Guild Wars 2

I’m wondering how thieves performance for high fotm and dungeons are doing, specifically burst damage wise. Are they considered to be one of the best for burst and how about survivability with that? If your fimilar with power necro d/d wells, how do you think they compare to them?

well, i am kicked repeatedly or just not wanted as a thief. same as rangers
engineers and necros are in the neutral zone.
while the warrior, mesmer and a bit ele are good
and guardian is a MUST

does the dev’s care that we get the boot ? i don’t think so…

We take thieves all the time for pve groups. They are fine.

columba, you are in the wrong topic mate, the wvw complaints are here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-thief-and-its-gameplay-Your-feedback/page/57#post1480276

the reputation you have as a thief hater will never go away
what you said is a lie, and you know it.

Stealth is op in pve and needs nerf. Who tought that perma stealth is a good idea?

DanH.5879:

columba, you are in the wrong topic mate, the wvw complaints are here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-thief-and-its-gameplay-Your-feedback/page/57#post1480276

the reputation you have as a thief hater will never go away
what you said is a lie, and you know it.

Some interesting and peculiar posts by Columba there, for instance:

Columba.9730:

let’s hope that the culling bug fix addresses the huge imbalance. right now I don’t even rezz thieves on my server.

And about Columba taking thieves in pve groups all the time? Somehow I doubt it:

Columba.9730:

More dungeons. I hate dungeons. It would have nice to acknowledge the near universal disgust at the gear grind.

The Thief is nothing short of GREAT in PvE.
Permablind/weakness, refugerezzing, SoA, Smoke Screen…. it’s like having a Guardian in your team, and it does work along a Guardian without overwriting his tools.
Too bad most Thieves can’t see beyond “olol I spam domoges n die ololol” and give us a bad name.

Thief ability to inflict blind at will is extremely useful.

I play support Thief in dungeons (always in fact) and usually I’m the among the ones doing the most in the dungeon, resurrecting people and countering mobs.

I’m a venom sharer with Shadow Refuge for utility and safe resurections and Thieves Guild to bring more bodies to hard fights, and while for personal combat I’m P/D, Shortbow is amazing in dungeon fights. 15 points in DA helps a lo as you can apply weakness in huge AoEs, and your second skill is the best combo finisher in the whole game (and despite Rangers aren’t too good right now, a Ranger-Thief teamup is the best healing in the whole game with the 15 seconds water field triggered by the cluster bomb). Aditionally, the third skill is fantastic when you don’t have enough endurance and you’re surrounded by red circles, and while you learn to time it, you can just spam it to get out or trouble.

That said, I find a lot of thieves doing it wrong, jumping in the middle of damage storms trying to berserk-dps everything, so I understand why some might hesitate to include a Thief in their dungeon group because of that trend, but support thieves are absolutely fine for dungeons.

I regularly run zerker thief in all dungeons. Thief has more than enough evasive options to survive anything the current dungeons can throw out. If you are uncomfortable with pure dps, move some points off line 1 or 5 into 4 for more evasion.

wich venomshare build are you playing?
i’ve played most of the time as berserk thief, and I want to test venoms :P

DanH.5879:

columba, you are in the wrong topic mate, the wvw complaints are here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-thief-and-its-gameplay-Your-feedback/page/57#post1480276

the reputation you have as a thief hater will never go away
what you said is a lie, and you know it.

How is it a lie? Other thieves do fine in pve. I’ve seen them do fine in dungeons, even though I dislike dungeons. What’s the problem exactly?

Columba.9730:

DanH.5879:

columba, you are in the wrong topic mate, the wvw complaints are here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-thief-and-its-gameplay-Your-feedback/page/57#post1480276

the reputation you have as a thief hater will never go away
what you said is a lie, and you know it.

How is it a lie? Other thieves do fine in pve. I’ve seen them do fine in dungeons, even though I dislike dungeons. What’s the problem exactly?

You are overstating the effectiveness of thieves in PvE. Leveling a thief is much more difficult than most of the other classes (leveled a warrior, in the process of leveling a guardian, engineer, ele, mes). As for dungeons, good luck in CoE with the frost wolves in close combat (where the thief is supposed to excell). A guardian or warrior can easily tank them while the thief has to contantly dodge and evade in hope that they won’t be one shot. All the blinds, dazes, or any sort of limited CC become garbage with the defiant mechanic. So yeah, you may be able to do fine if you are experienced in dungeon runs and pretty skilled with reading animations and timing dodging, but it certainly is much more difficult than running with my warrior (which I haven’t even had to put in full exos yet due to the ease of use).

