Guild Wars 2

Full Disclosure: I’m 100% new to this game. I also bought the expansion because I like it thus far that much.

Anyway, I’m looking into leveling a thief and am wondering the best way to go about it. Most of the information I’ve been finding is for end game and I Know some times end game builds are FAR different than what you should be leveling with. Most of the leveling builds I’ve been finding stretch back to 3 years ago.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I’m also ratherly lonely so any recommendations on meeting people in-game would be great. Maybe how to track down a guild or something.

Thanks in advance!

You won’t find many guides on levelling because it’s not really too hard. Everything you do will give you XP, so basically, just do what you want. My advice would be to explore, see the world, map things out. Especially for a first character, this will help immerse you into the game, get you waypoints to travel around as needed, and give you experience in fighting different things.

As for builds, generally the most effective builds are the ones that deal damage. As a thief, you have weak statistical defenses, of course. While the “best” thing to do is to focus on your Power/Precision stats (and eventually Ferocity), you deal no damage when you’re dead, so if you need to balance yourself out with some Vitality or Toughness as you go, so be it. The thought process is that as you get better at the game and learn what attacks to dodge, you’ll be able to start swapping out the defensive gear for more offensive gear.

Don’t worry too much about the order you unlock your Specializations in. By level 80 you’ll have enough points for all of them. Deadly Arts and Critical Strikes are the two offensively oriented ones, Shadow Arts will make your stealth much more effective, and Trickery offers some great utility. Acrobatics tends to lag behind compared to the others.

Frankly, the only thing that really wont give you experience in the open world is grinding monsters in the same location. The game’s spawn rate decreases if you are nearby the spawn locations of creatures as to prevent bots and getting people trapped while also prohibiting the mob-grind playstyle.

Sword + Pistol 1 or Pistol + Pistol for weapon set 1 are considered very good leveling sets due to the defenses on Black powder, stuns, invulnerability frames, and good damage.

Shortbow is considered as an excellent weapon for set 2 as it provides the best AOE and evasion/defensive combat as well as high movement speed and a ranged advantage.

When leveling do it zone by zone ! Take the time to do all the hearts of a map before going into another. The feeling of immersion is completly different than rushing through the maps.

I rushed with my thief and ranger and I regret it a little.

I’d agree that it’s good to take the time to enjoy the game and world that they’ve created for you; especially if, like me, you find that the core maps are just much more pleasant, pretty and enjoyable than the later maps (which are also good as a skill/build test… but just not as nice).

Make your peace with the fact that you will always be super-squishy, and avoid falling into the ‘Just a little bit more Vitality and Toughness…’ trap, done so incrementally that you don’t realise that you’ve completely tanked your damage output (which will actually make you die more frequently).

Can’t advise as to the social side that you asked about, since that will be personal to yourself, in terms of what you as an individual are looking for. I guess the main thing to mention here, that took me by surprise, is that you join a guild on an account basis, rather than specific char basis. Knowing that a bunch of strangers can see when I log in or out, where I am, and know who all my alts are creeped me the heck out so I left (not that I had any reason to mistrust anybody there… I’m just a very private person).

If that doesn’t bother you, then plenty of guilds are advertising themselves in chat, so you’ll find one that sounds like your style quick enough.

Best of luck, and I hope that you stick with your Thief. It can be extremely demoralising sometimes, but once you get good, and dance unscathed through all the stuff that used to one-shot you, it’s a feeling of fun and achievement higher than most classes or games can give you.

DeceiverX.8361:

Frankly, the only thing that really wont give you experience in the open world is grinding monsters in the same location. The game’s spawn rate decreases if you are nearby the spawn locations of creatures as to prevent bots and getting people trapped while also prohibiting the mob-grind playstyle.

Sword + Pistol 1 or Pistol + Pistol for weapon set 1 are considered very good leveling sets due to the defenses on Black powder, stuns, invulnerability frames, and good damage.

Shortbow is considered as an excellent weapon for set 2 as it provides the best AOE and evasion/defensive combat as well as high movement speed and a ranged advantage.

This ^
Sword + Pistol will make 99% of the Mob encounters a walk in the park.

For the ranged enemy’s, you can just hide behind a pillar or a corner and wait the ranged enemy’s to arrive in your Black Powder, you get used to it.

For traits, I recommend going for Trickster First, then Deadly Arts or Critical Strikes (whatever first, the other you learn right after) and Shadow Arts next (extra stealth time will help you exploring high lvl maps, but you wont need it until then).
(Acrobatics won’t help much, you may learn it only close to lvl 80 since it addeds little to grinding)

For utility skills, start with Sigils since you will find yourself using then a lot. Second is deception so you can get some stealth skills. Learn Tricks to boost your damage. Leave Traps last for the same reason as Acrobatics.

