Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone. I bought this game sometime ago and due to some hardware issues I haven’t been able to play the game yet. But during this downtime I have read the profession forums etc and I think I want to go with Thief as my first character.

For my understanding Thief profession requires abit more skills to play with and that’s fine by me. But I can’t but to notice the topics about other long time Thief players who are not happy with the updates that changes / changed Thief. So what’s the real verdict ? Is Thief still a strong profession in PvE and PvP ? I want a profession that can carry himself and not feel weak or otherwise be a burden to groups I play with. I was also thinking of starting with Guardian, but I’m more of a ’’rogue’’ styled player. Warrior is too mainstream.

So is it a bad idea to start as a Thief ?

I started thief in BWE 1 and have been playing it ever since. It is an extremely fun class with an extremely high skill cap. In my opinion one will never truly master the thief thanks to the infinite play possibilities that the class is capable of. After almost 1500 hours on the thief, I would say I have used about half of the possible build combinations, and am still learning new things every day.

The thing about the Thief balance changes uproar is that we have been using our thieves for a long time. We are set in our ways, and when Anet wants to take something away from us for stupid reasons (Cast time on IR because of people using it to stomp.. Are you kidding me?) and don’t explain their changes thoroughly, we get upset. As a new player however, you don’t have this problem. The thief as it is is not a weak class by any stretch, Anet just has no clue what they actually want us to do in this game and have, in my opinion, been making poor choices balance wise and unfortunately removing a lot of really fun builds from play.

To conclude, do I think you will have fun as a thief? Definitely. Without a question it is the most fun class to play and will continue being the most fun class to play, at least in my opinion.

If you’re a soloist, thieves are pretty good pretty good for doing all those pesky tasks in open world PvE, such as channeling skill points. I’d say they’re passable in all PvE modes. In WvW they’re greats at preying on lone enemies, but your chances of successfully, drastically decrease if your target has experience against thieves, or if more then one enemy is in the area. For SPvP, they’re about as viable as anything on the low end, and currently just hanging on with a build that’s about to be nerfed in the top tier. Dunno where the Thief will fall meta-wise after Dec 10th.
Overall Thief if played well will provide fun, reactive gameplay, though their skill cap is visible in some areas.

Guardians on the other hand pretty much have a free pass to all of the modes in GW2, and practically exhale team support. Just having a Guardian beside you boosts your dps, and if they use their F skills, selfishly or not they’re boosting your survivability. They can either power through things or bunker down and focus on staying alive with relative ease.

thief is a funny class there are a million ways to play it but they all lead to one of two ends the primary is the standard damage thief done with any weapon choice your little heart desires its sole purpose is to hit hard and quick to kill a specific enemy really really fast. the second is the infinite survival path this uses a lot of utilizes they can go for infinitive stealth (which is what is getting nerfed not as bad as people claim tho there are traps tricks dodges near infinite initiative roles this build is really really annoying to fight and you will get a lot of laughs but not necessarily a lot of pvp or wvw kills there are also a few builds that fall in neither of these two categories such as the support venom https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-venom-support/first#post3249958
and roamer builds and a few tanky thiefs are running around its very versatile in its build but not very versatile in its role. i personally tho i can play it the only thing i run on my thief is the venom build for WvW and an assassination build for mists which i only run when there is someone in the zerg on my server already running my necro build which isn’t very often due to it being well not a condition necro “gasp”

Thanks for the replies. My laptop is still about 1 week in repairs so in that time I try to gather as much information about Thief.

I was thinking of going with Sword and Dagger as primary weaponset & for backup dual pistols or shortbow. That way I could damage my opponent from range before closing in on melee range. Is there any good advice you people can give ? Is there any weapons or weaponsets I should avoid using or is everything usable ? Or should I have double daggers as second weaponset ?

Rock.4019:

Thanks for the replies. My laptop is still about 1 week in repairs so in that time I try to gather as much information about Thief.

I was thinking of going with Sword and Dagger as primary weaponset & for backup dual pistols or shortbow. That way I could damage my opponent from range before closing in on melee range. Is there any good advice you people can give ? Is there any weapons or weaponsets I should avoid using or is everything usable ? Or should I have double daggers as second weaponset ?

unless you plan to be a perma stealth everything is usable

Rock.4019:

I was thinking of going with Sword and Dagger as primary weaponset & for backup dual pistols or shortbow. That way I could damage my opponent from range before closing in on melee range.

I think that you should just go straight into melee. One thing S/D excels at is quickly teleporting to your target and/or back through it’s second skill. That skill has the same range as any ranged attack available to the thief and also immobilizes giving you the opportunity to nail them with some sword strikes. S/D also has access to dancing dagger which can cripple foes if they try to run away, or you can just use that teleport again. By doing this, you’d have a free weaponset to fiddle with.

doesnt matter, they are just some self claim pro who complain about PvP side of thieves

in PvE thief is still the second best dps next to fgs ele and have insane of evade so if you know the boss and have a good reflex you can pretty much be untouchable. also useful in various situations

if you want to know about pvp, thief arent bad against warrior, nor warrior can do better at what thieves do, what’s bad about thieves now is because of the insane amount of aoes and condition stack on classes like necro engi ranger. also AIs these classes have

Start as a Warrior, Necromancer, Mesmer, or Guardian first.

I actually play a Guardian and a thief as my mains (yes, both!)

PvE
I found Guardian extremely easy to level, solo. Throw in at least one other person and can work all PvE without breaking a sweat. I’ve never had any problems getting groups in dungeons. Further… guardians can go a more DPS spec (check the old Paragon build) which I use for PvE very effectively.

Thief
Pain in the butt to level solo. I was having no fun, and by level 30 I blew my gold to craft and power level my way to 80. I found that when I PvE, I want to run in the thick and go bananas. I never take my thief to PvE, and my groups never mind. If you feel the same way, know that thief doesn’t hold a candlestick to a guardian in this department.

WvWvW
Guardian
Everyone wants a guardian. You can go heal/boon support, bunker (tough + heal power), triple meditiation solo build, or take that same Paragon build out. Lots of builds with a much more diverse spectrum of play options. However, you will not by any means solo with the success that you can on a thief.

Thief
Solo kings in WvWvW. You hit like a truck, you can travel around the map quickly, and you can leave a fight if the fight is not going your way. 5-man coming? No, problem house’ up and get out.

My recommendation:
If you will be playing in WvWvW solo at any time (and hate zergs), go thief.

Else go guardian.