Fresh Level 80
Depends on play-style..
S/D has very high surviabiltiy and cleaves.
D/D good for high brust and some condtion builds. Most sought after in PvE for farm groups in full zerk (leaves no room for error).
P/D trollspec good at killing hordes of bads in WvW very slowly. Very tanky if PvE, ok as long as you don’t have lots of other bleeders in grp.
D/P perma stealth or burst spec or balance of two. More WvW/PvP spec.
S/P – bad in my opinion, maybe just PvE but I’d still rather just go D/D for PvE.
P/P – probably fine in PvE, not that bad in PvP on swap if you run in a group. It’s very surprising ranged burst most people don’t expect but it’s lack of stelath makes it undesirable.
Shortbow – good all around for PvP and PvE. Probably the best swap weapon. For PvP I would have at least one weaponset be D/X or Shortbow for combat movement.
Before you buy more gear, I would suggest, not only for a thief but every class in general, you find a weapon set you like and want to stick to first, and then start gearing around that set and build