Guild Wars 2

I’ve recently joined Guild Wars 2 about a month back now, and I’ve really enjoyed the game, used to play WoW before hand. But anyway I leveled, and recently got my Thief to level 80 I was wonder, what the general play style for the thief is for dungeons, or what good Trait builds/ability, weapon setups to use. As I really just hate to be dead weight, I like to know what I’m doing, know what helps my team/party members the most, and help myself succeed. I’d be open to and grateful to any help, support or direction my fellow players could give me ^^ In advance thank you for your help, in all its many forms.

Thief has one of the most options for builds. What did you used to play? Do you want single target or more aoe?

DD Backstab, single target dps
Sword/Dagger or Pistol, aoe control and decent dps
PD, single target condi
DD condi, aoe condi

vinceftw.5086:

DD condi, aoe condi

i believe you ment SB not DD

Jusassasin.6259:

vinceftw.5086:

DD condi, aoe condi

i believe you ment SB not DD

Deathblossom spam.

When I bring a thief with me in a dungeon (I play Warrior to dungeons), I have just a few requirements that the thief should fulfil. First and foremost, the thief has to use blinding skills. Blind is one of the best damage migrations in the game and the thief undoubtedly has the best blind abilities in the game. Second, use stealth where appropriate. You can use it to lose aggression, save friendlies, resurrect and move past annoying points. Last, but not least, ensure you are sturdy enough to avoid getting downed in a single hit. Doing less damage then your absolute maximum, just don’t become an annoyance (because dead people don’t do damage and waste other peoples time). If anything is annoying, it is having to resurrect your average Thief/Ranger several times per boss. Hope this helps~

If you’re coming from a trinity game like WoW the most important thing to remember in GW2’s instance play is that you have jobs other than dealing damage.

Thieves deal damage ranging from decent to amazing depending on build, but don’t forget that you’re the best source of trash DPS mitigation via blinds and spammable aoe cripples, you have the game’s only truly spammable blast finisher (so learn combo fields and when to use it!) and you’re the only class that can safely stealth-rez downed players (by stealthing both yourself and the downed target, and applying an AoE heal to you both to speed up the process)

These three things are what people are expecting to see you do as a thief in instances, as everyone in GW2 has to pull a bit of weight in terms of team support. It might sound limiting, but any thief that’s not packing shadow refuge in an instance gets a lot of eyebrows from his party because it’s really one of the best and easiest to use support tools in the game.

I sustain life great, DPS great, am good life insurance (blind aoe, refuge) … all in all this dungeon build works great for me. It’s not for everyone.

My dungeon setup;

Main Weapon Set Pistol/Pistol;

Why? It allows me to safely use a crit build and mostly berserker armor – both of which increase my DPS. The auto-attack from stealth is quite nice so stealthing to lose agro is made up for DPS-wise. Also traiting to regain initiative on stealth is quite helpful for unload spam.

Head shot is a good interupt (think veteran shaman in volcano fractals, or the brood in AC that summon adds). Area blind is underused but an incredibly powerful defensive ability for groupmates doing the tanking. You’ll gain more life from lifesteal food than you will from other party members healing and your own healing combined – that’s huge survivability. Both sigils are superior accuracy.

Swap Weapon Shortbow;

Obvious reason for this – it’s the best multi-target damage we have. You won’t steal as much life as with P/P, but you’ll still stay relatively safe compared to using sword to deal your multi-target damage. Also, as mentioned by the previous poster, it’s a great source of blast finishers. Sigil is superior bloodlust.

note: I do keep daggers with me for some occasions such as jade maw fractal. With so many mobs that reflect projectiles, clusterbombs don’t cut it.

Traits;

0 30 30 10 0 currently. 30 precision for obvious reasons – it’s such a good trait line. Since my survivability is so high I’ve considered changing the other two – possibly going 20 30 20 0 0.

Armor;

All my armor is berserker currently (transmuted to whisper skin). I’ve been using beryl orbs in the armor but I’m considering changing that up as well as my survivability is fine.

My trinkets are also berserker with exquisite beryl orbs with the exception of karka accessory, and solor/lunar infused rings. I like the rounded stats of these three items. The only stat I don’t utilize from them is condition damage since I’m not a condition build.

Utilities;

Hide in Shadows, Shadow Refuge, Signet of Agility, Signet of Shadows, Daggerstorm. I keep HiS, SR, and DS in at all times. The signets I sometimes change to other utilities depending on the location in the dungeon (ie: for swamp fractal I change signet of agility to either blinding powder. For boss fights I’ll often change signet of shadows to blinding powder or assassin’s signet).

You decide on your own what’s best for you. This is just my example of what works good for me in PVE/Dungeons.

Keep one thing in mind with this build. While it’s great for DPS and survivability, it can hinder a weak party that’s lacking survivability. The goal of this build is to stay off agro while dishing out as much burst and sustained DPS as possible. That means mob agro is potentially going to 4 members instead of 5. In some parties you’ll want to save refuge for emergencies to save other members. In parties that don’t need life insurance, I use refuge to regain initiative + autoattack from stealth + lifesteal benefit for the first 3 seconds + stay off agro. In some situations, Using #5 pistol attack is better for the party than your DPS. Kills take longer but they’re “safer” kills. Think of it as your “less lethal” option – you’re less lethal but so are the enemy.

When moving from the outside world into dungeons you can start as a ranged class and then pick the moments to go into melee as you learn stuff.

Depends on the dungeon really. If you need single target melee dps, go D/D. If you need single target ranged dps, go P/P or combinations of shadowstep that can remove you from the enemy area quickly incase you fall low hp. If you want full AoE use SB and spam Cluster bomb. There are a good amount of dungeon builds but your weapon selection will vary from dungeon to dungeon.

personally I run a high condition damage dual dagger build with a silly crit rate (which feeds directly into my survivability with pies)

However I have all skills unlocked and constantly swap them out as the dungeon demands (requires learning the dungeon first I admit).

My advice is to go with what ever base build your good at and enjoy and then start looking for points where switching an ability or two out will help the group more.

this of course also depends on the group, some will benefit greatly from smoke wall or shadow refuges, others wont really see any difference and you can get away with just pew pewing.

I’ve been running dual pistol + shortbow in the dungeons with a glass cannon build. Finding that the burst is quite nice. Here’s a video of Citadel of Flame path 1: