Guild Wars 2

I ended up using three weapon sets.

1. Dagger+Dagger
This is the ultimate damage dealing set for a thief. It’s very effective against single targets and good against multiple targets.

2. Short bow
Short bow is a must in chaotic fights with multiple enemies be it WvW or PVE fights due to its AoE features.

3. Pistol+Pistol
This set I use mainly in dungeons during boss fights. It’s good when you need to stay away from a single target and maximise your damage.

As I see it other sets are situational.

Pistol + Dagger

This is perfect for kiting. However damage is low and Pistol + Pistol outdoes this. Kiting can be substituted by using slot skills and traits. I don’t really see this set as very useful. Do you think it’s viable? When do you use it?

Dagger + Pistol

This is a mitigation set. Damage is lower than from D+D and it has two pistol mitigation abilities. Never used this. Why? What are your ideas?

Sword + Dagger

This set is rather interesting although I haven’t been using it much. Sword’s autoattack hits multiple foes so this is perhaps and AoE variant for melee. It has less mobility than D+D though and stealth is not so effective. So I guess the idea is a “Combat rogue” from WoW. Do you prefer this to short bow? I don’t.

All in all D+D shines and if you want to be a damage dealer (which is a primary role of a thief) you are best effective when using it. Short bow is another obvious choice for AoE at range.
Seems like these two sets are the most effective and as a damage dealer you are somewhat limited. What do you think?

I guess everyone agrees. That’s discouraging.

Thief pvp strategy. Invis, spam a couple buttons for 8-10k damage. Invis again, wait for cooldowns. Hit a couple buttons kill the opponent. Invis, hit a couple buttons, do 10 k damage. and so on…

And thief is supposed to be the most fun to play class of them all. That’s what the Brady guide said.

First get out of you WoW shell. Any class has a primary role, when you realize this your mind will be open for new posibilities. The Thief has a lot of potential an is a lot of fun.

I think you should play the class a little more and perhaps read up on some guides of people who understand it better than you do before making statements like this.

p/d is our condition build / outlasting build for pvp. It has a very good source of melee condition spam (stealth attack) as well as an auto attack that also applies the bleeds. It is a very safe weapon combination. I’ve played this combination with 12k health in WvW and would die less than anyone in my squad due to range+stealth in melee+ being able to outlast enemies.

S/D – this set is meh because of the #3 skill. I don’t even want to comment on it, its nice to look at while its in combat, that’s about it. If you ever want to “tank” , this is the set for you.

S/P is our melee cleave set. It is what I currently run in WvW. Shadowstep and haste are basically a must (SS can be replaced by infiltrator’s signet, risk vs reward). No shadowstep effect breaks casting so you can start up your pistol whip animation andn shadowstep to the target, stunning them into a 2x hasted pistol whip. It will kill 90% of your opponents (Assuming you are in full oranges). This set does not compare with shortbow at all, and fulfills a different role. The cleave comes in handy in WvW when there are multiple enemies together, it hits WAY harder than the shortbow (the only way to beat S/P’s burst with shortbow is to shotgun, and you will run out of ini way fast with that spam). You also get an extra gap closer / condition removal built into the set as well as an interrupt and an anti-melee and anti-chaos storm skill. All in all a great pvp set up if you run with a group. Solo? Not so much,but can still (and does) work.

D/P is a set that no enemy can get away from. Infinite gap closer with a blind on top of it is a good set up, and a lot of people prefer it in structured. Haven’t seen many thieves running it in WvW though. It can be fairly expensive to stealth with this set up for backstabs though.

D/D is a decently balanced set up (well,depending on the way you build the rest of your character) but it is far from our best. The only thing that stands out on a thief, that makes other classes jelly, and makes the weapon a must equip for us, is the short bow. Infiltrator’s arrow is too good to pass up, and shortbow is basically responsible for the lack of use that you see from p/p. If it wasn’t so good, I bet a lot more people would use the other ranged option. (Unless you want to become some pseudo hunter thief with 2 ranged weapons, which would really only be good in dungeons and pve).

Player One.4932:

Thief pvp strategy. Invis, spam a couple buttons for 8-10k damage. Invis again, wait for cooldowns. Hit a couple buttons kill the opponent. Invis, hit a couple buttons, do 10 k damage. and so on…

Wherever you got this info, it’s wrong.

#1: Stealth lasts 3 seconds generally on a glass cannon thief. I suspect you’re talking about a glass cannon because I’m reading a “8-10k damage” qq.

#2: Your first attack from stealth breaks your stealth. Yes, your very first attack, not your second, nor your third…but your first.

#3: When you break your stealth, it puts a debuff on you that prevents further stealthing for 3 seconds.

#4: Initiative skills have no cooldown, and utility cooldowns are far from 3~9 seconds. So, you cannot simply stealth and wait for cooldowns.

Sword / Dagger is not weak. I used it a considerable amount leveling up because you can essentially cleave multiple targets without spending any initiative. It excels at tagging mobs in events throughout the game.

Keep in mind that initiative you don’t use on Death Blossom can be used on dancing dagger with the S/D combo and provide excellent AOE damage consistently throughout a fight.

You also get a dodge mechanism with your 3 and an escape mechanism with your 2.

All in all a strong combo if you ask me.

Oh yeah, forgot to mention the free shadow-step. That counts too.

my favorite would be Sword / Dagger.

but only when they fix the pathing issue with Flanking Strike,
and the teleporting issues with Infiltrator’s Strike (and similar abilities).