Guild Wars 2

Welcome rogues, scoundrels, and cutthroats! You may have heard, (incorrectly I assure you), that the thief is predominantly a PvP class, and has a limited or ineffective role in PvE parties. Luckily for us, this is not actually the case; thieves have an impressive array of support skill that may not be immediately obvious to a player coming from MMOs that utilize the holy trinity. Once you see how the thief’s abilities apply to the unique mechanics in Guild Wars 2, however, you will see that the humble thief is a force to be reckoned with.

This post is focused on dungeons and overworld gameplay, so there are no PvP tips here. There are plenty of other resources for PvP thieves, and if that’s what you’re looking for I’d start with Lowell’s excellent Thief PvP guide. This is also not about specific weapons or builds so much, but rather, our roles and abilities in PvE and dungeons.

If you disagree with something in this article or wish to add something, please say so! While I am a successful PVE thief, I am by no means the very best, nor am I always right. If there’s an error, I’ll fix it!

(Due to post length restrictions, this will be three posts long.)

PART I: The Theme and Starting Guidelines:

This is important for more than just roleplayers and lore nuts, because understanding the “theme” of the class helps you understand the design of the mechanics, and the intent behind the thief. The Thief in GW2 is primarily a “skirmisher” and a “dirty fighter”. You should always be moving, in and out of melee range as needed, and always trying to throw your enemy off balance with your deep bag of tricks.

Always Have an Exit Strategy! A downed thief supports no one. The Thief is not a rogue in other MMOs, who can stay behind the enemy and merely manage his “threat”. That’s not how aggro works, and at any moment an enemy can turn and decide you are now it’s new best friend. Always have situational awareness of who the enemy is targeting, and always have an exit planned. A dodge and cripple, a stealth: always have a way to quickly move out of melee range at a moment’s notice.

Always have one ranged weapon! Even if you like melee, as I do, the thief is not built to stay in melee 100% of the time. You are a skirmisher, and your range from the enemy must be adaptable. Right now the Shortbow has an edge over pistols, but depending on your build and if you already have another shortbow thief or a hammer guardian, you may be better off with pistols.

Don’t get tunnel vision! Under specific abilities I’ll explain the various ways you support your party, but remember that you have a lot of party support, and the lives of your teammates are more important than landing an extra Heartseeker or Pistol whip. Always keep and eye on your allies HP, and be ready to dodge-roll away and help them immediately if needed.

Don’t be concerned with your DPS, not at first! This is the big paradigm shift from previous MMOs that a lot of thieves are struggling with. Your DPS (damage-per-second) is not the defining feature of your class. Especially when learning story-mode dungeons or early explorable-mode dungeons, the amount of damage you deal is not that important. A warrior or an elementalist is almost always going to out-damage you, unless you are
a pure-damage glass-cannon build…and this game will punish you hard for taking a glass cannon into a dungeon. Some expert thieves may learn to pull it off, but starting out: don’t worry about your damage that much. There are no time limits or rage timers on bosses, not that I have ever seen.

(continued…)

PART II: How do I support my party, AKA “What do I do if not pure DPS”?

I’m not going to go over the intricacies of specific weaponsets, as there are already guides for that. Instead, I’m going to focus on the ways we support others in dungeons and world events, and how it makes us so effective at PvE.

The Perma-blind (Sword/Pistol or Dagger/Pistol): This is one of our easiest functions to pull off, though many players will find it a bit tedious. By conserving our Initiative and only using it for Black Powder, we can keep up blind nearly 100% of the time on enemies in a small group. Some players prefer doing this with Dagger/pistol, so they have heartseeker as well for finishing enemies or quickly getting back in melee range; the trade off is the dagger only hits one enemy at a time, so do whatever is best for your situation. This is less effective on bosses, who only suffer a 10% chance to miss from Blind, but on non-boss enemies it reduces their damage to practically nothing.

