Guild Wars 2

I really love playing my Thief in WvW and Dungeons but am struggling to find a build/gear combination that feels right for me and was hoping to get some help here.

My absolute favorite weapon for my Thief is the Short Bow, the poison field and cluster bomb are incredibly fun, the evade and shadow step arrow are incredibly useful…what else can I say I just love it and would really enjoy building around it primarily.

My problem is that most builds I see that use bow are venom share builds, and I hate spending ALL my traits making venoms worth using and only when I am standing 3 inches from allies. I get that it is a good build, don’t mean to bash it, it just isn’t for me.

However, I do still want to be supportive to a group and not just another glass cannon backstabbing thief. So my question is: Is there a good build that focuses on being a non squishy group supporting short bow using thief that isn’t venom share? If so what is it and what gear/runes work best. If not, how close can I get? Lol

I am a 55 Thief who really needs help, thank you in advance for your time.

Well Thieves are usually only brought to dungeons for damage, even though shortbow is a great support weapon due to cluster bomb being a spammable blast finisher. I would recommend using almost full crit gear because if you enjoy using shortbow you will usually be at range and out of danger.

You can just build for some fun traits because not too many traits effect shortbow, however I would recommend 15/30/0/25/0. That build will give your choking gas AE a weakness effect which really reduces the damage mobs do. It also has lots of damage from critical strikes line, and lots of nice trait options from acrobatics.

For utility skills just run with signet of malice for healing, as each poison pulse from choking gas will proc its heal, as well as every arrow. Also bring shadow refuge for a nice support skill to save downed players/drop aggro on the group etc. I would also recommend signet of agility for condition removal/endurance regen on allies with nice passive precision, and smokescreen due to its synergy with clusterbomb.

What gear would you use with that setup? I’m not sure what names have crit on them, also what runes?