Guild Wars 2

Anyone tried this? It seems like it would be fun.

sorry. what is this?

Travlane.5948:

sorry. what is this?

Gear set.

Vitality/Power/Toughness

I have always wanted to try a bunker Thief. It seems like it would be a blast for PVE things but as for Spvp WVWVW, I don’t think it would work very well. You kind of have to have damage to be viable.

the questions come down to:

How would you supplement it? where would the healing and other damage reduction come from?

After you’ve sorted them out how long do you feel you’d stay alive and whats your now abysmal damages average time for a down?

with lowest base HP and second lowest base armour thieves are not really in a good position to start really focusing on a vital/tough bunker set both guardians and elementalists would be able to due to the other defensive mechanics they get (boons, healing etc) which compliment such stats well, the defenses thieves get don’t really compliment those stats being about evasion rather than prevention.

Daecollo.9578:

Travlane.5948:

sorry. what is this?

Gear set.

Vitality/Power/Toughness

oh…the new one……not sure it would work for thief……unless u go t 30 30 x x x. no way enough dmg oging out…..idk just my opinion. i think itd be best for a warrior or just mixed in with balanced sets?

best bunker set is carrion. bc of caltrops and hard to catch and blind on invis and death blossom and extra vigor traits. spvp its amazing and i run it in wvw zergs too /sometimes mixed w/ venom share……this sentinel set will never be a better thief bunker set….. as dasorine said.

Daecollo.9578:

Anyone tried this? It seems like it would be fun.

Not at all. Thief dmg is terribad if not offensive specced. With that gear all you will do is troll ppl around. Only a ranger can spec full bunker and still do dmg, just cos pets are ridiculously op in pvp (small scale).

I personally think Soldier’s armor works better. The extra power lets you kill things while the extra vitality doesn’t add enough HP to be impressive. I’ve been running around with full p/v/t armor and 0/20/30/20/0 and it’s pretty amusing. You don’t kill bunkers but anything else dies just fine. If you use s/d and d/p you don’t really die either.

And PvE is enjoyable with it still. I often play tank in dungeons runs like CoF and TA when tagging along with guildies just because there’s rarely someone that can stick around in melee range as long as a thief (assuming you’re combining your vit/tgh with evades).

Humorless.1573:

I personally think Soldier’s armor works better. The extra power lets you kill things while the extra vitality doesn’t add enough HP to be impressive. I’ve been running around with full p/v/t armor and 0/20/30/20/0 and it’s pretty amusing. You don’t kill bunkers but anything else dies just fine. If you use s/d and d/p you don’t really die either.

And PvE is enjoyable with it still. I often play tank in dungeons runs like CoF and TA when tagging along with guildies just because there’s rarely someone that can stick around in melee range as long as a thief (assuming you’re combining your vit/tgh with evades).

Thought I was the only one haha. Although I run 0/30/30/10/0 with D/P + S/D. Working on a new build at the moment though, and to be honest by the looks of the build calculator it looks rather tasty

I think some people are too hasty. As a roamer/dps, I don’t see that gearset working, but if you’re a Venom-Share with the purpose of support in zergs or dungeons, (main SB//S/D), you can survive pretty decently if you spec 30/x/30/x/x.

The thief philosophy is to avoid damage with blind, smoke, stealth, evade, and positioning. If you do that right then your vitality and toughness are not being used. Of course thieves are not perfect so you need to be able to soak a few hits but there’s no need to build totally defensively.

As a thief noob, I have geared almost full PVT with some emerald trinkets to complement. I did this to have a back-up when i failed to dodge, stealth or blind foes as I learn the mechanics.

I run a full bunker spec at 0/0/30/20/20, I would never run this in tourney but because my focus on thief right now is wvw and I can quickly fill up perception sig and use master maintain and BoCBSS, I can still crit fairly regularly but I don’t get the dmg numbers of dmg focused specs. My BS is 3kish on a crit at best (against 80 full exo).

As i get more comfortable with the thief mechanics, I’ll start to test 10/30/30/0/0 and less tanky gear… but for now, the tanky build keeps me alive longer and that helps with learning the class, it’s more forgiving.

Stooperdale.3560:

The thief philosophy is to avoid damage with blind, smoke, stealth, evade, and positioning. If you do that right then your vitality and toughness are not being used. Of course thieves are not perfect so you need to be able to soak a few hits but there’s no need to build totally defensively.

Don’t forget that you can turn your logic around. By having vit/tgh you can afford to stop worrying about evading/blinds/CCs and focus on damage for example without instantly falling over and dying.

That and when you’re up against a tanky spec in pvp you won’t have to worry about dying; that means you can “practice” your burst combinations etc without the thought of dying for a mistake.

The issue with that humorless is that even full tank spec thieves margin is much lower than others without utlizing that evasion/blind etc so while you do get to take a bit longer over doing so your sustainable face tanking time is still incredibly low.

At least unless your playing boon stealer

Dasorine.1964:

The issue with that humorless is that even full tank spec thieves margin is much lower than others without utlizing that evasion/blind etc so while you do get to take a bit longer over doing so your sustainable face tanking time is still incredibly low.

At least unless your playing boon stealer

That would depend on your build… full p/v/t gear with 30 SA takes hits just fine. Full thief burst does maybe half your HP worth of damage with the mug nerf. Ofcourse you have to abuse dodges, flanking strike and blinding powder for example as much as possible, but that’s what thieves are.

As others have noted, thieves aren’t well-built to benefit from defensive stats due to being designed around avoiding damage instead of taking it. As soon as there are stats that actually help a thief’s defensive mechanisms, thieves will be able to “bunker up” via stats. As it stands, thief survivability is mostly skill-based regardless of what equipment you’re wearing.

Just a fyi, the invader has better stats than the sentinel gear.