Guild Wars 2

This may not be favored in the eyes of everyone, but when i started out in the game and on thief, I used the 0/6/6/2/0 for just about everything. I used valk armor, zerk weapons and trinkets. This was good for 16k-ish hp and decent power and crit.

Im on my phone so I dont want to hassle with a build editor. Traits for crit strikes were practiced tolerance, hidden killer, and whatever else you want.

Shadow arts traits i used shadows embrace, blind on stealth, and shadows rejuv. For pve and wvw, the stealth boosts can be a life saver.

1. This build was fine for me in just about every aspect of pve to start. You shouldnt use this to run in a speed clear group, but you should stay away from these for a while anyway. Normal mobs die very easily to a backstab and maybe a few hits. I almost always use d/d or d/p for open open world. For most world bosses, you could do these with no armor and your eyes closed and it wouldnt matter, except for some of the higher tier bosses. But even then, you will probably be ok with this build, especially after the megaserver. As you get more comfortable, you can get more zerk and maybe go with a non-stealth dependent build, like 6/6/0/0/2.

2. The 06620 build is still viable for wvw roaming too. There are a few threads already on it. It was nerfed some in the patch but some of that can be made up with runes of strength or hoelbrak to build might stacks to make up for dmg lost. S/d builds are gaining popularity also, 0/2/0/6/6 or 2/6/0/6/0. You get more dodges with those builds. If you cant afford strength runes, there are other options. I prefer to stick with the power runes but there are a few others that could be useful in certain situations if they feel right for you: speed, traveler, wurm, pack, hoelbrak, scholar maybe.

3. Use s/p against dungeon trash mobs and lay down a black powder for area blinds. It makes trash basically insignificant to the group. Blind doesnt really work on champs or above so then swap to d/d if its single target. Sword hits up to 3 targets in close proximity and dagger is single target only.

For utilities, swap them for different situations. Shadow refuge is your rez cover or your oh kitten skill. Use it to rez a teammate safely or save yourself if you mess up. I really like signet of agility also. Refills endurance and clears one condi on you and everyone else around you. Pretty good, and if you dont need to use it, 9% crit is pretty sweet especially when you have some of that defensive gear. Other that can be good in different situations: assassins sig, blinding powder, shadowstep, infil sig, smoke cloud.

Sorry that was long. Hopefully something there can help you. Speccing into shadow arts is always a dps loss, but a dead thief doesnt help anyone. Once you get more used to thief, then try to work towards full zerk, at least for pve

Thank you for the technical insights on why this build has increased in popularity lately. The boon stripping and changes to ferocity/pvp stats makes sense.

As for everyone trying to copy sizer, or being sizer wannabes, cmon guys. There are plenty of great thieves out there. Harley and amon both poseted above – I’ve seen both of your videos with s/d and you guys are really good. Like someone said, there arent a crazy amt of build options so people are bound to have tried everything. Just because you tried the current up and coming build that was (correctly or incorrectly) Attributed to sizer, doesnt mean you are a wannabe.

Thanks to those who posted

Thanks for the replies. Sizer is good for sure, and could make sword/no OH look good. I’m trying to make sense of it for the common thief like me.

So if boon steal is that effective, does 3 skill get the most use? For the evade and boon steal?

So i noticed s/d seems to be the new craze since some of the top thieves used it in ToL. This mostly applies to spvp, but even wvw to some extent now. I’m not all that experienced, so I need some help to understand why it is so good. I’ve tried it some and I am having trouble adjusting to lower dps. Seems like you spend more time dodging and creating distance, than doing dmg.

I know it’s a pretty good dueling spec because it has good sustain and a lot of dodges/might. Fine. I know some tpvp teams may want a thief that can survive longer on a point or something. Good.

My understanding of a thief’s most common role, at least in spvp, is to zip around maps, decapping/capping unguarded points and helping in finishing fights with teammates. So you have shortbow for mobility and utility that seems to be a given.

Sword brings some nice effects like condi clear, weakness, cleave. But is s/d really better than s/p? Seems to me that even with the pistol whip nerf that the pistol offhand will provide better options in spvp than dagger offhand. Is fs/Ls really that good?

Can someone explain to me why this 2/0/0/6/6 build is so good for spvp/wvw now? Other than 1v1 fights or trolling with a bunch of dodges?

For bosses and other single target dps, D/D is considered best.

The min/max PVE builds are below. They are probably about even, although I don’t know if any new official research has been done proving one better since the patch.

5/6/0/0/3
6/6/0/0/2 – This is after the patch, if you prefer revealed training over 3 extra initiative. I’m thinking this might be better because your rotation with D/D on single targets is just C&D, backstab, and then AA until revealed is gone, repeat, while keeping your init above 6.