Maugetarr.6823:

Columba.9730:

DanH.5879:

columba, you are in the wrong topic mate, the wvw complaints are here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/The-thief-and-its-gameplay-Your-feedback/page/57#post1480276

the reputation you have as a thief hater will never go away
what you said is a lie, and you know it.

How is it a lie? Other thieves do fine in pve. I’ve seen them do fine in dungeons, even though I dislike dungeons. What’s the problem exactly?

You are overstating the effectiveness of thieves in PvE. Leveling a thief is much more difficult than most of the other classes (leveled a warrior, in the process of leveling a guardian, engineer, ele, mes). As for dungeons, good luck in CoE with the frost wolves in close combat (where the thief is supposed to excell). A guardian or warrior can easily tank them while the thief has to contantly dodge and evade in hope that they won’t be one shot. All the blinds, dazes, or any sort of limited CC become garbage with the defiant mechanic. So yeah, you may be able to do fine if you are experienced in dungeon runs and pretty skilled with reading animations and timing dodging, but it certainly is much more difficult than running with my warrior (which I haven’t even had to put in full exos yet due to the ease of use).

Speak for yourself. I run a S/D Thief and play all 3 paths of CoE in constant melee almost every other day with zero issues. Icebrood are a cakewalk.

Auesis.7301:

Speak for yourself. I run a S/D Thief and play all 3 paths of CoE in constant melee almost every other day with zero issues. Icebrood are a cakewalk.

How much armor do you have? With 2500 to 2600 I still get one shot with that champion icebrood wolf occasionally using the AoE move that breaks the ground. The other icebroods have long enough windups that you can dodge, but you’re (I am) still forced to dodge with the thief as opposed to the guardian and warrior on our team that can take several bursts in a row before having to worry about it. I’m saying overall, it’s a lot more effort to run the thief in dungeons than it is another class.

Maugetarr.6823:

Auesis.7301:

Speak for yourself. I run a S/D Thief and play all 3 paths of CoE in constant melee almost every other day with zero issues. Icebrood are a cakewalk.

How much armor do you have? With 2500 to 2600 I still get one shot with that champion icebrood wolf occasionally using the AoE move that breaks the ground.

every attack/aoe has its own animation, and if you learn them, you can dodge everything.
+ if someone in your group is tanky and melee, you shouldnt aggro monsters anyway.

yes, guardians can tank like a boss, but guardians also deal zero damage compared to a full berserker thief.

NoTrigger.8396:

Maugetarr.6823:

Auesis.7301:

Speak for yourself. I run a S/D Thief and play all 3 paths of CoE in constant melee almost every other day with zero issues. Icebrood are a cakewalk.

How much armor do you have? With 2500 to 2600 I still get one shot with that champion icebrood wolf occasionally using the AoE move that breaks the ground.

every attack/aoe has its own animation, and if you learn them, you can dodge everything.
+ if someone in your group is tanky and melee, you shouldnt aggro monsters anyway.

yes, guardians can tank like a boss, but guardians also deal zero damage compared to a full berserker thief.

I’m talking specifically about the little AoE leap thing that the wolf does. It seems to have ~1/4 second cast time denoted by a little hop. It doesn’t matter if you’ve pulled aggro against it at that point as its PBAoE. The rest are fine once you learn the cast animations, but that’s the thing, you need to be proactive and twitchy while running the thief in dungeons rather than being able to roll through it like a warrior or guardian. The effort put into running a full zerk thief though and reading all the animations while making sure you’re not running low on endurance or that you have shadowstep or shadow return up in case you do run out of endurance is a lot greater than running a shout GS / mace +shield warrior which still deals a lot of damage, has 400 more armor and 7k more health (base) than you who can use a couple of shouts and heal the whole group for about 1. 2k for each one. I’m not saying there’s no upside to learning to run a thief in dungeons, but it is a lot more intense for an almost equal payout (until you really learn all of you strengths and weaknesses). Even at that, if you miss time a crucial dodge out of a mistake of your own (or perhaps a mesmer dropped time warp on you shortening your dodge), you can be sat down in 1 attack.

