Guild Wars 2

For those of you who dont know, the Holy Trinity is based on class roles. In most mmo games, in a simpler explanation, dps-tank-heal/support. I feel that the other classes in this game have way more versatility in terms of team efforts.
Warriors- can tank and also buff teams or dish out damage.
Mesmers- Im new to mesmers but I know they can kite hard and buff really well. The also can throw out alot of damage.
Elementalist- obivously they can hit like a truck or they can go more defensive. They can also support with heals and some buffs
Engineer- I know they can throw out really high burst damage if built right. They can also support with turrets and healing along with elixirs. They can also be tanky on top of all this
Guardian- Bunker build obviously shows the true tank in this game. Guardians can also support with their utility skills and hit hard.

Now thief’s- The only way we can buff allies is with stealing and giving stealth. We can also give allies poison but that is if they are close enough. The main support ability we have is SR which if the other team isnt dumb then they will still do damage while you have SR up. So support builds are very hard to come by on thiefs but with some tweaks could be more viable. Increased range of venomous aura by a little. Also another little idea that could help is that when blinding powder is used, it also heals allies around you.

A defensive thief is ususally paired with either healing with signet of malice or paired with sustainable damage that way they can survive and still do damage. I feel the tanky thief would be a better choice then a support thief because when not in a group the support build thief is basically useless unlike other support builds in other professions in where they can usually take out enemies still. The build i run is a great build that is pretty tanky and can deal damage at the same time. I have about 20k hp and still deal 5-6k crits on BS.

An offensive thief is most commonly seen in gw2 imo. Obviously poeple run in to a GC thief and boom their dead. i feel that most thieves are forced in to this roles being a damage role because of all of the traits and skills available to us. I feel that thieves are most usefull as a burst damage role because its what works best. Just like the guardian bunker build can hold his own against a team of 5, thieves can destroy 1v1 or or even against 5v1.I am not saying this is bad I am trying to just maybe get some ideas on how others feel. I feel thieves shine in a light that most people hate because they can get blind sided and die almost instantly, but thats all we can do. there is no real support thief that can sustainably kill others on his own and its less helpful to go tanky because one: its hard to go tanky with out using stealth. and 2: thieves are more useful as a a damage role then any other.

So i feel that the holy trinity is kind of almost forcing thieves to always go a damage build and that is why we always see these nerf comments and post because thats where thieves shine and thats what thieves do.
I know that there are some support builds and some tanky builds with thieves but its just less viable and less contributive for a thief as the offensive thieve that can throw out lots of damage and conditions.

Anythoughts? also dont come in here raging i wont respond i didnt come here to argue i came here to get other peoples thoughts and opinions on where thieves stand. Bottom line is i think thieves are pushed to be damage roles IMO and just because people see so many of the damage burst thieves means that they are OP. Im sure if we saw just as much bunker build guardians they’d be saying the same things. Thanks!

Thief can achieve some of the best support in the game in my opinion. It’s just it comes from the support abilities of other classes… I’m referring of course to the spamable Blast Finisher that is Cluster Bomb.

Depending on what fields are put down a Thief can provide large numbers of effects (AoE Frost Armour, AoE Chaos Armour, AoE Healing, AoE Might are some of the key ones) it’s just that the only 3 reliable fields that Thieves get on their own aren’t very good (Poison (AoE Weakness), Smoke (AoE Stealth) and Dark (AoE Blindness… Which is achieved via their Smoke field)

They can also provide high uptime of AoE weakness using the Deadly Arts 15 point trait and Choking Gas. This can also be done with little to no loss of damage (I the only pre-requisites of the aforementioned support is 15 points into the Power trait line and one of the equipped weapon sets being shortbow (Most thieves tend to run with a SB anyway due to the versatility and utility it provides))

Also, as far as Tanky thief builds go, I don’t see them as being hugely effective due to the naturally low hp pool of the thief combined with the fact that a decent portion of thief survivability comes from stealth causes one of the main reasons to have a tanky build (Staying on a point) less achievable…

Well yea i feel that the finisher can help but not as much as a damage thief can because im sure someone else can grab an aoe finisher but even on damage thieves they can carry a Sb on second weapon and still use the finisher im talking lie real heal support with major buffs and stuff. stealth is a big buff but its the only one we can give unless traited in to trickery

I feel that if Anet wants to wuit the nerf complaints, in the future they would add more traits and weapon skills that lets the thief break away from damage and have more unique builds that can break off in to hybrid buiolds likree other profs tbh i would love to see a buffer thief… Like the burglar in lotro i feel having an invis buffer would be awesome for the team maybe drawing agrro whil buffing the team.

