Guild Wars 2

Like others have said, go S/P 5/6/0/0/3 for combat or D/P 5/6/0/3/0 for mobility. Take Practiced Tolerance and Invigorating Precision in Critical Strikes to significantly increase survivability. Take Withdraw, Signet of Agility, Shadowstep, and Shadow Refuge as your utilities. It’s rare you’ll be defeated unless caught off guard by a Teragriff charge without Shadowstepping or you’re hit by a Slinger boulder. Teragriffs can easily be knocked down by using SB #3 when they’re charging directly at you. You can stop Thrashers from using their vines by using Pistol #4. Good luck!

I really don’t see the appeal to 2/0/0/6/6 in S/D, why does the meta call for thieves to give up so much of their damage from CS for, what, Pain Response and Hard to Catch in Acrobatics? It just seems silly. Feline Grace is awesome, but past that, I feel that if you need more survivability, just take Shadowstep and use Shadow Refuge under emergencies where you can’t use it on a teammate. Damage just feels largely underwhelming otherwise with 1.2k and 2k critical auto attacks…

Yikes, I didn’t know that there were so many that dislike just having the +2 Warrior…makes sense though, once you got one, there isn’t anything the other can bring that could helpful. Runs of mine go noticeably slower as another one is added to the group, it’s really unfortunate.

Other very popular choices seem to be Staff Guardians, Bow Rangers, and GS Mesmers, very interesting…need to stop ranging guys, lol.

Starbird.4029:

D/D. Is D/D decent for leveling? As in I won’t constantly be dying to anything more than 1-2 regular mobs?

I wouldn’t really use D/D in open world because blinds from pistol just trivializes too much to just pass up. The single target DPS the best of any class, but that’s just about all you can do, and if you don’t DPS fast and fail to dodge, you’ll be downed easily. It also fails to cleave 3 targets like a sword does. Between best sets to use in open world, I’d stick with S/P or D/P, S/P for mob killing and D/P mobility and single target DPS. But if you like S/D, no problem going with that either, you’ll just need to rely on stealth and dodges more like D/D.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

P/P is extremely viable in pve, I dont know why people are saying it isnt.

Yes, you do have to tab target at early levels if you want to hit something in particular (and for those areas it might be better to use something with cleave like dagger or sword)

But eventually this becomes an option: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ricochet_%28trait%29

And with a high crit build it works very well at clearing groups of mobs with unload.

You -will- need to kite though. using p/p will take some judgement and you will need to slot a melee weapon for emergencies.

Starbird.4029:

D/D. Is D/D decent for leveling? As in I won’t constantly be dying to anything more than 1-2 regular mobs?

I’d recommend S/D since D/D lacks mobility, or P/D for the on-demand retreat skill.

P/P is just as viable as Warrior’s rifle. Thieves are basically in the same boat as them, in which having gun sets that offer more raw damage than bows, but lack the superior utility the bows have. If you absolutely need range DPS, then P/P is the way to go, but there isn’t many situations that force you into needing it to be honest, S/P just kills everything effortlessly that isn’t dredge or uses long lasting AoEs. Giving up 1 trait point, usually your 10% damage boost one in DA, for something that Shortbow has naturally with Trickshot just seems silly outside of WvW bag tagging.

P/P shines in just a few niche situations in pug groups.

SE P3 while fighting the dredge carrier where you need the extra range only obtainable with the ricochet trait to be able to damage it on the ledge.

Volcanic Fractal for body shot immobilizes to stop grawl from reaching villagers. Also very much acceptable for fighting both Grawl Shaman and Imbued.

Dredge Fractal for body shot immobilizes to stop Legendary Ice Elemental/Dredge Suit under the fire pots. Another fight where the DPS is accepted fighting either of the two.

P1 Arah for body shot immobilizes to stop Legendary Tar Elemental from fleeing from the stack. This one is a bit of a stretch though cause usually everyone else in the party has immobilizes for this.

Besides maybe using P/P for fighting some difficult Fractal bosses in unorganized pugs, it’s definitely not a good idea to main P/P, it’s far too weak compared to Shortbow.

I will say that P/P traited with Ricochet and Initiative regen makes it pretty lethal in WvW zergs, however you give up the strong utilities of Shortbow for it, making you considerably more vulnerable if you’re caught outside the blob.

serenke.4806:

If you get ticked off by builds, don’t pug.

