Guild Wars 2

Ok, so I have read so many guides my head is spinning. My biggest problem is that most of the guides are rooted in PVP or WVWVW which I have no interest in at this time. What I have been looking for but cannot seem to find is a PVE build with good survivability. While I am making requests, I would LOVE to not use the shortbow. I know it’s a great tool but as a former ranger I would truly love a Pistol/Pistol option with whatever else compliments that.

Here is where I am currently.

level 25 using S/P and SB.

6/0/4/5/0 for traits.

Slots are Signet of Malice/Roll for Initiative/Ambush and Shadow Refuge.

Starting with a ranger that I took to level 50 and then going thief which was what I originally wanted to play has been a serious wake-up call. I can literally play the ranger one handed while watching tv at this point. The thief is so much fun to me but I know I suck at it and I desperately want to L2P, so I am humbly asking my betters for their input.

TL;DR. Used to play ranger, love my thief more but suck at it in solo PVE. What can I spec in to cure this? (P/P instead of SB if possible)

What i do is use 2 daggers and specc into condition damage and spam death blossom. damage is premium and it has plenty of survivability since death blossom includes evade. then i go dual pistols for tank duty for the blinding powder or what ever its called (nr5 attack) you can keep up a blind for the whole fight if you do it smooth.

Edit: as for slot skills i used to only use signets but now that i know the class well i just play around with what ever i feel like to come up with new methods. but using only signets i feel is a good idea if you want less to think about.

The main selling point of pistols in PvE is blind, but most dungeon bosses only suffer 10% effectiveness of blind. It’s great for just doing hearts and random crap though. I personally loved D/P for most of my leveling experience. You have the black powder blind, which can combo with heartseeker for a stealth, which can lead into a backstab. If you time your heartseeker right as black powder is about to fade you can have really good survival efficiency. For this type of play I would usually take hide in shadows, shadow refuge, signet of shadows, and either shadowstep or ambush depending on how far apart targets are. For traits I went a few into acrobatics for the extra dodge rolls, and heavy into critical strikes for initiative return and damage.

Thanks to you two for taking the time to answer.

Remerik:

I tried D/D but I feel it might not be for me. I always felt I was running out of initiative when I spammed death blossom and then got hammered when I ran out of initiative.
How do you keep Black Powder up when it costs 6 initiative and still use other skills?

bwillb:
Awesome tip on the heartseeker with black powder, I had no idea, thank you. Is Roll for Initiative worth giving up for the others you mentioned?

Ehh I’ve never been a huge fan of RFI with this type of build. It takes you out of melee range which is great if you want to get out of melee range, but not so great when you’ve got a cloud of smoke protecting you and you want to land a backstab. If you go 15 points into critical strikes, you shouldn’t have too much issue with initiative if you’re efficient about black powder usage. Really a lot of the times you can just keep black powder up and auto-attack things to death.

You can keep BP up with a couple of initiative traits (I can’t remember which ones), or you can use the D/P dual skill for a five second blind and shadowstep to target.

For a fun variation of a condition build you can use D/D for LDP and P/D for the auto-1 bleed application combined with dancing dagger for a constant semi-AoE cripple. You can also play around with using CnD on the P/D set for the pistol stealth attack that applies five stacks of bleeds.

Unfortunately the early levels of playing Thief is kind of hard. We’re really REALLY squishy until the later levels. Thieves don’t have many good survivability options until tier 2 traits. At that point you have:

Leeching Venoms: Steal Health when triggering a Venom.

Using two of your utility slots for venoms along with Leeching Venoms allows you some pretty nice in-combat healing on demand.

Pain Response: Gain 10s of regeneration and remove bleeding, poison, and burning when struck and health is below 75%. This effect can not trigger more than once every 45 seconds.

Pain Response is another nice passive heal that you can almost forget you have once you slot it, but definitely notice it’s lack if you don’t.

Or instead of Pain Response you could take:

Assassin’s Reward: Heal yourself whenver you use a skill that uses initiative. Heal yourself for each point of initiative spent.

I’m not a fan of Assassin’s Reward, since you need to be a heavy initiative spender to make it useful(and thus more trait points to support it), although you could combine this with the heal skill Signet of Malice that heals you every time you attack. But I prefer the heal+stealth+condition removal of Hide in Shadows that you get at level 1. It’s gotten me out of more trouble than I can even remember.

So for the first 40 levels or so, I highly recommend Pistol/Dagger. You can kite up to any four melee targets forever with your 4 button: Dancing Dagger. I’ve taken down all kinds of veterans and even a champion or two like this(although champs take FOREVER. Prepare to be bored to tears).

