Guild Wars 2

In MMOs, I’ve always had the most fun with those rare classes that offer a combination of stealth, mobility, and healing. The SWTOR smuggler and the WoW druid are probably closest to my “ideal” playstyle (A shame that they aren’t in my ideal game.) Superficially, it doesn’t seem like GW2 offers anything like that, so I rolled a guardian. I’m happy with it, but lately I’ve been wanting to start another alt, and so I gave the thief a second look.

It turns out that there are traits do allow the thief to put out a little bit of healing and buffing. However, I don’t really have any way of testing whether those traits are viable in PVE. I’m not sure if everyone seems to focus on damage because thieves aren’t good support or just because support-oriented players just gravitate toward obvious support options like guardian and elementalist.

Should I give the thief another shot, or should I give up on decent stealth in this game and continue tinkering with my fledgling engineer?

If you went with a condition thief, you should be able to do what you want. You won’t be as effective as a guardian when it comes to healing, but when it comes to reviving dead members or sneaking your party through dungeons, the thief is unsurpassed because of Shadow Refuge. We also have scorpion wire to do pulls, and some traits do give boons to your teammates based on certain actions.

If you want to roll a support thief, consider going P/P or P/D so that you can also apply Vulnerabilities. But in terms of a lot of healing, that’s just not going to happen.

Normally i dont post on these forums, but i can this once because my built tends to be a supportive/self sustain thief depending on the time of the month haha. In the terms of healing power, we only have 2 things at our disposal for our allies, A trait that gives us 5 secs of regen boon to whoever we stealth, and shadow refuge, the III adept trait gives any ally we stealth regen for 5 secs, even if they reveal themselves imediately, this also scales with your healing power, and that trait also makes Shadow refuge extremely effective with the regen+heal on pulse. Boon wise we have a couple of choices i know of, the stealing boons from your foe and giving to party, and stealing gives you and nearby allies fury,might and swiftness for 10 secs, both these trait lines [Shadow arts and Trickery] CAN be usefull to your party if you want to have a more support side to your thief, The only tips i can give is if you want to go full support thief as in party/group support>my damage would be to get rune sets that increase boon duration, i think you can get roughly 70% boon duration? Im not sure haha, but to make our healing skills effective, Shadow refuge/shadow protector you should stack healing power to get the most out of it, i once ran this sorta style myself rocking around 1k healing power, and youd be suprised how beneficial you can be to your party members when you learn how to play it, althought i wasnt using boon duration+supportive steal so i imagine you could be even more-so if you went that route, just remember, if you go towards healing/support you have to give up something, for the most part, thiefs that go support end up giving up damage so its all about you finding that balance or build feel you like yourself.
Also as stated above, while we may be able to be a healing/support type we’re not the most productive profession at doing so, although sometimes its fun to play niche builds

Ps. sorry for the wall of text xD

The WoW Druid was also my favorite playstyle. I’d say that an Engineer is similar to a WoW Shaman with Engineering as a profession (and steampunk theme instead of nature).

My Thief is only level 26 or so, but I’m also really enjoying him a lot. He does stealth and mobility, and adds utility (rather than healing). Things like Caltrops (AoE bleed and cripple), Smokescreen (line of blind and destroys projectiles), Blinding Powder (AoE blind and stealth), and the incredible Shadow Refuge (AoE stealth and heal). Shadow Refuge gives 10-15 seconds of stealth to a group and lets you rez while stealthing yourself and your target.

If you trait properly, you can give poison abilities to your entire group when you apply poisons. Note that the stealth mechanic is very different from WoW’s Rogue class, the poison mechanic is very different, and the Initiative mechanic is somewhat different.

Yep, as I said many times in this forum, Thief is an incredibly underrated support profession. I think a support Thief excels more than other bursty builds. Shadow Refuge is by far the best support/utility skill in the game for a lot of different situations (including skipping really hard content), and venom sharing is good with the correct traits. P/D is a great set for support, and SB secondary serves as an on demand, whenever you want it, always available blast combo finisher which is great too.