Don’t have to pug to find someone using off beat builds, Nyx’s post made that pretty evident, no? We’re just posting what we hate to see is all.

I’m just curious, I want to hear everyone’s most hated build/weapon combinations that you happen to encounter in dungeons and fractals. It can be anything from the legendary bearbow rangers to the silly P/P theebs. Not making this topic to attack the “play how I wants” that like a build (I myself love P/P thief), just wanting to know out of anything you encounter what it is you hate the absolute most. Try and restrain yourself to stating one that just makes your blood boil and say why!

So, I personally dislike the before mentioned bearbow rangers. Usually if there’s a bearbow in my dungeons, they simply sit at max range and really do a poor job at providing the party with anything useful. Often times when everyone else is in melee, they grab the aggro and it becomes a really irritating run around to fight certain bosses. It usually (not always) provides a good indication that the ranger has never stepped anywhere outside of PvE open world as well. Did I also mention skill #4 on that darned bow? If they aren’t 1111ing, they’re most definitely #4ing.

I noticed there wasn’t any thread about what would be a good Silverwastes build for thieves, so I’ll go ahead and provide an in depth explanation of my own with viable trait/utility variations for you to choose from based on your preference.

What I usually run during the time till Breach is 5/6/0/3/0 with D/P (Fire/Air) + SB (Bloodlust/Fire), full Berserker gear with Centaur Runes on armor (Scholar Runes are also just as good).

For Traits:

Deadly Arts: Mug and Dagger Training.

Mug makes use of Steal with a 2k heal and being able to damage and poison your target.
Dagger Training provides a flat damage increase to dagger attacks.

Critical Strikes: Side Strike, Practiced Tolerance/Furious Retaliation, Invigorating Precision/Executioner.
Side Strike provides better critical hit chance from behind.
Practiced Tolerance provides you 1.5k extra HP in a Berserker build.
Furious Retaliation provides Fury (20% criticial hit chance) when you strike an enemy below 50% health for 10 seconds on a cooldown for 30 seconds.
Invigorating Precision returns 15% of the damage dealt from critical hits back as health.
Executioner provides a flat 20% damage increase to enemies struck below 50% health.

Acrobatics: Assassin’s Retreat/Vigorous Recovery/Power of Intertia.
Assassin’s Retreat provides 20+ sec of Swiftness (33% increased movement speed) on kill on a cooldown for 5 seconds.
Vigorous Recovery provides Vigor (100% endurance regeneration) on healing for 5+ seconds.
Power of Intertia provides Might (30+ Power and Condition per stack) on dodge for 15+ seconds.

For heal, utilities, and elite:

Withdraw, Signet of Agility, Assassin’s Signet/Shadowstep, Shadow Refuge, and Thieves Guild.

Withdraw is an instant heal that cures immobilization, cripple, and chill, two of which are extremely commonplace in Silverwastes that can easily kitten a thief up. Also a long distance dodge when paired with swiftness so you can easily get out of bad situations with it.
Signet of Agility provides 180 Precision on passive. Provides a condition cleanse and refills your endurance completely on active. Also does the same to 4 other allies if they’re in 360 range.
Assassin’s Signet provides 180+ Power and Condition on passive. Increases damage by 15% on your next 5 attacks on active. Wouldn’t bother using the active.
Shadowstep teleports you anywhere within 1,200 range. Returning to the spot you teleported from will cleanse 3 conditions. Both parts of Shadowstep work as a stunbreaker, which is what you’ll primarily use it for if a Teragriff knocks you down with a charge, which more often than not will down and defeat you if you don’t have this equipped.
Shadow Refuge provides 10 sec of stealth to you and 4 other allies that stand inside the AoE for the full duration. Also heals each pulse, but it’s not what you’ll want to use it for. A must have during Vinewrath to stealth the carriers, but otherwise used to just save yourself from being overwhelmed by enemies like Mordem Wolves.
Thieves Guild spawns two thieves to help you in combat for 30 seconds or until they’re defeated. They have some abilities like scorpion wire and blackpowder, but you’ll just use them for extra DPS. They don’t attack enemies until you do.

Might be a lot to take in and read, but I find this to work especially well. Hope it helps!

