How to make Thief work for a Noob!?
Are you NA or EU?
What weapons are you using? What armor/runes/amulet (sPvP)?
I’ll be glad to give you pointers or even work with you in game if time permits.
Well, I would say, that thief isn’t a reliable profession for noobs, unless you play one of these condi-spam builds and yolo other noobs.
For sPvP I would recommend using popular D/P SB setup and Marauder/Paladin amulet. Do not ever use Berserker amulet. It might look fun at first to 1HKO squishies, but fun quickly ends, when you meet somebody even slightly tanky.
Thief main role on sPvP is decap and so called +1. For decaping use Dash Dodge and SB 5 to quicky travel over the map. +1 tactic is kinda tricky: you need to pick right targets at right moments and KO them fast. Often when +1 doesn’t go well (enemy get reinforcements or you/your team mess up) it is better to just backoff and again go for decap.
Here are a few starter tips:
- Learn how to use your weapon set. Thief is the class relying the most on combo fields.
- Learn what hit hard on other classes.
- Go for the fights you are sure to win ( Don’t waste time in equal fights or outnumbered )
- swapping to shortbow during difficult situations can save your life.
As for the rest, practise and feel it with your body ^^
Are you NA or EU?
What weapons are you using? What armor/runes/amulet (sPvP)?
I’ll be glad to give you pointers or even work with you in game if time permits.
EU, I use this top rated Dagger/pistol build on Metabattle
I forgot to mention i also PvE mostly, im curious what spot Thief has in PvE encounters besides World PvE
GW2 is not reliable for noobs generally. If you have life outside of game no chance to skill up. Game for lifeless people most of ranged classes are op you cannot fight back to gain.
For PvE use P/P 3 for single target damage, Staff 5 for AoE damage, always take Critical Strikes specialization, as for equipment probably go full Berserker.
Edit: forgot about P/P 4 – use it to deplete Defience bar fast.
If you’re looking to solo queue ranked with a thief you’re in for a world of pain buddy.
If you are new to thief, don’t bother with Zerker, use Valks or Marauders. Valks is what Anet apparently recommends when you use the 80 boost. And it is what I personally ran before the elite specs. If you do PvP, you can still duel a zerker thief on equal skill levels just fine. At that point it is mind games.
When you start going into elite specs, Marauders is friendlier than zerkers. Marauders is 8% less damage for thief, but 5k more HP, and higher precision (not that it matters on thief). It will allow you to afford a mistake, not trash your damage too badly if you do raids (90% of the time people won’t actually notice).
And when you get comfortable with thief, you can swap to zerkers. Though with Zerkers, you need to be on your A game. You can not afford a single hit in full zerks, because everything in the HoT expansion or the upcoming one will absolutely wreck your kitten.
My current build is full Marauders. I take Daredevil, Acrobatics because Deadly Arts isn’t very useful without poisons and your steal isn’t up often enough for the damage increase to be worth a kitten , Critical Strikes with invigorating precision, signet of malice, Signet of Agility, staff, and a ranged weapon of your choice. People will flame me for this build, saying I am bad. But the reason why I use this is…
A. EVERYTHING in the HoT expansion will ruin a Zerker thief’s day in one or two hits.
B. The time to kill difference for small and vets is not very significant between zerks and marauders.
C. My interconnection is spottier than a dipeptic hyena (averaging at 429ping, screw you AT&T for years as a crap ISP). So being able to afford being hit in the face in PvE, Raids, or PvP because my connection wouldn’t let me dodge it is good enough reason to take it.
D. Annnd again, while people will run a DPS meter on you, most will not know what numbers to actually expect.
I’ve also solo’ed Cairn with this build from 37%hp to zero.
(edited by Leo Schrodingers Cat.2497)
The thief has three ways it stays alive in PVE:
#1: Blind Fields. Black Powder, Smoke Screen, blind on stealth, etc. The vast majority of overworld enemies become helpless if you drop blinds on top of them. For a low maintenance way to stay alive, use sword + pistol or dagger + pistol. Every time you fight an enemy, use pistol 5 and then just auto attack them to death. The enemy will flail helplessly while you melt them with the Thief’s powerful auto attacks. This works against up to 5 enemies simultaneously.
#2: Burst damage. A full zerker thief has a lot of offensive power, especially if they’re a daredevil. Little trick: if you use Steal after using Weakening Charge, you’ll spin in place and hit the enemy for all your damage. What I like to do is use this rotation:
Before the fight, use Basilisk Venom and bound for the damage boost
To start the fight, do the mug + weakening charge combo
They’re usually dead by now, but if not use Fist Flurry
They’re usually dead bynow, but if not follow up with double Vault in place.
The amount of stun and damage that is output with this combo is insane. I don’t PVP with Thief, but in WvW I have been burst down instantly with combos like this. Unleash as much damage as possible, and more often than not you’ll win.
