fractals from time to time to avoid getting one-shotted (mainly fractal 38, and recently 48 since I decided to stop being lazy) .

In dungeons that I run (AC, CoF, SE, CoE, and TA) I use armour set 1 always.

BUILDS
There are two builds that I run regularly and one build that I used to run. Builds that I do run are:

1. 25/30/0/15/0 (more defensive)
2. 25/30/0/0/15 (more offensive)

My favourite build, and the one I run most often, is build 1 since I do dodge quite a lot and the build helps with that. I run build 2 when I am in an organised group or we have lots of defense but not much DPS in party (5% damage or fury on steal).

The build that I used to run (in fractals mainly) and no longer do is:

• 0/30/10/15/15 (utility and defense)

With the 10 in Shadow Arts I could go for condition removal on stealth or initiative on stealth (long stealths for trash runs). This build is much easier to play but doesn’t do as much damage.

SURVIVAL

My survival comes from two sources:

1. dodge
2. weapon choice
3. party composition

The first is obvious and most people know about it: dodge whenever necessary.

The second, a lot of thieves do not know. They find a favourite weapon set and stick with it regardless what they are fighting. Doing this will not only make you an ineffective party member, it will probably get you killed often and make you a burden. I kitten the suitability of my weapon set for each fight. It doesn’t take long to swap weapons. The weapon sets I use:

• D/D I use this for single target fights, i.e. bosses mainly. Your highest DPS weapon set up. Use CnD for DPS or when the enemy targets you. Your survival comes from dodging and stealthing at the right moments to transfer aggro.
• X/P Black Powder (pistol 5) is an AMAZING ability when fighting non-champion mobs. If they are blind, they cannot hit you or your party members. In the groups that I am in, I insist on using loss of line of sight to bunch enemies around a corner. You cast pistol 5 and then spank them with impunity. The set-ups can be
  S/P: cleave, lock-down (e.g. grawl fractal), dodge;
  D/P: hard-hitting, non-champion, single targets (e.g. silver mobs);
  P/P: when staying at range is the sensible thing to do (e.g. final boss of dredge fractal)

• S/D I use this primarily in dredge fractal as they are immune to blind and I want to have the cleave, dodge and boon steal. The boon steal is handy in other places as well (e.g. CoE).

• SB I love shortbow. While P/P gives higher DPS vs single targets, SB is amazing vs groups. The readily available and spammable blast finisher is also great. I have SB almost always equipped.

• P/D I never use it.

A third survival factor is party composition. If you go into dungeons without the necessary kits (reflects, cc, damage, condi removal, boon steal, etc), you’ll have a very hard time or won’t succeed at all. My favourite composition for high level fractals is 2xGuardians + 3xDPS.

Final comment everyone dies from time to time.

P.S. Your utility skills should be changing for each fight if needed.

I’m having a few problems here and hopefully someone has some tips and I should mention that I’m pugging 100% at this point. I get the dodge thing on bosses, and for the most part, I do fine there, but on trash, there seems to be so much aoe damage flying around that within 5 seconds of entering melee, I go down faster than Steve Irwin in a tank of stingrays.

Doing Path 3 of AC tonight, the group just stacked up and LoS pulled the spider and did the same later on the lizards. I couldn’t even see what was going on much less dodge anything. Is this just a case where everyone who pugs is in full out tank spec? I mean I never got a chance to do much of anything other than die on these two pulls.

Sadly, the only option I see is to gear and specialize in defense, which seems like a cop-out. But I don’t see anything I could have done there in the chaos and actually survived except to spend like 90% of the time running short bow, which isn’t why I rolled this class. It’s staggering how different the dungeons are from the leveling.

Is this something you guys are running into? I also have problems on small bosses where they’re just buried in particle effects. Is there a way I can limit that?

d/d condition = Signet of Malice + Caltrops + Death Blossom

You will be healing so much you’de think SoM was OP.

Xzygy.1452:

…

Doing Path 3 of AC tonight, the group just stacked up and LoS pulled the spider and did the same later on the lizards. I couldn’t even see what was going on much less dodge anything. Is this just a case where everyone who pugs is in full out tank spec? I mean I never got a chance to do much of anything other than die on these two pulls.
…

S/P.

15 characters.

I run 25/20/0/25/0, adjusting major traits for weapon set. Seems flexible enough to me, seeing as I’ve run nothing else since November or so.

DA-wise I like to run mug for the aw snap heal/entertainment factor of killing stuff while otherwise disabled. Dagger/combined training based on whether I’m using daggers or not, obviously.

Between CS and acro you’ll get to tweak your healing/init regen/might stacking/situational weapon-based traits and get the most out of whatever you’re using.

If you’re not really gonna need to bring any utility to your party going full signet with signets of power/signet use is pretty baller – 20% signet CD, 5 mights and 2 init on signet use. Combo with either Assassin’s Reward or Quick Recovery depending on if you want less button mashing and more healing or more buttonmashing and less paying attention. I don’t personally run AR ever, but hey, the option is there.

Between the 50 kinds of initiative gain you should be able to BP/PW you way through just about anything.

Another thing worth mentioning – power of inertia with the 25% boon duration you get from acro and a set of 3×20% might runes is pretty fun if you’re also running signet traits.

i havent read it, but if u want a good wvw build here’s what i’m using these days http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmaPHdy5E+5Ey2jdqCJKuHOlR1UaFoJA-jUyAorASWAoCgJPl1sngYVrIas6aMl7QU1uwA-w

HELLruler.4820:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

HELLruler.4820:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

1. The main difference between a warrior and the thief is their armor type. Warriors wears heavy armor while thieves wear medium.
2. It seems that you are playing like a warrior when playing with your thief. You need to keep in mind your position and survivability. You need to dodge and evade all the time.

2. Are there any useful traits to help stay alive that I might be missing?

Thanks

Depending on your build, which I don’t know, I think stealth and stealth related traits will be good for you. Shadow Arts has a lot of survivability related traits.

lol, wait there. Thieves have only 10k base hp at lvl 80, while warriors have 20k. Defense is the main difference, not only the kind of armor they use

So what is “defense” exactly? Where does the “defense” number used to calculate armor comes from?

Oh, sorry, theres a stats called “defense”, so that got messed up.

No problem. I just didn’t like the fact that you “lol” at my reply when I specifically wrote “armor type” in my post implying that I was talking about the defense stats.

Defense means hp pool, armor, and damage avoid mechanics like block and dodge and going invulnerable and cond removal for this game

No they don’t. Defense means defense as stats. HP pool is HP or health. Armor is armor. Dodge is dodge. And evade is evade. Etc. Miscalling them “defense” only makes you a failure at communication.

Thats it. Warriors have more base hp and armor, they have blocks. The rest both classes have. The kind of armor is part of “armor” lol

Sigh, clueless. I’ll just add you to my “do not reply” list. Have a nice day.