I main a warrior, but I have been trying to put more play time on my thief because I really enjoy it. The problem is that I am absolutely awful in dungeons. I get downed constantly. I understand it may take some practice, but I’m just so bad and I honestly don’t understand how people play thief in dungeons and contribute nice DPS while staying alive, without just camping shortbow.
I tried zerk gear and build and I just can’t stay alive. I tried zerk gear and a survival build, using stealth to clear conditions and such, and I can stay alive pretty well but my damage is meh. For those of you who run thief zerker and do it well, how do you do it? Are there indispensable utilities or traits you can recommend that keep you up while dealing out nice damage, or is it just about having so much practice that you never miss a dodge/evade?
I know many fights pretty well from having done them on my warrior, but warrior is just so much easier. You just stand there with healing signet and take attacks right in the face and you’re fine. Thief is like a 0.05 sec mis-timing and you’re downed again. Any advice?
anet? are you there? are you reading this anet? please can understand the plight of thieves now? STOP NERFING US!
Sword/Pistol is a nice dungeon set (with Shortbow secondary), since you have access to Blinds (useful for trash), a repeatable stun, and auto-evade. If that’s acceptable to you, it comes recommended. DPS is very good on Sword as well. Lots of trait setups work, and you can run full zerkers (or mostly zerkers) if you wish. I suggest at least 15 Acrobatics, for Feline Grace.
Unfortunately, you will never have it as easy as Warrior. We have the lowest health and so-so Armor, so your non-dodge damage mitigation is mostly limited to what you can get from your party members. Although dodging is very good, and learning the “tells” of various bosses will help your survival chances considerably.
That is what you get for playing the strongest and most op forum class.
For dungeons it is most crucial to learn attack patterns and train yourself to manage your dodge rolls, evades and ranged combat accordingly. Its not about taking something with you, just need to watch and learn. A good start would be to practice dodging with shortbow in melee range. Shortbow 3 is very similar to regular dodge roll and can be used several times too.
The next step would be having a definite set of skills for every boss and/or party. In several cases something as simple as changing healing skill before fight can result wonders.
Some cases might even need trait adjustments.
And first thing you must know and never doubt – it is both absolutely normal and crucial to have all weapon sets available to you in your inventory and switch them around all the time, almost always keeping shortbow on yourself.
Granted you are zerker thief (and no other should be doing dungeons) you will do more damage with any weapon, even shortbow, than any support build or a dead thief with a single set will ever manage.
Waiting for Clumsy and pals to tell you thief is fine if not OP in dungeons, and that you should never ever be getting hit even when multi tasking and that you need to L2P.
Waiting for Clumsy and pals to tell you thief is fine if not OP in dungeons, and that you should never ever be getting hit even when multi tasking and that you need to L2P.
I get that you don’t agree with Clumsy et al, but honestly I have no problem with being told to L2P as long as that is accompanied by some suggestions. Or if the answer is simply ‘never miss a dodge’ then that’s fine, I’ll just never be that kind of perfect player.
Thank you all who commented.
If you want to be help to your team go trickery. I personally run 0/30/0/20/20 in dungeons. This gives me alot of vigor uptime, lots of dodges, moderate health pool, and lots of boons for me and my allies.
As for weapon sets, you have to get used to swapping for every fight. Some pulls need Sword/Pistol, some fights need Shortbow, and yet others need P/P or D/D.
It comes down to experience and knowing when you should use what weapon sets and utilities. If you have any specific questions i can answer them, i do run all dungeons and top tier fractals with my thief very efficiently.
Try and position yourself to the side or behind mobs whenever possible. For trash pulls use sword/pistol and drop black powder just before they come into melee range, after that signet of malice and pistol whip spam should keep your hp topped off. For most boss fights you should be using d/d and it’s just a matter of learning when to dodge.
You really don’t need to have lightning reflexes to play a zerk thief, it just takes a bit of practice.
Waiting for Clumsy and pals to tell you thief is fine if not OP in dungeons, and that you should never ever be getting hit even when multi tasking and that you need to L2P.
Guess I shouldn’t disappoint then. But first.
anet? are you there? are you reading this anet? please can understand the plight of thieves now? STOP NERFING US!
I’m not sure if you realize this but pve thieves haven’t been nerfed since assassin’s signet was cut to 15% for 5 attacks. And even that could be considered a buff/nerf combo. That was over a year ago.
snip
You’ve been spoiled by warrior. If you want to play a thief in full berserkers prepare to relearn every fight in the game. Your going to have to learn how to dodge everything. Of course you’d have to do this on really any class that isn’t a warrior or guardian. Some general advice though: take advantage of blind fields (s/p + smokescreen) because they make you invincible to most trash mobs.
edit:
I get that you don’t agree with Clumsy et al, but honestly I have no problem with being told to L2P as long as that is accompanied by some suggestions. Or if the answer is simply ‘never miss a dodge’ then that’s fine, I’ll just never be that kind of perfect player.
