Guild Wars 2

Hey guys, I’m returning after a long time away from the game. I played when the game came out and leveled my thief to 80 but then quit for a while. I started again yesterday and just jumped into the mists to try out some unranked and ranked and well it went pretty terribly. I understand that ranked can be frustrating and that thieves are better off in a party but it feels pretty bad that I get demolished by every class. I feel like paper and I don’t feel like I even hit that hard. I even lose to other thieves =/ I’m playing D/P

Welcome back.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/PvP-Guide-for-new-Thiefs-in-Ranked-Arenas

Have you read this?

Yup I’ve been reading the thread.

Thief is in a tough spot for PvP, in my opinion. Some general tips:

1) learn to read the minimap well, and use your mobility to keep their home uncapped anytime they leave it unguarded. Don’t try to 1v1 on far though – even if you win, odds are that’s 2 mins you could have used to win the teamfight at mid and have 90s of points ticking, for example.

2) learn to love your shortbow. You should be spending 70% of your time poisoning & pressuring squishies, ready to swap to D/P and guarantee a down. Poison the downed wherever possible too, to prevent banner.

3) take out the enemy thief/mesmer. They are your priority targets, keep them downed and off your tanks.

Your role is basically to +1 fights so you win/keep nodes, and to decap nodes when the enemy leaves them open. Other than that, you should be on the edges of team fights looking for opportunities to down something.

Good luck

Ps: if you’re worried about your ability to 1v1, arrange some duels with a friend on the classes you struggle with. Remember though, you’re a thief – fighting dirty and stabbing someone in the back as they fight your friend and running away after is what we’re supposed to do, leave the ‘honorable duel’ idea to the warriors & guards.

Hmm gotcha. The first ranked I played had another thief on the opposing team who basically carried his team (he was D/D I want to say?) and he would destroy me every time I tried to fight him. I’m just getting the impression that I’m doing something wrong.

If it was dagger dagger you can just stand in blinking fields abuse blinding field!… and then abuse your Sb to kite people unreasonably well.

Also if you want me to help you learn thief again I’m ok multi classing every class in the game and at least know their skills and the best traits!

@juggle I love being chased by angry men with sticks! It’s even better when they chose you because you killed their Spencer’s and th e y are invulnerable!!!!!

Sadrien.3470:

If it was dagger dagger you can just stand in blinking fields abuse blinding field!… and then abuse your Sb to kite people unreasonably well.

Heh, my strategy against most melee at this point is to just sit in blinding field.

I’m assuming you run a build with 6 in trickery Nero? If that’s the case, make sure you land steal against thieves and try to dodge their steal & CnD, that extra stealth from the stolen item puts you in a very good position and leaves them with half ini. Using D/P too, you can chain blinding powder with a port to put pressure on that way, and alternate between 3 spam and auto attacks, works against most squishies as long as you blind/dodge their big hits.

Just be aware with the blinding field that you can be hit from outside of it, the range of thief’s sword auto is greater than the radius of the field so if you’re sat in the centre I can still hit you. Make sure to move to the opposite side of the field to them and you’re golden.

And Sadrien, we are obviously kindred spirits, if a group of hacked off enemies don’t chase me halfway round the map for killing their doly and running away whooping then where’s the fun? xD

Thief is here for two things: run around and stand in circles and jump onto a guy who got low. However, to do these things, your team need to be able to win fights. If your team dies you can’t rotate and you can’t jump on anyone, because nobody ever gets low.

Thief is made for competitive play, not for soloQ.

in ranked pvp you need good team
you role is to rotate between ungaurd points and decap or cap. dont try 1v1 unless its sure fast win
tryo to find to bursty class like mesmer, thief, ranger, necro and pressure them to be on defense mode.
try to panic strike and call target so your team will burst the same target when 5 sec immobilize
dont stay on point and abuse poison field and blast for weakness.
go in and out and abuse stealth so there will be no chance for the enemy thief to easy target you.
try to findt fight when 3v2 2v1 4v3 etc down 1 enemy and go else where let them do the stomp.
practice practice practice

with pugs it will be much harder

Thanks for all the tips guys! I’m already doing a lot better in unranked. Ranked is still pretty rough. Now I iust gotta find a guild to play with.

