Guild Wars 2

Hi there,

I am thinking of building a thief specifically for WvW scouting, particularly for shadowing enemy zergs. The idea is to avoid combat, so I am thinking of a survival build with high toughness and vitality along with high boon duration to extend stealth. Anyone have any suggestions for such a build?

I think this build would be tanky enough to withstand some pressure, and stealthy enough for near perma stealth. This is as far as I’d ever go in to tanky side with gear/traits.

The standard 20606 dire p/d d/p is also fairly fast, super tanky, and still do loads of condit damage.

If you wanted to be super obnoxious and just unkillable, but not able to kill anything, you could also go something like this which has enough power and might stacking that you might be able to flip camps while you scout. Or you could take it even farther, do all nomad, use sigils of cleansing and energy.

You’re probably not winning any duels with this point spread, but it’ll be hard to kill you, even outside of stealth!

Hi thank you Woaden for the helpful advice, much appreciated.

No problem!

It sounds like you really want to stay in stealth while not having to engage the enemy at all (which rules out taking x/Dagger builds, since dagger stealth requires a target in melee range).

It also sounds like, if caught outside of stealth (revealed, etc), you want the ability to dodge incoming damage.

Lastly, it sounds like you want to cover great distances quickly.

Generally, you can always fit mobility in to a build (find a swiftness source, and equip bow, done) but then you usually have to choose between stealth or dodge. Giving you both sacrifices a lot, but that seems to be a trade-off you’re comfortable with.

When it comes to gear, you specifically mention toughness and vitality, which limits your options, but you may also want to consider making two sacrifices here, and still doing a large amount of damage.

Maybe go all Valk gear, d/p+sb, and 06602 trait points, take hidden killer. You’ll have all sorts of mobility, lots of stealth, and still throw up some impressive numbers for backstabs. Your only other drawback would be less initiative pool, so perhaps less access to stealth, but not by much, if you take every stealth utility.

Good luck! Report back and post a video of scouting if you have the setup for it!