Venom Sharing Basilisk: Many thieves overlook Basilisk Venom, do to it’s 1-second duration and use of an Elite skill slot, but there is one moment where it truly shines: when combined with the Venom-sharing trait found deep in Shadow Arts. This trait allows the entire party to gain Basilisk venom on their next attack: with a bit of coordination, this can mean up to a 5-second total lockdown of the enemy, even a boss. Basilisk Venom is also one of the fastest-recharging Elites in the game, with a mere 45 second cooldown, allowing multiple uses during battles.

Shadow Refuge – Best Darn Support Skill: Always but this on your skillbar in dungeons. Always. Shadow Refuge is not only the single best support skill a thief has, it’s a strong contender for the best non-Elite support skill in the game. Shadow refuge is a medium-sized Dark Field that lasts for 3 seconds, and every one second pulses to give stealth and healing to all allies within the field. The best use of Shadow Refuge is op party members who have been put into a downed state, as it both causes them to lose all enemy aggro due to stealth, and gives them back HP. Shadow Refuge can also be used to grant a long-duration stealth to the entire party: if a person stays in a Shadow Refuge for the entire 3-second duration and does not break the stealth by attacking, each pulse stacks the duration of stealth. By the time the Refuge fades, you should have 10 seconds of stealth remaining, which is enough to sneak by certain enemies to get a more favorable positioning.

If that wasn’t enough, any projectiles going through a shadow refuge get life drain! Really, this skill is amazing and you should always have it in groups.

Scorpion Wire: This skill makes you the best puller in the game, bar-none. For those not familiar with the skill, Scorpion Wire does the same thing as it’s namesake character from the Mortal Kombat games: it yanks the enemy towards you, instantly. The real hidden value of this ability, however, is that the enemy affected by Scorpion wire does not appear to be aggroing until after they are pulled; essentially this means a careful scorpion wire can be used to break up a group of linked enemies, by yanking one of them out of the pack.

Lotus Poison – Perma-weakness: 15 trait points in Deadly Arts gets you one of our best support traits, Lotus Poison. Every time you poison an enemy, you cause 3 seconds of weakness. Combine this with a mainhand dagger, or a Shortbow, and you can effectively keep Weakness on an enemy 100% of the time. The value of this to your party cannot be understated. Weakness on the enemy offers more damage reduction than protection on every party member. Fight dirty, thieves, it’s what we do!

Smokescreen: We’re not the only ones with a placed wall that blocks projectiles, but these skills can be essential on some pulls (particularly against rangers in Ascalon Catacombs). Coordinate with other party members to chain one projectile-blocking wall after another, and you have some seriously damage mitigation!

(continued…)

PART III: Thief Meta Roles

“Damage-Dealer” should not be our role. In GW2, everyone is a damage-dealer to some extent, and we’re not even the best at damage. Combining everything we know above, we can organize the PvE thief into some roles that are more unique to Guild Wars 2:

The Combo Blaster (Shortbow)
The importance of combo fields cannot be understated in Guild Wars 2. A good use of combo fields can turn an impossible battle into a victory, and no combo finisher is more powerful than the ultra-rare blast finisher. Thieves have the easiest access to a blast finisher in the entire game, and we can spam it continuously! In a hard battle, your role as a Combo Blaster may be one of the most critical in the party. It’s achieved by using Cluster Bomb, Shortbow #2, on top of a combo field. This can work with the Shortbow Poison field, but it really shines with your party’s combo fields. Make sure they are using them, and they know that you are planning to blast them for huge additional effects!

Cluster Bomb tips: Cluster Bomb has a very high arc of fire, and can hit the ceiling to cause a premature explosion (hey, it happens to a lot of thieves!). To prevent this, be mindful of the ceiling and try to get in a bit closer. Currently, it appears Cluster Bomb is NOT causing a Blast combo when detonated manually (this is from my personal tests, so correct me if I am mistaken.), which means in a party setup it’s usually better to let it fall and take advantage of the finisher.