Thank you all who commented.
Didn’t see this post. Unless your adamant on using a thief then you’d be better off sticking to your warrior. If you start sacrificing armor and traits for more survivability then you’ll start losing damage fast and probably end up doing more damage on your warrior.
(edited by Clumsy.6257)
I mainly use the thief for dungeons, and I do this because the thief has such strong defensive utility that I can get through the dungeon almost regardless of how incompetent my teammates are..
To survive silvers and vets, there is one thing you can use that makes them a piece of cake: blinds. Using black powder with the pistol off-hand can render a group of enemies nearly useless, letting you face tank 5 mobs with little effort. Smoke screen can set up a wall that lets you block projectiles and blind whomever stands in it, which makes for a good support barrier. There are also spot blinds like Blinding Powder, Signet of Shadows, and Infiltraitor’s arrow. Another not often used option is the Cloaked in Shadow trait with the dagger off-hand, which lets you pulse blind every 3 seconds when you use Cloak and Dagger.
I like to combine Sword + Pistol myself. The sword auto attack inflicts weakness, and the pistol blinds enemies, so with the two combined the few attacks that do get through have a 50% chance of being a fumble. With the signet of malice, I regen a surprising amount of health, and if things get dire I’ll use Dagger storm in a smoke field to blind and heal for massive amounts of health.
Theives also get weakness and stuns. The sword auto is good, but there is also the cluster bomb + choking gas combo, and this works with lotus poison to cause even more weakness. Against enemies that need to be interrupted, the pistol provides plenty of defiant stripping with head shot and pistol whip, and Sword/Dagger has tactical strike to fall back on. We can spam blast finishers with cluster bomb, and this can allow us long duration stealth and weakness.
Against champions, your main weapon is skill evades. Flanking Strike, Death Blossom, Disabling Strike, Roll for initiative, Withdraw, Signet of Agility, and our few sources of vigor allow us to continually dodge champion attacks. The weapon evades work the best out of the bunch. Once you have learned the bosses patterns and tells, you can time and dodge nearly all of their attacks, letting you stay in melee range for maximum damage.
My preferred weapon choice for bosses is the sword/dagger combo. Now, D/D does more single target damage, but Flanking strike has a longer immunity duration, and the ability to steal boons is way too useful for me to give up for most fights.
Anyway, my build is pretty simple:
Although two things to note: First, once I have bloodlust stacks, I switch one pistol to another with a sigil of strength. Second, I have two daggers I switch to that also have force/strength on them.
Although I have considered dropping executioner for Bountiful Theft. That AoE vigor + AoE boon transfer is delicious.
(edited by Blood Red Arachnid.2493)
Thanks Clumsy and Blood, those are helpful suggestions, I’ll start practicing maintaining blinds.
Ok a few things. If it is a dungeon non speed run you know you can pretty much run whatever you like and get away with it. If you are dying often and you aren’t getting the hang of thief just run the dungeon on a class you are more comfortable with to learn it. While it may seem cool the truth is you end up dying having others rez you and it is a pain in the kitten for those around you. Blind fields wont help on most boss fights. you Shouldn’t be dying to most trash as it is. You can run DD with some zerk and valk. Try to get above the one shot range with your hp (think 14k). Run defensive stats until you get used to full zerker but full zerker thief is super squishy and you will not top DPS without massive group support in the form of might stacks and vulnerability. You wont lose much DPS running cavalier or Valk with a trait like hidden killer.
If you still have issues jump on your warrior ( I am not even joking). The main point of a dungeon is to get the loot and get out. You have nothing to prove.
Lock of melee combat assist. Many attack can be avoided by simply walking through a mob (no need to dodge).
Accept the fact that some fights you’ll just have to Short bow through. There are quite a few ranged fights where you will have to just Pew pew it out on PP or SB.
One last thing. For the rest of your play time in this game no matter what class you play try not to get hit. There is no way in hell you’ll learn attack patterns just face tanking. Even if you are on warrior you should not be able to do this. Go to lost shore and see if the champ risen abom is up (spawns after plinx). If he is solo him in melee. If you get hit he gets a stack, and his attacks come in harder and faster. This is a great practice tool for learning to read attack patterns. You may think I am bullkittenting but I am giving some honest advice.
PvE no matter the class is basically learn to dodge, time your evades, and position. Blinds in most dungeons will not help you.
Depends on dungeon. Your main defense is dodging – yes, every other class can dodge and it’s lame, but this is how it is. You can have 3 dodges and some might building by adding 15 points to the vitality trait line. The trick is, you have to constantly watch your enviroment and dodge incoming attacks. CoF p1 and p2 is a good place to practice. If you can do CoF p1 endboss withing taking any damage and staying close to him permanently, that’s a good start.