Grinding from 1 – 80 gives you the exactly number of points to learn all Skills and Traits, so there is no need to save points.
After 80, if you have expansion, you can start hunting for extra points to learn Daredevil skills and traits.

For equipment, use only Master Work and if you want to waste money: rare weapons.
You do get a great chunk of itens from leveling, but its still recommended to change equipment every 15~20 levels.

General Tips: The majority of Exp earned in the game is level tuned or % tuned. Level tuned means it gives an amount of Exp in relation to the level its designed around.. this includes mostly heart quests, which use fixed values. Almost everything else uses % of level as its basis for the exp reward. This has 2 functions in the game design.

1. It prevents power leveling by immigrating players trying to sneak into high level areas, thinking it has a higher Exp value.
2. It offers players incentive to return to other areas for other reasons, without sacrificing exp gain or passive rewards.

Second, the game has a very heavy handed diminishing return penalty if you spend too much time in one area. Its another anti-farming/bot measure, and is pretty nebulous in terms of its triggers…. This is rarely an issue for most players, provided they wander around the map, rather then camp a spot for repeated targets. Its useful to note that the general consensus (by player research) suspects “Area sections” (within a zone) is how it decides if you leave the area to ramp down DR. DR impacts Exp gains, drops, and quality of drops; and ramps up pretty quickly once triggered.

The reason I mention this, is because players have a habit of sticking to a familiar area when not forced to travel by a quest. Since this game uses passive, area specific tasks, new players get confused on the optimal early leveling strategy. As a rule of thumb…. you make the most exp through exploration and dynamic events, as both award Exp based on % of your current level. However, in the lvl 1-15 and 15-30 zones (first trip), pure exploration and heart quests don’t level you as fast as you can clear them; this is because the Heart quests themselves are actually designed to KEEP you in an area long enough for the Dynamic events to spawn, and that is meant to fill that Exp gap. Highly efficient map clearing runs into this problem a lot, as experienced players can clear several hearts in the time it takes most events to cycle.

Long term, most of your class power comes from trait synergy. Without a full compliment of traits to mix together, most classes are really weak until around level 65/70…. but once you get 2 full trait lines and parts of a 3rd, the power scaling ramps massively. In the interim, look to strong stand alone traits or skills that look good in simple combos. Unlocking the Signet that gives the 25% movement speed is also a big help with getting around the map faster. In fact, the signets are the easiest to work with early on, as the thief ones offer flat stat boost as their passive effects.

xx manda xx.3954:

Full Disclosure: I’m 100% new to this game. I also bought the expansion because I like it thus far that much.

Anyway, I’m looking into leveling a thief and am wondering the best way to go about it.

First of all, Thief is not anywhere close to other professions. Thief’s defense mechanism relies on evades and stealth. So it’s best to get used to utilizing these features.

Start practicing shadowstepping. Learn which skills you can activate using Steal at the same time. Also learn the limitation and glitches.

Then learn the limitation of stealth. Get familiar with the Revelead debuff.

Next, learn to dodge the Thief way. In other professions, dodging is not as important since they have access to other buffs that mitigate damage. Thief has a low HP pool and wears a leather armor, thus the Thief cannot afford to get hit by big damage skills. Small damage are ok, but not the big damage.

Lastly and the most important, learn how to budget your Initiative pool. There’s no optimal ways to budget Initiatives since it relies on each player’s playstyle — so you’ll have to figure out how to spent these.

Other than those, the rest (i.e. armor, rune, etc.) is just like any other professions.

xx manda xx.3954:

Full Disclosure: I’m 100% new to this game. I also bought the expansion because I like it thus far that much.

Anyway, I’m looking into leveling a thief and am wondering the best way to go about it. Most of the information I’ve been finding is for end game and I Know some times end game builds are FAR different than what you should be leveling with. Most of the leveling builds I’ve been finding stretch back to 3 years ago.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

I’m also ratherly lonely so any recommendations on meeting people in-game would be great. Maybe how to track down a guild or something.

Thanks in advance!

*Short bow makes quick work of mobs in PvE
*As others have said, sword/X gives you more cleave
*sPvP is possibly the slowest way to level, as the tomes of knowledge only come about 60-90 minutes. (in my experience)
*Log in every day. After so many days you get tomes of knowledge just for logging in.
*Join a karma train zerg in edge of the mists. I normally start EOTM with my new characters once I hit level 11. Just use a ranged weapon to stay alive longer. Carry supply and help build siege.

EDIT: Plenty of guilds are desperate for new members: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/lookingfor

You might try [TEEF], a thief-specific guild. No affiliation personally but they seem cool.