Guild Wars 2

Hey guys. I am a new player and have always played the stealth class in mmos and rpgs. I’m having a little bit of trouble in this game though. Currently I’m level 20 and I die a lot, I mean A LOT. I was wondering if anyone can give me some tips. Weapon combos to use, I’m using 2 daggers and a shortbow. What traits to take at 30, any tips in general. I read guides and whatnot but they are outdated since a patch that just happened I believe. Thanks in advance.

To survive as a thief, you must first master dodging. I suggest you look for ettins or bears as they have slow windups on their attacks that make it easy to dodge.

When fighting with daggers, try to take on only one enemy at a time. Practice rotations on them, how to kill them quickly (tip: Cloak and Dagger -> Backstab -> autoattack -> repeat). As you become more experienced you’ll be able to take on groups alone with just daggers.

This video guide by Nike of DnT should help you. When he talks about traits though, divide the trait points by 5 if you have difficulty understanding.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=YRbKFGVLWYI

Thanks very much, checking the video out now.

First off, welcome to GW2! Here are some basics you should learn. Incoming wall of text.
Firstly, there is a huge difference between the combat here and the combat in WoW and most other MMOs. A few things of note:
The combat in this game is much more action-oriented- you can avoid attacks by strafing and dodging as you fight, and using skills to counter enemy attacks. It’s more important to avoid attacks than to heal them. You can avoid attacks via blind, blocks, teleports, and evades/dodges. Every class also has their own healing skill, which is your #6 slot.
There is no healer/tank/DPS trinity. Everyone is responsible for their own survival, for DPSing the enemy, for coordinating support and control to make fights more manageable.
Your success in this game depends largely on your skill as a player, rather than your gear.
I highly recommend giving this a read: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/GW2-Combat-system-101-Guide/first
In addition, GW2 is highly unlike WoW in many other respects. The game’s meant to be more of a journey- you take your time and enjoy the process of leveling, explore to your heart’s content, and when you hit 80, there aren’t tiers of raids and gear to chase one after the other. You pretty much find what you enjoy doing and do it.

All classes #1-5 skills are affected by your weapon choice, with main hand weapons affecting #1-3 and offhand are your 4-5 skills. Twohanders use all #1-5. All classes also have their own heal skills, which is the #6 slot. All classes also have 3 utility skills, which are the 7-9 slots. These youll unlock as you level up, the first at lvl5, then lvl 10, and the last one at lvl 20. Lastly, every profession has an elite slot. These are typically very powerful, game changing skills and as such have large cooldowns. Youll unlock this at lvl 30. In these slots youll put skills that youve unlocked via skill points. Dont worry about spending them incorrectly, as by the time you get to lvl 80 youll have more than enough points for every single skill. If not, skill points are still extremely easy to get at lvl 80.

Triple or dual signets are the best for leveling, btw. Assassins signet, signet of agility, and signet of shadows. For the most part leave them just as passive buffs, but be aware of what they do in case you get in a pinch. For example if you run out of endurance and need to dodge that ettins hammer, you can pop signet of shadows and blind his attack so that it misses. if you get a nasty, long lasting condition on you (aka bleed, poison, burning, and others) you can use signet of agility to remove 1 condition, as well as refilling all your endurance. Shadow refuge is also extremely helpful while leveling, allowing you to grab some tougher skill points guarded by a veteran or champion with absolutely 0 combat. Its also a great skill to reset a bit and refresh yourself.
As for weapons, sword+pistol is easily the best for leveling. You can get up on mobs with Sw #2 and then drop black powder, your #5 skill so that theyll miss almost every single attack and you can just autoattack them down. If there are multiple mobs or ranged mobs, use LoS to pull them behind a corner and do the same thing. The #3 skill, pistol whip, also evades any incoming attacks for the duration of the second part of the skill. If also advise using mighty gear at lvls 1-26, strong at 26-65, and berserkers at lvl 65-80. Update your gear every 10 levels or so by buying green quality gear from the Trading post, with the prefixes i described.

Play D/D or D/P.

Stealth is your best friend and Black Powder makes PvE extremely easy if you’re against melee mobs (or clustered Ranged mobs).

There are two very simple tactics using just your weapon skills. They work even at level 1.

- Use sword/pistol to fight enemies using auto-attacks in a smoke field created by black powder (skill #5). Enemies blinded by smoke will miss.
- Use pistol/dagger to kite enemies using auto-attacks and dancing daggers (skill #4) for cripple.

These are not complicated, exciting, or fast ways to kill things but they will give you some basic tactics.