Condition removal is the harder part. You can either use precision signet as I used to, but you’ll find out it’s horribly uneffective, so I recommend traits here (10 points to toughness line), so you can use all your stealth utilities and weapon skills to remove conditions.
Skipping, running.
Stealth and well positioned and timed teleports. Use the shortbow for it and Shadowstep if you think you’ll need it.
Positioning in fights:
Against single target bosses: try to stay behind it, so can minimalize the incoming damage and your endurance usage. If by any chance you feel a strike coming your way, just dodge through it (facing the boss) and walk back behind him. Easier to avoid longer reach / active time attacks like slow projectiles this way.
Know what you are going against.
If you die a lot, that can be for two reasons. The first, which you think is most likely, is not knowing the class. I’d like to focus on the other option, not knowing the dungeon. You may have done AC or CoF or TA or whatever dungeon a few times or many times with a warrior (unkillable braindead warmachine as I call them), but didn’t as a thief. There is a huge difference what you have to look for, I can tell you that as a thief main with a guardian alt. Things I don’t even feel as a guard, often gets half of my health instantly as a thief with 16k max. Carefully watch out for attack animations. Always have a condition removal ready, because a slightly longer burn, a short bleed or even the weakest poison leads to inevitable death if you don’t remove it.
Use your utility:
you have blinds (pistol, utility)
dazes (pistol)
dodges built into weapon skills (d/d 3, s/p 3 -not in the description but it’s there -).
Dungeon is a job for a TEAM.
It’s always nice to have a water using elementalist or a condition removing guardian on your side. If it’s not a full dps dungeon like CoF or TA, be sure to let them know about condition removal and combo fields. In an optimal case ofc. they should know that on their own.
Clumsy: so you don’t consider these as a nerf:
Seems legit.
Sword 2 should never be used in combat, its a waste of initiative. Those traits should absolutely never be used in PvE. But since you mentioned them, I’m guessing you use them so you’ve also thrown efficiency out the window so why would you care about buffs/nerfs. (edit:) Just to clarify, I said pve thieves not all thieves.
(edited by Clumsy.6257)
^ There is basically no supporting your assertion that PvE Thief hasn’t been nerfed in over a year. You ought to walk that one back if you want to have your opinion taken seriously.
I main a warrior, but I have been trying to put more play time on my thief because I really enjoy it. The problem is that I am absolutely awful in dungeons. I get downed constantly. I understand it may take some practice, but I’m just so bad and I honestly don’t understand how people play thief in dungeons and contribute nice DPS while staying alive, without just camping shortbow.
I tried zerk gear and build and I just can’t stay alive. I tried zerk gear and a survival build, using stealth to clear conditions and such, and I can stay alive pretty well but my damage is meh. For those of you who run thief zerker and do it well, how do you do it? Are there indispensable utilities or traits you can recommend that keep you up while dealing out nice damage, or is it just about having so much practice that you never miss a dodge/evade?
I know many fights pretty well from having done them on my warrior, but warrior is just so much easier. You just stand there with healing signet and take attacks right in the face and you’re fine. Thief is like a 0.05 sec mis-timing and you’re downed again. Any advice?
S/p is your main weapon set. BP-SR-Smoke screen/ShadowStep/SoA are your main utilities. I run with 0/30/30/10/0 and survive in most cases better than any other class in high lvl fractals(30-40). In certain situations you’ll be forced to equip ranged weapons like sb/pp but most of the time you want to melee BP/PW everything. So learn to time your dodge, time your pistol whips and blind everything that doesn’t have defiant buff.
^ There is basically no supporting your assertion that PvE Thief hasn’t been nerfed in over a year. You ought to walk that one back if you want to have your opinion taken seriously.
I couldn’t find release notes for October, November and December of 2012. Also, I left out the months that didn’t contain any profession-specific balance notes. Some months had 2 updates. We did have 1 major nerf, 4 seconds of revealed, but that was reverted a long time ago.
