Guild Wars 2

I’ve just started a thief alt and its a great change of pace from my guardian. However, I’m hearing from some of my thief buddies that the class is pretty difficult to play at end level, if not the most difficult from a “twitch” perspective. How true is that and are there viable builds that are a little easier than others?

what is twitch? sorry ive never hearde of it in game jargon! after i know i could perhaps help.

It is comparatively difficult. You can’t just spam attacks on cooldown like other classes, and due to the complete reliance on active defense you do a LOT of moving around, positioning and dodging to avoid attacks.
Also, ranged weapons for Thieves are all kinda garbage for dealing damage, and many bosses simply cannot be done in melee.

depends really what u wanna do…PVP WVW or PVE? pve is hard right now bc of bosses but you can run condi builds for them…. in any pvp/wvw envieronemtn id like to say that thief is hardest to play and survive but is also one of the most fun…..d/d ele is up there too tho.

Hm.. I just somehow assumed he was talking about PvE, but your post made me realize he never actually specified. That is important.

i think when playing thief….u get one of the most satisfying feelings when you kill another player ….not sadistic …just like you earned it….especially being so fragile. usually in gw2 its build vs build and rarely player vs player….preset builds usually beat other preset builds according to how they are matched regardless(within reason) of the player variable. that said a thief build winning/losing has much ‘more’ to do with player skill than build v build stats. so when u get to be good its quite rewarding. dont forget it can be quite frustrating dying in group play in 2 seconds alot…but hey…it happens. i hope this helps a lil.

Surviving in dungeons on a thief is much more difficult and unforgiving than on a guardian. It’s completely possible, but expect to eat dirt a lot while learning, and when saddled with groups that aren’t especially good. It’s particularly rough when you don’t have a sturdy front line of warriors/guardians that can help take the heat in melee.

I speak mainly from a WvW point of view. They’re okay. It’s not easy to land backstabs all the time but isn’t that difficult either. With Shadow Refuge and a D/P I have a lot of access to on demand stealth which is great. I don’t even need to run 20 in acrobatics for initiative every 10 secs or the utility.

Stealth is also a very strong mechanic so use it as much as possible. It shines especially in small team battles where you just pick off the low guys and stealth up again.

What is difficult though, is not getting focused sometimes. If you get stunned or immobilized you have to be very quick to react to that or you’re dead. And sometimes you can’t do anything about it. Overall, in WvW I feel thief is very strong. Landing 8k backstabs on level 80’s is awesome. And I’m not even that glassy.

Thieves are noticeably more skill reliant than other classes, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on you of course! But like the first response said, the big problem is they are very fragile in melee and very lackluster at ranged. Here’s hoping this will be addressed at some point soon.

I have been maining a thief for over 1100 hours and started out with a guardian, so I will give my 2 cents :P

PvE: Thief is very hard to play in my opinion. I got warrior, guardian, necro on lvl 80 and the other professions on lvl 50+. I found Thief to be the hardest to play. They are very fragile, you can easily blow your initiative(including your defensive maneuvres) and land in a very nasty situation. Stealth is really good to shove the aggro to someone else, but you have to know if they can take the extra attention from mobs.
You also need to be very very wary of your situation and know what might happen. Be prepared for a lot of things :P

WvW: Fun, just fun all over. Backstab stealth stuff? Sure, make people crazy! Want to get away? Stealth and off you go :P The moment you get focussed you have to be really careful and quick, that’s my experience atleast.

PvP: A bit of the same with WvW about the focussing part. PvP is really hard on thieves in my opinion. You don’t get to pick your battles that much so it’s more about trying to pick people off, roaming and if you can, hold a point for as long as possible and wait it out untill reinforcements come. Also that is my personal experience :P

All in all I think the Thief profession is awesome! Very very hard to master. They are hated by a lot of people, but they do not seem to realise what kind of player you have to be to actually be good in a Thief. The battle begins when you see an oponnent, not when you get close and start trading blows. Make use of your environment and play smart. kitten people off while they die and you stay alive is just a bonus!

Happy Hunting :P

Thieves have a horrible PvE reputation for eating dirt, and for the most part, it’s a valid observation. The class is difficult to master as already stated, especially when you can just absorb most incoming damage with a cookie cutter AH build or something. No such possibility on Thief – it’s all on you and your situational awareness. However, I think once you get used to playing one, in all modes, it makes you a better player overall. I’m glad I ran Thief first above all other classes (I now have 6 80s) – the survival instincts that Thief taught me translated over to everything else in everything I do!

