Guild Wars 2

I have made a post previously about whether healing power was worth investing in.
the answer is yes!
I feel that many thieves just go for raw dps (glass cannon was my last build) so people believe that dps is all the thief is good at.
I have recently geared my thief to be fully exotic in clerics armor and sapphire? trinkets.
my build leeches health when triggering venoms and uses S/D and SB.
I use withdraw (and vigor on heal trait) spider venom devourer venom and basilisk venom. I have close to endless dodges, alot of shut down and disrupting tactics and I found that using zerk weapons I actually still got a hell of a lot of kills.
more than on my glass thief.
I believe that I am a very annoying person to fight as I dont have any access to stealth other than CnD and people really struggle to get me down. if I get in trouble I use me bow 5 and shadow step to run away in clear sight, heal up then run back in again.
I have had alot of success playing this build in wvw and as I say I have (despite my damage stats taking a hit) picked up lots of kills!

if anyone wants to try a tanky (annoying as hell) thief I would definitely advise doing so.

I know my comment regarding thieves being only good for dps isnt strictly true but that thats where all the complaints and QQ are coming from.
I have also played a P/D conditions thief too so I have tried alot of different thimgs/ traits and gear set ups with thief.
This current build is the most fun ive had playing thief.

im kinda interested in this.. can i have a preview of the skill build pls?

skill build? sorry im not sure what your asking for but I hope this answers your questions.

traits:
20/0/30/20/0
I use might on venom, venom recharge, lose a condition every 3 seconds in stealth, leeching venoms, venom share, vigor on heal and the 10 seconds of regeneration under 75% health.

I use dwayna runes.
zerker weapons.
sapphire trinkets (I think)
4 clerics armor and 2 precision vit and healing power armor pieces.
I sit at 14.1k health 2.7ish armor and 2.7 attack
unbuffed 15% crit chance
1200ish healing power.
and I think thats everything?

withdraw/spider venom/devourer venom/shadow step/basilisk venom.

Feels like alot of stats wasted just for the venom heals . I tried it abit but as far as i remember it didnt scale that well with HP

I recommend taking a look into this

Try playing a p/d thief with apothecary gear and undead runes, u just tank everything and heal completely everytime you stealth

And I also play a shortbow build with clerics gear and dwayna runes. I’m just evading and dodging nonstop with a boatload of regen. And since I’m not stealthing they can’t QQ afterwards muahahha

SB, D/D, SoM, healing on initi spending, caltrops, caltrops on dodge, dagger storm, never die ^^ A lot of tricks to SoM if you experiment with it.

Nice build mate.

I was thinking about toying with a similar idea myself, but just never got around to it. It’s good to hear it’s viable and fun to boot.

yea I know what you mean about venom heals being maybe a waste but each trigger for me is just over 500 hp gained. so in a tight spot I can trigger all my venoms heal up a fair bit (maybe like 3.5-4.5k) then withdraw. its not optimal damage wise but the survivability balances it out I believe. and the venoms and sword immobilise and daze make u an awesome pain in the bum to fight.

I played p/d before but wanted something more “in your face” . never tried it with healing power though. Could be fun :-)

Always good to hear of alternative builds. When I played Warhammer Online I had 36 key binds however I feel Gw2 is a vastly more fluid and varied game with 10 key binds. There is always more than one way to play a class I believe in Gw2.

thank you for your comments elmuerto I agree 100% with what you mentioned there.

I believe people expect thieves to be condition specced or bursty. so they get caught off guard when they just get shut down completely unable to use any skills other stun breakers, which is where I think my success has come from so far.

would recommend trying this out if you can afford the gear!

I wish Cleric Thief (or Mesmer) would work nearly as good as Cleric Ele or Guardian.

Loading.4503:

Try playing a p/d thief with apothecary gear and undead runes, u just tank everything and heal completely everytime you stealth

And I also play a shortbow build with clerics gear and dwayna runes. I’m just evading and dodging nonstop with a boatload of regen. And since I’m not stealthing they can’t QQ afterwards muahahha

Yeah I have an armor set like this. It’s a nice ‘in your face’ at tanky d/d elementalist when you become a better healing juggernaut than them. :s

comeandsee – I have a cleric healing guardian, and yes hes a hell of a lot more tanky but my thief is better in small scale fights. when with co ordinated or even slightly organised groups my venom sharing means that (for example a 5v5) all of our opening attacks will turn them to stone, and maybe poison them if I choose to use that one too. then they come out of stone form and I (and everyone close to me) immobilises their target all the while leeching on venom use and popping my heal iff needed to grant allies regen due to runes. iff ussed correctly this build is very effective. (also giving allies might on venom shares)
I just wish the leech on venim was applied to everyone I shared the venom with.

What is the range on Venom Sharing? I had a guildy messing around with it before and it seemed pretty small aoe.

it is fairly small range I think, maybe shout distance? I could be wrong. but I find im always moving and constantly passing people so when I pop a venom I generally share with 1 or 2 people. The effects on a fight are obvious (and very powerful) when pulled off properly.

the leeching venoms actually heal for 602 a hit. just tested it :-)

Shizzlenit.7648:

I recommend taking a look into this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpXbn5uNGDg

So? What’s the point? waste 10 sec to full? lol.

of course u can take the trait to heal in stealth, but that trait is selfish in this TEAM PLAYER build (admittedly very useful) u could also trait for 5 seconds of regeneration when stealthing an ally, which also works on urself. this trait means you could get 18s of regeneration when using hide in shadows instead of withdraw as a heal. (if u use the trait previously mentioned and dwayna runes) u could also use the ‘heal when stealthed’ trait and ur healing would go through the roof.
but like I said that would be selfish. venom share gives MUCH more utility to the group and I would rather use withdraw as a heal get 6s of regen from runes and 10s vigor from traits. on a 15s cool down. Just a case of using sword 2 to get straight back into the fight again after healing.
of course I have thought about taking the hide in shadows heal with the above set up but the 30s cool down means you are only triggering ur vigor and AoE regen once every 30secs. I would rather trigger vigor and AoE regen every 15s. aand instead of regen on stealth we take condition removal on stealth. for some more survivability when we need to cleanse. tThis build only stealths when u need to interrupt a channelled skill, as u do not need to stealth to survive. I find fighting as a thief in plain sight much more rewarding than fighting in and out of stealth.
This is of course my own opinion. you may want to choose different skills and traits etc but this works for me and I truly believe in this build and thoroughly enjoy playing it.

I’d go for SB Cluster Bomb spam to be able to provide lots of healing with water fields. You will need a group to do this (or a ranger you could steal from) but CB is the best blast finisher in the game and can also be used to stack extreme amounts of might, give chaos armor to everyone, AoE blind the enemy zerg etc.

just make sure you are standing inside the field so you don’t have to suffer too much from CBs slow traveling speed.

yea CB is very good but I find I only use SB on rare occasions when I need to escape or dodge alot as I am in melee range 90% of the time. good idea tho I will bare that in mind.