Guild Wars 2

Coming back to the game with a better computer and I decided to roll with a thief, but most of the posts I have found about builds have been mostly max level builds. I was hoping someone could give me some insight on some of the thief trait and stat builds that have proven useful while leveling.

I’ve seen this thread a lot, and I have posted one myself because I am also looking for a build for leveling… But no one will give it up, all your going to get is “just try everything and see what you like” but sometimes I just want a cookie cutter

well, you have two main paths as far as easy to pick up leveling goes. condition damage with double daggers, where you run in drop caltrops if you have them and use death blossom until your initiative runs out, then kite the enemies till they die. trickery and acrobatics are good places for trait points while you level, as they enhance your condition damage and survivability. gear focus should be condition damage and vitality mainly as far as leveling goes.

the other is sword/pistol. you pick up signet of malice, and use black powder to blind your target and all targets in melee range. the smoke field will blind once a second, for I believe it is 4 seconds. the sword auto attack and pistol whip allow you to AoE down groups of mobs, and with signet of malice you can gain health for every enemy struck. critical strikes, acrobatics, and power are all good trees for that play style. gear focus is power/precision. you wont need a ton of health with all the daze and blind you have access to, but it helps.

good utilities for both are caltrops, shadow refuge, signet of agility, and shadow step.

these aren’t the only viable options for leveling, but they are the easiest and most effective from my experience. let me know if you have any more questions.

I would recommend S/* for leveling. D offhand is great for crippling mobs(u know its not a great damage spike anymore though) and the allowing you to jump back out of combat with the second half of infiltrators strike. P offhand allows you to stay in hand to hand very easily. Sword mainhand also has the advantage of hitting multiple targets pretty hard and causing weakness on the end of it too. I always trait 30 into shadow arts so I would recommend going that way first, but its a matter of preferance for playstyle.

I found the post by Phenn.5167 in this thread to be very helpful:
– https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Leveling-Thief-Build-Weapon-Combos

Just this week I started a Thief and have leveled him to level 45 using his advise, and it has been a cake walk and a blast to play. I’m using D/D for my main weapon set, and switching between P/D if I need ranged single target or SB for traveling or ranged multi-target.