Guild Wars 2

i’ll rank it somewhat i think is the strongest – weaker.

1. Signet of Malice or any other healing skill.
2. Shadow Refuge.
3. Eat an Egg.

so figuratively speaking Thief A has 20k health and he suffers a great deal of dmg 15k, he’s down to 5k hp, any big attacks and he’s down, what he needs is a heal, hmm 5k + regeneration 6 sec? no, signet of malice 30x attacks, it’s actually only around 10 sec of attacking with daggers (30×125) (500 healing power) 3750, so attacking for 25 seconds is better then all heals in game? yeas and no, theoretically indeed, so thief’s not up? they’re indeed, with a very little health pool they loose aproximately 15% dps over a warrior if they go knights gear to get 5k extra hp and since it’s not really easy to get any kind of heal build to actually work all round, i’ll go precision, vitality, power and just screw it-.- thiefs do high dmg, any tips on how to survive?

i’m thinking of rethinking the whole idea with healing power on thiefs and rangers, let’s forget about Guardians & Elementalists because they’re some real good healing builds for those classes i think, but since thiefs only got 2 real healing skills nah, i’d just use them along with my extra 10 000 hp and meanwhile not healing staying alive long enough to get that friendly protection buffs

for Dungeons basically, the lowest hp dies first. i wonder why hmm, guardians yell toughness warriors always wan’t more dps, theifs should get something too, but they need everything…

Some survival strats I use:

1. Don’t neglect Shadow Arts. Almost all of the traits here are designed to keep you safer longer and really make stealth much more of a safe haven than it already is.

2. Don’t neglect Acrobatics. If for no other reason than you get Feline Grace, it’s worth it. Assassin’s Reward is also an amazing trait.

3. Stealth utils + stunbreakers will save your life in really rough situations, especially if you’ve traited for health regen in stealth.

4. You shouldn’t be getting hit much anyways, many thief weapon skills have built-in evades and blinds, so use them wisely. Combined with Feline Grace (and especially vigor) + your evade skills, you can dodge all day.

I like to treat my heal as an “oh crap” button. Against anything but the toughest mobs / Champs, you should barely even need it. So in summary: Survival on a thief is quite a bit different than some other classes. We are not made to face-tank, we use our active survival (Dodges, cripple & kite, stealth, blinds, etc.) more to avoid damage in the first place.

actually noticed something, hide in shadow heal/regen spell /invis for 4 sec if speced is great to add grandmaster trate heal while in shadow, then it’s actually valuable over signet of mailice imo because of the bonus 300 healing power youll be getting as well

I like to max out traits in the Shadow arts tree and pick up Shadow’s Rejuvenation. It does heal you each second of stealth. If you use venoms, you can also pick up leeching venom’s that will steal health when you trigger a venom. 20 in Acrobatics and you can pick up Assassins reward. That heals you per initiative spent.

If taking full 30 in SA though, you will be in stealth for 4 seconds instead of 3 so you would get extra heals and that couples great with Hide in Shadows which also puts you in stealth and gives regen. And if you have any +healing on your gear that definitely adds up when you CnD.

That might not be optimal for a GC build though. But it tends to keep me very alive as I work my way through 100% map completion. I’m running D/D and D/P with a 0/0/30/20/20 condition build.

u can’t dodge all day, the most normal death cenario for me is me running out of dodges, u say u like acrobatics, but take it from u i see your something like 0/10/30/30/0 which is real low on dmg, 25/30/0/0/15 i run, with 17k hp, it’s a pain to get it that high without taking acrobatics, but with it i’m at 20k or so, so can always switch if i start feeding to get that extra dodge sweet

Well I threw away my zerker set a couple of weeks ago after getting one shotted one too many times, in exchange for a mix of POW/TOUGH/VIT gear & Valkyrie. Crit damage took a slight blow, but the great thing about it is that sharpening stones and maintenance oils alike will benefit the more toughness and vitality you have. So a boost in power, but yes it does suffer from low crit chance. Not so much a problem in dungeons but even then signet, sigil of accuracy & aforementioned maintenance oil will buff your crit to a decent amount.

I can get about 20+ stacks on mobs in a matter of seconds. Caltrops, Death Blossom x 3, switch to P/D, hit blinding powder and sneak attack. Mobs melt very fast with little to no effort with the 0/0/30/20/20 build I’m using. I’ve also been using it for WvW too and it’s pretty solid.

