Guild Wars 2

Hey folks,

I have some issues with playing thief in PvP. I’ve started my thief a couple of weeks ago and love the class, but I have the impression the thief is somewhat inferior against any other class in PvP.

Sure I can win some 1v1s, but against some classes it just seems impossible. I sometimes have the impression some players can drink their coffee whilst fighting me and still win, which is frustrating.

I’m playing D/P SB; Marauder stats with DD, Trick and DA.
I just have the impression I can’t “carry” my team. All I do is jumping around and decapping, trying to force the enemy to +1 situations.

Yet I can hardly win 2 or three games in a row.
I don’t think im a bad player (Ruby last season with Necromancer and warr), but I can’t get past emerald with my thief lol.

Has anyone maybe some hints for me? Or any link to a written guide or a video?
I really like the class yet I have the impression I may do something wrong.
It seems the class itself is so much inferior so it’s not forgiving mistakes…

Thank you in advance!

maybe you can learn something from commentary, i try to explain what i do while i play
you can also check out my stream www.twitch.tv/sindrenerr

First of all thief is weak duelsit.
Secodnly thief is very hard to play and learn.
Thirdly u must play decap and +1 all game long.

Ps
General consensus is that thief is trash in pvp, so nobody plays it in pro league, so u are right when u feel inferior to other classes.

I wonder if it isn’t done on purpose. Because if the thieves are made to be tricky, they have to do things pretty fastly.
However, strong & fast mustn’t be melt together unless to feel something really powerful. Like warriors in berzerk stance, which chains quickly skill over skill with high presence.

As a tricky class we are based on skills combo with 5 buttons for the most developped ones.
As a tricky class we are based on mobility, if the thief stay on a same place, he’s dead. No matter if it means keeping a “safe” distance from an enemy by turning around him.
If the movement is continuous, it’s easily predictable. And a tricky one without tricks, is dead.

What we have every others classes have it.
->Teleportation ? ofc
->Invisibility ? only other 2 classes. Ironically, we arn’t the easiest class to use it.
->Dodge ? lol, yeah
->Interrupt ? Ok, i admit. For the price of initiative. I don’t really count the skill of the 3 knifes. They are hard to land + priority to useful skills.

I wonder why we don’t have a ‘passive’ dodge skill who would allows us to attack while being safe from hits during seconds. Why don’t we have just to press a button to be invisible ? Something must evolve in our gameplay.

With necromancers we are the weakiest class of the sPvP. I challenge anyone to show me a convenient video with one of these two classes taking advantage over the rest of the roster. And i’m talking about good guys, isn’kitten The ones who know, who desire victory and who have the mind for it. I’m talking about both fighters.

Ps : excuse my bad English, please

Nefarius.9702:

Hey folks,

I have some issues with playing thief in PvP. I’ve started my thief a couple of weeks ago and love the class, but I have the impression the thief is somewhat inferior against any other class in PvP.

Sure I can win some 1v1s, but against some classes it just seems impossible. I sometimes have the impression some players can drink their coffee whilst fighting me and still win, which is frustrating.

I’m playing D/P SB; Marauder stats with DD, Trick and DA.
I just have the impression I can’t “carry” my team. All I do is jumping around and decapping, trying to force the enemy to +1 situations.

Yet I can hardly win 2 or three games in a row.
I don’t think im a bad player (Ruby last season with Necromancer and warr), but I can’t get past emerald with my thief lol.

Has anyone maybe some hints for me? Or any link to a written guide or a video?
I really like the class yet I have the impression I may do something wrong.
It seems the class itself is so much inferior so it’s not forgiving mistakes…

Thank you in advance!

being a thief is hard job but if done right you can carry your team
1. look at your opponent class and build
2. look at their role
3. compare it to your group comp
4. act accourdingly

if the enemy team is build around conditions like mesmer necro warrior or direct dmg like rev, thief, guard
does the enemy team had support like ele, bunker guard or ranger
does the enemy team has good sustain build like ranger engi guard

compare it to your team

now you choose your team rotation based on the enemy comp

look for pushing close and engage to enable home cap while you doing 1v1 or 1v2 (stealth and dodge abuse)
see if they push 4 mid and maybe push far if empty and decap and comeback mid to help
see if you can take 1v1 some players and if so target them the whole time
look for +1 mainly
careful from aoe on point
try to interrupt heal abilities while your team do some aoe

look at sindrenerr channel -amazing thief

Feiyans.8312:

I wonder if it isn’t done on purpose. Because if the thieves are made to be tricky, they have to do things pretty fastly.
However, strong & fast mustn’t be melt together unless to feel something really powerful. Like warriors in berzerk stance, which chains quickly skill over skill with high presence.

As a tricky class we are based on skills combo with 5 buttons for the most developped ones.
As a tricky class we are based on mobility, if the thief stay on a same place, he’s dead. No matter if it means keeping a “safe” distance from an enemy by turning around him.
If the movement is continuous, it’s easily predictable. And a tricky one without tricks, is dead.

What we have every others classes have it.
->Teleportation ? ofc
->Invisibility ? only other 2 classes. Ironically, we arn’t the easiest class to use it.
->Dodge ? lol, yeah
->Interrupt ? Ok, i admit. For the price of initiative. I don’t really count the skill of the 3 knifes. They are hard to land + priority to useful skills.

I wonder why we don’t have a ‘passive’ dodge skill who would allows us to attack while being safe from hits during seconds. Why don’t we have just to press a button to be invisible ? Something must evolve in our gameplay.

