Guild Wars 2

I just played my 100th game of PvP, so I’m still pretty new.

I usually engage doing Basi->3+Steal->3 autos->2 to apply stun->3. At this point, either A) enemy is almost dead and panic strike stuns them, B) enemy is at 90% health, C) enemy’s passive stopped me upon stealing, D) steal didn’t actually teleport me.

I feel like A only happens when the enemy is bad and has 0 defensive spells, and D feels like steal is bugged sometimes. My question is for B and C: what do I do next?

Chasing feels weird. Unhindered moves me too far past the enemy, a followup 3 doesn’t move me far enough and wastes ini, and I would miss or miss out using larcenous strike had I not blown 2 earlier. I recently learned about right clicking to change your direction (like I said I’m new), so reorienting the camera during a fight is not comfortable/natural for me yet. Should I disengage at this point? Should I keep auto attacking and hitting 3 as if I know how to dodge spells? If I disengage when I’m on a point, they can progress toward taking my point, which is usually why I end up continuing to fight unless they’re a guardian at which point I just let them have it.

I know it’s a super situational question, but I’m really just asking how to efficiently chase people as S/D when steal is on cd. D/P can hit 2 or 3 to catch up. Staff has 5 which hurts like hell. Shortbow has 5 but does negative damage. S/D can 2 once and move a few inches forward with 3.

My build:
DA 222
Trick 312
DrD 222
Marauder amulet, Pack rune, air/fire sigils (not sure if these are good, please advise)
Channeled vigor, SoA, BD, Shadowstep, Basi
Shortbow as alt weapon set

S/D isn’t really good at chasing any more after the patch. Actually, S/D isn’t really that good at all any more. You can get away with it at lower levels/hotjoins, but overall D/P or staff is much better.

Thief should be renamed to Dagger Pistol. Its the only usable set it pretty much has since the nerfs to the other weapons.

D/D condi cancer is also broken, but I do hope to see it nerfed massively at some point so people can stop pretending they’re good at the thief.

I love S/D. Thousand something games with it in sPvP, lots in WvW, really fun set with lots of tools.

It’s bad now, don’t use it. That said, if you’re going to insist on playing S/D:

Stop engaging with steal. Engage with #2. If B or C happens, reset using the return on #2, and try again. Steal on S/D is for interrupting heals and chasing down someone that is about to die on your next attack rotation.

You will have a lot of trouble killing things with S/D. It has poor burst and middling defense that makes it very vulnerable to counter-pressure. Basically you need to keep jumping on someone for a couple hits and jumping off and whittle them down with #2 until they make a big mistake / run out of cooldowns. However, post HoT, most classes have enough defensive cooldowns that you really won’t be able to chip them down effectively, and you lack the tools to capitalize on a few seconds of vulnerability.

But against baddies just 2 -> attack a couple times -> 2 out, 2 back in / repeat. It’ll confuse and kill people that don’t know what they are doing.

If you’re playing at a level where people know how to play the game, seriously, stop playing with a sword and use D/P (which has the burst to capitalize on mistakes) or staff (which has the defensive tools to resist counterpressure and stick to a target). S/D does not give you the tools you need to fight elite specs, there’s nothing you can do about it.

How to play S/D, go into HotM put your traits to DA 2-2-2/Tri 3-1or 2-2/DD 1-2 or 3-2 or 3. Equip Maurauder amulet With Scholar Runes or Wurm Runes, run Withdraw or Channeled Vigor, Shadowstep, Bandits Defense or Blinding Powder, Signet of Agility Elite is Basilisk Venom, Now Equip Shortbow in secondary slot, then Equip Dagger mainland, Pistol Offhand with sigils of Air and Blood profit spamming number 3 and using BP HS combo

alchemyst.2165:

S/D isn’t really good at chasing any more after the patch. Actually, S/D isn’t really that good at all any more. You can get away with it at lower levels/hotjoins, but overall D/P or staff is much better.

DeceiverX.8361:

Thief should be renamed to Dagger Pistol. Its the only usable set it pretty much has since the nerfs to the other weapons.

Ensign.2189:

I love S/D. Thousand something games with it in sPvP, lots in WvW, really fun set with lots of tools.

It’s bad now, don’t use it.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

How to play S/D … Equip Dagger mainland, Pistol Offhand

k…

It is sad but true, it is my favorite set, but now I am just grieving people with P/P assassinations, the salt is real.

Actually, I’ve seen some really nasty and very cool Sword Dagger builds in the last couple of days. I never noticed them before, and they are definitely rare. I had one of those Sword dagger guys give me some tips on it.

• Precast Infiltrators strike without a target. It will secure an escape.
• Initially you want to steal, not Infiltrators strike.
• perform your attack rotation, then use Infiltrators Return to get away and reset
• SD is meant to get in, deal damage, get out, before the enemy can do anything about it. so don’t get greedy with your attacks.

I’m not good at S/D. but this is what the S/D players i talked to told me.