You will always have trouble playing a PUG’ed PvP since each team composition will have different expectations. You can’t always play the same role in every map. Your role always depends on your team composition and team strategy in a given map.

What you need to do to be “not useless” is to form a team and practice with that team. Improve your communication and on what role your team captain wants you to take.

Other professions are also useless unless they know what they are doing and they know what their role is. Similarly, the Thief is as useless if all your build is about getting around the map as fast as you can. You also need to think about other things other than just trying to do map rotation — in other words, what’s your “Plan B”? What do you do if the nodes are guarded by bunkers? You need to think about that.

IMO, leave the capping/decapping the node to someone else, instead, stay with the rest of your team in defending a node — mainly running a Carrion/Cele condition build using a SB and just apply as much condition as you can to keep the enemy team pressured and interrupt important skills (although Necro, Ele, or Engi is really good at this role, but just in case you insist on using a Thief).

TL;DR
- Build a team
- Practice with the team — communication is the key
- Always have a “Plan B”
- Build condition based — you can still do map rotation with this build if needed
- Keep other professions as possible choice if your team demands it — else change your team

Sir Vincent III.1286:

You will always have trouble playing a PUG’ed PvP since each team composition will have different expectations. You can’t always play the same role in every map. Your role always depends on your team composition and team strategy in a given map.

What you need to do to be “not useless” is to form a team and practice with that team. Improve your communication and on what role your team captain wants you to take.

Other professions are also useless unless they know what they are doing and they know what their role is. Similarly, the Thief is as useless if all your build is about getting around the map as fast as you can. You also need to think about other things other than just trying to do map rotation — in other words, what’s your “Plan B”? What do you do if the nodes are guarded by bunkers? You need to think about that.

IMO, leave the capping/decapping the node to someone else, instead, stay with the rest of your team in defending a node — mainly running a Carrion/Cele condition build using a SB and just apply as much condition as you can to keep the enemy team pressured and interrupt important skills (although Necro, Ele, or Engi is really good at this role, but just in case you insist on using a Thief).

TL;DR
- Build a team
- Practice with the team — communication is the key
- Always have a “Plan B”
- Build condition based — you can still do map rotation with this build if needed
- Keep other professions as possible choice if your team demands it — else change your team

respect!!
saying tpvp with condi build for a thief

i am just experiment with that 6,0,2,0,6 carrion needle trap, caltrops

Hmm condition thief does sound interesting. Would some kind of d/d death blossom build be viable?

Nero.6813:

Hmm condition thief does sound interesting. Would some kind of d/d death blossom build be viable?

as much as d/d can put fast 3 stacks *3 of bleeding if you get targeted you are done.
i tried s/d which is more bleed from dodge, and tried p/d
if my role is not capping then p/d is better with immobilize spamming for you team also can burst your target

in the low tier its fun but in the mid tier where ppl cleanse your bleed cant stacks constantly so dd ele or guardian or shout warrior basically immune

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Ps: if you’re worried about your ability to 1v1, arrange some duels with a friend on the classes you struggle with. Remember though, you’re a thief – fighting dirty and stabbing someone in the back as they fight your friend and running away after is what we’re supposed to do, leave the ‘honorable duel’ idea to the warriors & guards.

+1 to this.

Much of the power of thieves comes from the opponent not being aware of them for the first second of the fight. You’re going to get all kinds of cancer-filled garbage filling your IM box, but that just means you’re doing it right.

Just don’t get embittered. Dueling is your friend also.

There’s no definite way to be “not useless” I know someone mentioned previously that your role changes with the team if you are pugging but there’s quite a bit you can do that you may not even know.

You can, as a thief, attract all the aggression of the enemy team and if you get realy good at cd management on a dp panic strike thief you can kite around 2-4 of the enemy pug team at one time while your team full caps the map (doesn’t happen a ton but when it does its pretty awesome)

Normally your job is to +1 and burst out people which shouldn’t be too much of a problem for you depending on the build you are running (it’s mainly for this reason I don’t find condi thief all that helpful)

When you get really good and your team is doing well you can push for those 1v1s with other people to keep their team distracted trying to take a point from you and trying to kill you while you sit there and win duels over and over (of course you should only do this if your team is winning fights everywhere else). Dueling is a good thing to learn on thief even if you don’t act as the far pusher.

