Guild Wars 2

I am curious if its possible and if yes, what spec.

i would say yes and a very good one, although you need to change up your playstyle to do it well, the guy who posted this thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/epic-thief-pvp has a video of someone from the french server using his bow as main and doing very well with it

I would say no. You don’t have any super great damage options, cluster bomb is slow/buggy.. the poison field doesnt do a ton of dmg, plus costs a lot of iniative and is easy to avoid, You have very little mobility with the 5 skill, which costs a ton, so you’re left to do the evading shot and dodges..

it just lacks reliable damage and constant mobility. I don’t think it’s viable as a “main” weapon at all, but it definitely has it’s uses and reasons to be a secondary set.

depends on your purpose, for pvp maybe not ( I don’t do much) but it is definitely a great weapon for pve against less intelligent AI.

to clarify, my post was more PvP orientated.

Bow is AoE basicly and only really useful against a zerg.

Yes.

Kite with #3, ae with 2 fast cast ie explode in air target it on self

use #4 drop poison and then drop #2 on it without exploding and you get area weakness.

etc etc..

I use my shortbow more than my melee weapons lol.

I have seen more than a few shortbow thieves in PvP and they never do well. they don’t really do any damage.. the one time they are effective is vs rangers when their trick shot gets to bounce between the ranger and it’s pet for 2x damage on ranger.

I think its great in pve! I’m really dd/sb but on the Orr maps, with so many adds and respawns I pretty much am always using the short bow. I use a 20/30/20/0/0 spec and go back and forth between dd and sb since you can switch them any time your out of combat.

I really prefer it with a power/crit/crit dmg build since I’m always using the blast finisher. Normally cluster bomb hits for 1100-1700 depending on armor(heavy/light) and usually crit for 2500 – 3k+(yay might stacks), which doesn’t sound like much until your hitting 5 targets and realize you just did 7-12k+ damage for 3 initiative and can spam it. It really mows down groups quick.

Its pretty survivable as well, the auto attack proc’s the signet heal for all 3 hits if its bouncing back and forth. Plenty of blinds, easy weakness and nice condition removal while stealth.

For single-target fighting? No. It’s our worst weapon.

However, in an AoE it’s incredibly powerful. If you’re blasting away at multiple mobs, you can do higher damage with the shortbow than any other weapon, by far. It’s especially good for WvW, where you can blast people on the ground from the walls (or vice-versa).

Combine with Signet of Malice, and you’ll have very high survivability in an AoE situation.

I keep one handy at all times in wvw. For keep fights it’s a necessity.

Signet of Malice & Cluster Bomb = many HPs. I use it with Sigil of Superior Fire for even more Health gain & damage.

http://www.guildwars2forum.com/threads/12272-VIDEO-Thief-PoV-Genesis-vs-Top-Marks-Gaming-tournament-finals?p=128694#post128694

Just going to leave that right here. Amazing shortbow thief D/P to finish people.

I’m going to say no simply because shortbow is largely ineffective in 1v1. While 1v1 isn’t the majority of situations in PvP, it happens enough that I wouldn’t consider shortbow a viable “main” weapon.

That said, there’s a reason why almost every thief has shortbow as their secondary weapon, because in a large number of situations it is amazing.

problem with bow: low damage, if you go against a zerg, they would down more of your allie before you can take one down. I would say no.

Im level 78 and I have been using shortbow almost all the time in PVE and WvW. You can get some decent damage but it is so easy to take down 3 or 4 mobs when you kite them. When there is only one I switch to sword/pistol for a quick burst. I love the shortbow. In Spvp I only use it when there is a bunch and they don’t see me. I just stand back and let the arrows bounce.

There are some very nice things that shortbow does. Mostly with the synergy between our on hit effects and trick shot as well as poison and weakness when traited into Lotus Poison. Basically trick shot will apply any venoms that you have active to any target it hits but only counts as 1 use of the venom. This means you can poison and weaken multiple targets 5 times with spider venom. Leeching poison also heals for each target hit and signet of malice heals for each target hit. This gives the potential for roughly 2k healing per shot with a venom active. Additionally the poison cloud does proc lotus venom each tic which can lead to large amount of weakness on opponents which is further compounded with a cluster bomb in the middle of your poison cloud spreading an area weakness combo field effect. Weakness on your opponents has the potential to save your team from damage more than protection boons. So the short bow is not a great 1v1 weapon and the damage is not brilliant but in team fights it is excellent support for area weakness, area poison reducing opponents healing abilities and your ability to sustain your hp through leeching poisons and signet of malice.

Great for WvW against zergs. I just wish we could get a little more range on it, maybe with a trait. Or add some range to it when you are shooting downwards, e.g from a wall.

only when defending a keep ;p

+1 for keep defense, you can do some great damage with it when they are all clusteredkittened like that. Not even close to the damage my D/D does, so for me not viable as main. Great second weapon though…

clusterbomb does a lot of damage aoe, there are definitely times to use it outside of keep defense… 2 examples:

mesmer
enemy shadow refuge

you guys should try it out and think about situations before saying its unusable

If you know how to shotgun cluster bomb, it becomes a very damaging close range weapon. Gain most effectivness in a zerg, but holds its own 1v1. You can spec for crit damage which is 3-4k crit for a single hit ( that’s pretty high, if your close range you can fire this cheap skill pretty fast), or spec condition damage and have the poison and 3 stacks of bleed per detonated cluster, which can stack pretty high if your up close.

talking PvP here, not PvE. its purely a support weapon and in PvE the Thief is not a pure support class. so the question is more like: “how should I build a support Thief for PvP?”

its an interesting role actually. Thieves have amazing mobility and several abilities that are very good at area control. A support Thief is a very strong roamer and point capper in PvP and can be almost unkillable (able to escape any fight). You end up sacrificing ALOT of offensive power though. Support builds won’t really be getting any kills. The damage is all attrition based. you’ll have to rely on supporting team-mates to actually finish people off, you just make their job alot easier.

Here’s my build for Shortbow Support for PvP|

this has the full package of Venomous Aura stuff:

• Venomous Aura itself lets you apply venoms (and all their traited abilities) to up to 5 nearby allies automatically whenever you use a venom.
• the extra strike from Residual Venom applies through Venomous Aura, so all allies will gain 4 strikes of Skale and 4 Strikes of Ice Drake venom.
• the might from Venomous Strength applies through Venomous Aura, so all allies will gain 2 stacks of might whenever you apply Venom. you can apply 4 stacks to everyone near you in an instant with this build.
• the life leeching from Leeching Venoms applies through Venomous Aura, so all allies will gain up to 8 life draining strikes from your venom. this can actually lead to a very large amount of healing and this ends up being one of the strongest health recovery support builds in the game (for PvP purposes).

you’ve also got some good synergy with your Choking Gas shortbow shot. you’ll apply Weakness for 3 seconds with this (due to the poison condition) from your Lotus Poison trait so you can keep entire groups of enemies weakened with very little effort.

so your plan with this build is to roam around the map as much as possible and show up where the big group fights are occuring. Venom up your team and then stand back and wear people down with your Shortbow. you should come out on top easily due to the power of your Venomous Aura. just make sure you’re paying attention and going where your team needs you because this build doesn’t have any 1on1 power at all.