Guild Wars 2

How do you play as melee thief in dungeons? (close combat)
I’m leveling a thief because I love its mechanics, but in dungeons I die too much…
I’m currently at level 30 dagger/pistol and in Ascalonian Catacombs theres a lot of mobs that just instakill me…. I spam black powder and try to dodge everything, but even with that, I get downed several times in certain bosses…

What’s your trick to survive in dungeons?
I want to play mainly in close combat, because I currently have a ranger for ranged combat…
How you identify when to dodge when you are facing a mob that is shinning of effects and is hard to see?

You have to do almost hit and run. With dagger/pistol (I am assuming you mean dagger mainhand, pistol offhand) Use your black powder then heartstrike through it to stealth. Have a second weapon set that is ranged, either pistol/pistol or shortbow, because unless you have a survival build you will have a tough time meleeing on every mob. Get behind mobs.

High damage builds don’t survive as well in dungeons, unless you can read the monsters, or are ranged, or count on something else to do the equal amount as sustained damage i.e. condition or burst dps and roll away.

If you need to heal often, but want to stealth still, you can always switch your heal out with the one that rolls you back (15s cooldown), and use different utilities to stealth such as the utility blinding powder. The shelter is almost a must in dungeons, if someone else goes down, as well as with any projectile combo shot it gives lifesteal. You can also use shadow step to start the battle, and if you start taking damage shadow step back

It is hard to find a balanced spec that can be used in pvp,wvw, and spvp. Just think of yourself as a ninja. Get in, hit hard, get out, disappear. You aren’t a brawler in people’s faces (for most builds). If you want to be more of a stand in their face, condition dagger is nice for evades with death blossom, sword/pistol has pistol whip which you evade all reg attacks in the animation, and sword/dagger has flanking strike which although tends to miss a lot still gives an evade aside from the roll. Both sword weapons also have infiltrators strike, which is like shadow step, and is useful for starting a battle.

Hope this helped some.

I have been playing a very heavy – glass canon – condition damage build with Dagger/Dagger weapon set.

The above poster got it right in the first sentence … “Hit and RUN!”

Basically on boss fights I will run in, drop Caltrops, hit Death Blossom, dodge roll for the extra caltrops (from the trait: Uncatchable), then Death Blossom again, then dodge roll .. etc. etc. until I am out of endurance at which point I will hit Roll for Initiative to get out of harms way. I will then quickly switch to a Shortbow and spam SB skill #2: Clusterbomb until Caltrops are off cooldown. I then pop Steal for an initiative boost and repeat the rotation.

The trick to remember here is that while you are in the Death Blossom animation you are effectivly immune to all damage (just as if you were dodging). So the entire time I am in melee range I am only effectivly hittable about 5-10% of the time. This is still long enough to eat a hit or two, but after a few runs you will learn how to time your attacks to avoid even that.

I can not speak for your D/P weapon set as I have not used it extensivly enough.

As a Thief I dont think you can just 100% melee .. granted melee damage is their strong suit, but you are kittening yourself if you try and sware off ranged attacks all together. Shortbow is just too good to ignore.

Yep hit n run its thief MO Get in hit hard get out, also Glass Cannon Beserker or Rampager depending if your Condition or Direct Damage, anything else your just kittening your self and asking to die. Also your not a Marine, First in Last out, thats the Guardians/Warriors job your more like the Green Beret or Navy Seal, Sneak in blow em up dissapear. <its the mindset you have to have..]
So overall Survival is having Patience, having Knowledge of the Boss, and above all AVOIDING not mitigating Damage at all cost.

Some extra tips, Let the beefier members run ahead and eat mob face. don’t be afraid to hang back sneak around and pounce on enemies at half health. also Important, is the thief with Shadow Refuge, is by far the most amazing Field medic on the team, shadow Refuge over a downed member run in and heal them with out any aggro to you.

i find that pistolwhip from S/P combo provides alot of survivability and high DPS.

What i mean is, while the channel is active, nothing cant tough you because you will evade everything, aoe, direct damage, aoe on the ground, everything. Its a short window but you can spam it all day long with acro + trickery traits.

Its actually kinda amazing, you can tank alot like this, plus you have shadowstep to teleport back if things get ugly and roll back for heal or shadow heal.

Like most of the other replies are suggesting, it largely comes down to a “hit-and-run” playstyle. However, there’s always the incredibly boring (and largely useless) option of sitting in Shortbow and spamming Clusterbomb/Choking Gas (the latter especially useful if you have the minor trait “Lotus Poison” which applies Weakness when you apply Poison, which CG applies every second to mobs in it’s field. That certainly helps your overall survivability tremendously.