The Mitigation Debuffer
Lotus Poison allows us to cause almost 100% Weakness uptime. Off-hand pistol allows us to cause almost 100% blind uptime. if you really want to screw up the enemy, you can even combine these two in a dagger/pistol setup. Our debuffs do amazing damage mitigation, and while it may not be as obvious as the Guardian’s flashy blue force-fields, we are doing just as much to keep our party alive.

The Puller
Scorpion Wire makes you the best puller in the game, due to it’s ability to split up enemy groups. Learn to use it well, and parties will love you!

The Team Reviver
This one is not immediately obvious, but has to do with our Initiative system: Every other class in the game is cooldown based, meaning to be most effective they need to be using cooldown as soon as they come up (yes, there are a lot of exceptions, but we’re talking in broad terms here). Thieves, however, use initiative, which allows us to use many abilities all at once, in exchange for sort of a cooldown “debt” that is paid by having them all unavailable to use when Initiative rebuilds. What this means for the team, is that a thief can burn all their Initiative very quickly, then run over and revive a teammate while his/her Initiative rebuild with no reduction in damage or debuff ability. We can create a window of opportunity to allow use to run around the battlefield at zero cost to us, as long as we do not let our Initiative cap out. Combined with our crazy mobility, this makes us the best-suited to reviving downed party members! (This only applies to downed party members, not dead party members. Dead party members take far too long to revive, and need to use waypoints.)

The Aggro-controller
Guild Wars 2 does not have taunts like other MMOs, not does it’s aggro system follow a single predictable pattern. Thieves, however, share with Mesmers the unique ability to control aggro in a defensive way, and we’re better at doing so than the Mesmers are. This boils down to one thing: The ability to stealth party members. Stealth is an immediate aggro-break on most enemies, and can save the life of a damaged player desperately trying to escape the enemy or a downed player about to get killed by the enemy. We have two tools for this: Blinding Powder, and Shadow Refuge. At least shadow Refuge should already be on your bar, and if needed, you can take both these skills to have the ultimate toolkit in party aggro control.

Still not enough group stealth for your tastes? Drop a cluster bomb on a smoke field.

In conclusion

This got long-winded, but I hope you’re starting to see just how incredibly valuable the thief is in parties. It may be awhile before we can convince other players of this, as our party roles are not obvious to an outside observer, but keep playing well and eventually people will learn that having you along is making their dungeon runs so much easier. Guild Wars 2 is a different beast than other MMOs, and un-learning the old ways is going to take some time for the average player.

Farewell, fellow thieves, and remember: You may be a lair and a cheat, but you’re the party’s liar and cheat!

(I will edit this post with corrections or updates as needed, so please give feedback!)

Very nice post, clearly one for a sticky

I just started a thief myself, and this is an amazing break down on them. I was always a bit worried because I don’t like the glass-cannon rogue stereotype, but from this it’s obvious that there are a ton of support options. Nice to see that, since all I saw in beta were people complaining about a lack of control and support with thieves.

Thanks for the post!

One thing you missed that I absolutely love:

Black power is radius-based – which means you can give your allies blinding attacks too! Against enemies whom it works against, it makes you and anyone standing near you pretty much invincible for 5 seconds.

Great post, hadn’t thought about using Basilisk Venom in that way, thanks.

Thank you all for the encouragement! Hopefully if we all pool our knowledge and experience, we can put an end to the myth that thieves have poor party support. We may not be Guardians, but we’ve still got a lot to offer.

I’ll be cleaning up the typos in the guide soon as I get home this evening; the edit post tool is not playing nice with my phone.

Really good guide! Helps a lot, I always used to think that elite was worthless and I totally forgot about the venom spread. Great job, I’ll definitely try it out!

Sticky immediately please! Amazing options for this prof in tough group scenarios

Yeah I agree, sticky would be nice.

Very helpful tips for playing a support thief. Thank you for this!

This is a very useful post! thanks muchly

Very cool and insightful post. If this were reddit, you’d have an upvote.

