Guild Wars 2

I’ve leveled a Mesmer, Guardian and Necro to 80 and now I’m trying to level a Thief. I’ve hit around level 30 and I find myself dying a LOT. I can barely solo a veteran and if any other mob gets involved I’m basically guaranteed to go down.

Is there some sort of secret to leveling a Thief that I’m missing? I’m mostly building glass cannon so I can speedily clear mobs, which has worked fine with my other characters. Should I go for more survivability? Are there certain traits I can grab early on that will increase my ability to survive?

It just seems to be 10x harder to level a thief than any other class I’ve tried so far.

S/P
Pistol off hand for the #5 blind field
Sword for cleavage auto-attack and the occasional infiltrator’s whipping

Boring as hell but a pretty safe auto-win spec.

SB as secondary, for mobbing up trash with cluster boobs.

You won’t be able to tank damage. You can, instead, build around a combination of dodges, evades, blinds, and stealths, and by doing so also maintain your “glassiness”. This might be difficult at earlier levels (no access to certain traits and/or utilities), but if built for it, you can easily solo-tank&dps silvers/champs.

I recently started using S/P. I love Pistol Whip.

I switched to P/P as my second set from SB but I think I’ll go back to SB since I have basically no AOE with that combo.

What heal should I be using?

SB rocks for trash mobs, especially with power gear.
Healing is situational, I like(d) Withdraw, basically for the short recharge in combination with Vigorous Recovery – but that trait was hit recently. When Cluster Bombing, Signet of Malice is very good, allowed me to tank out swarms of trash in Orr. Hide in Shadows has uses, stealth and condition removal is ok.

just go onto wvw and join a zerg with your SB. you manage to damage a lot of people and get tons of experience.

got a thief to level 80 in 5 days this way

s/p with these traits are very good, lots of regen and evasion, you just spam pistol whip
traits:
assasins reward
healing:
signet of malice
and also take bladestorm, when you’re low and have mobs around you, use it and it makes for great regeneration

frans.8092:

S/P
Pistol off hand for the #5 blind field
Sword for cleavage auto-attack and the occasional infiltrator’s whipping

Boring as hell but a pretty safe auto-win spec.

SB as secondary, for mobbing up trash with cluster boobs.

Basically what this guy says.

With blind Field spam you should be completely immortal to any Melee Mob, regardless of numbers. If they fit inside the field, you wont die.

To make the Sword damage more bearable you can carry Haste on Utilitys and Critical Haste on your Traits. Add a Sigil of Rage at lvl 60 and you will be trashing normal mobs left and right.

Just stay away from Dredges (immune to blind..) and areas with too much ranged mobs.