Thieves are really not a fantastic class to level as. They really benefit from having an already max main, not only because you can feed it gold and mats for crafting, but because playing a thief can actually be very tiring.
Shortbow is my personal favourite leveling tool and is insanely powerful with heavy condition damage. D/D is decent, but feels slower and weaker than SB (even in melee!). P/anything is gimpy, and P/P sucks.
A very powerful way to level with a Thief is to either use a Shortbow as Starbird suggested, or go D/D like you are and focus on Condition Damage with Deadly Arts and Signet of Malice and Caltrops.
Spamming Death Blossom will then give massive AoE damage and healing, and Caltrops does basically the same.
Best of all it’s Condition Damage, so it can be used to kill enemies far higher level than yourself by ignoring Glancing Blows.
I’d say Shortbow does the same but better, especially since Choking Gas will trigger massive healing every second just like Caltrops, and combined with Deadly Arts you can easily spread massive amounts of AoE Weakness.
You can also then take advantage of the huge amount of AoE Cripple provided by Caltrops to kite enemies.
Shortbow is hands down the best way to level, but D/D used this way is good as well and you can still use both anyway.
Carrion would be the most preferable equipment type.
I’d have a hard time recommending S/P for leveling. You do garbage damage since all Initiative is reserved for simply keeping you alive, and ranged enemies will just tear through you anyway.
The direct damage also means you have to fight enemies close to your own level, which die too easily to warrant building around keeping them Blinded at all times.
I went to a zone with lvl 45 mobs, being lvl 50 myself, and I was outperforming an Engineer there who was lvl 51. I know this because he saw me kill stuff faster than him, and asked me what level I was. We did some tests and I was doing more single-target damage.
I can’t really tell you if that’s blooming because the engineer prof. suffers from its own problems, but at least that was better damage than them (and I already have a 80 engi, i’m fairly certain single target damage is higher on my thief right now)
I use, and have used for majority of the time, a D/P combination. Single target, I attack with #3, it can keep slower attacking enemies blind, and just use dagger auto which has higher dps (I think) than sword, albeit it being only 1 target. Most enemies my level go down in under 20 seconds. Heartseeker is… slow, but its good for one thing. If you’re low on initiative, and the enemy is <50%, dodge away from their attacks and then jump right back in with a heartseeker. With proper traits in Acrobatics (as I have) you can do this 3 times in a row.
At your level, go 0/0/0/20/10 and you won’t regret it.
Get Caltrops on dodge, might on dodge, and if you are getting beat up too much, take assassin’s reward for more healing. You get lots of dodges, and your dodges become both attacks and might buffs. The might on dodge gives you the power and condition damage you are missing from putting traits into the strength line. You will clean up, I love it.
I strongly suggest going condition for leveling like many of the others. It was dreadful leveling as a thief because the damage is so low, the likelyhood of attacking more than one opponent at a time is high, and the heal on hit stuff doesn’t work at all. Just go with withdraw for your heal, and focus on the condition damage gear and get the caltrop trait. You’ll have more fun and you will level faster.