Awesome post! I already use shadow refuge to help with aggro but never thought of using scorpion wire to pull tough mobs from a group!

Kirin.8465:

We may not be Guardians, but we’ve still got a lot to offer.

If you use lotus poison to spam AoE weaknesses you might be doing more damage mitigation than the resident guardian

(50% damage reduction, Vs 33% damage reduction + occasional Aegis + regen)

Better still that damage reduction modifier is independent of boon based damage reduction so it is a multiplier if both damage reduction methods are being used together. 50% x 33% = 33% of damage gets through, blinds/aegis/blocks not withstanding.

Nice info dude…. but how about the gear choice for this build?

- set armor
- runes
- jewelry

I have 84k karma and can not decide which gear to spend
http://dulfy.net/2012/09/08/gw2-templegod-karma-armor-sets/

Can someone explain to me the importance of the third tier major traits?

Most of them just appear to be small stat boosts you could get from weapons and armor. But yet there are people who swear by putting 30 points into at least one trait line. What am I missing?

very good post, stick it please….

Excellent post. I feel like I understand my thief’s place in the world a lot better after reading this.

very good post. i use a Venom Sharing Shortbow build for support in PvE and i like it quite a bit. thanks for writing about it!

edit

this is my favorite PvE support build

http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/thief#19|0|2642|8743|3906|6680|11435|30|1142|1714|1708|0|0|0|0|30|2384|2387|785|0|0|0|0|10|2358|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

Great info! The scorpion wire tip helped enormously on the first dungeon I had to pug. I for one am totally a ‘lair’ and a cheat.

This was highly educational for me, since I’m getting ready to start running dungeons with friends and I wasn’t really sure what the thief role was supposed to be in group pve.

Thanks bunches; you saved me from being “that nub.”

Also, liked the trick with the scorpion wire (kind of surprised that the range is 1200).

Please sticky this!
(And post more tricks if you have any more up your sleeve)

Zii.1309:

Hello, I am currently sitting at 56% crit chance, 73% crit dmg, and 313 cond. dmg. Trying to do a hybrid build or maximize dps and still be liable in group play.

Does any one have suggestions? And has our class changed for the worse since they nerfed our agro/stealth mechanic in the recent patch?

Build: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#mckzMc0zMMFrMmMFrMmfGxV0ozacsb

I’ve seen a lot of complaints but for me it seems to have fixed some issues. Where before, enemies would stop attacking and totally reset, meaning that their health would begin recharging at max rate aswell. This reset wsa causing all sorts of problems for people.

Now, post patch, the enemy stops attacking and moves back towards it’s starting position, slowly and without resetting. So no recharge of health. When you pop out of stealth, they come right back at you, as they would have done before, but now they don’t have max health. Getting out of aggro range still seems to break the combat and cause them to reset as it would if you’d just run away.

This has been my experience but frankly there are so many bugs from before and new bugs post patch, that I wouldn’t just take my word for it.

Nice guide. I wish in the blind section you would have included how Cloaked in Shadow can let Sword/Dagger do permablind arguablely as effectively as pistol off hand, more efficiently, while accessing the other stealth benefits the Shadow Art line can give you. (Regen, Might and Condition Removal in my case)

Nice read I’ve been playing this way, succesfuly using most things you said for quite a long time, and I’ve always been saying this since the beginning:

Support Thief is far superior to DPS Thief. You see a lot of DPS Thieves because of how many people want it to be a super ninja and overkill everything, but the best way to play it is in a supportive role. The name is Thief, not Assassin like in GW1.

I only have 1 “but” to your posts:

I prefer Thieves Guild to Basilisk Venom in my Venom Sharing support build for the following reasons:

- The stone duration doesn’t stack, which means that to get those 5 seconds instead of only 1 you will need to:

1) Get everyone close to each other (most times you won’t be sharing with the whole party, since the last patch we have a visual indication of the sharing radious that is very useful).

