Should I Use The Meta (And What Is It?)

I've been playing GW2 since release, but never really bothered looking into what I guess you guys class as the current 'best' build in terms of DPS, support etc. I guess meta basically means best?I've been wanting to mix/max my character for a while now, and people keep recommending me to use the meta. Where can I find this? If you mean over at metabattle.com then which meta would I pick, as there is Raid and Fractal. Basically I'm just looking for something to help me out more in general PvE, fighting world bosses, killing champs etc.Also, does the current meta use Staff, as I'll probably have to get hold of an ascended staff if so, as I don't currently have one.

Thanks.

Going off on a bit of a tangent about what it means to be "meta" before I get to the direct answer...Everyone who plays this game has their own individual goals. For the most part, each person's goals boil down to some version of "I want to have fun". However that person chooses to define their fun is up to them, and when playing on their own, how they choose to achieve their fun is also entirely up to them. For example, if someone's "fun" is to complete all the objectives for all maps, they may choose to look up guides on how to best do that. Another person with the same goal for fun may instead find that they get more enjoyment from figuring out how to do all these things themselves. To an outside viewer who only sees each person's superficial goals of finishing map completion, it would look like person #1 who uses guides is operating much more efficiently, while player #2 is taking the worse route. But rather, neither person is playing the game "wrong", because their actions affect only themselves and within their own parameters they are both operating at maximum efficiency to achieve their goal of how they want to have fun.Playing with a group has the same underlying concept. Each person coming to the group has some goal that they are trying to achieve, but can't accomplish alone. And these underlying goals may not be the same for every player. (For example, you may join a fractal because you are testing a new build and want some content for it, another person in the group might be there to get their daily recs out of the way before moving on to something else, a third person could be there just trying to raise their fractal level.) But by joining into an activity with relative strangers, you all create a new entity, the group itself, which has the overarching effect of temporarily changing all of its members goals into an implied "complete the objective together". Now, because humans have a natural aversion to feeling like they're getting cheated, there is a shared expectation within the group that each person is putting in an equal (or at least equivalent) amount of contribution towards reaching that shared goal. And also, because humans tend to enjoy things better when they are succeeding rather than failing, and the assumed underlying goal for all individuals is to enjoy their time in this game, the general atmosphere of groups in "challenging" content (which is subjective) is that each person is doing the best they can to help achieve the success of the group goal.And thus reaches us to the origin of the meta. (Usually) through significant amounts of data, feedback, and live testing, members of our community have figured out which builds, playstyles, talent/gear/utility choices, group compositions, etc. perform the best in many various situations. Thus, for whatever your group is trying to do (fractal, raid, map event, dungeon), those options that contribute the most towards achieving the group's goal of completing the objective are what is considered the meta. Dps comparisons on websites like qtfy give a good idea of how different damage-dealing specs contribute to their particular section of the group's measure of success: the responsibility of killing things. Build rankings on metabattle give a good idea of general performance of those builds for whatever type of content it is, but remember that the specific needs and objectives of your group may vary from what those rankings would suggest, and higher rankings on metabattle usually mean the builds are generally more universally useful/meta.

Sorry to put you through all of that, in retrospect I may have been reading a bit more into the question than necessary. Onwards to the thieves!

In general PVE, us thieves are not particularly hailed for our group support abilities (yes deadeye can partially take on the task of stacking might, trickery can give us access to 50% uptime on various boons to allies, though we do have some of the best access to group stealth options and mobility). What this ends up meaning is that for the vast majority of thieves, our place is the meta is maximizing our personal damage output as much as possible, while we let others take on more of the support/survival roles. In organized group content, condi dagger/dagger thieves are slightly (less than 10% difference under best circumstances, via qtfy) above the damage of power staff thieves. Since your focus is more on open world content, I'd have to say that staff daredevil absolutely takes the cake in that department. This is because of the simply insane quantity of evades you have access to, all of the free healing from Invigorating Precision (critical strikes grandmaster), all of your abilities (autoattack included) hitting up to 3-5 targets, and the overall better effectiveness of power's burstiness in open word compared to waiting on conditions.

