What is better for noob/casual player dd or de and why?

Hello, Im returning player to gw2 after long time and I want to play just casually, so no long rotations to memorize or some other "play piano" stuff. My end-game is gonna be some raid/fractals to get good loot, map completion and wvw (Im still surprised more mmos didnt copy this mode, cause its awesome) So my question is which of thief elite spec is better for me, while I want to play some one-shot build in wvw or something really bursty so I can surprise enemy squishies from stealth and try to take them down quickly or take objectives as fast as possible, but I would like to use the same elite spec for other content too, while being accepted for raids and fractals. Would you Master thiefs of gw2 please advise me on this topic? Thank you for answers

The typical raid/fractal thief is Staff Daredevil (e.g. https://discretize.eu/builds/thief/power-daredevil ), which is powerful but kinda one-note. You've investing almost everything into constant damage output in order to burn down bosses faster (including your CC, which is intended mainly to get the juicy damage bonus from forcing a boss into the "broken" state).

You can play Staff Daredevil in WvW as well, but it's not the most common build — those are usually Rifle Deadeye, D/P Daredevil, or P/D condi thief (core or Daredevil). You'd also want different gear and traits compared to the PvE version, because WvW Staff Daredevil typically takes a few more hits than stealth-oriented builds. It is, however, a pretty fun build because you can hit people in the face for like 9k with Vault while dodging whatever fancy combo they were planning to use to beat on you. It's also the closest thing to a zerg-viable melee build, though how viable exactly is sometimes the subject of heated debate.

My go-to for open-world is actually Rifle Deadeye, because the PvE version (with Crit Strikes) has really good self-buffing and sustain. I find Deadeye to be fun to play in WvW as well, though you do need to carry several weapon loadouts because there will be enemies you just can't kill using certain weapon sets. It can be a bit frustrating as well, though, because of how the PvP/PvE skill split actually makes the WvW build a lot more one-note than PvE.

Daredevil. Most deadeye players I've seen in all game modes are pretty terrible.

In PvE, they camp rifle and shoot from range and don't stack for boons while refusing to weaponswap to cleave things.In PvP they camp rifle and stay stealthed (not able to capture points).In WvW they camp rifle and think that downing someone that gets ressed in 3 seconds is worthwhile when they could be doing big damage with staff. Because they can't steal , only stealth attacks rip boons when traited with rending shade (Shadow arts).

Couple that with the fact that daredevil has more evades, a decent PvE weapon (staff), and marauder's resilience that nullifies the lower health pool (10% damage reduction in range as well as 7% power to vitality conversion) and it's a sure thing that daredevil is superior.

In PvE , staff daredevil does reasonably high damage (with cleave) just auto-attacking with assassin's signet and signet of agility. I think someone benched it at ~22-23K out of the 35K theoretical maximum?

In PvP people that have been playing thief for a long time typically run sword/dagger (teamfight with boon rip and immob/evade) or sword/pistol (burst and immob/evade) , dagger/pistol is more gimmicky due to the stealth attack reliance for its damage and boon rip. Of course in all those situations shortbow is run for mobility.

In WvW if you are decent at evades you can stay alive on staff daredevil whereas nobody wants deadeyes. If you aren't decent at daredevil I'd advise an easier class such as necro , spellbreaker, or rev to get practice dodging in WvW.

@Infusion.7149 said:Because they can't steal , only stealth attacks rip boons when traited with rending shade (Shadow arts).

Mark Target rips boons just like Steal/Swipe do when traited with Trickery.

If you have both expansions use build template switching and make a gear template that's kind of solid with both builds. I switch between them a lot wherever I'm at, it's really handy.

@kash.9213 said:If you have both expansions use build template switching and make a gear template that's kind of solid with both builds. I switch between them a lot wherever I'm at, it's really handy.