About the Acrobatics skill and the Speed sigil, while they both provide more than enough swiftness with just a single kill, I find it rather annoying to have to constantly engage and kill an enemy for the swiftness, so I just went with Centuar runes since I can keep permanent swiftness just by using Signet of Malice and some points in Acrobatics. Centuar runes seem to have good synergy in Silverwastes with the power increase and cripple reduction, so it’s not all too bad even though it’s another 6 slots occupied in my bags. I would’ve actually gone with a Speed sigil if I didn’t have to give up Fire on Shortbow (Fire & Bloodlust) for it. I guess I like the unconditional swiftness and power too much, haha.

I run around in Silverwastes a lot as thief, but I’m finding that I want more swiftness outside of Pack Runes, so I looked up the various choices of runes to choose from and have narrowed them down to the following:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_Speed
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Rune_of_the_Centaur

I’m looking for the best of these two to get the best mileage in the Silverwastes. Speed seems best for lazy chest farm runs while Centaur seems best for general roaming for Breach and Vinewrath. To be specific on why it’s a hard choice for me is that Speed will allow me to free up a utility slot for a stunbreaker if I happen to get knocked down (since I use a 25% MSI signet), While centuar will allow me to do more damage as well as reduce the duration of the large amounts of cripple afflicted by the enemies there. The runes come down to convenience vs. utility and I do chest farms, breach, and Vinewrath frequently, so which would be best in general?

I have contacted my bank and they stated they are not affiliated with the extra charges. This is all under Anet’s name.

I had wanted to purchase 2,400 gems total that day, so when I purchased 800 gems for $10 and checked my account, another Pending Withdrawal-POS DRI*ARENA with the charge of $20 appeared on my statement. So I know for a fact the Pending Card Transaction is the actual gem charge, but why am I being charged $20 extra for each gem purchase?

I purchased 1,600 gems for $20, but when I check my bank account I see that I was charged twice for a total of $40.

The first transaction is a Temporary Hold type, and the description is Pending Card Transaction at DRI*ARENA.

The second transaction does not have a listed type, but the description is Pending Withdrawal-POS DRI*ARENA.

Could I get clarification on this?

I was actually talking about this yesterday in the Players Helping Players section, how to make the best of the bag slots. I made a suggestion for those with x8 20 Slot Bags, but for those with x5 <18 Slot Bags, If anything, I’d just say go with, in this order:

1. Starter Backpack (for potions, tools, ect.).

2. Invisible Bag (for personal weapons and armor).

3-4. x2 Equipment Boxes (for weapons and armor you want to salvage).

5. Craftsman’s Bag (to just keep all the sigils and ascended mats out of the way).

The only thing you wouldn’t be able to really take of is junk, which would land in Starter Backpack, but if you go to merchants often it won’t be a problem. If you reaaaaally need more space for salvaging gear, I’d get a third Equipment Box and swap it out with Craftsman’s Bag.

Also, exotic fractal bags do not work with ascended gear. These bags only work for the rarity that they specify, which I feel is wasting potential space in regards to the exotic ones. There really isn’t much occasions you’ll have 20 exotics at any given time.

About the gear issue, of your weapons appearing outside the bag, I’m assuming is a bug with the bags as I have to deal with that as well, my offhand weapon just goes to my Equipment Boxes. It’s annoying at best, I just go find it and place it back in Invisible. I used to use x5 Leather Bags with no special qualities and I had to go find my personal weapon at the bottom of the bag all the time, I eventually just got used to it.

I appreciate all the answers you guys, it’s all been very helpful. I decided to experiment with all the different types of bags to see which ones I can give me the best mileage and give feedback on what I believe would be the best set-up.

I tried out the fractal boxes in particular first, mostly because they were the bare bone when it came to organizing weapons and armor. However, the problem with these were that they were too niche for the way I play (extreme farming), and while I do find use in having bags for just exotics and rares, the exotics in particular just don’t appear enough, nor stay in my inventory long enough to really justify having 20 slots exclusive to them.

Rare bags, while useful when farming in the Silverwastes…well, it fills up so quickly when left unattended, that it goes into my Starter Backpack, making it kinda mediocre in practice. But that’s just my method of farming, it’s probably the best of the fractal bags in my opinion.

