Guild Wars 2

I play a Ranger as my main, all through levelling 1-80, WVW, instances etc I found I had
great survivability and did not die a lot. I played with shortbow/longbow always on the move flanking and dodgeing.

I’ve rolled a few alts but have not really levelled any past L15 yet. The Thief has become my second favourite so far but one surprising thing was I’m dying a heck of a lot more than ranger.

This tells me I’m doing something wrong !

The early personal story intances I’ve died on which never happened when doing personal story on ranger. if theres 3-4 mobs I end up dying.

With the ranger I often went to areas a level or two higher than me while levelling and had no issues yet with the thief I die if I try and solo a combat skill point area.

The Auto (1) attack I try and leave tick 3-4 times before hitting another skill
as I had assumed it was a chain skill and would break the chain if I hit another skill,
I’m doging and moving and even switch to a short bow and try and kite but I’m feeling extremely squishy.

For all the Thief’s out there. What am I doing wrong ?
Any tips for a thief noob ?

~B

Dont squander all 30 points on power, all I’m saying

Thiefs ARE squishy. Use stealth, cripple and dodge to stay alive. Personally I’m always circle kiting and using Dancing Dagger/Caltrops to maintain constant cripple. If you can’t circle kite properly because the area is small/cluttered you can still kite in a oval which works just as good if you time your dodges for when you double back.

Right now I have 20 in Deadly Arts and 19 in Critical.
When all is said and done I’ll have 25 in Deadly, 30 in critical and 15 in Shadow. My gear will provide me with power/precision while my jewelry will provide me with toughness and vitality.

You don’t have a pet, so make sure to dodge/kite in general.
Use signet of malice (healing skill) combined with the poison field on your bow to heal while fighting.
You can easily outrun mobs, so RUN when you’re in trouble.
Don’t forget to use a nourishment (there’s some good cheap ones out there, like cherry pie)
Having a panic button like blinding powder can prevent a lot of deaths.
Oh, and if you’re dying too much, you probably shouldn’t be spending points in the deadly arts tree.

Could use some more info on your current playstyle before we can really help you! But a few general things.

You are a thief, you are bursty, but squishy. So the approach that will usually work best is going full in and kill before you get killed.

If that is not your style you can kite and dodge incoming damage. But being squishy, a mistake (or add) is all it takes to screw you up!

I started out with the kiting part, but realized later on that the full on approach works some better.

Remember, we have stealth for a reason. If things don’t go as you like. Stealth up and try a different approach!

My best advice is to get yourself a S/D and pistol whip and black powder to win. It gives you great survivability, especially using signet of malice for the heal. This is a very comfortable set up that will let you PvE with ease and get used to the thief so when your a little better you can switch to a different weapon set.

Also get the catldrops as a utility, it’s insanely good as an AoE

i used dagger / pistol to level, its decent dps and if you time your black powder right a mob can stay blinded the entire fight and never hit you , also things like scorpion wire can be helpful to pull tougher single mobs rather then getting the whole group, once your in a pvp setting however i wouldn’t use this setup

I solo melee champs on my Thief… Dancing Dagger/ Caltrops kiting as stated before…

If i have a difficult spot… Thieves guild + Thief Trap + Caltrops…. that is a ton of dps…

Learn to use your evasive tricks with large mobs. Death Blossom evades and multitargets, Shortbows are generally good at hitting multiple targets and playing keep-away.

And when it starts going wrong, stealth. What heal skill are you using? After a bit of trial and error, I wouldn’t use anything other than Hide in Shadows now.

You hit like a truck, but you should never stick around in once place too long.

Use black powder (a pistol off-hand skill) to blind enemies and prevent them from hitting you or death blossom (dual daggers) to avoid an attack before it hits and deal bleeding damage.

You have skills that cloak you and let you teleport short distances. Use them to launch sneak attacks and to run away if a fight goes badly.

Stealing is an excellent opener to an attack because it teleports you right into melee range and gives you an item that either buffs you or hurts the enemy. With the Hidden Thief trait it cloaks you too so you can start off with a back stab. With the Kleptomaniac trait it gives you three initiative. Don’t forget about it, it’s very useful.

