Guild Wars 2

I’m a mesmer main and I’m about to finish my thief…

I’m curious what type of build I should be running for Pistol/Dagger (Condition Based) for solo roaming (1v1 , 2v2, 3v3)

I’m looking for answers to the following:
- What kind of gear, dire?
- X/X/X/X/X?
-Why do people hate on this build so much?
-Someone mentioned battle sigils to me with P/D and P/D weapon swaps (Thieves don’t have cool downs)

As a back up I would like some suggestions for how to optimize the condition based gear (Dire I’m assuming, I don’t know) for pve so I can switch onto it for dredge fractals (fractal 50 without thief against the current dredge bug is awful)

There are lots of variants of P/D, all with their own emphasis. Back when I tried the build, 0/0/30/20/20 was the standard build and afaik it still works well today. But you could also invest in Deadly Arts to pimp your Venoms or go for a Venom-share build with Thieves Guild and Ambush Trap.

As for gear, Dire is the most obvious and safest choice. It should make you nigh immortal with the right traits. But this means you’ll be dealing condition damage almost exclusively. Some may prefer a little Carrion or other gear for a little more omph, but that’s up to you.

The reason why people hate on it so much is because it’s a low-risk, high-reward build that kills with attrition, rather than skillful play. The entire build evolves around using Cloak and Dagger as often as possible, followed with a Sneak Attack and then the odd Shadow Strike as a gap opener or whenever you feel like it.

You do the same thing, over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Against every enemy, in every situation. You don’t need to react to anything, anticipate anything or even use 2 hands. All you need to do is manage to hit targets semi-reliably with Cloak and Dagger. That’s it. But don’t worry, with 15 Initiative you get three tries before running into problems since you don’t really need it for much else.

As for PvE…..it’s almost exclusively a single-target condition build and pretty weak with straight-up damage. Frankly I can’t imagine a worse build to bring to high-level fractals. Maybe with Riccochet you could spread some of your conditions to other targets, but that too sounds extremely lackluster. I don’t see this being viable at all, especially not in Dire gear.

Dire 0/0/30/20/20 or 10/0/30/0/30 are fairly common p/d builds in wvw. Don’t run p/d in PvE though, you basically become deadweight and contribute nothing to the team that a zerk thief doesn’t.

Do you have any tips on top picks for traits using x/x/30/20/20?

Nanazaken.8069:

Do you have any tips on top picks for traits using x/x/30/20/20?

Tbh, that is as bunker as it gets and you’re much stronger just running 10/0/30/0/30/. That setup is excessively defensive IMO.