Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone
I’ve been back in GW2 for quite a long time now (I restarted playing 6 months ago) because of HoT. Since my return I play mesmer, which his my main (if that’s how you say it), engineer, elementalist, guardian, ranger, Necro, Warrior and Revenant. But now I’m REALLY tired of the warrior (don’t ask why please), and so I wanted to replace him with a Thief. My problem is that I don’t know ANYTHING about this profession (except that they’re sneaky and they steal), I don’t think I’ve even seen it before I stopped playing GW2.

So I wanted to ask, what’s the thief in general, his playstyle, gimmicks, how fast his he, etc. I could make him/her and play him/her right away, but I kinda wanted to know more of it from people who are really good with it, from people who use it in PvE to PvP champions.

I also made a few builds with him for when I’ll play with it in PvE or sPvP with the build editor.

Unrelenting Poisonner:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVl8MhimYbTw4JQ/EHtEk/N3ZO9v8ktoDQXCOA-TZxBQBGc/B6VGYZnAgIcIAAwTAAA

Stealthy Striker:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAoa8YlsMhunY5TwwJw+EH7ElPJiirYHA12ByjgNoEA-TJBBwAAeCAUOJAlLDsc/BA

Agile Fighter:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAW6an8lCNmiFmCePBsPhFYCrLLkEqCzhwRYLULBEA2NA-TJBBABA8EAma/BMuIAxXGAA

Something that rhymes with “er”:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQRAsY6al8MhOnYhTw7Jw+EHwE1uDWuOsXYhYVoTgAY3A-TZBGABBcQAY4EAAwTAA6yA3s/AA

Feel free to comment on them and give your suggestions and improvements. Sorry in advance if the links aren’t working (I’m new to this forum thing) or my writing, I’m not always good in english. And thanks in advance

Hi and welcome to the thief class. Always nice to see players trying out the thief, I hope you’ll find something to love about our class, because unfortunately, we are in a bad spot in basically all game modes. We deal mediocre damage, bring nothing to parties besides blinds, stealth and some CC, and die easily.

Thief’s playstyle is much faster compared to other classes. It is one of the more difficult classes to play. But unlike Engineers and Elementalists, which is difficult to play becuase of the sheer amount of skills they have to juggle, the difficulty in playing the thief is the extremely low amount of survivability we have, and lack of access to boons. We rely on active damage mitigation, which means dodges, blinds, stealth, general mobility etc. Which is why thief has more of a ‘twitch’ playstyle, compared to other classes.

We do not have cooldowns on our weapons skills, and rely on initiative instead. You can look at it as the ‘Mana’ we have for skills.
This is a double edged sword, as even thoug you are able to pretty much spam powerful skills without cooldown, once we run out of initiative, we will not have access to any of out weapon skills besides auto attack, unlike other class where they can just swap weapon sets/attunements/kits and have a whole new bar of skills to use.
This is why one of the first things new thief players will have to learn is initiative management.

As for builds, build vary greatly from different game modes. In PvE, damage king, while for PvP/WvW, we need more survivability and stunbreaks.
Check out metabattle for general “optimised” builds for each game mode. But no reason to not try out every different traits and skill we have, and coming up with your own builds. You will find your own preferred skills as you play, and will develop your own playstyle.

For example, personally I will use Withdraw for almost every situation. I never use Signet of Malice and Hide in Shadows, simply because i prefer Withdraw. Are the other heal skills bad per se? No, they are extremely strong in different situations, but I’m just stubbornly in love with withdraw.

In any case, try to have fun with thief.
And good luck, you’ll need it.

Oh and join the [TEEF] guild, we’ll be happy to give out any advice we can in game~

EazyPanda.6419:

Hi and welcome to the thief class. Always nice to see players trying out the thief, I hope you’ll find something to love about our class, because unfortunately, we are in a bad spot in basically all game modes. We deal mediocre damage, bring nothing to parties besides blinds, stealth and some CC, and die easily.

Thief’s playstyle is much faster compared to other classes. It is one of the more difficult classes to play. But unlike Engineers and Elementalists, which is difficult to play becuase of the sheer amount of skills they have to juggle, the difficulty in playing the thief is the extremely low amount of survivability we have, and lack of access to boons. We rely on active damage mitigation, which means dodges, blinds, stealth, general mobility etc. Which is why thief has more of a ‘twitch’ playstyle, compared to other classes.

We do not have cooldowns on our weapons skills, and rely on initiative instead. You can look at it as the ‘Mana’ we have for skills.
This is a double edged sword, as even thoug you are able to pretty much spam powerful skills without cooldown, once we run out of initiative, we will not have access to any of out weapon skills besides auto attack, unlike other class where they can just swap weapon sets/attunements/kits and have a whole new bar of skills to use.
This is why one of the first things new thief players will have to learn is initiative management.

As for builds, build vary greatly from different game modes. In PvE, damage king, while for PvP/WvW, we need more survivability and stunbreaks.
Check out metabattle for general “optimised” builds for each game mode. But no reason to not try out every different traits and skill we have, and coming up with your own builds. You will find your own preferred skills as you play, and will develop your own playstyle.

For example, personally I will use Withdraw for almost every situation. I never use Signet of Malice and Hide in Shadows, simply because i prefer Withdraw. Are the other heal skills bad per se? No, they are extremely strong in different situations, but I’m just stubbornly in love with withdraw.

In any case, try to have fun with thief.
And good luck, you’ll need it.

Oh and join the [TEEF] guild, we’ll be happy to give out any advice we can in game~

Thanks for your help, now I’m really excited to start and play with him/her, it’ll be an interesting challenge. As for the invitation, I know you can get in 5 guilds, but I like to only have one. But if it’s not a “Always represent” sort of guild and there’s no requirements of voice chats (like teamspeak or others), I’ll think about the offer

Is good in that you can be either reactive or proactive, since you don’t have to worry about cooldowns and every weapon has an evasive move.
Once you unlock Daredevil you can take things to the next level as their mobility is amazing.

Yah, but in turn other things got nerfed. I am currently playing glass cannon. At least I can feel like I’m doing something.

How2thief? Ferrrysimble.

Pick how you wanna sustain. Thief has two semi viable choices and a totally unviable 3rd that only works in solo PvE:

-Perma stealth (gunna need D/P, for the most part)
-Perma evade (gunna need daredevil. Fortunately, you’ve got more weapon choices)
-Health recovery (a mix of signet of malice and some traits)

Pick how you wanna deal damage. As per usual, condi or power.

D/D or P/D (only in WvWvW) for condi.
D/P, S/D, or staff for power.

The issue with thief is that you are totally reliant on your ability to quickly make decisions and act on them (aka, how well you can take initiative…GEDDIT? CUZ THIEF USES INITIATIVE).

You can end up theorycrafting when you’ve gotten better, but getting good on thief takes alot more time and dedication than it takes for the rest of the classes. A lot of newbies take it on and quit because they can’t stand the wait…..

Or you could just be a thief genius.

Best of luck :o.