Guild Wars 2

Has anyone ever tried this ?

yes, many tried. Everyone failed. It is more trashy than dp.

Do you guys do better with D/P SB in sPvP or do you feel like D/P S/P is the better choice? is there any offhand besides SB using a D/P MH that you would consider a personal meta? I’m asking the questions every thief wants to know. Also what right now do you feel is the meta sPvP condi spec? Let’s get some energy going boys and clear this up for our fellow daredevils stuck in the fog.

If you’re any good and are not kittening around, you will not play anything but D/P w/ SB on swap.

End of story.

Since no one is really explaining anything ill explain. The main thing the thief has better than all other classes is mobility. You get that mobility with dash and shortbow. Since the thief role in pvp is decap and +1, mobility is very important.

S/p doesnt really provide much that u cant get with dp. Sword auto is less dps than dagger, sword 2 is nice and s/p 3 is nice and all but it sucks because it costs so much initiative. The pistol offhand skills are on DP as well so u basically just lose sword 2 which is probably the only decent skill on that set.

U can also maybe replace sb with staff and vault around for mobility but i feel its much slower than sb although staff provides better cleave. Thats just my opinion though, others might disagree.

Although if ur just solo queueing, u can play anything u want as long as ur good enough.

Well I’m just speculating. I would imagine D/P SB is the best, and D/P staff is most likely second in terms of power builds. I just ask because with S/P you got the infiltrators and the invuln from pistol whip. To each there own I guess. What happened to S/D and why isn’t is strong anymore? what exactly got nerfed about it?

Rocky.8195:

Well I’m just speculating. I would imagine D/P SB is the best, and D/P staff is most likely second in terms of power builds. I just ask because with S/P you got the infiltrators and the invuln from pistol whip. To each there own I guess. What happened to S/D and why isn’t is strong anymore? what exactly got nerfed about it?

S/P is just too clunky (huge pre and after casts on PW) and doesn’t have the mobility needed to compete with D/P and SB or Staff. It just lacks overall.

The repeated initiative cost increases, the conditions needing to be met on sword three, the destruction of Acrobatics traitline, alongside the power creep on other classes/weapon sets are why S/D is no longer viable in sPvP.

Acro nerfs, Daredevil’s existence, 30% damage per hit buff on dagger, and the remaining professions all having so much boon access and invulns/blocks made S/D both weaker and low-reward than D/P.

Rocky.8195:

Well I’m just speculating. I would imagine D/P SB is the best, and D/P staff is most likely second in terms of power builds. I just ask because with S/P you got the infiltrators and the invuln from pistol whip. To each there own I guess. What happened to S/D and why isn’t is strong anymore? what exactly got nerfed about it?

Infiltrator’s bug was fixed so it will port u back now so it’s not so useful for mobility. If ur using S/P, a decent player will figure it out after the first PW and then either hit u before or after the PW. I still did 2 or 3 tiers in pvp with S/P but I swapped to D/p eventually when the players got better.

S/D is ok, still works in duels vs some classes but it’s the same S/D it always was meanwhile all the classes got massive sustain increase and damage increase. If ur fighting a tanky person, they will outsustain u, vs a DPS class, they will do more DPS. It simply cant keep up. Meanwhile dagger got a massive auto attack buff, pistol 4 has very good synergy with PI and u got on-demand stealth. I think another reason why S/D was good before was because it was the first time it was meta and people didnt know how to counter it. Since it became meta before, people know what to expect now after fighting it during that meta.

You would need S/D on steroids pretty much to compete and thats what staff does. If you wanna do 1v1s like the old S/D days, then u would probably be best off with acro bound staff thief but then theres the problem that ur slow as hell and can simply get out rotated. You become a bruiser like a warrior but ur probably even slower.

I’m a new player (just started leveling), I really like dual daggers… just kinda cool. However, this thread doesn’t even mention it – is it completely useless in sPVP and WvW (roaming/ambushing in WvW stragglers)? I want to level with the spec that I’ll play in PVP at 80.

Separate stupid question, having a dual dagger – does that increase the auto attack of the main hand dagger? I’m guessing not.

TwistedSister.8190:

I’m a new player (just started leveling), I really like dual daggers… just kinda cool. However, this thread doesn’t even mention it – is it completely useless in sPVP and WvW (roaming/ambushing in WvW stragglers)? I want to level with the spec that I’ll play in PVP at 80.

Separate stupid question, having a dual dagger – does that increase the auto attack of the main hand dagger? I’m guessing not.

I’ll try and answer this comprehensively: doing well in sPvP is about making the best decisions and having the most optimized build. That’s partly because you want to win (right?) but also because there’s 4 other people who need you to play well and play intelligently. D/D is an ok condi build, it can build up insanely high stacks of bleed at melee range. However, because a condi clear gets rid of all stacks of a condition, if you only stack bleed on me and I remove 1 condition, then I’ll remove all the stacks of bleed. And even if you put cripple on me via dagger 4, most condi clears remove 2-3 conditions. So basically D/D condi is easily countered by any condi clear.

