Guild Wars 2

Hey guys.

After a long series of tests with almost every profession I finally decided to be a thief.

I’m still level 15 but I noticed that thief is a little bit harder to play with than the others I tested. With ranger and elem was just run around shooting at the enemies, with guardian and warrior was more like a face-to-face combat and so on…

I’m thinking of focusing my skills in stealth/critical/backstab so I’m trying to kill mobs using that. Anyway… I’m killing mobs like this and I want to check if is the “right” way, or if there’s a better way you could tell me:

1) Open the fight with the 3 skill 1 or 2 times just to stack a couple bleedings.
2) Run around the mob or foward and back trying to make it miss me, hitting with the 1 ofc.
3) 5… get inv… backstab till the hp is low
4) 2, 2, 2…

I try to use evade when they make aoe or stuff like that.

Is this the way to go up till 80?

Any tips are welcome.

Cya!

I’d use dagger/pistol. The blind field (pistol 5) will allow you to wreck any PvE that isn’t immune to blind. Plus, you can pistol 5 => dagger 2 (heartseeker) and stealh. Easy access to stealth just in case you gotta disengage from any mobs. But honestly the best way to get to 80 is crafting :S

Quoting myself on the same subject on another thread:

Additionally, if you’re using a Thief in PvE, use Sword (Mainhand) and Pistol (Off-Hand) and thank me later. First, unlike Dagger, Sword cleaves, which means that each attack hits as an AoE in front of you, for quite a decent amount of damage. Dagger has more damage, but it’s entirely single target, and in PvE AoE is king. Second, Pistol Whip is a ridiculous skill for PvE, not only does it have really high damage (and AoE due to cleave), but you can’t be hit for the duration, so it’s essentially free damage, and you get a single target stun as a bonus. Lastly, Black Powder is another skill that is amazing for PvE, as it drops a field around you that blinds enemies inside it for the duration, meaning that any monsters that try to melee you while that’s active will just miss their attacks entirely, so you get to hit for free.
A lot of people who pick up a Thief, especially new players, go for daggers, because of “style points” and because the dagger style is usually why they picked a Thief to begin with, but their Daggers really are more PvP weapons than PvE. They’re actually quite mediocre to bellow average there… For PvE, on a Thief, nothing beats Sword Pistol.

Additionally, forget about conditions in PvE. Especially if you don’t have condition damage (which you shouldn’t have for PvE). Consider them free bonuses, but don’t bother with them.

Oh yeah, I forgot to say I’m using dagger/dagger atm.

I don’t intend to make PvP till I’m 80, so I guess I will try the sword or dagger/pistol set for leveling and maybe try d/d later.

What about the swap weapon? Any tips?

I watched some videos of d/d and i thought they would be good for PvE too. I guess I was wrong.

Thanks guys!

I leveled to 80 with d/d and the shortbow.

For a while, I had a second thief that I was leveling with p/p, but I scrapped that to make room for trying out engineer.

In any case, while I had to learn that I couldn’t just wade into battle like my warrior or guardian, once you play to the strengths of d/d it’s fine, if you choose to continue to pursue it in PvE.

Your thoughts about what skills to use should work for most mobs. As I recall, I usually did something like the following:
- heartseeker’d (2) into a group, ’cause I cannot stop myself from using leap skills to initiate
- popped caltrops (utility version, not on-dodge version)
- used death blossom (3) as an evade and aoe on the now-crippled enemies a couple of times
- hit steal (default: F1) on one of them, followed by using whatever stolen skill (doing both recovers initiative)
- more death blossom if needed or heartseekers to finish up

If things went badly, I could always cloak’n’dagger or otherwise stealth (utilities, heal) to give myself a reprieve. Offhand dagger also gives you Dancing Dagger to bounce among the baddies and give you some easy kiting.

Roll for Initiative will make it even easier to spam death blossom on groups until they are dead.

On top of all of this, if the group is large enough or not dying fast enough to your liking, the shortbow is an amazing weapon probably every thief should be familiar with or running with, at least in many situations. It gives you additional AoE damage and a poison field as well as the means to kite PvE mobs quite well.

You could even adapt the skill sequence you describe in your own post to include, say, a shortbow opening to hit the enemies before swapping into daggers at melee range or swap to the bow during the fight to hit the now-clustered pulls as well as provide you with an easy escape (shortbow 3).

All of that said, you might still enjoy s/p or d/p more for leveling. I just really like D/D and think it’s loads of fun to dance among mobs while leveling. You may instead prefer the easy stunning with Pistol Whip, the natural cleave of the sword, or the ability to keep melee mobs blinded.

I tried d/p and s/p a little bit but its really not that better from what I was doing with d/d.
In fact I killed faster with d/d.

Ofc when there are multiple mobs things get a little bit harder, but like synk said you can always swap to the sb and sue that multiple target arrows and AoE.

I also noticed something stupid I was doing. I was trying to kill mobs 3+ lvls than me in zones more advanced than I should. So, I’ll try stick with d/d and see what I can do. As I lvl up I’ll also have more skills to work with, so maybe its just a matter of getting use to it.

I use dagger/pistol and use 3, Shadow Shot, to blind and shadowstep to them and simply gut them with 1 and 2. My alternative set is pistol/dagger which also allows me to easily outside of battle to switch them up to pistol/pistol and dagger/dagger.

I’m not a good thief either.

Thief d/d just like elemen and ranger =)) you work is only spamming Unreload