I know that would be ideal, but I have two problems, Im lazy so I want to focus only on one elite spec now and I want to buy just one expansion now. This scenario might come in handy, but now I just want the elite spec that is more idiot-proof

@Goldenbearcz.1602 said:I know that would be ideal, but I have two problems, Im lazy so I want to focus only on one elite spec now and I want to buy just one expansion now. This scenario might come in handy, but now I just want the elite spec that is more idiot-proof

I don't think it's even possible to buy just HoT right now, or to buy PoF without getting HoT for free.

Class stuff aside, you're much better off having both because mounts (even just the Springer) make navigating the HoT zones a lot more pleasant.

@Infusion.7149 said:Daredevil. Most deadeye players I've seen in all game modes are pretty terrible.

In PvE, they camp rifle and shoot from range and don't stack for boons while refusing to weaponswap to cleave things.There is no point in stacking when I get boons from M7. No point in stacking even with FfE because the might and fury you get from it can only affect you once per use and stacking would put both rings on the stack. Skirmisher's/Spotter's pierces.

If someone is way off tag then they're probably not getting healed either or affected by passive buffs that aren't boons. Also, piercing is not the same as cleave which is why deadeye has never been recommended for fractals.

There is no such thing as 1-shot builds anymore.Your best bet may be to have a thief for pve and a thief for wvw/pvp. Staff is good and fun in pve and can be used in large wvw fights, but smaller fights against decent players will give you a hard time since it's easy to evade your vault.

It all really depends how you like to play. None of it will be as hard and piano like as ele. None of it will be as easy as necro or guardian. Each build has pros and cons. The best pvp build is probably p/d condi, but others are great. I roam wvw as rifle DE and make lots of kills and win a lot of 1v1, but it, like most, take some good practice to really be excellent at it. If raiding is your main thing, then you will probably want staff, which works well with wvw zerg.

@Infusion.7149 said:If someone is way off tag then they're probably not getting healed either or affected by passive buffs that aren't boons. Also, piercing is not the same as cleave which is why deadeye has never been recommended for fractals.

Often when I am off tag I am not getting hit much either. But let's say you are getting hit a bunch, you can make up heals with invigorating precision since rifle attacks hit hard and you'll almost always have fury, at least with the build I use. It takes about 4-6 seconds to gain 7 malice with high precision, giving you an extra 10s of fury. So a rifle deadeye with a proper build doesn't really need to stack.

And while you are right about cleave, piercing tends to have the same effect assuming enemies are lined up. But Deadeye's strength is single target ranged damage which is good for taking out specific adds that make fights harder.

Daredevil is just a lot more forgiving than Deadeye is. You just have a lot of dodge access and if you do PvP you'll notice Deadeye when it's revealed it's more than likely to fall over. Or projectiles track it through stealth But at the end of the day use what you want I've seen some really good Deadeyes.

The thing I really want to sell you is: don't think of your thief character as just "a daredevil" or "a deadeye." 95% of the resources you use to play either profession are the same, coexisting on one character. It's very easy for you to have everything unlocked and to transition between elite specs (or playing core-only) freely. All it'll cost is one extra weapon, no different from converting your basic thief build from dagger/pistol to sword/dagger. You can even set some hotkeys to switch between them instantly out of combat.

It cost me way, way more to play two different Firebrand builds (healing vs. DPS) than it did for me to turn my Deadeye into a Daredevil for Raids.

@"ASP.8093" said:The thing I really want to sell you is: don't think of your thief character as just "a daredevil" or "a deadeye." 95% of the resources you use to play either profession are the same, coexisting on one character. It's very easy for you to have everything unlocked and to transition between elite specs (or playing core-only) freely. All it'll cost is one extra weapon, no different from converting your basic thief build from dagger/pistol to sword/dagger. You can even set some hotkeys to switch between them instantly out of combat.

It cost me way, way more to play two different Firebrand builds (healing vs. DPS) than it did for me to turn my Deadeye into a Daredevil for Raids.

