Guild Wars 2

So I decided to finally level a thief and I’m doing it the old fashion way (no tomes, or experience scrolls). I’m finding myself a little unsure where to build or what weapons to use for leveling. I’ve never touched thief before but I’d love some advice on how to help with leveling a bit.

Weapons for leveling are usually Dagger/Pistol or Sword/Pistol. Blackpowder helps a lot with trash mobs.
Shortbow will probably be your second choice. Just for movement. Infiltrators arrow is convenience at its peak.
I would start with critical strikes I guess, getting Invigorating precision asap. But it wont matter too much, you can do open world content fairly easily.
In general you will probably be wanting CS, DA and Trick.
Shadow arts and acrobatics are semi-optimal for pve.
Your skillbar will consist of Withdraw (without IvP) or signet of malice (with IvP)
Probably a combination of signets and deceptions and either daggerstrom or thieves guild.
But I’d recommend you to give everything a fair try. We dont heavily depend on our utilities, so you can basically just run whatever you like and just see how it plays.
Try to view every mob as a dodge training. The faster you adapt to evading every attack, the better.
The first few elvels I remember to be really hard. Some centaurs told me to hold on to my endurance the hard way.
But later on you will have a relatively easy time soloing champs or elites that are a high threat to others.