Guild Wars 2

The only thing thieves bring to a party is high dmg via d/d and s/b for AoE. And 10 seconds of fury every 30 seconds to that 1 lucky guy that just happens to be near you. With stealth changes and food nerfs I’m either getting my kitten kicked or having to constantly back out to heal losing tons of dps. I keep asking myself why i don’t just reroll any other class. Or why anyone would even want a thief over even an engineer.

Had no issue with my thief in frac30+.
Signet of Malice+Omnom pie+sigil of blood still equals at least 650hp/s.
Blindspam/evade prevents damage altogether.

Changes just made full glass cannon much harder to play, now you’ll have to rely on some defense to keep up.
I have 2400 armor 15k health while still hitting like a truck, and healing/blind keeps me in the fight.

Blind doesn’t work on bosses. Or their AoEs / Cleaves. I’m not talking about trash, were probably the best class to have for clearing trash.

Hanna must be really pro or something..

On topic:

I’m finding myself asking the same question. Thieves? What are they good for? PvP? >.>

I’ll be anxiously awaiting a serious rework of the class for PvE, as I’m already too invested in my character to consider rerolling.

Dangerkips.6035:

Hanna must be really pro or something..

On topic:

I’m finding myself asking the same question. Thieves? What are they good for? PvP? >.>

I’ll be anxiously awaiting a serious rework of the class for PvE, as I’m already too invested in my character to consider rerolling.

Or just knows how to play a character instead of crying continuously on the forums, maybe something crazy like that.

just got to lvl 34 fractal with my full zerker thief… not really imposible if you know what ur doing

Or just knows how to play a character instead of crying continuously on the forums, maybe something crazy like that.

Acting like everything is fine and saying “L2P” is a good way to adress class balance issues. (<— sarcasm)

No one really cares if you could play a thief with one leg and no eyes and still kill one mob. Doesn’t prove the class isn’t underpowered for the majority of the people playing the game.

my advice: for PvE roll a warrior/mesmer/guardian and you’re golden
i don’t know for wvw/pvp/spvp etc.

thieves are great at pve. you should try out some different gear and builds to see if your success improves

Dangerkips.6035:

Acting like everything is fine and saying “L2P” is a good way to adress class balance issues. (<— sarcasm)

No one really cares if you could play a thief with one leg and no eyes and still kill one mob. Doesn’t prove the class isn’t underpowered for the majority of the people playing the game.

What if everything is fine and it is a L2P issue?

You claim that one player being able to use the class fine is no proof of it being fine, yet you’re acting as if the sole fact you’re having issues with the class now is enough evidence to claim it’s underpowered.

Does not compute.

Dangerkips.6035:

Or just knows how to play a character instead of crying continuously on the forums, maybe something crazy like that.

Acting like everything is fine and saying “L2P” is a good way to adress class balance issues. (<— sarcasm)

No one really cares if you could play a thief with one leg and no eyes and still kill one mob. Doesn’t prove the class isn’t underpowered for the majority of the people playing the game.

Why do we now expect games to be modified to meet player’s level of competency rather than expecting players to increase their competency to match what the game requires? Seems to be a major trend since the 2k’s began.
Left wing attitudes reach even to the video game world…its inescapable.

Yeah okay…I barely touched food before patch and have no plans to now either…I say this is another L2P issue here…

Dangerkips.6035:

Acting like everything is fine and saying “L2P” is a good way to adress class balance issues. (<— sarcasm)

This post made me cry a little bit.

You just said that because someone is not skilled enough to play the game it means that classes have balance issues. Go take a few minutes to think about that.

To those people who have been suckered in by easy games like WoW, SW:TOR, or most single player games, let me share a little secret with you:

When it comes to MMOs players are not supposed to be able to roll a character and immediately be great at everything in the game. If you want to do endgame/competitive content like solo WvW or Fractals then you absolutely need to learn how to properly play your class. If you don’t L2P then you absolutely deserve to die in competitive areas, period.

