Guild Wars 2

So I’m level 55 or so right now, and browsing through the forums I’ve seen several post alluding to thieves being unwanted in dungeons. A couple players said they had people leave the group if a thief was part of the party. This is distressing to me because I’ve spent a bit of time getting this guy to 55 and planned on my max level experience to be centered around dungeons. Sooo what has your guy’s experience been?

I’m 5/5 for dungeon runs and I’m only lvl 56

I do Fractals religiously (level 30+) and I have run into this problem a few times. However, there have been many instances where I have proven myself more than useful in dungeons (Healing/ Regen, stealth res, blind, poison, walls, the list goes on). There have been cases where I actually surprised my group.

So I will say that yes, it is a bit of a stigma being a thief, but that is because people got sick of running into glass cannons that needed to be resurrected every battle. However, if you run a beefier build, and know how to play your class, then you shouldn’t have any problems as long as you are able to state that you know what you are doing.

Well the really high level fractals might be a different story, but for the most part thieves are perfectly ok in dungeons provided you don’t suck completely. The basic arguments against taking thieves for dungeons fall under these categories usually:

1. Thieves are perceived as having no group utility.
2. Thieves are all squishy, backstab based burst and die constantly.

Number 1 is not completely true, especially depending on how the thief is built. My guild calls me the team medic, usually because I’m the last one up and save us from party wipes via stealth / blinds. Venom sharing builds, while not very popular, can be used to great effect if you’re on a communicative team now that they’ve seen a nice buff, and thieves can also provide heavy DPS, which is important in and of itself.

Whether or not thieves are not as useful in comparison with other classes is open for debate, and honestly I don’t care because all of the dungeons save fractals can be ran with just about any comp with ease.

Number 2 is likely based on biases against thieves both justified and unjustified. Justified, because there ARE a lot of terribad thieves out there who spend the majority of fights on the ground because they can’t spec / play properly (lol wats a dodge?!11). Unjustified obviously as well, because many of these thieves give good ones a bad name. Unlike a tank guardian for example, a thief’s survivability mostly comes from his reflexes in dodgeing and active damage mitigation (not saying Guard’s don’t take skill, they just play differently), and plenty of PUG thieves haven’t figured it out yet.

Edit: Forgot to add, I’ve also never had a problem being kicked or someone complaining I was in the dungeon party, ever. If you do encounter this and you feel it’s unjustified, get in a guild with non-idiots and run with them.

u will be fine. Ive never had problems running dungeons or high lvl fractals

The reason for this mentality is the Thief is the least forgiving prof to play when geared for DPS. It’s fine with you know every fight and can dodge/avoid all big damage. Our single target DPS is actually better than warriors. It’s just thieves on average go down a lot due to bad play or learning fights and no one has the patience.

High level fractals can pose issues for thieves if specced/played incorrectly, this is due in large part to a thief’s survivability being tied to evasion skills rather than blocking or huge health pools. Guards have great mitigation and warriors have lots of health, thieves have blinds and shadow step. If you want to succeed in a dungeon bring a short bow since many fights are ranged biased. Backstabbing is your best damage, but if you die you aren’t hurting anyone. If you rez your group under the glorious dome of shadow refuge and save a wipe then they will love you. Thieves do great damage but they also have some great utility which is often overlooked because a lot of thieves are played by ex-WoW zomg thief = rogue = damage only players. There are no predefined roles in this game so you are responsible for healing yourself and avoiding damage.

As a Thief who does dungeon regularly, I cannot stress how many bad thieves I’ve seen, so that hate isn’t unjustified.

I cannot recommend if the Thief lifestyle of dungeoning is right for you. I don’t know how you play, or if you are in-general a good or bad player as a Thief in dungeons. I can, however, tell you that Thieves bring options to the table that other classes only dream of, and a well-played thief can carry a dungeon of bad pugs(but I hate doing that).

Knowledge is power as a Thief. Know what will hit you and kill you, and dodge before it hits you and kills you. No matter your build, you should always be playing in the mindset that a direct hit on you is an instant kill, and play accordingly. If you’re constantly dying and bringing the group down, then you may be better off with a Warrior or Guardian for dungeons.

Do not be afraid to use Pistols/Shortbow in a Dungeon, even if your build isn’t optimal for it(Pistols are not optimal for my build, but I bust out two of them in dungeons when appropriate and don’t miss a beat). You do not have to melee everything, and both weapons can do great damage and have great utility uses in dungeons.

It is all about the traits a Thief has. They change how awesome you are in a dungeon, or how fail you will be.

I run 15/0/10/15/30. My steal gives AoE might, fury(the best part), swiftness, and gives two boons to my allies that I rip off my enemy, while also dazing the enemy(burning defiance or using it for daze), while also poisoning and weakening him(since my poisons do weakness), and good damage via mug. However, being in melee range is bad is most cases, so I steal with my Shortbow out, and use disabling shot to put distance between me and the boss since it has one of the best built-in dodges. The 15 in acrobatics gives me tons of dodge(I can essentially dodge 3 times to your 2), and the 10 in Shadow arts lets me regen initiative by stealthing with Shadow Refuge as WELL as its other benefits of regening init(so that I can continue my burst faster with any weapon of choice).

