Guild Wars 2

My fellow thieves, of recent iv been getting into fractals a bit more and am still at low levels ( 10-20 range). Currently i run 0/30/10/30/0 sometimes i swap around and drop the acro line, with sig of malice, shadows refuge, and assasins sig, running s/p sb combo. Gear wise im full zerk except shoulders and feet are soilders, with all zerk trinks (1 acended ring, and amulet). However i want to know whats the “expected” or optimal build for higher level fractals for when i get to that stage. I dont see thief being a super desired class in high level fractals but i love mine and am gonna play it anyway. Any tips builds or pointers would be awesome for me to take ideas from and be a big help.

ps. sorry for all the grammatical errors peeps =D

lv 50 fractal here, running 49 every day

tbh you can run fractals with about any build, exprience counts more than optimal gear imo; you can have best gear ever but at high lv everything one shots you so if you suck at dodging and don’t know how to do fights properly no gear and build in the world will help you

as for thieves not being desirable, i wouldn’t say so…you really want one thief in high lv run to skip as much as possible + stealth rezzes are really good since ppl get one shot a lot

few things i would recommend though:
- multiple weapon sets to be able to adapt to different fights
- SA tree is pretty usefull imo due to condition removal and longer stealth (that helps on some maps like dredge)

personally i run pretty much same build as i run in wvw: 10/30/20/10 zerker + some pvt, it is not optimal but it has diversity i need; for weapons i run d/d, p/p, sb, d/p depending on fight

as for tipps here are few, althrough you probably know most of them:

underwater:
- pretty straight foward, would use harpoon gun mostly tbh

cliffside:
- for first boss p/p, as his melee is deadly; SA condi removal helps but if you have enough AR isn’t much of an issue tbh
- untill last boss i run d/p for aoe blinds, it works well on chanters as long as party stacks on you, can some smoke screen for extra safety
- on last boss make sure to get refuge: when boss drops hammer, wait till you or whoever holds hammer gets 4th skill, make sure your party stacks on that preson and use refuge – that way your party will be invisible during stun phase and won’t be attacked by chanters

snowblinded:
- you can run smoke screen sb/smoke bomb/refuge/ d/d to solo fire part if you really wanna be a hero heh
- ice elemental: make sure to get smoke screen for elemntals as they can easily wipe group
- last boss i prefer to use p/p as his aura is rather annoying to deal with

swamp:
- p/d to kill spiders if i end up fighting any before grabbing orb
- refuge/signet of shadows and shs help a lot to carry orb, you can stand far away from orb, port to it with shs and return back while carrying it so it saves time
- for Mossman i use p/p/sb, vs bloom d/d
- SA condi removal helps a lot if you got stuck

harpie:
- smoke screen/refuge for stealth
- smoke screen + black powder+ daggerstorm to stop harbie attacks
- p/p for robot boss in poison room so you can run back to battery while keeping dps
- thief guild + ambush trap help a lot vs poison projectiles as they body block them, so you can just stand behind your pets and let them eat dmg for you
- for last boss get smoke screen, p/p makes fight easier imo

ascalon:
- smoke screen and aoe, pretty straight foward map so not much to add there
- last boss i usually dps with d/d untill he starts to yell “i will never surrender” or something like that, then switch to ranged

dredge: this map makes thieves most usefull actually lol
- thief with SA + smoke bomb and refuge can stay stealthed almost for entire eduration of activating the button in first room
- if you got bomb path, you can solo it as thief by doing following: make sure your group stays out of agro, stealth yourself (smoke bomb, smoke bomb + sb, refuge, w/e fancies you), grab bomb, get in range of shadow step and use to to port to door, place bomb, use shadow step + sb inf. arrow to get away from dredge to drop agro; SA tree with stealth spells reduction and extra second stealth helps a lot there
- if you got cannon door: clear dredge, have your party grab cannons and use them, smoke bomb + refuge them so they don’t get killed by dredge -> run to back to fight boss, make sure to have smoke screen for snipers
- on last boss i usually run lava switch since you can get fast to switches and rez ppl on the way by using sb 5, shs, shadow signet

fire map: (personally hate that one the most)
- sb aoe/smoke screen for first trash
- immobs from p/p + scrop wire to prevent NPCs from reaching sacrifices
- smoke screen p/p for shaman till he jumps down
- last boss: p/p, signet of agility, SA condi removal, HiS, refuge, smoke screen, dagger storm; watch the boss, try to stay away from the group as by stepping side to side you can avoid his arrow w/o needing to dodge; during shield phase get to boss and use daggerstor to reflect wurm attacks, use smoke bomb after and spam sb aoe to kill them quickly; use refuge to get ppl up; signet of agility and stealth to drop fire condi

(too long post)

thaumnova: didn’t run that one much but it is pretty easy, can play about anything
- you can get through radiation room by using sb 5 -> shadow step and then using run skill you get by being in that room, usually is enough to get across them room hehe

molten furnance: pretty straight foward
- after clearing 4 rooms you can use refuge to stealth to the back side of the big room and pull mobs in small groups instead of fighting them all

Mai Trin: during cannon phase you can stealth yourself and sit in the corner, cannons will ignore you for most part; wouldn’t suggest to melee her as she hits kitten hard, i use p/p and stay close to her but just bit outside of her melee ranger

Molten boss: this is not best solution but i tend to run smoke bomb and refuge a lot on this fight, as ppl die a lot here and stealth is only way to rez them w/o getting agro from boss and eating aoe; once again SA condi removal is good for this one

jade maw is same on any lv, so nothing special here really

overall maps themself aren’t so bad, instabilities on other hand can be major pita and might force you to go signet of malice or switch weapon set or even build (cough lv 44)

this are my 2 very long cents lol, i might be all wrong though but this is how i run it :P

Smoke bomb- helps rally people, assuming they know not to throw junk at “trash mobs” and break that stealth.