If you don’t want to L2P then that’s fine; videogames are meant to be fun so you should play the game how you want. But don’t expect to be able to properly participate in the more challenging content if you don’t know what you’re doing.

TL;DR
GW2 has casual gameplay for casual gamers and competitive gameplay for competitive players. If you don’t want to play competitively then don’t play competitive content.

P.S.
I am myself by no means a hardcore player or elitist; I die all the time in Fractals and WvW and I value having fun over getting the highest score. The only difference between me and players who complain about a class being OP or UP is that I’m not afraid to admit that my deaths are 90% my fault for not playing as well as I should have.

Let’s see:

Thieves can dodge almost infinitely. Vigor + dodge roll trait + sigil of agility = close to no cooldown on dodge rolls (coincidentally enough to keep you rolling 6 stacks of might for fun, 3-4 in actual fight/dodge mode). Heal dodge roll. Utility dodge roll (though I never bothered with that). I can P/P or SB champions or any number of mobs in my sleep and never get touched (or mob zerg, nothing my heal dodge can’t handle – especially since the buff). I personally find it a blast to be a flipping ninja/yoda Asura, and only ever set stealth for WvW or PvP. I place a sigil of generosity/purity on pistols as a condition remover. That + sigil of agility is enough to keep me condition free against everything but a necro (as their wells hit to quickly to avoid). Shadow step is enough to cover you when you know when you’re at risk of condition stacking.

Then you can add in timing evasion moves and blinds. Those have the advantage of allowing you to keep going without ‘breaking’ dps – but honestly I have always considered correctly used dodging to be factored in DPS, thieves just have ways to not run out or lay consistent blinds. Heck, I’ve allowed many people to face tank because of blind spam surmounting the 10% effectiveness limits (I personally dodge/evade tank when aggroed, help others tank with blinds).

Short answer: I don’t even use stealth in PvE unless I plan on never engaging the target (aka run through a map/objective)

My Thief is easily my best character, and is also an important part of my guild’s dungeon runs. I can keep Poison and Weakness up on enemies permanently with my Shortbow whilst also bombarding them with explosives and magical bouncy-arrows, or alternatively I can hand out more Blinds than Swimsuit Sunday at the senior center. The class has a virtually endless supply of dodge endurance, an evasive heal skill that clears movement impairs and has a fifteen flippin’ second cooldown – which, by the way, fuels even more Vigor if built right. No, I’m not my group’s primary damage source – but between Caltrops, Gas Arrow, Black Powder, Shadow Refuge, Lotus Poison, Bountiful Theft, all the rest…well, I stay on my big fat charr paws as well as our frontline soldier-class guys do, and I make sure they’re able to win fights. Permanent poison/weakness and mass AoE bleeds/cripples can do that for a group, even against oversized champions.

Yeah, a D/D Berserker’s spun-sugar cannon will be at a disadvantage in dungeons. That’s what happens when you don’t use a single skill, trait, or piece of equipment to provide for your own safety. if you build and play the class intelligently, however? it does perfectly fine.

Thief. PVE. Dungeons. LOL.

GW2’s dungeons now
COF p1 – warriors, mesmer
everything else – guardians

Who needs other classes really? I’ve played my thief, then I play my guardian. And then I never look back.

Well Thief is not for everyone. It might not be as straight forward and in my opinion boring as guardian, but it is definitely viable in PvE if played right.

Usually the people who complain try to play every class exactly the same way. And with some other classes that might work.

Zepidel.5349:

Blind doesn’t work on bosses. Or their AoEs / Cleaves. I’m not talking about trash, were probably the best class to have for clearing trash.

Blind works but it’s a bit more tricky
1) AoE aren’t rly targetted, it’s like us shooting clusterbomb (Need to edit this later, ‘cause I’m not sure what I stated actually is true about clusterbomb)
2) Cleaves hit more then 1 person, only the first person gets missed. When in frac fighting the tentacles at bonus event it’s easy to see this. With blackpowder on point blank area they should be blinded at each hit. However if there are 2 melee persons hitting him (both on 1 side), only one gets missed, the other gets swinged away like a ragdoll in a crash test.

