Thief Sword/Dagger viable?
You didnt say how are you playing it but if i was you i would go full crit build if you know what that build looks like!
Here is my current build
http://gw2.luna-atra.fr/skills_tool/
Also how do you build full crit?
All weapons and builds are viable and excel in areas others dont. Why dont you post your build so we can see what sort of synergy you’ve got going on.
Sword/dagger is pretty much the stealth master so you should be aiming to focus how effective you are at that.
Stealth loses its luster when you can’t backstab. Sword/Dagger is weak.
I honestly dont think its weak. I just feel you have to play it in a certain way to make it really good
Sword period feels pretty inferior to the other choices, IMO – with dagger offering great evasion, high burst, conditions, and the awesome backstab, dual pistols offering 10 stacks of vulnerability, good sustained dmg, and shortbow offering rare combo fields and a lot of aoe at range. However, it does have its perks:
Some perks I found while using it:
Good amount of AoE in Chain attack
Only source of boon removal
Backstabbing without the need for Stealth
Okay evasion
Shadowstep on low CD
Condition Removal on Low CD
Overall, these strengths led me to believe its quite strong in PvP, or in zergs. In PvE, I really dont like the strengths, as it has 0 ways of taking advantage of combo fields, and brings no conditions to the table. (although offhand adds some of that) This is the only weapon I don’t even generally like to keep as a backup anymore. However, I’d probably prefer this to daggers in a PvP situation.
I’ve had a lot of success with sword/pistol on my thief in PvE thus far. The teleport ability on the sword is great for specific target removal or getting through a chain of lower enemies to attack the veteran in a group. I think pistol is a much better off hand, however, because the 5s blindness from black powder gives the slower tempo of the sword a very necessary few seconds free from retaliation to use the 3 slot skill, which hits as an aoe for the highest concentrated straight damage the thief can put out. Daggers with multiple stacks of bleeding can put out more damage over time, as potentially could the poison from the shortbow, but if you’re on your own in the wilderness thief armor doesn’t often let you survive the time necessary without a lot of dodging and expenditure of endurance. Sword/pistol removes that necessity entirely. I find it very effective to stack poison on top of the high damage output as well.
Swords also hit all frontal targets. So it’s much better vs. Mesmers and other stealthed Thief characters, as you’ll hit them more often than not with the auto spam.
I personally don’t use the sword because…. Well I don’t know why. It is good and has it’s own merit, but there’s something about Heartseeker spam and Death Blossom which make daggers so nice. It’s not that they’re more effective than the sword, but just more suited to what I like to do… like Death Blossoming into a large group of enemies before stealthing out.
I’m a big fan of sword/pistol. Pistol Whip is by far the most OP skill we have, IMHO. It stuns then does massive AoE damage and can be hit twice before you lose all initiative.
Sword/Dagger unfortunately is inferior to Dagger/Dagger in every way.
Start with PVE.
What Dagger/Dagger gives you in PVE? You can burst targets down very fast with Chain → Cloak → Backstab → Heartseeker, and you can AOE farm with Death Blossom. What Sword/Dagger gives you in PVE? Your Cloak doesnt give you much, yes it disables enemy (daze) but its one second only and you generally dont need that in 1v1 in PVE. No real way to burst a single target. Your AOE is your chain, but it doesnt make you invulnerable like Dagger/Dagger one does, you have to be close to the enemies to attack them and some enemies cannot be circlestrafed safely (like wolves or some risen), they hit you and you cant let yourself be hit, while with Death Blossom you just run away from them while they tick down. Dagger/Dagger better both on single and multiple targets in PVE.
PVP. In PVP as Thief you may think Sword gives you two very powerful benefits. One is 1 second Daze (you can disable key ability or just generally prevent enemy from healing/stomping). Second is shadowstep (condition removal, gap closer with 1200 range), stun removal. Unfortunately 3 is useless in PVP since it relies on enemy standing still and noone stands still in PVP except noobs who you can beat with bare hands anyways. And now you look at Dagger/Dagger and see it gives you MUCH more. You can nuke your target with heartseeker spam. You can deal big damage from stealth. You can evade attacks while still dealing damage (in AOE, not on single foe). And your gap closer, even if less range, is spammable, so if you are in range, you’ll stay on target while spamming, while with Sword, you got on target, and you cant continue jumping – need to wait for skill to “cooldown”. And overall, you need nuking in PVP. You dont have that in Sword/Dagger, you have one of the best nukes (if not THE best) in the game with Dagger/Dagger. End of story.
If you want Sword in mainhand, take pistol in offhand. You get a very powerful aoe blind for PVE (and PVP somewhat). You get a daze on demand. You get a super powerful 3 ability (use it with Haste in PVP and you basically have a stunlock, the only class in the game that can have a stunlock – meaning, keep reapplying stuns, so even breaking stun doesnt help since you get stunned again and again), so you can actually nuke in this build. But you need Haste for that, otherwise target runs away. Plus you’ll need some extra initiative (from stealing, just extra initiative, from extra regen) meaning you need specific traits to hit the pistol whip more than two times in a row.
Still, Dagger/Dagger seems to be THE melee Thief choice. Maybe Dagger/Pistol could be viable too, but main hand Dagger is without question.