Thieves are one trick ponies, u don’t know what the combo is? u fail. u do know what the combo is but you fail it? ur nothing…

Thanks for the replies all. I should have stated that my end goal with the thief is to finish the Orders storyline and use him mostly for WVW. My guardian main will be my primary for PVP and fractals.

By “twitch” I mean how much does thief resemble a first person shooter game.

The difficulty of the Thief depends on the your build. A backstab build with a lot of stealth, is going to be a lot easier to play then a pistol build with almost no stealth. Personally, I found the Thief a lot harder to play while leveling up, then at end level. Generally, I would say that if you’re use to playing a bunker build, then you are going to have a harder time playing a Thief.

Kirei.1792:

Thieves are one trick ponies, u don’t know what the combo is? u fail. u do know what the combo is but you fail it? ur nothing…

I feel like you are one of those people that picked up a Thief because of how well they do in 1v1 WvW situations, then put them down again after realizing that it takes skill to use.
Thieves are definitely not one trick ponies. A very high number of players use variations of the Backstab build, but saying the Thief class is nothing but that is like saying a PvE Guardian is nothing but a healer. It’s simply not true. I myself play a S/P PvE Thief that hits like a truck and has decent survivability. In sPvP and WvW I switch to S/D, which is a very versatile and SITUATIONAL weapon set.

Pentalic.5409:

Kirei.1792:

Thieves are one trick ponies, u don’t know what the combo is? u fail. u do know what the combo is but you fail it? ur nothing…

I feel like you are one of those people that picked up a Thief because of how well they do in 1v1 WvW situations, then put them down again after realizing that it takes skill to use.
Thieves are definitely not one trick ponies. A very high number of players use variations of the Backstab build, but saying the Thief class is nothing but that is like saying a PvE Guardian is nothing but a healer. It’s simply not true. I myself play a S/P PvE Thief that hits like a truck and has decent survivability. In sPvP and WvW I switch to S/D, which is a very versatile and SITUATIONAL weapon set.

all good points here. my seriuos set is my bleed build for wvw although its bad against d/p i dont care bc u dont see d/p in zergs. s/d i my main fun/versatile build with d/p backup for pesky other thieves.

Zappa.9064:

I’ve just started a thief alt and its a great change of pace from my guardian. However, I’m hearing from some of my thief buddies that the class is pretty difficult to play at end level, if not the most difficult from a “twitch” perspective. How true is that and are there viable builds that are a little easier than others?

The real “difficulty” of the Thief class is learning how each skill can positively affect your positioning. Due to the fact that we are pretty squishy, we won’t be sitting in front of our targets for very long. Every one of our weapon sets (except P/P) has some form of manoeuvrability that can keep us from taking damage while allowing us to position to increase our own.

That being said, another key point is Initiative management. If you’re a new thief, I suggest not investing any points into the Trickery trait line. At 15 points into this tree you get a minor trait that grants +3 to maximum initiative. If you get used to having this bonus (trust me, you will consider it quite the bonus later on) you might get sloppy in terms of skill rotations and managing initiative.
In my eyes, one of the signs of a good thief is his ability to make a build that does not hog initiative.

What Pentalic said about initiative is true. I use a D/P and D/D set up. D/P requires a lot of initiative yet my only trait ini regen is 2 on stealth. I see a lot of D/P users also using others like the signet and 20 in acrobatics but this not needed. I can do fine witht his one. Just gotta be careful with spamming dat der heartseeker. I mainly use it as a short gap closer/damage dealer. I always chain a few auto attacks (that hit like a truck) in between heartseekers.

As of PvE it’s pretty easy, I just bring Black Powder to my team and spam sword auto-attack with full berserker.

