Guild Wars 2

I decided to roll a thief after being spoiled by the “easy mode” that is warrior, so I’m a bit overwhelmed by how soft the thief is. I understand this is a late-game class, and that it’s highly dependent on the abilities of the player, rather than it’s class abilities.

I died by the fourth quest, which was shocking to me, and have been challenged ever since (“challenged” sounds better than “struggling”).

Any tips I should be aware of that I likely didn’t have to worry about with my warrior? Should I actually build defensively for PVE?

Black powder shot seems to be my saving grace, but I don’t want to rely on that my entire time … seems like it’d get boring after a while.

IMO. Double Daggers.

You have an evade abilty on Skill #3 and you can go invisible at will by attacking with skill #5.

Keeping a Shortbow handy is good for staying at range, or juking multiple enemies.

Also, the evade/roll heal is incredible while leveling, and has a very low cooldown.

Thief have been the probably quickiest class for me doing map completion and personal story.

I’m wearing full berserker and I just use pistol whip, with malice signet, and 30 point in vitality trait with healing when using initiative. On top of that use some healing sigil. And just prawl through everything. You never die because you regen like crazy.

Either that or I suppose condition build with caltrap and spam death blossom for evade.

PissedOffRyno.5381:

I understand this is a late-game class, and that it’s highly dependent on the abilities of the player, rather than it’s class abilities.

It’s the ganking profession, seen in every MMO nowadays. My suggestion is to join WvW and gank people there until you are level 80, then go back to PvE with stats high enough to play through all content with more or less any build. Level scalling still doesn’t make a fully geared level 80 character that much weaker in low level areas.

I’m casually leveling a second thief and I find that using sb 3, death blossom, the occasional stealth and ofc dodge will get me through most sticky situations. You pretty much have unlimited evades, just work out a rotation to time your skill evades to offset your endurance evades and keeping dosing in between and you’ll be the last one standing.

I really had to push through mine. He was the third character I rolled back when I started in early January and he hit 80 only a few weeks ago. Once he made it through to the mid levels he was fine but before that I really had to make sure his gear was up to level.

I tried all sorts of weapon combinations too but maybe that was my problem.

S/P and Shortbow for weapons, caltrops, signet of shadow and thieves guild as skills. Go Shadow Arts and Acrobatics; make sure you take Assassin’s Reward. Cloaked in Shadow and Uncatchable are also useful. For melee you can pull groups, hit Black Powder once every three sword combat sequences while working in caltrops, and literally never die. Likewise, you can kite almost forever with shortbow.

Thief PvE is silly easy.

Edit: Let me add that dodging is almost never necessary if you’re sitting in your BP, and your stealth will go unused except for when you don’t feel like engaging an enemy.

Edit again: Use signet of malice as your heal.

Last edit: Sword / pistol is what you want… ugh, shouldn’t have posted so late last night.

Learn to dodge is a start. Feline Grace essentially gives a Thief 3 dodges for a full endurance bar.

Ask a total noob question and people actually respond friendly and with useful information? Wait…what? This is not real. What did you guys do with the type of MMO community I’m used to seeing?!

YOU GUYS WILL NOT TRICK ME!!!

(thank you for the responses)

Condition thief is pure junk in pve. The only class that is allowed to go conditions in pve is grenade engi. The best strength of thief is power dps.

If you need some more help just go to the thief forums. There’s a pretty good list of thief builds there. Good luck

randomfightfan.4091:

The only class that is allowed to go conditions in pve is grenade engi

Even then, it’s a DirectDmg/ConditionDmg hybrid. Ascended = Zerk, Exotic = Rampager. But this is all offtopic.

I am not sure if you will read this but my second character is a thief who rocketed to level 80.

Gather up a pack of mobs, aoe them down with the shortbow. Signet of Shadows and the acrobatics tree are your friends. Learn how to dodge, dodge often. Learn to move whilst using caltrops and Clusterbomb + chocking gas from the shortbow.

This class is a lot of fun, and really agile. I found that the warrior class was just a lump in comparison.

I hope you nail this.

Thief is great in PvE once you’re 80 – as long as you include some toughness/vitality.

Solo PvE is awesome, especially snagging skill points and such.

I mostly went p/p+ sb for leveling. p/p #3 gives you plenty of burst on single mobs to kill them quickly and short bow #2 is a near spammable aoe for group situations. just have to be careful with autoattack since it bounces and can be bad in tight situations.

Add in a health dose of running in circles and kiting and off you go.

I use P/P and S/P and have no problem. I run from fights I cant handle, but I do just fine. Thief is easier than Warrior in orr, I believe.

At the early stages, Black Powder is riding shotgun alongside your dodge roll. Learning how to use both will give you a good feel on how initiative and evade keep a thief upright. With that in mind, S/P and D/P should get you through the early stages. Once you get some traits lined up, then I recommend playing around with the different weapon sets and see which one suits your tastes.