Guild Wars 2

Hi guys!
My mains are Guardian, Mesmer and Necro.
I purposely let my Thief (AND Engineer) sit because he (female playing a male toon, lol) was as slow as molasses in January, squishy, and just difficult for me to play, which made him no fun. I came from 9 years of WoW, playing healers and casters and even the Rogue I played there was much different and you could stealth around and get into tons of trouble, etc. It was FUN. After my third 80, I decided to try again. I started searching builds and finally settled on a Sword/Pistol build that I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED! I made a couple of small changes to the runes and sigils, adding a speed rune and sigil into the mix. I am still using minor runes so I can get away with it. I also chose the signet that gives permanent speed boost (I had not been able to get to it before) AND took the trait that gives me a speed boost when I dodge roll.

Please understand my Thief was like… MAYBE level 12-15 at that time. Now he is 34 and I adore playing him. He kicks massive butt and I even ran him a lot through LA during this recent Living World event to challenge myself. The problem is this… Recently I did a full boot and nuke on my hard drive and reinstalled EVERYTHING. I THOUGHT I had written all the pertinent info down, as I did on my Mesmer, Guardian and Necro so I would have it handy. I did not, or cannot find it. Now I have a few Trait points to spend and can’t remember where they go. I have searched every forum on evry site, searched Google, YouTube, GW2guru, Wiki, you name it and cannot find this build.

Yes I have found dozens of Sword/Pistol builds but every one of them has a big fat ZERO under stealth (I think it is stealth… third from the bottom?) I know for a fact that at the very least, this build had points in all three of the bottom builds, as the three bottom ones (I have SO FAR) are 5/10/5. I THINK I should start putting points into some Crit but am not sure and hate to have to start over.

I had thought that the names St3alth and Cyber both sounded VERY familiar, but the builds I found of theirs are not the right ones. Maybe I have just not found the right one yet. Please understand, I am HAPPY with this build and weapon set; I do not plan to run him in dungeons, and just want to stay alive and ENJOY playing him. He is super fast now and nowhere NEAR squishy and I make rare gear for him so it is obvious I love playing him. I don’t want to change that.

Here are the facts:
The build is for PvE ONLY ( I despise PvP ducks)
This is a LEVELING build, as I am only 33 or 34 atm.
This build uses Sword and Pistol with Shortbow as alternate weapon.
This is a DPS Beserker build and all stats are as such. No condition runes or gear; straight dps.
This build has at LEAST 5/10/5 in the three LOWEST tiers of the traits.

The page I had found had several builds on it but was primarily listed as a leveling surviveability (why does that word look misspelled?) build for Thieves. One of the suggestions on the page was the S/P as it is easy for newcomers to Thieves (and GW2) to learn and play well. It was highly advised to use it until much later in the game or when you had much more skill and comfort level.

Like I said, I wiped the hard drive or I would have that saved.
I must find it; I don’t want to change everything up midstream and I am happy playing like this. Yes I tried dagger pistol and dagger dagger etc. I will recognize the page immediately upon seeing it. ANY help would be much appreciated; sorry this was so long and thank you for reading it. My Thief Ardanrion on Sorrow’s Furnace thanks you as well. <3

I have no idea what purpose it serves to use Shadow Arts in a Sword/Pistol build. SA is a stealth-line, and you have no stealth access in this weapon set, so you’re limited to using utilities/healing.

We can help you build something that’s probably better, just be clear about what you are looking for. Traits are meant to be swapped anyway.

I assume it was for the toughness boost.
I didn’t make the build lol. The main thing was the acrobatics,
as I was zerging a lot at low levels and the speed boost when dodging
and speed boost when killing a foe, on top of the speed runes and sigils and
Signet of Shadows made him finally fun to play and much less frustrating.

