Guild Wars 2

I decided to roll from necros to thief and quite frankly I’m struggling to understand how to play it. My crit chance is 74%, ferocity 225%, and my power is 2075.

As for traits I’m running Deadly Arts, Critical Strikes, and Dare devil

As for weapons I tend to use d/p- s/p -d/d

The thing is is when I play with or against other thieves it seems like they strike faster and harder than I do. For instance the last match I played the other thief was 11-0 and I had died at least 4 times if not more by that point.

I tried watching youtube vids, but some of the vids I found were vague at times or didn’t clearly explain things so I gave up on it.

I try asking the other thieves since they obviously know what theyre doing, but I usually get told I suck or one day youll be good etc. I’m not sure how that’s so if when every time I try and learn from someone else I get talked down to.

So I’m making a last ditch effort to try here in hopes that at least someone will help me cause as I may enjoy it, I’m on the verge of deleting my thief and giving up completely

First off ditch critical strikes and take Trickery. Trickery gives you better initiative management, in addition to boonrip on steal which is very important. Secondly get a shortbow for your off weapon, the #5 skill is the best way to escape from fights that have gone bad, and moreover will get you around the map much faster.

No offence my friend but critical strikes has no impact in PvP and your build is missing the one trait line that gives the most impact.

Running trickery is absolutely essential in in PvP and I would highly recommenced you follow this build if you want to have good impact and team synergy in spvp https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Daredevil_-_Dagger/Pistol

In short trickery increases your maximum initiative. Grants initiative, boons and rips boons from your target for you and your allies whilst dazing your target.

So the feeling of them being faster may be the fact that they are dazing you, stealing your bones and have more initiative to spend than you.

Maybe you should watch Sindrener since he has a lot of videos on D/P Thief. He has a lot of small techniques useful anywhere, and gives a lot of tips vocally on how to rotate as Thief. Of course, he is also one of the best Thieves mechanically which you can learn a lot from.

Don’t create your own build, use the meta D/P build first to learn why it works. Trickery grants you a 20.75 second Steal CD, and landing Steal grants you a lot of advantages: 2 initiative, daze, stolen item, vigor, fury etc. Deadly Arts has traits that help secure kills, and Improvisation can actually reset utility CDs to give you an edge.

If you’re not understanding what you’re doing, just randomly playing won’t get you anywhere but frustration. Sorry that quite a few Thieves tend to be egoists, but you also have to know that no one has responsibility to teach you.

Some tips about your playstyle (I’m not a good Thief, rarely play the class):

You are the fastest +1 roamer. Look for existing even fights, focus on a target to down them quickly and leave for the next fight. You seek to unbalance fights as much as you can.

Your spike is mostly Backstab Steals, with interrupts from Steal daze and Pistol 4 proccing Pulmonary Impact to supplement your damage. Your Dagger autos are also very good damage, so while you are chasing a target with Dagger 3/on top of them with Pistol 4 fishing for Headshot interrupts, try to get a few swings in.

Stow your weapon, make it a habit. You can interrupt other actions so that you can get Headshots off when you need it RIGHT NOW instead of waiting for e.g. a Dagger auto to finish. You should also stow, because you don’t want enemy Thieves to proc interrupt PI on you unnecessarily.

Basi Venom allows your otherwise blockable attacks to go through… blocks. Such as a Guard/Warrior using their blocks and you need that Steal now. Basi Steal will allow your Steal to go through.

You achieve your speed by memorizing port spots and reaching them with Shortbow 5. You can maintain permanent swiftness easily. You can disengage with your stealth and mobility, there is no need to die in fights.

Watch enemy Thief. You are racing against them to perform +1s, and you are also in position to stop them from successfully performing +1s. Watch minimap and be aware of where an enemy Thief can be.

You went from the class with the lowest skill floor/ceiling to play the class with the highest skill floor/ceiling.

