Guild Wars 2

The title for severalreasons.

Proper rotations and other builds have enough catchup speed to deny decaps. (ie dps guard, cele ele, portal).

DP is so squishy you need to stay in shortbow during team fights until you can spike someone down that’s low. Smart players will force you to use your shadow step after you and your team do a spike. Sometimes infiltrator’s + double dodge can work, but you can’t swap to shortbow to evade more unless you’ve made yourself useless for 10 seconds of a team fight. Being in melee range outside of spiking in a team fight is suicidal, as you should be the primary focus in that situation.

Weak vs other meta builds in smaller side node fights that offer better overall team value (dps guard, engi builds, hambow), and not enough sustain to hold a point long enough to get backup. Because you can’t hold out in a bad matchup you lose more time than probably all other builds.

The strength of the build is it’s mobility and burst. It’s very much a finesse build, this unfortunately breaks down the bigger a fight gets due to the increase in chaos that comes with more players. The build rightfully has fewer team support options, unfortunately this combined with is lack of damage contributions in a team fight (outside of spiking) make it feel weak in such scenarios.

Ideally you’d be able to use your mobility as an advantage, unfortunately because of how proficiently rotations are and how proficient various builds are with catchup speed this advantage is often completely neutered. Additionally if you use up all your initiative on mobility and have to get into a fight, you’ll probably be downed. Starting a fight with at least around half initiative is critical for any build.

I continue to play DP because it’s the playstyle I enjoy, I just worry that it’s bad for teams I’m on when I do so.

As a newish thief do you think it’s worth it learning this build? Or should I spend more time learning and practicing S/D?

On a side note, putting / between D and P would be helpful. It can be quite… misleading.

LegionLord.5392:

As a newish thief do you think it’s worth it learning this build? Or should I spend more time learning and practicing S/D?

Stick with D/P. Imo, it’s way more fun, and way more rewarding when you get stuff right.

@Shockwave,
Look at it this way, at least you can provide better support with your blinds and headshot. If you go S/D, all you have is a 1.5 second daze off a back attack and while in stealth and the cripple on 4 isn’t too reliable ether.

S/D is versatile and easy to perform well with, however D/P feels more rewarding when played properly.

During my days on S/D I could stick around good in team fights and I had great mobility. It’s pretty much a mobile, anti-thief (6 trickery), team fighter with great sustain, while D/P is more fast-paced. D/P has to turn the fights the first moments it enters combat or provide pressure with SB when needed. If it can’t turn the fight quickly, it’s often better off going elsewhere, which most thieves don’t realize.

Generally speaking though, I don’t think you should try and fit a square peg in a round hole and have your thief try to contribute to a teamfight too much. If the problem is a d/d celestial ele while attempting to decap far, you have the potential to kill him, but it’s usually not worth the attempt if he has his armor of earth off cooldown. If the player is kitten bad, like he pops armor of earth right when he enters earth attunement, then you should be able to kill him. However if he’s smart, he can drag the fight on and that spells bad news bears for D/P thieves.

Overall, I’d advise your team to try and call out important cooldowns that you can make a mental note about. That way, if the situation occurs, you can get a better handle over the cooldowns available for him.

As an example, say you’re using a killshot war to call out rando spikes (terrible comp, i know). You usually want to have your teammates call out something like guardian shield bubble as it could prevent your team from doing a “random” team co-ordinated burst on a target (killshot would be absorbed). Just have them call out important cooldowns that might prevent critical damage given your team’s spec so it doesn’t become such a cluttering mess over teamspeak.

Again an example, it’s pretty critical that the mesmer knows where the enemy thief is. So if the thief is respawning, especially if your mesmer is at far, that’s something worthy of shouting repeatedly over teamspeak. Something like a skill cooldown isn’t – just keep your ears open.

When you say d/p thief you should really be saying shortbow thief. Sword builds can use that kit as their primary weapon but d/p stays in shortbow most the time. If you practice enough you can even port in and burst with shortbow because when you do it with d/p you often leave yourself too open to the enemy team’s attacks.

A few patches ago d/p could 1v1 any build and have a decent chance of coming out on top. Currently (and likely in the next patch) most the meta builds counter d/p in 1v1. I find it really frustrating but I can understand why it should be that way to maintain balance. Try getting better at decapping to compensate. Anticipate enemy movement and pop a SR just before they leave their home heading to mid and you’ll easily get the decap.

I still play d/p about 50% of the time although I freely admit that s/d is superior currently.

D/P is so much more fun then S/D :>

+ If you coordinate well with your team, it’s still pretty kitten effective

Requires far more effort to play effectively, however offers more utility and more options for team play. The reward is a small bit higher than S/D in my opinion, but the risk is substantially higher. D/P does not need buffs – it’s just not as easy to play, nor do I want it to be personally. There’s very little room for error but the weapon set has good outplay potential. It’s also good in team fights if used correctly – pressure people with stealth forcing them to go back to their home node, if they don’t then go and decap; if they do then you can do a good amount of damage and clean up a team fight if you position properly and choose your targets well. All of this requires a good team and good communication/coordination. S/D is a more efficient solo queue build and still extremely good in high level sPvP (it is better than D/P for the majority of players). Until you learn to play D/P you will feel fairly ineffective, and it’s not a build that’s easy to learn (however it’s not to difficult to kill bad players with – it’s the good players that will make you feel useless). In essence; low skill floor and one of the highest skill ceilings/caps. It’s a balanced build.

There are people who will disagree with me but that’s my 2 cents.

Edit; Spelling errors, hopefully soon I’ll have internet and can stop using my phone to type.

Narcarsis.5739:

Requires far more effort to play effectively, however offers more utility and more options for team play. The reward is a small bit higher than S/D in my opinion, but the risk is substantially higher. D/P does not need buffs – it’s just not as easy to play, nor do I want it to be personally. There’s very little room for error but the weapon set has good outplay potential. It’s also good in team fights if used correctly – pressure people with stealth forcing them to go back to their home node, if they don’t then go and decap; if they do then you can do a good amount of damage and clean up a team fight if you position properly and choose your targets well. All of this requires a good team and good communication/coordination. S/D is a more efficient solo queue build and still extremely good in high level sPvP (it is better than D/P for the majority of players). Until you learn to play D/P you will feel fairly ineffective, and it’s not a build that’s easy to learn (however it’s not to difficult to kill bad players with – it’s the good players that will make you feel useless). In essence; low skill floor and one of the highest skill ceilings/caps. It’s a balanced build.

There are people who will disagree with me but that’s my 2 cents.

Edit; Spelling errors, hopefully soon I’ll have internet and can stop using my phone to type.

Your input is highly appreciated. We just need to wait and see how the upcoming september patch will affect D/P gameplay overall.

To be clear I wasn’t trying to imply using S/D at all.

I do find it challenging to provide the kind of value I’d expect to give in a large team fight vs players that are looking for any opportunity to focus me. And vs highly aware teams getting benefit out of rotating for decaps can be hard too.

I’m not looking for changes to thief, I’m just wondering what the right moves to make are. But I’ve got it figured out. It was a mindset issue.

It’ll be interesting to see how D/P has to adapt with the upcoming changes.