Guild Wars 2

hi evreyone…

First, please forgive me about my not good english… I’m from asia…

I’m new in here, my level is still 50.

I need that question because, I had to get used the weapon set from the beginning to familiarize itself.

I need some suggestion, which best for thief. Best for WvW followed PvP and last for PvE.

I see lot Thief WvW video, most of that people used P/D
but for sPvP they use D/D

and fyi, until now i still use D/D with secondary SB…

please also help for give the reason “why”….

Thank you so mach to you all…

Depends if you want to use condition damage (bleeds) or direct damage (high hits).

For condition damage you can use P/D or D/D (with death blossom)
For direct damage, you should use D/D.

For condition builds P/D offers greater survivability since you don’t need to stay in melee range and offers to the option to kite. This generally makes it better for WvW.

For sPvP you’ll be fighting over capture points most of the time (or at least you should be :P) so you’re going to be in melee range anyway. The makes the evade of death blossom more useful. D/D also offers aoe condition application and is more useful when fighting 2 or more people in a close area, which can happen a lot in sPvP. Personally I think D/D is more useful in sPvP than P/D but P/D is arguably stronger in a 1v1 situation.

For a burst build P/D doesn’t really offer anything, so D/D is better with backstab and heart seeker.

I’m assuming you are asking about PvP. I personally prefer running p/d when solo, or in pug situations. In high-end teamplay though, backstab d/d is a better call, since you can also spam shortbow for aoe/ranged between each spike.

I’d say if you want burst/lots of damage and don’t care about being able to take lots of hits, d/d and berserker gear.

If you are more interested in steady damage/ranged/surviving, I have plenty of videos of p/d in action, including showing off the legendary pistol in vids 8-10.

I don’t sPvP like ever. Just not my thing, I don’t like arena based PvP in MMOs, I play other games for that style of competition. Thus, I can’t comment much on the utility of sets in sPvP. I do however do a lot of WvW and PvE so I’ll share my experiences.

The utility of a P/D build tends to vastly outstrip the single target burst power of D/D in a WvW or PvE situation for three reasons:

1. Incoming damage – P/D is by design a high survivability build that deals damage via DoT attacks and maintains a naturally high initiative total. This means you nearly always have initiative left over to escape. In addition P/D requires very little melee time, which means a higher average distance between you and the enemy than D/D. In short, P/D, with the high turnaround on stealth and the low melee time tends to be a more survivable build, and when facing overwhelming odds as you often do in WvW and PvE this is key as it tends to ensure you’re not the one wasting damage potential by lying on the ground.

2. Skill Synergy – P/D, as a condition based damage build with multiple attacks tends to synergize much better with the thief’s best AoE abilities. In a D/D setup skills like caltrops, shortbow’s cluster bomb, and daggerstorm are useful, but in a P/D setup they’re twice as useful, pushing much higher amounts of DoT damage which is applied in a short time and continues to provide excellent DPS for several seconds while you are free to reposition, help res someone, or escape. In addition, a lot of the theif’s utility skills are naturally more effective when used with builds that increase condition damage and duration. Also, certain healing sources which aren’t worth using on a D/D build can become very potent with a P/D condition build. Signet of Malice, when used with the above mentioned AoE provides a lot more potential HP for the condition based and mostly ranged P/D setup than it does for the D/D direct damage one.

3. Pressure – Specifically in WvW, the raw damage output of a bleed build turns the thief’s shortbow from an easily ignorable source of occasional damage in to a high pressure source of bleeds. The resultant damage to a mass of enemies is very good, like a necromancer condition build, at making enemies blow condition removal skills or heals to cleanse the damage, which leaves those skills unavailable to deal with utility conditions and disables used by allied players of other classes that rely on landing roots, stuns, and other such abilities. In addition, the skill synergies described in point 2 further cement the condition thief’s roles as an excellent applicant of pressure. On multiple occasions I’ve been able to ensure the escape or repositioning of an entire allied force by applying caltrops or dancing daggers in a choke point, placing a large amount of cripples and high damage bleeds that slow down enemy forces, force them to bunch due to cripple, snf force them to blow heals, dodges, or condition removal to cleanse the high damage multiple stacks of bleeds. This puts them in a perfect setup to be simply destroyed by allied AoE or siege, and can at times turn around an even numbered fight. Thanks to the escape utilities built in to the thief profession I can often ensure this retreat and catch up with that force that I’m covering both alive and ready to assist with a counterattack or structure defense.

4. Conclusion – none of this is to imply that D/D is not good. On the contrary, it’s extremely good at quickly dealing with single targets and escaping, and doing so very efficiently. However it tends to have a lot of risk involved and a lot of downtime between assassinations. This is excellent in a scouting role, and is equally as excellent in small numbers and occasional combat like that you’ll have in a roving gank group, but for sheer team effectiveness against the large HP bars in high end PvE, or the large enemy numbers found in Mass WvW combat, condition based setups tend to be safer and do a lot more to help your team. Not to say that flat out assassinating isn’t a help to your team, it very much is! The conclusion is essentially that P/D condition based builds tend to help an overall fight better, whereas D/D direct damage tends to help more when dealing with a specific single target.

Heh, I just got my thief to lvl 80 and I couldn’t make up my mind either. So I ended up running strange bleed-spec D/D and P/D and put the shortbow in my backpack to switch into when it’s useful. I find it easy to reset a fight as a thief, so I have no problem switching weapons.

For D/D caltrop + death blossom stacks up AoE bleed really fast. When I see a zerg in WvWvW, I’ll run or steal into the middle of the zerg, caltrop + death blossom (x2), spider venom + dagger storm (fyi I run leeching venom + signet of malice). Also I find that it’s so much easier to get credit (and loot bags) in a fight with D/D because heartseeker is so good at finishing somebody with low health.

P/D I find is much better for certain 1v1 fights. I can save my initiative for escapes and/or stealth. Then when the guy gets low or tries to run, I switch to D/D and try to finish him off quickly.