5/6/0/3/0 (I’ve seen this for extra dodges and a little hp. less DPS than the ones above but more survivability. Maybe good if you want to lean towards more zerker gear but less risk of dying)

Smoke screen is a useful utility sometimes. You can spam blast it with shortbow #2 for stacking party stealth in addition to shadow refuge. It is also useful on fights with projectiles to support the party.

I made this build in the calculator. Haven’t tried it because i dont have any celestial armor but I’m tempted. Uses strength runes instead of perplex but I think it could make a good hybrid build. I like the efficient use of might on hybrids because it boosts condi and power.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQRAoY6YlsMp7pVOxwJ0PNhPRtdA8aNAXhg3NxScgA-TVSDwAMODAvV/h1+Dt1P8UZWClgVeIAdVaAwEEhAEsFA-w

I like it because it gives still good precision, ferocity, defense, and still okay power. Less in shadow arts than yours, but this version is mostly just for condi cleanses when going into stealth and for last refuge, haha jk. From my experience, blind on stealth is fairly useful, but it isn’t a make or break, especially since it is only one stack instead of a pulse.

I also like D/D better than D/P for the hybrid build because I think D/D is more designed to be hybrid. You can still get burst damage with D/D due to easier and faster access to stealth. And it stacks a crazy amt of bleeds also, if you want bleeds.

Just my opinion on a hybrid build. Probably isn’t for everyone, and your build might fit your play style better. Maybe this one is a little more offensive than yours, but I would feel very squishy with only 12k hp, especially with all the condis flying around. Plus, this is mostly exotic stuff, would be better with ascended but that’s not realistic right now.

Glad it helped some.

Be careful with a pure backstab, hidden killer D/D type build. I’ve seen a lot of comments that the ferocity patch really hurt this build because it is typically stacked with crit damage and the dps loss is a lot higher.

The “10% damage nerf” that was advertised was for a balanced zerker build that got it’s dps from crits and non crits inside and outside of stealth. Hidden killer builds used to stack crit damage at the expense of precision and 90% of the damage came out of stealth, which was 100% crit chance.

When all your damage comes from crits inside stealth, it is easy to see why hidden killer backstab players are claiming they lost 30% dmg because most of those builds went from around +100% crit damage to around +70% with ferocity.

Whether you go power or condi (as Zero day said, condi looks stronger now), make sure you bring some form of condi clear because there will be more condi in wvw. Shadow arts is the best condi clear thieves have (at least 2 trait points). Could maybe work out something with the condi clear sigils.

Are you familiar with how 1h weapons work for thief? it’s different than any other class.

Your 1,2,4,5 skill for each weapon will always be the same. your 3 skill will change depending on what combo you are using.

For example – dagger main hand always uses 1 auto attack chain, 2 heartseeker. Dagger offhand always has 4 dancing dagger, 5 cloak and dagger. If you have d/d, your 3 skill will be death blossom. This is an aoe, evading skill. If you equip dagger/pistol, your 3 skill becomes shadow shot (a direct damage teleport and blind skill).

S/P – 3 skill is “pistol whip”
S/D – 3 skill “flanking strike/larcenous strike” (chain)
P/D – 3 skill is shadow strike.

You can match them up with my above post to get a summary of what they do.

I’d also recommend playing around with this build site. Very helpful for seeing the skills and gear combos. They are in the process of updating it after the recent patch. Should be accurate soon.

http://en.gw2skills.net

Dagger MH – single target direct damage. Works well with stealth for big burst (backstab)

Dagger OH – Cloak and dagger gives stealth and decent dmg. dagger 4 is mostly worthless unless you are chasing someone

Sword MH – point blank aoe dmg, mobility. boon stealing, evade and damage with Dagger off hand. point blank aoe burst, stun, dodge with pistol off hand

Pistol MH – range dps, favors condi builds. with dagger OH, gap opener with decent direct damage and torment. With pistol OH, channeled direct damage. While the damage is decent, this set is very hard to use due to no defense. Probably well avoided until further buffs down the road.

pistol OH – useful offhand. pistol 5 blinds in a small aoe (and blinds target up to range 900) that pulses blind every second for everyone in it. nice combo field for stealth and blinds. pistol 4 is also useful – instant ranged skill interrupt.

I’d recommend getting familiar with all the combo’s in PVE before trying to fight real players, unless you just have your heart set on it. uplevels in wvw are easy targets for lvl 80’s.

To stealth on a D/P build, you first cast 5 – black powder, then cast 2-heartseeker to leap from the black powder field. You can also hop through the field, or leap into the field to achieve this. You can heartseeker multiple times through this smoke field to stack 3 seconds of stealth each time. Also, if you are fighting, if you 5-2, you stealth AFTER the heartseeker does damage so you don’t have to worry about being revealed until after you deal damage again.