With necromancers we are the weakiest class of the sPvP. I challenge anyone to show me a convenient video with one of these two classes taking advantage over the rest of the roster. And i’m talking about good guys, isn’kitten The ones who know, who desire victory and who have the mind for it. I’m talking about both fighters.

Ps : excuse my bad English, please

There is a trait, that nobody uses which is called instant reflexes ^^ 2 seconds of invulnerability

Wargameur.6950:

There is a trait, that nobody uses which is called instant reflexes ^^ 2 seconds of invulnerability

When I started building my thief around sPvP, I’ve made up my mind about the traits and how I should bring fights situations to benefit a maximum from them.

To me, instant reflexes is not viable actually. Because it requieres a lot for few results.
Playing suicidarily ain’t a so bad idea in fact. As we can’t profit from it well enough in other manners.
The time we notice the proc, it’s nearly end. This is enough to proves ours is not good. Notice once again, to use it we must trick here because the trait is weak.

Also I want to bring attention over those who have such.

Warrior & rangers. Both of them own it for good reasons. One because it must survive to assassinate attempts while shooting from distance. The other to survive melee.

About us, it’s blur. To survive in melee ? But we are not supposed to stay in melee. We are thieves. Basically, if you can see a thief, he’s gonna have a bad time.
However, we have not the best tools to success our basic role. So we become duelist, or we are the shadow of our class. (lol)

With equal gear, being forced to assault someone over 1-2mins unable to face anyone, is not a good sPvP end. During that time enemies keep earning points while defending.

Wanna see thieves doing good thief things ? Go watch it in WvW. The max stats are capped in another manner.
Anyone with legendary, ascended gears + food and a good know of the game will kill nearly everyone in few assaults. A cool guy with only exotic stuff ain’t gonna stand long.

Classes are more interessing to talk about sPvP. Their own luggages are more representative here.

Ps : A possibility to allow only thieves to dodge without moving could be great. With “Bounding dodger” it would become famous.

Maybe a trait to have 50% chance of a glancing attack on a non moving thief :p

in advance, i dont play thief in pvp.
theres a litle question to thieves theoricrafters:
thieve must be alwais a burst duelist? others clases moved their role trought the diferent metas but thieves no, ¿the real problem of thief is no viable build or closed minded thief comunity that not explores the other roles?

You can win almost every 1v1 if you have the right build and know how to use it.

megilandil.7506:

in advance, i dont play thief in pvp.
theres a litle question to thieves theoricrafters:
thieve must be alwais a burst duelist? others clases moved their role trought the diferent metas but thieves no, ¿the real problem of thief is no viable build or closed minded thief comunity that not explores the other roles?

Let me answer your question. Why thief players treat and thieves are usually treated as a burst class, you ask?

Well first of all thief is pretty much the squishiest profession in the game, so if you want to play this thing you’ll need to be fast. You’re either killing you opponent first or you get killed. Therefor you need burst. So if you don’t want to play dodge-spam condi, you’re usually left with either a build that’s neither effective in surviving (cause of the power creep in the game from other classes, thief low health pool, active defense vs automatic defense other professions have plenty of, and bad condi clear while the game is cancered by condis) nor in dealing dmg effectively and also bad support, or the burst which you asked about.

Opposed to the popular belief that’s very spread on the forum according to which thief is something to be afraid of and need to be nerfed all the time cause you got beat in a flash by one in wvw, this profession without the person behind the keyboard and it’s actual skill, reflexes, terrain and situational overview, it’s one of the weakest (if not the weakest) in the game as a stand alone.

Hope I answered you question.

megilandil.7506:

in advance, i dont play thief in pvp.
theres a litle question to thieves theoricrafters:
thieve must be alwais a burst duelist? others clases moved their role trought the diferent metas but thieves no, ¿the real problem of thief is no viable build or closed minded thief comunity that not explores the other roles?

It all comes down to boons and defenses.

The thief has very limited access to boons (which is why post-release balance the class has never been OP; boons are what make builds OP in almost every case), and very limited access to sustained defenses, like a shield block, mesmer’s distortion, endure/defy pain, RF, etc. This makes it difficult to stay on a sPvP point with, especially since the points are small, and due to the thief having a low-tier health pool, prevents the thief from soaking damage or leaving the point to not die, since that enables a decap.

Up until Daredevil, the thief had the worst cleansing in the game, too, so even one condition build or control build could ruin one’s day entirely. The only solution was running Shadow Arts to cleanse 1 condition every 3s while in stealth. Since stealth also doesn’t count towards point capture, staying in a fight and actually contributing to the team was virtually impossible, especially since the profession has some of the lowest damage output yields when not traited for damage or modified heavily by stats and boons. Since the thief gains all its damage from scaling bonuses (% increases), rather than fixed ones (like might), and sPvP amulet stat values are lower than they are in PvE, which the coefficients are balanced around, the thief’s damage-scaling ends up being less-worthwhile than only a few stacks of might, since fixed-bonus power advantages cover a more significant chunk of stats than modifiers do. This is also why boons are so powerful in sPvP and always have been; they’re disproportionately stronger than they should be by the mathematics of stats themselves.

While the Daredevil took away the stealth-dependence, it as well as every other HoT elite spec came with massive power creep such that the small boosts the thief needed to stay competitive with the core game were overblown, and as were all the other professions’ tweaks and changes.