Guild Wars 2

I am wvw player and use build 2/0/0/6/6.

Particularly I use S/P because the interrupts and blindness are very useful. The Pistol Whrip help in battles as well as in both the damage evades.

Have tried playing S/D but could not be as efficient. Until watched several videos about it.

What were the strengths and weaknesses for sets of arms?

S/P
- Lot interrupts
- Burst and Evade with Pistol Whrip
- Blindness and Smoke combo field

S/P is great. As someone said to me recently, when you lose to a good S/P, you feel like you did real poorly.

A reason for that is, a good S/P counts your cooldowns and knows when to strike. Because otherwise their attacks are very predictable and are not open to that much change or interpretation on their part.

As S/p you can pick when and where you want to lay down the boom, but it’s the same boom every time. And I love it when an S/P drops BP, that kitten costs a lot of ini and i’d rather it go to that (which I can swing just outside of) than a pistolwhip to my face.

That said, pistol interrupts are so clutch, as is the feeling of baiting someone in to FINALLY taking a whole or most of a PW, and dieing instantly.

S/D on the otherhand has a bit more flexibility (due in part to the two-stage FS/LS). You can not always land a full PW, but you can always land that mug+LS, and in most trickery builds, that’s stripping 3 boons as well, very useful in this might stacking and boon meta.

S/D
- More flexibility
- Easier ini management
- More Boon Rips
- More opportunities for “sure thing” damage (landing LS, landing mug+cnd+tacstrike)
- If 4 points in SA, blind on CnD

Pistol offhand is very nice but S/P gameplay is so clunky I can’t use it anywhere else then in pve. S/D is fluid and a lot more fun to play.

I play s/p in spvp. Skill interruption and aoe blind > boon stealing. imho.

More condition removal.
Stealth+the100softhingsstealthdoes.
Boon steal.
Faster evade.
Gap closer.
More control overall.
Dual Attack still does heavy damage.
The process of blinding comes with damage and vulnerability rather than just no dmg+aoe field.
Less of a ini sponge.
It doesn’t lock your movement in place.
It doesn’t rely on utility skills like Haste, Shadowstep, Infiltrator’s to hit people.
AOE confusion spam as well as other fast 100% combo finishers.
Incinerator is the only good Thief Legendary.
and so on.

I think S/P has better damage output and control capability, but I’ve always found S/D to be more fun because it’s more fluid. I also think S/D gives me more flexibility to play around with my traits and utilities, but that’s probably personal bias because I’ve played it so long.

What I miss when I use S/D is a high burst damage with only 1 and interrupts.
Before the last path I played D / P because I use too much control, blindness always made us enemies.
With S/P I do not use much BP, sometimes I use Head Shot, tend to use Pistol Whrip to interrupt + damage.
Of course if the combo Steal+ Larcenous Strike + CND has a good damage, but I think it’s easier to dodge. Usually I Steal combo + Pistol Whrip with Sigil of paralyzation, time Stun the enemy is exactly the time to finish the PW.

I use this build on WvW and sPvP
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAsaVl0MpwplOx7JsPNBNB5dY+SZ0KAdfko0XA-T1BBwASOEAEOBAY3fU+B4JAgT9nU6DOrEMAACA38mH9mH9mlCIilRA-w