Be careful of people that can interrupt skills, because if your heartseeker leap combo gets interrupted, you lose a lot of initiative and will be in trouble.

First off, I wouldn’t really recommend leveling a thief solely thru crafting. You can do whatever you want, but the reason is there is a lot of timing, skill mechanics, and combat skills you will not learn while leveling that will have to be learned after you hit 80. I leveled my thief with a mix of pve and wvw (running with a zerg only). You won’t be a lot of help to your team in wvw as an upleveled, but you aren’t a whole lot of help as a full 80 thief either so no big worries =)

It depends on what you want to do in wvw to decide on a build. The thief can do a few things well. Roaming is one of them. After the patch, I’m not really sure yet how things will shake out but D/D wasn’t terrible before, but not that strong either. You must have great timing on your cloak and dagger skill because all your damage basically comes from backstab. If you miss one, you are behind the 8-ball. I’d recommend d/p power build for roaming, p/d condi is good also because people are not as prepared for it. The build for d/p is usually X/30/30/X/X where you can place the last 10 (two points now) wherever you want. Deadly arts gives you mug with some utility on steal, acrobatics some hp and utility, and trickery gives you more dmg from behind, or thrill of the crime. I use 0/30/30/10/0 because of the falling reduction, run speed in stealth, or might on dodge. I think the normal p/d build is 10/0/30/0/30. Not all that sure about it though. You can probably find p/d build info on the thief forum. You have to be good with your cloak and dagger for p/d to be effective also.

As a roaming thief, things that will help your server are flipping camps, attacking keeps to make the enemy waypoint contested, scouting for a commander, and other general havok. Kill noobs

In a zerg, our effectiveness is not as apparent, but there are things that you can do. If you have other 80’s like warriors or guardians, you might wanna bring them since WXP is account bound now, there isn’t really a reason I can think of to bring a thief to a zerg over them if they are available. If you are like me and thief is the only 80, then nevermind. A thief has a very good blast finisher on the shortbow, cluster bomb. You can spam blast finishers on several useful combo fields for nice area effects, mostly fire and lightning fields (might and swiftness respectively). Maybe you can stack a lot of might for your party. Do these when the zerg stacks before a fight. Blasting a smoke field gives area stealth but I don’t see this happen all that much in a zerg.

During fights, cluster bomb is also good for aoe dmg, especially if you detonate it over a group of enemies. Helps you tag a lot of targets and does decent dmg. Choking gas is also good if you can land it where a lot of enemies are because it poisons a lot of people. You can also keep your other weaponset to a burst set up so you can switch to it to burst down an enemy that has made it to the back line to all the squishies. S/P isnt a bad choice, because you can infiltrators strike and pistol whip for quick burst, cleave damage (sword hits more than one person), and headshot against stomps.

As for gear, in a zerg I usually go a little tankier. I used to use soldiers on head, chest and legs, valks on the rest of the armor, zerk weaps, and a mix of zerk and cavalier trinkets. Got around 2500 armor, 16k hp and still pretty high crit dmg. Not sure what to use post-patch. I probably won’t change for a while. For traits, you can go a little more support. I always use 30 in critical strikes for damage. trickery has some nice support with the stealing traits, but you would probably only use steal to gap close to someone that has broken thru the front lines. You can use the upgraded steal skill without a target to grant swiftness, might and fury to the part as well.

There are venomshare builds that are probably good for zergs but I’ve never tried them.

Power is the best damage stat from everything I’ve read. It makes your attacks hit for more damage. The more power you have, the more damage you will do. Precision increases your chance to critical hit, which means that your hits will do 1.5 times their normal damage (or more from ferocity). The hits have a red blood spot behind the numbers when the combat text scrolls. Ferocity dictates how much bonus critical hit damage you cause on a critical hit. So if you have an additional 50% bonus to crit damage from ferocity, your hits will do 200% normal damage. All of this is on the wiki under “damage”. I’ve always built the thief for power>ferocity>precision.

They recently nerfed critical damage in the patch, but they also buffed sigils and runes so its hard to say how everything will play out.

So I know that was a lot of text. I didn’t realize how long it was. But I think it could help you on your way, if you can stand to read it all.

I have two builds I’m going to try. I am going to try first to take advantage of the new sigil and runes of strength. I like their synergy and in my head at least, seems like you can stack a lot of might to reclaim some of that lost crit dmg. I also don’t fully understand how bloodlust is going to work (I’m thinking it’s still worth having on a weapon so you can get 25 stacks, but I know you can’t unequip the weapon anymore.)

new strength runes – 175power, 45% might duration (seems big), 25% to gain might when struck for 10 sec (~15 sec), 7% dmg when you have might (pretty much always on with these builds, as opposed to scholar).

