Guild Wars 2

I love everything about numbers. I enjoy optimizing damage, tinkering traits just to squeeze out every damage possible out of one character. My first character was a thief. The reasoning behind my choice was: in most MMOs, a (primarily) melee class with the lowest defense for armors should wield the highest damage potential.

With that said, I’m looking at my thief in a pve perspective.
http://i527.photobucket.com/albums/cc359/rachel032791/gw2/gw057.jpg

I was exploring every option. So I worked on my thief until I had every weapon set, possible. 3 pistols, 2 daggers, a sword, a shortbow, a speargun and a spear. All exotic power, precision and crit damage.

Backstab’s damage was cute, but I found it awful in pve. Killing one mob at a time wasn’t to my liking. Here’s a picture of me pwning a rabbit. http://i527.photobucket.com/albums/cc359/rachel032791/gw2/gw039.jpg

I found the calling with sword and pistol. It was effective until they nerfed it, and nerfed it hard. The nerf didn’t kill the spec, pvp wise. But then again, sword pistol thief in pvp is child’s play, hands down, easiest spec to play. Having a stunbreaker at your disposal anytime you want, you can’t ask for more than that.
What the nerf did to me and what mattered most to me, in my opinion was they did kill the spec in pve.

http://i527.photobucket.com/albums/cc359/rachel032791/gw2/thecombo.png
http://i527.photobucket.com/albums/cc359/rachel032791/gw2/thecombo2.png

A sword pistol autoattacks (nonstealth) composed of three hits. Slice, Slash and Crippling Strike. Those 3 attacks add up to a total of 2,628. While the newly nerfed pistol whip has 2,853. This goes without saying that you’re better off spamming black powder and autoattacks in pve.

That was the last straw for me. At first I laughed at other thieves saying you’re better off autoattacking than pistol whipping. Then I got the facts slapped across my face.

So I went into my little cave and cried. Being the avid fan of numbers as I am, I was a lost child in the midst of a forest with pedophilic wolves waiting on every nook and cranny. aNet gave me a glass of betrayal served with 2 servings of incompetence. Or at the least, that’s how it was to me.

And then I made a warrior.
http://i527.photobucket.com/albums/cc359/rachel032791/gw2/gw055.jpg

My warrior’s gears aren’t optimal yet. I have exotic accessories and a greatsword. Rare berserker set with ruby orbs. A few stats off full exotic, but it gets the work done. It was then and there I found the light.
http://i527.photobucket.com/albums/cc359/rachel032791/gw2/gw054.jpg
Although I had 25 stacks of precision, notice that I only had 22 stacks of might and my endurance is full. 4.4% additional damage if my endurance isn’t. I dealt as much as 30k while waiting for somebody to start arah story.

I’m a pve guy through and through, and the thing is, I find thieves inferior to warriors in pve Damage wise, there’s no debate, Warriors have the highest damage be it range or melee. Support roles, I’d say thieves are as up to par as warriors. Thieves have good debuffs, and utilities for pve play. Banners and shouts for warriors on the other hand is as good as it gets.

All in all, GW2 classes are not one dimensional. But people have preferences, and we play the game according to those preferences.

On a sidenote, I’m sure you would notice the HP difference, but i couldn’t really give a single crap about it since it doesn’t give me damage.

Betrayal! I recommend making a mesmer too.

What on earth…how is your PW doing that little damage? Almost all the time my PW does 5k damage and my auto attacks are doing around 3k damage. I’m not even a glass build either…

Yeah youre examples are suss. Your warrior screenie shows you doing almost 27k but youre using a skill that takes 3 and a half seconds to channel and is arguably the strongest warrior skill in the game which requires you to be perfectly stationary to use. Not the mention over 20 stacks of might against a foe with 25 stacks of vulnerability, running nothing but signets as utilities. Im sure thats great in PvE and you yourself said youre a PvE guy but youre really struggle for survivability in many scenarios.
Im sure in 3 and a half seconds i can deal damage that rivals that is a thief in similar circumstances.

BabelFish.7234:

What on earth…how is your PW doing that little damage? Almost all the time my PW does 5k damage and my auto attacks are doing around 3k damage. I’m not even a glass build either…

What’s written is not the damage I deal, but if you looked at the screenshots it’s the skill damage factor.

My warrior in full magic find gear out-damages my pathetic thief, by a long shot. And my thief is in full berserker gear.

The thief class is (according to the game designer) a tricky, hard to pin-down class (through stealth and mobility). This is amazing in pvp, but mostly worthless in pve.

However, a warrior is designed to be a class where once you get caught in melee range, he beats your face to the ground – quickly. This has some weaknesses in pvp (few escape options), but is amazing in pve.

All this stems from the PvP-centric game design. PvE is more of a side-game.

Adein.2031:

The thief class is (according to the game designer) a tricky, hard to pin-down class (through stealth and mobility). This is amazing in pvp, but mostly worthless in pve.

However, a warrior is designed to be a class where once you get caught in melee range, he beats your face to the ground – quickly. This has some weaknesses in pvp (few escape options), but is amazing in pve.

All this stems from the PvP-centric game design. PvE is more of a side-game.

See, here’s the thing. Those “few escape options” are also a problem in PvE. You get Shield Stance, Endure Pain, and an extra dodge roll if you spec right; you’ve also got easy perma-swiftness, which of course helps a ton; and some weapons have a mobility skill. But overall you can’t dodge all the red circles and your defensive skills don’t compare favorably against a guardian or even a thief.

Y’all are talking like warriors can just run through Orr pulling 20 guys and beat their faces in without breaking a sweat. That’s not really the case. They roll through isolated trash but have to work for it quite a bit in challenging encounters.