Guild Wars 2

I rather love my thief. Besides my thief, I’ve leveled an Elementalist and an Engineer to 80, and a Warrior to mid-30’s. My thief remains my favorite, for reasons I can’t describe. Unfortunate, all the really good builds for thieves seem to favor melee and PvP. I have two problems with this:

a.) I can’t melee to save my life. On any class I’ve tried. I get stomped when I try melee weapons/builds.
b.) I don’t enjoy PvP. In any game. No, no. It’s true, though I’ll admit that I love how GW2’s PvP is implemented. WvW is very cool, IMO.

So, what I need is a thief build that emphasizes ranged in PvE/Events/Dungeons. I’ve tried looking some up, but the ones I found were either outdated, or got extremely negative feed back, even from other ranged enthusiasts.

Much love to whoever helps me with this.

EDIT: After looking over the suggestions, I came up with something, and I’d like people’s thoughts on it: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/I-m-Sigil-and-I-m-a-ranged-noob/first#post2136360

Short bow is thief’s best weapon of choose in my opinion.

I have probably the best pve thief build but it’s no where near the best for wvw. It also takes a lot of practice to use. My suggestion is to just stay ranged for now. Watch the abilities of the enemies carefully. You will get a good view of this while you’re safely at ranged. After a while, push yourself to get in close and avoid the abilities you’ve been watching closely. It’ll come naturally, just keep at it You’ll be meleeing bosses in no time!

Yes, I suppose I could adapt...

But in case I don’t, let’s have some more suggestions!

Shortbow and Pistol/Dagger

from a pve perspective, if you go p/d, you are 100% useless

You can solo pretty much anything with it. Even champs, in Orr.

There are 3 ranged weaponsets, P/D, P/P and SB. P/P is the weakest, in any format, which leaves P/D and SB.

you can solo it but you do kitten for damage. It’s amazing in wvw because you can out survive anything and put up good condi pressure but in pve it is junk. Just auto attacking with my short bow does more than p/d. p/d is also only single target whereas sbow gives the benefit of being aoe, better ranged (says it’s 900 but it shoots closer to 1200 due to arrow arc), and all around, higher damage. P/P is actually stronger than p/d because spamming unload does pretty good damage. The problem with p/p is that it has no mobility and no stealth.

And the whole soloing thing. Anybody can solo anything with anything. D/D solo’s a boss a LOT faster than anything else, s/p solos melee mobs with easy (black powder), and s/d is the best all around (cleave, good evade, daze lock things without defiance), and everything melee takes more skill than ranged but is 3-4x faster.

spec into critical strikes and what ever gives u sb damage, with critical strikes u get crit rate and damage along with 10% pistol damage increase and ankle shots which have a 60% chance to cripple on crit. If you’re going for a ranged thief that should work to keep things at bay. P/P is the strongest ranged weapon set you can use. P/D n SB are fine if you want to kite around and all that junk but P/P’s unload will make short work of anything. (there’s a reason why SB n P/D thieves get kicked from CoF p1 farm groups)
Also since you want to switch to melee, go S/P it gives you good gap closing and alot of damage with mob clearance too. The evades and brief stun with pistol whip is pretty forgiving for someone wanting to change. PLus you don’t need to worry about backstabbing or all the leaping about.

Yesterday I did Arah P3 with my thief using my usual D/D Shortbow setup. During Lupicus fight, in P1 I spammed cluster bomb killing ads fast, in P2 I used shortbow’s autoattack when I wasn’t resurrecting people (they kept getting downed/dying), and in P3 I switched to D/D and just tailed the boss with his back always on me earning me free backstabs lol.

Without my thief, I’m sure we would have failed, there was one time where it was only me and ele alive, he kited the boss, while I resurrected the other 3. Don’t underestimate your role in PvE

Edit to add: not to mention all the shadows refuge skipping

randomfightfan.4091:

from a pve perspective, if you go p/d, you are 100% useless

Sorry but I’ve done pretty much all high end PvE content with P/D + Shortbow in a Conditions + Support build and it works wonderfully. If there are too many red circles with very damaging effect (and this handicaps most weapon sets anyway) I can always switch to Shortbow and apply perma-weakness and keep triggering combo fields.