I want to use S/P+SB
I want to be able to PvE solo level (not worried about
dungeons or PvP) mostly by killing hearts and zone completion, events etc.
I want to have high surviveability and speed boosts
so it isn’t so slow, painful, boring and frustrating. I SUCK at stealthy stuff so… yeah.
Not sure what else I should put…. hmmm….
Thanks for the help, btw ^.^

Oh here is a good thing to mention I suppose. Please remember this may not be the BEST setup but it is my play-style and what I am comfortable with and enjoy most so.. yeah. Anyway my utilities are so far (since I don’t have the dagger storm yet obviously)
Hide in Shadows (not sure if that is best heal for me?), Signet of Shadows (indispensable), Caltrops (indispensable) Scorpion Wire (MEGA indispensable) and Thieves Guild. As you can see, I am so hung up on those utilities it is hard for me to consider anything else. At very low level, Scorpion Wire is the ONE skill that saved my butt enough for me to consider playing him again. No more face pulling groups of mobs; yank one out without aggroing the others, kill it, move to next. LOVE it.

Stormravyn.6149:

I assume it was for the toughness boost.
I didn’t make the build lol. The main thing was the acrobatics,
as I was zerging a lot at low levels and the speed boost when dodging
and speed boost when killing a foe, on top of the speed runes and sigils and
Signet of Shadows made him finally fun to play and much less frustrating.

I want to use S/P+SB
I want to be able to PvE solo level (not worried about
dungeons or PvP) mostly by killing hearts and zone completion, events etc.
I want to have high surviveability and speed boosts
so it isn’t so slow, painful, boring and frustrating. I SUCK at stealthy stuff so… yeah.
Not sure what else I should put…. hmmm….
Thanks for the help, btw ^.^

Oh here is a good thing to mention I suppose. Please remember this may not be the BEST setup but it is my play-style and what I am comfortable with and enjoy most so.. yeah. Anyway my utilities are so far (since I don’t have the dagger storm yet obviously)
Hide in Shadows (not sure if that is best heal for me?), Signet of Shadows (indispensable), Caltrops (indispensable) Scorpion Wire (MEGA indispensable) and Thieves Guild. As you can see, I am so hung up on those utilities it is hard for me to consider anything else. At very low level, Scorpion Wire is the ONE skill that saved my butt enough for me to consider playing him again. No more face pulling groups of mobs; yank one out without aggroing the others, kill it, move to next. LOVE it.

If I were you (well i was in your shoes while doing world exploration with thief) I would just put trait points into deadly arts first and then whats left into critical strikes if using S/P and Shortbow (and the best weapons for leveling/exploration ). Gear is all berserker (“strong” (?) in lower levels). Traits: Mug and Sundering strikes in deadly arts, I would chose mug first. No point in going more then 25 points for deadly arts once you get exposed weakness (this works well with sundering strikes which applies vulnerability on crits). In critical strikes you should chose practiced tolerance and maybe critical haste or Furious retaliation, Executioner once you get 30 points. Once you get that its either 15 points in Trickery and Thrill of the crime or 15 points in acrobatics for some extra dodges. For utilities its very situational, but you cant go wrong with signet of shadows when doing world exploration. Signet of agility for some damage boost and condition clearing if you get some nasty burns, cripples or too much bleed stacks. For the last place I would switch around anything that is required for situation like shadow refuge for grabing skill points, vistas and not having to fight mobs that are guarding it. Dagger storm mainly for elites, switch to thieves guild if you want some more damage on veterans/skill point challenges. For heals : Signet of malice works very well with pistol whip on lots of mobs, same as cluster bombs when you explode it just before it hits the ground (It heals for every hit on every target, so if you have 5 mobs in front of you pistol whip will heal for 9×5xwhatever you signet of malice power is at that level), but for exploration anything will do, you can change around according to situation.
Oh and about pulling out single mobs with scorpion wire – you can do that if you like it, but its really not needed. With S/P you can face tank all the grouped mobs you can encounter with pistol whip (tooltip don’t say that, but second part of skill is an evade) or with blinding powder+ auto attacks.

Thank you Karolis; that all makes a lot of sense actually…. lots of damage boosts. I must keep my Acrobatics for my dodges and speed boosts lol. Scorpion Wire would be hard to give up but will try it and see. I often encounter Vets with normal mobs patting with it and that is crucial for those situations. Especially as it does not pull aggro from other mobs. Case in point; I JUST killed a Veteran Eagle Raptor In Kessex with two hatchlings patting with it. I used Scorp Wire to drag off the hatchlings and dispose of them first, then took the Vet down easily. Even underwater Vets are no issue with Harpoon Gun. Having SO much fun; it should be illegal LOL!
Thanks for the clarification on Signet of Malice as well; I have been seeing that come up alot in forums. I hate having to spend the Skill Points, as I am saving for Blade Storm but I will do that if it is that good.