Maugetarr.6823:

Auesis.7301:

Speak for yourself. I run a S/D Thief and play all 3 paths of CoE in constant melee almost every other day with zero issues. Icebrood are a cakewalk.

How much armor do you have? With 2500 to 2600 I still get one shot with that champion icebrood wolf occasionally using the AoE move that breaks the ground. The other icebroods have long enough windups that you can dodge, but you’re (I am) still forced to dodge with the thief as opposed to the guardian and warrior on our team that can take several bursts in a row before having to worry about it. I’m saying overall, it’s a lot more effort to run the thief in dungeons than it is another class.

On anything but the Champion, I rarely have to dodge. In fact, I run ahead of the group and force aggro on myself from the wolves so that they use their pounce, and then dodge it. This puts it on a temporary cooldown for the rest of the team to wail on them, and I stealth to wipe aggro from myself and proceed as normal. Blind on stealth and constant dazing keeps them under control at all times, and I always have a dodge on hand for the pounce if my blind isn’t in effect. At full health, which is usually the case against the Champion when he’s alone, I can take a full hit from the ice/earth AoE attack that he uses with 2-3k HP left. If I have to be completely honest, I last longer than most Warriors and Guardians I’ve played with while in melee. Even when Thieves are dodging the big hits in non-boss, standard play, what’s wrong with that? Thieves are meant to do that. They have a higher skill threshold, and it’s only natural for a class that prefers to avoid damage rather than sponge or systematically mitigate it eg. protection, aegis. This means you get more bad players in the Thief profession, sure, but it doesn’t somehow devalue Thieves in any way.

To answer your question, I have close to 2800 armor.

Auesis.7301:

Maugetarr.6823:

Auesis.7301:

Speak for yourself. I run a S/D Thief and play all 3 paths of CoE in constant melee almost every other day with zero issues. Icebrood are a cakewalk.

How much armor do you have? With 2500 to 2600 I still get one shot with that champion icebrood wolf occasionally using the AoE move that breaks the ground. The other icebroods have long enough windups that you can dodge, but you’re (I am) still forced to dodge with the thief as opposed to the guardian and warrior on our team that can take several bursts in a row before having to worry about it. I’m saying overall, it’s a lot more effort to run the thief in dungeons than it is another class.

On anything but the Champion, I rarely have to dodge. In fact, I run ahead of the group and force aggro on myself from the wolves so that they use their pounce, and then dodge it. This puts it on a temporary cooldown for the rest of the team to wail on them, and I stealth to wipe aggro from myself and proceed as normal. Blind on stealth and constant dazing keeps them under control at all times, and I always have a dodge on hand for the pounce if my blind isn’t in effect. At full health, which is usually the case against the Champion when he’s alone, I can take a full hit from the ice/earth AoE attack that he uses with 2-3k HP left. If I have to be completely honest, I last longer than most Warriors and Guardians I’ve played with while in melee. Even when Thieves are dodging the big hits in non-boss, standard play, what’s wrong with that? Thieves are meant to do that. They have a higher skill threshold, and it’s only natural for a class that prefers to avoid damage rather than sponge or systematically mitigate it eg. protection, aegis. This means you get more bad players in the Thief profession, sure, but it doesn’t somehow devalue Thieves in any way.

To answer your question, I have close to 2800 armor.

That was my point, though is there is a slightly higher floor and ceiling to the thief which requires more attention. And 2800 armor!!! Holy crap!!! I have 2,595 or lower depending on what armor set I’m wearing so sometimes I can absorb the hit with ~1k left over, sometimes I can’t. Ill conceed that thieves are valuable when played to their potential, but you have to work a fair amount harder to get them there.

Akiru.8065:

wich venomshare build are you playing?
i’ve played most of the time as berserk thief, and I want to test venoms :P

25-0-30-0-15

Venomous Strength, Quick Venoms, Infusion of Shadow, Leeching Venoms, Venomous Aura, Thrill of Crime.

Carrion equipment, 3*Krait rune, 3*Afflicted rune, 2*Sigil of Agony on P/D (total of +75% on bleeds with 25 in DA).

Spider and Devourer Venoms, Shadow Refuge, Hide in Shadows and Thieves Guild.