Because the thief is the roamer of the team you need to take advantage of your mobility and use the minimap to find the best location to go ambush people on. Keep an eye out for their glassier characters and burst them out of the fight as quickly as you can.

If you still need help learning fights or if you need help on thief you can always pm me if you’re on NA and we can practice sometime. Hope I’ve helped you in some way shape or form, and gl with thief!

Other professions are also useless unless they know what they are doing and they know what their role is.
^

That’s just not true. Any other class can be good solo, but not thief.

YuiRS.8129:

Other professions are also useless unless they know what they are doing and they know what their role is.
^

That’s just not true. Any other class can be good solo, but not thief.

Fighting solo at the corner of the map or outside the node is useless. They need to fight on the node — that’s what knowing what they are doing means.

Trying to DPS as a support build is useless. That’s what knowing your role means.

For survivability max out shadow art and then crit damage or condition damage choices skills wisely

Mikey.1456:

For survivability max out shadow art and then crit damage or condition damage choices skills wisely

Yes, let’s jsut forget about the fact that speccing into Shadow Arts, means you rely on Stealth for surviveability…
Yo’re useless when your stealthed (to put it real basic), the OP asks about how not to be useless… Your advice would work for WvW and even then it’s quite bad considering how much of a Crutch SA is (not to mention, it’s not exactly needed if you learn to play properly).

So to the OP: Disregard his advice, Stealthing in PvP isn’t as good as you might think it is, atleast once you get to somewhat higher tiers.

Personally I’d reccomend you make a bit of a list for yourself when you start a match.
What’s your team comp, what is the comp of your enemy team. Who on your side will need to keep an extra eye on, and who on the enemy side will need a dagger in his back first?
If you can set your priorities like that and try to get a feel for when you can leave a fight and go for a (de-/re-)cap, then you’ll be doing great before you know it.
Don’t use stealth excessively because it means you burn through your initiative. Don’t forget that the SB is also a pretty potent damaging weapon

Mikey.1456:

For survivability max out shadow art and then crit damage or condition damage choices skills wisely

Eventually thieves will stop doing this when they realize it only helps them survive as long as they arent attacking, which means the opponent has a chance to heal.

And also that points cant be capped under stealth.

It’s good to help learning players adjust to the fast pace of the games, but once you are accustomed to fighting in pvp I suggest you abandon the trait line immediately, perhaps in favor of acrobatics or dps.

So how do I survive if I don’t rely on stealth? I can’t exactly tank like a warrior and I cant sustain like a cele. If someone so much as looks at me I’m going to die.

Nero.6813:

So how do I survive if I don’t rely on stealth? I can’t exactly tank like a warrior and I cant sustain like a cele. If someone so much as looks at me I’m going to die.

Dodges, ports, blinds, evades, interrupts, and stolen skills.
basically, you shut down attacks either as they happen or before they happen.

Shortbow 3, Dagger pistol 3, Sword 2, and pistol 4 are all your bread and butter skills.

Stolen skills are remarkable effective against the classes that provide them:

Elementalists produce an ice shard, which chills for 11 seconds, thus slowing cast time

Thieves provide hair tufts which provide free stealth.

Guardians provide Mace crack, which provide free stun

Mesmers provide plasma, which gives a thief all boons in the game.

Engies provide throw gunk, which causes random conditions and can be leapt through for chaos armor, which does the same.

Warriors provide whirling axe which, when standing in a powder field, provides blinds, projectile reflection, and high dps.

Necros provide skulls, which provide free fear. Fearing a necro while stealthed is a guaranteed interrupt unless they have Esp.

Rangers provide healing seed, which removes conditions, and can be leapt through for free health.

Stealth is good for evasion, but it has high upkeep cost, so your focus should be on using steal moves successfully and evading big spike damage attacks.

Thieves cannot tank or sustain. They have really big burst, so abuse it, then get out of the way of melt moves.