Guild Wars 2

I’ve played Warrior, Guardian to 80 and exotic sets and elementalist to 45.

So far the Thief albeit doing alot of damage is the hardest to lvl. Does it get better or should i some how adapt my playstyle?

I found that many times than not, im “forced” to use my CDs to regen initiative or heal, while on warrior or guardian or even elementalist i didnt have time to activate them because the targets would be dead by then.

Easiest way as a low level, find melee mobs, train them to a group, death blossom. Or, get a short bow and farm dynamic events.

Basically thats my main special ability, the death blossom, a couple of times till initiative is low, then melee and heartseeker or roll for initiative and do some more rounds of death blossom if its a strong opponent.

Still i find it hard. Even with armor and daggers right up on my lvl, its hard to stay alive in a group of mobs. This is certainly not a faceroll class as many ppl whine about.

Thieves have it hard in PvE, it’s certainly not a faceroll class.
I’d suggest using P/D as your secondary and kiting, using Dancing Dagger to perma cripple. It’s safe and you let the bleeds kill the mobs. I did this till lvl 72.

My thief is faceroll in pve. I can solo champions alot of the time. Sure its time consuming, but not difficult. I roll with a P/D condi setup. somewhat typical 0/0/30/20/20

Go condition damage and spam blossom if you want to get blown up in short order, or play a Thief the way they were meant to be played at that level and put a pistol into your offhand.

The trick is to always have your melee targets blinded by using pistol skill 5. As long as the mobs stay in the blind AoE (they do at low level) they’ll literally never be able to hit you. I’ve had more than a few surprised remarks from other players after my Thief has tanked a group of mobs, I guess they expected me to spin about like a kitten and then go stealth or die.

Pick a shortbow as your second weapon and you’ll be able to kite champions too using dodge roll and skill 3 to avoid attacks.

I leveled D/D and P/P (swapped to a shortbow for events)

First thing you need to keep in mind while leveling your thief is that it is not a warrior or guardian you have to move constantly and dodge a lot. If you use D/D Death blossom is pretty much your main ability even 1 on 1 just because of the evade. You will also need to learn your threshold for fighting things don’t pull 10 things and expect your healing and heavy armor to compensate as a thief has neither really. Learn to use stealth to escape bad pulls and or bad respawns.

The biggest problem you will probably face (unless things have changed) is doing the storyline. At level you will have to be careful as it is easy to get overwhelmed by lots of adds. If you can find a leveling buddy it will help a lot, if not get use to taking the story quests at your own pace don’t try to rush it because you are not interested in whats really going on or you have already done it before.

Nosleep’s and Fixeon’s advice look sound, ill give a go on a pistol/dagger combo (albeit i really do like melee).

pistol/dagger is more powerful when you play it as melee.

cloak and dagger is your friend.

Just use caltrops.

Caltrops + deathblossom
Caltrops + shorbow

solved

edit: seriously caltrops damage is off the charts

I have a level 40ish thief, and the thing that really drew me was the idea of P/P. I was wondering if I’m playing it wrong though, because it honestly feels very boring (at least in PvE, I don’t PvP at all yet). I find myself only using Unload to take advantage of combo fields, and I’ve never found Body Shot to really be worthwhile. So what winds up happening is I usually just wind up standing in Blackpowder the whole time.

Plus I admit I get envious of D/D having three different combo finishers and P/P being stuck with just projectile. The first character I made was a Mesmer; did that spoil me as far as skill interaction goes? Cause I really want to like my P/P Thief.

Also, if you don’t have a Razer Naga you should rebind “Q” to mouse 4. There is a world of difference between “turn left” and “strafe left”. If you try turning then you’ll move pretty awkwardly whereas strafing gives a more consistent turning when you hold down mouse 2.

With a Naga just rebind strafe left to A, dodge to S, and strafe right to D, since your thumb will have access to abilities. Without a Naga abilities you’ll use more often in combat should be closer to home row. Since dagger storm is on a high CD you wouldn’t want that to be binded to F for example, but maybe 4, or given how few buttons you need here compared to WoW, even E might do, and you may want to keep dodge kitten due to how important dodging is, or even Q or W, as long as you don’t accidentally press dodge when you want a “2” ability.