Enjoyluck.2618:

Short bow is thief’s best weapon of choose in my opinion.

While I agree that Shortbow is a wonderful weapon, a must have, and probably the best designed weapon we have (probably because all the skills are on the same weapon instead of varying depending on main and off-hand) I would say it’s our best secondary weapon but not main weapon. It has all the tools to complement any other weapon set you get as primary and don’t need specific traits to work (though Lotus Poison makes it awesome in support) but offensively except for Shotguning groups and choke points/bases or tagging enemies in events it isn’t the best weapon. But yeah, it’s a great weapon and I always take it as secondary as because of Initiative, except for on-swap Sigils we get litle benefit for swapping for spam attacks like other professions, so using the swap for all that complementary utility for when you need it on your secondary set is a good thing.

NoodllZ.8376:

P/P is the strongest ranged weapon set you can use. P/D n SB are fine if you want to kite around and all that junk but P/P’s unload will make short work of anything. (there’s a reason why SB n P/D thieves get kicked from CoF p1 farm groups)
Also since you want to switch to melee, go S/P it gives you good gap closing and alot of damage with mob clearance too. The evades and brief stun with pistol whip is pretty forgiving for someone wanting to change. PLus you don’t need to worry about backstabbing or all the leaping about.

P/P thieves get kicked out of cof p1 farm groups just as fast if not faster. The short bow actually does more damage than pistols in the situations where you actually MIGHT use a ranged weapon (the first part with the turrets and… uh… that’s it). Not going short bow also means you’re nerfing your team. You no longer have access to the amazing, on demand, high damaging, blast finisher. If you’re meleeing, your team is meleeing, and you see a fire field, blast that ling 3-5 times and you’ll give the entire team 9-15 might stacks for 20s. See a water field? Blast that to heal the entire team for about 1500 a blast. Here’s for a more detailed look. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blast_finisher

Pro tip, put down smoke screen, shoot it with cluster bomb.

If you’re not meleeing, you’re doing it wrong for things like CoF (and most everything else). D/D also does a ton more damage than s/p vs bosses. The evade also will get you killed more often then it’ll help. You’re rooted in place, not damaging or evading for the first 1/2 of the skill (don’t say target is stunned cause defiance>stun) and even if you don’t get hit, auto attacking does just as much damage as pistol whip but you can move while attacking. It is pretty forgiving if you’re not going to be dodging anyways but to someone who can successfully avoid attacks, daggers are the safer bet and yield significantly higher reward.

Lokheit.7943:

randomfightfan.4091:

from a pve perspective, if you go p/d, you are 100% useless

Sorry but I’ve done pretty much all high end PvE content with P/D + Shortbow in a Conditions + Support build and it works wonderfully. If there are too many red circles with very damaging effect (and this handicaps most weapon sets anyway) I can always switch to Shortbow and apply perma-weakness and keep triggering combo fields.

Sorry to say this but I’ve had p/d daggers in mid lvl fractals before (30-38) and every second of that I felt like I was carrying the guy. He didn’t go down too often but even when he was up he wasn’t doing jack. Ally goes down, I shadowstep to the guy with sbow. The other thief just stand in the corner. If you don’t go down right in front of the p/d thief, they won’t be coming to your rescue.
If you need ANY aoe, p/d thief won’t help at all while the sbow thief will be your knight in shining armor.
If everybody goes down the sbow thief can easily kite the boss around and get a few ticks of resing in, slowly saving a member of the team (so he can res everybody else). P/D thief is the only thing left? Either he’s going to try and leave agro range (good luck) or take 45 minutes to kill whatever is left.
If there are field on the ground, the sbow thief will take advantage of that and boon up the entire team. P/D thief will look at that field and wonder what it’s all about.