Don’t get hung up on the stat boosts from traitlines. You can get stats anywhere (armor, trinkets, weapons, food, utilities, nourishments), but the slottable trait bonuses provide stuff you can’t get anywhere else.

Signet of Shadows is like a pair of training wheels on a bicycle. You might think you need it, but it just holds you back. Trickery to 10 (for Thrill of the Crime) and deep Acrobatics will give you high uptime access to Swiftness, which is better than the 25% boost from SoS. Eventually you’ll drop this signet.

I’d suggest going 10 Deadly Arts for Mug, 10 Trickery for Thrill of the Crime, and get used to pushing F1 whenever it is off cooldown. Synergies are cool, and it’s best to start taking advantage early.

Sword/Pistol works really well with Signet of Malice. Hide in Shadows has its moments, but the nine hits of Pistol Whip (along with its cleave property) make SoM much stronger in general. If you need the condition removal and stealth that HiS provides, you’re better off getting it from utilities like Blinding Powder, Shadowstep, etc.

Ultimately, everything works well with Sword/Pistol except Shadow Arts. I’d recommend not getting attached to anything in particular. Traits were meant to be switched (that’s why they make it so cheap to reset them, and let you change the slottables out of combat freely), so don’t be afraid to experiment and find stuff that suits your style.

If you absolutely need the +25% movement, go with Runes of speed or travelers. I still have a rough time going without that movement buff, and I’ve played since inception.

<—- Lazy

I did spend some points to get Signet of Malice
Retraited but went with what Koralis said earlier; hadn’t seen your comment yet. And until I am 40, I can’t go any higher on Deadly Arts so for now I am sitting at 10/4/0/10/0.
I’m lazy too Fade LOL… I HATE chugging along like a slug so I am using SoS, as WELL as speed when roll, speed when kill, Speed Sigils AND Runes lol. Needless to say I am not slow anymore.

So I DO want Trickery? P.S. Yes I need to learn to hit that F1 every time it is off CD; I am horrible about forgetting about it…

It is heartening to learn that maybe I won’t be dependent on SoS forever; so many Thieves say in forums that it is a permanent placement on their bar. I AM finding out however that I am seriously lacking condition removals or, likely, I am trying something new and not familiar yet, so not realizing I should do this or that rather than stand there and burn lol. This class (or I guess they call it profession in GW2) is not familiar enough to me yet for me not to have to think about what I am doing lol.

Hilarious story for your amusement as way of saying thanks: I am in the Skritt Tunnels in Brisban and start clearing out the Fire Trolls and Destroyer Crabs. Like I said, burning is an issue so going carefully. I accidentally get two Trolls at once and live through it but have a nasty condition. I go down and realize JUST as I hit the number 1 skill when downed that I had JUST targeted a Veteran Destroyer Crab I had not previously seen. So of course I kittened it off and got a bad case of DEAD. I run BACK, kill the Vet, but JUST as I deliver the killing blow, I dodge/roll right off the edge and die AGAIN to falling. This is SO not my day.
Enjoy the laughs; I did lol.

I went 30 in Trickery, and boosted the hell out of steal (Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft and Sleight of hand), so I have steal on a 21 second CD, with swiftness at 12 seconds uptime from Thrill of the crime. I’m hoping I can get used to that when I start weaning myself off the signet.

I’m using Perplexity runes, but I’m looking for options for a different runeset. Probably Travelers, Speed or back to Scavenging (which will put me at around 2460 condition damage).

I will say Perplexity runes complement 30 in Trickery pretty well, if you go Sleight of Hand.

You don’t need Trickery, but it’s extremely strong for a Sword/Pistol build, and it will train you to use Steal more often (I map mine to a side mouse button, BTW). Strongly consider getting to at least 10 for Thrill of the Crime: Fury access is really powerful, especially at your level.

Yes, you will eventually wean yourself off of SoS, if you are any good. People who have SoS as permanently on their bar are either bad or lazy. Speed boosts do NOT stack. If you have any Swiftness at all (+33% movement speed), Signet of Shadows is literally doing nothing, since that boost is only +25%. As you are using Assassin’s Retreat, I’d suggest dropping SoS entirely if you can keep the Swiftness stacks going.

