Guild Wars 2

Been playing my thief a while, and play an Elementalist who just hit 80.

On my thief I just got to level 10 fractals, and got my first ascended ring; so far I’ve had no issues. I generally do P/P on bosses that hurt in melee, and can keep great up time with unload and the damage seems solid; I barely die, use shadow refuge when needed, etc…

I’ve been hearing a lot about how at higher fractals, people specifically ask for certain classes not to join. Well, specifically I’ve heard that people do NOT want thieves or elementalists in their higher level fractal groups.

This is making me feel a little disheartened in my pursuit of Fractals, seeing as I’d also like to do them on my Elementalist; why are people deliberately choosing to not allow in these classes? What makes them worse than the others? Will it be fixed?

I adore playing my thief, and the dodgy play style it entails, I’d hate to think that I will be gimping my group in higher fractals just for being a thief.

A simple answer: Reflects, Elementalist’s don’t suffer from it that much, but when a party needs reflects a thief cannot compete with a guardians utilities/boons it brings to a party.

What do you specifically mean by reflects? Projectile reflection? I suppose that makes sense though, no one ever complains about multiple guardians.

Then this is a bad design, every class is a class because somewhere back in the day, traps were deadly, locks were daunting and you could bash all day on a 9 pin tumbler with your guardian or warrior and not get in.

It’s because the game isn’t designed for real class use. D&D is the bases of all dungeon based class driven game design. If all we had to do were events, then it works fine. Throw the same thing into a real dungeon were class specifics are not used, then you get this.

GW 1 knew this. I would trade my 80 guardian in exotics such as they are for my GW1 monk any day.

AkiLeaves.2613:

Been playing my thief a while, and play an Elementalist who just hit 80.

On my thief I just got to level 10 fractals, and got my first ascended ring; so far I’ve had no issues. I generally do P/P on bosses that hurt in melee, and can keep great up time with unload and the damage seems solid; I barely die, use shadow refuge when needed, etc…

I’ve been hearing a lot about how at higher fractals, people specifically ask for certain classes not to join. Well, specifically I’ve heard that people do NOT want thieves or elementalists in their higher level fractal groups.

This is making me feel a little disheartened in my pursuit of Fractals, seeing as I’d also like to do them on my Elementalist; why are people deliberately choosing to not allow in these classes? What makes them worse than the others? Will it be fixed?

I adore playing my thief, and the dodgy play style it entails, I’d hate to think that I will be gimping my group in higher fractals just for being a thief.

People are feeding you BS, I’m in the 30’s and I see thieves and ele’s in groups all the time, I’ve never seen someone get kicked for being one or the other. Have enough AR and play good and pay attention and no one will care.

Folk.2093:

People are feeding you BS, I’m in the 30’s and I see thieves and ele’s in groups all the time, I’ve never seen someone get kicked for being one or the other. Have enough AR and play good and pay attention and no one will care.

This has been my experience too.

Yes, Guardians are by far the most effective professions to have for running Fractals but it doesn’t mean the other professions somehow hold you back.

There is no reasons why a Thief or Elementalist should not be running FotM at any level.

One thing you have to understand is that aside from a very subtle damage increase on the mobs and higher Agony damage, nothing fundamentally changes in the FotM.

So if you can’t see a reason which would prohibit you from progressing now, then there won’t be one in the future either.

If people kick thieves out of their fractal party or dont even invite them they are noobs, period.

Dagger storm alone is reason enough to take one with you because it’s just way too good on Grawl Boss.

+ Smoke Screen
+ Refugee

A good thief will also rarely die (SoM + Assassins Reward + Omnom Pie + A little bit of Skill)

It’s true that a Guardian brings more support then a thief, but that doesnt mean a thief is complete crap.

I openly welcome both classes, so long as they utilize their utilities and help support the team.

it might not be “you” per say, but in general terms, the playerbase for ele sucks. too many newbs. yes there are good players, and good uses for ele but overall the people who play it die way too much.

A good thief is always welcome in my 30+ party.

Thanks for the words. I always make sure to dagger storm, refuge, smoke screen, scorpion wire, etc… When necessary.

I believe one of the problems is the myriad of unintelligent D/D Heartseeker Thieves I have ran with. I just did a group earlier with another thief, and got another D/D thief who faceplanted far too much, didn’t use shadow refuge, etc, etc… This is somewhat common as well from what I’ve seen.

Of course I die here and there, but some of these thieves really seem to love the floor.

thief brings a lot of utility to the party it might not bring reflect but it does bring a smoke screen and shadow refuge and a ton of damage. people that don’t want thiefs just have not partied with good ones or enough thief’s.

No issues getting into fractal groups.

My main is elemental, i dont have any issue with partying up. D/D elemental bring a lot of buffs, staff can bring reflect tons of AoE dmg etc etc. Remeber that not all fights are melee friendly and you will be fine

All that BS that people dont like elem on high lvl fractals are not true, i find party as easy as any other class.

i got kicked because i was a thief class :/
me not understand the why …. i rarely die, and use my SR & blinding when ppl are down.
me also not understand why ppl attack boss while downed so they break stealth…

simply why not all thief and not all ele can do hight lvl fractal

That’s a load of rubbish, I’m still having no problems as a melee Thief at 30+ and my 2 guildie Elementalists usually join me in the same group and have no problems either. Bad players give the professions a bad name by falling on their arses too much.

Honestly, if you’re playing Thief well, you’ll find yourself being the team medic most of the time.