You need to take ur lumps mate & then start analyzing how you went wrong

Azukas.1426:

You went from the class with the lowest skill floor/ceiling to play the class with the highest skill floor/ceiling.

You need to take ur lumps mate & then start analyzing how you went wrong

But but but thieves are OP and ez/faceroll to play!!! according to majority of non-thief players on this forums anyway.

On more serious note, OP, if you don’t know how to play the class, start with metabattle.com (it contains most commonly used builds with some explanations) and watch Sindrender’s stream to get idea about gameplay (although i assume he won’t stream this week). Once you get hang of the class you can start to experiment with the build and adjust it to own liking/gameplay. GL and welcome to teef club

Azukas.1426:

You went from the class with the lowest skill floor/ceiling to play the class with the highest skill floor/ceiling.

You need to take ur lumps mate & then start analyzing how you went wrong

not so, hammer warrior is worst case. i tried guard, didnt get hot to play it, then necro and things goes well.

ugrakarma.9416:

Azukas.1426:

You went from the class with the lowest skill floor/ceiling to play the class with the highest skill floor/ceiling.

You need to take ur lumps mate & then start analyzing how you went wrong

not so, hammer warrior is worst case. i tried guard, didnt get hot to play it, then necro and things goes well.

Cause necro is the only well user for who don’t have hot!

Vitali.5039:

ugrakarma.9416:

Azukas.1426:

You went from the class with the lowest skill floor/ceiling to play the class with the highest skill floor/ceiling.

You need to take ur lumps mate & then start analyzing how you went wrong

not so, hammer warrior is worst case. i tried guard, didnt get hot to play it, then necro and things goes well.

Cause necro is the only well user for who don’t have hot!

LOL that is not true. Core thief, burn guard, condi engi just to name few. You may not be able to compete with those at top 100 or so but in lower ratings those builds can work if you know what you are doing.

Cynz.9437:

Vitali.5039:

ugrakarma.9416:

Azukas.1426:

You went from the class with the lowest skill floor/ceiling to play the class with the highest skill floor/ceiling.

You need to take ur lumps mate & then start analyzing how you went wrong

not so, hammer warrior is worst case. i tried guard, didnt get hot to play it, then necro and things goes well.

Cause necro is the only well user for who don’t have hot!

LOL that is not true. Core thief, burn guard, condi engi just to name few. You may not be able to compete with those at top 100 or so but in lower ratings those builds can work if you know what you are doing.

You don’t get the joke..

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well

Vitali.5039:

Cynz.9437:

Vitali.5039:

ugrakarma.9416:

Azukas.1426:

You went from the class with the lowest skill floor/ceiling to play the class with the highest skill floor/ceiling.

You need to take ur lumps mate & then start analyzing how you went wrong

not so, hammer warrior is worst case. i tried guard, didnt get hot to play it, then necro and things goes well.

Cause necro is the only well user for who don’t have hot!

LOL that is not true. Core thief, burn guard, condi engi just to name few. You may not be able to compete with those at top 100 or so but in lower ratings those builds can work if you know what you are doing.

You don’t get the joke..

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well

Yeah, it is hard for me to understand a joke written in broken English.

Cynz.9437:

Vitali.5039:

Cynz.9437:

Vitali.5039:

ugrakarma.9416:

Azukas.1426:

You went from the class with the lowest skill floor/ceiling to play the class with the highest skill floor/ceiling.

You need to take ur lumps mate & then start analyzing how you went wrong

not so, hammer warrior is worst case. i tried guard, didnt get hot to play it, then necro and things goes well.

Cause necro is the only well user for who don’t have hot!

LOL that is not true. Core thief, burn guard, condi engi just to name few. You may not be able to compete with those at top 100 or so but in lower ratings those builds can work if you know what you are doing.

You don’t get the joke..

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Well

Yeah, it is hard for me to understand a joke written in broken English.

Sorry bro, can we fix it?