Shadow’s refuge- same deal but also for skipping certain sections that aren’t worth the effort. Also makes the panel and bomb parts in the dredge fractal really easy

Smoke screen- when walls are needed, but also in fractals like ascalon where you LoS them at a corner. The 7 second blind field makes it ideal for avoiding their heavy hits.

Pistol whip- best for LoS areas, coupled with signet of malice and signet of infiltration for initative management. You throw #5 down and pw, basically never die until you run out of initiative. Kinda depends on your build. I’m not even full zerker and my pw can get up to 11k sometimes, cleave.

Shadow step- great for the last minute dodges. It also makes breaking the seals in the Cliffside fractal much easier on the arm part, because you can avoid a lot of hits by porting in and out. Due to high mobility and the long range teleport, you can even ooc to recover some bosses while your team distracts. That’s if you really need to recover, don’t do it just because you got hit for 7k.

Shadow Arts- I always run atleast 30 into SA, because I can swap major traits for some real good things. Like in the water fractal, thief has really weak underwater stealth. So I can put on stealing grants stealth. In the grawl fractal where you have to halt the veterans from reaching the prisoners, venom share with devourer venom and basilik, really helps keep them down and controlled. Its a really good trait line, plus the extra toughness goes a long way in fractals where the term “trash mob” is almost obsolete at high levels.

Scorpion wire- good for various reasons, mainly just in times where you don’t want to move and need to melee something like the chest seal in Cliffside, when the archers keep poking you and you want the hammer guy to get a hit. Or for distracting the ogre in the asuran fractal along with Off-hand pistol to remove his defiant stacks (or the boss in dredge fractal to getting it under the bucket). You kinda have to look for its uses but it does come in handy.

Weapons- by this I mean have all of them. 2 pistols, 2 daggers, sword, sb. Don’t waste time with condi builds, thief conditions are either really slow or too risky to apply. Your best bet is something along the lines of utility or dps, or both. I run 0/30/30/0/10, the 10 in trickery mainly for thrill of the crime because I enjoy fury and swiftness as a thief but you can also put on merciful ambush during the grawl fractal boss incase someone goes down. 30 in CS is just to hold up my end of the damage but it also has some good defensive traits like Concealed Defeat (grawl boss, uncategorized fractal, etc) and practiced tolerance (vitality is important on thief) and pistol mastery (when dual pistols are useful). 30 into SA for reasons stated above basically, it goes a long way. For example, the regen in stealth covers up the burn from the grawl boss, so you can SR and stealth rez someone who got defeated and not worry about dying.

Those are the only tips I can think of, I did a ton of fractals back in the spring/summer and do it often these days just hoping I get a useful ascended gear piece (2 zintyl weapon chests now…. kick in the nads if you ask me). Out of all of them, the reactor fractal is my favorite. Soloed the last 10-20% of the boss 3 times now, seems like people cannot see blinking platforms all too well :/

go full dps and just learn all the fights – dodge accordingly. As long as you have the AR for the higher levels you’ll be fine.

0 30 0 20 20

executioner
practiced tolerance
pistol mastery

Assassin’s Retreat/Vigorous recovery(bosses)
Pain Response

Ricochet
Long reach/Thrill

P/P Sigil of Fire THEN Sigil of Restoration
SB Sigil of Fire

Full zerk armor Rune of Vampirism or Eagle
Valk rings
Valk weapons
Zerk Accs
Zerk Amulet

Signet of Malice(Withdraw on bosses)
Roll For Initiative
Signet of agility (great for dmg+lvl 49)
Shadow Refuge
Daggerstorm (TG on bosses)

Stack enemies upwith team. Use BPS once if 4 or less use it 2x in a row if 5 or more.

if 2 or less just spam unload as it does 7-10k dmg or up to much much more with ricochet and heals the heck out of you.

Use scorpion wire/disabling shot to pull on charr lvl and youll get just warriors first and finish mages etc after.

vampirism helps you really if your are new at high lvl fractals and gives you that 1 extra chance. i personally dont use vamp but i dont really get downed.

dont be afraid to stack 2x poison fields in a large group as it will heal you up alot also with SoM.

the build is self explanatory in other words but will get the hang of it and ive never had any bad comments from other players and am usually the last one standing.

high dmg
high survival
decent HP
high mobility
ranged dmg

Thank you all very much for your answers, you guys went into way more detail than i was expecting its a huge help. Ill be sure to copy this to a txt document to refer too, quick question though is there a chart/formula for how much AR you need for differnet levels. Currently i run 10% in my 10 to 19 range but when i progress whats the safe amount per lvl? ty again everyone!

I use mostly the same skills as Cynz with a shadow arts build so the use of class skills is probably more important than the build. There are still plenty of small changes you can make across the board so don’t take it as gospel. All the weapon sets can be used. Signet of Malice + caltrops/daggerstorm can be good for trash.

for 40+ you need 50-55 AR