Personal combat with P/D, group/horde/too dangerous to step in combat switch to Shortbow. Try to watch your party members HP before using a venom and get close to those who need it more if you can do it safely (specially Spider as it can heal 2000+). Devourer Venom is more situational, but it can stop an horde if you share with enough party members and many of them are hitting multiple targets. Follow the strategy I said with the Shortbow (spreading weakness, triggering every combo field you see and getting away from red circles), keep shooting and moving, make intelligent use of Shadow Refuge and you will be a great help for your team in dungeons.

Thief brings a great deal to dungeons, but you have to know how to play them and what they’re best for.

As Lokheit said, Cluster Bomb + Ranger’s Waterfield = massive spammable area heal, but you can take that further in a coordianted group. Spam CB in your guardian’s light fields for retaliation, in the ele’s fire fields for area might watch the whole party’s DPS go up, lay down your own poison field and pop CB for Area Weakness…. Oh, wait, that’s just using the blast finisher on one weapon. You can also use the projectile finisher on that same weapon with those combo fields, or, swap to your Dagger set and grab yourself a leap finisher. Keep Daggerstorm slotted for a Whirl Finisher, or run D/D for Death Blossom and more access to a whirl finisher.

Thief is amazingly strong as a combo player, and as such, can truly excel in group play. We have access to Poison + Dark + Smoke combo fields, and can steal access to Water and Etherial combo fields, we have solid combo finishers on most of our weapons, and with good initiative management, rarerly are we stuck with a finisher on a long CD.

Thief is a rocking asset in dungeons when played well, and even more valuable when your team helps My static dungeon group has started pinging combo fields before setting them so that people are ready with finishers that can leverage it…. soooooo cool, and the thief can spam on them sooooo well!

Lots of people are talking about the usefulness of the shortbow, but what about choices for melee? What are the best PvE choices there at the moment for dungeons?

Anything with an offhand pistol, the Blinding Powder is nearly invaluable.

MrForz.1953:

Anything with an offhand pistol, the Blinding Powder is nearly invaluable.

While offhand pistol is incredibly valuable and excellent when leveling or doing casual PVE as you can auto-attack and laugh in the face or anything that isn’t a dredge or a turret, once you enter the dungeon picture you need to be very careful (I know from experience that leveling with /P creates a “I’m safe” mindset that you need to get rid off here) with it as many opponents will have unshakable, which means only 10% of the time blind will affect them (a percentage so low that you can’t base your gameplay on it), and in some dungeons there are so many hard hitting mobs that can hit you one step away from where you planted the smoke field if you’re not careful with where you’re putting your feet, not to mention all those red circles popping everywhere (which means sometimes you can’t stand on your fields for their full duration and they cost 6 ini), that /P is no longer such a safe bet.

Havana.8625:

Lots of people are talking about the usefulness of the shortbow, but what about choices for melee? What are the best PvE choices there at the moment for dungeons?

The amazing thing for Shortbow, is that it easily adapts to your build so you only need to think about your primary set when building. You make your build for your primary weapon, and when you see you will be destroyed if trying your usual main weapon strategies, switch to Shortbow. So really you can use some melee and switch to Shortbow if it’s not safe to get close. I play P/D as my primary set, which is a pseudo-melee set as you need to strike CnD every now and then. When it’s too crowded with mobs and red circles (in high end dungeons it means 90% of the time) I switch to Shortbow and help my team with it.

I consider Shortbow the greatest secondary weapon as it’s a weapon you don’t build for (maybe the 15 in DA but it’s not a neccesity) but you always want one equipped just in case for every situation. It’s not as great as a primary weapon for general use as other weapon sets have a lot of build potential in comparison, but it’s the best secondary set to adapt to multiple situations and helps a lot.

From all our weapon combinations, I think it’s the best example of initiative implemented the right way on a weapon. In most sets you make a build so you end up using the same 2 skills with ocasional but not frequent use of some other skill: 5 and 1 P/D bleeders, D/D Backstabbers (with some 2 spam) and S/D Dazers (using 2 as your way in and out), 3 for Unloaders and D/D bleeders, etc…), but Shortbow (probably because it’s a 2 handed weapon) is the only weapon where every skill is going to be frequently used and you never feel like one skill is stealing inititive from the other because everyone have its specific role: 2 for either combo finishers or bursting/shotgun mobs, 3 for endurance free spammable dodges (endurance free! at first I rarely used it, but when you learn to time it it’s great), 4 for condition spread (and if using 15 DA it spreads weakness like crazy which is great to defend your team), and 5 for travelling faster and avoid getting locked in a place by all those orrians and spiders.