After level 40 the class really starts to feel like it’s coming into it’s own. I personally don’t like the glass cannon builds that people find so popular in PvP. They work fine against other players when you can exploit their weaknesses and fight 1v1, or when you have backup.

But for PVE when you are often fighting three or four enemies, sometimes with a veteran mixed in, a heavy survival build is going to serve you a LOT better. My personal build suggestion is to go Pistol/Dagger with a core of :

20 Shadow Arts: ( V Infusion of Shadow) ( IX Leeching Venom)
20 Acrobatics: ( II Power of Inertia) ( VIII Pain Response)

You can only get one right at 40, but both by 50. I recommend going for Pain Response first, but you can choose whichever you feel more comfortable with. Using Spider Venom and Ice Drake Venom as defensive heals instead of offensive poisons keeps you topped off for HP, and if you start to take a pounding hit Hide in Shadows to buy more time. You can also pop your 5 button, Cloak of Shadows regularly to get a bit of spike damage and more stacks of bleed on the target. Pain Response will kick in automatically as needed, along with Last Refuge if you happen to get dropped all the way down to 25% HP or less.

So it does take level 50+ to become really tanky as a thief, and you won’t be killing things quite as fast as other build. But you WILL survive a lot longer.

And this build works well with just about ANY gear setup, which is perfect for levelling since a lot of the time you can often be wearing some fairly outdated equipment. And it’s much more forgiving while you’re still learning the class.

I will say that the thief playstyle probably changes the most, depending one which traits and skills you choose. You’ll have to experiment a LOT to figure out what works best for you. Try using the Heart of Mists area in the PVP section to test out builds.

Eliteseraph thank you so much that was very informative and helpful. I will put your advice to good use. The consensus seems to be Pistol/Dagger which I am very happy with as most of the guides told me to use Pistol/Sword and to spam Pistol Whip. Is there an second set of weapons you recommend or do they all work with this spec and Pistol/Dagger?

Pistol/Dagger and Dagger/Dagger

I do have a lvl 25 thief, but I’ve been playing thief extensively in sPvP and I think I’d know now what I’d rather use for PvE.

I’d probably just use s/p and s/d, with signet of Malice.
Pistol Whip from s/p does tons of AoE dmg, plus a ton of hits which will proc Signet of malice. In my utilites I’d be sure to have Blinding powder, Shadow Refuge, and the stealth trap.
The only trait I’d be for-sure to ahve is the 10 pt Shadow Arts one, that gives you regeneration whenever you stealth. So there you go, now you heal on every attack (and Pistol Whip does 8, I think) and whenever you stealth, which is all your utilities and whenever you switch to s/d and use 5.

Oh, I might switch out the stealth trap for Ambush trap, that NPC theif is a kitten.

Also, btw, all of your stealth durations stack — Shadow Refuge stacks in a very odd way.. You can leave the are of shadow refuge and be in stealth, but only if you have 5 seconds left of stealth remaining while in shadow refuge. if you leave earlier than that, you will de-stealth. Also to note, you only get the ‘Revealed!" debuff if you attack in stealth. in sPvP i will commonly chain stealth to heal, by simply using Dagger 5 skill without attacking in stealth. (I’m traited for Regeneration in stealth, condition removal in stealth, and health regeneration in stealth (the 30pt one))

auhfel, thanks a lot for the tips. I had no idea that the stealth stacks. I keep getting different info on whether to use Signet of Malice or Hide in Shadows. I have tried both but will probably have to do more field tests to see what I like best.

I have been using Ambush, I like that most of the time it tanks for me for at least 15 seconds. This has helped me tremendously when doing skill point fights.

Eliteseraph.4970:

Unfortunately the early levels of playing Thief is kind of hard. We’re really REALLY squishy until the later levels.

Playing a Thief at low levels is NOT hard. What are you smoking? I often tear packs of mobs apart. Sure, I run around all over the place, use my abilities smartly, but it’s really… not hard. Are we squishy? Yeah. Sure. But who the hell said I’m supposed to take hits? I do a prettykittengood job of avoiding damage with skills like Death Blossom, Cloak and Dagger, Daze Shot, Black Powder, and more.

After reading this thread I tried out the Sword/Pistol where as I have been using only DD/SB up til now (level 25). I was amazed with the survivability with this! My question is what stats other than vitality should I be pushing? I am mostly condition damage/vitality as of now but I am guessing power/vit/precision?

Thanks for any insight!

pjsheets.6972:

After reading this thread I tried out the Sword/Pistol where as I have been using only DD/SB up til now (level 25). I was amazed with the survivability with this! My question is what stats other than vitality should I be pushing? I am mostly condition damage/vitality as of now but I am guessing power/vit/precision?

Thanks for any insight!