I have 5 80s and Thief has the best support by far.
Stealth-rezzing a player that would otherwise die & aggro removal to a player that would otherwise get downed are much more tide-turning effects than anything other classes have.
Let alone the ability to apply AoE weakness (2x if traited for weakening poison), AoE cripple, massive damage denial through blind fields, blocking/reflecting projectiles, team life leech and removing conditions/restoring endurance.

It’s just sad that most Thieves can’t see most of this and believe they are a DPS class, or again think Thief’s support is about healing team through refuge/regen.

Mystogan.4157:

Well yea i feel that the finisher can help but not as much as a damage thief can because im sure someone else can grab an aoe finisher but even on damage thieves they can carry a Sb on second weapon and still use the finisher im talking lie real heal support with major buffs and stuff. stealth is a big buff but its the only one we can give unless traited in to trickery

I heal 1200-1400 per second to every party member standing on a water field. Ranger’s water field lasts 15 seconds, making you the best healer in the whole game when it’s present :P

I play a support Thief, sharing Venoms (with their Might and Heal), boons from Stealth, Combo Finishers, maintainable Weakness AoE (Shortbow poison field + 15 points on Deadly Arts) and Shadow Refuge (my favorite utility in the game, a lot of uses including being the best resurrection skill).

It’s giving me amazing results so far in every enviroment.

The role of the tankier thief is picking on GC thieves :p

Gw2 Holy Trinity for End-Game PvE: Support, Control, DPS

Support: P/D Carrion Venomshare Thief, Grants allies 8 might and 400 health for 16 attacks. (Still not anywhere near as good as the guardian however, but that’s how end game PvE works)

Control: D/P Berserker Blinding Thief, Spam Auto-Attack and blinding powder. (Not as good as the necro or engi but again, end game PvE)

DPS: P/P Berserker DPS Hero, Spam Unload. (This is the top tier build right now, level 30+ fractals kill for a good DPS thief, with 10 vulns and 25 stacks of might from other classes, you’ll be hitting 12,000 unloads)

So it depends, END game TOP TIER PvE? No not every class can do anything. Thieves get a few decent support abilities like shadow refuge and weakness, but those can easily be apart of a FULL DPS build.

But if your pugging CoF, then do whatever the hell you want cause you can run that easy kitten naked.

I CAN’T STRESS THIS ENOUGH If your using a SB to activate combo fields, then you have no idea what your doing. Your wasting DPS to activate crap combos like Choas Armor when the only combo that needs to be going on is the GUARDIAN who is pounding the warriors Banners on his fire fields.)

Has anyone mentioned smokefield on the thief? I don’t want to read through all the posts, but I think it needs to be mentioned as a useful utility as a support.

Mystogan.4157:

Well yea i feel that the finisher can help but not as much as a damage thief can because im sure someone else can grab an aoe finisher but even on damage thieves they can carry a Sb on second weapon and still use the finisher im talking lie real heal support with major buffs and stuff. stealth is a big buff but its the only one we can give unless traited in to trickery

Have you ever used cluster bomb in a water field? That’s thousands of points of healing. Or a fire field building up might stacks for everyone? That one ability creates synergy with every other class in the game if played correctly.

Add in our own combo fields, shadow refuge and dps and I’d say thieves are in a pretty good place right now.

Chewy.9263:

Has anyone mentioned smokefield on the thief? I don’t want to read through all the posts, but I think it needs to be mentioned as a useful utility as a support.

Smoke Screen, the most under rated skill in the game. I love it. Blocks projectiles, lets you stealth or grant area stealth on demand and allows you to shoot through and blind targets. Works great with any ranged build, especially with pistol/pistol as it allows you to free up initiative every 24-30s as you wont need to use Bps.