Uncommon seems useless, as I pair Masterwork and of less rarity together as garbage to salvage for luck and materials, I ended up just using an Equipment Box instead. Maybe it’s good for those who like mystic forging Masterwork gear, but even then I’d say it’d be better just to get Equipment Boxes…

I can happily say though, that the Craftsman and Oil bags are indeed useful and I’ve grown fond of them stopping junk, masterwork sigils, and overabundant ascended materials and interrupting my salvage sprees. I ended up taking the following bags and might even recommend this set-up to others in this order if I may:

Slot 1. Starter Backpack: For general purpose, such as potions, food, tools, and salvage items like Raw Ambrite that won’t go into equipment boxes despite being salvageable.

Slot 2-3. Safe Boxes: For your personal weapons and armor, especially useful if you keep multiple types. I’d have to recommend having one at the very least to prevent non-token gear from showing up at vendors, a friend of mine accidentally sold his Ascended Shortbow once, so it’s a nice precaution.

Slot 4-6. Equipment Boxes: For all types of weapons and armor you find through dungeons. While you’d have to sort through the different rarities, you’ll definitely have an easier time avoiding overflow into Starter Backpack when you pair it with Craftsman and Oiled Bags. Struggling, as well as just have an easier time salvaging if you go ahead and place your salvage kits down here with the gear if you keep a tiny inventory window like myself.

Slot 7. Craftsman’s Bag: Useful for just getting materials out of the way. I often have an abundance of sigils, silk scraps, mithril ore, elder wood, and ascended materials that I just want to get out of the way while I’m salvaging, so this pack comes in handy. Since I’m always selling materials, this never fills, and when it does, it’s usually cause of the ascended materials which you’ll get in the habit of throwing out, and sigils which you’ll often vendor/sell it on the trading post.

Slot 8. Oiled Pack: Just takes all the junk from monster, and directs them right at the bottom of your inventory out of sight. Visit a vendor and it’ll be out of mind. Shouldn’t ever fill or you’re not visiting your merchant often.

Hope this helps!

There are plenty of bags to use, ranging from Invisible Bags, to Rarity Equipment Boxes, and to Oil Pouches. With the max of 160 item slots for me to take advantage of now, believe it would be a good idea to open up to a larger variety of bags to use…I think? My question is, which would be best to use now? I only ever used vanilla 20 slot bags up until now, do most people just stick with that?

I’ve been trying to search for a topic on this to no avail, so I’m just going to ask for some clarification. Do defeated players, ones you have to do hard revives for, count towards the scaling of enemies during events such as in the Silverwastes?

I hear people go back and forth on this during Vinewrath and the wiki doesn’t seem to provide any information regarding this specifically besides, “Events scale both up and down according to the number of players who are currently participating.”, which I’m under the assumption is that when you tag an enemy in the area, you’re participating, whether you’re active, downed, or defeated.

Can anyone clarify for me? Thank you in advance.

I want to know the general consensus regarding the quickness trait and utility. I do like quickness, but I’m wondering if either are really worth taking in their current state over other traits and utilities a thief has.

Critical Haste is a master trait in the CS tree. It procs at a 25% chance on a critical hit for 2 seconds on a 30 second cooldown. In my opinion, I feel that this trait lasts far too short and is on cooldown for far too long to make much use of it. Furious Retaliation seems to out perform it, even when solo.

Haste is a trick utility skill. It activates immediately and works as a stun breaker. The downside is that it reduces endurance to 0 and cuts endurance regeneration by 50% on a 60 second cooldown. In my opinion, Haste just seems…okay. It’s a huge tradeoff having no endurance for 6 seconds, but having Signet of Agility or someone providing Vigor makes it less dangerous to use.

My problem with this though is that this requires having two utility slots dedicated to the usage of extra DPS from Haste and under the assumption that a thief is running full DPS utilities of Signets of Agility and Assassin, you lose the utility of Smokescreen and Shadow Refuge, which seems too valuable in group play. If you want to take Smokescreen or Shadow Refuge in addition to Haste, you’d have have to give up one of the Signets…which would obviously be Assassin as Agility synergies better with Haste. Unfortunately, I don’t know if giving up Assassin for the Haste + Agility combo is actually better or worse.

Thoughts? Is going for quickness worth it at all?

BlackTruth.6813:

Travis the Terrible.4739:

BlackTruth.6813:

I don’t get it. What is the point of phalanx over banner regen or shout healing? That trait actually needs to be changed.

