Guild Wars 2

So, for week I’ve been alt hopping constantly, getting characters to 30 then deleting them, trying to find the one I like most. I think I’ve finally narrowed it down to 2, and need some help with my final decision.

Guardian.

Tanky, cool looking armor, apparently able to solo efficiently, but the weapon skills that I tried were a bit lacking, and a bit meh. none of them really stood out to me as being amazing, other than the book of wrath, which was just about the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. If it was a shorter cooldown and an actual weapon, this would be a really easy choice.

Thief.

I haven’t really played them much, to be honest, I get it to about ten but found it wasn’t all that survivable, maybe I was doing it wrong. My friends tell me that shortbow thief is just about the most fun they’ve ever had. I also really love the idea of thief, I always play stealthy assassins in games like elderscrolls, and their armor is on par, if not better than Guardians in terms of pure kittenery.

They both have things I like, and things I don’t. My big problem, is I need to be able to solo level efficiently. I am a US player playing on EU servers for friends, but no one is usually around during my leveling hours to keep me company and make it go a bit smoother. So some survivability, and damage output enough to solo mobs my level +3 would be something I’d greatly like.

I am massively indecisive, and rather than stare at the character creator for the nest two days, I’ve decided to come to the forums, to ask people far more experienced than me for their opinions on both classes.

This means I want opinions on both classes, or a strong opinion on one, and a reason for it. Don’t just say “You should play thief, because I think it’s cool.” This is utterly unhelpful and you will make me a little sad.

TLDR: Don’t be lazy. Read the thread, it will take two seconds.

Would really appreciate some help.

My two most played are my Thief (main character for RP) and Guardian (tons of RP plus she is awesome for dungeons).

I find the Guardian much more satisfying in PvE. She has a lot more flexibility in fighting style, so much more support, and survives stuff that put any of my other characters in the dirt. I got past the “boring” feel of the weapons by using scepter/focus and sword(or mace)/shield. That gives me a lot of zippy zapping, mobility, cc, and defense. I use Tome of Courage for the Elite. Sooooo heart warming to tell my group “big heal near me” as I channel the 5 skill and watch all their health bars bounce to full at once.

My thief has style, I admit, and is still my favorite for storylines. He’s darn good for most of my dailies, too, and has World Completion so he goes on Guild Missions. I couldn’t have started and mained anyone but him thanks to the hooks that pulled me into GW2 in the first place.

Still, if you’re starting from scratch and want something versatile and survivable, I would recommend the Guardian.

Can’t say I’m great with either of those, but I do have a lvl 80 alt of each. This is obviously an opinion, so take it with a grain of salt if you will…

With a guardian, solo leveling is a total breeze. From 1-80 I think I died ~10 times, versus ~120 on my thief. That being said, playing a thief is a hundredfold more fun than playing a guardian to me. I think it really boils down to your personal skill level when it comes to picking which to roll with. When playing a thief, you’re learning and mastering the class. With a guardian, you easily learn the class, but mastering it is a whole other story since you can be pretty bad and still face-roll most of the game.

If time is not an issue, I’d suggest leveling a guardian to 80 to learn what’s what in the game. Going the second time through with the thief will be much easier and you’ll probably find out quickly whether or not it’s worth keeping relative to the guardian. Reason is, I found a lot of the apparent difficulty difference between classes comes from a lack of understanding of what enemy mechanics are and how to counter them, and in that sense the guardian is much more forgiving.

Well, for the things you said you like, I would go with a Guardian.

A Guardian has massively defensive skills; almost every skill they have will have some sort of defensive mechanic in it – blinds, projectile blocks, reflection, blocking, protection, regen., so on. There are builds out there to make a massively overpowered killing machine that no tank should ever be able to do. My only problem with a Guardian is that their pace is very slow. It gets boring for me, but hey, everyone has their own opinion. You have superior control of the battlefield, and you will never, ever die.

A Thief, on the other hand, is a bit tricky.

You can make very tanky builds on a Thief, but they’re much harder to pull off – mostly because they rely on evading, rather than just eating damage. Thieves are possibly the highest burst damage dealers in the game, and so are loved in sPvP and WvW for picking off single targets. A lot of the rotations they use in PvP will not work in PvE though, because the monsters are smarter than people in these cases. If you want to kill things like nobodies business, but also have to really watch what you’re doing, Thief is for you.

Ultimately, I would say Guardian – they’re much easier to play, and they have a lot more defensive utility than a Thief does. However, if you’re good at dodge rolls and avoiding red circles and the like, then Thief would be great.

Sorry I can’t pick and choose, it’s just not in my nature. xD I’ve rolled thousands of alts.

Why not just keep and play both alts? I have 5 characters (Mesmer, Ranger, Elementalist, Warrior and Necromancer) that I play more or less equally. If/when a 6th race is added, like the Tengu, I’ll be rolling up a Tengu Thief to add to the roster.

I have both level 80 guardian and thief. Thief was my very first character, and explored the most with, while Guardian now has become my favorite and main.

For solo-ing PvE, nothing beats Guardian for its survivability. With Guardian, I am always raring to go, explore new world, and take on veterans and multiple mobs by myself. Thief on the other hand, due to the squishiness leveling, I tend to be more careful and reserve when taking on multiple mobs and veterans.

After attaining 80 for both, I also find myself running dungeons with Guardian more often. It is just that knowing my Guardian will likely to survive what ever surprises threw at him, that now I play guardian most of the time. About the only thing I miss when playing Guardian is the running speed I had with my Thief.

Damion,

As a general FYI, the Thief is unofficially slated for a class overhaul. It might even end up being massive. There is no ETA on this process beyond general game dev comments, so it could happen anywhere from 1 to 6 months from now.

1) All forms of Stealth just got a nerf by increasing the cool down timer in between stealth periods by +1 second. This has severely messed up the flow of almost any stealth Thief, which covers the majority of Thief players. However a recent dev post on Reddit (which is where they do a lot of their posting) has indicated that this stealth nerf may be removed for the PvE side of combat.

2) Despite this comment by ArenaNet, tons of people are still whinning about stealth. In my personal opinion, I expect to see stealth get nerfed again within the next 3-6 months. If you’re only focusing on PvE and ArenaNet restores their recent nerf, then it’s likely that you’ll not feel the likely nerf in the near future. Yet if you’re planning on playing a lot of WvW and PvP, it’ll probably hit you hard.

3) ArenaNet devs have made comments that the burst dps potential of a Thief is too bursty. They want to nerf down some of the burst aspects of the class and want to buff up some of its long term damage potential. The only specific comment has been about giving Thief access to Burning, which is the only damage dot type that they currently lack. However that really doesn’t say a lot about what ArenaNet’s true plans are.

My main is a Thief and I love it. However I’m a non-traditional build that doesn’t stealth or do mega dps bursts. As a Sword/Pistol build that’s designed around using the Venomous Aura trait to AoE buff myself and those around me (including our Thieves Guild temporary pets), I’ve been able to dodge a lot of the Thief nerfs. Yet my specific build is odd by Thief standards since “it doesn’t play like a Thief”, which is sometimes thrown around like an insult.

Guardian is currently in more demand since people always expect Thief players to be running glass cannon dps specs. But having said that, both classes are very viable during the leveling process and at the level cap. Play whatever you like and make sure that you excell at your class. If you’re one of the better players, most non-idiots won’t care about your specific class when you’re bringing so much to the table.