As for camera you should have a high mouse sensitivity (mine is 5000 DPI, but adjust to what works for you) with 75% camera rotation speed to ensure you don’t have a slow and clumsy rotation speed. The moment you move your mouse is the moment you look in that particular direction.

In summery, keybinds are important and should be intuitive.

ens.9854:

Just use caltrops.

Caltrops + deathblossom
Caltrops + shorbow

solved

edit: seriously caltrops damage is off the charts

It is a great utility, but in events like the Balthazaar prequest sometimes it’s best switching it out for smoke screen (to block those pink balls and acolyte hands) or even blinding powder (Grenth is a rare instance where it’s great using this).

I personally had an easier time leveling my thief than my ele. Then again I leveled my elementalist first and by the time I leveled a thief had a firm grasp of the game’s general mechanics and area layouts. I can attest to the deathblossom strategy. If you see a ranged mob kite melee towards them and deathblossom them, that way all get in. I had a lot of help from dagger throw, but they nerfed it into the ground so it’s just an overpriced cripple now.

I usually went with defensive traits b/c thief alone does enough damage and never really had a problem in PVE. I used S/P and just blind a lot of enemys.

if you not afraid of reparis i found very useful the firs talent of Deadly arts: Back Fighting.
Double the damage while downed.
This helped me a lot during leveling as a thief
Also, i think that leveling with a condition build is the best option for a thief without spending lot of money in low-levels equip

I leveled S/P pretty much 1-80, Black Powder is seriously amazing for solo PvE. Once I was 80, I did my 100% world completion mostly with SB, since it requires the least attention when fighting weak enemies, and has supreme kiting ability for strong enemies, you can even solo champions with it, if you bring the time.

go back to play guardian/warrior
just my 2 cents.

I had a very similar issue, coming from the Guardian where I very rarely died. I ended up respeccing out of Power into the Vitality line for 10 pts (1K HP), then the Toughness line. It’s really a hugely noticeable survivability boost at low levels, especially with Swiftness on dodge, Blinding Powder at 25% HP, and blind on stealth (I’m D/D, so I stealth a lot). The only thing that’s annoying about it is that your heal skill will heal for a very, very small proportion of your HP (I use the signet, and get ~20 hp per hit, 400 hp when I use it, and have 5K HP at level 36).

So, you need to stay mobile to stay alive. For that, I use Shortbow, as #3 is a dodge + cripple. I used it last night to whittle down two on-level champions in a row (the wasps at the human treaty-talk camp out by Ebonhawke). Very effective, if a bit slow, but SB is also your Dynamic Event weapon par excellence – the bouncing #1 attack, Cluster Bomb, and Poison field are all great ways to get tags. Then do whatever you want for your main weapon set – as I said, I do D/D, but just because I like the big numbers from Backstab.

So my current traits are, at 36:

0/6/10/10/0

with Shadow Arts VI (Stealth blinds foes) and Acrobatics I (fall dmg -50%, and you use Blinding Powder when you take fall dmg).

D/D with CND and BS. That’s all you need IMO. You literally need to use CND→BS every time it becomes avail.

I just recently started leveling a Thief. I will admit the first few levels were kinda rough, but once you get a few key triats this class really starts to shine. I leveled a Guardian first, so I was kinda used to face tanking a bit more than most classes. Needless to say switching over to a Thief was a bit … interesting at first.

There is one key thing I learned quickly, and that is do not stack defensive stats. I run D/D with Condition Damage and Power gear and tear up groups of mobs.

Here is my basic PvE strat:
1. Gather up a group of 3+ mobs
2. Death Blossom over them
3. Dodge roll away from them (leaving behind Caltrops(Trickery 10))
4. Death Blossom x2
5. Steal (+3 Initiative)
6. Death Blossom x1
7. Dodge roll away and let them come to you through the Caltrops
8. Roll for Initiative to get a bunch of Initiative back
9. Repeat …

The amount of damage you can do through the Bleed effects is rather astounding! And 95% of the fight you are in a state of evade, so you very rarely take damage.

I think many people that start Thieves assume that if they are taking too much damage, they need to stack more Vit/Tough/Healing or whatever, when the fact of the matter is, Thieves are just more skill oriented than other classes. If you want to rely on your auto-attack and the occasional dodge roll, then this is not the class for you.

