Guild Wars 2

Do you all find P/D a more effective build than glass cannon? If yes or no… why?

In sPvP, WvW, PvE??

In any case it’s hard to say… as one will shine in situations where the other one wouldn’t. IMO it would be better to find which one YOU personally prefer.

WvW what do you prefer?

It 100% depends on what you’re doing and the situation.

There have been times where I’ve wanted a quick down but I’ve been on P/D… Vs. targets with a lot of condition removal it can take AGES.

There have been as many times where I’ve been on D/D and been forced to disengage when I know I could have stayed in to fight as P/D…

Best advice is for you to try both. If you’re just starting out… P/D is easier than D/D due to the high survival.

If you’re getting your gear via dung tokens (and if you’re new I highly recommend it) here is a list of all of the armor sets. Click on the dung and it’ll show you what you can get where. Unfortunately Valk armor (which is great for keeping up hp and crit damage at the same time) is only crafted.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_armor_sets

I think p/d was just as effective before, but now that people are catching on and getting smarter with fighting thieves, a more glassy build is better. not saying p/d doesnt work anymore, its just slower.

after a while, d/d doesnt even feel that vulnerable anymore. What other class can you play standing in the enemy zerg picking off the guy on the ram to prevent them from capping a tower?

Once they fix culling, won’t be so easy to ‘pick’ people off.

Personally I’ve not been using stealth spamming builds in WvW on principle (so no d/d burst or p/d condition). Been having fun with a P/P + SB hybrid. A quick SB intro puts enough poison for the duration of the fight – and even if they remove it after you switch to pistols, a steal puts it right back on. Caltrop spam with clusters/pistol/dancing daggers keeps bleeds over 10. Full crit line + zerker gear (though I plan on swapping to ascended all-stats accessories for more condition + healing + hit taking) means I hit hard. It’s true I’ll never be able to walk into the middle of zergs and pick people off one by one like stealth spam thieves can, but I find it effective and fun to play.

Drawing Guy.3701:

Once they fix culling, won’t be so easy to ‘pick’ people off.

Personally I’ve not been using stealth spamming builds in WvW on principle (so no d/d burst or p/d condition). Been having fun with a P/P + SB hybrid. A quick SB intro puts enough poison for the duration of the fight – and even if they remove it after you switch to pistols, a steal puts it right back on. Caltrop spam with clusters/pistol/dancing daggers keeps bleeds over 10. Full crit line + zerker gear (though I plan on swapping to ascended all-stats accessories for more condition + healing + hit taking) means I hit hard. It’s true I’ll never be able to walk into the middle of zergs and pick people off one by one like stealth spam thieves can, but I find it effective and fun to play.

My main issue with P/P is that it is very easy to mitigate/avoid unload damage. It is kinda nice for zerg vs. zerg if you don’t want to go into their group… and they might not see the unload coming in those situations… but just a SB’s trickshot/cluster bomb works well enough for direct damage those situations imo.

If you’re going P/D you have the benefit of not needing to stay on your opponent so it’s much harder to track you… plus the natural high survival of condition gear. Cluster bleeds also do very nice damage to a single target at range if you can time the explosions just before they hit the ground as does the poison… trickshot is very weak with P/D though…

That’s just my 2 cents and I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s P/P set up. P/P was actually how I first started with my thief

Eh, I’ve been consistently getting over 200 in sPvP and have won all but one 1v1s (and over half my 2vMEs) I’ve had (unless you count those that ran away) in both sPvP and WvW. Haven’t done any tPvP which is a more proper test, but I still need to learn people’s tells better (so my copious amount of dodges allow me to never be touched) before I feel ready to step out of the noob zone. Issues connecting with unloads have not been a problem. I can spam them more often than anyone can dodge + block + reflect: Init on crit (70 crit chance) + 3 init every 10 secs + roll for initiative just gives so much that I’ve rarely found myself click “too low” before the target is downed.

So no, you’re not raining on my setup.

Drawing Guy.3701:

Eh, I’ve been consistently getting over 200 in sPvP and have won all but one 1v1s (and over half my 2vMEs) I’ve had (unless you count those that ran away) in both sPvP and WvW. Haven’t done any tPvP which is a more proper test, but I still need to learn people’s tells better (so my copious amount of dodges allow me to never be touched) before I feel ready to step out of the noob zone. Issues connecting with unloads have not been a problem. I can spam them more often than anyone can dodge + block + reflect: Init on crit (70 crit chance) + 3 init every 10 secs + roll for initiative just gives so much that I’ve rarely found myself click “too low” before the target is downed.

So no, you’re not raining on my setup.

The higher up you go the better people will be at dodges (which is a HUGE part of this game) as well as using other things to mitigate damage. If you watch a lot of the vids that people put out of them ganking the person doesn’t dodge or doesn’t dodge in any meaningful way. It’s the same basic reason why some people find mesmer OP but others find it laughable (due to the no illusion creation on blind/block/dodge etc.). But if it works for you go for it until if/when it doesn’t.