Guild Wars 2

Hello, my name is Van Stellis, and I’m getting my butt kicked all the time.

I play a human thief with street rat origin. I’m a noob, got into the game just a few days ago.

In short, the main problem is fighting Doc Howler.

To be honest, I don’t remember exactly the name of the quest. It’s pretty early on the storyline, when you need to prevent Doc Howler from killing half of the city and the next PS quest when you need to face that Two-Blades guy.

I managed to beat Doc Howler at the first time, though died like 20 times in a row. Actually winning Doc was kinda luck, I put her down pretty quick before another pack of adds arrived and kicked the dust out of my butt once again. Alright I returned and finished the bloody quest eventually, although having a very bad feeling about what’s coming up next.

The next quest is for level 10, so I’ve upgraded my gear, crafted all new armor and weapons leatherworker and weaponsmith can make for level 10, spent some time in the wilds working out moves with different weapon setups, reached level 11, got into the quest instance, fought off several waves of lesser bandits, then (surprise!) Doc Howler again kicked my butt 30 times in a row. My best try was taking about half of her HP. I dodged, vanished in shadows, healed myself, kited her, been running around and eventually ended up with all cooldowns popped and biting the dust pretty soon. Seems like Doc have a truckload of health, hits like a freight train and got no CDs on her skills at all.

I admit I’m quite an average player just looking for fun and I tend to keep it this way. And being constantly killed during my personal storyline is rather annoying. Well I’m not a video games industry pro, so it’s not my place to tell developers how to craft games, but… The whole affair seems like a pretty bad design to me. Maybe somebody who spends most of his or her lifetime playing, can progress through these quests like a hot knife through butter, but it’s not an average pre-bedtime warrior like me obviously.

Oh you’re not even at the most fun parts yet, ie the rest of the personal story.

Its real simple if you realize one thing – the Thief is a bad PvE class. What you can do is use a shortbow, kite and hope for the best. At low level your gear is kitten any way you look at it.

If you are still looking to solve this problem:
First, I found thief to have the steepest learning curve to survivability of all professions. That does not mean it is not survivable, but it is more difficult than most.

Some people can dagger/dagger and dance around their enemies all day without getting hit much. I cannot, but I learned how to deal with the enemies. At lower levels before you have access to many utilities, there are 2 basic, easier approaches to fighting: ranged kiting and blinding.

Range kiting: either go shortbow (best choice) or pistol/something (pistol/pistol is probably better than pistol/dagger for this). Run around, dodge and shoot. If you use shortbow, use skill number 3 to evade backwards and cripple your foe when they get too close. Use only skills 1 and 3 with shortbow so you don’t run out of initiative. More practice and you can pull this off with pistols, but it is not easy.

Blinding: Go sword/pistol (recommended) or dagger/pistol. You objective is to get adjacent to your enemy and keep them blinded with skill #5. Do not activate skill 5 a second time until your smoke field expires and the enemy blindness drops. Use only skills 1 and 5 until you get good at initiative management.

Another recommendation is use Signet of Malice as you healing skill. It will allow you to recover from occasional hits.

Hope this helps.

Dawdler.8521:

Oh you’re not even at the most fun parts yet, ie the rest of the personal story.

Its real simple if you realize one thing – the Thief is a bad PvE class. What you can do is use a shortbow, kite and hope for the best. At low level your gear is kitten any way you look at it.

Dunno what you’re talking about. Have no problem with thief in PvE. Is my first and main toon. Maybe the problem you’re having is not being able to stand still and soak dps like I see so many do in PvE.

SB is good. Poison field and trick shot thru it poisons multiple enemies. Like above guy said. Mine is a D/D SB thief. Always moving, always dodging, poison with bow, in out strike dance away, singing “Can’t Touch This” to myself. Heart seeker is NOT a magic bullet. Can’t offer tips on stealth. I’m a mobility/evade thief, I hardly use stealth. Can trait for extra init and init regen on evade, but that come later on.

Move your dodge to mouse thumb or a preferred key. Double tapping a movement key takes to long, and gets you killed in places you don’t want to be dodging as well, when all you are trying to do is take careful steps.

Am rusty tho. Have been lvlin many alts, haven’t been on me thief as much lately, so am definitely forgetting something.

Oh, I almost forgot about this thread. Thanks for all the answers, some are really helpful.

You know, after playing around for a while I can tell that the biggest part of the problem is me being unskilled.

So after frustrating experience with thief I’ve rolled a guardian – somewhat an easy mode but I still had my share of defeats. Anyway I’ve leveled him to 25 without much trouble, learned a great deal about game dynamics, mechanics, builds etc. After years of WoW and WoW-like games GW2 is the most innovative game on the market, just about everything is different, not to mention that fights are much faster.

Talking about speed, my next toon is elementalist. That’s where you’ve got to move your butt lightspeed or face quick and violent death! But when you know how to do it right you have tons of fun.

Of course I’ll return to my thief some day, just hate to leave stuff unfinished. I think next try will be much easier.

Still I think PS difficulty is a little too tough especially for lower levels, it’s rather noob-unfriendly.

Maybe it should be like in LotRO, when you pick up your class the game tells you: this is good for beginner, this class is advanced, etc. I’d marked guardian and ranger as beginner friendly, thief and elementalist as advanced and so on. Would make a noob’s life a bit easier. Gaming is about having fun after all, is it?

VanStellis.3180:

Oh, I almost forgot about this thread. Thanks for all the answers, some are really helpful.

You know, after playing around for a while I can tell that the biggest part of the problem is me being unskilled.

So after frustrating experience with thief I’ve rolled a guardian – somewhat an easy mode but I still had my share of defeats. Anyway I’ve leveled him to 25 without much trouble, learned a great deal about game dynamics, mechanics, builds etc. After years of WoW and WoW-like games GW2 is the most innovative game on the market, just about everything is different, not to mention that fights are much faster.

Talking about speed, my next toon is elementalist. That’s where you’ve got to move your butt lightspeed or face quick and violent death! But when you know how to do it right you have tons of fun.

Of course I’ll return to my thief some day, just hate to leave stuff unfinished. I think next try will be much easier.

Still I think PS difficulty is a little too tough especially for lower levels, it’s rather noob-unfriendly.

Maybe it should be like in LotRO, when you pick up your class the game tells you: this is good for beginner, this class is advanced, etc. I’d marked guardian and ranger as beginner friendly, thief and elementalist as advanced and so on. Would make a noob’s life a bit easier. Gaming is about having fun after all, is it?

In Fact Thief is a good PvE class if you lay the cards right, no matter if its you fighint a group of mobs you can still win at easy. for me i tend to burst everything down fast and i went full damage for my thief in terms of giving up all my survial skills but that only depends on if you have the ability to survive without them, or confident in your play style. Thief is a awsome class even though my first was a warrior but its a class id reconmmand aswell.