You just keep using all of them and never feel like they’re stealing resources from each other as all of them are used on their own situations. It’s not a gamechanger weapon so it isn’t as good as your primary (in PvP for example it’s mostly used for traveling), but it’s an excellent, versatile and team-friendly secondary weapon.

Oh, and I forgot to mention it’s a great “tag” weapon with an AoE auto-attack which helps getting gold medals in events.

Always keep one of those because you will find an use for them no matter what style you want to play with your primary weapon. You simply need to recognize the limits of your primary set (or if you’re in a group with poor utility) and switch to Shortbow before you become too stubborn to change and die. As long as you can read those situations, use anything you want as your primary weapon.

Havana.8625:

Lots of people are talking about the usefulness of the shortbow, but what about choices for melee? What are the best PvE choices there at the moment for dungeons?

I run D/D in dungeons (and Short Bow.) It gives access to a Leap (#2) and a Whirl (#3) finisher, has access to stealth + bleed + poison and is my go to set for Boss DPS.

I will say that it offers less versatiltiy / group benefit than Any/Pistol, but I slot Smoke Screen frequently for anti-projectile and providing the group a Smoke combo field, so I don’t feel that it’s too much of a trade off.

I’ve seen some discussion in the dungeon forums of D/D thieves being superior methods of doing structure damage for things like the controller in CoF p1.

well , i’ve done some pve in last few weeks
i can say thieves are close to top if they are played correctly
example : i can facetank 20 -30 mobs for few seconds (signet of malice + dagger storm , if i also drop shadow refuge i get combo field dark so i leach 300 /target for 4 seconds. with this combo you can regen more then 3000 hp /sec
generaly signet of malice is very strong on pve , combined with aoe ( shortbow /sword)
Smoke screen got an short cooldown and can be usefull in many fractals and dungeons. death blossom is another strong pve skill, specialy if you got some celestial stats and might up.
i do not have problem to take drops (10-25 moldy bags / penitent or shelter) even without an party , with shortbow
thief also got 2 combo fields smoke ( smoke screen /black powder) wich provide area blind combined with projectiles) very usefull in high lvl fractals
on Short :
Pro’s
thief can compete with warrior in terms of dps – on single target
many escape tools , utility’s to increse party survaivability
high lifesteal (skills +traits)

Cons :
low base hp /armor (medium armor user)
poor acces to boons
initiative dependent ( can provide short duration burst, fall on constant burst)
poor aoe compared to elementarist /warrior /eng
require a lot of experience to be played correctly.

I have been doing quite a lot of Citadel of Flame (CoF) speed runs with thieves in our team. And I have also doing other dungeons with guild thieves. Thieves can quickly do a lot of damage, but tend to die more often than other professions in CoF. Mind you: most CoF group consist of glass cannon warriors + mesmer.

I usually do dungeons with my warrior. She doesn’t have that high armor (2.7k) or health (21k), but I rarely die in fight. I might die to some insta kill traps / environment objects though.

My own thief hasn’t yet hit level 80, so I haven’t done any dungeons with her. I solo play everything. So far soloing the map areas, personal story or even soloing some champion bosses hasn’t been a problem with a thief. You can either solo kill the monsters fast with dual daggers or use sword or caltrops + clusterbomb to damage several at same time. Hide in Shadows + Shadow Refuge + Shadowstep gives amazing survivability. If the fight seems to be going wrong, you can always reset it by teleporting to safety or hiding in stealth, without incurring armor repair bills.

I think the problem with most thieves in pve is that people don’t understand:
1. Thief is one of the easiest professions to begin (warrior is even easier, engineer is the most difficult to begin with)
2. Thieves however have quite high skill ceiling, meaning it takes quite a lot of practice to be a good thief (Engineers have even higher skill ceiling, making them the most difficult profession). Most thieves never hit this level. I have seen way too many thieves trying to face tank as much as guardians or warriors. In my opinion, this is not the optimal way to play a thief.

There are some good thief dungeon builds posted to this forum, so I won’t repeat them.