Guild Wars 2

So recently, about two to three months ago, I rolled a Thief for the first time because I wanted to learn all the classes better. From day one its been an absolute blast. I’ve always been a sucker for rogues but I feel like Kirby with Steal. And Steal as a mechanic, as basic as it seems, has been a LOT of fun for me. Almost moreso then Mesmer. (Almost). So I wanted to know, what makes a Thief a good one? I win a good amount of games and fights. (Not all though.) but I always seem to be aimlessly wandering around, or camping far.

TL;DR What is my job exactly as a Thief? I know Im supposed to be a “Roamer” but the term’s meaning isn’t very clear to me.

Aylpse.6280:

So recently, about two to three months ago, I rolled a Thief for the first time because I wanted to learn all the classes better. From day one its been an absolute blast. I’ve always been a sucker for rogues but I feel like Kirby with Steal. And Steal as a mechanic, as basic as it seems, has been a LOT of fun for me. Almost moreso then Mesmer. (Almost). So I wanted to know, what makes a Thief a good one? I win a good amount of games and fights. (Not all though.) but I always seem to be aimlessly wandering around, or camping far.

TL;DR What is my job exactly as a Thief? I know Im supposed to be a “Roamer” but the term’s meaning isn’t very clear to me.

You are supposed to be a free kill, but anet doesn’t want to break a profession so we can’t even be that.

you need to be fast
you need to know how to handle 1vx situations till you party come
you need to burst fast ppl
and stealth away to your next job

[Read]

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/To-Be-A-Thief-1/first#content

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Psychology-Of-A-Thief/first#content

Get your mechanics down and learn to rotate. Focus on rotating, not team fights. Eventually you’ll get a handle on when to stay for team fights and when not to.

Watch people like sizer on twitch

Carpboy.7145:

Watch people like sizer on twitch

Watching youtube twitch* thieves kill bad players is not going to teach newbs anything.

The only tried and true method of learning this profession is learning the profession through PvE and then get a PvPing friend to duel you in sPvP. Then you both can go into WvW and get some kills in.

Zacchary.6183:

Carpboy.7145:

Watch people like sizer on twitch

Watching youtube thieves kill bad players is not going to teach newbs anything.

The only tried and true method of learning this profession is learning the profession through PvE and then get a PvPing friend to duel you in sPvP. Then you both can go into WvW and get some kills in.

Sizer doesn’t Youtube and you can see him playing live in PvP. Not sure if you have that much experience with PvP, but in terms of how competent the players there are, they’re almost always much more experienced, especially if you do queues not Hotjoin. The stat balances also make sure that your on an equal level with everyone gear wise. Sizer also does high level dueling, so you can watch that too. Don’t listen to the idiots saying thieves are easy kills. Thief is the best profession in the whole game for carrying teams other than Decap engi, and overall any GOOD team (not APeX, they’re full bunker trash :P) will run a thief.

BTW Sizer’s team won the tournament of legends. Go watch his stream!!!

Uuuh no it won’t. It won’t teach players a kitten thing. Simply watching and copying an overglorified celeb’s build will only lead to a new player’s disappointment simply because it isn’t the profession or the build that is carrying the player. Thief builds don’t do kitten unless the player using it knows what they are doing.

By the way, Yishis is a better choice for teaching newbs how to play the profession because he actually provides commentary for his encounters instead of blast generic tracks while he is ganking people like everyone else. Even then, you’de have to watch his vids multiple times and then meditate on them for a minute to so much as get a basic understanding.

But there is nothing in this game that will teach a player how to play a profession better than first hand experience.

Best way to learn is going into the arena and play against different professions and builds.
If you have problems with some, you can ask the other player how exactly something works and you can play the exact same situation again and again.

Play to the class strengths. They have great mobility – so they have a wider range of movement than certain classes. This means they can get to far quickly for a quick decap. They have ways to disengage combat – very critical for going to far point. They ether have spike damage (d/p), or consistent damage (s/x). On the negatives, they can’t sustain themselves very well due to initiative and poor healing – so you probably don’t want to 1v1 tango with a point defender. And, in general, they suck in areas where there is a lot of random damage getting thrown around (large teamfights). This is the general stuff.

The specifics rely on what type of weaponset you’re playing as. D/P is very burst oriented and S/x builds are very consistent damage oriented. That being said, D/P can turn a fight into a numbers advantage for your team, but they are pretty bad in teamfights due to all of the random cleave damage. S/D is very good at zoning certain critical classes out (usually the ranged aoe bomber classes), but doesn’t have as strong of a burst as D/P does (the most you’ll get out of larcenous is usually around 4.5k, whereas backstab usually does 5 to 6k without executioner’s proc). D/P, in general, provides more utility for the team with blinds, and interrupts; but S/D can more readily remove/steal boons.

When it comes down to it, the thief is best played when no one is paying attention to you. Above all, play to this strength.

- So you can intercept a 2v1 against a teammate of yours, and can potentially turn it into a 2v1 in your team’s favor (executioner’s helps a ton with this). Thus forcing uneven numbers quickly. The two players attacking your one teammate weren’t paying attention to you.

- You can “peel” for other people. Say a necro is tunnel visioning your engie. Sick the thief after the necro and that will be a dead necro. The necro isn’t paying attention to you.

- You can quickly decap far point (it takes only 5 seconds to tick it down to neutral, ~15 seconds to recap it again) which allows for other classes to potentially move up to closer/more dangerous range to put on more of the pain train as one of the opposing players are forced to retreat to re-cap again. If they don’t re-cap the point, it helps you snowball the game into your favor. Again, this really only works if people arn’t paying attention to you as you generally want to avoid man-moding against a home defender.

- You can try and zone out enemies who arn’t on the capture point where all the cleave damage is. Usually these characters are ether necromancers, engies, mesmers, or eles.

Edit: Oh and one more thing. DO NOT STOMP IN TEAMFIGHTS. Trying to stomp someone in a teamfight as a thief is just asking for death. Make your kills, and move on.

Do not think you are good and don’t go 1v1 people around. You suck, and 1v1ing in a ladder match is only going to harm your team.

This is the best advice I can give to a new thief.

One piece of advice I can pass on: don’t abuse stealth. If you stealth at every chance you get, you’ll train yourself into a ‘comfort zone’ and end up relying heavily on it. It’s not a good habit. Learn how to use it offensively as well as defensively.