2) Force them to get rid of their auto-attack (which means with random players it would be impossible, and even with a friends party some might find annoying to get rid of auto-attack just for this) and pay a lot of atention to you to stop casting whatever they’re using.

3) Use a team-speaker and make them take turns to apply the stoned effect, which means in the process you’re losing a lot of dps from the whole party as each member waits for their particular second to make an attack.

- I’m not sure of this one, but against Champions I’ve been noticing most times they’re unafected, which might mean that Defiant protects them against it while active like it does with Stuns (BV started to be “considered as stun” recently so it might be the reason for this happening). I’m not sure of this one because I only use BV underwater so I don’t have too many samples.

- Thieves Guild gives you extra targets for the Venom Sharing as you won’t normally get it to everyone in the middle of a fight with everyone running and dodging. This means extra aplications of the 5*Life Stealing (extra damage in adition to the heal) from Spider Venom being succesfully used. The more targets you get to share, the more damage that 36 second recharge skill will be doing (around 1800-2000 extra damage per shared allied, it’s a lot if you share with 5 targets and Thieves Guild help you getting that mark). Spider Venom might be our most powerful venom given how they proc to life steal 5 times and benefits from the Lotus Poison trait for 15 seconds of Weakness.

- They’re more bodies. More bodies is always useful, they can absorb damage or distract opponents while you try to revive a teamate. You can use them to cover a retreat, get extra push in your offense, turn an even fight, etc…

In my honest opinion Thieves Guild are better suited for support than Basilisk Venom. I think BV shouldn’t have made the cut to the final game, as it’s a waste in most cases, and a reason to nerf stuff in the few cases where it has an use. There is no middle ground for it under its current concept.

Nice guide!

Excellent guide. If I may, I’d like to add another vital role that a Thief can perform for their team:

The ‘Defiant’ Eater

So, you’re in CoE and for some reason, your party has failed to push/pull Alpha in to a wall for an easy killing session. He now has stacks of Defiant on him, so you either have to waste all your CCs in trying to move him again, or you fight him where he stands and thus make the fight a bit more risky.

Not to worry! Your party was awesome enough to bring a Thief along, who’s now going to ‘eat’ all those defiant stacks, in mere seconds, with their Initiative system and Pistol #4. Alpha can again be moved in to a corner and basic ‘whack a mole’ can continue.

You’re at the end of a long Dredge fractal, kiting the end boss from one lava vat to another. Oh no! Your super-awesome-amazing GS Banner Warrior didn’t get the ‘range’ memo, and has decided to melee him, thus giving him a few more stacks of Defiant! Oh no – the boss has decided to sit down and heal himself – you need to strip that defiant and interrupt him ASAP or else all your kiting/DPSing ‘leet’ skills will soon be in vain!

Calm down, Warrior! You have a Thief with you….he’s probably sporting Pistol/Pistol as he’s ranging a single enemy…and also because it makes him look awsome. He’ll Pistol #4 those Defiant stacks away and THEN he’ll perform the heal interrupt so that the Boss will get up off his kitten and walk to the next lava vat.

Y’see, Ladies….anything’s possible when you decide to leave out that 3rd Warrior and opt for a class that isn’t hindered by cooldowns and can perform a given task numerous times in succession.

I’m on a horse.

Nice.

In addition to what was said,

The weakness-on-poison trait has a 15 second cooldown timer (per target I believe).

Clusterbomb, as you said, is better used undetonated, not only because of the blast, but also because detonating only has a small damage increase. It’s great for tagging though.

You can blast the smoke fields from Smoke Screen and pistol #5 for group stealth.

Shooopa.5632:

Can someone explain to me the importance of the third tier major traits?

Most of them just appear to be small stat boosts you could get from weapons and armor. But yet there are people who swear by putting 30 points into at least one trait line. What am I missing?

Nothing beyond what the trait descriptions tell you. But some Major GM traits are more then small stat boosts, the +20% damage on opponents below 50% (the GM major in Critical strikes), for example, is rather big.