I leveled my Thief using a D/D condition build. Focus in Condition Dmg and Power gear. Get the Caltrops skill ASAP.

The fight goes something like this:

1. Steal to initiate fight.
2. Hit Caltrops to start the bleeding DoTs and root the target(s).
3. Hit Death Blossom.
4. Hit Death Blossom.
5. Auto-attack or reapply Death Blossom bleeds until mob is dead.

Using this you can just watch groups of mobs melt right in front of you. As you get more comfortable with the GW2 playstyle you can mix in a more advanced attack by switching weapon sets in the middle of the fight. I use P/P as my backup set.

1. Steal to initiate fight.
2. Hit Caltrops to start the bleeding DoTs and root the target(s).
3. Hit Death Blossom.
4. Hit Death Blossom.
5. Dodge backwards and switch to Pistols.
5. Auto-attack or Unload depending on initiative available.

Also, learn to use the skill you get from the Steal skill. Each mob type will give you a different skill (a stun or blind or buff), you can anticipate it and plan to use it. They can be pretty useful especially in tough fights.

Use the skill point setup that gives increased dagger and pistol damage. When you can, get the skill that allows your pistol shots to bounce to other targets.

I was the same way when I started in Beta. I can tell you you’ve made a good choice starting with thief in this game. Like D/D ele, once you have it down playing the other classes will seem easy, because you’ll understand the most fundamental aspect of GW2 combat – don’t get hit.

I can tell you too that thief will get much less painful as you level up and fill out your traits and utilities. Some of the things we get later are so fundamental to the playstyle it feels like a different profession.

As far as weapon sets go, it just depends on what you like. S/P and D/D conditions are the easy-mode leveling sets. The first you just blind spam/pistol whip your way through packs of mobs, the latter you bleed spam your way through packs as described above. If you like kiting then P/x. P/P for direct damage, P/D for condition. These are both single target fighting. If you really like blowing up a single target quickly, D/D or D/P are the way to go with direct damage, lots of stealth, and backstabs. If you want to fight packs of mobs and weave in and out of them with lots of evasion, go my personal favorite, S/D. It’s got a nice cleave to let you deal with small packs, but it’s not so easy mode as S/P. It’s also excellent for chain stunning mobs with the sword stealth hit. Shortbow is your “I’ve gone and aggro’d too much. Let’s kite around and thin the herd a bit,” weapon. It’s also going to be your weapon of choice for getting tags in the big zerg events. It’s damage is only ok at best, but it’s utility is through the roof.

If you find you are dying a lot you might want to fall back on a strat I always use when learning professions. Go extremely tanky until you learn the ropes, then dial it down as you get better. The survival trait lines are Acrobatics and the stealth line. Acro will give you HP and more evasion, stealth will give you toughness , better heals and better stealth. I’d recommend using these lines and then getting DPS stats on your gear until you get into the 60s. This will lengthen your fights a little, but look at it as more practice time. By the 60s you should have enough tools and experience to try higher risk builds.

For utilities, leveling you probably want Shadowstep, Shadow Refuge, and the run speed signet. Shadowstep and Shortbow step are for when you need to bravely advance in a different direction. Refuge is for getting a breather in a fight, ninjaing resource nodes and skill points, or giving you enough stealth to bypass mobs you don’t feel like fighting. You have no Waypoints so run speed is obvious, it also has a single target blind you can use in a pinch.

For your heal go with Hide in the Shadows until you get better. The stealth can buy you breathing room the other heals can’t. When you get to elites, thieves guild is definitely the way to go in PVE. They boost your DPS, and can tank for you.

Hope this helps, if you have anymore questions feel free to hit me up in game.

I started replaying the thief I left off over a year ago, and I’m going with this guide, more or less:

http://intothemists.com/guides/332-simple_thief_leveling_build_for_new_players

(Instead of caltrops I’m using the run speed signet, and instead of Thieves’ Guild I’m using Dagger Storm.)

I like it much more than S/P or D/P.

I don’t know if this will help you, but…
I went from level 0-45ish usuing pretty standard beserker gear and weapons (power, precision, ferocity). I would agro 2-5 mobs with shortbow equiped, kite them around a poison field for a few seconds, then/or jump in the middle and SPAM 2. The 3 stacks of bleads and huge damage pretty much melted any mobs. If they were almost down but I was about to die and had no heals, I would just kite them through a poison field and fire SB 2 at a distance.
It may not work for you, but I found it pretty usefull. The SB is great for pve.