Strength sigil: 60% to gain 1 might for 10 seconds (~15 secs), 1 sec icd. With 55% crit, this equals one stack of might every three melee swings, according to probability.

First build – more of a group build for wvw and PVE. 30/30/x/x/x. Basically, taking some ideas from sPVP meta pre-patch. More of a burster/finisher type role (PVE also). Very high power, some might stacking (not as much as the solo roaming build probably), mostly glass, survival mostly from blinds and stealth. Might use zerk weapons if I find that 14k hp is not needed with ferocity nerf to everyone. This build also depends on whether revealed training turns out to be any good. For the extra 10 points, each extra tree could have it’s uses. The SA points are mostly for condi cleanse since condi use will probably go up even more. Tempted to take 10 in acrobatics for might on dodge roll and 1k hp. 10 in trickery for thrill, self explainatory. The extra 10 points can be moved/chosen at will now.

Note: Panic strike should equal revealed training. 2nd sigil on bow would be fire.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vYAQNAoaVlsMp7pVOxwJ8PNhs9wnqQeirgTp9gmaJYC-zUyA4LBRCCERBgyAm8KiGblrIasqFMlLRUt3AjQACGDA-w

Solo roaming: Nothing complicated here. 0/30/30/10/0. Same gear set up as the above build. I foresee the might stacking being even higher here because of the 2 stacks of might for 23ish seconds on stealth, and one stack for 23ish seconds on dodge. I would probably use HK here just because I prefer to crit my backstab in solo fights. Again, if I see this build works and 15k hp doesn’t seem necessary, I will probably drop the valk weapons for zerk. Might work a little better with D/D since the stealth comes more frequently, but D/P can still build some might with HS thru black powder 2 or 3 times.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vYAQNAoYVlsMp7pVOxwJ8PNhs9wnqQii7hTlUNVXhrC-zUyA4LBRCCERBgyAm8KiGblrIasqFMlLRUt3AjQACGDA-w

I used 100 power 70 vit food on both builds to get more power and boost hp to the target of 14/15k. Since the foods that used to give crit dmg got nerfed some, they didn’t seem worth the money.

I didn’t include infusions because I don’t have any of them yet. the builds would be better with all ascended obviously, but I don’t have it yet. Was holding off til after the patch.

Please give feedback on how you think these will be.

Background: I’m a pretty casual player (~5 hrs per week usually) that has been playing about 6 months. I do some PVE so I grinded my ascended berserker trinkets first and just finished the set. I’m looking at what I want to do next and made up this build. I enjoy WvW the most so far, so I wanted to have a set for WvW. This gives good burst and defense. Not the best straight up dmg. I do mostly solo roaming, but some duo. Even then, I’m usually targeted first.

I’ve had some decent success with using the exotic version of this (they were cheap) but wanted feedback from better players before I invested in the asc trinks. I don’t have much gold and I’m saving to make ascended weapons so the food, stones, and gems/sigils/runes are what I actually use because they are a favorite alternative to highly priced items. I’d like to have things like best soup and stones, and travelers runes, but the runes alone would wipe out my life savings.

I would also like to know thoughts on how builds like this will fare once ferocity comes out. I know the change will be across the board, so all players will be scaled down. But I do not know if it will make this too weak. I’ve noticed most of my dmg comes from backstabs, and that the key to thief seems to be patience, so I sacrificed some crit chance out of stealth for defense to be able to take a few hits between C+D if I need to, until the next window for backstab opens up. I suppose this build could work for D/P, not sure.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmaPHfS4E+5Ey2jdqCJKuHOVS1UdFwKA-j0yAY/AitgIIQEBQqAQ2TQM9ps2HKiGr+BTFTEV7OwECQ0WA-w

I am a fairly new player (thief) and was looking into the different possibilities of weapons at 80. It seems like legendaries are kind of the top tier as far as achievements go but I have a question.

If I wanted to craft a 1h weapon, say the incinerator, would I actually have to craft 2 to hold one in both hands? Or does your offhand automatically assume the same skin if it is the dame weapon type (d/d)? I’m guessing you would have to craft 2 incinerators if you wanted one in each hand.

If that is the case, it seems like it might not be worth the effort to craft the 1h versions since you would have to do the grind twice to have both weapons be legendary, as opposed to 2h weapon users only having one grind. Maybe I’m just picky and would like to have a legendary in both hands.

What is the big draw of a 1h legendary? Just the graphical effects it produces?