Guild Wars 2

Hey, everyone. After an extended break from Guild Wars 2, I’ve decided to reroll a Thief. My original toon is a 46 Ranger, that I’m sure I’ll keep playing. But I just had a hankering to make a Thief and so I’m currently working on him. I run D/D and S/P. Anyway, I really love WvW and would like to build for that. Just looking for tips as far as traits, equipment, and general gameplay.

Hello try to help as much and as imformative as possible. quickness is a godsend for any D/D thief really, try get 2-3 different sources of quickness and you’ll basically cut down warrior’s like trees. main stats should in any kind of thief build except P/D, death blossom spam be Power/Precision. try get Power as high as possible and keep precison over 1775 for something like 51% crit. now this is you’re choice thou, toughness or vitality, personally i’d go with vitality because of stuns and while in them you will die if you’re not tanky (healing power don’t help), thou healing power is great not lying i’d go with a more standard thief build for starters so you’re A critty B tanky. goes well together as long as you don’t die in 2 seconds.
shortbow is also great when dueling daggers, aoe weakness from 15 points in power tree is also a good treat, as well as -2 initiative on stealth skills + remove 3 condition.
healing! yeah, if you’re in pvp try not to focus so much on regeneration healing effect and more on brutal raw power since it’s known to stack all up, you’ll then be running around with 20k hp, and deal as much dps as any dps dealing in this game, hf & gl.

knights on armor i’d take and berseker on the rest added with trates that boost A dmg / B Survivability and C take shadow’s return as first utility skill, it’s super awesome in any situations. and a must have in many ocasions, i take it always it’s just a must have for any class if all had it

Question is if you want D/D burst damage or D/D condition build. Personally, I don’t like D/D condition, it’s boring to play. So my advice will be for D/D burst damage.

Knights armor sounds good on paper, but in fact it’s not good choice imo, because you won’t get enough +crit damage to utilize precision on the gear (and burst builds are all about having high crit chance and high crit damage).

I use full berserker armor, weapons and amulet, rest of jewelery is Cavalier (power/though/crit damage) with emerald jewels inside (prec/though/power). I use runes of the Pack (mainly because these were rather cheap, stashing money to get Air runes). Sigils I use: D/D is Superior Accuracy + Air and SB is Fire.

Now, thing lot of players overlook is food. I use Sharpening Stones / Oils as “potion” buff. I use +100 power / +70 prec food or +100 thoughness / +70 precision food. Depends on situation.

I also agree with Speedy that quickness is seriously overpowered no matter how you get it. But I don’t agree with the conclusion to get at least 2-3 sources of it. I have it only traited (precision tree, trait X), that’s more then enough (not gonna waste sigil slot for it and definitely not gonna waste utility slot for it). You want D/D build, it’s not essential to get quickness for this build. If u wanted PW build, then sure, get as much of it as possible.

Oh and get SB instead of S/P (or get rid of D/D and make PW build). Learn it, love it. Life saver.

The build I use is pretty much standard WvW backstab build (atm running 20/30/0/20/0). Experiment with traits to find combination which works for you

Now there’s the thing about utilities. Lot of people run with Shadow Refuge, lately I’m thinking about swapping it for something else, because while it’s great skill in lot of situations, it’s pretty much suicide button in fights. Bad players will let u use it for full duration, smart guys will kill you inside, because u just showed them where you are and you can’t escape the ring until stealth becomes permanent (that is if you want to escape). If I’m gonna swap it, then it will probably be for pull (good form of CC and priceless when attacking keeps).

My utilities are so far: Speed signet, Shadowstep (essential for every thief) and SR. As elites I swap between Venom and Thief guild (don’t use Daggerstorm, that’s good against dumb people, otherwise it’s suicide button).

What if you wanted to go direct damage but not going full glass cannon?
I dunno but I usually like to have a safety net just in case.

i run 10/30/30/0/0 semi glass cannon because im trading some raw power for survivvability. CnD is my best friend and i can effectively harass groups in WvW (though its not recommended for your health, my poor sylvari can’t afford her medical bill sometimes) but its really fun.
EDIT: cloudysan you should check out my build then and see if it works for you. utilities are sos shadref and shad step with dagger strom. armor is valkyrie jewels are zerker runes you can use wurm or scholer i think but i think wurm is better

Pro-tip: Disable auto-attack
Left it on so many times that after i CnD i still dodge as to avoid popping right back out of stealth lol
Speaking of stealth, have at least one utility that grants it because it is your saving grace as a glass cannon

RedSpectrum.1975:

EDIT: cloudysan you should check out my build then and see if it works for you. utilities are sos shadref and shad step with dagger strom. armor is valkyrie jewels are zerker runes you can use wurm or scholer i think but i think wurm is better

Much appreciated!
(btw my thief is Sylvari, too =) )
Now I only need to get Valk armor (had something like that in mind anyway after seeing one certain video just a moment ago and he uses the same armor).

Sylvari thief as well lol. But DEFINITELY D/D burst. I’m not really into the whole condition damage thing. I switched out S/P for P/P. At least in PvE. Last night in WvW I kind of messed around with it. It did okay. But I’ll certainly look into SB.

wdspeck.8723:

Sylvari thief as well lol. But DEFINITELY D/D burst. I’m not really into the whole condition damage thing. I switched out S/P for P/P. At least in PvE. Last night in WvW I kind of messed around with it. It did okay. But I’ll certainly look into SB.

Apparently dem Sylvari know how to thief it up, but anyway you should def try SB, don’e get me wrong, I love P/P, but SB does have multiple target hitting AND lets you be an escape artist.

In WvW there are certain places where you can inf arrow up. SB is def. useful for this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHkisuqfhbo
Was posted recently here on the forum. Will help =) and make many many people break their keyboards.

cloudysan.4397:

In WvW there are certain places where you can inf arrow up. SB is def. useful for this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHkisuqfhbo
Was posted recently here on the forum. Will help =) and make many many people break their keyboards.

Time to make more people rage, and the funny thing is, as a thief we dont even need to try, we just need to play

cloudysan.4397:

What if you wanted to go direct damage but not going full glass cannon?
I dunno but I usually like to have a safety net just in case.

That’s why I use Cavalier accessories, rings and back slot with emerald jewels (to get some precision back). You can get those from karma vendor in Straits of Devastation.

Only Vit bump I have is from traits, all my builds have at least 15 into Acrobatics tree to have more dodges.

Lately I was running this build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmaOHdy9E95Ex2jdqTeypIpItTxVtKA

With good combination of food buffs (+100 though / +70 prec food and power oils) I can get around 3150 attack and 2600 armor. Sure, damage output is bit lower then if I go full glass, but I can run through enemy zerg and survive it.

With such build you also don’t need to do usual CnD + Steal combo, you just need to steal and stab, saves loads of initiative on alpha strike.

Ad SB: Definitely try it. Every thief should have SB up all the time, it’s great defensive tool and great offensive tool.