Guild Wars 2

First of all, let me give a little background about myself. I’ve been playing MMOs for more than a decade. In most MMOs, I traditionally play the thief/rogue/assassin type class. Unfortunately, I found myself dying a lot in beta as a Thief so I initially switched to Ranger at release. As an 80 Ranger, I didn’t do to well and took a long break from the game up up until about a month ago. I never did greatly as a Ranger. I had a ton of fun in group WvW play but if I went off by myself, I was easily killed even in 99% of 1v1 situations.

Since I’ve returned, I leveled an Elementalist to 80 but it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea aside from d/d. After some further research and WvW experience, I decided I would go Guardian. I hadn’t always been one for survivability or “simplicity” but I’m not the best PvPer in GW2, despite being great at most other MMO’s (4 time Gladiator in WoW, three of which as a Rogue) and the idea of being able to help out my team while still being able to hold my own if I were to want to go roaming (this is my preferred thing to do in WvW but I often join the zerg for the reward incentives).

Not that I don’t love Guardian and find it viable for what I want to do, despite having an immense amount of difficulty tagging anything in zergs due to low fps and scepter speed/melee range, but I’m looking to level another character and perhaps find something more suitable to my liking. So far, I’ve narrowed it between Engineer and Thief.

My initial experience with Thief hasn’t been good. I’m frustrated because I see others doing so well, especially in sPvP, but I found myself dying instantly and frantically trying to accustom myself to the initiative/no-cooldown gameplay mechanic, which I must say I absolutely love. On the other hand, Engineer just doesn’t seem to have near as much potential for me – aside from support, range, and fun goofing off with a flamethrower. I’m in dire need of figuring out which of these classes is right for me as someone who doesn’t necessarily like dying instantly, wants to hold their own in 1v1 or maybe even be able to drop someone in a group without feeling like the whole attempt was futile, and being able to roam WvW without feeling useless.

tl;dr; Can’t decide between Engineer or Thief. I like WvW roaming and being able to hold my own and not dying instantly. Please take into consideration the patch notes changes and feel free to ask any other questions if it’ll help you help me.

And before anyone answers with this, I’ve tried both classes and have a lot of fun on each aside from the fact that Thief particularly seems to have a learning curve. Will I get used to it, eventually?

Engineer, if you build him right.

HGH elixirs, with toolkit or nades and permaswift/permavigor. Take your pick (of weapon kit).

If you get REALLY good at a Thief, chances are there’s little chance you’ll die, but I think you have to be playing it quite a lot to learn it.

If you think thief has a learning curve, I dont think you’ve played your engi enough. Engis are more than able to hold their own in 1v1s, but picking targets off a group is harder because you dont have a non-counterable mechanic like stealth to escape easily.

You can achieve pretty much the same thing with a thief and an engi depending on your build. If you want to go the easy way, roll a thief.

That’s my opinion though. Honestly, play which you have the most fun with and create your own build fitting to your playstyle.

Hope it inspires you

Very much a biased opinion, but I love my Engi so it gets my vote for WvW.

My current build has a list of knockbacks, pulls, blocks, leaps, immobs/cripples, etc. all on relative short cooldowns, so if I end up in a 1v1 I can’t win, I have more than enough options to disengage and get to safety

Just a preliminary thank you as I continue my consideration for all of your answers and contributions. It’s highly appreciated to say the least.

engineer play is MUCH more rewarding than thief play. stealth isnt necessary to escape alot of the time as we have numerous CC abilities, blocks etc so I dont find escaping too problematic.

I feel like a kitten when playing my thief and actually play a condi p/d spec. fun to play but engie is more rewarding in my opinion