#3: Dodges. The thief has a lot of skills that have evade frames, such as Death Blossom, Pistol Whip, Vault, Disabling shot, etc. The more skilled way to play the Thief is to watch the enemy movements, then use an evade skill when the enemy attacks. Most PVE enemies have really obvious animations, and if you use a skill like Death Blossom when they attack, it’ll go right through you without damage. Getting used to skill dodges will let you solo melee champions in zerker gear.
Ignore ALL posts above, really. I just can’t believe that people want to put you on p/d even though you said you are looking for a noob friendly build. If you are a noob, as i am, and you want to make your Thief any good in PvP there are only two ways:
1. Play Condition Thief, Carrion Amulet, Venoms, with double daggers + SB, it could be P/D too. You won’t die easily, you will see. It works perfectly in unranked arena, i just destroy everything with exception of good guards/DHs, you need to fight them from range and kite them with SB, which takes some time.
Condi Thief playstyle is easy, relaxing, very powerful 1 vs 1 and super fun!
2. Your option nmb. two is Power Marauder double Pistol Thief. You just spam #3 most of the time, even easier than condi Thief, burst dmg is great for a range weapon, your only downside is projectile reflection and lower survivability. Your secondary weapon is Staf as your only noob friendly melee Power Weapon, which you can use when you need to fight in melee range, especially vs multiple opponents. Or you can take SB instead of Staff, if you find Staff doesn’t work for you. P/P + SB is very noob friendly weapon set: you use p/p for bursting down your opponents and SB for avoiding attacks, mobility, and aoe fights.
Avoid d/p, Sw/x, really, all these weapons are very noob unfriendly Just don’t touch these weapons!
(edited by Sifu.9745)
Thanks for the help i will try these diffrent ideas btw how is SB as a dmg dealer? or is it only a utility weapon?
Thanks for the help i will try these diffrent ideas btw how is SB as a dmg dealer? or is it only a utility weapon?
Condi SB dmg is stronger than Power SB, especially if you play with Spider, Scale (or Devourer) + Basilisk Venoms. It could hit pretty hard, IF you can land your Cluster Bomb on your targets or keep them inside Choking Gas + cluster bomb. But it’s mostly being used as utility weapon, it also has great defensive skills like Disabling Shot (gives you evade) and Infiltrator’s Arrow. But it is a bit harder to play SB as dmg weapon. d/d is much easier to learn, hits stronger and it offers better survivability due “perma” evades + stealth (Blinding Powder is a must have).
SB is also ok when you need to aoe multiple opponents.
(edited by Sifu.9745)
I’m trying a vamp build inspired from a guardian crit life steal build I made a while back it seems to do pretty good. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAsaVl8MhCnYpTw4JQ/EHaFlvCmgMY3i31L2LgmLAA-ThSDQBvQ9HNqc4J7PKJgiSsEoEEE6DowRAYBPCALcCAAgJIBBYO-e
Idea is criting and spending initiative heals you which keeps you over 90% to benefit from scholar runes. It’s got breakbar potential, stun breaks, high crit dmg, close to perma fury uptime, a nice blind field and enough escape potential. Mix more valk gear for more hp but less crit which is a bit of a catch 22. Hope this helps you out. If your learning big telegraphs in HoT then take the 2 sec evade in trickery tier 1 to save you. If you have daredevil replace trickery with it. Pop elite for mass heals in a mob of enemies and dodge, dodge, dodge.
Thanks for the help i will try these diffrent ideas btw how is SB as a dmg dealer? or is it only a utility weapon?
shortbow is amazing on both !
It’s a melee shotgun in disguise. The damage on cluster bomb is quite high since every cluster has a chance to critical hit. Really useful against thieves that just went into stealth but you know are still nearby.
Btw list of SB utility :
- blast finisher on demand
- poison field = -20% heal efficiency. >6 poison stack daze on each pulse ( great for pve breakbar & rez denial )
- evade
- mobility with port
oh that what your struggling meta build are bad lol. not even “Sindrener” runs zerker in WvW.
In PvE I’d run Deadly Arts, Critical Strikes (take the health return on critical strikes) and Daredevil. Use staff and Sword/Pistol or dual pistols. Full berserker, agility signet and healing signet. Your basic rotation on the tougher mobs: Staff 2 into Steal, evade back with damage trait, AA chain. Repeat. If you die a lot you can use S/P and keep a permanent blind field to evade most attacks.
In sPvP you should use the meta battle build. In WvW you should NOT use only berserker. I’d use Marauder gear for the added health bonus. P/D condition is pretty funny in all game modes with high survivability and trolling potential, but you’re not meta in any way. But it works ok if you’re a casual player (like myself).
I’m also on EU, so if you’d like any help or tips just hit me up in-game and I’ll gladly assist you! I’ve been playing since beta and have been on and off the last few years, but I’ve always been a thief main with a few thousand hours on it.
If your looking for tips on how to be decent at thief even if you are new or a casual comes down to a few things.
