Guild Wars 2

I am coming back to the game after a decent break and would like to try out the thief, among other classes that I had not attempted to play. I haven’t followed every patch since, so I am wondering if anyone would be so kind as to give their assessment of the state of the thief in pve, spvp, and wvw. I am probably more interested in pve and wvw, and would like to put in the time to learn how to roam in wvw properly (something that was a pain on my old guardian main) as a thief. I am not terribly interested in min-maxing, but I would like to avoid putting time into a class that Arenanet has just drilled into an absolutely subordinated position during my absence.

Thanks.

Thief is in a good state.

In PvE it’s got a lot of value, being a high dps class. It also can spam blast finishers via SB2 for lots of might off fire fields.

In WvW you can also be a combo field battery, Shadow Refuge is solid to help hide a havoc group, they’re the best roamers in WvW too and therefore good for scouting.

In PvP they only have 1 role currently, which is roamer. They do it very well, but don’t have much support to offer in team fights besides SR or contributing to a team spike. Their mobility makes them incredibly valuable. The challenge is that the thief is one of the hardest professions to play well in PvP. D/P is the most versatile weaponset and has the highest skill cap. S/D is very effective too, because of it’s tradeoff of some utility for more consistent damage. P/D is the other viable build, which is a ranged single target condi pressure build. If you plan on PvPing you might want to try S/D|SB with 2/0/0/6/6, it’s is a decent training wheels build that will also work at high level play should you wish to go in that direction.