Guild Wars 2

Decided to level one of my alts since I am pretty much done with Main (Guardian). So I decided to go with a thief since it the complete opposite of a guardian and as far weapon combo well as the title suggest I like Sword/pistol the most, and was wondering what are the best utility skills and traits that complement the combo.

Thank you in advance for the suggestions.

Depends, but for the most things you can go for glass cannon build, taking 5% damage on dual skills and 5% crit on dual skills.
Best utilities (considering combat) would be haste (for dual skill) and shadowstep (to sit on target during dual skill). 3rd one is usually the one i switch between SoS/Scorpion Wire/Shadow Refuge/Devourer Venom/Ambush Trap. That is if you plan to do serious damage with this set.
For other things, S/P is without a doubt best support set and works with everything but conditions. Venom share (the only viable thief utility build) benefits most from S/P.

xD

S/P is amazing when properly built.

For gear you’ll have 2 options.
1st you can go glass cannon focusing on power, precision, crit damage but this will leave you super, super vulnerable and is generally not the greatest idea for the thief’s tank weapon set ever since the PW nerf.

2nd you can go for a Power/Tough/Vit set which will make you beefy and you’ll have amazing dps.

Next your heal should be Signet Of Malice, it helps per hit which makes it synergize well with PW (because PW hits lots and evades any source of damage including DoT).

Finally you’ll have some options for your utility and elite skills and these will be highly reliant on what stats you decide to trait.

Haste is a MUST, it makes PW devastating and allows SoM to heal you a ton and as such I’d suggest going 20 points deep into trickery to get 4 bonuses.

1) Thrill of the Crime, so you gain fury and might when stealing which can be done while rooted from PW (also makes PW crit more)

2) Trickster to give Haste a 48 second cooldown (its normally 60 seconds).

3) More initiative

4) stealing will replenish initiative

Next I’d suggest going for signets. This requires you to go into the critical strikes tree (20 deep) which again syngerizes with PW allowing it to crit more often.

Signets of Power and Signet Use are needed because they allow you to give yourself 5 stacks of might upon activating a signet which in turn gives you 2 initiative.

The signets which are best to use are Assassin’s Signet, Signet of Shadows and Infiltrator’s Signet.

For your elite the best choices are Dagger Storm (works with Signet of Malice) or Thieves Guild. If you’re a Sylvari Take Root is also viable.

With my current build which has full exotics (not the exact stat placement I’d like but it’s kitten close) I have 3300 attack, 16000 health and 2300 armor. My auto atatcks will deal anywhere from 1000-2000 damage on a non-crit and on a crit I’ve seen as high as 6k.

PW on average does 4-5k but I’ve seen a 10k on a crit before.

Signet of Agility is also handy to refill your endurance bar after using Haste.

Elthurien.8356:

Signet of Agility is also handy to refill your endurance bar after using Haste.

Oh man, I’ve had that save my life in WvW before xD it also overrides the no endurance regeneration.

You can do a lot with the S/P set up. For example, I’m playing a Venomous Aura AoE buff spec using S/P. For my specific spec (once you get Leeching Venoms), I normally run x2 Venoms and either Shadow Refuge or Signet of Shadows (depending on the situation). (Standard choices for Venoms are Spider and Skale.) Or against pure burn boss fights, I’ll sometimes switch out my non-Venom skill for Ice Drake Venom (mainly for the Leeching Venom procs).

S/P can be a glass cannon. Or it can rather tanky between the persistent AoE Blind field of Black Powder (Pistol #5) and the built in evasion that comes from using Pistol Whip (Combo #3). Don’t be afraid to experiment and find a build that works well for you.

EDIT

Here’s a link to my Trait spec.

http://www.gw2builds.org/create/bwe_1/thief#2.1.3.0-1.20.19.3.2-30.10.30.0.0-12.9.10.7.6.5.12

For soloing in high level play, I usually switch out my Critical Strike trait for Practiced Tolerance since I often need the extra Vitality. The reason for this is because I’m wearing pretty much every piece of gear with Knight (Power / Precision / Toughness) stats. Between x2 Superior Sigil of Blood on your S/P weapons, Onomberry Pie (which also heals on crits), and your constant Leeching Venom trait procs, you’ll getting a constant stream of healing. Then for your condition removal needs, you have your HiS heal to wipe off dots and you can also Sword #2 spam to remove conditions as needed. My built basically runs only 100 pts in Vitality gear and a bit of bonus Vitality from my Critical Strikes trait. While I would never run such a low Health build normally, spamming Combo #3 and using Venoms really help you to heal back up in a short amount of time.

Oh man again thank you for all the responses, really looking forward to playing my s/p combo now. Keep them coming.

On a note of interest, I was surprised to find out that your Pistol Whip damage output is completely based on your Sword damage rating and not your Pistol grade. I noticed that when my Thief hit 80th and starting to upgrade to Exotic weapons one piece at a time. From the Pistol Whip animation, you’d think that your Pistol was somehow involved in your dps output.

Wiser with Age.3714:

On a note of interest, I was surprised to find out that your Pistol Whip damage output is completely based on your Sword damage rating and not your Pistol grade. I noticed that when my Thief hit 80th and starting to upgrade to Exotic weapons one piece at a time. From the Pistol Whip animation, you’d think that your Pistol was somehow involved in your dps output.

Thank you for that info.

Here what I am running right now. It works really good if I get someone with my setup, they usually drop quick but I am having a hard time keeping any one stunned long enough since the patch. Did pistol whip get nerfed again?

Anywho any suggestion on my current build?