Guild Wars 2

So…I have looked all over the forums, but have been unable to find much about leveling a Thief. I have tried various builds out, but end up dying significantly more than most of my other professions. I generally enjoy builds that have some survivability…I’m running a bomb-specced engineer, a hammer-specced warrior, and a minion master necromancer. I don’t care at all if the build is viable at level 80. My thief is level 20. Any advice?
Just as a second point…what builds along the same line would be viable for level 80 general pve? I would like to point out that by this I mean not dungeons, not fractals…I can go find 20 builds on that in a couple minutes. I mean for general running around doing stuff like level 70-80 events.

You’ll want 30 in Critical Strikes always, but I’d invest in the Acrobatics tree and the Trickery Tree for leveling. Avoid Deadly Arts till you hit 80, and Shadow Arts isn’t that good in my opinion. 15 in Trickery and the rest in Acrobatics should be good. Just grab Sword/Pistol and Shortbow, can’t go wrong.

His thief has 10 trait points at the moment.

Just go with the story and keep in mind that your thief is vulnerable. Acrobatics and trickery are good though, get those dodges up. Off-hand pistol for black powder shot will save yo many times, main hand sword for cleave and we have …. S/P. And a shortbow as second set, for blast finishing in group events (don’t try to melee bosses with your sword just yet).

Any advice for slot skills?

Also, would you mind explaining the acrobatics and trickery?

For swiftness on dodge, feline grace and caltrops on dodge. I think might on dodge is a 10 point major in acro to complement it.
Withdraw, Hide in Shadows and Signet of Malice each have their place, but Withdraw is my favourite. For PvE Caltrops is nice, Shadow Refuge for rezzing, stealth opening of chests, or getting away. In PvE Thieves Guild for elite and then usualy the shadow signet for +25% movement.

I would run S/P. The sword is there for the direct damage and teleporting to the next target, while the pistol is there for blinding and interrupting. The third skill is a stun, evade and damage flurry, and is quite powerful. Off-hand P/P to throw a flurry of attacks with unload and heal rapidly with Signet of Malice. Since this is stealth-less, focusing on stealth traits is a bit sad. Focus on the critical line for Opportunist (15 points) to have more initiative (useless after 10th of December). Use Signet of Shadow for movement speed, Signet of Infiltration for more initiative regeneration/stun break and either the Assassin’s Signet (+ power), Shadow Refuge (defense/heal) or Ambush (because it is fun).

You will be playing without stealth, but with a spammable area-of-effect blind and a flurry of area-of-effect attacks to deal direct damage and regenerate both health and initiative with. Teleport to ranged, pick them off with blind and flurries of attacks. The elite choice is probably Thieves Guild, and they are nice to have at champions to make it go a bit quicker, but aren’t necessary. Racial elites can be fun as well (e.g. summoning an Asura golem or the human hounds of balthazar).

Gotta agree with Deathspike here. S/P is the way to go for leveling ^^

Pistol/dagger can be a really easy to level up, kiting small groups of enemies using the cripple from dancing daggers. It’s PvE so you can change your weapons around to match your enemies of course.

piece of advice to save you any further struggle: delete your thief and roll a warrior

d/d once you get a hang of it, the fastest weapon combo for single target kill speed. However I recommend every chance you get to farm an event with a group the best way to level. shortbow tagging, staying out of danger, etc.

Thief is more about learning how to play than any other class. It is one of the least forgiving to the initiate.