Guild Wars 2

I started my thief a long time ago with the idea of making him a sword thief. I was modeling him off of a character I made in a D&D session who sort of stumbled into that build face first. I only do PvE, so I did my research on DnT’s site and played around with build calculators for a while only to hit brick wall after brick wall. Dagger just does far more damage no matter how you slice it. I get that sword cleaves, but now that Staff is in the mix, the datamining seems to indicate that Staff will take its place on trash mobs with far more control and comparable, if not better, damage. So… what’s the sword FOR in PvE? Is a sword thief just a bad idea outside of PvP/WvW now? I’m honestly confused here.

S/d:
Sword cleave (speed compared to staff unknown) auto, blind/daze
Shadowstep that roots, shadowstep that clears condition
Dodge that deals damage, damage that steals boon and is unblockable
Aoe ranged cleave
Stealth on demand

S/p:
Same as 1
Same as 2
Dodge that stuns and deals huge cleave damage
On demand daze/interrupt
On demand blind field (which means leap finisher=free stealth)

If anything this new traitline will DESTROY offhand dagger. But not mainhand sword. Staff just looks like an aoe cleave pressure.

I personally play a sword thief and Solo dungeon run on a regular basis preferring it greatly over other mainhand choices. I also pvp a fair amount w/ s/p (that being said i have 3 differently spec’ed thieves)

Firstly the challenges in HoT have not been truly revealed so there’s no way to actually answer you question in regards to that.

How much or little damage the staff will do in also similarly revealed until the game is released (data mining doesn’t count as numbers are not finalized)

I will also say you should just play what is FUN for you screw the numbers especially if you don’t play in a competitive formats

Enough with the negative i will try and answer your question now…

in a nutshell sword is for mobility and interrupts and as you mentioned before hitting larger numbers of opponents

Infiltrator’s Strike
- gets you in and out of danger / AoEs with ease can be combined with other Shadow-Step abilities to move further faster than any other class.

Pistol Whip = evasion + good damage
- if you have used this skill with Signet of Malice you might not need to have asked this question

Considering some of the New HoT Traits & Skills

where dagger & pistols look more towards stealth Sword has always had evasion built more solidly into it’s mechanics no disrespect towards deathblossom

i would say take a look at some of the synergy with the following regarding Sword thief + HoT. daredevil will just further complement sword evasion and mobility at the cost of stealth.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Driven_Fortitude
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Escapist%E2%80%99s_Absolution
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Impacting_Disruption

i could get into more but this is getting a bit wordy if you need more help or have more questions feel free to msg me!

Hope this Helps!

“Is a sword thief just a bad idea outside of PvP/WvW now? "

Answer: KITTENS NO!
if anything that is where it shines the most.

This does help. I want to experiment with a Sword/Pistol Daredevil with the leap finisher dodge now. The stealth may not hit as hard as dagger, but it’s a good way of proccing Revealed Training and gives more control. From what I’ve seen of HoT PvE so far… control may be the only way to survive sometimes. (I’m looking at you, Mordrem Snipers.)
I’ve worked with a self-healing build before on thief (it’s actually my casual build), so I know that synergy with Pistol Whip… I just plain forgot about it. Been on my warrior too long, I guess. Good catch!

D/D is somewhat (~20%) more damage than S/P in PvE, but comes with many caveats – it is only single target damage (no cleave), it requires you to stay behind your foe consistently (fine when someone else holds aggro, otherwise it takes work), and you sacrifice virtually all of your utility for that damage boost.

S/P on the other hand has reasonably strong cleave, access to a fantastic blind field to allow you to cleave down packs in relative safety, and a ton of interrupt and evade from #3 and #4 that makes it easy to rip defiance stacks (from champion mobs) and simply sustain through incidental AoE damage by evading in place with Pistol Whip. When you are looking for more than simply maximizing single target DPS at all costs (and if you are, go reroll Ele right now) S/P offers an awful lot of power that is oftentimes preferred to a marginal DPS boost.

For anything resembling ‘hard’ PvE, S/P is the melee weapon set of choice, and as things stand I see no reason to expect anything different once the expansion hits.