Guild Wars 2

This is a pretty simple noob question, I admit, but how high is the thief’s skill curve, as professions go?

Among the highest

Somewhere below druid, rev, and Mesmer.

On skills alone pretty simple. Then it depends on the game type. Open world thief is pretty dumb.

WvW and PvP are two different experiences and the skills required are quite hard to master. PvP is pretty much all about map reading.

PvE – Not applicable
WvW – very low skillcap
PvP – highest possible skillcap

Open world, no profession is very complicated. In fact almost every enemy you can just stand in front of an autoattack to death with no skills or dodging. In WvW, most thieves just run around aimlessly trying to gank newbies with a preset combo. and run away if they don’t succeed immediately.

For PvP, thief is a gamechanger and the highest skill cap IMO. Most thieves in PvP are the reason a team loses, and a good thief just blows the game wide open.

Thank you for the detailed analysis! May I ask about Necro/Reaper, Berserker/Warrior, or Guardian as far as skill required?

Every profession on every build takes about the same skill. Thief is sort of an outlier because it’s either a disaster or a godsend (in PvP).

Everything is mostly about knowing when to dodge/interrupt/where to go, etc., in all game modes, i.e. not profession-dependent.

Fluffball.8307:

Open world, no profession is very complicated. In fact almost every enemy you can just stand in front of an autoattack to death with no skills or dodging.

While this is strictly true, it’s rather misleading. For many classes such as Mesmer, Ele, Engi, and most condi builds, autoattack spam is extremely poor damage and most people including the extreme casuals will end up pursuing more complex rotations simply so they don’t waste as much time killing trash mobs. Thief being the one exception here since autoattack spam is highest dps.

I also disagree about thief in sPvP. Mesmer, Druid, and Rev are significantly more demanding classes in terms of mechanics, rotations, and map awareness. Most of thief’s skill requirement comes from knowing what to dodge and what to interrupt, and rotations. However none of those things are unique to thief, and thief has a far easier time managing those things than other classes.