I’ll bet with 10 Acrobatics and 10 Trickery, and well-timed dodges, you can keep Swiftness up 100% of the time with a little bit of effort. Every Steal will be 11 seconds of Swiftness, every kill is 22 seconds, and you can have up to nine stacks of Swiftness going at once (so it’s not out of the question to have 2-3 minutes of Swiftness). That will allow you to replace SoS with something like Assassin’s Signet, which by level 40 will be passively giving you +100 Power.

Just a short mention ( I started to earlier but really did NOT want to bring Anet’s attention back around on this) but the runes or sigils (I forget which) are still glitched so with all I am stacking, especially if I do an event or just rapid clear an area of mobs I have easily seen as much kitten MINUTES of stacked Speed boost lol. That easily beats anything I have ever seen on my Mesmer, Ele, Guardian or even Necro, who has an insanely long one.

One question… since Deadly Arts, Critical Strikes and Acrobatics are so important, and people disparage anyone using more than 2 or 3 trait lines, should I really add in Trickery too? I do like the Thrill of the Crime trait though.

Lastly, I have my dodge/roll on my middle mouse button (INVALUABLE) and my PTT key set to mouse button 4, as Ctrl screws up my game, so I would have to use Mouse Button 3 lol. An idea for sure and easier to get used to using, since F1 seems to be hard for me to get used to; I’ll give it a shot. A bit of a reach for my thumb, but at least I can do it without looking for either the F1 key or the little square

^ That’s not a glitch; that’s how AR is supposed to work. They intentionally doubled the duration of the Swiftness buff on that trait back in the Dec 10th patch. How you use it now, is precisely how it’s intended to be.

Don’t assume that you need DA and CS both. My build looks something like this, and I have zero problems burning things down. Although my setup is more geared for WvW, it’s perfectly serviceable for any open world PvE, because most of my damage stats come from gear and food.

While you can go with a max-damage 25/30/x/x/x build with Sword/Pistol, you’d better not make a mistake, because a sneeze means you die.

I used Runes of Scavenging for some time. They a great set especially for one heavy in Acrobatics. The only think I did not much like was the number 4 which allowed the next attack after a heal to steal health.

I found it did not do a lot because after a heal I was healed.

As far as signet of Shadows. I took it off my skill bar a long time ago and do not miss it. The active is not very good and the passive is a waste of a utility slot IMHO.

I can pretty well have permanent swiftness in Wvw with assassins retreat and can build up two or three minutes of it to cross maps without much issue. I will often build up that swiftness (kill a wolfpack) and then swap out the trait just before I enter a battle if I feel the need.

I do not miss whatever trait assassins retreat replaces if I do get forced into a battle as much as I would miss that extra utility on the toolbar.

Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft (for the vigor), Sleight of Hand (reduced steal cd) and Expeditious Dodger can pretty much give you close to perma-swiftness. You don’t need a target for Steal to proc swiftness using Thrill.

Edit: Confirmation on Interceptor’s post. Works even better with bountiful Theft. No real need for Assassin’s retreat.

Doing some experimentation with both of those, and once you get in combat, and Steal when the cd comes up every time, will give you all the swiftness you need. Even out of combat, you can maintain swiftness for travel that way. Using Bountiful Theft in combat will merely allow you to dodge a bit more and proc the swiftness from Expeditious Dodger.

I’m going to get off my lazy kitten , and do some real time combat testing with that, but it looks extremely viable so I can drop the Signet/traveler rune addiction.

Holy cow, you don’t have to have a target to steal to get the proc?!?! O.O
NOW you tell me rofl…
Hey Interceptor, I DID answer you last night but got a “Site down” thing the one time I was lazy and did not copy my text before posting. I was disgusted and didn’t feel like re-typing it and went to bed. Been getting Skill points ALL day on my Thief… in a bit I will have gotten 30 today, so a bit busy (and tired and hungry) atm but will answer you guys later this evening and thank you
Been mowing down Vets like nothing all day LOL!

sword pistol got nerfed early in the game

If you find 25/30/0/0/15 too glassy, have a go with something like 0/30/0/15/25. You miss the extra heal and power from DA but you’ll get a truly stupid number of dodges, it’s pretty beast with a shortbow