Guild Wars 2

I’m planning on buying my 8th & final character slot to start a Thief. I tried thief a year ago and couldn’t get into it so he got deleted. Of course, that was back when I thought Guardians & Rangers were fun. Now, I main an Engi and prefer the more complex & dynamic professions, so I’m giving Thief another go. Enough preamble…

What’s a good playstyle for leveling? I’ve heard shortbow is a great 2nd wep set. And I don’t PvP or WvW hardly at all so I don’t need those builds. Just a general idea how best to level and handle dungeons as I go. And if anyone says ‘all signets’ I’m leaving. That’s why I never got my warrior past 16. Thanks in advance.

PS – posting this here cuz I didn’t get much help in the Thief forum

I started my thief not too long ago and i am currently playing D/D, with a focus on bleed damage thanks to Death Blossom.
I use the healing signet so that every time i DB, i get healed 3 times * the number of enemies hit. This, plus the fact that DB has avoidance built in allows you to survive rather well (but never stop moving or you are dead).

Coupled with that i use the trait that allows me to drop caltrops when i roll, so more bleeds and more avoidance. (with some + condition damage gear, enemies start to melt^^)

Because DB uses a lot of initiative, i use the trait that grants me initiative on steal, as well as the skill “roll for initiative”, thus you can twirl around all day =)

This works well for levelling (just turned 45), however i have no experience with dungeons at all !

In PvE I generally find Thieves very strong in 1v1 situations. It’s when you start pulling lots of enemies that they start to crumble because Stealth is not really a sustainable combat defense, and they are innately very squishy. It is at worst a dps setup for “stealth” attacks, and at best an escape alternative to losing a fight.

With that in mind, 1v1 you can kite and interrupt an enemy almost indefinitely if you reserve your initiative for interrupts and CC.

In 1vX, I either run away and then pick off enemies on at a time, or rush in and load as many Death Blossoms as I can, before being downed. Then I just wait for the bleeds to kill someone so I can rally and spam more Death Blossoms. :P

I would suggest keeping at least one pistol in your bag because it is a very good kiting weapon. My main issue with shotbow is that the attacks bounce and have AoE, which can often pull nearby yellow mobs, making a fight harder than it needs to be. It is useful in events for tagging everything so you can get credit though.

I feel a Thief’s survivability scales in a similar manner to Elementalists. Looking at their traits, a lot of them augment your combat skills with self-healing. Until you obtain enough traits to augment your offensive skills with enough healing to just go all out, you will have to manage your initiative to not over-commit yourself to a fight you that you won’t be able to quickly power through.

I am leveling a Thief right now. She’s currently level 71 and I’m using an approach similar to what minizero suggested above.

I run dagger/dagger and shortbow as my two active weapon sets. I usually start out encounters with SB, either using the explosive #2 skill or laying down a Poison field to have that condition running right off the bat, then as the enemies close in I switch to the daggers. D/D has some amazing Bleed stacking capability, especially thanks to Death Blossom, and with every wep. set you also have access to Caltrops (both the utility ’Trops and the on-dodge ones), which pile on even more Bleeds. Oh, and Steal (F1) is very useful for breaking stuns and for occasionally setting up combo fields, so use it when you can as well.

This is not a build that relies on a lot of stealth, so I have to really keep an eye on my health. Signet of Malice, with the passive of heal-on-damage dealt, works amazingly well in conjunction with DB, especially when I can hit multiple enemies. Multiple mobs CAN be tough to fight, but keep in mind that the Thief has a lot of AoE condition-inflicting skills, and using them together can take down crowds of enemies very quickly as long as you remember to dodge and keep an eye on your HP. I would also suggest investing in on-steal or on-dodge traits for getting some extra might, health, and initiative here and there for doing stuff you’d already be doing in battle.

Hope this helps! :-)

You really have to try things out for yourself. What looks good on paper doesn’t always work for your personal preferences. When I first started my Thief all I wanted to do was build for sword/dagger (shortbow). Then for a log time I played dagger/pistol (short bow).

Now I’m doing dagger/pistol (pistol/dagger) which is really problematic stat wise because main hand pistol wants condition damage and main hand dagger wants power but this is my favorite set up cause it matches my play style (stay away for melee and pressure the hell out of range).

All that to say you are really going to have to test things out to see what you like. Then it might change again based on what you are doing. I pistol/pistol in dungeons but I don’t use double pistols anywhere else

Solkard.5136:

I would suggest keeping at least one pistol in your bag because it is a very good kiting weapon. My main issue with shotbow is that the attacks bounce and have AoE, which can often pull nearby yellow mobs, making a fight harder than it needs to be. It is useful in events for tagging everything so you can get credit though.

I actually do that on purpose. I usually use Signet of Malice so that will increase the heals I get as well as damage since you need at least 2 targets around to keep it bouncing. I also have a Sigil of Blood on my shortbow so that increases the number of chances for it to proc as well.

Choking Gas + Cluster Bomb is also useful applying weakness which will lower your incoming damage in case you miss a dodge.