Guild Wars 2

is it just me but in my story as an asura thief i seem to die pretty quickly … is it that i suck or is this feeling felt by other players

like the quest “down the hatch” i get instant downed by the turrent with one hit..

Yes, there are some very tough spots, but keep at it. I died like 20 times to one single encounter. Just one ‘boss’ fight. But then I learned to dodge, and evade, and maybe switch weapons, and use utilities. Upped my skill level right away.

Thief may be the hardest class in PvE as it’s a beast in PvP. Until you level and get traited out you will feel a lot of pain. As a thief you need to get better a kyting and letting your NPC friends take a bit of pain while you do the killing. The ‘frontal assault’ that you can do with a warrior is not what you want to do as a thief. For one of my missions I found if I moved too fast I’d agro many things but if I just sniped with my pistol I could take everything one at a time.

Don’t fight strait on, do your best to move in stealth and let others take the shots for you.

Thief has more health than ele, just sayin

Personally I have changed my Traits to better protect me during long battles. Try using more defensive build traits that will allow you to survive longer. Just like you I was feeling the burden of repairs and such while playing the game from my constant deaths. Since there is no accurate trait builder websites I will just type out the passives:
Weapons: Sword/Pistol – Shortbow
Healing: Hide in Shadows
Utility: Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge, Ambush
Ultimate: Thieves Guild

Traits: 30 Shadow Arts, 30 Acrobatics, and 10 Trickery or 10 Critical Strikes

Main passives from traits: Blinding powder on 25% health, Stealth lasts 1 second longer, Gain might when you stealth, Gain swiftness when you dodge, Gain back endurance when you dodge, 10% bonus damage when your endurance is not full.

When picking between trickery and critical strikes you are choosing raw damage vs utility. For pve I find that having the 10 point passive “Instictual Response” allows you to auto-stealth past mobs without wasting any cooldowns.

Optional 10-point Passives: Infusion of Shadow allows you to gain initiative EVERY TIME YOU STEALTH, Shadow Protector makes your stealth heal you and any friendlies that are stealthed by your effects, (the 30 point shadow Arts is purely up to you) Shadow’s Rejuvination has you regen health while you are stealthed.
Power of Inertia gives you might every time you dodge, Assassin’s reward heals you when you use your abilities, and by far the most important passive, Quick Pockets gives you 3 initiative when you swap weapons in combat.

when going trickery i prefer instinctual response, if i choose to go critical strikes i do Side Strike.

Have a look on your stats.. for me, a shortbow is pretty helpful because of AoE skills (bomb and venon)…even though i prefer the pistol looks! lol

I’m always surprised at the number of thieves who say they use Sword/dagger or Sword/pistol… I find sword the slowest and least thief-y feeling of the weapons.. but anyway, to each their own.

Another route is dagger/dagger, and then a ranged set for your other weapon(s). Dagger/dagger provides a great set of tools to survive in PvE — as Death Blossum allows you to lay down a lot of AoE bleed damage on single mobs or groups, and evade their attacks while doing it. Plus, because by its nature it flips you onto the back side of the enemy, it generally takes them some time to re-orient to your new position, and by that time, you’ve either (1) gone into stealth and prepared to slam them with a backstab, (2) rolled out of the way with Roll for Initiative, or (3) flipped into another Death Blossom to yet again disorient and bleed them.

I personally play d/d and d/pistol, and with those weapons, then make use of a lot of stealth and bleeds. Often it feels like you’re just toying around with monsters, downing them at your leisure with that combination

I’m an Asura Thief at level 31 right now and so far I haven’t died yet in any of my story quests. I went 10 into Trickery, 10 into Critical Strikes, then starting on Shadow Arts. I’m stacking Power/Precision/Condition Damage on my gear. So far its been working. Get in, DB, DB, run around and kite, get in, DB, steal, kite. Rinse and repeat. If its a group of 4+ then I drop caltrops and kite with my ShortBow.

If you find yourself dying a lot, you should switch up your gear, maybe approach a new play style that works for you, maybe even just changing your trait line will help you. Or maybe its what you said, learn to dodge and move.

I’ve had np with thief in pve.

Yes, thief can be difficult as it is tied with Elementalist and Guardian for the lowest Health Pool. If someone says “You must suck. I never die as a thief.”, they are lying. Have them type /deaths in-game.

I find that using a Short-Bow with caltrops helps prevent taking damage for most of the fights. Switching to the daggers when you cannot evade much more helps burn the enemies down quickly. Stealth (Hide in Shadows) frequently to give yourself rejuvenation and drop threat.

Level 60 Thief

Weapons: Dagger/Dagger & Short-Bow
The reason for the Short-Bow over pistols is that I can do much more AoE and be more evasive (Disabling Shot & Infiltrator’s Arrow) with the bow than I can with the pistols.

-Skills-

Healing: Hide in Shadows
The others don’t come close to the effectiveness of this ability. It drops threat, heals, and cures burn/poison/bleed.

Utility: Caltrops, Blinding Powder, and Shadow Refuge*
Caltrops are almost a must. They slow and damage all enemies that walk over them which is a great help when kiting with the short-bow. Blinding Powder and Shadow Refuge can be swapped out for whatever really. I like Blinding Powder since it is an extra stealth which can help to get out of combat. I recently started using Shadow Refuge and haven’t really formed an opinion on it as of yet. It does give life-steal when shooting projectiles through the combo field.

Elite: Thieves Guild OR Dagger Storm
I swap these out as I need to; depending on the challenges I’m facing. Group Events I will use Dagger Storm since the cooldown is only 90s and you do massive AoE damage. Thieves Guild helps when solo questing since the 2 thieves that spawn will hold threat and deal significant damage.

(http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_thief_skills)

I played a rogue in WoW and i wanted to try out a melee thief even if pistol is better for survival. I went d/d and at first it was very frustating coming out of fights with 50% hp. Even with Death Blossom or Flanking Strike giving me an evade bonus some of my early fights still made me want to nerd rage.

I ended up respec’ing my traits and i’m at level 24 right now with 10 pts in Shadow Arts traits and starting to put points in Acrobatics. All my gear has +toughness on it, weapons and jewelry included. My armor has 6 different kinds of runes, with the 1st bonus being +toughness. I pretty much didnt worry about the 2nd rune bonuses. I probably should have went with vitality at lower levels then vit/tough at higher levels to help soak up condition damage, but its too late for that now.

Im trying to find a build I like that has a balance of defense and offense. I was dying very fast with my deadly arts/trickery dagger build, even with all the lotus evading, so I tried a shadow/acro build and i could basically tank 3-4 mobs without losing much health. That was fun, but I didnt like how long it took me to kill something.

I might try deadly arts/acro or deadly/shadow.