D/D sbow thief has access to EVERY SINGLE FINISHER. Blast, Projectile, Leap, Whirl

P/D S/P thief has access to… Projectile. That’s it. Talk about wasted potential.
If you’re wondering what kind of trade-offs this weapon set gives you to make up for the less damage and fewer finishers, here it is. You also are blessed with less mobility, fewer evades, higher initiative costs, fewer potential boons, and less burst.

You can do any content in the game with P/D but if you’re using it in pve, you’re just nerfing yourself and holding a group back. Go ahead and use that set in wvw though. It’s pretty decent there (except if you’re going p/d don’t go s/p as one is condition and one is power).

randomfightfan.4091:

Sorry to say this but I’ve had p/d daggers in mid lvl fractals before (30-38) and every second of that I felt like I was carrying the guy.

Seen one P/D you’ve seen them all.

If you need ANY aoe, p/d thief won’t help at all while the sbow thief will be your knight in shining armor.

You are saying P/P > P/D because the Shortbow has AoE?

I think everyone here is saying the Shortbow is a must to have equipped, whatever other weaponset you choose to bring.

P/D S/P thief has access to …

What are you talking about? Who mentioned S/P? S/P is hardly ranged, nor is it a required set for P/D

P/D deals kitten dmg and every player who can’t contribute decent dps to a party is underperforming. Damage is king in PvE, support is second place. This is not an elitist/narrow minded statement but the (sad?) fact about pve balancing.
Btw, this thread is about range, and P/D is a melee weaponset. If you range P/D, your damage goes from low to zero.

Back to Topic: For a pure range build, thief has only one viable option. P/P + SB. Use SB 1 + 2 against multiple mobs, P/P 1 + 3 against single targets. Equipment as much berserker as you can handle, traits sth. like 25/30/0/15/0. I like the extra dodge from Acrobatics 15. Some players don’t. Your choice.

frans.8092:

What are you talking about? Who mentioned S/P? S/P is hardly ranged, nor is it a required set for P/D

9th post. That was back when we were still talking about the original topic. Sorry for going back and trying to help elaborate on what the op was asking. Probably shouldn’t have responded to that in such an out of place manner. And if you would have kept reading, you would have seen me saying that p/d and s/p don’t go well together.

The long and short answer to the op’s original question is to use sbow as it is hands down the best ranged weapon set for thief. Use D/D, S/P or S/D. D/P is very sub par in pve but it does have its situations. I carry all the weapons needed to use any set. Doing that will make your thief play significantly stronger. I do carry around 2 pistols but I haven’t used both at once in a very long time. Even vs single targets like dredge boss in fractals bow is better. It allows you to evade the stomps easy and you can blink up to the switches from the bottom, saving time, allowing you to do extra damage against the boss, and it makes you look pro.

I know P/D is less effective in dungeon (as is P/P) but the the question is for ranged options and D/ or S/ not ranged.

There are three ranged weaponsets, one of which – the Shortbow – is a more required then optional. Either P/D or P/P can be the second set, of which P/D is, imo, the easier and more survivable option, but P/P the more obvious to get started on, gearwise.

randomfightfan.4091:

NoodllZ.8376:

P/P is the strongest ranged weapon set you can use. P/D n SB are fine if you want to kite around and all that junk but P/P’s unload will make short work of anything. (there’s a reason why SB n P/D thieves get kicked from CoF p1 farm groups)
Also since you want to switch to melee, go S/P it gives you good gap closing and alot of damage with mob clearance too. The evades and brief stun with pistol whip is pretty forgiving for someone wanting to change. PLus you don’t need to worry about backstabbing or all the leaping about.

