Guild Wars 2

*cough*prepares hammy dramatic voice* Well the new healing skill with venomshare that “Oh the new thief heal is going to mix some things up for sure!!!” is all you are going to get unfortunately when it comes to support. I mean seriously who do you think you are to want to have such perfectly reasonable demands satisfied? Do you think you are a warrior or guard so you can be heard? Who do you think you areeeeeeeeeee (shameless gurren lagann reference)

Now on a more serious note the new venomshare heal skill will be touted for a long time as an incredible new buff to the support capabilities of the thief so at least in their minds, all it’s great on that part. Don’t hold your breath for anything other than that for the next few months, unless some truly dramatic action on the part of the players happens (like a significant drop in the number of thief players).

I always figured Thief group utility came from mixing damage with control. They can blind, boon rip, boon share, assassinate, cripple/immobilize, and/or stun depending on weapon set and traits. When a thief is in your party you use call target to tell him or her who you want to take out of the fight ASAP.

This is from a more sPvP perspective, but if you’re with a Thief outside of a zerg setting I don’t see how it’s much different.

Hmmm so you are saying a thief can assassinate people?

If you target a person to take out (lets say a squishy ele) and lets presume even more that you can 100-0 them in 2 seconds, the time it takes you to stomp the ele will get you killed. Lets assume you stealth stomp. The time it takes for you to stomp will not be enough to stomp the ele presuming s/he doesn’t mist form while his allies are reviving him/her. EVEN IF you stomp the ele, you die instantly because of channel time and ele gets an instant straight ress.

Difference between here and spvp is that its around 10v10 at the least rather than the standard 5v5 in spvp, and not to mention the players are stacked and grouped, not spread over the map.

end result: if EVERYTHING goes your way SOMEHOW you still end up dying fast and doing nothing.

Thieves cannot fight well in groups that know what they are doing. A well stacked group will sponge a thief’s damage easily and down the thief pretty quickly too.

Boonshare? ele’s do this ridiculously better providing almost perma protection etc if played right ~back to my previous point about saying how every class can do it better.

Boon rip? again, mesmers do this a lot better and offer a lot more condi cleanse, and better invisibility for groups with veil and mass invis.

Stun? you cant possibly say that the thief stun (which im presuming is with s/p 3) is better than a warriors hammer stuns which can be chained and are aoe. Same with the engineers that are aoe. Both of the classes mentioned also do better in teams due to their water fields (engi) and banners etc (warriors).

You don’t have to stomp the guy. You just have to take him down so his threat level goes down. Then you get ready for the next target while your team stomps. Same for the other classes that have bad times when trying to stomp in the middle of a fight.

For the rest, I realize now that responding to this thread in the first place was a mistake. The Thief has a unique combination of all of these, in addition to its unique playstyle.

I’m not looking for what’s better than every other class. But you are, so I guess I can’t help you.

On my own Thief build I have two hard CC abilities, AoE poison for downed enemies or regen builds, four snares, easy blast finisher, projectile reflection, boon sharing, and boon ripping. I’m happy with it.

Thief job in a group is taking down targets. If you even get target, you pop stealth and run to the group so you get untarget.

Moreover the greatest advantage to have a Thief around are the fact that you can heal people on stealth (Last refuge and blinding power). Considering that your team doesn’t have the habit to screw up attacking people on down-stealth.

To last, Thiefs are great teammates of other Thiefs (obvious reasons) and Bunker builds that can take of the attention of you and last long enough for you to finish your enemy’s.

For last, you can always run away, wait the enemy’s to leave and ress up your entire team. If you are dying with a Thief on WvW then its a L2P issue, because you really shouldn’t.

Btw, I am talking about WvW only here.
Thiefs on SPvP simply can’t be helped: Or your team is already winning, or you are really awesome. Most of the time the first.