Guild Wars 2

Hello, I am a semi casual player, played not too long ago and only played Reaper. I am really interested in having daredevil but as one of my characters. But, majority of people I’ve met, warn me to stay away from Elementalist or Thief, if I’m having bad ping. The ping I currently have ranged from 250 to 300 max. If it helps, I’m interested in mostly PvE and some WvW. Please give me an advice to roll one or not. Thanks in advance and sorry my bad English.

tl;dr Ping is around 250-300, is thief viable for that ping? PvE and WvW.

The reason people warn you about ping is because thief is an extremely fast paced class. If you don’t experience a ton of lag you should be fine.
Thief can be challenging to learn because you don’t have invulns and other such things so all the damage you don’t want to take has to be negated through dodging and blinding. It takes time to develop the reaction time and become used to surviving with such low defenses and I guarantee you will die a ton in the process but when you start getting good with thief you will notice it feels much better to play with. I find that rolling a thief is incredibly fun and educational. You learn a ton about how the thief class plays which gives you an advantage when fighting them and then you play at a much higher skill level for pretty much any other class because you develop quicker reactionary skills and you become more effective using your baseline tools (Dodges and other active defenses) for survival so adding on the other invulns and such available to other classes can make you near unkillable.

Summary: Thief is worth it if you’re willing to put in the work for it.

As Ario said, the issue is more with lag than high ping, so as long as your ping is somewhat stead you should be able to find something you can play.

That said, thief is a glass cannon at heart, so don’t expect it to be a picnic if you have some ping issues.

In pve – anything works but in raids. Can’t raid on thief with lag simply because if you react too late to mechanics you might wipe whole group.

WvW – thief is probably worst class to play in pvp environment when you have high ping. This class is as closest to action gameplay as you can get in this game – whole class is based around active defense: you need to dodge attacks in time, interrupt in time etc. – all within milliseconds. With high ping it is simply impossible.

I have played on NA servers from EU with 160+ and eventually had to move to EU simply because after patch couple years ago your skills just would eat your resources without actually do anything due to high ping and how server reacts to it (e.g. hs + steal combo will eat ini and put steal on CD but not actually port you to enemy). I also got hit mid dodges a lot. With 300 ms it would be even worse. If warrior or engi gets hit – they can usually shrug it off; thief will die.

If you have high ping you gotta play something with passives and slow gameplay, e.g. warriors.

250-300 ms might be doable. Try it and see.

play ghost thief should be fine for your ping. does not require fast reactions like most of thief builds you can auto qu most of the build to avoid input delay get around your ping.

this is for WvW of course in pve should play whatever you want because all pve monster telegraph there plays you can get to point where you offset your dodges to your ping.

Thank you so much for the replies. I think I will play my thief for world bosses and Meta events in both tyria and HoT. Hopefully it doesn’t drag me down with my pings. Once again, thank you.

Your friend is right, if you want frustration, a lot of it, go thief. I used to play a rogue in wow, that’s why I came here to play the same role, but it turns out, it frustrated me a lot, this is the second time I tried to pick up this game and it failed me. PVP in this game is just not a fun and enjoyable thing, it’s a mess. But this is a good PVE game.

Keyboardwarrior.8021:

Your friend is right, if you want frustration, a lot of it, go thief. I used to play a rogue in wow, that’s why I came here to play the same role, but it turns out, it frustrated me a lot, this is the second time I tried to pick up this game and it failed me. PVP in this game is just not a fun and enjoyable thing, it’s a mess. But this is a good PVE game.

Thanks for the response. I think I will just use my thief for not so clutch stuff like open world even and HoT events. Already have a Reaper to do the fractals and others. Just that thief is too cool on my eyes, must roll one