Guild Wars 2

Heyo, I’ve been playing Thief almost exclusively since the early beta events, and I love the class to death; but there’s always been one persistent problem, how do I balance out my health/toughness with my damage?

This might seem totally silly to some other players, but I can’t seem to get it. I’ve tinkered with my traits more times than I can count and it always comes to the same of two problems. I can take a few hits but my damage is laughable and unnoticeable so I just become a poison tool, or I can’t afford to get hit more than once but my damage is better than anyone else in my group. This obviously leads to issues when in group play because my party has to constantly revive me, or they would be better off with someone who can actually put out some major DPS and not be crushed like an ant in the middle of a yak stampede.

Help?

Are you making sure your weapons are armor are up to date?
What trait lines are you in? Power? Vit?

Also be sure not to fight things more than a few levels higher than you, you’ll get squished.

Mhm, weapons and armor are all at my equal level or just one under. My trait lines jump around a lot in an attempt to see what I can come up with lol. I’ve gone from condition damage/crit/toughness to power/crit/condition damage to vit/power/toughness and its still a tough balance.

I would trait how you want and use stats to fill in the gaps. you should reach a happy medium between damage and survivability. Also remember that the Thiefs mobility is his/her main defence. Additionally take 15 in the power line to grab that trait. its a godsend, you more or less gain 100% uptime on weakness which reduces damage incomming by 50%.

Zeoli makes a good point. Lotus Poison (15 points in power) is amazing if you’re dagger/dagger.

Other than that, I’m not really sure. I know some foes are a lot stronger than they appear, like most dredge IMO. Are you focused in a trait line or two, or do you have 5 points in everything? :p

Typically focused in two trait lines. :P I’ve always made a point to get 15 in power though, and have actually found Sword/Pistol as a better solution for surviving than D/D, maybe I’m doing it wrong haha. The interrupt/stun and evasion with extreme damage seems to be the best way, but of course I run out of initiative and have to shadowstep away before I get hit lol.

I use knight’s rings, valkyrie earrings, and the 44k karma power/toughness/vitality helm and chestpiece. Everything else is berserker. I don’t really feel like I have major survivability issues. Most of my survivability comes from black powder and stealth from D/P, range from the shortbow, hide in shadows, shadow refuge, shadowstep, and the shadow arts/acrobatics trait lines. Damage is still quite good. It’s not on the level of a glass cannon warrior, but what is? And even playing primarily melee, I tend to be the least likely to die in most situations. Especially WvW – dying there is nearly impossible without getting hit by a lag spike.

Vargs.6234:

I use knight’s rings, valkyrie earrings, and the 44k karma power/toughness/vitality helm and chestpiece. Everything else is berserker. I don’t really feel like I have major survivability issues. Most of my survivability comes from black powder and stealth from D/P, range from the shortbow, hide in shadows, shadow refuge, shadowstep, and the shadow arts/acrobatics trait lines. Damage is still quite good. It’s not on the level of a glass cannon warrior, but what is? And even playing primarily melee, I tend to be the least likely to die in most situations. Especially WvW – dying there is nearly impossible without getting hit by a lag spike.

I’ll pick those up and see what comes of it. I still have yet to see someone use D/P effectively but I guess if everyone suggests it, it must be good huh?

I’ve survived for 69 levels without Lotus Poison (15 in Power).
What I go with is 20 in Acrobatics for that “gain 2 initiative per 10s” trait, 15 in Trickery for the Condition damage, 15 Shadow Arts and 5-10 Power (haven’t unlocked the last book yet).

Basically, the strategy here is to only spam Death Blossom (D/D) to get their bleeds as much as possible. Steal to get initiative (trickery trait), and use it once more. During your 4 Death Blossoms, you evade all attacks. You can either stay and use auto attack (or a utility) until you can use Death Blossom again, or switch to Shortbow.

I’ve been able to survive too many fights with this, and can take around three enemies at the same time since Death Blossom attacks all enemies around you. Basically, try focusing on movement, dodging, acrobatics and lots of condition damage. Use the support utilities to interrupt your enemy, block projectiles and stuff to stay alive. The only very annoying enemies are ranged enemies, but you can get smoke screen to kiiinda get through that. Hope this helps.

