Guild Wars 2

So having just restarted playing gw2 after many friends saying it has improved since launch i decided to go back to my thief and try to be serious about the game. I was wondering if people could help me with some builds, one that’s good in explorable dungeons and one that could be good in high lvl fractals, 30+

Berserker stats and offensive runes/sigils of course.

The best condition removal is in Shadow Arts, remove 1 condition upon entering stealth and every 3 seconds you’re in stealth. If you’re D/D backstab you’ll also want infusion of shadow also from the Shadow Arts line, giving you 20 Shadow Arts. That gets you 15 in Shadow Arts as well, which is increased stealth duration, useful if you’re stealthing your group past trash.

If you have 20 in Shadow Arts due to being D/D backstab, you might as well go 5 more for might on stealth to make up for going into a defensive line instead of Deadly Arts. 5 more would let you get Shadow’s Rejuvination which will heal you for around 320 upon entering stealth and each second you’re in stealth, which is good sustained healing for a backstab build.

The other healing option is 30 Acrobatics for Assassin’s Reward, but I’d recommend Shadow Arts if you’re a backstab build. Acrobatics does have some condition removal traits but they are automatically applied and have a cooldown, so aren’t as reliable as Shadow Arts if you stealth often.

The easiest way to boost DPS if you’ve invested in a defensive line is go to for crit chance and damage, since you have a base crit damage of 150% (which you don’t see in your stat view). So 30 into Critical Strikes you can pick up little over 14% crit chance, 30% crit damage, an additional conditional13% crit chance from traits, 10% damage boost while above 6 initiative which goes well with infusion of shadow for backstab builds, allowing you to maintain that buff, and executioner for +20% to foes below 50% health.

I wouldn’t take hidden killer because it just puts to waste all that real crit chance you just accumulated in addition to your berserker stats. Better to take the damage boost in my opinion.

That sets the traits to 0/30/30/0/0. The remaining 10 can go to Trickery for flanking strikes, Deadly Arts for mug or vulnerability on crit, or if you want more dodges take 5 points from Critical Strikes and put 15 into Acrobatics.

Healing skill, the best in my opinion for PVE is Signet of Malice. It has great synergy with shortbow detonate cluster bomb and D/P pistol whip on trash, healing you for significant amounts while either at range or evading. For a single target if you want to range it goes well with P/P unload as well. In terms of the activated heal it provides, it’s high to hide in shadows for PVE, but not as high withdraw.

Elite.. I swap between dagger storm and thieves guild. Dagger storm has good synergy with signet of malice and will usually heal you right up, especially if the attackers are using projectiles. Otherwise thieves guild for some extra damage.

The utility slots can be anything really. Signets for power/crit chance, shadow refuge for group heal and nipping past trash, blinding powder to remove conditions when you’re not in range to cloak and dagger anything, shadow step for 2x stun breaker, caltops for additional signet of malice healing etc. You can justify a lot of them, and will probably swap the skills around depending on what you’re doing. The same goes for weapons in my opinion. I’ll often switch between D/D+D/P, D/D+SB, D/P+SB.

15 Trickery for 3 extra initiative might look tempting, but for a backstab build which most are in PVE, infusion of shadow is superior. It’ll allow you to keep backstabbing and maintain that 25 Critical Strikes 10% buff. 15 Trickery will simply be an extra cloak and dagger right before you run out of initiative.

On the other hand, if you’re building for speed with a berserker group, you’ll want to invest in offense only, which is likely to be 30/30/15/0/0, 25/30/0/0/15 or 30/30/0/0/10. I always initially assume not, and that there’ll be defensively specced pugs. A glass thief in a defensive pug group never works well for me; although I favour meleeing despite so perhaps if you ranged you could pull it of in those instances as well.

I came back to gw2 a few weeks ago and run a p/p thief (25/30/0/15/0) build with full berserker gear and scholar runes which I love. – high DPS and very mobile. I find that it performs very well in PvE and WvW (solo or group) but dungeons and fractals are more of an issue depending on the group.

More experienced parties understand you need to stay mobile and make use of your significant damage but tanky parties, that just want to stack and stay still, will quickly get you killed.