I run power-vit-tough armor(runes of divnity) and weapons with bloodlust and force on daggers and flame on shortbow, valkyire neck.rings and earrings.

with 0-30-25-15-0. I find this build quite tanky with 2.7k armor and 20k hp, the high uptime of dodge and stealth save me from a lot of dmg also. backstabbing doing 4-9k dmg, About support. My best bet is stealth and healing downed allies or kite away enemies while i stealthed a ally.

I would like to see more support built into the thief. Blast finishers are fine and all but really in the middle of combat (I am using WvW as an example here) 30 people fighting 30 people there are combo fields everywhere, they are appearing and disappearing all the time. You will waste a lot of cluster bombs on fields trying to stack buffs and either get the wrong buff or have a field disappear right before your shot lands because of how slow the cluster bomb moves. Sure its great for prebuffing things like might and retaliation. Or if you run a stack strategy once in a while it is useful. But it is not a very reliable buffing method outside of that.

What is more is the shortbow is probably one of our most detached weapons. And what I mean by that is that there is just one trait dedicated to the shortbow and that makes it do a whole 5% more damage. Granted there are traits that will work with a shortbow like they would with any other weapon but most of these are not that effective. But we are forced to use the shortbow for AoE as it is our only real option for AoE. (at least in a PvP sense)

I would like to see more support abilities built into the thief to make us more useful in teams if we want to be that way. A buff to Venomous Aura would be alright but honestly I find this to be a rather sad buff to give to my allies. True we could also pass out might along with it but I really only find devour venom to be useful. It seems half of the time Basilisk venom doesn’t work and spider/skale venom just really are not that special. There are more effective ways to apply poison and weakness and 3-4 stacks of vulnerability is just plain sad for the cool-down this thing has. As for Ice drake venom. I really think this skill could be great….. if it didn’t have such a horrible duration.

What I would do

First thing make Venomous Aura and Venomous Strength default on every venom. Then combine Quick venoms and Residual Venom into one trait. Now take the 3 traits you just effectively gained and make the shortbow more useful, or at least allow it to feel more attached. Making trick shot hit 5 targets instead of 3, and maybe making it so any active combo field it passes through sticks with it to every target not just the first one. Maybe put a trait in that allows your choking gas to be changed out for another combo field. (little up arrow over the skill or something) Be able to pick things like fire field, pison field, and maybe some kind of hallucinogenic gas which would act like a chaos field. And lastly there has been a lot of demand for a 1200 yard range weapon for the thief. Since you could probably replace residual venoms and put it on the quick venoms you could take that high ranking trait and make it so shortbows and maybe even pistols get 1200 range. Call it something like improved sights.

From here there are some less useful abilities you can improve on or replace. Shadow trap, Needle trap, Tripwire and infiltrator’s signet. The problem with the traps is that you really don’t have time to set them up. And once you do set them up there are more effective skills or abilities/traits that can do the same thing and save you a utility slot. The signet is a lower recharge stun break. But honestly I would take shadow step over this any day. Return ability and condition removal aspect are huge perk. And lets not forget that if you are using this as a stun breaker you are probably trying to get out of something not into something so having the choice of where to land is much better than using this and running or trying to stealth.

Ideas for replacements
Signet of lethality – Active + 5-10% Crit damage to you and your allies (3-5 person cap). On use you and your allies (again 3-5 cap) next 3 attacks have 100% crit chance. (Passive effect would not stack even if you had a party of 5 thieves using it, and on use would simply refresh the 3 never stacking higher)

A shadow and a fear- AoE ground effect, dark field. Players in the area gain 3 stacks of vulnerability every second and after 5 seconds the field would have some kind of black explosion/smoke effect and cause AoE blind and a short fear. (make it about the same size as our poison field and the recharge 30-45 seconds)

Shadow Rip – In effect this would be something like a mesmer’s portal but with some slight disadvantages and a few advantages. First the disadvantage would be that it uses ground targeting. Meaning that the entrance is placed where you are standing. You would need clear line of sight and would act a lot like shadow step. 1200 yard range. So you could not shadow step up to or down from walls in towers/keeps. However there would be no player cap limit on this this skill. The cool down could be the same as the mes portal 90 seconds. The point of this skill would be to allow your force to make drastic flanking moves or to get your friends into or out of a fight faster.