Thief is kind of annoying to play at low levels. However the moment you get to the gear with 3 stats on it, it’s faceroll pistolwhip time.

dragoaskani.6271:

My thief is faceroll in pve. I can solo champions alot of the time. Sure its time consuming, but not difficult. I roll with a P/D condi setup. somewhat typical 0/0/30/20/20

You may be able to do this properly traited at level 80, but that doesn’t change the fact that thieves are initially harder to do well in PvE than most other classes because they’re melee oriented and really squishy with a terrible downed state.

OP, if you like the thief, keep playing it, they get tons of tactical options and reap large benefits from certain skill and trait set-ups that make them get ‘better’ as you get higher level. My thief felt ridiculously weak until around the mid levels where it started to get more in line with other professions, and they’re fun too.

I am using S/D (mainly), P/P and Shortbow (event/travel), 25/30/10/5/0.

Gears: Knight armor set (for Toughness), Valkyries Jewel set (for Vitality) and Berserker packback + weapons.

S/D skills using:

1. Sword auto: frontal AoE, decent dmg, moderate speed.
2. Inflitration Strike: 900 range port in, 1200 range port out. It is kind of annoying at beginning, but when you get used to it, it is amazing. It breaks stun, removes 1 condition, 1200 effective range port out is so good to get out of nasty situations. In short, it has everything you need to get away from danger.
3. Flanking Strike: 1st strike is an AoE. It has good dmg, but kind of unreliable due to the positioning problem. Hope Anet fixing this.
4. Dancing Dagger: Even it got 50% dmg nerf, it is still pretty good skill for crowd control and wearning down multiple targets.
5. Cloak n Dagger: Another good skill. You can either use it as an offensive skill, cloak then blind/stun or as a defensive skill, cloak and run away. With the trait which make stealth skill recover 2 initiatives, you can spam this every 3 seconds. Woot!

Healing Skill: I am using Signet of Malice for general situations, and Hide in Shadow in dungeons or PvP.

Key Utilities:
#Shadow Refuge: AoE Stealth. It is just too good to ignore. Must have skill before leaving home.
#Signet of Shadow: 25% speed all the time. If you dont use this, what else?
#The last slot: is whatever fit your style. For me, I use Signet of Agility for extra precisions.

Short Bow + D/P or S/P, Caltrops, Signet of Malice, Dagger Storm, Shadow Refuge = easy time farming and leveling

I’ve used Sword/Pistol and Shortbow. With pistol offhand, you can blind quite often and take almost no damage. Sword #3 is a multi-strike that evades damage, too, I think. I’ve finally decided to learn to move/dodge better, but it certainly wasn’t needed.

^^ Oh, and Caltrops is great too. It’s surprisingly powerful at lower levels.

Druitt.7629:

^^ Oh, and Caltrops is great too. It’s surprisingly powerful at lower levels.

This.

Caltrops has been on my hotkey bar since about level 12. now in my 20s and can pull huge groups and wipe them out in seconds with Caltrops, and Death Blossom, and the caltrops from the trait: Uncatchable.

Einlanzer.1627:

dragoaskani.6271:

My thief is faceroll in pve. I can solo champions alot of the time. Sure its time consuming, but not difficult. I roll with a P/D condi setup. somewhat typical 0/0/30/20/20

You may be able to do this properly traited at level 80

Actually you can start doing it easily at lvl 20 if you have half a brain for tactics. P/D with cloaked in shadows, CnD stealths you and blinds them, drop caltrops, sneak attack, repeat as necessary. So easy its not even funny.

Get Signet of Malice (3 point healing skill) and use it. Just have it passive and heal when you need to. Use duel daggers while this is equipped. Suddenly, things get INCREDIBLY easier. Trust me, I was struggling with my thief until I did this.

Works best with duel daggers because they attack quickly and often. Signet of Malice heals you a little with each attack. I don’t find it nearly as useful with say, a sword dagger combo. But with duel daggers it will work wonders. Trust me.

If something gets me below half health, I usually dodge back, heal, and begin using a ranged weapon, but this is rare, and only happens in the case of me fighting more than 2 mobs at a time. For ranged I use short bow mainly, as I find duel pistols lacking. Occasionally I might use a pistol/dagger combo for ranged, but I find I’m not liking it as much as the short bow alone.