Guild Wars 2

1)Would level 45 be a good time to swap to a power based build?

2)Would leveling with D/P be effective for heart events and soloing Vets if needed during those heart’s at level 45?

As for question #2, if D/P – SB wouldn’t be recommended at level 45, could some experienced, nice thief recommend a build for that level that is power based? I know Pistol whip is popular, I find it a bit boring, but wouldn’t be against it.

D/D – S/P – D/P all choices I wouldn’t mind.

I’ve been running the standard condition pve build with d/d – short bow. It’s working fine, but was thinking of making a swap to something more dynamic.

Also I’ve been following the zerg in Queensdale a bit, for some coin to spend to upgrade my gear. I’ve noticed I keep getting silver medals on the Troll. Every other champ I score gold, but on the troll I can’t figure out why. I try and do as much damage I can, and swapping to short bow to blast for Might/Heals.

I don’t run d/d when running the events because bleeds get overwritten so quickly. I swap to P/P – Short bow, or even S/P – Short bow.

I know these things have been asked before. I’ve googled and read over some forums before posting this. But really never found an up to date, clear answer. Sorry If I overlooked something.

Thanks!

1. by the time you get 2 stat gear, power builds start pulling ahead, by 3 stat gear condi builds are left in the dust, so yes great time to swap over
2. i prefer s/p mainly for the cleave so i can pull several mobs at once, and you shouldnt be trying to solo a champ, takes a long time and gives minimal xp, not worth it until you have all your traits
3. depending on your preference id advise s/p + sb or s/p + d/d (mainly for movement) and dont use pistolwhip it lowers your damage from auto attacking
4. as far as leveling builds go, put everything into deadly arts/critical strikes and fill in the rest wherever you want (our best traits are grandmaster or grandmaster minor so you cant get them yet)

I’m sorry I meant soloing Veterans, not champs. I’ve soloed a couple champs already using the P/D set, and yeah took forever. I can solo most vets with my condition gear/traits no problem, except for casters. They can eat me up.

Thank for sharing the wisdom. I keep hearing the thief class gets more fun 40 plus, so I keep chugging along.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m having a blast. But one or 2 wrong moves and I’m taking a dirt nap, not like my other classes. I want to keep going, fine tune my game play and be a decent thief.

Thanks again.

either d/p or s/p makes soloing vets easy, just spam black powder and unfortunately if you want to maximize your thief’s potential your going to stay that squishy, you just learn to time dodges/evades the more experience you have with each fight

Unless you use a healing/toughness/condition build, you will die as soon as you make a bad move. It does get better when you can access the Shadow Trait grand-master healing-in-stealth, but you will never be able to take decent damage in a power-based build. I recommend using the cheesy D/P because blind is the only damage migation you have, apart from twirling around with dodges and evades, but you’re not doing damage like that. A S/D on the switch is pretty nice for the AoE auto attack and the utilities to dodge, strip boons (dredge…), interrupt (again dredge…) and C&D. Other than that, keep throwing in as much damage as you can with Power/Precision/Cond.Dmg.

P.S: I hope you’re waiting for it to get better to go and do WvW, because personally I believe that the thief is absolutely horrible in PvE. Anything it can do, another class can do at least 10x better. The blind spam is pretty much the only redeeming feature for dungeons and alas, you don’t really need it there either. It is really quite fun in WvW, if you manage to stay alive.