Guild Wars 2

I have had my thief parked for a while because I’ve never been a huge fan of the glass cannon builds. I kind of want to start playing him again, but was wondering if there are any true tanky builds out there that DON’T revolve around condition damage?

I’m talking power/toughness/vitality most likely, and being able to stay within melee range (probably sword/dagger, maybe sword/pistol?) To me it seems like D/D is built around C&D + backstab, or condition builds w/ death blossom. Is there any way to build a thief out like this (large-ish health pool, good sustained damage, high toughness, less focus on gimmicky burst)?

I can stay in melee range for the vast majority of fights with no Toughness or Vitality gear. The trick is to get your crit chance up as high as you can and stack Superior Sigil of Blood, and Omnomberry pie with your Signet of Malice.

Sigil of Blood has a 30% chance to heal you on critical hit.
Omnomberry Pie has a 66% chance to heal you on critical hit.
Singet of Malice heals you every hit.

With these 3 things, a very high crit chance, and the skill Pistol Whip from the Sword/Pistol weapon set you withstand some serious punishment. I have face tanked all 3 paths in AC, and all 3 paths in CoF with very little problem. Ovbiously you need to dodge some attacks, and keep a handy supply of condition removal/CC removal abilities available. If you get knocked down for more than a few seconds, chances are you will die.

Here is my build: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckmM9mobFLoobFLopx0f0oazsqM

I choose Daggerstorm over Thieves guild because of the Stability boon you get … remember, knockdowns kill you very quickly.

My gear is full Berserker’s.

EDIT: Thought it might also be worth mentioning that when your self heals are being outdamaged just drop Shadow Refuge ontop of yourself and continue to spam Pistol Whip. The added healing from SR and those few seconds that the mobs stop attacking you is more than enough to get back to full health. Seriously, you will heal for 1000s and 1000s every second this way.

Osskil.1029:

(large-ish health pool, good sustained damage, high toughness, less focus on gimmicky burst)?

Missed your last sentence here … I suppose my lifesteal build may be considered “gimmicky”.

:(

So, tanky + non-conditions?
You’ll want to look into Soldier gear then (pow/tough/vit).

But if Thieves are naturally more fragile then professions like the Warrior. You need to spec into Shadow Arts to take advantage of stealth.

For damage, you have a choice of focusing on Deadly Arts for base damage + CC (higher cond duration) or Critical Strikes for more damage through crit.

I’ll look into it and write up a more elaborate explanation when I get home.

P/t/v with 0/20/30/20/0 stats and s/d make for an awesome tank build for thieves if you build it right.

I was running a tanky thief build for a while in WvW. Soldier armor/weapons & knights jewelery. Sword/Dagger. 0/0/30/20/20. Perma swiftness with withdraw & runes of air. Mostly just a roaming scout and I’d pop thieves guild & ambush trap when I need to take down a dolyak, sentry or supply camp. Quite fun being un-killable :P

You can try beryl gear plus 100% chance of crit in stealth + all the healing a normal tank thief would have. But your main attack will only be backstab.

There’s not really a full tank build thief, since it’s honestly outclassed by any other class’s full tank build. S/D is pretty good when built for both damage and survivability. For example, you can use Knight’s and Valkyrie armor/accessories, for a mix of both Power, Precision, Toughness, Vitality and Crit damage. This could give you enough damage to still be threatening, while enough evades and defense to let you survive.

As for traits, this build is somewhat reliant on stealth due to the stealth attack and Cloak and Dagger. For this reason, I’d build 10/30/30/0/0 or a variation of it. Mug is really good for damage. You could also change the traits to something more like 10/30/0/30/0 if you want to use a S/P build. You definitely want Mug if you’re using S/P, though; it is way too good with Pistol Whip to ignore.

Krathalos.3461:

You definitely want Mug if you’re using S/P, though; it is way too good with Pistol Whip to ignore.