P/P thieves get kicked out of cof p1 farm groups just as fast if not faster. The short bow actually does more damage than pistols in the situations where you actually MIGHT use a ranged weapon (the first part with the turrets and… uh… that’s it). Not going short bow also means you’re nerfing your team. You no longer have access to the amazing, on demand, high damaging, blast finisher. If you’re meleeing, your team is meleeing, and you see a fire field, blast that ling 3-5 times and you’ll give the entire team 9-15 might stacks for 20s. See a water field? Blast that to heal the entire team for about 1500 a blast. Here’s for a more detailed look. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blast_finisher

Pro tip, put down smoke screen, shoot it with cluster bomb.

If you’re not meleeing, you’re doing it wrong for things like CoF (and most everything else). D/D also does a ton more damage than s/p vs bosses. The evade also will get you killed more often then it’ll help. You’re rooted in place, not damaging or evading for the first 1/2 of the skill (don’t say target is stunned cause defiance>stun) and even if you don’t get hit, auto attacking does just as much damage as pistol whip but you can move while attacking. It is pretty forgiving if you’re not going to be dodging anyways but to someone who can successfully avoid attacks, daggers are the safer bet and yield significantly higher reward.

P/P does way more damage than SB vs single targets, zerk build with unload and you easily cross 15k damage. SB comboing is fine, but suppose the OP is soloing in PvE P/P offers more damage compared to P/D. Also remember that the OP wants range and maybe away to transition into melee, infiltrator strike can get him in range, root the target, let him try putting some damage in and then getting out if it gets rough. Can’t really give him D/D and tell him go dodge with death blossom and survive. Its fun and effective, yes but not what I’d make someone do right off the bat.

Okay. Digging through all that, I came up with this:

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.10.1.20.13.0.0.0.0.154.168.166.165.179.2.2.10.454.kitten .0.467.473.476.0.0.0.497.0.0.0.0.0.25.30.0.15.0

I ended up going with the Shortbow as the main weapon, and dagger/dagger for some situational stuff.

Regarding the trait lines:
I figured the SB has a poison AoE, so why not take advantage of that? I do like the idea of having Signets as a Might/Initiative battery. I decided to go with Executioner, because while I do like the idea of increased damage for flanking the target regardless of their health (Side Strike), in practice, I find the targets are often very angry with me, so I don’t get to see their sides too often. Finally, endurance refund + Might buff on dodging.

I went with Signets because of the whole Might/Ini battery.

Thoughts?

OP: Go Pistol/Pistol with Shortbow and follow Loperdos’ guide. It’s a solid build and a viable way to get through PvE as ranged:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/82179-buildguide-examination-of-ranged-thieves/

@random if you read the text you quoted from me I clearly state that I keep Shortbow in adition to P/D so most of your argument is invalid as I have Shortbow in adition… P/D and Shortbow complement each other wonderfully for different content and I love having both all the time (btw my P/D build is support oriented, it isn’t the typical WvW P/D build that neecs to be stealthing all the time, and as I said Shortbow is your friend when it’s dangerous to jump into close range).

Sigil.9054:

Okay. Digging through all that, I came up with this:

[url]http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.7.10.1.20.13.0.0.0.0.154.168.166.165.179.2.2.10.454.kitten .0.467.473.476.0.0.0.497.0.0.0.0.0.25.30.0.15.0[/url]

I ended up going with the Shortbow as the main weapon, and dagger/dagger for some situational stuff.

Regarding the trait lines:
I figured the SB has a poison AoE, so why not take advantage of that? I do like the idea of having Signets as a Might/Initiative battery. I decided to go with Executioner, because while I do like the idea of increased damage for flanking the target regardless of their health (Side Strike), in practice, I find the targets are often very angry with me, so I don’t get to see their sides too often. Finally, endurance refund + Might buff on dodging.

I went with Signets because of the whole Might/Ini battery.

Thoughts?

