Guild Wars 2

I have been thinking about making a thief, how are they in pve and dungeons?

Beast in AC. We steal Skull Fear from AC guards at the end part, helps a lot surviving anf finishing them off. CoF I am a great player, good DPS on the mobs, can hide my team, good in the tnaking if you use Clatrops, shadowstep you survive quite a bit.

Shortbow is amazing if you stick venoms on it and attack all mobs. I run very linear dungeons CoF/AC and CM. Other than that I don#t know how we do against other dungeons.

People will say that Thieves aren’t so great in dungeons because they are squishy, but they have the tools to compensate. Evasion is high, they have plenty of ways to blind & disengaging + stun breaking is an absolute breeze.

I leveled my Thief alongside a Warrior and to be honest the damage of the Thief is a bit behind some Glass Cannons… but personally I just love the playstyle – and playing medic when my team is in bad shape

I’ve been running TA recently, and this is a place where you can’t afford to be disabled for too long. I’ve had no problems than I’ve had in any other dungeons I’ve ran, and stealthing your party is great for getting past all the timesinks.

I play a pretty pure glass cannon thief, and I have very little trouble in dungeons. Part of this stems from the fact that I pretty much always run with one of my friends, who uses a shout warrior, and we compliment each other very well. The other part is just learning engagement timings, and using your mobility to avoid hits.

thief is my 2nd character… my first is a rifle warrior… I can’t speak for the other classes but my warrior gets pretty much picked out of the group by mobs and everyone gangs up on him… my thief seems to be the last one to even get attacked in dungeons… it seems like my warrior is an aggro magnet… thief I very rarely get attacked in dungeons… and if I do, mobs seem to drop their aggro from my thief much faster than from my warrior…

Condition thieves are good in dungeons. They can solo certain events, but they really lack any support outside venom share, which really is just meh in a dungeon. Shortbow Combo Fields are nice, though.

They are on average ok, IMO. Some builds are better suited than others and it also of course depend to some degree on what other group members are using. For d/d, builds focusing on conditions works very well if there aren’t any other bleed stackers but BS builds often do quite poorly (the idea of a big burst and then waiting a bit before doing it again isn’t so good for mobs with huge health pools and since stealth doesn’t stop AoE attacks they’re extremely squishy as well). Short bow is a very nice weapon which brings both a useful field and a blast finisher although the bounce on AA can be a boon (e.g. for flowers in TA) or a curse (if it pulls more mobs than you wanted). I haven’t used swords and pistols that much but I would guess that Black Powder from OH pistol could be very handy for non-bosses (especially those with big damage attacks like Graveling scavengers) for the blind.

In theory I don’t mind bringing my thief to dungeons but in practice I almost never do since I feel that most other classes can do the same things and better. Shadow Refuge is perhaps the only thing I would say thieves have that no other class has anything similar at an equal or better level. Keep in mind though that the most important thing is that you enjoy what you’re playing, most dungeons are so easy that you don’t need the “top performer”-professions for the various roles so just go with what you want and learn how to perform well with it.

@eXs: Mobs quite often goes for the player with the highest toughness (or armor, not certain) so that might be a reason why your warrior gets targeted more often.

thief is an monster in dungeons , if is played corectly.
you can kite an champ from start to end only with shortbow 1+3 +4 without any risk.
you can drop shadow refuge on downed ally’s to protect them and continue fight, without losing any second on resurect. they will get almost instant resurected on shadow refuge
you can output second best damage ingame on single target if you time cloack and dagger +backstab corectly.
aswell thief guide +ambush trap can create an great distraction . Neddle trap is great vs champions.

Rainu.6871:

@eXs: Mobs quite often goes for the player with the highest toughness (or armor, not certain) so that might be a reason why your warrior gets targeted more often.

I can second that this feels accurate. Our normal dungeon group consists of two thieves (one crit, one condition) a necro, a DPS warrior, and an ele.

Of the five of us, my tankbleed thief has around as much armor as our warrior, and higher toughness, and the mobs for the most part like to stick one wither myself or the warrior. Generally I pull because I’m a much better tank than the warrior due to my build, and when I stealth or withdraw the mobs usually have around a 70-80% chance to start snacking on the warrior, if they haven’t already been killed by the six billion aoes we’re tossing around.

Then I unstealth and a bunch of them come back to me. We’ve learned that playing aggro pingpong in this manner can often end encounters (even boss encounters in some cases) with very few hits ever even connecting with the party, NTM two thieves worth of shadow refuge allows the group to fix nearly any mistake made seconds after it happens.

Go in knowing you’re squishy but you have tools to survive. A couple setups have evasion and Acrobatics 15 gives you a lot of dodgyness. Our damage is good and our support isn’t as bad as some say. D/D Condition builds do quite well. D/D Backstab and P/P are probably the best for sustained single target DPS but S/x is not too far behind. I think a well played thief is a good addition to a group. Floor mat thieves are another story :P

GL out there
Blood~

The thing about thieves in dungeons is that you have to play to the class’s strengths. In dungeons, our support is fair… it’s not great, but it’s not horrible either. As others have mentioned, Shadow Refuge is a godsend for many things (stealth by mobs, stealth into range of mobs, stealth res, or just using it as a healing bubble / life steal combo field.)

Some of the thief utility is lacking when compared against other classes abilities to deal with the same problem. I prefer my guardian’s Wall of Reflection in CM to my theif’s Smokescreen as a way to deal with the dungeon’s riflemen, but at the same time, my thief’s mobility in some parts of that dungeon with the Shortbow #5 is a tremendous advantage…

Like I said in the beginning, play to the strengths of the class and you’ll do fine in dungeons.

As for open PvE, you have great open world mobility so you can get where you want to go quickly, decent AoE from several different weapon options (D/D, S/Any, SB) and that really helps for events. I find Signet of Malice to be one of the best ever healing skills for any class, and miss it on everything else I play.

Roll a thief, have fun with it, it’s an awesome class

I switched from d/d-sb to p/p-sb once FotM became too much damage. I can tell you this, groups look down on thieves that are glass cannon and getting downed in melee whether in fotm or any other dungeon really.

But I was never glass cannon, and now that I’ve switched to full ranged (other than gearing daggers for things with reflect projectile), groups love me. The single target burst as well as sustained damage is so good with P/P, and between shortbow and daggerstorm, large groups melt pretty fast as well.

I have no traited power but use berserker armor for the most part with beryl orbs for the bonus crit damage and health. I also exclusively use foods with lifesteal and bonus precision. The sheer number of attacks/crits with these weapon sets combined with these foods is about 2/3 of my total healing.

More often than not I don’t need to use healing utility (6), but I do anyway to top off and because pistol auto attack from stealth is like a mini unload for more burst damage. I’ve also traited to regain init when using stealth skills which gives me more unload burst.

Heck I even shadow refuge often to get the init back and for the auto attack with pistol from stealth – only when I’m fairly confident in my groupmates not being downed in a fight. otherwise I save it to save them.

With this setup I stay off agro so that I can do max potential damage over time while not having to be protected or saved by groupmates.