Because regen banners and healing shouts are more or less only used to carry bad groups. PS effectively does the same thing but boosting the damage making the run faster.
Besides if you kill something in 10 seconds with PS and it takes 15 with banner regen or shout heal. Youre slowing the run down. In that case GTFO my party.

Forgot we were talking about PvE, the might nerf shouldn’t be that big of a deal cause PvE is already easy as and will still stay easy when might gets nerfed.

Who knows maybe when the PvE AI gets better then shouts and banner will be truly better.

Possibly, though I still doubt either will be used nearly as much as Phalanx in PvE, I don’t believe Warriors would do the party nearly as well by specializing into heals when their strongest abilities are buffing other member’s power and crit.

hybrid.5027:

Youl should have had Night/Force on your gs already. Strength sigil is insane overkill with Forceful Greatsword. You just don’t need it.

After today’s patch the Battle sigil on Mace is bad and you should swap the battle sigil to Strength on the mace and you’ll be good to go.

Sounds completely reasonable, I’ll go ahead and make those changes. The help is much appreciated.

Serval.6458:

Would the battle sigil have been that helpful in the first place? The long duration of its’ might isn’t taken into consideration when it gets shared and when hitting more than one mob with greatsword you’d probably cap at 25 might and start overwriting it with short duration forceful greatsword stacks.

That doesn’t help with your decision, but I concur the battle sigil should be removed.

That’s a very good point. To be honest, I never really understood why the meta called for it in the first place, with FGJ, SoR, and Forceful Greatsword, I had plenty of might without it’s extremely long duration on myself. I think the only thing going for this Sigil in PvE would be that you can activate without necessarily being up in an enemy’s face, but that’s pretty trivial imo.

BlackTruth.6813:

I don’t get it. What is the point of phalanx over banner regen or shout healing? That trait actually needs to be changed.

Huh? It’s easily one of the best Warrior traits you could bring if there’s might issues, which in my experience is common in pugs (it’s named the pug carrier trait for a very good reason!). I’ve never seen any Warrior use Banner Regen, nor Shout Heals in PvE at all. It’s come to the point that I never take it off in dungeons or fractals honestly cause might stacking Elementalists seem to be rare.

I exclusively run Phalanx Warrior when I decide to play Warrior in pugs, but with the upcoming nerf to the Battle Sigil, I’m now trying to decide what sigils would be best when dungeon running.

I ran my build slighty different than what the meta calls for, with my Sigils being Strength and Force on my GS and LB, and Battle and Force on my Axe and Mace. It made keeping might up extremely easy, but now I’m wondering if it’s time to switch things up, particularly if I should get rid of the Strength and Battle Sigils and grab Night Sigils instead for 10% more damage in most dungeons instead of having an easier time keeping might up for the party in sub optimal pugs -or- if I should replace Strength on GS with Night, replace Force with Night on LB, and replace Axe and Mace with Night and Strength. Thanks in advance!

BIRDPUNCHER.8263:

I’m a full zerk thief running d/d and sb, 56003, and run 49 fractals daily. 40, too, if I’m especially bored. Holding up the lack of videos as proof of no melee thieves in fractals is silly: how many people record and upload their daily fractaling experience? One out of thousands? And only then if it is a timed run, or a solo, or something otherwise out of the ordinary.

Staying alive in melee is a combination of knowing the fight, knowing your class, and knowing when to back off. Shaman raises his arm? Dodge. Fighting Mai Trin? Invest in Shadow Arts. Have aggro? Swap to shortbow, kite a bit until he’s back on a teammate, then hop back into the fray.

If you are inexperienced, sure, run p/p at low levels while you learn mechanics. But refusing to learn d/d playstyle is a disservice to yourself and your teammates. Your damage as p/p is middling at best—downright bad if you’re geared with defensive armor—and the only other thing you bring to the table is the occasional stealth bomb. There’s no reason to take you over an engineer or a Mesmer, at that point: they’d put out competitive numbers and offer more utility.

Getting hit and downed occasionally isn’t a big deal, either. It happens to everybody. If anything, my teammates usually get downed more than I do: since I am so fragile, I’m alert to tells and dangers that they aren’t.