Because people are selfish and indoctrinated. Guardians are relatively better for many fights that rely on projectile reflection, I’ll give you that, but as a lv 38 fractal player, everytime I read “need heavy” I don’t know if I want to laugh or cry.

I welcome every class and once did a perfectly smooth run at lv 28 with 3 thieves.

2 guardians have enough uptime of wall of reflection to just make them easy fights. Add some avenger shield and make it “funny”.
My guild fractal group is 2 guardians (my and my friend which also play a lot) + whatever.
Main problem with thieves on fractals are they strange builds. Full glass cannons with d/d and 11k hp are just useless most of the time. But this does not make whole class useless. The same problem is with warriors. Glass cannons zerk with gs and than you see them with rifle 50% of the time and 50% of the time with stone throwing.

Eles on the other side are imo great for fotm. They have reflect, aoe on staff helps with trash a lot, also they have nice damage vs this ice thing in one fractal.

@OP

I would take you on my fractal run any day instead of an unskilled guardian, did level 26 yesterday and wiped over and over on valcano end boss, why?

Because the guardian was either too low AR or had a glasss hammer build. Our group was Me (mesmer), a thief, 2 warriors and a guard.

We wiped over and over, and guess what it was the guardain down first followed by the warriors, me and the thief went down last each time. A few times the guardian could not even stay on his feet from the very first AOE fire hit, he went down countless times even before the first stage of grubs.

The reason i think he had a glass hammer build is because the groups overall DPS was probably the best iv ever seen in fractals, so no complaints there. But they just could not take a hit.

I would take any experienced player of any class over a clueless guard or warrior any day.

Glass hammer builds may work in other dungeons but not in some fractals.

To the OP: if you intend to PUG your way up through the fractals as a thief, you better expect that many PUGs will kick you out as soon as they see your profession. And even if you progress with guild members or other trusted players, you’ll still be far behind guardians in terms of support and survivability.

I am a lvl 80 thief full glass canon(power,prec.,% crit. dmg). I use d/d,p/p,sb. I swap them depending on each zone in each fractals. I also change my skills and traits depending on the zone and not on the weapon i am currently using(most of the time). I reached FOTM lvl ~30 before the fotm update(where players can join any given level) i am now in the ~40. Just learn how to play your class and you should be fine. Don’t try to play for yourself, play with the team. on higher fractals teamwork and communication is the key to win. don’t get me wrong on the ’Don’t try to play for yourself’, you still need to enjoy what you are doing

Kastayeule.6148:

I am a lvl 80 thief full glass canon(power,prec.,% crit. dmg). I use d/d,p/p,sb. I swap them depending on each zone in each fractals. I also change my skills and traits depending on the zone and not on the weapon i am currently using(most of the time).

This pretty much is how people should play there class, changing and evolving on the go.

Unfortunately a lot of pug groups are inpatient and don’t give people time to change anything. I personally change armour, weapons, nourishment and utilities for each fractal. I don’t bother so much with traits because your limited to what you can actually change, It would be great if this limit would be lifted and you could save builds for quick selection.

@Back on topic.

I’ve only every seen classism on two occasions and both times where very recent, in Arah the other day one guy refused to play with a ranger on our team, said something along the lines of Ranger=No DPS so we kicked him (not the ranger), we completed the dungeon fine. A couple of days ago I joined a pug group and a THIEF joined after me, straight away kick appeared next to the thief and he was gone, so I asked why he was kicked and someone replied I don’t want a thief in my team, so basically I said good-bye and left also.

The people excluding thieves are the same noobs excluding thieves from CoF Path 1 farming. They get a few thieves that don’t know how to survive and they get biased.

END GAME 40+ FRACTAL GROUPS ALL HAVE THIEVES. They dps like a warrior and provide boss uitilities.

99% of 50+ fractal groups are Guardian (Cleric Support) /Necro (Carrion DPS) /Engineer (Berserker DPS Vuln Stacking) /Warrior (Berserker DPS Vuln and Warbanners) / Thief (Berserker DPS boss countering)

Thieves have so many abilities that just DESTROY certain boss fights. Along with having the highest ranged DPS, highest melee dps, and 2nd highest melee burst, of any group member, you have a verity of support skills such as smoke screen.
tl;dr bad Thieves die a lot and make people biased, Theives rock

Scootabuser.4915:

The people excluding thieves are the same noobs excluding thieves from CoF Path 1 farming. They get a few thieves that don’t know how to survive and they get biased.

END GAME 40+ FRACTAL GROUPS ALL HAVE THIEVES. They dps like a warrior and provide boss uitilities.

99% of 50+ fractal groups are Guardian (Cleric Support) /Necro (Carrion DPS) /Engineer (Berserker DPS Vuln Stacking) /Warrior (Berserker DPS Vuln and Warbanners) / Thief (Berserker DPS boss countering)

Thieves have so many abilities that just DESTROY certain boss fights. Along with having the highest ranged DPS, highest melee dps, and 2nd highest melee burst, of any group member, you have a verity of support skills such as smoke screen.
tl;dr bad Thieves die a lot and make people biased, Theives rock

Depends
Theives on fractuals 1-20 are pretty bad. Thevies on 30+ have enough experience to be a nice addition to the group.
I remember a levle 64 fract theif that out played all of us. It was a nice refreshing encouter to meet this thief.

People can ask thieves and eles not join when there is already thief or ele in the party and they need some haevies to soak damage.

Otherwise, if you already have a nice tanking line, thief is a nice addition with their dps and stealth utilities.