So blind does work, but only if there is only 1 melee person and he’s capable of dodging the aoe. Takes some time to learn which attacks you can and which you cannot avoid with blind.

There is currently no reason for a group to invite a thief instead of a warrior, even if the group have warriors already. That fact alone speaks volumes about how incredible bad thief is right now in group PvE.

A thief that has multiple AoE stealths that allow your party to easily pass sequences or objectives. A thief that has some of the easiest access to blinds to help negate damage your party takes. A thief that MORE DPS potential than a warrior if built right. A thief that has MORE survivability than a warrior if played right.

So why would you want a warrior over a thief again? Only two reasons: 1) You don’t know how to play a thief, and thus don’t know their potential. 2) You don’t trust a pug to play a thief. If it’s the second reason, is the problem the thief, or the fact that the Warrior is too shallow that any noob can play one and has little skill curve for improvement?

Personally I still think that Thief is one of the better designed classes with some of the most room for skill to make it the best. Stealth has just made it where that skill was not needed. This change helps as people can use their stealth bonuses without having to start over on killing a mob, and it also teaches them to treat PvE slightly more realistically. It’s no longer an instant “oh kitten” that tells the mob to shrug his shoulders and walk away from it’s enemy that was nearly destroyed. The mob actually realizes that a puff of smoke doesn’t cause that little thief to stop existing – he’s actually still a threat.

Drawing Guy.3701:

A thief that has multiple AoE stealths that allow your party to easily pass sequences or objectives. A thief that has some of the easiest access to blinds to help negate damage your party takes. A thief that MORE DPS potential than a warrior if built right. A thief that has MORE survivability than a warrior if played right.

So why would you want a warrior over a thief again? Only two reasons: 1) You don’t know how to play a thief, and thus don’t know their potential. 2) You don’t trust a pug to play a thief. If it’s the second reason, is the problem the thief, or the fact that the Warrior is too shallow that any noob can play one and has little skill curve for improvement?

Personally I still think that Thief is one of the better designed classes with some of the most room for skill to make it the best. Stealth has just made it where that skill was not needed. This change helps as people can use their stealth bonuses without having to start over on killing a mob, and it also teaches them to treat PvE slightly more realistically. It’s no longer an instant “oh kitten” that tells the mob to shrug his shoulders and walk away from it’s enemy that was nearly destroyed. The mob actually realizes that a puff of smoke doesn’t cause that little thief to stop existing – he’s actually still a threat.

Mesmers are much better at moving a party around and using stealth to get places, plus they come with Time Warp… the real reason why they’re invited to the party. But this isn’t about mesmers, this is about stealth and stealth won’t get you into parties. Try asking to replace that CoF speed run mesmer with your thief and explain that he can stealth, too. Stealth won’t get you into parties.

Melee blind puddles make trash easier, sometimes, but won’t get you a spot in a party either.

A thief has more dps potential than a warrior if spec’d and geared properly, but in doing so sacrifices survivability… that is to be made up with player skill? But isn’t that what people are saying? The thief class is weak compared to warriors who do nearly as much damage without being downed every time they miss a dodge.

Here are 2 reasons you would want to play a warrior over a thief:
1) You like doing great damage while wearing heavy armor and dishing out party buffs.
2) You want invites to pugs.

You realize that not everyone plays 4 warrior 1 mesmer CoF path 1 runs 24/7. If you find that as the center of the game, then I feel sorry for how you think the game must be played.

My thief can take on more than my warrior ever could. Yes, I have to move more than my warrior needs to, but I have many more tools than he does for survival. My Warrior sometimes can’t avoid that hit, but he can survive it most of the time. My thief never has to, but can’t take that hit. But if I never take that hit, “most of the time” of the warrior becomes “all of the time” for the thief. So more potential DPS and more potential survivability. It’s difficult to miss a dodge in PvE when you can spam two dodges and still have another dodge at the ready, and mobs tells are obvious. Ever since hitting 40 on my thief, not once have I found myself without a dodge ready.

