Guild Wars 2

Hey All,

Started to level a thief after a warrior (lvl 76) which I sadly had to delete to do a transfer with friends.

Decided to level a thief and to be honest I’m having a hard time and die a lot compared to my war of course.

Currently I’m running with Double dagger and shortbow.

Question 1) Is my weapon setup considered the best? Or is there a better combo?

2) Which stats should I be focusing on?

3) Which traits should I take for pure leveling?

Any help would be appreciated, thanks all!

Here’s a thread with some suggestions for you: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-forums-are-depressing-and-a-question/first#post1732948

For leveling in PvE you can go with Evasion and/or Stealth to help. D/D Backstab does great single target damage. Sword works quite well for AoE as does Shortbow.

S/P Pistol Whip gives evasion while its rolling. Couple this with Signet of Malice and you’re healing a good amount. This works well with traits that give you initiative regen. Alternately you could simply stand in the Black Powder field and keep your target blinded so it doesn’t hit you. Sword autoattack chain does pretty good damage.

D/D Deathblossom gives evasion also, its quite initiative intensive and you’ll be working with Condition Damage and Duration for better effect as your bleeds do all the work. Q up a bunch of stacks then run away and let them bleed out.

Shortbow 4>2 drops a poison field and combo’s it into aoe Weakness which is helpful in staying alive. Also does good aoe and if you use the cluster bomb, works well with Signet of Malice.

Shadow Arts Trait line 10 gives you access to -2 initiative with stealth abilities. This lets you CnD>Backstab all day long. Great for single targets.

Just a few for you to mess with. GL,

Blood~

Great advice to work with Bloodgruve, well appreciated!

I don’t feel very confident by going for multiple targets because of my experience with single target being very poor. However I will mess around with it in lower level areas to see how it fits me so thanks man!

@Kitcat, looked trough their forums and they have loads of information however everybody recommends different stuff so it’s kinda hard to make a choice based on 15 opinions :p I will keep an eye on those forums though in case something comes up.

Don’t forget to unlock ‘Caltrops’ ASAP. You’ll notice night & day difference when dealing with multiple opponents.

‘Dagger Storm’ should be also high priority for multiple targets, so save those skill points to unlock it right when it becomes available.

My best friend while learning the thief was the bow. Keep a medium distance because it travels slow but hen yiu learn how to time the detonations it’s amazing aoe. Of they get too close. Hit number 3. It’s like an extra dodge but uses initiative.

And if yiu get in a real pickle and there too fast. I learned you can actually shoot cluster bob behind you as your running forward and just spam.

And another good weapon like stated is the sword pistol. You can basically spam blind all day and just hack and slash with the aoe of sword auto attack. Since in pve, most mobs have a slower attack rate so one blind will usually miss there attack and just out up another one.

Since most pve content is about killing small groups of mobs, I find dagger/dagger fun but since its a single target thing, it takes awhile. Back in the day when stealth caused aggro to drop, yiu could stealth and backstab and then stealth again and re assess the situation and go in again. But they removed that so I just aoe the trash

In dungeons or champs dagger/dagger works well dive its usually one mob and yiu just want to dps it down

For general roaming in pve I use signet of malice. With dagger dagger it doesn’t help much but with the aoe of bow and sword, yiu get some good healing. Dagger stem works great with this too with lots of mobs. Yiu self heal fast. Also cluster bomb, signet of malice and shadow refuge combo field will heal you even faster.

Sword/dagger is pretty good for face tanking too once you can get the blind on stealth skill in te shadow arts tree, it ten becomes kind of like sword pistol but Cnd hits hard and now you can daze with your sword web you attack out of the stealth.

I usually just run signet of shadows for the speed boost and the blind if you need it and I think it’s calle signet of agility, gives me a boost in precision and a condition remover. And I usually keep shadow refuge on just as a utility if I want to skip by stuff to grab a poi or vista without killing trash.

In pve though for leveling, yiu can really just out a bunch of stuff yiu want together. I don’t find any combo bad. Maybe run some venoms to kill stuff faster

Oh and 15 in acrobats will also give you kind of an extra dodge so now you got 3 plus your bows number 3 so mobs really can’t touch you.

All this stuff kind of makes it easier while you learn the class.

Oh and another note, not sure if you knew it( I was level 40 before I figured out), I turned ff melee assist so yiu can basically run through the target and backstab it instead of running around. And if yiur use to tanking with a warrior yiu might not have used right click for moving. I use right click to steer and changed my strafe to a and d so I can circle strafe with bow easily and turn around faster and backstab