Guild Wars 2

I made it to lvl22 on my main character which is thief. I now created a brand new thief for use in PvP. I still don’t really understand how skills and traits work. So I use my alt thief to practice different skills and traits in the PvP zone. I know PvP builds and PvE builds are different. I don’t really mind. I’d just like to cater my character towards PvP build whether I use him in PvE or not.

1. It seems like you can’t activate traits like you can with utility skills on your hot bar? The traits just automatically activate when you do something or something happens?

2. I was looking to go into shadow arts for traits which seems to be about cloaking. So I figured the skills I would equip would be related to that line of traits. Not sure if this is good for dual wield pistol.

I picked the following:
SLOT 6 – Hide in Shadows (for healing)

SLOT 7 – Shadow Refuge (utility skill for stealth and healing)

SLOT 8 – Blinding Powder (the only stealth utility skill)

SLOT 9 – Ambush (because it summons NPC thief – there were no more actual stealth skills to choose from, so this seemed pretty nice)

SLOT 0 – Thieves Guild (also for summoning)

So this build would pretty much make my thief geared towards summoning and shadow arts while killing with dual pistol.

SHADOW TRAITS
Last Refuge
Cloaked in Shadow
Meld with Shadows
Hidden Thief
Hidden Assassin
Shadow’s Rejuvination

ACROBATIC TRAITS
Expeditious Dodger
Fleet Shadow
Feline Grace
Pain Response
Fluid Strikes
Assassin’s Reward

If you really want to go the dual pistol route you should look at the CS traitline and or the Trickery traitline.

The trickery traitline offers that extra initiative and dual pistols uses lots of that for UNLOAD spams which are the big damage dealer.

Dual pistol uses LOTS of initiative. Going trickery would also give more oomph from the bleeds inflicted by the auto attack.

OK so do Trickery as primary trait line. Then Critical Strikes?

The skills cost different skill points – 1, 3, 6. Does it mean the ones that cost 6 are better?
Because I only have 3 utility slots. I’m thinking of just choosing 3 skills out of the ones that cost 6.

You will need some sort of survival but in order to optimize the damage of your pistols you should look at trickery and or critical strikes. A lot depends too on whether you want to use the weaponset primarily as direct damage or to stack bleeds off the auto attack chain.

Skills that cost 6 are not necessarily better. Blinding powder as example is used by many in their builds as it can be very effective and acts as a blast finisher. Ambush costs 6 but few use it as it very situational.

Rather then look at what each costs look at the cool downs and what the skill gives you. IE if you have no condition cleanses and are not in the SA line you would likely need shadowstep. You should have a stun breaker and Shadowstep or RFI are great for that.

Do not fixate on one set of skills. Very often in WvW depending on your situation you will load up a different set entirely.

For a pistol pistol set smoke screen might be used more then a person with an s/d set.

p/p is just for fun, you won’t be winning any tournaments with it (yet)

but i’m rank 43 and love to play p/p thief in hotjoins, the spec i use is literally just spamming 3 for unload, its pretty fun for a mindless game or two

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-cRRV;1ZwV0-N5JOkd0;9;4JT;0J59-48A;439-5JV4;2sV2DsV2D5Ba

it literally is all out glass and just spams unload XD
deals pretty impressive damage, especially when it ricochets!

i think after the feature patch i’ll definitely be trying out the 5% healing on critical hits trait!

Well, I have never given p-p a real shot. It seems like it could work in theory though. I don’t really know, you just have me an idea though. Let’s see how it turns out, I’ll be sure to keep you posted.

I used to play this in top 100 solo que few months ago:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlUm6N3eS6E95Ex2jeCUeyVwpaPc5LhJA-TsAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1MsYBxECA

There is totally no point playing P/P in sPvP without 30 critical strikes and deadly arts, because your only defense is killing your opponent before they kill you – the faster the better, preferably before they even close range or notice what hit them. If you drop deadly arts for anything like trickery or acrobatics, your damage output will be simply too low to do anything (around 20% lower), rendering you useless.

Alternatives: you can use signet of malice+something instead of shadow trap for pure fire support, but it is weaker than shadow trap+thieves guild combo node protection.

PS: I wrote a small guide about it, and it was before initiative regen buff what made it even more powerful
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/sPvP-P-P-SB-confusion-build/first#post3421439