Now for your two reasons:
1) Already talked of the other two points (I still hold mobility > tough/vit). “Dishing out party buffs” = FGJ for 100% of warriors. Can’t deny how amazing that is, and am waiting for that thing to be put on at least a 35 second cooldown. If 100% of a class uses a utility, there is a balance concern. FGJ spam is a valid reason to take a warrior over any other class.

2) I wouldn’t want to be in a pug that wouldn’t invite my thief anyways. If they think ‘x’ class is the factor if they succeed or fail, that’s most likely a party I would have to carry. I don’t need to listen to the warrior whine that his build is now useless because they made omnom pies/ghosts ‘useless’ as I res him.

AOE Weakness combo and stealth rezzing are fantastic and I will invite a thief to my party for these alone if they are able to survive on their own enough that we don’t have to babysit them.

There are alot of “small” things that thief does that add up if you look at it that way.

Glass cannon thieves that die repeatedly are very different from glass cannon thieves which are able to survive using tricks. They can help with survivability alot.

- FGJ spam doesn’t mean the skill is imbalanced actually. It is convenient due to low cooldown for shout specs and is convenient due to might for glass specs.
It just speaks volumes for how boring/too high of a cooldown the other utility choices are. Most warriors either go shouts or zerker.. so most warriors use that utility. Alot of thieves use shelter also, but it is fine.

KOLZ.4501:

Dangerkips.6035:

Hanna must be really pro or something..

On topic:

I’m finding myself asking the same question. Thieves? What are they good for? PvP? >.>

I’ll be anxiously awaiting a serious rework of the class for PvE, as I’m already too invested in my character to consider rerolling.

Or just knows how to play a character instead of crying continuously on the forums, maybe something crazy like that.

Yea, crying on the forums… umm isnt that what all those people who cried about thieves being OP were doing? But to stick to the subject… lets do a couple things
1) Updates: In 23 patches since Sept 9, 2012, the thief has seen 10 reductions in damage and survivability. In those same patches, they have received 7 increases… most of these increases came in the form of their underwater skills… only 1 was truely useful and that was the range on scorpion wire. In those same 23 patches, for all other classes combined, there was a total of 4 reductions. In the last patch, all other classes saw an increase in 23 abilities, trait skills, and weapon skills… thats 23 in ONE patch! In 23 patches, the thief has had 5 damage abilities cut by at least 50%!

2) Proof of Underpower in PvE: I have stopped playing my thief because of the bull nerfs… especially the no aggro loss from stealth. I do, however, log on my thief to do resource hunting. During those times, I sit and watch other players as they battle vets, champs, group events. I have watched warriors, engineers, guardians, elementalists, necros, and rangers battle Champion mobs in Orr and not even break a sweat. I have watched my own ranger (level 20) battle 5-6 level 24 mobs with no problems. I have taken down a level 25 vet and 2 level 24 trash mobs without losing a pet or having to use a heal… so that right there discounts player knowledge of class. I personally have been in dungeons with guildies with my thief and seen guardians and warriors take on every graveling in AC with little to no issue while my thief gets one shotted by the lowest of trash mobs.

Dont sit there and tell people they should re-roll their character because the devs and whiny players who couldnt overcome a thief in WvW decided to make a single build somewhat viable… especially if you are playing a class that can solo champions and have seen nothing but increases in power over the last 23 patches. Why the hell should a person who plays a thief have to conform to a single solitary playstyle and build so that they can be somewhat fun to play? And btw, the way a thief is somewhat viable now is to become a mini-warrior through toughness and cond dmg build… and that is it, nothing more.

Drawing Guy.3701:

A thief that has multiple AoE stealths that allow your party to easily pass sequences or objectives. A thief that has some of the easiest access to blinds to help negate damage your party takes. A thief that MORE DPS potential than a warrior if built right. A thief that has MORE survivability than a warrior if played right.

So why would you want a warrior over a thief again? Only two reasons: 1) You don’t know how to play a thief, and thus don’t know their potential. 2) You don’t trust a pug to play a thief. If it’s the second reason, is the problem the thief, or the fact that the Warrior is too shallow that any noob can play one and has little skill curve for improvement?

