Guild Wars 2

Hello!
I’m rather new to the thief class and been reading around and trying to make some builds myself but I’m having a hard time figuring out good builds for WvW, PvE and S/Tpvp.
I’m guessing that I should go full zerker for pve like any other class but what about weps and traits for all the modes, can someone shine some light on this for me?

When I look at the traitlines it’s not obvious to me what traits I should pick :S

Thanks in advance my dear thief community

Deadly Arts, many thieves love to put 10 points here for mug, the extra damage and the small heal is really useful. Going further in would either be for a glassier type of build using dagger training or the buffs for venoms for a bleed and condition build using venoms and bleed duration, venoms can also be used for direct dmg builds.

Critical Strikes, this is where to go if you seek heavy amounts of damage,
traits to buff signets, convert precision to vitality, fury when targets go below 50%, 7% crit chance from behind (useful when taking executioner), and lastly the decision between hidden killer and executioner, executioner outdps hidden killer, but hidden killer can give a nice kick in short fights like when fighting other players in WvW, since it allows you to convert some of your precision into defensive stats.

Shadow Arts, this is where to if you wanna go further into the benefits of stealth,
blind on stealth, condition removal on stealth, regen while in stealth, also SA allows more specialization on venoms the lifesteal provides heavy burst, and venom share provides you with group utility.

Acrobatics, this tree focuses around being, well.. Acrobatic and hard to hit, going 15 points in here lets you pretty much dodge 3 times in a row, and good traits are vigor on heal, fleet shadow for landing your backstabs, pain response as a protection to condition burst, blinding powder on fall is sweet in WvW, Quick Recovery is quite ok for some extra ini regen, Quick Pockets for some controllable ini regen.

Trickery, 10 points here will allow you to gain max damage from your backstabs, and the buffs to steal this tree provides are helpfull for your group, and long reach will give you a long gap closer on steal quite situational, Riccochet is a nice trait for pistol builds, uncatchable is really nice for kiting players or npcs.

Some common ways to setup traits:

Direct Damage:
10/30/30/0/0
25/30/0/0/10
/0/30/30/10/0
/0/30/0/25/15
10/30/0/0/30
Condition:
0/0/30/30/10
0/0/30/20/20
5/0/30/15/20
5/0/30/20/15

Probably forgot something wrote it pretty quickly.

Thanks alot for your input Ghostwolf!

What would be the recommended setup of traits and gear for wvw? conditions? very defensive?

WvW only has D/D and D/P remaining viable.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Building-a-better-D-D-thief/first

Everything else (condition etc) is better done on some other class. Oh, and prepare to die. A lot.

I made a post about a good dungeon dps build.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Think-Thief-is-too-hard

Seriously, roll another class. Engis and Rangers have the same look.
All we get is nerf after nerf after nerf, the playerbase adapts and gets nerfed again.

As of now, thief doesnt even have the best burst (yeah yeah, if you go full glass and have 25 stacks of everything that other people give you you can outdps a guard or a warr by 5%…). The sane thing to do is not to play the class at all and hope they realize their class has no active players and buff them / change them.

Here’s a build that you can use for all game modes- I do, anyways. Like any other thief build, it’ll take you a lot of time to become as good as the average player of another class (excluding ele, which is also in a bad spot right now), but if you truly love thief, then it’s certainly doable.

As others have said, try rerolling first. If you still can’t get away from thief (that’s what happened to me…), then just mess around with builds like the one linked above. I’ve made it over the period of about half a year now, so you have the benefit of my experience… And my mistakes.

Same general stats for WvW and PvE.

Thanks for the advice guys.
The thing is I already have every other class, and their forums says pretty much the same thing, that their class is crap and gets nerfed all the time and all other classes gets buffs etc (even a bit on the warrior forum but not as much there
I’m not playing this class to be the best at stuff, it doesn’t matter that I can play my warrior and do more dmg, it’s still different gameplay, skills, wep sets and so on.

A special thanks to Arganthium, I’ll try that in sPvP for starters!

Wharrgarbl.9263:

Seriously, roll another class. Engis and Rangers have the same look.

Why is it that they nerf the medium armor classes? It seems they want the middle to be destroyed and have a black and white line between heavy armor tanks/meele dps and ranged caster dps/Condi.