Guild Wars 2

Hey hey people.

I’ve just started playing sPvP on my thief. I’ve been using Staff/Sb and Dp/sb, following Caed’s builds for both. I’m enjoying it a lot, and it definitely seems to work well, I just need some pointers on how to actually play the class properly in PvP.

I’m still new to the game all around, and honestly barely have any actual game knowledge, or real mechanical knowledge; so it’s all going to be a big learning experience to me. But any advice or direction on how to go about playing and improving my ability with the class will be amazing!

Thanks!

Dont bother, I have been playing thief for 3yrs. No point od playing this class. U might dodge 90% od enemy kitten interrupt half if their kitten, make perfect combos, rotations, yet u do no dmg and have no cds and die in few moments.

Agree with guy above me, its not viable. I have probably about 3-4k hours on thief alone. S/D D/P and Staff builds are all trash compared to other classes’ meta builds.

The thing about thief is, once you get into a certain level of play, our effectiveness drops to near useless.
Sure, in very low MMR where you still find Zerk Staff Eles, Greatsword Warriors, Power Rangers etc, we can be really useful by bursting down glassy specs.
But once you get to higher levels of play, and you hit a brick wall. People actually use tanky stats, use CCs and knows how to dodge your attacks. You’ll find yourself unable to kill anything without +1ing non-bunker spec enemies.
You will also die very easily due to our low health pool, low defence, lack of damage mitigation buffs. Despite all the sacrifice thieves make in terms of survivability, our attacking powers are mediocre at best.

But if you do want to have fun in low MMR with thief, simple, +1 fights, Cap/Decap points in the map. This used to be relevant before the whole bunker meta, and still works if your enemies are bad enough.

with the right group composition you can do ok.

sure with other class you can do the same and much easier but thief mobility is priceless

you can rotate the map and make 1 enemy defender to stay and hold the point while you +1 elsewhere .
you can +1 fights and come back to support with fast burst while fast going decap if the fight getting even.

yes its hard knock life for us but we will survive…

tbh, i know it sounds bad but if you want to spvp as thief, then stick with unranked.

I play thief in ranked and I’ve got a 50%+ win rate, so thief is not “bad for the team”. You can learn to play it great, you just need to practice a lot. What helps me is to always look at the minimap and consider at which fight/point you’ll be most valuable. Thieves are not great at 1v1 so try to join team fights or cap empty points.

The greatest thing about thief is that they can flee a fight very easily, so if you think you’re going to die just get the hell out of there lol, there’ll always be another place on the map where you can be useful.

A lot of negativity here. Actually, while thief in not really viable in higher levels of competition (which I’m sure most of the whiners are very far from), it can really carry in soloq, up to saphire/eary ruby. I played thief in saphire, soloq/duoq, and have lost maybe 2-3 pips only.

Basically, you want to play something that does a lot of burst damage, and that is very mobile. For example, I run a d/p build with Impact Disruption, Dash, Fist Flurry and Scholar runes. You don’t want to 1v1 anything on point (unless you’re really, REALLY forced to), but you want to decap empty points (usually far, and it works amazingly in low tier soloq since people have 0 map awareness), and +1 people in 1v1s and 2v2s.

Basically, to +1 effectively, you arrive on the edge of the fight, you wait for a dodge, and you then you steal into your burst combo. For me for example, I arrive in stealth, if my team mate has done his job the foe is just a little over 50% health, and I Basi Venom into HS into Steal into Fist Flurry. If you get the interrupt on Steal, the HS, and the beginning of FF, your foe is already super low. If you get the combo off he’s dead.

Rules: chose your 2v2 carefully, but you shouldn’t 2v2 that much. Communicate with your team mates to tell them to rotate to the points you decapped (otherwise there is no point), and make sure that your team mates know your role. Most games you lose as a thief are because of a necro or a DH thinking decapping far is a good idea.

Good luck, and enjoy the shadows.

If you are new to thief, and trying to bring your skills to pvp, I suggest staying far from ranked. Heck even unranked, put some builds together you like or look some up for inspiration and try them in the lobby lists to see what you lack and what you are good with and work your way up from there.

You will die, a lot. You will run, a lot. You will wonder what all that effort is meant for just to get a kill, a lot. But if you enjoy the class you can at the very best just sigh and move on.

reroll lol

Thief requires too much kill/experience to make it playable in ranked atm, even then you won’t be able to carry team. Not to mention that every single match ppl will harass you and report you for playing thief xD (prime example was today https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Ban-warriors-thieves-from-ranked-lol/first#post5898984 )

Also playing other classes will help you a lot in long run if you want to play thief after all since thief is all about knowing when to interrupt, when to attack and when to run from enemy (and rotations ofc).

Reroll to Scrapper.