Guild Wars 2

My first day playing, and it was a total mess.

I first picked up the Guardian to play with, it came up fine when my friends have told me that I was in the wrong world. So, I deleted that Guardian profession, moved to another server, and totally set there. That time I have chosen Thief, thinking that I might try this one out as well, as this being absent in Guild Wars 1 (I have an Assassin there, but this one is another story).

I played for almost 7 hours straight. Yes, it was long enough to be considered as a full-time job. The problem is, however, I only reached level 10.

This is my first character, and I don’t want to rush to level 80. Yet, dying to that Doc Howler for three times during a showdown in my personal story, and this leveling that might take me for a lifetime tell me that there might be something wrong with being a Thief. I was shocked because my Guardian rarely dies during combat.

Is the Thief less-PvE oriented than other professions, or it requires a higher learning curve than any other professions, therefore not making it suitable for newbies?

Doc Howler takes out a lot of people, I remember her giving me some issue back at launch.
Try throwing in a pistol offhand and using black powder on her, the field will blind her.

I already resolved the Doc Howler problem by ditching out out more DPS than I should by picking out Assassin’s Signet. That too didn’t go well though, she managed to put me to that “lying down” status before I could kill her. Well, that’s good than not getting the kill at all, at least.

If you’re truly a noob who’s played just a few hours then I must say you’re quite observant. Look around these forums a bit to get a better idea of the pve imbalances when choosing your first profession. To answer your question, yes the thief is weak in pve especially versus the guardian.

My thief doesn’t die in PvE. Whether I’m running S/D + SB or S/P + SB.
Generally unless you buffer yourself with some tough/vit (investing in Shadow arts and Acrobatics also helps) you’re based a lot on just not getting hit, and you have the tools for that.
I think the general game is fine for a new thief /P beats the majority of the game. It’s more the community that is hostile that doesn’t value you significantly in PvE and hates you in pvp. You can certainly handle anything that comes at you.

If anything the first couple levels are a bit hard because you’re lacking options.

Leveling is much slower as a thief than it is with the Warrior or Guardian. It’s less rewarding from a PvE perspective too so if your goal is PvE, I wouldn’t suggest the class. Similarly, if your plan is zerg combat in WvW, not the greatest class you could go with as the thief is probably the lowest ranked class for large group combat.

Now if you plan to run small groups then the thief is fine, but be warned that WvW no longer really supports roaming as more times than not you’re going to run into an enemy zerg regardless of the server you play on.

It’s a rewarding class and not faceroll like many others, but it’s far from the strongest in anything but small group roaming.

^ With that being said I think you just mentioned “The Thief deserves the worst class ever award”.

With a thief you have to learn to play. You cannot soak damage and need to actively defend with dodge, blind/smoke, shadowstep, cripple, and daze. You need to use the right defense for the right situations. It’s all there in the weapon sets if you know when/how to use the initiative and when to run with auto-attacks.

I agree, I noticed that the Thief have lots of skills in the arsenal that either deals with dodging, or getting cloaked. I think Thief has a much higher-learning curve than other class. I still haven’t tried all yet so I can’t conclude.

If you’re fighting a single mob then go with D/P. for multiple foes I would use S/P. drop the blind field and just auto attack. Most of the mobs attack so slow that they get blinded between each attack. That’s the easiest way, but also pretty boring – and takes a lot of time.

But as an answer to your question; no. It’s not noob friendly. It takes time to understand, especially if you’re headed to the Mists.