Personally I still think that Thief is one of the better designed classes with some of the most room for skill to make it the best. Stealth has just made it where that skill was not needed. This change helps as people can use their stealth bonuses without having to start over on killing a mob, and it also teaches them to treat PvE slightly more realistically. It’s no longer an instant “oh kitten” that tells the mob to shrug his shoulders and walk away from it’s enemy that was nearly destroyed. The mob actually realizes that a puff of smoke doesn’t cause that little thief to stop existing – he’s actually still a threat.

You make an interesting statement… first you say that thief has aoe stealth and more survivability than a warrior… and yet you then contradict yourself when you say that a mob wont shrug his shoulders at a nearly destroyed thief. Umm, ok so which is it… does a thief have more survivability or are they always on the cusp of being destroyed?
Now, if we are talking realistic here… umm what makes a person shouting any more dangerous than a person who isnt shouting? So for realism sake should we make those shouts just look good?
Now lets talk about this stealth business shall we? Stealth lasts 3 seconds unless specd to get that extra second. However, by specing for that extra second, you have to sacrifice other things…like dmg output or survivability. What I am hearing in this particular thread is that thieves are great in dungeons because they can get the party past mobs or aoe stealth through Shadow Refuge to revive fallen party members. So basically a thief is there just to revive people… so in essence, in a dungeon, a thief becomes a paramedic period. Yea thats the class I wanted to play…

Lol Ruggan – combining separate subjects into one so they sound contradictory. First is higher survivability =/= invincible. So stating that something has the ability to nearly kill in no way contradicts anything. Using stealth to instantly drop aggro is what people used to rely on for survival. Without that, thieves still have plenty of tools at their disposal to avoid/negate damage.

Also those short 3 second stealth actions are not your party stealths – they are personal stealths. Shadow Refuge indeed can stack ~10 seconds of stealth on the whole party. Blinding Powder is a 5 second stealth. Both of those numbers untraited, applying to everyone. If your party needs the ability to stealth past sections, revive party members, etc, that is an additional support role that thieves can provide. A thief can provide a party those stealths, blinds to increase party survival, tons of cripples, access to constant poisons for healing bosses/mobs, potential venom shares to give the whole party CC and might… all on top of great DPS. Thieves are GREAT at PvE. I would gladly take one in a party, and a party would never regret taking mine. So you don’t want to play a thief just because he has the additional ability to safely revive your party on a tough boss where anyone else would have the boss walk up and punch them in the face? Well, play a class you do want to play. Any combination of classes can easily complete any PvE content if played right. As long as you listen to directions and don’t suck, that’s 99% of what a dungeon needs to succeed.

If you want to break out metas, you can even look at CoF path 1. Is 4xWarrior and 1 Mesmer truly the fastest way? Switch 1 warrior for thief, and suddenly you switch that 3 stacks of might (likely useless if they’re GS warriors anyways) for a party member that do just as good DPS; get your party past the bridge in complete safety; mass cripple (caltrops EVERYWHERES!) + kite + dps the entire mob in the acolyte room; can run a rock quickly if the mesmer fails as he has teleport; can stealth hold a torch in his sleep if you don’t want him using his higher evasion to avoid the champion to kill the room torch; and can perma-poison the final boss automatically negating 33% of it’s heal making it that much quicker on top of the fact poison is a unique DoT adding that DPS. No, I definitely do not think the meta (or at least the forum meta), has everything 100% pinned down, as I can see by people questioning Thieves in PvE.

Blinding powder only gives 3s of stealth… which I find hard to believe anyone who actually plays a thief doesn’t already know, but it doesn’t matter because as I’ve already said nobody farming CoF wants or needs your stealth and any group that needs you to stealth them anywhere or stealth rez constantly isn’t really a group most people want to be in.

