Guild Wars 2

Is nice, not for dmg but reflect and consistent dps, should really use this while attacking.

Uh… ok?

/15 stacks of confusion

What

/15 Characters

Staff dps is a joke. Was deuling a rev in wvw and took 3 mins to kill him on s/d. Swapped the staff and rekt him in about 20 seconds, 3 fights in row.

Well, I just happened to recently calculate the base DPS values of the three main-hand weapons that thief can use.

Staff: 595 base DPS
Dagger: 582 base DPS + 3.57 poison TPS
Sword: 548 DPS

In a max might situation, the staff auto beats out the dagger auto only when you have 21,384 effective power. That is…. extremely hard to reach, so as far as autos go, you’ll want to stick with dagger.

However, the greatest strengths of the staff isn’kittens auto attack. The staff comes with several other strong skills:

Weakening Charge is much higher DPS than the auto attack, and attacks multiple targets. its hard to use, though.
Bound is an excellent evade skill which also does more damage than the auto attack. This makes staff the only weapon where the skill evade is a DPS gain.

So really, dagger vs. staff depends on how active of a playstyle you want. D/P is good for passive and relaxed play, while the Staff is better for chaotic and aggressive play.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, I just happened to recently calculate the base DPS values of the three main-hand weapons that thief can use.

Staff: 595 base DPS
Dagger: 582 base DPS + 3.57 poison TPS
Sword: 548 DPS

In a max might situation, the staff auto beats out the dagger auto only when you have 21,384 effective power. That is…. extremely hard to reach, so as far as autos go, you’ll want to stick with dagger.

However, the greatest strengths of the staff isn’kittens auto attack. The staff comes with several other strong skills:

Weakening Charge is much higher DPS than the auto attack, and attacks multiple targets. its hard to use, though.
Bound is an excellent evade skill which also does more damage than the auto attack. This makes staff the only weapon where the skill evade is a DPS gain.

So really, dagger vs. staff depends on how active of a playstyle you want. D/P is good for passive and relaxed play, while the Staff is better for chaotic and aggressive play.

So I’m pretty new to GW2 and I’ve had a hard time loving a lot of the weapon sets for my thief. I run d/p with p/p (and I don’t really love p/p either). I can’t say I understand how to compare damage, especially since the defensive strategy when I’m on my own appears to be get in, kill something, and get away – if you even have time for that!

d/p seems perfect for that. I have multiple ways to close gaps, which basically means I never have to run up to an enemy. I just shadow shot, steal, or dodge my way to them. That gives me that much more time to take them out before other things catch up to me!

I don’t have infiltrator’s arrow, but I run UC with two endurance refills (one is my heal, the other provides precision and a condi clear) which gives me full uptime swiftness and lets me burn endurance to increase movement speed and/or escape quickly. I’m sure you could cover ground even more quickly with infiltrator’s arrow, so maybe SB is “required” for getting to points as quickly as possible in PvP?

Does the staff (or other weapon sets) really do that much more damage? Or is this advice geared for more static dps scenarios such as standing behind a boss teeing off for 20 seconds at a time? Also, is area effect damage that critical? Is that more of an organized PvE function? Honestly, area effects seem rather pointless at melee range for a thief. It’s not as if we can be the primary target and stand in one place tanking 3-5 enemies anyway!

But please, educate me. Help me to see the light on these other weapon sets! I love d/p. The playstyle is super fun! But I don’t want to lock myself into a style that doesn’t work outside of solo play! What are the pros and cons here?

If it matters, I run d/p p/p and a dd/da/cs build. Usually run channeled vigor, power and precision signets, bandit’s defense, and impact strike (although utilities are obviously situational, too!). It’s working out great in the jungle on my own, but what will I find lacking in group play?

-Staff does have a slighly higher dps than dagger mainhand. It also offer things like projectile reflection and a whirl finisher on AA.
Staff and dp both have a couple of good skills, but the undoubtly best ones are headshot and vault.
Both can be extremely dangerous when used right, both are mainly pvp skills.
In pvp you will just be autoattacking, and against large-sized enemies staff can also use weakening charges properly to get even more damage. d/p gets a little bit more beneficial, if you need more than just damage.
I am perfectly fine with d/p in pve, and I would not give up on my incinerator, in raids I get very close to the 27k dps im supposed to do, and Ive never liked minmaxing.

Infiltrators arrow is:
-a huge boost in speed
-a shadowstep, making it superior to every other form of movement (can avoid attacks and obstacles, can exit dragons maw traps, can glitch through a lot of floors)
The bow itself is also not bad in combat.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, I just happened to recently calculate the base DPS values of the three main-hand weapons that thief can use.

Staff: 595 base DPS
Dagger: 582 base DPS + 3.57 poison TPS
Sword: 548 DPS

In a max might situation, the staff auto beats out the dagger auto only when you have 21,384 effective power. That is…. extremely hard to reach, so as far as autos go, you’ll want to stick with dagger.

Are those calculations purely based on damage coeffs? If so, it’s important to note that when you are alone, staff is actually better thanks to the vulnerability application. I did some testing in the Mists and posted the result here. If your party provides vuln and might, dagger is probably better.