Dont forget that our elusiviness is one of our classes strong points. Evading dodging trying to confuse te enemy. I pllayed some necro in the past mainly in pve but i can tell you know thief is alot different and alot harder mainly because of the tank difference. Even with a decent amt of hp, thieves can still drop in 3 hits. Also try guerrilla tactics, i play s/d and it works well, especially when out numbered. With d/p stealth up-backstab-drop blindingpowder on the enemy- auto him until you are not revealed, and repeat. If needed run to heal

Azukas.1426:

You went from the class with the lowest skill floor/ceiling to play the class with the highest skill floor/ceiling.

Revenant, Mesmer, and Elementalist all have higher skill requirements for entry level play. And if you are trying to play at skillcap, then we can add Druid to that list.

The skill intensive part of thief is being able to read the fight, and read the map. The actual mechanical complexity of thief is really low.

Ralkuth.1456:

Maybe you should watch Sindrener since he has a lot of videos on D/P Thief. He has a lot of small techniques useful anywhere, and gives a lot of tips vocally on how to rotate as Thief. Of course, he is also one of the best Thieves mechanically which you can learn a lot from.

Don’t create your own build, use the meta D/P build first to learn why it works. Trickery grants you a 20.75 second Steal CD, and landing Steal grants you a lot of advantages: 2 initiative, daze, stolen item, vigor, fury etc. Deadly Arts has traits that help secure kills, and Improvisation can actually reset utility CDs to give you an edge.

If you’re not understanding what you’re doing, just randomly playing won’t get you anywhere but frustration. Sorry that quite a few Thieves tend to be egoists, but you also have to know that no one has responsibility to teach you.

Some tips about your playstyle (I’m not a good Thief, rarely play the class):

You are the fastest +1 roamer. Look for existing even fights, focus on a target to down them quickly and leave for the next fight. You seek to unbalance fights as much as you can.

Your spike is mostly Backstab Steals, with interrupts from Steal daze and Pistol 4 proccing Pulmonary Impact to supplement your damage. Your Dagger autos are also very good damage, so while you are chasing a target with Dagger 3/on top of them with Pistol 4 fishing for Headshot interrupts, try to get a few swings in.

Stow your weapon, make it a habit. You can interrupt other actions so that you can get Headshots off when you need it RIGHT NOW instead of waiting for e.g. a Dagger auto to finish. You should also stow, because you don’t want enemy Thieves to proc interrupt PI on you unnecessarily.

Basi Venom allows your otherwise blockable attacks to go through… blocks. Such as a Guard/Warrior using their blocks and you need that Steal now. Basi Steal will allow your Steal to go through.

You achieve your speed by memorizing port spots and reaching them with Shortbow 5. You can maintain permanent swiftness easily. You can disengage with your stealth and mobility, there is no need to die in fights.

Watch enemy Thief. You are racing against them to perform +1s, and you are also in position to stop them from successfully performing +1s. Watch minimap and be aware of where an enemy Thief can be.

This is great info… another thing I like to do is combo a heartseeker with the steal backstab combo, if you hs and steal right before the hs will land you can combo it with backstab for big damage, that’s probably how the other thiefs are bursting you down faster.

MasterD.4790:

This is great info… another thing I like to do is combo a heartseeker with the steal backstab combo, if you hs and steal right before the hs will land you can combo it with backstab for big damage, that’s probably how the other thiefs are bursting you down faster.

That’s really situational though. In the majority of situations, you’ll apply much better pressure by simply autoattacking normally. It’s much harder to deal with a thief that’s just autoattacking + headshot than it is to deal with a thief that’s trying to be fancy with heartseeker.

Thank you all for the advice, I wasn’t looking for someone to hold my hand, but this ^ this is really all I wanted, simple advice

I’ll start looking into sindrener, I was watching Kuroi at first but, sadly he doesn’t play anymore

Yet again thank you all for the amazing advice and heads up, it is greatly appreciated