Getting back to the OP … dagger/dagger/shortbow 30/30/X in zerker was much easier to play when C&D dropped aggro. You’ve got 11k hps and you’re standing in melee range… and now stealth won’t drop aggro. Like the OP says, your only choice is to drop dps no matter how you choose to handle the new aggro problems be it respec, regear, or constantly run away… begging the question why play thief if not for high dps? It’s an awful change that deserves an official explanation.

Gwalchgwn.1659:

Zepidel.5349:

Blind doesn’t work on bosses. Or their AoEs / Cleaves. I’m not talking about trash, were probably the best class to have for clearing trash.

Blind works but it’s a bit more tricky
1) AoE aren’t rly targetted, it’s like us shooting clusterbomb (Need to edit this later, ‘cause I’m not sure what I stated actually is true about clusterbomb)
2) Cleaves hit more then 1 person, only the first person gets missed. When in frac fighting the tentacles at bonus event it’s easy to see this. With blackpowder on point blank area they should be blinded at each hit. However if there are 2 melee persons hitting him (both on 1 side), only one gets missed, the other gets swinged away like a ragdoll in a crash test.

So blind does work, but only if there is only 1 melee person and he’s capable of dodging the aoe. Takes some time to learn which attacks you can and which you cannot avoid with blind.

Nope, he’s talking about Champions and above. Their Unshakable buff makes blind effective 10% of the time. Which means it has a 10% chance to miss its next attack instead of 100% on any normal mob.

So yeah. It might as well not work at all.

Mars.6319:

Blinding powder only gives 3s of stealth… which I find hard to believe anyone who actually plays a thief doesn’t already know, but it doesn’t matter because as I’ve already said nobody farming CoF wants or needs your stealth and any group that needs you to stealth them anywhere or stealth rez constantly isn’t really a group most people want to be in.

Getting back to the OP … dagger/dagger/shortbow 30/30/X in zerker was much easier to play when C&D dropped aggro. You’ve got 11k hps and you’re standing in melee range… and now stealth won’t drop aggro. Like the OP says, your only choice is to drop dps no matter how you choose to handle the new aggro problems be it respec, regear, or constantly run away… begging the question why play thief if not for high dps? It’s an awful change that deserves an official explanation.

Yeah, I still do ok on my thief, but without the aggro drop ( the only thing stealth ever seemed good for), my whole game has changed. It is like a different class to me now. Since the change, I have no real use for stealth. If I were a backstab build, well, ok…but I never was into that. It was a damage mitigation tool, and a control tool, for battle. No more; emerging from stealth is a Taunt now. Why waste the resources? Maybe some ppl like it, for me it just removes a tool I used to use.

This stuff really just limits builds. Kiting on the thief I always loved, it is great for that. But now, it is like the best way to go. It works great, but now that I don’t use stealth at all….it feels like a different class. It much more boring now.

I will eventually come up with a build and set of weapons to make it useful, but it will definitely be a much more boring, undefined class for me.

To each, his own , I suppose. Maybe this does not change the way some people play. For me…thief is no longer the thief. It is now, the Duelist:) Dull but effective. Probably go all ranged now. I’ll see.

Mars.6319:

why play thief if not for high dps? It’s an awful change that deserves an official explanation.

I LoLed hard at that part.

It’s amazing how people still have tunnel vision with the Thief and think it’s a dps faceroll super ninja when support thief is FAR superior to dps Thief.

The name is not assassin (that was GW1), it’s Thief. It isn’t implied by your class choice that you’re going to be a dps ninja.

There is already a good thread in this forum explaining the basis of support Thief.

Seriously it’s far more helpful than paper-cannon and benefit your full group far more than dps which there are already tons in the game (and you still do very well on your own). You will die a lot less, your team will die a lot less thanks to you, everyone will perform better and the team-dps and survival will get higher.

Please people stop with the tunnel vision, it isn’t obligatory to try to emulate a ninja just because you can. The Thief has more versatility than that and it’s because 99% thieves only want to be ninjas that other players don’t know about that and sniff at Thieves when forming their groups.

Support thief? Only someone who don’t actually play a thief can even say that with a straight face. Thief is by far the class with least group and support skills.