1. Pick a Build and weapon set you like. For me I run power D/P -SB power build.
2. Practice in Spvp zone. Use the Golems and other practice dummies for stealth combos, stacking stealth..ect.
3. After you feel comfortable with the build and combos go into Spvp and practice. Don’t worry about dieing and such just practice jumping in and out of fights.
4. After your Spvp runs try and roam around in WvW getting those 1v1’s when you can and flip camps and such.
5. As with any skill it takes time to get good. You don’t have to no life the game to be good just stick with one class and practice, you will get there.
If you are new to thief, don’t bother with Zerker, use Valks or Marauders. Valks is what Anet apparently recommends when you use the 80 boost. And it is what I personally ran before the elite specs. If you do PvP, you can still duel a zerker thief on equal skill levels just fine. At that point it is mind games.
When you start going into elite specs, Marauders is friendlier than zerkers. Marauders is 8% less damage for thief, but 5k more HP, and higher precision (not that it matters on thief). It will allow you to afford a mistake, not trash your damage too badly if you do raids (90% of the time people won’t actually notice).
And when you get comfortable with thief, you can swap to zerkers. Though with Zerkers, you need to be on your A game. You can not afford a single hit in full zerks, because everything in the HoT expansion or the upcoming one will absolutely wreck your kitten.
My current build is full Marauders. I take Daredevil, Acrobatics because Deadly Arts isn’t very useful without poisons and your steal isn’t up often enough for the damage increase to be worth a kitten , Critical Strikes with invigorating precision, signet of malice, Signet of Agility, staff, and a ranged weapon of your choice. People will flame me for this build, saying I am bad. But the reason why I use this is…
A. EVERYTHING in the HoT expansion will ruin a Zerker thief’s day in one or two hits.
B. The time to kill difference for small and vets is not very significant between zerks and marauders.
C. My interconnection is spottier than a dipeptic hyena (averaging at 429ping, screw you AT&T for years as a crap ISP). So being able to afford being hit in the face in PvE, Raids, or PvP because my connection wouldn’t let me dodge it is good enough reason to take it.
D. Annnd again, while people will run a DPS meter on you, most will not know what numbers to actually expect.I’ve also solo’ed Cairn with this build from 37%hp to zero.
The quality of your build is irrelevant because you didn’t post a build.
You mentioned 3 specializations and only listed the traits of one of those lines.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/ is very easy to use and make builds.
ps- I hope you never give directions to people who are lost.
Funny thing about thief is that you need to know your enemies as much as you need to know your thief.
Ive been struggling to find a class i can main since like gw2 came out, ive been playing on and off since then. So yesterday i created a Charr Thief cause i like the fantasy of a Thief cat.
Anyway ive tried thief on 80, and i feel like they die easier than a zerker guardian, but dont kill as fast as other zerker classes. Also yesterday i tried Metabattle builds. And boy conquest pvp, or spvp what you wanna call it. I died freaking instantly. Im not sure how to learn thief when i never get the chance to like do any real PvP. It feels like the rest of the pvp community are lightyears ahead in skills.I want to make thief work cause they got cool abilities etc, but as a kitten player it does seem like the classic warrior is the only choice :/ even tho i feel like they die easy to :/
Go into your build panel and pick invigorating precision. You’ll go from dying all the time to being the one all your dead teammates are yelling at to “reset” and “/gg.” Then, if you really want to go all-in, go to amazon.com, buy a Logitech G13, and map dodge to your joystick press-down.
I was in the same boat as you honestly
Made a guardian then did pvp didn’t do bad and ran into the thiefs and realize my dream o being a good thief I always had my thief The Giz made but always played and was like I can’t do this in pvp/pve but then I watched YouTube videos and took what I learned from my guardian
I’m stoppable and still learning but let me tell you I down people so fast I don’t realize they down sometimes d/p and bow are what I’m using
I mostly have power because I’m leveling
Reading is key on the classes to make them work and it’s trial and error with the stuff but have to stick with it and it will grow and get better don’t abandon your child lol
If your looking for tips on how to be decent at thief even if you are new or a casual comes down to a few things.
1. Pick a Build and weapon set you like. For me I run power D/P -SB power build.
2. Practice in Spvp zone. Use the Golems and other practice dummies for stealth combos, stacking stealth..ect.
3. After you feel comfortable with the build and combos go into Spvp and practice. Don’t worry about dieing and such just practice jumping in and out of fights.
4. After your Spvp runs try and roam around in WvW getting those 1v1’s when you can and flip camps and such.
5. As with any skill it takes time to get good. You don’t have to no life the game to be good just stick with one class and practice, you will get there.
Or just search on browser ‘1v1 arena’ and theres plenty of servers to join
I used to be a power ranger, now not sure anymore
One of the best tools i found to learning how to play thief is getting beat consistently by another class, rolling up that class and trying to determine the build used to beat your thief and then taking that other class against a thief and seeing how they beat you.