Speaking only from a WvW roaming perspective, when I came back to the game after 3 years and transitioned from my usual builds which always ran offhand dagger to rifle deadeye I found very little of what I'd learnt transitions well to rifle. Other weapon sets on DE are of course still the same, but rifle is a completely different play style to core/daredevil in my opinion.That could explain why I very rarely see rifle DE's in WvW that are anything other than walking bags. Of the few DE's that are actually a threat more than half of them are running one shot builds that perma stealth for 19 seconds waiting for mark + Bqobk + Assassins signet to be off cooldown.

Unrelated but assassins signet really should be an elite skill in WvW.

@Doug.4930 said:Speaking only from a WvW roaming perspective, when I came back to the game after 3 years and transitioned from my usual builds which always ran offhand dagger to rifle deadeye I found very little of what I'd learnt transitions well to rifle. Other weapon sets on DE are of course still the same, but rifle is a completely different play style to core/daredevil in my opinion.That could explain why I very rarely see rifle DE's in WvW that are anything other than walking bags. Of the few DE's that are actually a threat more than half of them are running one shot builds that perma stealth for 19 seconds waiting for mark + Bqobk + Assassins signet to be off cooldown.

Unrelated but assassins signet really should be an elite skill in WvW.

If you're mostly playing thief, I think that may skew your impressions a bit. Melee thief builds are strong against ranged builds in general, thanks to their access to gap-closers and evades. And Daredevil is well-suited for glass-on-glass encounters because you've got the extra dodge bar, fairly front-loaded damage modifiers, and that little bit of extra hp.

@Doug.4930 said:

@"ASP.8093" said:The thing I really want to sell you is: don't think of your thief character as just "a daredevil" or "a deadeye." 95% of the resources you use to play either profession are the same, coexisting on one character. It's very easy for you to have everything unlocked and to transition between elite specs (or playing core-only) freely. All it'll cost is one extra weapon, no different from converting your basic thief build from dagger/pistol to sword/dagger. You can even set some hotkeys to switch between them instantly out of combat.

It cost me way, way more to play two different Firebrand builds (healing vs. DPS) than it did for me to turn my Deadeye into a Daredevil for Raids.

A couple other kits are similar to rifle skill slots but most have an evade or port or something on skill #3 but once you get comfortable using Rifle 4 that kit starts feeling more like playing staff for me but you have to get to where you can land it where you want, it's fun for traveling. You don't have to mess with Snipers Cover much but it's handy to have.

@ASP.8093 said:

@Doug.4930 said:Speaking only from a WvW roaming perspective, when I came back to the game after 3 years and transitioned from my usual builds which always ran offhand dagger to rifle deadeye I found very little of what I'd learnt transitions well to rifle. Other weapon sets on DE are of course still the same, but rifle is a completely different play style to core/daredevil in my opinion.That could explain why I very rarely see rifle DE's in WvW that are anything other than walking bags. Of the few DE's that are actually a threat more than half of them are running one shot builds that perma stealth for 19 seconds waiting for mark + Bqobk + Assassins signet to be off cooldown.

Unrelated but assassins signet really should be an elite skill in WvW.

I've been most exclusively maining rifle DE since I've come back to the game. Its very different to what I was used to is all. I agree with your comments about daredevil too. From playing both perspectives D/P daredevil beats most DE specs, rifle in particular for the reasons you stated. However I'd say D/P DE demolishes S/X daredevil (if the sword thief chooses to stay and fight) whilst Rifle DE still has the edge over a sword build, but not as much as D/P does because the rifle stealth attack has an obvious tell and is easily dodged, whilst D/P has absolutely no tell and can one shot from stealth. This is from my experience however, user experience may vary.

Rifle DE is still very strong as a proper roaming/duelist beyond meme one shotting people in my opinion. I was just saying a lot of roamers either don't know how or refuse to utilize it to its full potential.