As thief is today, all it brings to a group is DPS and stealth-resses. Its not strange if people see thief as a DPS class and nothing else, because that’s what we are now.

Sinner.7139:

Support thief? Only someone who don’t actually play a thief can even say that with a straight face. Thief is by far the class with least group and support skills.

As thief is today, all it brings to a group is DPS and stealth-resses. Its not strange if people see thief as a DPS class and nothing else, because that’s what we are now.

Yeah, Been there donde that completed, all explorable modes usually without breaking any armor (and resurecting loads of self-proclaimed tanks and DPSs), close to 700 hours and 5000 ach points of Thief gameplay alone, God Walking Among Mere Mortals in GW1 with an assassin but yeah, I have never played the profession and can’t say the difference between GW1 assassin and GW2 Thief roles.

I didn’t list that for braging, I always try to stay humble about my peformance because I hate elitists and I play to enjoy the game, but I think you CAN’T downgrade what I say using as an argument my low or non existent experience with the profession because I think I have a very good share of experience with the Thief and wouldn’t post what I said about support Thief viability without being absolutley convinced from my own experience and success during months of play.

When you exit your ninja tunnel and can see the light of how versatile Thief is instead of sniffing at other opinions and use arguments from your imagination like that they’ve never play the Thief just so you can dig deeper in your dps tunnel, I recommend you to try support builds and be of some real help to your party.

Thief is the most underrated support class in the game ( so much that many assume he can’t and never try it) but he can excel at that. I’ve been playing it months amd I’m having a huge lot of fun and success with it and I highly recommend it. You still can do a lot of damage (and of course more than paper canons that stay as corpses most of the time lowering the whole team dps while they resurrect him) and you really feel like your team is having a lot more of success because of your job.

The GW2 Profession is called Thief and not Assassin for a reason. Yes, it can do some great dps like the assassin and other games rogues, but it’s a far more versatile profession than that.

If you want to sniff at that and stay in the ninja tunnel that’s fine, but then don’t cry if being a dps and try to survive becomes more difficult because you can do more stuff than raw dps.

It’s possible that our DPS builds might need some boosts to excel in PVE specially after the last patch, I agree and I hope people who like DPS builds can have them fixed, but that’s very different than deciding the whole class is garbage because you’re limited to only DPS roles.

Lokheit.7943:

Sinner.7139:

Support thief? Only someone who don’t actually play a thief can even say that with a straight face. Thief is by far the class with least group and support skills.

As thief is today, all it brings to a group is DPS and stealth-resses. Its not strange if people see thief as a DPS class and nothing else, because that’s what we are now.

Yeah, Been there donde that completed, all explorable modes usually without breaking any armor (and resurecting loads of self-proclaimed tanks and DPSs), close to 700 hours and 5000 ach points of Thief gameplay alone, God Walking Among Mere Mortals in GW1 with an assassin but yeah, I have never played the profession and can’t say the difference between GW1 assassin and GW2 Thief roles.

I didn’t list that for braging, I always try to stay humble about my peformance because I hate elitists and I play to nejoy the game, but I think you CAN’T downgrade what I say using as an argument my low or non existent experience with the profession because I think I have a very good share of experience with the Thief and wouldn’t post what I said about support Thief viability without being absolutley convinced from my own experience and success during months of play.

When you exit your ninja tunnel and can see the light of how versatile Thief is instead of sniffing at other opinions and use arguments from your imagination like that they’ve never play the Thief just so you can dig deeper in your dps tunnel, I recommend you to try support builds and be of some real help to your party.

Thief is the most underrated support class in the game ( so much that many assume he can’t and never try it) but he can excel at that. I’ve been playing it months amd I’m having a huge lot of fun and success with it and I highly recommend it. You still can do a lot of damage (and of course more than paper canons that stay as corpses most of the time lowering the whole team dps while they resurrect him) and you really feel like your team is having a lot more of success because of your job.

The GW2 Profession is called Thief and not Assassin for a reason. Yes, it can do some great dps like the assassin and other games rogues, but it’s a far more versatile profession than that.