Problem is OP didn’t really specify an environment to be tanky in. If he’s talking PvE, I wouldn’t bother with Mug. As mentioned before, S/P with Signet of Malice and heal-on-crit food will allow you to face-tank most PvE. I tend to take Uncatchable + Acrobatics as well for extra dodges and heal/damage on dodge.

For PvP you’re going to get more “tanky” mileage out of S/D because you can trait for defensive stealth and use dazes to heavily mitigate enemy damage.

I only have a few weeks experience with the Thief, however a “tanky” build is exactly what I am going for.

I have 15 in Deadly arts, giving me Lotus Poison (inflict Weakness on Poison), combined with the sigil that increases Weakness duration gives inflicted Weakness +25% duration. With a mainhand Dagger that is 3.75 seconds of Weakness on each auto attack chain (in addition to bonus Endurance from the second part of the chain). The Shortbow4 poison AoE stacks a lot of Weakness (SB2 blast finishers for more Weakness stacking). Shadow Protector (5 seconds of Regen when going into stealth) is very important.

Pistol offhand gives an at will interrupt (as a Mesmer main, I am extremely jealous of the Thief’s Pistol4). Pistol 5 is great for blinds, and gives the smoke combo field for Heartseaker-ing into stealth.

Armour runes are full Dwayna runes. Giving healing, +20% Regen duration (25% boon duration from traits), and 5 seconds of Regen when using a heal skill. This when combined with Shadow Protector and all the +boon duration gives 20 seconds of Regeneration when using the Hide in Shadows heal skill… also providing ~7 seconds of Regen to nearby allies. Pain Response (Acrobatics trait) gives about 14 seconds of Regen pretty much every 45 seconds (in addition to clearing DoT’s).

As for gear, I’m using pretty much full Clerics, using a Knights jewel (for sPvP) giving me a extra little bit of Vitality, bringing my HP pool up to 14.5K.

The 20 in Trickery I went for could probably be better spent elsewhere if you wanted to be more tanky… it’s just a personal preference for me (Bountiful Thief and Pistol4; as a Mesmer main player, these two are the biggest reason why I made a Thief, I love them so much).

As for Utilities I went for Shadowstep (personal bias to teleport utilities, although the condition clearing is handy as well), Spider Venom (on demand Poison/Weakness; about 20 seconds of Weakness when it all gets stacked together), and Shadow Refuge (I use it simply for a Dark field and it’s healing often). Daggerstorm for elite (whirl finisher + reflect is nice).

…

tl;dr:
High toughness, moderate HP (for a Thief), almost constant Regeneration (with about 1k healing power), and almost constant Weakness on the enemy. It has been working very well as a “tanky” build for me. For a “tanky” Thief build, it uses a surprisingly low amount of Blind.

My build probably could be improved, as I’ve only been playing Thief heavily for the past few weeks…. although this build has made Thief overtake my other classes as most played in sPvP… at the very least I am enjoying the build a great deal.

Hey guys, thanks for all the responses. I guess I should have clarified that I am pretty much only into Wv3. The idea of a valkyrie + P/T/V mixture and S/D seems pretty interesting to me. I know that my thief won’t be as good at it as a tank warrior/guardian (trust me I know, I have a p/t/v 80 warrior, I am just a medium armor + mobility guy over tank and spank + heavy armor)

I use D/P and have Power,Toughness,Vitality set.

I think it works out pretty good. I kill people, and i hardly ever die in WvW. have like 19-20k health

I would probably say the closest thing to a tanky melee thief would be s/p, d/p, or s/d, with the later two being more stealth orientated. S/P was better prior to the 15% damage nerf on pistol whip, but now relies too heavily on haste and signet of agility. S/D is a great control/damage set and D/P trades the C&D stealth for BP and HS stealth. Anything with pistol off-hand relies heavily on blind from BP and can be tough because most players will just move out of the smoke. S/D is great but relies a lot on stealth and daze to survive.