As of PvP it’s bit more complicated and I needed to watch someone else playing thief to understand the mechanics of this profession. But yeah once you know what to do, it’s pretty easy to execute.
Here is the said-video https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Had-a-nice-fight-with-a-warrior although I switch weapons a lot more often and use dagger/pistol half of the time.

as long as you learn how to dodge properly, pve isn’t an issue

i’m not sure if i can really describe pvp since it’s not a set thing and changes every time

Can’t say about PvE but thief is a blast in WvW because of it’s mobility. I play spVp exclusively now because I got fed up running 5 mins to where I might find a fight. When I first played sPvP I got my bhhuuuut kicked. Now I find things really flow quickly and feel like a ninja knowing what’s happening all around me – because with 14k HP – almost any class can get you down with the wrong step – its taken me a while but I think I got the hang of things now. There’s so much more to Gw2’s relatively fast strategic play than SWTOR or WAR which I played before.

Easy, just spam 2 didn’t you know!?

It’s definitely a change from other classes. To start you have initiative instead of cool down. Whereas thief haters say that this makes us OP I can say this gives us a false freedom of choice that many new thieves fall for. IMO, cooldowns on powers give you a reliable rotation to work with to stay in a fight, taking my necromancer into account. And I do not have one, but lets be honest, DD Eles are the best example of this to use, its all skill rotation with them. For a thief it’s harder because the game is telling you you can use whatever you want, but pick wisely lest you waste initiative for nothing. Don’t get me wrong, most battles for me are like CnD, backstab, autoautoauto, Cnd, Backstab, autoautoauto(I missed the parts where I dodge, shadow step, heal up and steal).

Our best defense is our agility so that has to be used to its fullest. I will admit, my main and first ever character was a thief so at first I had nothing to compare mobility with. Then I max’d a necromancer and by God, thieves def have so much mobility. And they need it because if you take it to WvW, I guarantee cc’s will be your end 8/10. But overall it just takes practice practice practice heck Im still learning somethings.

Zappa,

The reflex time aspect of “twitch” builds is usually based on a personal choice. Case in point, my Thief doesn’t play like a “real” Thief. I’m running S/P and using a Venomous Aura AoE buffing spec. Using Knight gear and healing on critical hits, Pistol Whip and / or Black Powder basically lets me melee a lot of the time with only occasional dodging. This build is a mostly anti-twitch build that also doesn’t use Stealth.

If you want to play some kind of nimble build that uses twitch reflexes to survive, then there are countless Thief builds available. Just remember that you don’t have to play that way if you don’t want to.

I have 2 level 80s: a thief and a ranger. I don’t play the thief often and am not very good. I can very easily kill other bad players, but struggle against good ones (of all classes). I mostly play a ranger and feel I am very good. I rarely lose to thieves on my ranger (I guess I “win” about 9/10 fights). But if I encounter what I consider to be a really good thief, I simply cannot beat them and they will usually down me.

So, I’d say thief is easy to do well in WvW, even if you aren’t good. But the class has a very high skill cap, so if you master it, you are truly awesome (at least compared to ranger) in small fights.

Where would all of you rate the mesmer or an Engineer in PvE compared to a thief?

ipvrf.7420:

Where would all of you rate the mesmer or an Engineer in PvE compared to a thief?

In terms of difficulty to play? Mesmer is pretty easy, honestly. Like the thief it’s quite squishy and relies on defensive abilities/frequent dodges to keep out of harms way, but unlike the thief it isn’t crippled by going ranged, which gives the class the option to back out without losing much effectiveness. You can even play it fully ranged just fine. Totally viable in a way that thief shortbow, p/p, and p/d aren’t. The class is garbage at low levels though.

Much like an elementalist, engineer requires a lot more button pushing dexterity than other professions and tends to have a lot more abilities to worry about, but the medium ranged nature of the class makes it much more forgiving, especially if you go with a toughness-heavy rabid armor setup which is a great choice for engineers. They can also very easily pick up some great defensive traits without sacrificing a ton of damage, like backpack regenerator and perma swiftness/vigor.

After playing a Thief I get bored trying out any other class. Auesis said it; once you get good at keeping a Thief alive you’ll have the reflexes and situational awareness to keep anything else on its feet. In general you’ve gotta stay on your toes when going into combat and be very good at both dodging and positioning; if you’re getting hit alot as a Thief, you’re playing it wrong. (in general)

Fight melee enemies at range and range enemies in melee; you’ve got the movement powers to get in and out very quickly so make use of them.

Ambush trap is very nice for catching aggro when you stealth and you can get an easy 4-6 dodges/evades in combat by paying attention to how your utilities work.

I run my Thief alone through Orr all the time and have no problem staying alive.