Guild Wars 2

I played GW1 a lot, played GW2 in the Beta and only a bit when it came out but I quit early for several reasons. I decided to give the game a second try yesterday and started over from lvl 1. I think Thief seems fun to me and I’m now lvl 8 and can dual wield. I just am confused because my 3rd ability on dagger or sword seems to get replaced completely once I have a 2nd weapon in my offhand.

Twisting Fangs was one of the strongest abilities for Assassin in GW1 and one of my favorite. It’s the 3rd attack for the dagger main hand (although weaker than it was in GW1) and once I equip a pistol, it disappears. Is there something I’m missing here? Are some thieves expected to have an empty offhand? I don’t get it.

A thief’s 3rd skill depends on what they hold in the off-hand, unless they use the shortbow, which is a two-handed weapon. It’s one of the profession’s unique features. The skills that appear if your off-hand is empty are more or less placeholders.

One of the thief’s class mechanics is that the #3 ability when dual wielding is unique based on the weapon combination, not solely on the main-hand or the off-hand weapon.

Full list here: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dual_wield

What I mean is, I have Twisting Fangs only if I have no offhand equipped it seems… which makes no sense or else it’d be a skill that people only use from lvl 1-5 and then never again.

NeoSoul.4198:

What I mean is, I have Twisting Fangs only if I have no offhand equipped it seems… which makes no sense or else it’d be a skill that people only use from lvl 1-5 and then never again.

It is. Other professions get 1-3 filled with just a mainhand weapon. Twisting Fangs is a placeholder skill so you don’t have 2 skills until you equip an offhand weapon. It’s a shadow of its former self anyway with no deep wound condition in this game.

Besides what others have said…

This is a COMPLETELY different game from GW1. The only similarities are: the game’s name, the background lore, the races/species in game to an extent. So, it’s best not to compare the two, else you might be heavily disappointed if you were a GW1 fan.

The #3 skills with no off-hand are just placeholder skills, so that thieves aren’t limited to only two weapon skills at a time when other classes would have three. Yes, one of them has a name that hearkens back to GW1. It’s just an easter egg, more than anything else.

While we’re talking about GW1 skills coming back, equipping two daggers will get you Death Blossom, a skill I’m sure you’d likewise remember. It’s also really bad in this game. Outside of very specific gimmicky builds, your Dagger/Dagger experience will be much better if you focus on attacks like Heartseeker, Cloak and Dagger and the followup Backstab instead of using Death Blossom.

I digress but this reminded me how I miss how great GW1 build making was with all those synergies between skills.

GW2 is like they’re afraid to give the player any ability to use synergies, specially on the defensive end. We could have just the 4 main attributes instead of so many stupid secondary attributes overcomplicating things, and have the trait system be the one making conditions and criticals effective.