Rune of strength is bugged. The 6th passive doesn’t work. Also you won’t have enough access to might to make sigil of strength work all that well. Also the might on dodge only lasts 2-3 seconds at the start of your dodge, so cut out 3/4s from that time and that’s all you’ll have left. Don’t use venomous strength. You don’t have a single venom on your utility bar and venoms in general are weak. Also a signet build is very weak in pve. It’s fine in wvw as a jump in and blast someone build but you’ll die in a heartbeat. You should always have at least shadow step or shadow refuge. Being glass and 100% offensive will get you a few kills against horrible people but you’ll lose to anything else. What you have there is a very good damage build but you will also be very glassy.

I might be interpreting you wrong but I thought you were wanting to get better at going melee while usually staying ranged. If that is true I’d suggest getting a little more survivability until you get better at staying in melee for extended periods of time. If that’s not the case then just ignore what I just said. That is probably the best trait set up (not best trait choices though ) for pve.

@random if you read the text you quoted from me I clearly state that I keep Shortbow in adition to P/D so most of your argument is invalid as I have Shortbow in adition

Me quoting noodllz somehow makes my completely separate responses to you invalid? Okay. Logical logic is logical. I never said the set was bad… in wvw or pvp. It is junk in pve though.

If you really think your conditions are so boss then picture this. You’re fighting a boss event. You are now getting 1 tick of each condition every 1-5 seconds since everything is already max stacks from everyone else. You’re in a dungeon. There’s another thief. You just lost half the damage from your poison b/c he’s doing 4x+ the damage you’re doing with his daggers. There’s a warrior or 2. His/their passive bleeds are fighting with yours. There’s a necro. You’re now fighting for both bleeds and poison. He’s also pouring out a wider variety of conditions than what you’re capable of doing and it’s all aoe! Both of your dps has been nerfed against the boss. There’s a ranger on the team with a short bow. He stacks bleeds higher and faster than you. You’re also caping each other’s bleeds, nerfing each other’s dps. You’re both also fighting for poison. There’s an engi. He alone can stack 25 bleeds, 25 vuln, burning, perma poison, confusion, blind, and all that in an aoe. He’s doing your job but 20x better and in an aoe. You just being there is nerfing him.

Every single one of these other people will be dishing out more dps than your p/d build and each will be able to support their team better. I know it sucks that you don’t like to hear all that but p/d thief just doesn’t belong in pve unless the only thing you’re doing is solo roaming orr, slowly soloing orians.

Random… read again… I NEVER said you quoting noodzl, I said you quoting me so I’m not using any dumb logic here (it’s in the text you quoted from me this second time… please read what you quote because this makes twice in this thread that you quote from me and show you didn’t read what you quoted). You should read what someone says before going “I know it sucs that you don’t like to hear this” or “logical logic is logical” .

In the first post I said P/D was doing great with SB for situations when jumping inside is dangerous and team support. Then you quoted (and in the quote I say that I keep the SB) me and said that P/D was bad and a SB Thief would be better to help teamates, which I already said. Then I told you you should re-read it, and then you quoted that second post saying that I was talking about you quoting noodlz when in the text you quoted I clearly say “quoted from me”.

About professions nerfing each other stacking conditions, in first place during world events it doesn’t matter at all as the zerg will destroy the world boss anyway. I often switch to Shortbow anyway there to tag more enemies and avoid red circles. And stronger bleeds take priority btw (I often see a lot of my bleeds ticking on dragons) so bleeds from someone’s auto-attack won’t affect me, only bleeds from someone taking more condition damage than I do and there are very few of them, and as I said, in world events it doesn’t matter much.

In dungeons what you said looks great on paper, but 99% of the times I’ve been in dungeons I’ve never been nerfing anyone’s bleeds. You rarely get to 25 bleeds in dungeons, in normal mobs they either don’t last enough to get the 25 bleeds or everyone is spreading their bleeds. Against bosses I’ve been with other bleed specialist in my party and it often is at 20-22 stacks more or less when there are 2 of us, sometimes reaching the 25 mark. The professions that are able to reach a high peak of bleeds normally can only do that every X time so as long as 2 of them don’t waste theirs at the same time they won’t be affecting each other.