Edit: spelling

Asrat.2645:

-Staff does have a slighly higher dps than dagger mainhand. It also offer things like projectile reflection and a whirl finisher on AA.
Staff and dp both have a couple of good skills, but the undoubtly best ones are headshot and vault.
Both can be extremely dangerous when used right, both are mainly pvp skills.
In pvp you will just be autoattacking, and against large-sized enemies staff can also use weakening charges properly to get even more damage. d/p gets a little bit more beneficial, if you need more than just damage.
I am perfectly fine with d/p in pve, and I would not give up on my incinerator, in raids I get very close to the 27k dps im supposed to do, and Ive never liked minmaxing.

Infiltrators arrow is:
-a huge boost in speed
-a shadowstep, making it superior to every other form of movement (can avoid attacks and obstacles, can exit dragons maw traps, can glitch through a lot of floors)
The bow itself is also not bad in combat.

Well, I’m glad to hear d/p is at least a viable option in most areas of the game. I really enjoy the playstyle and I find the abilities work well together. As far as my second weapon set, I run p/p but I don’t really like it for several reasons.

The pistol AA is painfully underpowered. It deals low damage to a single target and has no attack chain for additional effects. It forces you to burn initiative to produce any kind of damage with this set. Its only saving grace is the stealth burst, but this seems like it should do more damage since half its damage is condition based.

Pistol 2 is also underpowered. It does pitiful damage and a fairly pointless 1s immob and 3s invulnerability stack. An immob is quite welcome in a ranged set, but this one is practically useless.

Pistol 3 is the only decent ability in the set. It does damage. That’s it.

As noted previously, headshot is a great skill but not so great in this set. It works a lot better in d/p because dagger AA is so much stronger than pistol AA. This allows you to reserve initiative for interrupts without killing your damage output.

Black powder. Another great skill for d/p that seems rather pointless in the p/p set. What am I going to do with a melee area blind in a ranged kiting setup? Not much! And I still really REALLY need to use that initiative for damage!

D/p, on the other hand, our worst ability is heartseeker and you can still use that as a decent damage short-range gap closer, as a combo for stealth off of black powder, or even to move around more quickly (Although we have better ways of doing this, obviously!). AA, shadow shot, headshot, and black powder all see regular use and seem to fit well together in the d/p set.

I don’t know. Maybe I need to give the shortbow another chance. But honestly, it feels to me as if shortbow is mostly just used for infiltrator’s arrow and because the other thief weapon sets give no access to ranged area effects. It’s the same reason I don’t like the other weapon sets. Aside from d/p and staff, they all seem a little lost to me.

Zodryn.4216:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Well, I just happened to recently calculate the base DPS values of the three main-hand weapons that thief can use.

Staff: 595 base DPS
Dagger: 582 base DPS + 3.57 poison TPS
Sword: 548 DPS

In a max might situation, the staff auto beats out the dagger auto only when you have 21,384 effective power. That is…. extremely hard to reach, so as far as autos go, you’ll want to stick with dagger.

Are those calculations purely based on damage coeffs? If so, it’s important to note that when you are alone, staff is actually better thanks to the vulnerability application. I did some testing in the Mists and posted the result here. If your party provides vuln and might, dagger is probably better.

Edit: spelling

They are done using “tooltip values”. What I do is stand in the mists completely nude of any equipment buffs, so I get what their damages are at 1000 power, no modifier. This gets “base damage”, which is easy to work with. If you want to find how much damage you’ll do, take the base damage, and multiply it by effective power / 1000l. These comparisons were done assuming the enemies are already debuffed to the nines from other sources. Otherwise, it gets complicated.

On the one hand, staff auto sustains about 15 stacks of vulnerability, technically increasing its DPS by 15%. On the other hand, a lot of the work that staff does isn’t by using the auto attack, but by pacing weakening strikes and vault with bound.

The lowest poison can tick for is 33.5. Since the dagger auto sustains 3.57 poison ticks, this technically adds, at no might, 119.6 extra DPS on top of whatever you’re doing. Because of the disjoint between power and condi damage, this is either a lot or not that much. For example, my full zerker thief sits at 10,633 effective power under fury, including all of the various trait buffs rune buffs, and sigil buffs. This would give my thief, standing completely by itself, the following for auto attack DPS:

Staff: 6325 × 1.15 = 7274
Dagger: 6187 + 119.6 = 6307
Sword: 5835

Though it looks like sword is left in the dust, it is still a viable defensive weapon, as its auto puts permanent weakness on enemies, and comes with other useful utilities (condi cleanse and warps on demand, boon stealing and a long dodge). But that is more of a PVP thing.

Factoring in might gets complicated. Technically, full might raises effective power 27.7%, coming to 13,578 total. But, it’s effect on condi damage is much bigger. Suddenly, instead of doing 33.5 damage per tick, poison is doing 78.5 per tick, adding 280 on top. If the enemy has max vulnerability from sources other than yourself (which is fairly common), then you’ll get auto attack dps which looks like this:

Staff: 8079 (x 1.25 for vuln)
Dagger: 7930 + 280 (x 1.25 for vuln)
Sword: 7441 (x 1.25 for vuln)

Its only a 1.6% difference, but technically dagger still wins out. From there, you just go with ancillary bonuses. Each weapon does different stuff, so go with the one that has what you need.

Personally, I’m more of a sword/staff guy. Staff is pure offense, sword is high defense. But those are fairly active playstyles. The most passive playstyle you can have is Dagger/Pistol. You just use Black Powder on occasion, then auto attack down anything that crosses your path with overwhelming force.