MSGhero.9023:

I just played my 100th game of PvP, so I’m still pretty new.

I usually engage doing Basi->3+Steal->3 autos->2 to apply stun->3. At this point, either A) enemy is almost dead and panic strike stuns them, enemy is at 90% health, C) enemy’s passive stopped me upon stealing, D) steal didn’t actually teleport me.

I feel like A only happens when the enemy is bad and has 0 defensive spells, and D feels like steal is bugged sometimes. My question is for B and C: what do I do next?

Chasing feels weird. Unhindered moves me too far past the enemy, a followup 3 doesn’t move me far enough and wastes ini, and I would miss or miss out using larcenous strike had I not blown 2 earlier. I recently learned about right clicking to change your direction (like I said I’m new), so reorienting the camera during a fight is not comfortable/natural for me yet. Should I disengage at this point? Should I keep auto attacking and hitting 3 as if I know how to dodge spells? If I disengage when I’m on a point, they can progress toward taking my point, which is usually why I end up continuing to fight unless they’re a guardian at which point I just let them have it.

I know it’s a super situational question, but I’m really just asking how to efficiently chase people as S/D when steal is on cd. D/P can hit 2 or 3 to catch up. Staff has 5 which hurts like hell. Shortbow has 5 but does negative damage. S/D can 2 once and move a few inches forward with 3.

My build:
DA 222
Trick 312
DrD 222
Marauder amulet, Pack rune, air/fire sigils (not sure if these are good, please advise)
Channeled vigor, SoA, BD, Shadowstep, Basi
Shortbow as alt weapon set

I second everything Ensign said above. Especially save your Steal until after you’ve already landed your initial few hits, at least.

Also, Dagger 4 really does have a use here: use it to cripple fleeing enemies. By this point you should have both swiftness and vigor, so you can run/dodge your way to close the gap. It’s pretty important to pursue IMO once they start running, because as a S/D dagger thief you’ll only get one shot to finish them off before they heal/reset or their friends show up.

S/D is the toughest set up to play, as others have noted. Frankly I’ve abandoned it in PvP, but I still enjoy it in other game modes. Doesn’t mean YOU can’t get pretty good at it though, if you practice. GL.

what you do is if you see him use flanking strike wait till end of animation. then you just blow him up because .2 punish frame on move lol

Also, try to not let the naysayers discourage you too much. If you have found a weapon you enjoy playing, then play it. Otherwise we WILL be a d/p only class, which would suck.

Good luck!

JonnyForgotten.4276:

Also, try to not let the naysayers discourage you too much. If you have found a weapon you enjoy playing, then play it. Otherwise we WILL be a d/p only class, which would suck.

Good luck!

I was a naysayer for almost four years. I played D/D + S/D and skipped shortbow because of the fact I could work around it.

With the recent patches, I can safely say Thief = D/P.

Does it make sense to sub out shortbow with staff or d/p? Would I just be on those 100% of the time instead of using s/d at all, especially if I swapped Escapist Absolution with the staff damage DrD trait?

DeceiverX.8361:

With the recent patches, I can safely say Thief = D/P.

Staff is perfectly playable and in my mind superior than D/P for solo queue, for similar reasons to why I preferred S/D pre-HoT – it’s better for contesting points and fighting even numbered fights, at a cost of lower burst and disengage.

MSGhero.9023:

Does it make sense to sub out shortbow with staff or d/p? Would I just be on those 100% of the time instead of using s/d at all, especially if I swapped Escapist Absolution with the staff damage DrD trait?

Staff + D/P is the best dueling set-up. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to swap it out for an actual match, because the mobility from short bow is really crucial for your decaps and rotations, but if you’re just joining dueling servers or fighting people in WvW you can do without it.

If you ran S/D + D/P or Staff you’d spend almost all your time in Staff or D/P; the only value S/D offers is sword 2, which you could pre-cast as an escape option to swap to. Otherwise, no, you wouldn’t ever actually use it in a fight if you had D/P or Staff available.

s/d and shortbow is the way to go, that is ofc, you play s/d. i dont believe in this crap about chasing targets down, if they got away then let them go… they will either come back and or give up but you’re both reset so whats the problem…if i wanted to keep them in combat i would go shortbow and pace my self because any smart person being chased by a thief will have a counter burst plan in mind…although you can surprise them with los advantage. I have played s/d for 3 years now, but milked it since hot. i have never used/bothered witht hat bug exploit of infiltrators return and jump…

i do not play pvp much anymore but i play a lot of wvw, my traits are DA 2/2/2 tricekry 3/1/2 DD 3/2/2.

Ensign.2189:

DeceiverX.8361:

With the recent patches, I can safely say Thief = D/P.

Staff is perfectly playable and in my mind superior than D/P for solo queue, for similar reasons to why I preferred S/D pre-HoT – it’s better for contesting points and fighting even numbered fights, at a cost of lower burst and disengage.

I didn’t say Daredevil. Staff has better burst, anyways.