Guild Wars 2

I have been using the shortbow an awful lot lately, and have been experimenting with different builds found around the interwebs, but there always seems to be one trait point that doesn’t agree with me. I just wanted to see in this thread if any of us thieves, had viable shortbow builds that they use for both PvE/PvP. If you’d be willing to donate your build, could you please specify wether it’s for PvP or PvE. Just to reiterate I really would like the shortbow to be the primary weapon of choice, I always like to steer away from the norm and try the odd weapon out. Thanks in advance guys!

Hello XoAtticuSoX.5160,
unfortunately my memory is very poor but try to take a look at twitch streamers at (mid)night and there is a guy playing asura thief from Elona (DE) server who was just destroying ppl with his short bow at their main spawn (autoattacking mainly, kinda boring to be honest). That night they were constantly pushing back like 30 guys with 10man squad.
In my opinion short bow will always be just an utility tool for us. I can imagine to have a fun in WvW where both zerg-size teams are pushing each other back and forth while you deal damage to multiple targets and supporting team with stealing boons etc.
In PvE its useful for mobs trains but I don´t think you have to care about build for it.
I prefer PvP with my thief so I can´t tell you anything about shortbow in dungeons. Oh one thing at last, do not let newbie thief to pull mobs in dungeons Yay! His reaction was worthy a death.

Even if you find your desired build it will be useful only in specific and probably rare situations. Mainly because you need to have at last two targets which are near to each other to pull out some decent damage. So thumbs up for your effort to discover new things but I think its just for fun which gets boring pretty fast.

I´d like to hear some more theory about it tho.
Cheers.

For PvP, Short Bow shines with 15 points in Deadly Arts and 30 in Critical Strikes. The rest put wherever you feel is beneficial.

The 15 point Deadly Arts combined with Choking Gas is good for PvE as well as PvP. It stacks Weakness on everything in an AOE, meaning you and your team are taking 50% less damage from non-crits. It’s extremely useful and does turn the tide in large fights, especially if you have any healing on your end of the stick.

Thank you guys for the reply. If anyone else has any feedback on this please keep it coming.

I completely agree with Vexus. If you want to use a shortbow, that should be the skeleton traits for it. To further it, I would go down the mobility route for traits, unless you are looking at a condition damage based build.