Try Toughness/Vitality/Condition Dmg. Support/heal thief FTW!!!!!! Your only source of powerful dmg will be from bleeds, but you will outlast any enemy with your healing capabilities, stealth, and buffs. I have a trait that gives me might when I dodge… so over time you will hit harder… throws so many people off guard to find a tanky thief comes out of stealth at full health every time maybe even with caltrops on the ground or more summoned thieves to deal the dmg for him.

Oh i also use Pistol/dagger combo for pve and pvp along with shortbow to successfully create distance or hop to an ally to revive them fast. I felt dagger/dagger was too risky and think idiots who spam heartseeker have no skill.

I’m using a sword pistol setup and abusing the heck out of the partial invulnerability it permits. However ultimately our survival is hinged on timing your attacks. If you don’t think you can interrupt a big hit, it is extremely important to get away before the hit connects. If you can blind them, do so. If you can stun them, do so. Essentially, 90% of our damage mitigation should be based on outright damage avoidance.

That said, I’m running a full berserker armor and weapon set, with power vitality crit damage jewelry. While I am uncomfortably low on hp right now, I know when I’m done getting my equipment at full 80 exotic I’ll be at a comfortable 16k or do hp. I say comfortable because even with less you can take the occasional hard hit and a few minor ones. I also suggest a generalist armor rune setup like Rune of Divinity, which offers +10 to all stats and 2% crit damage for every piece of armor with that rune. It’s a passive way of boosting HP, power, precision, and toughness.

I’d suggest running 15 points into the power tree, so you gain weakness on anything you poison, also the 2nd strike of a dagger swing gives you a little endurance. Thieves are not meant to get hit. You have so many tools at your disposal to make sure you can avoid most damage. It just takes time to learn your own class, mobs, and enemy professions that you’ll die a lot early on.

My suggestion:

I’m a dagger/dagger condition damage thief who lives on mobility and stealth to get in and out of combat pretty much at will. My build is 30 points Deadly Arts, 20 points Shadow Arts, and 20 points Trickery. The key thing is I’m loaded up on stuff that proc’s on steal and makes poison work better/longer most of which also benefit bleeds.

Just to give you an idea. When I steal, it proc’s Serpent’s Touch poisoning my target, and Lotus Venom weakening them. I also have Exposed which is 10% bonus versus targets with a condition, ie poisoned. I have Thrill of the Crime which gives me and any allies near me Might, Fury, and Swiftness for 10 seconds. Oh, and I have Hidden Thief which stealths me when I steal. All that adds up to my target being in big trouble.

So, steal to pile on my benefits, then backstab my target. Then I hit a pair of Death Blossoms (#3 attack) which stick 3-6 bleeds on my target and anything near them. Since I’m built for +condition damage, those bleeds hurt. I then hit Cloak and Dagger which puts me right back into stealth for another backstab. There is a really good chance my target is dead and never got to hit back.

However, if target is still alive, I dodge backwards leaving caltrops via Uncatchable. This means my poisoned, bleeding near dead opponent is also now limping, and I have a moment or two to collect my thoughts, perhaps make a snarky comment or two in chat, etc.

I also make heavy use of the Hide in Shadows heal, and not just as a heal. It’s stealth. So not only can it heal, but it can also set up backstab or let you escape from a fight that is going badly.

Learn to be mobile and learn to dodge first and foremost. then pick up catrops on dodge, shadow refuge, and speed signet(its a clutch defensive skill too…use it love it). also dont do pwr/crit/cond, conditions don’t crit and takes away a huge portion of your stat based survivability. even without the crit you should be getting 2k dps bare minimum at 80 and decent quality gear. If you go the pwr/crit route you should have sufficent burst and control to kill your opponent.

i think i favor survivability more than most Thieves, since i see many people with glass cannon builds. i’ve noticed that my kill rate is actually higher with more survival stats since i can take on more mobs at once (while doing heart quests) and that my dungeon effectiveness is ALOT higher (since i’m not dead, obviously).

the offensive stats i use are a mix of precision and condition damage. the condition damage ends up being the biggest contributor since i use alot of bleeds and poison. however, the precision plays a very important role as well. it does make my direct attacks do more DPS but the main reason I use it is for triggered effects. the trait that gains initiative on crits is extremely useful. crit triggered weapon sigils are extremely powerful as well. getting extra life drain or might stacks or bleed stacks from crits makes a huge difference.

the defensive stat i consider most important is vitality. direct hits are easily evaded and i rely on dodge, death blossom evade, and kiting to avoid getting smacked directly. it can be very hard however to avoid picking up condition damage so having extra health makes surviving poison, bleed, or burning much more likely. toughness doesn’t mitigate condition damage at all, so gotta just have the raw health to stick it out. vitality it is.