The reason you’re probably noticing an increase in survivability with S/P is that sword is absolutely amazing vs. multiple targets with Signet of Malice. Get caltrops on dodge, always pull at least 3 mobs at once, and dodge over them. You should end most fights at full HP once you get the hang of it, and should be able to handle 3-8 mobs without many issues, as long as the majority are melee. This works all the way to 80 and doesn’t really require you to use any weapon abilities but sword #1 and dodge unless you’re mixing it up for fun. For utilities activated caltrops are a great compliment as well as shadow refuge for general movement/utility.

Eliteseraph.4970:

Unfortunately the early levels of playing Thief is kind of hard. We’re really REALLY squishy until the later levels. Thieves don’t have many good survivability options until tier 2 traits. At that point you have:

Leeching Venoms: Steal Health when triggering a Venom.

Using two of your utility slots for venoms along with Leeching Venoms allows you some pretty nice in-combat healing on demand.

Pain Response: Gain 10s of regeneration and remove bleeding, poison, and burning when struck and health is below 75%. This effect can not trigger more than once every 45 seconds.

Pain Response is another nice passive heal that you can almost forget you have once you slot it, but definitely notice it’s lack if you don’t.

Or instead of Pain Response you could take:

Assassin’s Reward: Heal yourself whenver you use a skill that uses initiative. Heal yourself for each point of initiative spent.

I’m not a fan of Assassin’s Reward, since you need to be a heavy initiative spender to make it useful(and thus more trait points to support it), although you could combine this with the heal skill Signet of Malice that heals you every time you attack. But I prefer the heal+stealth+condition removal of Hide in Shadows that you get at level 1. It’s gotten me out of more trouble than I can even remember.

So for the first 40 levels or so, I highly recommend Pistol/Dagger. You can kite up to any four melee targets forever with your 4 button: Dancing Dagger. I’ve taken down all kinds of veterans and even a champion or two like this(although champs take FOREVER. Prepare to be bored to tears).

After level 40 the class really starts to feel like it’s coming into it’s own. I personally don’t like the glass cannon builds that people find so popular in PvP. They work fine against other players when you can exploit their weaknesses and fight 1v1, or when you have backup.

But for PVE when you are often fighting three or four enemies, sometimes with a veteran mixed in, a heavy survival build is going to serve you a LOT better. My personal build suggestion is to go Pistol/Dagger with a core of :

20 Shadow Arts: ( V Infusion of Shadow) ( IX Leeching Venom)
20 Acrobatics: ( II Power of Inertia) ( VIII Pain Response)

You can only get one right at 40, but both by 50. I recommend going for Pain Response first, but you can choose whichever you feel more comfortable with. Using Spider Venom and Ice Drake Venom as defensive heals instead of offensive poisons keeps you topped off for HP, and if you start to take a pounding hit Hide in Shadows to buy more time. You can also pop your 5 button, Cloak of Shadows regularly to get a bit of spike damage and more stacks of bleed on the target. Pain Response will kick in automatically as needed, along with Last Refuge if you happen to get dropped all the way down to 25% HP or less.

So it does take level 50+ to become really tanky as a thief, and you won’t be killing things quite as fast as other build. But you WILL survive a lot longer.

And this build works well with just about ANY gear setup, which is perfect for levelling since a lot of the time you can often be wearing some fairly outdated equipment. And it’s much more forgiving while you’re still learning the class.

I will say that the thief playstyle probably changes the most, depending one which traits and skills you choose. You’ll have to experiment a LOT to figure out what works best for you. Try using the Heart of Mists area in the PVP section to test out builds.

As someone who an initiative-efficient setup, what Assassin’s Reward gives you is the ability to regulate your healing to burst out of a bad situation and reserve it when you don’t need it. Shadow Refuge will get you out of more trouble than Hide in Shadows without taking up your only heal skill, and Signet of Malice is simply amazing any time you’re hitting multiple targets (which you should usually be in PvE). Running Assassin’s Reward + SoM means never waiting for your heal skill to get out of a sticky situation, the most effective option to get your health back is be aggressive and take it back.

I wouldn’t put points into Shadow Arts unless you’re using very heavy stealth or in certain dungeon situations. The survivability of the tree is just overkill in open-world PvE.

Tulisin.6945:

I wouldn’t put points into Shadow Arts unless you’re using very heavy stealth or in certain dungeon situations. The survivability of the tree is just overkill in open-world PvE.

Where would you put them besides Acrobatics?

Thanks

Tulisin.6945

I have read on numerous guides that the #1 skill for Sword/Pistol is decent for AOE but very weak and underwhelming for single targets. Is it better to use #1 and Pistol Whip for multiple targets and Pistol/Dagger or Dagger/Dagger for singles or can Sword/Pistol be used effectively for both multiples and singles?