@kash.9213 said:

@Doug.4930 said:

@ASP.8093 said:The thing I really want to sell you is: don't think of your thief character as just "a daredevil" or "a deadeye." 95% of the resources you use to play either profession are the same, coexisting on one character. It's very easy for you to have everything unlocked and to transition between elite specs (or playing core-only) freely. All it'll cost is one extra weapon, no different from converting your basic thief build from dagger/pistol to sword/dagger. You can even set some hotkeys to switch between them instantly out of combat.

It cost me way, way more to play two different Firebrand builds (healing vs. DPS) than it did for me to turn my Deadeye into a Daredevil for Raids.

Curious, I actually find snipers cover to be the main skill in standing a chance against rifle DE's hard counters; being dragon hunter, LB Soulbeasts and Tool holosmiths. The latter of the 3 being far less common after it stopped being the unbeatable kingpin of roaming that it was. I mean if the players are equally skilled the dragon hunter still wins imo, but snipers cover allows you to put up a good fight before your demise.

@Doug.4930 said:

@ASP.8093 said:

@Doug.4930 said:Speaking only from a WvW roaming perspective, when I came back to the game after 3 years and transitioned from my usual builds which always ran offhand dagger to rifle deadeye I found very little of what I'd learnt transitions well to rifle. Other weapon sets on DE are of course still the same, but rifle is a completely different play style to core/daredevil in my opinion.That could explain why I very rarely see rifle DE's in WvW that are anything other than walking bags. Of the few DE's that are actually a threat more than half of them are running one shot builds that perma stealth for 19 seconds waiting for mark + Bqobk + Assassins signet to be off cooldown.

Unrelated but assassins signet really should be an elite skill in WvW.

@kash.9213 said:

@Doug.4930 said:

@ASP.8093 said:The thing I really want to sell you is: don't think of your thief character as just "a daredevil" or "a deadeye." 95% of the resources you use to play either profession are the same, coexisting on one character. It's very easy for you to have everything unlocked and to transition between elite specs (or playing core-only) freely. All it'll cost is one extra weapon, no different from converting your basic thief build from dagger/pistol to sword/dagger. You can even set some hotkeys to switch between them instantly out of combat.

It cost me way, way more to play two different Firebrand builds (healing vs. DPS) than it did for me to turn my Deadeye into a Daredevil for Raids.

I never pay attention enough to know but a lot of the stuff they throw at me feels loaded upfront. Even with the time it takes though to set up it can be safer to use than going into stealth while their shots are still connected to you, plus It lets me blind a lot or stealth off of, you just need to know when to roll over it to stay out of LoS and to pull away from trouble keeping it to your back.

In my experience, the best way to use Sniper's Cover (and Kneel in general) against other players is to cover the cast with stealth. Then you get the benefits without exposing yourself so much during the cast time.

The biggest issue I had with thief in PvE was it being just too squishy for my tastes so I didn't play it much over the last 8 years.My wife mains thief but even she finds it a bit squishy at times as well.

I made a thief build a little while ago that focused more on survival through sustain and evades but I didn't test it in game until recently.

It's still in early testing though so I have not done much in terms of soloing super powerful creatures and bounties etc.I've thrown it up against a few core world champs like the Toxic Spider Queen to name one, and taken them down easily enough alone.I still have to run it though dungeons, HoT hero points and bounties as well as other stronger PvE creatures to get a better idea of what it can stand against and what it can't but so far it's probably the most fun i've had playing a thief in Gw2.

If you just want a casual PvE thief build that's easy to play and pretty durable then it might work for you.I would not try taking it into PvP and WvW though, I expect it would get brutally crushed in those modes, it wasn't designed to fight other players lolhttp://gw2skills.net/editor/?PaxAgiZlJkw8ybYhtruGZnW2TXNbA-zxQY7ob6hvU6LVDsAaNICOiM5EEm/KYG-e