Guild Wars 2

I have watched videos of thieves owning in WvW,PvE,etc. After seeing this,I made a thief as soon as I could. Now I don’t know if I am just bad, I am playing him wrong, or what the situation is, but I can’t seem to complete simple tasks like skill points or even 1v1’s against NPC’s my level. Now I am only level 20, so I am really hoping that things start to better from here, but is there a reason why I am struggling so much with my thief?

Also, I’m not sure if I am just used to my level 80 warrior with a lot of health and toughness, but why do I die so much faster now? It literally takes 3 hits from an NPC maybe two levels higher than me to down me and it’s really frustrating. Any tips?

You mean videos made to showcase skill and someone being superior and better in situations?
You bought into the hype.

Edit: I’m not saying Thieves are bad and I’m not saying you’re bad. Just learn to adapt and adjust. I too went from the transition of playing Rangers/Wa to Thieves and Eles. Just learn the play style and find what suits you. You’ll start to have fun, even if that means NOT playing a thief

Yeah, you are right. I saw these videos and told myself thats what I wanted to be. It is disappointing to hear this, but sometimes the truth hurts I guess. However, I am still going to play on him and practice.Maybe I will get better as I level up more. Thank you.

If anyone still has any tips or tricks they are willing to share, I am always looking for ways to improve.

Check this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/I-Just-Feel-So-UP-Am-I-Doing-It-Wrong

Some good advice there

Just from reading those comments I feel I have learned some cool techniques that I’m going to use when I play again. Thanks for the link.

for solo pve (skill points, hearts, or anything else involving mobs) use dagger/pistol or sword/pistol and use this incredibly difficult chain ( one move every second so you have to be a very skilled player):
5 – wait – wait – wait – wait – 5 – wait – wait – wait – wait – 5 ….
^_^

You are still in a low level to judge.

Try playing it in PvP to check the class better.

In PvE the thief is pretty boring to level, and pretty weak. I used pistol/dagger to spam blinds and have a semi-easy level experience. The thief really becomes strong at 80 with all traits and gear, before that, he’s useless.

My thief took a LOOOONG time to be any decent in PvE. As someone else said, pick up Sword/Pistol and use 5. Then…auto attack until blind wears off and use 5 again. Repeat until dead.

It’s very boring but you’ll be practically invulnerable against most enemies.

Once you get higher level and have better gear/traits it gets better. Until then…it’s pretty crappy.

Low level PvE is a challenge.

At 80 in exotics its as easy as it gets.

Just to update everyone, I took the advice of using caltrops for condition damage while shooting with my shortbow and I cannot explain how much it has helped. I can now take on huge mobs and take little to no damage because of this technic. I also started to get better with my D/D by using death blossom more often. I just want to thank everyone for all the advice, it has worked wonders for me and I really appreciate it.Thanks.

I’m glad to see that you’ve adapted to the Thief playstyle, that’s great!

Here’s just a few tips to make Thief more fun in PvE than auto-attacking and hitting BP every 4 swings…

• Put 5 points into Trickery for initiative on Steal and use it for an extra DB.
• Use Roll for Initiative for an extra DB (or two, depending on initiative level).
• Use Signet of Malice for constant heal ticks with every hit on every enemy (think about it for a moment, 5 enemies in a mob x 3 hits for each one x heal tick for each hit = a lot of healing ).
• Switch to Shortbow when completely out of initiative and RoI/Steal are on cooldown and kite the mob around your Caltrops. Doing this you can very easily solo melee Champion bosses as long as you stay out of their range and keep mobile.

Hope you enjoy the Thief!

There are 2 abilities that grant evasion for a short time. D/D Deathblossom and S/P Pistol Whip.

Stealth is another way to mitigate damage and control the fight. P/D is good as you can stealth, wait for it to almost drop, hit Sneak Attack and restealth quickly.

Thief has a ton of play styles, I love the class for it. It gets a lot easier when new trait tiers become available.

GL
Blood~

Deathspike.1870:

In PvE the thief is pretty boring to level, and pretty weak. I used pistol/dagger to spam blinds and have a semi-easy level experience. The thief really becomes strong at 80 with all traits and gear, before that, he’s useless.

pistol/pistol – shortbow in pve is incredibly powerful. All out glass cannon on map completions, get bloodlust up, upgrade armor to at least masterwork at decent intervals (cheap route), and weapons to rares (still relatively cheap).

Two more more targets, shortbow just decimates them; auto attack as you close the gap then cluster bomb at your feet so there’s almost no “air” time. Single target p/p autoattack two or three times while they close the gap, unload on them, dodge back, repeat (if necessary, most likely not in most cases).

Just using map completions/events to level using this technique you should get to 80 within about 40 to 50 hours of gameplay and maybe 3 to 6 gold (probably less – loot easily makes up for costs of masterwork armor, and quite a bit of rare armor/weapons).

I’ve leveled ranger, mesmer, guardian, and thief to 80 and thief was by far the fastest.

Incurafy.6329:

I’m glad to see that you’ve adapted to the Thief playstyle, that’s great!

i think this is a big part of the thief, adapting to the situation no matter what youre running with, but i guess that applies to all professions, just more for the thief

Thief is strongest class in the game But unlike other classes that can deal with taking a hit or 2 thief can only live threw dodging.

Taobella.6597:

Thief is strongest class in the game…

Ahahahaha!! Not gonna lie, that made me chuckle quite hard.

Xenth.2408:

I’ve leveled ranger, mesmer, guardian, and thief to 80 and thief was by far the fastest.

Guardian decimates everything without thinking, Ranger has insane condition damage with traps and mesmer zerker destroys even champions with little effort. I’m surprised you thought thief was the fastest, I much preferred the other 3 due to their insane power. Auto attack shortbow and nuking is still pretty slow compared to them, but a lot better, for sure.

Thief is one of the better classes at pve solo, but at lower gear levels you are really squishy. If you want to kill every sub champion mob, use p/p or bow and kite in a circle, this takes really long but you can take any number of(melee) mob, most range mobs. d/d with 3 (death lotus) spam +kiting kills most groups much much faster also.