Guild Wars 2

Hello fellow thieves!

I have been leveling up a Thief for the past week and gotten up to level 40 (I have very limited play time). I have tried all of the weapon combos and found my niche to be the D/D combo with P/P when things get hairy. I have been doing very well and have soloed quite a few champions. I enjoy Bleed effects and seeing all the numbers pop up, There is nothing quite like the sight of 25 stacks of Bleeding on a mob and seeing all that damage flying around!

I have done AC Story with a premade group that consisted of a Warrior, Elementalist, Necromancer, and myself (We decided to 4 man it for my first run, the rest of them had been through it several times). We pretty much smoked the place and I felt I did pretty well in the damage department, and only died a few times (mostly because I was unfamiliar with the mobs/traps in the dungeon).

So I love reading these message boards and seeing other peoples builds and ideas, but one thing seems pretty consistant … D/D is a poor choice for Thieves! Also another thing that just baffles me is that people say D/D has no AoE damage … How can people say this? Death Blossom with Condition Damage gear, along with Caltrops just destroys mobs. I have tried to compare this with a Shortbow, and while the SB is a good weapon, it does not seem to be any better than massive amounts of AoE bleed damage.

Can anyone help me clarify why D/D is a poor choice? Because currently (only level 40) I just dont see the downside to playing D/D.

I don’t know. I play the same build in pvp and the aoe dmg is awesome. I’ve just started pveing with it though.

D/D is pretty good. P/P is not.

With D/D, your only limitation is against multiple targets, and even then it isn’t horrible thanks to the effectiveness of Death Blossom + Caltrops. I primarily run with D/D and S/P, switching back and forth. SB is good for events when there’s a lot of chaos. As an aside, I find that HiS works better with D/D while SoM works better with S/P.

P/P is just altogether bad in its current state. It has poor utility, but much more importantly its damage potential is severely undercut due to a bug or design flaw with Vital Shot (#1) making it fire much more slowly than it’s supposed to. I’m finding as many opportunities to bring this up as possible in the forums because it’s a problem affecting Pistols and Longbows across professions and should be a top priority QA item.

Thanks for your post Einlanzer. It is good to see someone else using a similar setup (DD+Caltrops) to some success.

I have also heard that Vital Shot (pistol#1) is borked in some way, but I so rarely use that weapon skill I have not really noticed.

I usually swap over to P/P once I exhaust my Initiative with D/D, pop the skill Roll for Initiative and then unload with #3 for damage, #4 for if a daze is needed, and #5 if I am in a dungeon with other melees and an AoE blind would help them. (Black Powder is quite an awesome skill).

I’ve actually been doing DD PP condition build lately outa being bored of using shortbow so long. Works great so far. You just need to know when to swap weapons, and right time to chain skills together. A well timed headshot can totally wreck someone as well. I’ve shutdown and bled to death bunker guardians that way. As for PvE pistols are useful against bosses, especially in fractals, over shortbow. It’s hard to make due with it in WvW though. Can still wreck people but not as useful with being single target vs all the swarms of enemies and the lack of mobility.

Thanks Doggie for your reply!

I was wondering how well P/P would work in late game and Fractals. I would think the Daze and AoE blind would be quite useful.

I have not done any PvP yet, but am glad to see it may be viable!

D/D and P/P require different traits for them to become good, p/p is a crit and imitative build, while d/d is either imitative and condition, or full crit

D/D is probably the best weapon set we have.
P/P is garbage.

P/D or D/P is decent I’ve heard.

Standard is pretty much D/D + SB.

swinsk.6410:

D/D is probably the best weapon set we have.
P/P is garbage.

P/D or D/P is decent I’ve heard.

Standard is pretty much D/D + SB.

Sounds like you haven’t had much experience to really comment on this.

P/X is currently performing at ~49% of what it should be, spamming ‘1’. The cast time is supposed be .5 instead your getting a .8-.9(?). This is severely kittening P/X’s non initiative skill to the point of it being useless. So stay away from any condition/condition duration P/X’s builds until it gets fixed and becomes insanely OP.

D/D is a good choice, P/P is a viable choice, however they are both mutually exclusive. Sb is pretty much mandatory, so that only leaves you with one open slot. D/D (both condition and pwr/crit) brings theoretically the highest single target dps, but is limited due to the Thief’s lack of natural survivability in PVE. P/P does substantially less damage (and is currently only viable using pwr/crit), but being a ranged kit, it allows you to stay alive easier.

So basically you choose between raw killing power and survivability.

I must state I love D/D + Caltrops! Along with my acrobatic build I dodge everything while numbers fly every where taking out very big mobs, and great in 1v1.

Now P/P is great depending on the build, but in my opinion, for a conditional build, I would either go Shortbow or P/D. Shortbow is great! I use it lots for AoE damage, and great for pushing mobs back in wvw (along with shadow refuge, I run in, drop some caltops u). It also has “Infiltrator’s Arrow” which is great for getting in and our of combat and traveling. Now for P/D, I like this because it allows you to stack bleeds much easier than P/P. Reason being, from using “Cloak and Dagger,” you go stealth and can use the sneak attack, which puts 5 stacks of bleeds on them! If you’re running a DoTs build, P/P is hard to get loads of damage out of, compared to Shortbow and P/D as a ranged weapon. I carry both and switch based on the situation. I like Shortbow more, but do what you feel is best =D There is nothing wrong with P/P, I just feel that it is better suited for a raw damage build (power/crit).

Hope my ideas help! If you have any questions you can PM me in game and we can talk thief =3

-Gwyn

It’s not just about weapon choice. The build is at least as important as what weapons you’re using.

D/D with Condition Damage is fundamentally different than D/D with Burst Damage

The same applies to P/P.

With Condition Damage, your main source of damage with D/D will be Death Blossom, with Pistols it will be auto-attack (and possibly Unload, despite bad scaling).

With Burst Damage your main source of damage with D/D will be Backstab/Heartseeker/Auto-Attack and with P/P it will be Unload.

Build changes quite a lot about weapon choices.

The issue here is that Pistol Auto-Attack is pretty weak and it really doesn’t offer much for Condition Damage builds. Damage is good with glass-cannon builds but little else.

D/D on the other hand can work quite well with both builds.

Can you give some links as to where you saw “D/D is a poor choice for Thieves”?

From my PvE experience, I think P/P is decent as an auxiliary set to D/D but you don’t spend much time in it due to the weak autoattack and underwhelming syngergies in that set. What it IS good for is Sneak Attack for bleed stacking from stealth, then while you’re there you can either stack some vuln for your friends or Unload with Signet of Malice for a quick heal. Finally Black Powder plus Heartseeker is a nice stealth to re-open up with the daggers.

I have to say I usually use D/D and situationally either P/D or SB.

Edit: vuln stacking is really nice if you can coordinate with your party well, use during time warp for example for insane damage.