Guild Wars 2

I recently decided to pick up a new class for both pve and pvp, coming from mesmer. I was debating between engi and thief and settled on thief since I really like mobility and high risk/reward. I tried thief out last night for some pvp action, and I find it super fun, however I die every fight. I don’t like staff as I find it incredibly one dimensional and it’s a total yawn fest. I prefer d/p since it seems more blinky and versatile. I tried going to your guys’ ‘guide to guides’ pinned topic but found it lacking and quite out of date, I don’t even think the daredevil trait line is mentioned anywhere. Can someone point me to youtubers or at least give a general breakdown of the right side of the skill bar like the dont-leave-home-without-it utilities/heal/elite? …. or a link to your non-staff build of choice? …or should I have gone with engi?

HumanComplex.1648:

I recently decided to pick up a new class for both pve and pvp, coming from mesmer. I was debating between engi and thief and settled on thief since I really like mobility and high risk/reward. I tried thief out last night for some pvp action, and I find it super fun, however I die every fight. I don’t like staff as I find it incredibly one dimensional and it’s a total yawn fest. I prefer d/p since it seems more blinky and versatile. I tried going to your guys’ ‘guide to guides’ pinned topic but found it lacking and quite out of date, I don’t even think the daredevil trait line is mentioned anywhere. Can someone point me to youtubers or at least give a general breakdown of the right side of the skill bar like the dont-leave-home-without-it utilities/heal/elite? …. or a link to your non-staff build of choice? …or should I have gone with engi?

Go to Metabattle.com for a few builds also watch Sindrenerr he has some good videos and such, biggest thing I can advise try every weapon combo out and see what playstyle you like most it’s easier to become good with weapon style you enjoy, yes some are inherrently worse than others.

D/P is the go to weapon set. Check out the metabattle build for that. I personally run bandit’s defense, shadowstep, and agility signet for utilities. They all offer multiple functionality. I also like channeled vigor for healing and basilisk venom for elite, but withdraw and impact strike are good options.

I don’t play engi, but from what I hear, you may get more bang for your buck there. Thief can be very fun but also difficult . Typically people who stick with it are hopeless, degenerate addicts like me.

For PvE, Staff with DA/CS/DD, Assassin Signet passive, the rest of utilities barely matter. Dump initiative on the boss with Weakening Strike if the boss is fairly large/immobile, and just spam 1 because staff AA has the best DPS available to the thief otherwise.

For sPvP, typically it’s something along the lines ofD/P + Shortbow; DA/Tr/DD; heal = Withdraw/CV, 7 = Shadowstep, 8= Bandit’s Defense/Black Powder, 9 = Signet of Agility, 0 = Impact Strike.

Do remember the thief is incapable of 1v1’ing well in sPvP since the profession is primarily scaling-based and therefore has sub-par capabilities in sPvP where stat pools are so much lower than they are in PvE and WvW. This means that you should be actively avoiding fights to flip uncontested points/decap them except to help an ally in a close fight win, or an ally already winning a fight simply win harder to make the point cap faster. You will not level the playing field well if you attempt to even the numbers of a 2v1 if the classes are built to fight; odds are you’ll get caught in stray fire and die. You’re helpful in braking ties; that’s about it.

D/P is still the meta despite staff being a good pick in the right hands. Nothing beats the utility and safety the set offers in terms of the thief’s options, and it boasts some of the best burst damage available to the thief. Condi D/D is a variant build focused a bit better on fighting potential, but typically it’s ill-advised as playing for moving around is usually more beneficial to the team as a whole, especially since revenant offers near-identical mobility to the thief and can fight much better, so you’ve got competition to worry about in terms of taking uncontested points quickly.

D/D power is strictly terrible in sPvP; condi is better at fights but not as effective +1 in most cases. S/D is better, but still not as good as D/P for a variety of reasons. P/P is situationally extremely powerful, but there is so much projectile hate in the game now that it’s pretty difficult to pull off and very unreliable (plus again, you’re still at an innate disadvantage), S/P is okay, P/D is awful unless in strict duels against people with little cleansing (a solid pick in WvW roaming despite people saying otherwise, however almost all thief builds are viable in WvW since our traits scale to their fullest extent and let the thief not be terrible from a numbers POV).