Guild Wars 2

I decided to undust my old thief. So a couple of confirmations as i am outdated.
Dagger is better than staff when all boons and vuln are provided.
I should only autoattack when quickness is up, otherwise vault or cnd should be used.
Trait wise I should go for trickery with daggers instead of daredevil.

Anothet thing regarding breaking bars. What should I use? Dagger/pistol is an option now (just for dagger aa and pistol4 for the bars) or there are better options?

Ty!

1. Use Vault or CnD+BS on an appropriate timer (5 and 6s to maintain initiative), Steal and utils, then AA.

Edit: also, dodge ~ every 4s for Bound or Lotus bonus, and use DB for a condi build ~ 4s.

2. DD is superior due to Havoc Master and Bound

3. Power build, take Impact Strike and Fist Flurry for break bars. Condi build, share Basilisk, and use either Needle Trap plus trap on heal, or Impairing Daggers depending on your build.

Eh, I’ve seen a million different answers to the question of what thief build to run and what rotation to use.

Some people are saying that you do better dps by just picking up the Trickery line over DA and only autoattacking.

In my opinion if you’re going to take Trickery > Daredevil and just autoattack with Dagger main hand, you should just bring a Tempest. At that point you are among the squishiest classes in the game using absolutely no defensive utilities or utility skills. You bring absolutely nothing to the group, and you’re not even the highest damage class. Tempest crushes that Thief build in every possible way.

It’s a different story if you use Daredevil and Staff, however. Firstly, Daredevil is required for Staff and staff has only marginally worse sustained DPS than D/D + Trickery. You should autoattack when you have quickness, but you should still dodge into your enemy every 4 seconds to ensure the 10% damage bonus is present. Vault is a DPS gain only if you’d need to dodge to survive an attack anyway or if you’re lacking quickness since it does not itself benefit from quickness. The addition of Vault and dodging adds a lot to your survivability, though, which makes you far less of a liability compared to the D/D build.

For breakbars your best contribution is probably Basilisk Venom. Even without venom share it counts as a 300 power break between its two hits and requires minimal DPS loss compared to other options. Outside of that you shouldn’t need to bring more as it’s not really your responsibility in the group.

I have been playing a little around. Am I correct dardevil dps = rev dps (glint/dwarf)?
Nevertheless I gonna pick dardevil for my open world stuff.

If we ignore big hitboxes (so no gorseval), how does tempest have top dps on VG? Scepter auto is garbage, so dps is not there. Lightning whip is good, but not great, i’m pretty certain thief sword/dagger/staff auto do more now with the boosts. That leaves staff aoe spam. It’s good, but imo not great. And ele lacks survivability in that build. If you go fire + air + only one potential defensive line, a ele making mistake is getting almost one shot. And staff auto’s are very meh.

Only fresh air + air overload (and sometimes burning), seems to work for me. But there’s still windows with no burst skill available (using auto attack) wich is the limiting factor of ele. Big hitbox, no question the meteor shower hitting non stop, outweights downside of weak auto. But on VG the situation (imo) is all diff.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

If we ignore big hitboxes (so no gorseval), how does tempest have top dps on VG? Scepter auto is garbage, so dps is not there. Lightning whip is good, but not great, i’m pretty certain thief sword/dagger/staff auto do more now with the boosts. That leaves staff aoe spam. It’s good, but imo not great. And ele lacks survivability in that build. If you go fire + air + only one potential defensive line, a ele making mistake is getting almost one shot. And staff auto’s are very meh.

Only fresh air + air overload (and sometimes burning), seems to work for me. But there’s still windows with no burst skill available (using auto attack) wich is the limiting factor of ele. Big hitbox, no question the meteor shower hitting non stop, outweights downside of weak auto. But on VG the situation (imo) is all diff.

Fresh Air D/W is huge DPS now since it got buffed substantially to motivate those builds. Additionally, Staff is still massive damage even without big hitboxes. That said, Fresh Air totally trumps Staff against small enemies or enemies that move a lot (ie. would walk out of Lava Font/MS). I definitely recommend Fresh Air against VG/Sab, but Staff against Gors. Staff also helps against Gors because it’s far easier and lower risk to manage orbs with Staff than it is with D/W. Also, Lightning Whip is pretty bloody good DPS on its own so don’t discount that when you have to use it.

Honestly, even as someone who is still mostly a thief main in most aspects of the game, I still don’t see it as worthwhile to bring a thief to raids above any other profession (assuming equal skill of the player). The dps is more competitive, but it doesn’t seem to blow the competition out of the water or anything and when so many other high dps classes can also bring things like fire fields (not just good for might stacking, but also more condi dps from proj finishers), banners, boons, etc., there’s just no real advantage to a thief.

Unless someone is able to prove unequivocally that thief DPS is far ahead of other professions, you can only argue to bring a thief on the grounds of it not being a liability anymore, rather than it being of any particular benefit.

I hate to say this because I love my thief and would love to bring him in raids, but facts are facts and if I bring my thief to a raid, I want it to be because it’s the most useful profession I can bring and not simply because 9 other people will put up with me not bringing my warrior/engi/mesmer/etc. instead.