Guild Wars 2

I run some Ac yesterday, and i was mostly spamming aoe and combo blasts.
That seemed the most usefull, besdes condition removal.
Dagger-dagger had quite low dmg and felt someweath useless, trough myght be a bad build, but thats not the point.
The point is : we really needed some tank like character. The warrior was a banner master support-rezzer, the rest aoe dmg and combo fielder. Some mobs just cut us like butter. The leaer sead many times he wishes he could be taking like a real warrior or something…

so it came into my mind i loved tanking in other games….are there any tanky like builds for thief? By that i meant exception survievability, by some means.
Anyone can suggest any builds?
Or i should switch to my ele and “tank” with that?

This is our tank build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmKP3dS5E+5EBXhk69gsdNsdP4qV1KA;T8AgyyuEcJ5S1liLKfMwIgxOjzH5MLRGMMDA

(COPY AND PASTE LINK TO MAKE IT WORK)

caltrops, signet of malace, death blossom, roll for inititive and steal for more inititive

much much ini regen

regain ini
steal ini
spend ini
heal in spending ini (death blossom+assassins reward+signet of malice)
dodge on spending ini (death blossom)
heal on doing damage (caltrops+death blossom+assassins reward+signet of malice)
heal to get ini (activate signet of malice)

massive hp

go all night long

some caltrops, kiting, dodging in the middle will mean you can do this pretty much forever, just not spamming it (you have to be clever with it)

you could say to be the ultimate survivor use stealth, but that isnt really a tanky build

dodging/kiting/evading is the only way to tank damage without loosing agro via stealth

daggerstorm + signet of malice is a great way to heal on a bunch of mobs and gives 8 seconds of not using inititive giving it time to fully regen

ive listed sigil, armour, runes (pay close attention to the runes) and weapons in the build editor

Pretty much anything with lots of crit, lots of hit volume, and Signet of Malice+Omnomberry Pie can face-tank things. Omnomberry pie is pretty broken without a cooldown. Death Blossom works, as Webley pointed out, but most people use Pistol Whip from S/P since it also grants access to a blind field which completely trivializes “tanking” anything sub-boss.

Tulisin.6945:

Pretty much anything with lots of crit, lots of hit volume, and Signet of Malice+Omnomberry Pie can face-tank things. Omnomberry pie is pretty broken without a cooldown. Death Blossom works, as Webley pointed out, but most people use Pistol Whip from S/P since it also grants access to a blind field which completely trivializes “tanking” anything sub-boss.

Listen to Tulisin, he is usually right.

I was about to say this same thing. I run a “tanky” type build and have done pretty much all the dungeon paths, including quite a few fractal levels. The primary way I survive is through the skill Pistol Whip. This skill attacks 9 times VERY quickly, and with a crit chance of 50-60% you can see a LOT of very quick critical hits.

Now combine all these crits with (as Tulisin said) Omnomberry pie, or the equilivant for your level, and you get a 66% chance to heal yourself for each crit. Also toss on a Sigil of Blood for an additional 33% chance to heal per crit (keep in mind the sigil has an internal cooldown of 2 seconds or something close to that). On top of that keep Signet of Malice equip and you will heal for every attack.

This build works very well with the Sword/Pistol weapon set. Also the Pistol Whip skill has a built in Intrrupt, and a short evade mechnic which will allow you to avoid damage for the first 1-2 seconds of the animation.

Now do not assume you can just face tank every mob in the game this way, you still need to move around and dodge roll from time to time. This is true for every “tanky” type build reguardless of class.

For gear I run a pure glass cannon Berserker’s armor and trinkets, as you will be healing so much, so fast you really do not need toughness or vitality to survive most encounters. The one big downfall of this build is if the enemy has some form of CC (croud control). Knockdowns in peticular are VERY dangerous, and as such you should take at least 1, preferably 2 ways to remove these types of conditions. If you are not attacking, you will die quite quickly.

The #5 skill of the S/P weapon set (again, as Tulisin mentioned) is called Black Powder. This is rather unreliable on bosses, as they have a pretty strong resistance to blind effects, but for trash mobs, it can keep them pretty well blinded. Just watch out for AoE damage, as that can still damage you.

Webley.1295:

daggerstorm + signet of malice is a great way to heal on a bunch of mobs and gives 8 seconds of not using inititive giving it time to fully regen

This is an excellent point. To add to it; If you have sufficient critical chance (50-60% and the aformentioned Omnomberry Pie and Sigil of Blood you will be unkillable for the 8 seconds of Dagger Storm if you have 4+ mobs to hit. My normal group will no longer run Fractals without me because of this one ability because once you reach the higher level of Fractal runs the groups of mobs you run into can be extremly painful. This skill allows you to tank them, and in many cases, quite nearly kill them, without any fear of dying.

High ini build + black powder at melee + shoot with pistol at melee for extra projectile blind combo

Great for tank trolling people, not that great for damage.

Exactly the way im playing already since starting my thief.
Only problems, as already said, are knockdown and similar conditions. But if you jumped into the fight with ilfiltrator’s strike you will be still able to port back even if knockdowned, feared or whatever + it will remove a condition of you (never really read the description of sword skill nr 2 until a few days ago.. forgot about that feature).

