Looking for a more durable thief build

I don't have a ton of experience playing thief. I'm looking for a more durable build for a thief than full glass cannon. Any links and/or feedback would be appreciated.

I assume you speak to a power build.? Condition builds can be more durable, and in fact must be.

I'm fine with power or Condi. Just looking for something more durable while I learn the class better.

Edit: I need some gear, traits, and ability choices.

What for? PvP? PvE? More casual content? Raids?

Durability in thief comes down not so much the ability to absorb damage and heal as it does to avoid it in the first place. As such our key mitigation measures are in some combination and no particular order of importance are dodges, stealth, ports and weapon evades. You need first and foremost a sufficient supply of these. That said you WILL take hits even if you manage to avoid that damage there are some few ways you can try and recover health.

For the dodge based builds.

If this is PVE Daredevil using staff and traited into Critical strikes for Invigorating precision offers an excellent combination of Dodges with weapon evades + recovery of health Via vault and Invigorating precision. You can use something like Daredevil runes which adds a bit of toughness and allows Crits after a dodge. Mixing in some amount of Valkyrie gear can be useful.

An example of a very robust build Condition wise would be dagger dagger Condition in Dire or Trailblazer armors. Trait up Signet of malice as the heal. Acro/Daredevil and one of DA or TR works very well here as you can get full time Regen , ongoing heals out of your SOM attacks and excellent condition cleanse. This can be all but unkillable in most of PVE but does have weaknesses against other players. You can also take settlers/apothecary or shamans mix in armors over Dire or TB and can in fact outpefrom those two specs. In such a build you can easily gain 2k health + on every deathblossom.

For the stealth based builds.

Stealth based builds would Include DE or Core . DE rifle traiting into SA can be very robust when coupled with a melee type weapon. In these builds rely use Smeld and Rifle dodge with utilities to ensure readily available stealth. SE , Hidden thief and something like CIS taken in SA as once you stealth you can eat a lot of damage. In Rifle if you sacrifice some f your precision so as to get some vitality (Ie Valkyrie armor types) , you would look for traits to balance out that precision loss. As example Hidden Killer out of the CS line means every hit from stealth crits. Use in combo with something liek Sigil of intelligence of those daredevil runes (100 percent crit after a dodge) and you can make up for lower precision in a hurry.

The ability to absorb more damage usually means sacrificing damage sources to do so in order to get higher armor or vitality. In making hat sacrifice you try and look for other means of upping that damage. I find that the use of sigils or runes tend to be better at providing alternate means of damage then they do of mitigation. If you balance this with very specific traits your damage out does not have to take a big hit.

So as example. In my Daredevil Power build d/p , i wanted to get some vitality in so as to better take a hit. Precision suffers so I put a Sigil of Intell on each weapon set. Off hand . I then used daredevil runes for guaranteed crit on dodge. SOA as a utility is a Goto for added precison plus condition cleanse and an added dodge meaning even on cooldown if I activate and lose the precision I am going to get an extra dodge thus Crit. The build relies on weapon swaps and it becomes second nature to plan your attacks so that when the big burst is being delivered, you are chaining the guaranteed crit sources.

If talking pve just run full power dps gear traits and utilities with the exception that you take this trait: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Invigorating_PrecisionIt heals you for 15% of the critical damage which you deal so the more damage you deal, the more you heal yourself. Combo that with staff's heavy 3 target cleave damage and some more passive sustain from signet of malice and all of a sudden thief becomes arguably the highest sustain face-tank and heal class in the game that still does very good damage. The set up is only weak to high incoming cc since you can't keep attacking and healing when stunned and is weak to being one-shot due to low health pool. However against high sustained damage, especially when cleaving multiple adds, the healing is unrivaled by anything other than dedicated healing specs with no damage and might makes right warriors and even those struggle to keep up.

Super helpful, both of you, thanks!

@Tails.9372 said:What for? PvP? PvE? More casual content? Raids?

All of the above.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAoa6al8MhKnYvTwwJw+EH+E1OAetA03EVRU0TrWIHA-jxBBABVq+Te6HA4kAY0+DB8EAwS53ZKBJFQELjA-e

Just started playing around with this. Heals on crit, Intitiative spend and hits. I got no idea how that performs in group content or PVP but it's certainly durable for the expansions and LS. Dump heal traits as you feel.

Pretty much the combination of blind spam (Pistol#5, for ex.), Invigorating Precision and Sigil of Malice is everything you need to play Thief on PvE most of the time.

You can also change, if you ever get the HoT expansion, from Berserker stats to Marauders. The extra HP helps a lot.

In pve Invigorating precision is all the durability you need. PvP there are no durable builds. They all rely on damage evasion.