Guild Wars 2

Hi just like my title states I am trying to decide on either playing a thief or ele. After the patch I am just curious which is better for pve for doing fractals, farming, and some WvW.

I wanna play a more melee role not sure how well ele does that compared to thief. I like thief except I started one and their survivability at low lvls is very poor. That or I am just playing wrong lol.

Ele I enjoy as well but I don’t like switching elements every 10 secs gets really annoying.

If you don’t enjoy attunement hopping, don’t play ele unless you plan on being a full glass lightning hammer build for PvE. Even that will take a lot of experience, as your survival will be completely dependent on how well you can evade, and you will primarily be a group player, as your damage will be partly dependent upon others.

Thief has good survivability later on, but that survivability is dependent on how skilled you are at avoiding damage and timing stealth/teleports. Don’t get discouraged if you have trouble early on, as it’s a difficult class and you don’t have your traits in yet.

Elementalist takes more skill to do well. A lot more skill. I’m adequate as a Thief and take nothing but dirt naps on my (admittedly only level 30) Ele. Though I did start another Ele as a shill for RP and got him to level 12 easily enough after a year of practice playing the game. Ele might be more useful to groups; it is a constant frustration to me on my Thief that I’m not buffing my friends.

Try one of each for a few levels, see how it grabs you. Be warned it takes a huge amount of time to unlock all attunements on all Ele weapons.

I love my d/d ele. Its friggen fun and fast paced. I feel like I’m walking through mud on my warrior, thief, and ranger in comparison. google “crystal desert dagger dagger elementalist” for an awesome guide.

oh, btw. i have had no problems with 4-8 mobs at a time as long as i have room for movement (dodge!). I can handle most veterans even two levels higher than I am and sometimes two veterans at a time. Power, toughness, vitality gear. This is my first 80.

You can play close combat with a dagger ele, but admittedly thief has more weapon options. However, the Ele has 4 attunements worth of skills so you still have alot of variety in that one weapon set. However, if you dislike the attunement system, you will dislike the ele.

They are both squishy, but the thief can mitigate this later on with a plethora of escapes, stealths, and resets. The only solution for the ele is simply to not suck, using your dodge and attunement swap smartly.

The game isn’t at the point where one class will be denied a group, however my experience is that eles are more versatile and ‘fit’ into most lineups easier than a thief.