Hey guys. I’ve been trying to choose between ranger and thief for a while now and haven’t gotten too many responses.
I really love playing ranged classes. I really wanted to know how viable thief is as a ranged class?
I know the short bow is pretty awesome, and you have the option to do dual pistols. When you use sword/pistol or d/d, how much time do you spend in melee? Can someone give me an idea of how a typical fight goes against multiple enemies?
It would really make my decision a lot easier, as I’m leaning more towards the thief at this point.
Happy hunting.
Ok.
The thief is able to do a sort of melee-ranged style, meaning that we can teleport to our targets in seconds, easily. For example, an easy combo to pull off might be
Shadowstep→Infiltrator’s Arrow→(Another IA?)→Steal
Which, with two IAs, has a range of 3000. You can also increase steal’s range, making a grand total of teleporting to your target (with a few button presses) that is 3,300 units away from you.
That being said, recall that the thief has to get up-close and personal in order for this to be of any use, anyways. That means that you’re now vulnerable to both ranged attacks by enemies as well as melee attacks, while staying at range limits the damage that is done to you by only including ranged attacks, and not melee.
Also, the thief is the only profession without a weapon that has an autoattack with 1200 range, excluding Engi (Rifles go 1000 range, and can be specced to increase range further). This gives thieves a serious disadvantage in things like attacking towers in WvW, or in large-scale battles where range is necessary. On the other hand, Rangers can shoot for up to 1500 range with their longbow. That’s a lot.
So, from a strictly projectile-based point of view, Ranger > Thief with ranged attacks.
However, this does not automatically declare ranger to be the winner. For one thing, the Thief SB (which is almost certainly the ranged weapon you would choose, because P/P is mostly inviable currently) is one of the greatest all-around utility weapons in the game. It has a bouncing autoattack, an insanely powerful #2 attack (in spite of the fact that the projectile for it moves rather slowly), a Poison combo field, a free evade, a ridiculously invaluable shadowstep, and both a Blast Combo Finisher and a Projectile Combo Finisher. This makes the thief’s SB a very, very powerful weapon. The autoattack itself doesn’t do a lot of damage, but its bounce is pretty useful, especially in WvW where you can shoot a cannon, hit the person operating it via bounce, and then see the arrow bounce back and damage the cannon again. Again, it doesn’t hit for a ton, but it does, at the very least, decent damage, and, with bounce, a kitten load of damage for a simple autoattack with a rapid rate of fire.
Cluster Bomb, while somewhat slow moving, is our only 1200 ranged attack on a weapon (Scorpion Wire, a utility, also has 1200 range). It also hits like a truck. This is an attack that you have to learn pretty well, actually; blow up a Cluster Bomb too soon, and you’ll do suboptimal damage. Blow it up too late, and you’ll heal for less if you run SoM, and will have to wait longer between consecutive CBs. Not to mention that, again, you’ll be doing less damage than you could be.
Disabling Shot is a free evade with a cripple that’s great for getting away from enemies, or kiting. Learn it. Live it. Love it.
Choking gas is a wonderful combo field that does damage, lasts a decent while, and mitigates enemy healing. Stand inside the field for its entire duration, and you could find yourself with a heck load of poison on you. It also is useful for bouncing more poison around via auto/DS with their finishers, or creating Weakness with CB.
Infiltrator’s Arrow… Not enough can be said about this wonderful skill. It allows you to teleport up particular ledges, which is, of course, cool, but has also given me the opportunity to surprise enemies as well as save my rear end on many an occasion. This attack also provides a blind, which might not seem particularly useful at first, but what I’ll often do is IA to an enemy’s position, switch to melee, and slice them up. The IA then provides damage mitigation. I mean… IA is so useful for mobility, which is one of the things our class relies on, that it makes the SB a truly fantastic weapon, even without the other four attacks.
So, if you go Thief, you get “ranged melee”, as well as SB. With Ranger, you get more pure ranged attacks, but you don’t get as nice a weapon as Thief’s SB. So. Your pick.