D/D power is pretty bad compared to D/P for a power set, because pistol 5 + dagger 2 gives you stealth (therefore access to Backstab), and Pistol 4 (assuming you get an interrupt) gives you a ton of damage if you take the Pulmonary Impact trait. By comparison, with Cloak and Dagger (dagger 5) you have to hit your target to get stealth, which means I both need to be in melee range and my attack needs to not be evaded/blocked. No such restriction on pistol 5 + dagger 2 because it’s using a combo field. And no, the offhand dagger does not affect autoattack.

So it’s not that D/D is a terrible choice, it’s just not optimized for sPvP against halfway decent players. Whether you’re ok with that or not is your decision, but I guarantee your pugs will hate on you hard if you don’t play effectively. And by pugs I mean pick-up groups, if you have actual pugs they probably won’t care what your weaponset is.

TwistedSister.8190:

I’m a new player (just started leveling), I really like dual daggers… just kinda cool. However, this thread doesn’t even mention it – is it completely useless in sPVP and WvW (roaming/ambushing in WvW stragglers)? I want to level with the spec that I’ll play in PVP at 80.

Separate stupid question, having a dual dagger – does that increase the auto attack of the main hand dagger? I’m guessing not.

Both Condi and Power D/D work pretty well in sPvP. WvW might be a little struggle since you’ll lose some advantage that D/P offers. Condi you’ll usually be better with a couple of people while roaming or a zerg, sharing Venom makes you kill things faster. Power just go D/P, thing about it is that OH Pistol has an interrupt and a smoke field that you can utilize to stealth with Heartseeker. Nevertheless you’ll probably still get your kitten handed by a DH.

Main Hand and Off Hand equipment are their own separate entity. Main Hand affects skills 1-3 while Off Hand affect 4 and 5.

Thanks Huskyboy.1053 and Midontto.5847!

TBH – I’m probably only going to be an average or below average player on Thief, I just don’t have the time to be a master (I’m a casual). Also, I don’t really know enemy animations – would D/P be the speck for us crappy players to still put up a good fight? Swap should be shortbow?

TwistedSister.8190:

Thanks Huskyboy.1053 and Midontto.5847!

TBH – I’m probably only going to be an average or below average player on Thief, I just don’t have the time to be a master (I’m a casual). Also, I don’t really know enemy animations – would D/P be the speck for us crappy players to still put up a good fight? Swap should be shortbow?

Tbh thief is not the class for you if you’re not going to put in the time to learn how to read enemies. With all the particle effects in GW2, it’s hard to see your enemy’s animations outside of highly telegraphed attacks like Vault on Thief’s Staff or True Shot from DH’s Longbow. What’s most important is knowing ALL of your enemy’s skills in a 1v1 situation, and predicting what will happen next. That will help you greatly with interrupting via Steal or Head Shot. But if you can’t/won’t put in the time to learn the meta builds for each class, it will be nearly impossible for you to beat them outside of lucky interrupts and enemies who don’t understand that they can just not auto attack while the Thief they’re fighing spams headshot.

But if you really do want to commit to Thief there are generally more friendly builds for casual players. Trapper and Scout are two that come off the top of my head. Venom sharing and Condi D/D builds are pretty friendly too with some learning curve. As long as you understand that skill spamming will just put you in bad scenarios you should be fine.

Huskyboy.1053:

TwistedSister.8190:

Thanks Huskyboy.1053 and Midontto.5847!

TBH – I’m probably only going to be an average or below average player on Thief, I just don’t have the time to be a master (I’m a casual). Also, I don’t really know enemy animations – would D/P be the speck for us crappy players to still put up a good fight? Swap should be shortbow?

Tbh thief is not the class for you if you’re not going to put in the time to learn how to read enemies. With all the particle effects in GW2, it’s hard to see your enemy’s animations outside of highly telegraphed attacks like Vault on Thief’s Staff or True Shot from DH’s Longbow. What’s most important is knowing ALL of your enemy’s skills in a 1v1 situation, and predicting what will happen next. That will help you greatly with interrupting via Steal or Head Shot. But if you can’t/won’t put in the time to learn the meta builds for each class, it will be nearly impossible for you to beat them outside of lucky interrupts and enemies who don’t understand that they can just not auto attack while the Thief they’re fighing spams headshot.

Thanks for your honest assessment, but I really like the class and don’t want to reroll a warrior. It’s not that I don’t want to learn and improve, but I just can only commit 5-10 hrs per week (play time) + 5 hours reading/watching vids per week. 10-15 hours per week total.

It is a bit overwhelming being 4 years behind the curve… but I don’t want to be the weakest link on teams

When it comes to raw combat, you’re going to be the weakest link on teams when playing enemies at your skill level while playing a thief. It’s the weakest profession in combat currently in sPvP. Note the distinction of sPvP here.

A good thief can potentially carry a game not because of fights but because of its point and rotation control. +1’s are icing for when there isn’t something to do because your enemies are spread thinner than your allies (allowing you to make a fight outnumbered). If you can’t decap/cap uncontested points and can’t +1 or fight, it means your team is losing when outnumbering your opponents, and is simply going to garner that loss in most cases.