Based solely on my few months experience, I never have seen thieves melee said bosses. I’m aware that there exists thieves that melee them, that goes without saying, but they’re such a rarity I’m lead to believe that it isn’t worth the risk. Fractals has been available for a long time, don’t you find it strange that there’s such a scarcity of videos (none until Ambrosia kindly provided) from the point of view of thieves? I’m not saying a video is the all ends proof of what makes something possible or not, no, but if gives people who want to learn a general idea what to do.

I know that dying is fine, yeah, pugs look at you funny and whine, who cares? It happens to the best of us. But the bad thing about is that by dying, you’re doing nothing vs. doing something, which is what I feel is a massive deal breaker for using D/D during fights that wipe easily like Shaman and Mai in particular.

See, when I look Ambrosia’s gameplay (which was really great by the way, thanks for the upload), that time spent downed and defeated could’ve been spent doing just about anything else, like using Smokescreen, Shadow Refuge, Dagger Storm, or actually might not have been easily as defeated with P/P and would be still pounding Shaman with Unload. The damage of D/D was great in the first half of the video, definitely, but for the 2:30 minutes spent defeated + time spent kiting to position and dodge, I find it difficult to say if Ambrosia in the end put out more damage than a P/P thief that would’ve very likely still have been up (trying to avoid bias, but at range you have a better reaction time from the powerful attacks). It’s a bit unfair to say that it’s a ‘disservice’, though I can’t argue that a P/P thief isn’t doing anything more than Mesmer or Engineer (I don’t know those classes personally), but Shadow Refuge and Smokescreen are still something the thief has while still doing decent damage with berserker gear. Ambrosia did say that he/she wasn’t playing at their best, and that seems to be my issue with the set in fractals; unless you give it 100% at all times, you’ll be putting yourself and the team at an unnecessary wiping risk.

Maybe I’m just putting too much emphasis on dying and should just do it anyway just for the sake of learning to do it? I’m genuinely not trying to advocate using bad weapons or promote bad habits, but I find the choice between these sets to be one sided.

oxtred.7658:

5/6/0/3/0 is your friend. Also, dagger auto attack gives you endurance. P/P is bad because it has no auto attack and unload damage isn’t even that high compared to a backstab rotation.

That build gives a lot of dodges certainly, but as soon as a dodge is failed, which will happen sometimes because your members obscure some tells, you’ll be critically wounded, or downed easily.

The benefit of P/P is that it provides sustained, safer damage, and easily stacked vulnerability. It’s certainly bad in dungeons where you stack on bosses and they don’t hit nearly as hard, but that’s the exact opposite in fractals. It’s hard for me to be convinced that melee for thief is a good idea vs. fractals bosses when you consider that the risk of being defeated for missing a dodge in itself is a huge DPS loss over just spamming Unload throughout the entire fight.

I think some videos of melee thieves in a group would be more reassuring that it’s worth the effort and risk, but they’re truly nonexistent (there’s plenty of solos, kudos to them, but that isn’t the same as a group). I myself don’t see much thieves melee the bosses either and just use Shortbow.

AmbrosialK.2653:

I’ll post a video of a lvl 50 imbued shaman I pugged earlier today to see if that gives you any insight

I’d appreciate that. I’d be especially impressed if that was with D/D as well.

CobOfCorn.6352:

I run 66002 for everything but Mai Trinn and the Volcanic fractal, where I go full SA. It takes a lot of getting used to at first, but once you learn the animations of the bosses its pretty trivial.

Seems like from what you and DecieverX has said, investing in SA would be a good idea to try for Mai and Grawl. I’ll give it a shot, thanks. Focusing more on tells, in spite of all the particle effects would probably be a good idea as well, lol.

Narkodx.1472:

Shadowstarkirby.4072:

Narkodx.1472:

What are you guys talking about!?

If you can not melee the boss that is simply because you do not have experience or are running in sub optimal groups aka pugs who have no clue how to support their teammates

There is no reason to not use D/D against single targets – it is the superior weapon set for those situations

Stop freaking out, dude. I know D/D the best weapon set for organized groups, but I’m running in pugs, which means my groups are anything but that the majority of the time. While the damage is of course lower, it’s more sustained, safer, and applies vulnerability at a fast rate. That isn’t to say I won’t learn to melee these bosses if that’s what most thieves do, which is why I’m asking this at all.

It would be great to actually see a video of a thief playing D/D for the mentioned bosses, but I don’t see any, which is my issue in personally finding the viability of D/D in a lot fractal fights.