Speedy.8546:

u can’t dodge all day, the most normal death cenario for me is me running out of dodges, u say u like acrobatics, but take it from u i see your something like 0/10/30/30/0 which is real low on dmg, 25/30/0/0/15 i run, with 17k hp, it’s a pain to get it that high without taking acrobatics, but with it i’m at 20k or so, so can always switch if i start feeding to get that extra dodge sweet

It’s really not that low on damage, I still get ~5k – 7k backstab crits depending on target armor. It’s true, it’s not nearly as high as it could be, but the way I see it: It’s much better to do medium-high damage and come out of crazy situations alive than overkill a target and get blown up the second you make a mistake or run into a 2v1.

With high vit, low to no toughness, and low to no healing power, you might survive for a bit but will lose almost any battle of attrition against tankier mobs / players if you have no way to cleanse conditions and recover health in between heals.

remove conditions is no problems, i always runs with guardians for some reason

hmm found this regarding the thread Combos that grant Life stealing
Combo Field: Dark × Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Combo Field: Dark × Combo Finisher: Whirl

seems were the only class with dark combo fields which grant life leech! so it’s actually 3 heals in 1 spell, great 20% 4 with condition removal. 5 with extra heal in stealth, might come usefull i think.

then u can easily go stealth reg up for 2 seconds stealth again, downside is it looks funny when a thief does this and ppl hate it cuz he’s just slowly regenerating thou it’s even moer funny when a theif with 2k health dagger jump in and insta die :P

hey Jericho thanks for replying, do you know how toughness compare to overall survivability in comparision with vitality perhaps?

Omnomberry Pie + Signet of Malice + Caltrops + Pistol Whip = lots of regeneration

I run with Power/Precision/Toughness build

Speedy.8546:

hey Jericho thanks for replying, do you know how toughness compare to overall survivability in comparision with vitality perhaps?

No problem!

Some people will tell you that Vit is always more important hands down, and generally this is true as it “scales” better with our low base health. However, a little extra toughness goes a long way.

In general, higher toughness = better heals. Recovering 3k health on a char with 2.9k armor is much more potent than recovering 3k health on a char with 2k armor simply because they can hold onto it longer.

So if you run a couple of traits that allow you to regen health, adding in some extra toughness definitely helps it, but you shouldn’t go overboard as you’ll then be gimping your offense.

hey funky fat thighs – low crit chance is not good at all, i take it your in the 20 zone, boosting it too 40 which isn’t really that much precision hence why i reccomend going knights gear. the 0 precision of valkyrie for their extra toughness meh, better to with precision and vitality no?

I do have a toughness healing power armor set for my Tanky thief build. Pretty much invincible in both pvp and pve. All those annoying D/D tank eles frolicking around doing whatever they want to~ Thief can do it too. .-. If I can’t kill someone I can still just stand there while he hits me till they get tired and give up because my healing is just crazy ;s

Hide in Shadows, Shadow’s rejuvenation, 7500 hp restored in 4 seconds + an extra backstab and 2-4 stacks of might.

crit chance is crit dmg.

yeah thank you Frenk, i’m gonna go switch that now, i think it’s ridiculously high with 1k healing power let me check

Jericho thank you again for replying, we can both agree on 2 things it seems, toughness > better heals. vitality for 12k base hp goes along way i’d say a short way pve, i almost always play pve hence why the vitality madness :p

conclusions?
shadow tree is awesome everybody says so, hehe, yup you won’t go wrong with 300 healing (especially if you have none) and 300 toughness kitten right if you don’t got any)
better then 300 condition damage / steal recharge or is it? nvm, if u like that trait line go for it but with a thiefs balanced damage / low survivability i now sure it’s a waste with traits.

25/15/30/0/0 is a healing oriented build focusing on nuke dmg, with quickness 4sec+3sec from wep, go go, 9k heal with 1k healing power, scale it down to 500 or you start loosing serious dps.

I’d like to direct you to This thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-Self-Heals/first#post948836

In which we had a nice hard numbers breakdown of thief healing.

I play a P/D/SB carrion condition build, using signet of malice, a life sigil, and a single apothecary item (shoulders) and survivability versus damage is rarely a problem.

If you’re using an offhand dagger and important point to pay attention to is the ridiculous amount of healing you can pull off by using dancing dagger from within a shadow field (like shadow refuge or some necro wells)

In any boss with adds situation, I’m commonly wielding P/D rather than SB as the overall sustained bleed DPS is better, and I’m focusing the boss. I can take a 90% hit in HP, pop Shadow refuge, and spam dancing dagger from within the field and be fully healed in seconds. In addition, spamming unexploded cluster arrow in any water field is an easy way to toss out a 50% or more AoE heal for everyone around me.

Thieves can be extremely durable due to these heling synergies combines with acrobatics and stealth, and are actually better equipped than guardians to tank large waves (Whereas guardians handle bosses much better) of trash due to the way the skills synergize. In our instances, my thief is the one that charges first in to any encounter where the enemy is strong in terms of number rather than individual power.