Guild Wars 2

Hi! I just reached 80 for the first time.

I’ve been leveling with d/d and shortbow, and I mainly intend to do wvwvw and pve, and I was wondering if this is viable for that purpose, if not, what weapon combination is better, and what skills/traits should I chose?

I have also saved up 170k karma while questing, and what kind of gear should I pick with d/d and shortbow or if there is a better weapon combination, what gear should I pick there? And where do I find this exotic karma vendor?

d/d is perfectly viable, and there are several power based builds. as for better weapon combinations, honestly use what you love. if you pick a play style you don’t like just because it is somewhat more effective you will just find yourself hating the thief. as far as armor, berserkers and valkyrie pieces can be used for multiple builds, so they are good investments.

as far as weapon combinations and skill/traits, do you want to keep using d/d? if so 30 points in both crit strikes and shadow arts, with valkyrie gear and enough berserkers to get 30-40% crit chance can make you a very survivable damage dealer, there are the more glassy options, or you can switch the off hand dagger for a pistol for easier, non targeted,though more expensive stealth, and more utility.

sword builds take longer to kill, but bring more mobility, more control, and tend to be very survivable even when almost full GC. the real question is, what way do you want to play? let us know your prefered weapons and play style and the other people on the forums and myself can find a build that suits you to start off with and make your own.

Thank you very much for your reply

In all honesty, I have only played d/d and short bow as I have used it through all my leveling. I tried sword and dagger during the very early levels, but I didn’t quite like that.

Also I really like the dagger animations and the fast auto attack.
I also don’t see myself switching out the short bow, because I really like the AoE capabilities that gives, and even though it might take longer to kite than pistols (which I have no experience in), the bow gets the job done on single targets, it just takes a little bit longer.

So if d/d and shortbow is viable in wvwvw and pve, I don’t see myself switching away from it

cool, then all you need to decide is whether to go glassier or more survivable. it really all depends on what you think you can survive with, and what you prefer. for d/d I prefer to go tanky with a majority of valk gear with enough berserkers to get 30% crit. then I take hidden killer to guarantee back stab crits and then proc fury through furious retaliation at the enemies 50% health mark. others prefer higher crit chance and take executioner, though you need quite a high crit chance for that to be the best choice. short bow will honestly be more likely to work well than p/p in WvW. it has more mobility, a good source of AoE and the all important spamable blast finisher. most people who use p/p do so because they like it more than for its effectiveness.

as a side note about PvE, build more survivable, and use the short bow at first then add more strait damage based gear and start getting in closer more often as you learn the dungeons and get better at dodging and predicting attacks. it will help prevent you from being one of those famous floor tanking thieves.

Bow>pistols in 99% of situations. The only time pistols is better is on a boss where they need to be interupted as often as possible and you can’t rely on your teamates being able to dodge what is coming. That pretty much narrows it down to ta up 1st boss after the vines.

You’re able to do almost the same dps on a single target (with cluster bomb, is slightly lower), be at better range, have better kiting potential (that 3 skill), and you have access to that spam-able blast finisher for fields (mostly fire and water).

Daggers also has access to 3 finishers but you really will only be using the leap and whirl. The projectile is a waste of initiative almost all the time as well.

I’m also a d/d sbow thief but you should have every weapon combination in your inventory for whenever they’re needed.

Click on the link in my sig if you want to see some good quality vids on dungeon thieving.

Thanks again

What should I spend the last 10 traits on? acrobatics?

I’m also trying to look up the gear, I got 170k karma. Should I spend that on gear? I looked at http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Category:Exotic_armor_sets and can’t figure out which one to chose as they don’t have that valk or berserker tag.

I also noticed on the auction house that there is a very big price difference in weapons. For example there are exotic weapons that have the same damage, but different stats that vary very in price, like 2g for a dagger and 50g etc, isn’t the damage the most important?

Edit: Also looking at weapons, would 2x Berserker’s Pearl Carver be a good choice?

exotic is exotic. Just worry about the stats and make sure the stuff is lvl 80. Best and cheapest way to do this is to go do dungeons. Probably bets to just get some pvt from some low level dungeon (where people don’t gear check and dumb crap like that) then go spam CoF with your tanky gear until you get enough tokens to buy zerker gear.

Since you’re thief I suggest going CoE actually. It’s a hard dungeon at first but it’s tailor made for thieves.