Even if you are forced into range due to to heavy melee hits, you will be able to heal up fast with shortbow and good timed exploded cluster bombs (3 hits per mobs) or for boss fights if you go down fast p/p and unload – heals like 2-3k per usage.

Personally using:
signet of malice
signet of shadow (replaceable with any other skill, depending on if move speed is needed)
signet of agility (4.5 extra crit chance for better heal / condition remove for you and your team mates)
shadow refuge (using it for ressing only in most cases or for extra heal if needed)

replacing signet of agility or shadow with smoke screen if the current mobs are doing a lot of ranged hits.

Traits are different for me.
30 crit strikes is a must imo, traits 6 (1k hp more) 10 (not always, can be dangerous if you need black powder because it halfes the time / using 4 or 5 here often as well) and 11.
15 into acrobatics for more hp and more dodges. The first trait isn’t that important normally. 3 is kinda useless mostly because you don’t want to activate signet of malice so i mostly choose 2 or 1.
Those 45 are the basics for me.

Rest of the 25 points are depending on the difficulty of the dungeon/frac lvl or whatever im doing. If easy enough, 25 points into deadly art. If e.g. at frac lv40 im using 10 shadow art and 30 acrobatics with traits 9 and 10 for extra heal/ini regen.

Webley.1295:

This is our tank build

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlcmKP3dS5E+5EBXhk69gsdNsdP4qV1KA;T8AgyyuEcJ5S1liLKfMwIgxOjzH5MLRGMMDA

(COPY AND PASTE LINK TO MAKE IT WORK)

caltrops, signet of malace, death blossom, roll for inititive and steal for more inititive

much much ini regen

regain ini
steal ini
spend ini
heal in spending ini (death blossom+assassins reward+signet of malice)
dodge on spending ini (death blossom)
heal on doing damage (caltrops+death blossom+assassins reward+signet of malice)
heal to get ini (activate signet of malice)

massive hp

go all night long

some caltrops, kiting, dodging in the middle will mean you can do this pretty much forever, just not spamming it (you have to be clever with it)

you could say to be the ultimate survivor use stealth, but that isnt really a tanky build

dodging/kiting/evading is the only way to tank damage without loosing agro via stealth

daggerstorm + signet of malice is a great way to heal on a bunch of mobs and gives 8 seconds of not using inititive giving it time to fully regen

ive listed sigil, armour, runes (pay close attention to the runes) and weapons in the build editor

This is very similar to what I’m playing and it works great against several mobs, but I can’t kill anything in WvW.

How is your performance in PvP situations with this build?

No need for pvp discussion, i was asking abaut pve.
I would assume someone could make an thread abaut pvp -tanking. Or something like that.

Besides that i found the tips really awesome and indepth. I must thank you all. I will try to make some test runs with them and practice it a bit. And give feedback on them later.

Let’s talk about lv 40 fractale you can’t get hit by boss there because you will insta die. In other words you are better of with dodgin and vigor buff and full class canon build then tank. Also thief is really not that great as a tank compere to guardian/engineer.

hmm its like “unicorn build” ?

Webley why does it need lots of bleeing? And condition dmg? Would it not be better to have more protective runes?

Btw Kindread i understand how the “combo” works now, but would it not be better with some more compassion? You might heal many times, but really only slight.

Enjoyluck, lv 40 fractals? Basically anything 2-3 hits you in this game, when not soloing.
Whell anyway. If you bothered to post, may i ask you why Engi or Ga? I will roll an alt soon anyway, and would like to see your opinion why you say they are even better tanks as thief, so i am able to pick whitch one to play.

Nekroseth.5186:

Btw Kindread i understand how the “combo” works now, but would it not be better with some more compassion? You might heal many times, but really only slight.

The amount of healing you get from a steady stream of critical hits from Pistol Whip, combined with Signet of Malice, Rune of Blood, and Omnomberry Pie is enough to keep you up through just about anything. I say just about anything because of course there are some mobs that will 1 shot you, or just about anyone else if you do not move from time to time. Against your average dungeon mobs and bosses you can face tank with Pistol Whip in full Berserker’s armor/trinkets while life stealing like crazy.

The % that +Healing Power adds to Signet of Malice, and the Lifesteal food/runes is very minimal, to make a decent increase you would have to sacrifice too much damage, which is one of the reasons I love this build so much. In my normal dungeon group I can Pistol Whip for 9-12k damage and heal for around 2-5k depending on how many Omnomberry Pie procs I get and how many targets I am hitting. With 3-5 targets in front of me I fully heal myself every Pistol Whip. Ionly really go down if I am not paying attention, or learning a new dungeon and just dont know what to avoid yet.

Kindread.9481:

The % that +Healing Power adds to Signet of Malice, and the Lifesteal food/runes is very minimal, to make a decent increase you would have to sacrifice too much damage, which is one of the reasons I love this build so much.

This is a good niche for Lunaria/Solaria/Karka Shell/Triforge/Divinity runes. They allow you to get the benefit of some healing power without as much of a stat sacrifice.