Metabattle's staff build for both raids and fractals are virtually identical and focused on getting the most dps out of your thief as possible. So I suggest reading both of the guides as they each have useful perspectives and tips on various thief abilities. In addition, here's my thoughts and suggestions on everything those lists cover as well.-Full berserker stats for maximum dps, scholar runes for best dps when you can keep your hp up, and force/air for optimal dps while crit capped. If you find berserker is too squishy for open content, you can switch in some marauder (preferably) and/or valkyrie pieces in order to up your hp pool. And if staying about 90% hp for scholar runes is too difficult, both. But keep in mind that sacrificing crit chance and raw damage also hurts your healing abilities (via invigorating precision), and killing things slower means they have more time to do damage to you, so you want to prioritize keeping as close to crit capped as you can. And finally, sigil of accuracy's 7% crit chance outperforms sigil of air if it's not putting you over the crit cap, and has the benefit of increasing all of your damage output rather than just being a single target proc.-Signet of malice for passive healing that scales with how many things you're hitting and doesn't interrupt your rotation, or channeled vigor for a larger burst of healing and endurance restore (both are good, this comes down to a playstyle choice, I generally let invigorating precision take care of my passive healing and thus prefer channeled vigor).
-For utilities its assassin's signet because 180 power is stronger than what most any other utility can offer for dps, and has the benefit of being completely passive.
-Signet of agility is suggested for fractals because a passive 180 precision (9% crit chance) is also stronger than almost any other utility if you're below crit cap, which is more likely to occur in the smaller group compared to an organized raid with more external buffs (and you should be well below crit cap when solo open world). The on demand endurance and condition cleanse also makes it a great "oh shit" button for you and the people around you, and for that reason it never leaves my bars.-Fist flurry is on the list for raids because it's good for dps, pumping out a lot of damage quickly and offering some extra breakbar help too. For fractals and open world I don't suggest is quite as much, because it is harder to reliably hit the 5 strikes, and being single target isn't as helpful.-Haste now that it got buffed to a 30 second cd is something I've found to be suprisingly useful (and not listed on metabattle because it assumes meta-built groups that have chronomancers for permanent quickness). The 6 seconds of quickness is enough to get off 4 AA chains in that time instead of 3, which for me unbuffed on a dummy is a gain of 11k aoe damage compared to the above fist flurry's ~8k extra single target damage over the AA chain it replaces. It also has the added benefit of helping out your swiftness and more importantly your fury uptime (assuming you're specced into invigorating precision and thus not getting perma-fury from no quarter), which is small but relevant. Final plus for it is that it can function as an emergency stun break too. This earns haste a spot as my third general purpose utility of choice whilst out and about, alongside the above two signets.-The fractal page lists plenty of other utilities and their uses, and since dps isn't the #1 factor in open world you're welcome to swap in whatever real utility buttons you want (traps, shadowsteps, stealths, etc.) if that's what you have fun with.-For elites, none of our options have any significant effect on our rotation or performance, so pick what you want. Basilisk venom (for larger groups where you can reliably spread it) and impact strike (for smaller groups and/or more controllable application of disables) are both the suggested elites due to breakbars. Thieves guild is a fairly negligible amount of extra damage over its 180 second CD, though dagger storm isn't a horrible choice if you like getting yourself surrounded.

Staff is the really the only thing that's vital for your build, due to the fact we use initiative rather than ability CDs and thus don't need to weapon swap constantly for our rotation. So your secondary weapon set can be based around whatever extra form of utility that you personally feel fits you best.-Shortbow is good for tagging multiple enemies in events with its bouncing autoattack, and poison field on #4. And as a thief you should know that it's main draw (haha bow pun) is the shadow to anywhere on #5. It's single target dps, however, is atrocious.-Pistol/Pistol has great single target dps (by ranged standards) by spamming #3 unload, giving it the utility of being able to sustain respectable damage during the times you're forced to keep distance from a target. Additionally the smoke field on #5 gives you an emergency aoe blind and since you have two leap finishers with your bound dodge and staff #5 it can be used to stack some stealth. Plus the interrupt on #4 can come in handy from time to time.-Sword/pistol on the other hand gives you a more full toolkit for battlefield control, keeping the great offhand pistol abilities, and adding in both stun and shadowstep options, while maintaining a fairly solid 3 target cleave autoattack (though still well below staff's damage output).-Dagger/pistol again keeps pistol's solid offhand utility, while providing better chasing options than the sword, and offering another leap finisher to combo with the smoke field for stealth. But it cuts the autoattack cleave down to two targets.-Dagger/dagger. We all know this one. Doesn't offer much relevant utility other than access to a short duration bouncing cripple, and a short on-demand stealth without any leap finisher shenanigans.

