Guild Wars 2

I’ve been doing pvp lately, and I’ve noticed it is rather hard to keep stealthing in battles, and I find myself out of initiative when fighting many skilled players. I use D/P (I hate D/D I don’t really know why) so I do the traditional BP+HS (Black power + Heart Seeker) combo, but often I find myself dead when I’ve almost killed people. Lately I’ve been trying to depend on blinds to stop people from hitting me, but I always have the same result; no initiative.

What traits and special skills should I use for trying to keep people blinded or trying to stay in stealth? I’m not interested in perma stealth, I only use stealth to backstab most of the time, and occasionally to reset, so I would be leaving stealth usually 2 seconds after stealthing or so. I’m looking for a way to minimize the loss of initiative when fighting.

If you’re curious I use Pistol/Pistol as my other weapons, even though I used to use Pistol/Dagger(Is P/D even a good weapon set to use?)

One last urgent question: Is Shadow Rejuvenation useful if I don’t stay in stealth for long? I often never rest in fights, since I usually play the annoying thief and I pull people off points. How much health can I get from the trait if I’m only in stealth for 3 seconds at longest?

Check out www.metabattle.com for what traits etc you should use. a lot of points in Trickery gives you more initiative
As for P/D, it’s more of a condition set really.

The D/P is a roaming build your job should be finishing other people’s fights and taking points. Use Shortbow for mobility and learn the teleport locations for all of the different maps.

As far as initiative management goes, you can go with a meta 2/6/0/0/6/ spread which will give you 3 extra initiative that I find helps a great deal. There is also a 6/0/2/0/6 variation which I find to be less effective.

Your initial burst should include a Black Powder -> Heart Seeker -> Steal -> Backstab combo. With the suggested trait spread you get back 3 inititive from the Steal as well. Note that this burst is very initiative cost heavy as you lose 6 on the Black Powder and 3 more for the Heart Seeker. Since it does comparable damage to Shadow Shot plus Shadow Shot blinds that should be your main damage dealer along with auto attacks after your initial burst.

If you know you can’t take your opponent, disengage thieves excel at this. NEVER ever try to hold a point, you are extremely squishy and that is not what the build is designed to do.

Shadow Rejuvenation sacrifices a great deal of damage for a very minor amount of healing and is not worth it in PvP however it can be useful in WvW. As mompen suggests, take a look at the D/P or S/D builds on metabattle.com for a trait and gear load out.

It’s about positioning and mobility. When you stay on your target’s blindside (flank or back), you can just keep auto-attacking and save your initiatives for bursts. Also staying in stealth as long as possible (2s minimum) helps regenerate initiatives — but if you pop out of stealth as soon as you gain stealth, then you’re not giving yourself a chance to recoup lost initiatives.

It’s all about being patient and disengaging often.

Well, I looked at meta builds, but I didn’t really like them all so I changed it around.
These are the trait lines I have things in. 0-6-2-3-3
My skills are: Hide in Shadows, Shadow Refuge, Blinding powder, Roll for Initiative and Thieve’s Guild.
I think this build is good enough, I can see a positive effect of it on pvp now, and for some odd reason I live longer without all the health traits.

Timiok.1048:

Well, I looked at meta builds, but I didn’t really like them all so I changed it around.
These are the trait lines I have things in. 0-6-2-3-3
My skills are: Hide in Shadows, Shadow Refuge, Blinding powder, Roll for Initiative and Thieve’s Guild.
I think this build is good enough, I can see a positive effect of it on pvp now, and for some odd reason I live longer without all the health traits.

It’s not the build — it’s you. You’ve L2P Thief.