As I’ve already said I have a support build, I’m not the main damage dealer (in fact I don’t use Caltrops so my average personal rate of bleeds if I keep using the P/D is between 10-14 and my utilities are focused on group support). And again, when it’s dangerous to jump inside to land the CnD I’ve already said that I switch to Shortbow which is an awesome support weapon. Because there is a switch weapons button so the fact that I run P/D doesn’t mean that my second set is P/D too. Each set complement each other perfectly and I’ve been excelling at high end PvE running them, my proof of this working is my own experience (if it doesn’t works for you it’s fine, I’m doing great with it and I’ve mastered both sets and know when to use each other and even how to combine both in a fight). I’m really bored seeing plenty of so called DPS Thieves dying all the time doing zero dps because they’re dead in the floor.

Lokheit.7943:

Random… read again… I NEVER said you quoting noodzl, I said you quoting me so I’m not using any dumb logic here (it’s in the text you quoted from me this second time… please read what you quote because this makes twice that you quote and show you didn’t read what you quoted).

In the first post I said P/D was doing great with SB for situations when jumping inside is dangerous and team support. Then you quoted (and in the quote I say that I keep the SB) me and said that P/D was bad and a SB Thief would be better to help teamates, which I already said. Then I told you you should re-read it, and then you quoted that second post saying that I was talking about you quoting noodlz when in the text you quoted I clearly say “quoted from me”.

Many words have been said. A man gets confused. One must forgive a man.

Read that in a Bravosii accent

But I do maintain p/d is junk in pve as power thief > condi thief in pve by a lot. Conditions take time to build up and take even more time to deal damage and the damage they do is less than their direct damage counterparts. It doesn’t matter if you can build up 15 stacks of bleeds on a target after 6 seconds when the target is dead in 10 or less.

I guess we won’t convince each other on this. It’s ok for me as long as each of us is succesful with his own style. I will still recommend the support route (note the support thing, this isn’t the typical WIldBill build this build is meant to support your allies and having passive damage keeps your dps on even if you’re around doing stuff) with P/D and SB as it has given me amazing results so far (in fact I use the same unmodified build in all 3 enviroments so I’ve got a lot of experience with that setup now and it works great in all 3 enviroments). I admit in some dungeons I tend to use SB more because most times it’s very dangerous to go melee and P/D needs that melee jump and SB is amazing in dungeons, but in general having a P/D set let’s me keep a high dps (not glass cannon level but I kill stuff really fast) while surviving and helping teamates around. And against certain dungeon and fractal bosses (like the svannir guy on fractals for example) the P/D is excellent as you can be on him all the time stacking the bleeds.

Well, someone showed me a 20/30/0/20/0 P/P build that was doing twice as much damage as I was getting with the other builds suggested in this thread, so I think I’m going to go with that.

Thanks for the help, everyone!

Or go 25/30/0/15/0 and deal even more P/P damage, because 50 power and + 10% damage > 2 Initiative every 10 sec

“from a pve perspective, if you go p/d, you are 100% useless”

In PvE you can change your weapons around between fights and pistol/dagger can be used as the best kiting set for small groups of enemies. There are often other ways to get that done though and the short bow usually offers much more utility.

I think the reason you’re self proclaimed a ranged noob is because im sure you probably have the same issues when i had joined this game , keeping screen straight and sticking to target. Ask yourself why you dont sees many good warriors lol , they dont stick very well and gw2 is a game of kiting . Finally after 4 months of play i can stick on an opponent like waste on an senior citizen .

Guys FOCUS, the guy needs help with ranged, not with D/D P/D D/P…

First of all, don’t use that site as it is only good for PVP. Use this
Second of all, the only issue I found with the P/P build that someone linked in here is having 12k HP, maybe invest in some Valkyrie instead of Berzerk to balance critical chance and HP. That’s all.