And as for traits, I know that both guides suggest deadly arts/critical strikes/daredevil, which is because that setup provides the maximum amount of personal dps.-Deadly arts's extra choices are underwhelming. We take this tree for the raw damage of +10% to targets that have a condition (which is literally almost always), and the extra 20% to targets under half hp (averages roughly an extra 10% dps boost). With the grandmaster set in stone, the minor and major traits don't offer much else. Mug is a bit of extra healing and damage, and revealed training is extra damage on the rare occasion we do stealth (via leap finishers or stealing stealthing items). Lesser needle trap isn't horrible if you feel the need to create a small safe space around you when you heal and synergizes decently with deadly trapper.-Critical strikes we again take for the raw damage. Twin fangs is two conditional crit-enhancing bonuses that are very strong and for the most part not too hard to keep up. Assassin's Fury is meant to synergize perfectly with No Quarter grandmaster trait, comfortably sustaining ~9 stacks of might at all times, which is nothing to sneeze at if you'd otherwise not be might capped. Signets of Power is okay for open world, since we generally like to run multiple signets and it gives extra bonuses on kill to those signets, but it's ultimately underwhelming in terms of actual output. Sundering strikes major trait is about on par with practiced tolerance for solo performance if you're target is not already vulernability capped (our rotation already sustains around 12-16 vulnerability stacks just from the autoattacks), so the positive side is that vulnerability helps the people around you, while the negative is that if whatever you're fighting is already vuln capped then this is a wasted trait. And for the grandmaster the choice is between No Quarter for extra raw damage and all but guaranteed 100% fury uptime, or invigorating precision which with our high crit chance amounts to essentially 12-15% of all damage we deal coming back as healing (meaning a couple vaults into a pack of enemies becomes a full heal). For open world or more casual group content I can 115% suggest sticking with Invigorating precision.-Daredevil trait choices are pretty self-explanatory. Damage, damage, and more damage. Since you use a staff, you don't often hit things outside of 360 range, so Havoc Mastery is basically a raw 7% damage. Since you're integrating dodges into your rotation, your endurance generally won't be full anyways, making staff master a near-permanent 10% damage boost that only requires some extra rotation management, plus extra endurance gains. Escapists's Absolution condi cleanse on evade with a 1 second ICD isn't horrible either due to the amount of evades we have, so if you need more condi cleanse for something and don't want to have to micromanage another 10% damage bonus out in the open world this isn't bad either. And of course, the grandmaster options are brand new dodges, each with their own specific uses. Impaling lotus for condition damage (not us), Bound for physical damage (yes us), and Dash for extra mobility (situationally useful, it's the fastest way to get around and can easily stack you over a minute of swiftness, but very recent nerf that cuts off all endurance regen for 4 seconds after breaking an immobilize, cripple, or chill severely hurts it and can leave you more likely to be stranded without a dodge). So you can switch in unhindered combatant for getting around the map, but make sure to have Bound in place whenever doing any actual combat.-And I'd like to talk about the Trickery traitline. It comes with being able to sustain only a 15% raw damage bonus, which falls a bit behind Deadly Arts's average 20% damage bonus, hence why it isn't suggested for raids. However, the trickery traitline comes with way more utility and boon application than deadly arts does, making it much more useful for open world or unorganized group content. For starters it's baselines traits are extra max initiative and initiative on steal, and I'll be quite honest with you that being able to pound out 4 vaults in a row (15 max initiative, 3 restored while vaulting, 2 back from steal for the last vault) compared to the only 2 in a row with just deadly arts melts most trash mobs before they can touch me. Additionally, if you're all alone or in an unorganized group, then you can't rely on the constant boon uptimes that the fractal/raid guides assume someone else is providing you, so Thrill of the crime provides you and the people around you with an extra 50% uptime on fury and swiftness (with negligible might). Bountiful theft adds Vigor into that 50% uptime too, in addition to whatever boons you steal as well. Trickster also is an option if you're running Haste or other tricks and don't feel the need for vigor. And for grandmaster traits, Quick Pockets isn't horrible if you want to run two of the same weapon set and have it function as a source of free initiative that doesn't interrupt your rotation at all. But Sleight of Hand is the more reliable and universally useful option, with the daze coming in handy now and again and lowering the steal recharge to help out the boon uptimes of your previous traits (plus just more stealing, we are thieves!).