I am not “freaking out” lol

You should look harder because there are AMAZING thieves out there I found a video in 5 seconds and he is not the best thief I have seen

If he can solo it in melee range you can melee in groups – not to mention it is level 49

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vvlskuZv00

Sorry, just how it came across as, but okay. But I’ve seen this video, it’s the first that pops up in any search and it’s a solo. Solos are completely different than a group; you have a lot more control of the boss AI and don’t have to deal with aggro ever leaving you and having to ponder if she’s following you or not, which is especially critical for outranging Mai without worrying about being slashed. Aggro jumps around in groups, which makes melee more risky, and Warriors and Guardians that actually can take a few hits and stay in melee range often obscure tells, which is pretty vital to knowing when to dodge a spin and ect.

I think seeing one of these types of thieves in a group setting will allow me to get the idea of when to make the most of the melee sets.

Narkodx.1472:

What are you guys talking about!?

If you can not melee the boss that is simply because you do not have experience or are running in sub optimal groups aka pugs who have no clue how to support their teammates

There is no reason to not use D/D against single targets – it is the superior weapon set for those situations

Stop freaking out, dude. I know D/D the best weapon set for organized groups, but I’m running in pugs, which means my groups are anything but that the majority of the time. While the damage is of course lower, it’s more sustained, safer, and applies vulnerability at a fast rate. That isn’t to say I won’t learn to melee these bosses if that’s what most thieves do, which is why I’m asking this at all.

It would be great to actually see a video of a thief playing D/D for the mentioned bosses, but I don’t see any, which is my issue in personally finding the viability of D/D in a lot fractal fights.

I’m especially fond of using thief, and as of right now it’s the only class I currently can use for my Lv 20+ runs. So my problem is this, while I like playing my thief, I seem to feel underwhelmed in certain fights, though am ‘unsure’ if I should be. As I’m playing in my fractal runs, under most circumstances in boss fights I’m constantly switching to my 5/6/0/0/3 P/P SB build against bosses, since otherwise I just get downed from a one shot.

Such examples of enemies I’m not able to melee consistently would be Grawl Shaman, Mai Trin, and Legendary Archdiviner. There’s a stigma in guilds I’ve visited that there’s never a reason to use P/P (which I strongly disagree with), but it’s seemingly mandatory for me as the majority of my boss encounters now shred me, regardless of whether I have 15k HP from Acrobatics + Practiced Tolerance vs 11k HP from pure DPS. I’m torn between trying to force myself to learn to melee, or just keep using the sustained, albeit lower damage than what I can get from S/P (D/D seems too glassy to be used at all outside of the Dredge Bosses and Bloomhunger, so I kinda tossed that out of mind).

So to narrow my question down a bit further, should I really try to melee in these fights or is P/P what most thieves use against them? Finding videos of thieves in these boss fights has proven to be difficult outside of solos, which is completely different than a group setting. Thanks in advance. :]

Hello! I’m actively searching for a nice and friendly guild to actively do activities with. I’ve been around for over a month and still continuing to search for a guild to comfortably settle down in, preferably one that runs on the Darkhaven server for WvWing (though if you aren’t, that’s okay too!) and is PvE eccentric.

Other info:

Classes: Lv 80 Thief (Dialna) & Lv 60 Warrior (Valnersa)

Gender: Male

Occupation: College Student, so may be inactive at certain periods.

Thanks in advance!

Hello! I joined Guild Wars 2 two weeks ago and would like to join a smaller size guild, mainly to do PvE and make some friends! I have minimal experience and knowledge with the game, but am open to learn from older players as long as we can have fun doing so. :]

Other Info:

-In-Game Character: Dialna; Lv 80 P/P + SB Thief.

-Server: Darkhaven.

-Gender: Male

-Occupation: College student (so play time is irregular, but usually present for the most part if schoolwork permits).

-Location: East Coast US.

Hope to get some requests soon! Would love to try Explorable Dungeons without the dreadful hate in certain dungeon parties. And learning PvP and WvW would be nice too.

Also, I’m not fond of talking via voice chat, so I won’t be doing that. I also am not very fond to those large copy+paste guild recruitment information posts, they just come off intimidating, overwhelming, and somewhat uncaring to me, so please avoid posting those. Thanks!