Tilty.3150:

Try Toughness/Vitality/Condition Dmg. Support/heal thief FTW!!!!!! Your only source of powerful dmg will be from bleeds, but you will outlast any enemy with your healing capabilities, stealth, and buffs. I have a trait that gives me might when I dodge… so over time you will hit harder… throws so many people off guard to find a tanky thief comes out of stealth at full health every time maybe even with caltrops on the ground or more summoned thieves to deal the dmg for him.

This right here sounds like fun lol XD I’m defiantly going to try this out

Personally I find the survivability comes from evasion rather than HP/Toughness.

I choose +Power and +Condition damage above all else. I have the health skill which gives +hp per damage dealt. I throw down caltrops when i dodge (a trait) and have the caltrops skill.

Finally, each fight, I use death blossom over and over. I use gain regen+1 initiative every 10 seconds, and stealing = gain 3 initiative. I time my death blossoms based on the opponents attacks. I’ll get at least 4 death blossoms per fight + 2 dodges, which means evading 6 attacks.

If the fight is longer, throw down caltrops and move out of the way as your initiative returns.

Hope that helps.

PS: I’m only level 56, and play exclusively PvE.

You have a few options.

The easiest option is to focus on 3 stats, one of them being a survivability stat. That is the most basic way to do it. For instance, you could focus on power, condition dmg, and toughness or vitality. Alternatively, as another example, you could use precision, crit dmg, and toughness or vitality. I think you more or less get the idea.

A more difficult option is to use weapon sets that give you the most survivability. Instead of using stats to protect you, you use skills from a particular weapon set that keep you alive. This is more difficult because it is directly related to skill level; it only works if you use those skills properly. To maximize dmg you need to look at what the offensive skills do for you. For example, dual guns gives you blind spam, but also stacks bleeds/vulnerability. The stat setup would then be condition dmg/power/whatever else you want to fill it out.

A 3rd option, and maybe the hardest, is damage avoidance. Thieves have it particularly good with their stealth mechanic which can virtually replace dodge if you bring a lot of stealth skills. This means that 1) you have to be good about timing so stealth isnt wasted, 2) have fantastic initiative management, and 3) exercise some patience. Initiative isnt cheap so having some patience is huge when dealing with stealth burst builds. Give it time to regen, but dont give your opponent too much time to recover. Its hard but very rewarding. Worth practicing.

I’ve just been bringing a bunch of blinds and other control. Not running Shortbow has been key to this, so there’s definite control abilities on both swaps as well as utility skills.

Just build full power/percision/crit dmg and try to get as much percision as possible and then use trait 5% percision to vitality. With this build you’ll deal enormous amount of dmg but the only problem is that you die soon. Thats why, learn to use dodge and u should be fine. It’s true it’s not the best build for Multiple targets but if you are a boss/dungeon farmer like me that it’s mostly 1v1 this build is the best.

I run a D/D build and seem to do pretty well. I’m only lvl 35, but having a great time so far. I tend to use stealth a lot to utilize backstab, I think this is one of the major parts of D/D for the Thief. Stealth also helps avoid damage as does calling in the Thieves Guild. The biggest thing that will help you avoid taking hits is really getting your dodging down. I’m constantly dodging, going into stealth and trying to move behind my target. I threw together my current build (which will be changing as I lvl obviously) so you can see the traits I’m using and the skills I’ve decide work best. Dodge, Dodge to build might, go stealth, use Assassins Signet and Backstab for huge damage.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fYEQNAsYVlUmyOXcy5E/5EhvAtC0srwVB

Just my two cents with S/P, always make sure you have infiltrator stike up in 1v1 fights. I can’t tell you how hilarious it is to fight a bow ranger and have them knock you away, only for them to see you teleport from 1 spot to another, and then right back to them (with infil strike again). Also helps when you might lose the fight, you can use it any time (since return is a stunbreak) and then get away.