Well, I hope that's been informative enough, and good luck going forward! God forbid you should somehow still have questions, feel free to ask and I'm sure someone will answer.

P.S. I do suggest also trying a double pistol/pistol daredevil build, with Trickery's quick pockets trait for initiative refills alongside Critical strikes and of course daredevil (plus you can take escapist's absolution for condi cleans since you don't need the staff trait). It's self-buffs-only single target damage kept up on par with staff's self-buffs-only dps over the course of ~2 minutes on a 1 million hp target dummy, which is an impressive statement for a ranged weapon set. Plus over that time I had enough initiative and endurance regen to always be attacking via the unload spam or bounding dodger (though keep in mind that's conditional on Unload getting all of its shots off and refunding some initiative).

But it's kind a one trick pony, since all it does is spam unload and dodge, and most of its dps "advantage" over staff is that it keeps itself fully might stacked whereas staff doesnt provide any of its own might. Add the fact that quickness just makes you start spending initiative faster than you can regen it means that while it's keeping up with staff for solo dps, it will quickly get outclassed by staff when you have other classes supporting you.

Anyways, I didn't want the last post to scare you into the "meta or gtfo" mindset some people have and push on others. So I just wanted to share that there's other options that can be plenty viable even if not 100% optimal.

And as I always like to say, what works best on paper isn't necessarily what works best for you as an individual person. Playing the "optimal" spec poorly is usually worse off than playing a "sub-optimal" spec properly.

Aplier gave you a very detailed and thorough response. Unless you plan to raid or do high level fractals with PUGs, I'd suggest only using the meta as a guideline. Don't be afraid to customize the meta build to suit your playstyle. If you have a static raid/fractal group, you and the group will decide what your group's meta will be.

The only thing I would add is there is also a condi meta build that uses DD Daredevil build that uses bleed/poison damage, evades, and DD3 spam that you should check out as well (go to the mists and hit up the training golems). It feels/plays completely different than the power staff version and synergizes very well with DD and the DA and Daredevil trait lines. I've run both meta builds in open world PvE and well as Dungeons and Fractals and found them to be equally effective.

Wow, thank you very much for that Aplier! You're right, I don't really have any more questions now, haha. Although... I've never heard of qtfy, and just checked it out. I thought that Metabattle was the main place for people to get their meta builds from, although is qtfy better? I'm gonna go get a staff, and work through what you suggested.

Really appreciate it, thanks again.

THANK YOU so much for this, Aplier. Let me be frank - I'm a brand new player coming from WoW and was having trouble lining up terms players use there, over here. Some are different, some are the same or similar.. so halfway through your post I finally realized that the 'optimal' build or specs were what players were referring to by meta. And though your were pointing to thieves, I was freaking out because others were wondering why I chose turrets because it wasn't meta. Now I realize where this could be challenging endgame, as it sounds like my chosen style has been kinda broken for a long time. Thank you so much!!

"Meta human" is a term from DC Universe meaning "human who got minor empowerment and by the virtue of this acquired strength feels obligated to boss ordinary humans and tell them what is best".

What is "best" is the lack of surprises for meta humans because if everyone runs the meta build the game environment is absolutely predictable and meta humans can lord over without being rudely surprise defeated by upstart muggles.

Everything work in open world PvE. Some builds make it easier, but they all work.

I always play around and go with what I want, not what the meta currently is. I recently played condition P/D DD. Very fun and loads of survivability, but far away from any meta.

Have fun, experiment and find a build that suits your needs. If you are looking at doing high end fractals and raids, then you need to worry about meta, as those instances will require the best build to succeed.