If you want to sniff at that and stay in the ninja tunnel that’s fine, but then don’t cry if being a dps and try to survive becomes more difficult because you can do more stuff than raw dps.

It’s possible that our DPS builds might need some boosts to excel in PVE specially after the last patch, I agree and I hope people who like DPS builds can have them fixed, but that’s very different than deciding the whole class is garbage because you’re limited to only DPS roles.

I am also of the opinion that Thief support is lacking currently compared to most other classes. It’s an unfortunate state of affairs, but that is what I see to be the case right now after rolling a full set of level 80 alts.

So I’m genuinely curious as to what specific things that you tend to on your thief to support your team that is better done on a Thief than any other class. So far the obvious ones that have been outlined include: stealth ressing/skipping, venom share (which is quite lacklustre in PvE tbh), blast finisher spamming, and defiance stripping.

These support options are all quite situational and require every member of your group to have good communication and know exactly how the Thief mechanics work and exactly when you’re going to be using them. For instance, I’m sure we’ve all had times where we tried to stealth an ally for ressing and he/she keeps on autoattacking, getting one or both of us killed, and times where we spent all our initiative to strip defiance from a boss waiting for a strategic moment to cc when a teammate just throws a random stun at it for no apparent reason.

The Thief shines in a team with good communication and understanding of its mechanics, but this is nowhere near a given for most practical PvE groups that most Thieves are forced into. And in these groups, I can see why we’re considered inferior in terms of support compared to the more “universal” support options of other classes like Mesmer’s portal, time warp and boon sharing, Warrior’s group damage boost through fury and might, Guardian’s group damage mitigation, healing and boons, Elementalist’s passive regen/active healing + boon stacking through fields and auras, Engineer’s vulnerability stacking through explosives, Necro’s group condition management, and the guaranteed multi-res skills that most other classes have.

Unless you have something more specific and valid to add to the list of things a Thief can bring to a group better than any other class, I think it’s disingenuous to just call the state Thief support A-OK without juxtaposing them at all to options that other classes have available.

Sinner.7139:

Support thief? Only someone who don’t actually play a thief can even say that with a straight face. Thief is by far the class with least group and support skills.

As thief is today, all it brings to a group is DPS and stealth-resses. Its not strange if people see thief as a DPS class and nothing else, because that’s what we are now.

I’ve got a feeling we’re being trolled.

The OP posts about how dagger/dagger is unbearable after the stealth change and people keep saying the fix is to go support.

Unless I missed it, ANet never explained the change. Was it intended to break dagger/dagger? We just don’t know… but hey, you can always go support thief, right? kitten

I rolled a warrior for pve and it’s way better than the thief.

Sure you can get to high level fractals but you have to deal with the stigma of being a low armor/dps class that most don’t want in group.

Unless you have a regular group to play with, it’s hard as a thief to get fractals completed. I tried and no one would group me.

I spam Warrior LFG and get invite in like 30s.

I guess it’s just a sure bet that your warrior will be a big hand to your group, but with a thief it’s more considered 50\50 if they’ll be kitten hot or abysmal.

How do you cure that kind of player mentality? For starters I would’ve said that thieves needed to begin with something more than 10,850 health. It’s just not enough to play around with, whereas if you played with certain other classes you may not need to spec into those defensive stats at all.

After the patch I’ve had to stay above 20k hp to endure most onslaught moments in dungeons, and had to give up SA in favour of acro for super-dodges. And although I can’t nip in/out anymore I can still achieve everything I need to in combat, without deaths. If I had a standard amount of hp, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to do any of that.

But it’s true what people say – stealth will only get you into trouble now, and there’s no explanation or excuse for it. If it was for the benefits of not losing agro when doing a skill point, ‘overzealous’ might be a word to describe it…

Sinner.7139:

There is currently no reason for a group to invite a thief instead of a warrior, even if the group have warriors already. That fact alone speaks volumes about how incredible bad thief is right now in group PvE.

There is no reason to choose more than half the classes as opposed to warriors in PvE o.O
Thieves aren’t the sole ones out.