Guild Wars 2

I love being stealthy so I went 30 shadow arts (IV,X,XI), however, I have 40 trait points left and I don’t know what to use them on ( Please include perks when you suggest). I saw some people on youtube using vitality armor for a stealth thief and I am not really sure why… What would be the optimal armor/accessories to have? (With runes/jewels). Also, should I be going dagger/dagger with this build or something else? I have around 34 gold to spend on my thief’s gear, although I would like to use temple armor if possible, but if not, I can always buy off of tp.

20 in Acrobatics (Quick Recovery and the +50% movement speed while in stealth) is really good when paired with 30 in shadow arts.
Armor is tricky. My set is a mix of Valkyrie (boots, gloves, shoulders), Knights (Coat, Legs) and Celestial (head). While trinkets are a mix of Cavaliers and Berserker. Runes are divinity x6, but I believe Lyssa Runes would be good too.

Hope it helps

The best builds for WvW that use 30 is Shadow Arts are burst D/P buids and Condition P/D builds. D/P is better than D/D do to more gap closers, blinding powder to nullify melee burst and give you on demand stealth with <3seeker and a useful interrupt. for D/P most people put 30 in Critical Strikes and the other 10 is probably best spent on fleet shadow in acroabatics.

For P/D the best build seems to be 0/0/30/20/20, with carrion gear and mainly apothecary or even settlers trinkets. Both builds rely heavily on stealth in order to deal damage and stay alive.

If you want to instagib or get instagibbed, this post is not for you.

If you however want to sustain yourself through long fights and want to be hard to take down it’s worth looking at.

If you want best possible defense at a low impact of your damage, using soldier armor and jewelry in the right slots is the best way. Soldier jewelry and some of the armor pieces can be obtained from temples. Weapons and leg armor however can only be obtained from dungeons or WvW badges. The goal for a lot of thieves is 15k hp and 1400 toughness.

Here’s the order where it’s profitable to switch crit damage parts for soldier or other stats. Above the line has expensive crit dmg and below the line it’s profitable to pick crit dmg.

1: Helmet, Legs, Exotic Rings, Exotic Back = 16 stats per 1% crit dmg
2: Chest (+2H weapons)
3: Exotic Earring
4: 1H weapons
5: Exotic Amulet
6: Shoulders/Boots/Gloves = 12 stats per 1% crit dmg
____________________
7: Ascended Items
8: Orbs
9: Exquisite Jewels

In my builds I aim for them being easy to play, cheap to create, good stat balance and highly customizeable, and room for many different ways to use utilities and abilities.

A good starter setup D/P 0/20/30/20/0, not too expensive, tanky and has decent dmg.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlYm6O3cS5E/5ExmieuTuHG1pNtTBXtKA-jEzAYLBRKCIZBiIAk8W0a2LgthioxqXwUlCp6yI7NGyq7IyCBMaBA-w

There is however a big advantage of having 100% crit chance from stealth, but will cost you some defence and initiative regen, but you can trade a lot of your critical chance for vitality since your main damage source will be backstab anyways. You can basically switch every berserker piece to valkyrie and obtain high vitality while keeping high damaging backstabs. I always choose to stick to 15k hp / 1.4k toughness

A backstab build 0/30/30/10/0.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlYm6OXcS5E/5Ex2je6Tiy9woOtpdFwKA-jEzAYLBRCCIZBiKAk8W0a2Lg9hioxqXwUlCp6yI7NESdHSzSBExYA-w

I like this build best with scholar runes, which requires me to change the gear a bit.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlYm6OXcS5E/5Ex2je6Tiy9woOtpdFwKA-jUzAYLBRCCIZBiKAk8ia2LgpvkVcLiGreBTVCoLjsyMpejioVLFQEjBA-w

And I also recommend Wish’s builds, D/D but can be played with D/P as well.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Post-Your-Build-Thread/page/3#post2426220

His builds are made through careful calculation and optimization and provides you with the best Defence:Damage