January 2013 – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-January-28-2013
February 2013 – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-February-26-2013/first#post1639231
March 2013 – https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-March-26-2013/first#post1856151
April 2013 – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/launcher/april-30-2013-flame-and-frost-retribution/
May 2013 – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/last-stand-at-southsun/
June 2013 – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/june-11-content-release-notes/
July 2013 – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/july-23-content-release-notes/
August 2013 – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/queens-jubilee-release-notes/
August – 2013 https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/clockwork-chaos-release-notes/
September 2013 – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/release-notes-for-super-adventure-box-back-to-school/
October 2013 – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/release-notes-for-blood-and-madness/
October 2013 – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/release-notes-for-tower-of-nightmares/
comming from person who likes d/d in pve: never miss dodge and pray your target dies before you get downed
there is reason why any decent thief is usually the last person to die on high lv fractals: at lv 49 it doesn’t matter if you play tanky class or not, everything can one shot you and since thieves have to dodge they are more used to it, i think
(edited by Cynz.9437)
Warrior is much easier in dungeons. You don’t need to change weapons often. You don’t need to change traits and skills much. Common knowledge tactics like stacking nearly always favor heavy classes. Thieves still aren’t in such a bad place though and once you learn the class you can make a lot of adjustments for different fights to make things easier. My survival tips would be
- use all the weapon sets
- don’t stand in front of dangerous mobs
- blind anything without defiant
- have alternative tactics on hand (like SoM, daggerstorm, caltrops)
- plan ahead what defense you’ll use next (weapon evade, dodge, smoke, etc)
All the combat knowledge you’ve picked up on your warrior should be useful. I was certainly able to take more risks on my warrior, find out the key dodges, and then take my thief into the same melee areas.
Warrior is much easier in dungeons. You don’t need to change weapons often.
Huh? My Warrior is changing weapons all the time. That’s why the meta has the Fast Hands trait. If you mean actually altering sets, swaps to warhorn for weakness in Fractals/Swiftness between groups, Sword for block or Shield for difficult trash runs. Whereas a thief has swaps between S/P and D/D dependant on trash or boss … and that’s about it.
Sure Warrior is easier, but not because of that. It’s easier because of higher HP, higher armor, and arguably more dodges, all while having an easier highest-DPS to achieve so your focus can be on avoidance.
Thanks everyone for continuing to comment, there are some very helpful suggestions in here, and I am putting them to practice =D
Sword 2 should never be used in combat, its a waste of initiative. Those traits should absolutely never be used in PvE. But since you mentioned them, I’m guessing you use them so you’ve also thrown efficiency out the window so why would you care about buffs/nerfs. (edit:) Just to clarify, I said pve thieves not all thieves.
Sword 2 became bad after it no longer broke stun and the increased cast time on IR, but it wasn’t a waste of initiative, there’s nothing wrong with a good engage and disengage and you can save your dodges for later. Wth are you using your initiative on anyways? It barely cost anything and you are definitely not spamming it… And you did skip this in your list. :P
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-June-25th-2013/first#post2339673
But you are correct. PvE thieves have not recieved a lot of major nerfs in about the past year, except for the initiative spammers in the Dec 10th patch, but before January 2013… :/
ive read through the suggestions and I see a lot of people recommending s/p and perma blinds, so I wont waste your time (I like a run this combo to, and its as great/helpful as they say) but what I do want to mention is p/p. a lot of people don’t use it and hate it, but with 0/30/0/10/20, I use s/p, p/p. the last line gives you three extra init and bounceing shots. with unload you get 8 shots, each with 50% to bounce up to three times. so on ave that’s 8+4+2+1=15 hits (+/-) in a very short amount of time for very good amount of damge AOE. with sig of malice this can help get your health back and keep you caped off, and the extra three init you get with the trait line means u can spam this ALOT before running dry and needing to let it recharge. a lot of things/bosses/situtions you can malee with s/p but some times its smarter to roll out and catch your breath, p/p can let you do that and not lose as much damage.
QUESTION!
Today I did my first thief-dungeon-run. Putting aside the fact that I used sb and only went for d/d when I felt a little suicidle, it went well.
Well actually it was the second trun that went fine – the first I was kicked from bc. someone told me “(my nick) stack!” and when I asked what exactly I had to do s.o. called me noob and kicked me.
So yea …
1. horrible community
2. what did he want from me? Thiefs are not supposed to stack might are they?!
He probably wanted you stand on top of everyone else.
He probably wanted you stand on top of everyone else.
Meaning he wanted me to take all the might they could offer me so I could rampage?! If that would have been the case I gladly would have done that :O
Sometimes stacking is for boons, but sometimes it’s also to keep all of the monsters clustered together for people with AOEs and cleaves, as well as making it easier to pick someone up without having to move.
If someone is doing backflips over in a corner and being impossible to ress, as well as dragging trash everywhere, that will kitten off a lot of people. It’s particularly important in dungeons like CoE (for example) that people stay close together.
(edited by Interceptor.2653)
Sometimes stacking is for boons, but sometimes it’s also to keep all of the monsters clustered together for people with AOEs and cleaves, as well as making it easier to pick someone up without having to move.
If someone is doing backflips over in a corner and being impossible to ress, as well as dragging trash everywhere, that will kitten off a lot of people. It’s particularly important in dungeons like CoE that people stay close together.
Ok thanks.
But thiefs are not supposed to stack might, are they?! I mean we do have venoms but no one can possibly expect us to use a venom-might-stack build?!
You don’t need to use venoms to give people Might; you can just use Cluster Bomb to blast someone’s Fire field. And in any case, if your party is stacking Might, you should get over there anyway, since there is no downside.
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