I can’t stress the importance of ALWAYS having shadow step as one of your utilities enough because not only is it an escape, it’s also a condition removal.

Don’t trait yourself exclusively for power, you’ll probably get armor and weapons that boost those numbers high enough. Look instead for traits that match your ideal attack methods.

• The first trait line Deadly Arts boosts your power and the traits are most useful to thieves who use venoms often.

• The second trait line Critical Strikes is self-explanatory because it boosts precision (critical hit chance) and the traits are mostly based on effects that can trigger from criticals.

• The third line Shadow Arts boosts your toughness and its traits are best for helping teammates.

• The forth line Acrobatics is tied to HP and how long buffs last. The traits in it mostly apply to movement and dodging. I don’t know what I’d do without Feline Grace, which effectively gives me three dodges instead of two.

• The fifth line Trickery is an odd one. It boosts the damage your conditions inflict per second, and the cooldown rate of your class skill Steal. This line is mostly based on your steal skill, but it has Uncatchable which leaves caltrops behind you whenever you dodge and Preparedness which gives you three extra initiative to play with.

You’ll probably have to experiment with all kinds of different builds to figure out one you like. Unlike the other classes, most the thief’s major grandmaster (tier three) traits aren’t very game-changing. So you might want to not dump 30 points into more than one line. But again, it’s all up to you and how you play the game. Different builds will work extremely well for some situations and not at all for others.

Single Target:
Dagger/Pistol
Hit 3, let auto attack chain finish once, repeat

Multiple Target:
Sword/Pistol
Hit 5, let auto attach chain finish once, repeat
OR
Shortbow
Kite and use 4+2 combo to give mobs weakness

Leveling stats:
Power, Precision, CritDmg
Leveling build:
Critical Strikes, Deadly Arts, Acrobatics

You can remove all the complicated dodge in/out, stealthy gameplay AND build glass cannon to level faster without sacrificing survivability by simply exploiting your spam-able blinds.

I MUCH prefer [Hide in Shadows] to [Signet of Malice] for your heal while leveling because it not only gives you another “OH SH*#” escape skill but it also removes damage conditions which WILL be a big problem while leveling. Shooopa suggested using [Shadowstep] for this, but [Hide in Shadows] has almost half the cooldown and I just haven’t found [Signet of Malice] healing to be all that great.

Using this strategy you don’t really even need utility skills, so I’ve just been running with the Power, Precision, and RunSpeed signets to make the gameplay SUPER simple.
It’s just as easy to level Thief this way as it is to level Sword/Focus+Greatsword Guardian (which is REALLY easy).

Cheers for the tips folks. Have my thief up to to L38 now. One thing this profession has thought me is to actually look for the attack animations which I would not have paid as much attention to when playing a more ranged profession. (Much harder to see in Zergs)

I would usually play by constantly flanking and kiteing if very low on health.
I’ve messed about with different weapons and found Double Daggers and Short Bow
is easiest for me to play with. I did not like the Pistol for some reason found it slow.

Been focusing on Toughness rather than Power or precision and have not upped precesion yet. But not L40 get so can only but 10 points into each trait line. So going to focus on Shadow Arts for most points.

Loving this out of combat run speed its horribe when I switch back to my main
and running feels so sluggish.

~B

I love Pistol/Dagger as primary. I currently have shortbow secondary but I’m not in love with it.. Going for the last three traits, and kiting /skirmishing with caltrops and signet.

And yeah, the run speed boost while exploring is a beautiful thing.

Go melee some ettins (southeast queensdale or southeast kessex, depending on your level) and fight them until you consistently kill them without getting hit. Their attacks are excessively obvious, so they are a great enemy to practice on.

The thing with that is, if you get too used to fighting in that style, dealing with enemies that have faster attacks can be a hassle. Or those that have long delays between their tells and the actual attack (some of the ice wurms I’m starting to come across now are like that).

Start calling the thief your main instead of your alt.