Guild Wars 2

I have leveled to 42 in Harathi Hinterlands and found myself soloing in the Centaur camps lol using Sword for the Aoe and PD to pull and ranged damage (lower areas are kind of deserted.) Sword gives less than great single target dps but the three skill is great for the aoe if something goes wrong, especially with Pain Inverter, and Spider and Devourer Venoms.

My difficulty is with the champs and beefed up vets where I want the single target dps in close melee combat to prevent pulling patrols and respawns. I can see the contests getting worse as I move into higher levels. Am I missing something?

shotgun your cluster bombs at your feet!

Hold on, are you asking for AoE or for no AoE?

Because when it comes to PvE, especially leveling, nothing beats Sword + Pistol with Berserker gear.

If you want more AoE than Sword can give you, try the Shortbow. Clusterbomb is quite cool with Berserker gear.

If single target is your only concern, then try Dagger + Dagger.

I love my shortbow, I use it so much I practically main it and tend to forget I have a dagger/pistol in the swap off. If you want or need AOE that’s the go to weapon for a thief. Not only do you have Cluster Bomb but Choking Gas gives you a poison field to drop weakness on everything and trick shot bounces so it makes clearing a lot of things much easier.

I certainly overlooked the skills of the short bow. I’ll get ranged single target for pulls and also the aoe in close and at distance. That’ll give me the other weapon set for dagger and single target dps . Thank you. I totally missed that.

You can also go for a condition-style AOE method, which is strictly inferior to Sword/Pistol but works better against enemies like Dredge that ignore Blind.

Choose Signet of Malice as your heal, Caltrops on the Utility bar, Dagger/Dagger as your main weapon, and use Death Blossom to deal AOE damage while evading, healing, and sticking bleeds on enemies. Highly effective in open world PvE.

Signet of Malice looks like a great skill. I see now it heals for each hit, and there are a lot of hits. This seems to be the skill that should take 25 skill points to unlock.

Thank you for all for pointing out great techniques and their synergies. This is a great forum. You guys all talk solid and effective ways to get the most out of the class.

Note: “guys” denotes both the male and female gender