I don’t think it’s worth kittening your damage too much for it. I feel like it works best to mix survivability with damage. Feels like you don’t sacrifice that much damage if you make yourself a bit beefier and take a few extremely useful support/utility spells.

Such a shame we don’t have any ranged stealth builds though, since most of our innovative and fun plays come from stealth builds. Only thing I played was P/D for the stealth, you need to go melee for it but it’s relatively safe. Just a shame it only works well with condition build.

Thieves provide more support through stealthing team members and reviving them safely(dropping aggro).

There are multiple ways to build a support spec. I’m personally running a Venomous Aura offensive AoE buffing spec, which also gives some decent healing as the people I buffed are attacking. Another route is taking the AoE buffs from the Trickery trait line. Both AoE buffing routes have their strengths and utility skills like Shadow Refuge really are amazing.

Well support theif can be good if you have a party that knows what they are doing but to be honest most people don’t know how to use combo finishers to there full potential. We currently are the only class in the game that can spam blast finishers making it very effective in group pvp. But we don’t really have many combo fields to take full advantage of it on our own, But if you are in group stacking boon duration/healing you could be affective as a support role and still do decent dps, for example if a elementalist drops a water combo field on the ground and you spam cluster bomb you will heal aoe for 2k per cluster bomb.

If a guardian drops there fields down you could give every one 25 stacks of might and a very long duration of retaliation, you can also aoe blind in dark fields, stealth in blind fields ect as well as still doing damage to the mobs you are attacking.

the best way to do this is to stand close range to what ever field you will be bombing so its a short distance for the skill to travel so you can use it over and over and stack traits that allow you to regen initiative faster as. if you stacked healing power your combo finishers in a water field could hit close to 2.5k heals but if you just go a normal dps spec and put combo fields near the boss or mobs you are fighting you can be supportive and still do good dps. the other tip is to remember is that combo fields don’t stack and this is where the problems will start if you are in a bad group because say having a theif drop poison on a water field will make you finishers not heal but spam weakness

Thief support is definitely viable in PvE, as well as PVP. It all depends on how you go about it though. There are actually a few different support builds, but thief support in general isn’t focused so much around healing as it is around buffing and providing stealth to allies. Sword/dagger is a pretty good melee support set. It gives you the ability to put weakness on a target reducing dmg to allies, has condition removal, an immobilize, cripple, vulnerability, and the ability to remove enemy boons. More offensive support, but still great support in most situations.

As far as utility skills,shadow refuge obviously is awesome support for performing stealth revives/saves etc. Signet of agility removes conditions from allies. Smoke screen blocks projectiles, and Blinding powder blinds enemies and stealth’s nearby allies. Shadowstep is good for traversing the battlefield if you need to rez a downed ally. When using it to teleport back it also removes 2 conditions from you.

As far as trait trees, Acrobatics can be a good self support tree due to it’s traits, but going down these trait line also increases the duration of boons that you place on yourself and allies. Shadow arts is good for it’s trait “Shadow Protector” which gives regen to allies that you stealth. This works well with some of the skills I listed above, especially if you’re stacking healing power. If you’re using your basilisk venom elite then “Venomous Aura” Is a great one, because this elite will also be shared with allies as well. Potentially giving your party a ton of CC . All other thieves you summon, as well as pets from your other party members will benefit from this trait as well. Giving your party the ability to turn things to stone every 45 secs is extremely useful. In the trickery trait line you have traits such as “Thrill of the crime” which gives nearby allies fury, swiftness, and might which is great for increasing damage output for a few seconds. Also “Bountiful Theft” has a chance to steal boons from enemies giving them to a few allies, as well as granting them vigor. Combined with the boon duration from Acrobatics, these will last longer.Having a support Thief in Arah for giganticus lupicus comes in handy a ton. These are just a few examples though of some traits I’ve been using, or have used at some point. Thief support plays different and is less obvious to play compared to guardian or elementalist support, but is still viable non the less assuming you know how to play it. Hope this helps!

Thanks for all the responses! I definitely have a better idea of what the class is capable of and what builds to try.