Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone! I played gw2 at the release on engi, and now back in game. So i leveled thief first, to lvl 20, and i am not satisfied. He seems to be weak, very low health and defenses, and not such as “crazy” damage as you can wait. I know that thiefs are strong in pvp with their burst backstab damage, but i’ve seen many videos, where ranger hits out 60% thief’s hp with only rapid fire, so mb he is not so strong? My question – is ranger more robust than the thief? Is he still viable in pvp, can he beat other classes with no probs? I want a class which will be comfortable in solo pve, cause i like to explore, will have worthy damage for dungeons and not being a kitten in pvp (i dont need an imba, i just dont want to feel myself weak all the way). Please help me making a choice – to delete thief and begin ranger (cause i dont have more slots) or to continue thief?

Moreso WvW than PvP. In sPvP, thieves are arguably the weakest class. A big thing with thieves is that they’re heavily-dependent on their traits for their damage, and the durability just isn’t there without extensive traiting/gearing towards defense which obviously cuts down immensely on the damage. Thief success throughout most content is directly related to player skill, and admittedly with the trait level requirements being pushed back to 80 for the grandmaster tier, is one of the most difficult/frustrating to level up from a lack of power early on. That said, they’re a very strong class in terms of late-game DPS in both PvE and WvW, and can be very desirable in highly-organized sPvP groups.

Open-world PvE, the ranger is probably the strongest class as the pets are SO durable, and mob AI is relatively poor such that it will attack the pet until it dies and the mobs don’t really do anything but that. Rangers have medium-tier base health, whereas thieves have low, so yes, they can be considered as more robust in terms of raw numbers, but again, traits and skilled play paired with stealth can make the thief fairly resilient later on. A tank/healing ranger, however, will be significantly more durable, granted it will deal less damage.

The ranger is probably more new-player friendly, especially if you’re not used to the squishy assassin role, and with the recent buff to Rapid Fire, can deal very large numbers in PvP and WvW. Rangers using bows are on the very weak side of dungeon-based PvE content, though, as their pets are liabilities for their damage dealt, and the dependency of staying at range keeps them away from party buffs/buffing the party. The thief will definitely out-DPS the ranger in group dungeon content.

It’s really about your preferred styles of play and how long you’re willing to stick with it/learn the game. Thieves take a lot of work to learn and level, but ultimately will be pretty much as effective. Not saying rangers don’t require skill, but I think the thief, especially during the leveling areas of the game, requires a lot more effort.

Be sure that if you’re playing the thief to not use the dagger as a mainhand weapon until 80, basically. You’re going to be totally dependent on the Hidden Killer grandmaster trait, which isn’t unlocked until then, and the sword/x builds are overall much safer with almost identical damage outputs before getting HK and dagger-based traits. I’d ask for some help in the thief subsection for more info on leveling up as a new thief.

Simply, if you’re not enjoying the thief in terms of its style, you probably won’t continue to. If you prefer the long range style, then by all means try out a ranger. You don’t have a ton to lose since you’re not very high level yet on the thief, either.

thank you so much! hope i will be successful as a ranger)

Banebladez.9057:

Hello everyone! I played gw2 at the release on engi, and now back in game. So i leveled thief first, to lvl 20, and i am not satisfied. He seems to be weak, very low health and defenses, and not such as “crazy” damage as you can wait. I know that thiefs are strong in pvp with their burst backstab damage, but i’ve seen many videos, where ranger hits out 60% thief’s hp with only rapid fire, so mb he is not so strong? My question – is ranger more robust than the thief? Is he still viable in pvp, can he beat other classes with no probs? I want a class which will be comfortable in solo pve, cause i like to explore, will have worthy damage for dungeons and not being a kitten in pvp (i dont need an imba, i just dont want to feel myself weak all the way). Please help me making a choice – to delete thief and begin ranger (cause i dont have more slots) or to continue thief?

Please just keep in mind Rapid Fire only deals damage if the target does nothing about it. In general, any LB ranger that does what you said is dead as soon as you start hitting him.