Guild Wars 2

I’m a new thief and I’m serious about playing well with this prefession. Actually I’m fond of the role as an Assassin with long range weapon ( short bow might do the work ),
but I’m kind of confuse by the shortbow skills, which can neither play Direct dmg nor condition dmg. Can anyone give me some idea like how should I play it ?

you’re doing it wrong if you’re trying to use shortbow as a burst weapon. SB is mainly used for mobility and decent aoe with cluster bomb.

While I welcome you to the profession, I will leave others give advice on the shortbow. I tend to use it as a utility weapon and find it awkward in combat. Others are more proficient.

In any case good luck and have fun.!

Welcome!
To hell… Or at least a place were everyone comes to cry to…
Prepare yourself… for every build that you will play and be able to kill or escape “certain” death with, will be deemed OP or cheesy.

DatPieGuy.6540:

you’re doing it wrong if you’re trying to use shortbow as a burst weapon. SB is mainly used for mobility and decent aoe with cluster bomb.

^ Essentially this…

SB as been always kind of used more for it’s mobility via 5 and evasion/mobility via 3 (?). Cluster-bomb shotgunning (It might have been nerfed? Last patch, not 100% sure) is also useful in zergs, “shotgunning” (:D I actually believe i coined this term (used it in beta)… o well never know) meaning blowing it up right after shooting as opposed to letting it fly… effectively making it explode close/point-blank range and stacking 3 bleeds + 3 damages (if you notice, when the bomb drops it does 1 damage, say 1k… when it explodes it does 3 smaller damages on a single target… BUT it always totals up more than 1k unexploded)

We, thieves, don’t have long range (1200 units, or more). We’re either melee or medium range (900 units). Or ranged weapon sets are P/X and SB…

SB, like mentioned before, is used for mobility/evasion… a good sidekick weapon for any build I would say.
P/P, lackluster, confused weapon set… majority of the time it’s used as pure damage.
P/D is a typically a condition weapon set… relying on possibly bleeds and/or confusion.
P/Nothing – most OP weapon set of all… no one knows it yet… and shouldn’t… because with great power… comes great responsibility… (Joke… please laugh after this… it will make me feel better)

Personally I play P/D condi/bleed in sPvP (hotjoin), I can give more detail if that interests you.

O.O

SB – shortbow
P – pistol
D – well you know what that is, some people want it… Dagger ofc!

Yeah a random thought came to my mind… someone that’s just joined the game might not know what the abbreviations are…

There are no assassins in this game. Arenanet have balanced against it. You can’t burst someone from 100-0 as well with a Thief as you can with a Warrior or even Necro. This certainly isn’t the place for you if you want a ranged assassin (which to me sounds ridiculous).

Shortbow is awfully designed, slow-shooting, boring, and overall ineffective. Feel free to not believe me and waste hundreds of hours discovering what the rest of us already know, though.

Warrior does the role of sniper better than Thief

Thief does the role of ranged assassin better than warrior bcs of shadow steps

Shortbow is the best weapon that a thief can have. The main playstyle of shortbow (or at least how I play it) is to line up your surprise shots to get in some good ranged clusterbomb hits. The auto attack is particularly good against certain classes who have ai. Clusterbomb seriously is an awesome skill. It does serious damage. It overloads blinds, aegis, and certain blocks. It’s AoE, so that means it’s great against stealth targets. The poison field is the best application of poison in the game. It has a built in evasion skill which you can use in conjunction with your dodges to make you last in a fight. Just don’t spam it, as you’ll reduce your initiative quickly that way and you’ll be wide open at the end of the cast of it. Finally the infiltrator arrow skill is great to get some distance on your target. You can also make good use of your steal item skills through the use of the surprise shot, as well. The biggest drawback is the lack of stealth. So generally, if you want to use the shortbow most effectively, you need at least 2 sources of stealth on your utility bar – usually people take shadow refuge and hide in shadows to fulfill this, but I’ve seen good players use shadow refuge and blinding powder instead to have withdraw on their bar.

Don’t ever focus on one set though, as it makes you predictable. However any thief worth their weight will generally spend most of their time in the shortbow weaponset over their melee weaponset.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Shortbow is the best weapon that a thief can have.

Only thing I disagree with since this is quite debatable. It has a lot of uses, therefore making it good utility but I personally do not think it is the best weapon. More than a few fights I’ve had where switching to shortbow would’ve caused a loss since its autoattack isn’t powerful enough as a standalone, and clusterbomb is slow enough to be dodged assuming they are a decent range away and have endurance left. The shortbow is amazing at kiting though. I will say nothing is more fun than playing a x/x/x/(at least 3)/(at least 3) thief with shortbow out. With withdraw and the right utilities I can say No other class even comes close to the sheer amount of evades and blinks this brings while kiting