Dagger Pistol is good for dungeons, you just have to be mindful that the “Defiant” buff on all the bosses means that Blind will only have a 10% chance to cause the target to miss, drastically diminishing it’s effectiveness.

However, with most trash mobs, Black Powder should be plenty of survivability (as long as the mob isn’t consuming the blind condition faster than the Smoke field is applying it, i.e. Ascalonian Warriors/Rangers tend to burn through attacks pretty quickly, and the latters traps don’t seem to be effected by blind at all).

As with all things Thief, Stealth is your friend, and I’ve noticed that in most Exp Mode dungeons (minus Fractals) C&D is just as- if not more effective than Black Powder. However, this also depends on what your group make up is, and if you can get away with being purely D/D or S/D. Speaking of Sword Dagger, the free Daze on Tactical Strike is definitely worth considering as you can burn through the stacks of Defiant rather quickly and get a real form of CC off on the boss (when used properly, this can make most runs a breeeeeeeze).

Hope this helps

I wouldn’t recommend relying on melee too much. You’ll probably want to be using shortbow most of the time. Some mobs are safer to melee than others, know when you can melee and when you need to keep your distance.
Have an escape button, like shadowstep or blinding powder ready.
Sword/pistol is nice against trash mobs.
Heartseeker spam on bosses that are below 25% is also really nice.

Jefzor.7145:

I wouldn’t recommend relying on melee too much. You’ll probably want to be using shortbow most of the time. Some mobs are safer to melee than others, know when you can melee and when you need to keep your distance.
Have an escape button, like shadowstep or blinding powder ready.
Sword/pistol is nice against trash mobs.
Heartseeker spam on bosses that are below 25% is also really nice.

i play full melee in dungeons and loving it.

Jefzor.7145:

I wouldn’t recommend relying on melee too much. You’ll probably want to be using shortbow most of the time. Some mobs are safer to melee than others, know when you can melee and when you need to keep your distance.
Have an escape button, like shadowstep or blinding powder ready.
Sword/pistol is nice against trash mobs.
Heartseeker spam on bosses that are below 25% is also really nice.

I run melee about 70% of the time in dungeons, its all about which skills you use and the % of time you are actually “hittable”.

Take the skills: Pistol Whip, or Death Blossom. Both of these skills have a built in evade which makes you unharmable for the majority of the animation. They are a great initiative dump. Once you get low on Initiative back out, swap to a ranged weapon set and go to town with it until you have enough initiative to get back in there safely.

I am not saying a full time Shortbow Thief is not viable, but a high crit build with Pistol Whip, or a high condition damage build with Death Blossom (as 2 examples, there are more) will out damage Cluster Bomb/Choking Gas. Now if it is your first time through a dungeon and you are unfamiliar with mob/boss mechnics then you may be more of an asset to your team if you stay at ranged … a dead Thief does no damage.

hi all,

I’ve been mostly WvW since the game release but given ANet’s direction on future content, I feel the need to start doing some dungeons. Like the OP, I’ve had problems in AC exp mode and wonder if it’s just lack of experience or I need some gear change. Currently I have crafted exotic berserker set and jewelry item. Should I create a different set for dungeon that focus on vitality, toughness and power? Would that give me more survivability? I am mostly S/D with SB, and build is 25/30/0/15/0.

Melee is viable in most cases, there are situations you will just want to get the kitten away from though. Seems AC can be quite punishing to melee in some cases.

D/D Deathblossom bleeds with Carrion gear is nice for a hit and run build.
S/P Pistol Whip gives you some evasion and black powder.
P/D Condition builds are nice to run in for stealth and back off for bleeds.
D/P is IMHO one of the harder sets to master and play, probably the toughest to run in dungeons especially at low levels where its harder to recover initiative.
S/D has surprised me… Hard hitting attacks w/o initiative cost, port in and out of combat that cures conditions, stealth for dropping agro and a daze, an evasive strike which needs some improvement…
P/P is my go to for single target ranged damage.

My suggestion would be to try S/P where you can evade from Pistol Whip or blind with Black Powder. Or try P/D and run some condition damage and duration gear.

Acrobatics 15 is great for more dodges, Shadow Arts 10 to 20 is great for recovering initiative if you’re stealthing all the time, can remove conditions too if you’re not S/D.

Good luck,

Blood~