Utilities should be Hide in Shadows(So you can reset yourself in a fight if you take a hit and live, while also giving you another means to stealth and maybe regen init, or do a sneak attack for a weapon, sneak by a part, etc), Shadow Refuge(No brainer, aoe lifesteal for projectiles, aoe healing, aoe long-duration stealth, awesome combat rez, cluster bomb it for blinds), and then the other two should switch as needed. Caltrops is a fantastic cripple to help your teammates kite, as well as does nice bleed damage. Smoke Screen blocks projectiles, gives blinding shots, and also can be cluster bombed for aoe stealth(I’ve made other thieves go HUH?! when I do that, they need to learn their class more). Blinding Powder is another way to stealth a downed ally, or to stealth yourself and get initiative, or to inflict a blind, or get a sneak attack, etc. Scorpion Wire can be used to pull in some enemies safely out of groups and is also a knockdown to burn defiance. Signets for power and precision can be put on when you need more damage for a specific path or run style(and precision signet lets you dodge more when used, too, as it refills the energy bar). Haste is useful when you need to pump out DPS really fast, or maybe haste-res someone or to activate a switch faster(safest at range because of the lack of energy to dodge afterwards). Thieves Guild is great for soaking up hits and putting some out at the same time, and Daggerstorm is fantastic in areas where you need to put the pain on a room full of enemies, or where you really need that reflect or stability for a short time. Racial elites could also come into play.

I have 4 level 80’s and I run dungeons on all of them every day (Guardian, Warrior, Thief, Ranger) and I feel like I do the most damage, have the most utility, and make the biggest difference in the success of the dungeon when I play my Thief. I suggest starting with more of a balanced build, and gear yourself with “some” survivability to start, and as you get comfortable with the class and how to survive, start replacing some of the survival gear with DPS gear as you see fit. You can’t be lazy on a thief, you will need to switch out different weapons almost every fight depending on if its a single target melee, single target ranged, or multi-target melee or multi target ranged type of encounter.

The issue is that thieves are the hardest class to play in a dungeon. It also typically requires a different skill tree than what you’d use in WvW or sPvP. That means that pug thieves are very much hit or miss. Sometimes you get a thief who knows how to dungeon and it works well. A lot of times you will get thieves who try to burst a boss. After the burst, they will have removed 1% of the bosses HP and then not know what to do.

Personally, I suggest using other classes for dungeons and use a thief for WvW or open world PvE. Warriors and guardians are easy mode for dungeons and of course the current state of ele makes them good at everything.

Well this is the general rule for me:

Thieves I know: Great. Awesome. Good DPS and make running through mobs 100% easier.

Thieves I don’t know: 95% chance they’re more of a liability than an asset.

I’m pretty sick of people discriminating against thieves in PvE. 100% of the time when someone starts whining about having a thief in the party, I outperform them in every way.

It’s usually the players that just want to ride on the back of classes that perform well in groups, like guardians, mesmers and to a lower extent warriors.

People need to remember not every thief is your fotm glass cannon DPS machine, there are many other perfectly good builds we utilise as well.

With some classes, something like a ranger probably, you can go into a dungeon and do much the same as you do in solo pve. You won’t be performing well but nobody will really notice the problem. If you try to play a solo pve thief in a dungeon you could well be down all the time and the group will obviously notice. This doesn’t mean that thieves are bad in dungeons but you might need to learn new ways of using your skills, weapons, and traits.

thief is good, is just not easy
many ppls reject thieves from dungeons, many ppls refuse to take me in fractal partyes, cause i am an thief, however i managed to finish lvl 10 under 40 minutes( 4 stages ) with 3 thieves in same party .And i usualy do 20 with another thief, we use signet of malice , lifesteal food/we time shadow refuge for dark fields and sometimes we drag the party, with an balanced /tanky build.

yes , you did did a mistake creating a thief. just roll a guardian to faceroll any dungeon and fotm. thief fights best when downed ^^

I am a thief. 95% of my dungeons are with short bows only. Condition damage is your bestfriend. I can stack about 14-16 bleeds all by myself and poison mobs. It really does add up. Being squishy won’t be a problem when you’re ranging and when you have two evades and disabling shot to evade AND like 10 stealth moves. Especially speed runs. They are helpful too. It comes with experience too.

Sometimes I end up tanking the mob boss, which is not a good thing for your health but it kind of makes ya feel good after doing all the condition damage:)

It’s perfectly understandable to have a bad disposition towards Thieves in dungeon content, because there are a LOT of awful ones. The good ones really shine, however. It seems that there is a huge disparity between the Thieves that get downed almost instantly at any confrontation, and Thieves that outlast the entire party while dishing out their damage. There is almost nothing in-between.

Stiv.1820:

Our single target DPS is actually better than warriors.

This, however, is sadly not true. I would give ANYTHING to have the DPS of my Sonic Boon Warrior on my Thief. It just doesn’t happen, as much as I would like to think.

Stiv.1820:

Our single target DPS is actually better than warriors..

AHAHAHAHAHAHA…WHAT?!?!