Guild Wars 2

I’ve been watching the class videos and I’ve been trying to decide on what I’d like to play the most and the Thief looks the most interesting. I’m looking for a melee class to use in PVE with high utility and considered an asset in a group if played correctly. Is this that class?

What’s your take on the Thief?

If you are completely new to the game and aiming for PvE I wouldn’t recommend going for a thief right away. You will most likely have alot of trouble right from the start. Probably run a warrior just to get to know the game and its aspects/mechanics and then roll a thief or whatever you want to play.

Thief is very weak in pve compared to other classes.
Reasons – no aoe – and no constant damage – after you used all your burst , auto atack is your friend
I would recomand warrior / guardian for Pve

Rayya.2591:

Thief is very weak in pve compared to other classes.

Not by any reasonable standard, but it does require you to stay quite a bit more mobile unless you’re running S/P to facetank stuff. For this reason I’d say thief PvE is less newbie friendly. The reward for the struggle being that once you learn to make thief PvE work you’ll have gained valuable PvE skills that’ll benefit any profession.

Thieves have several great things going for them in PvE. Thieves have good area attacks. Blind spam allows them to stand face-to-face with anything that’s not Unshakable. Thieves “grow into” both big damage — and consistently big damage. Thieves also have some of the best options for bypassing encounters you don’t want to fight.

But the easiest builds to play for leveling are likely to teach you bad habits you’ll have to work hard to unlearn later. And the builds that are harder to play tend to be that way because they’re just plain weak.

Which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t play a thief as your first character! But it helps to be leveling another character at the same time. You’ll gain valuable context about how the game works and what the thief’s real strengths are.

Thieves are exactly what you’re looking for “if played correctly class.”

So… I’ve been playing some other classes. I’ve tried a Guardian, Warrior and a Mesmer. Sadly with both the Guardian and Warrior I found it all a little too simplistic and the Mesmer just isn’t for me. With some basic knowledge of how the game plays and with understanding how important dodging is I’m wanting to give the Thief a real go.

Do you have any advice for me?

Some general thief advice:

1. Shortbow is our most versatile weapon. Get comfortable with the shortbow and you’ll almost always have some trick you can fall back on when your other weapon set won’t do.
2. Sword hits up to three targets with its basic attacks, dagger hits one.
3. Thieves are really, really good at getting big damage via crits. But they don’t really “grow into” this until you can get later-level armor (which comes with three stats, so you can stack Power + Precision + Crit Damage). When you’re just leveling, crit builds will give you some damage and better resource management, but you won’t really see their full explosive potential until the late levels.
4. You know the sweet active-defense skills that Guardians have? Black Powder (Pistol off-hand attack), Smoke Screen (utility), and Dagger Storm (elite) are like that for thieves.
5. Thief PvE and PvP builds tend to be pretty divergent. You can often use the same gear everywhere, but expect to be changing traits and weapons. Burst damage and stealth are a lot better in PvP than PvE; good initiative management and stand-still defenses are better in PvE; there’s more leeway in WvW depending on what exactly you want to do.
6. Your best group utilities (in my opinion) are Shadow Refuge, Smoke Screen, Signet of Agility, and Caltrops. Also, don’t overlook the party support value of being able to spam Clusterbomb into combo fields.

Thief has many good tricks for PvE, in fact, the last zone of the game is easy mode with a Thief because of how many teleports and stealths it has to avoid getting attention and being pulled and snared while doing important stuff.

Your best friend: Shadow Refuge. It gives you a way out of battles, a way to commune with skill points without fighting, a way to resurrect allies without agroing opponents… it’s an amazing skill. Just remember not to exit it until it ends or it will break the stealth, but once it ends you still have 10 seconds of stealth to go wherever you want.

As previously said, your best secondary weapon set will be Shortbow (but not the primary one, you should build for your other set as SB is very versatile but not great as the goto weapon, and it doesn’t need any extra to work well). It allows faster travelling, a way to scape pulling even when inmobilized, and when you find dynamic events with many waves of opponents, it’s very useful as you get credit for each enemy hit and Shortbow hits a lot of opponents. It’s also the best blast combo finisher in the whole game (no matter what Hammer Guardians say, Cluster Bomb with no detonation is the best combo finisher in the whole game by far).

If you find trouble or you’re still getting used to the game, try a bit of S/P, as Pistol 5 skill can permablind melee opponents in PVE if you stay on the same place.

In fact I wouldn’t have listened to all that people telling you to roll a Warrior first. Thief is great for PVE and it really feels like playing an action gamen instead of an MMO because of how it can reuse skills and is constantly maneuvering.

Thanks for that, helped a lot.

Thief was my first class. It is very fun to play but you are squishy. Don’t listen to anyone who says the class can’t contribute to the group.

Get familiar with Dodge, 15 pts in Acrobatics is very helpful here. Stealth helps mitigate damage, although it won’t stop an attack that is already initiated. Vitality is always nice but I don’t run much toughness. Evade is another tool to help you, most notably from S/P Pistol Whip and D/D Deathblossom. Most important, watch the mobs and get to know what the animations mean an when you should get out, if you are focused on your character you’ll be on the floor.

Get to know each weapon loadout and try different specs, they all have their uses. From my testing D/D Backstab and D/D Bleed builds push the most damage but do not dismiss the others (no extensive testing, just some quick observations and napkin math). Sword main hand will give you some pretty decent aoe damage. P/P is nice single target ranged damage but Shortbow is much more versatile and has good aoe.

I usually have Blinding Powder, Shadow Refuge and Signet of Shadows on my skill bar but again get to know the strengths of each utility. Hide in shadows is my heal unless I’m S/x or P/P then I run Signet of Malice (or if I’m running 0/20/0/20/30 D/D Bleed)

My second toon is a guardian, there is a major difference in survivability between the classes. Thief can be challenging but its quite rewarding. If you get frustrated easily I would suggest a different class until you really know the game, if not you’re in for a fun ride.

Blood~