Guild Wars 2

Sorry! I accidentally deleted my other post!

I am returning to GW2 after quite a long break and am looking for a class that is fairly easy to pick up and perform decently with. Thematically, thieves really appeal to me. However, I keep seeing posts about how difficult thieves are to play.

I have no preference for melee or ranged, but have been liking the idea of a stealthed assassin. I do not mind putting in some research and practice to achieve greatness on my thief, but if I am to be honest, I do not want to sink 100s of hours just to perform at an average level. This is not currently my main MMO. I want to feel at least somewhat useful in sPvP, world PvP, and PvE with a modest amount of effort (I realize gear can make a huge difference here in many cases). Am I barking up the tree of the wrong class here?

Please do not read this as me whining that I want an OP class result with no effort. I just want to feel useful to my fellow players without devoting my life to a class. Perhaps straightforward is the correct term?

Thanks in advance!

Hey, glad you decided to jump back in. Thief is still really srong but the issue you may have with wanting to do different game modes is that there are certain builds for each mode that you will want to run so you will end up practicing on multiple builds (some of which can take awhile to get used to so that’s a fair amount of practice at the start, later you don’t have to practice as much to be competent and helpful) Overall, I don’t find thief as a class terribly difficult to play so you can stop searching, you have found a wonderful class to play

BUT, the thing that takes awhile to learn for thief is tactics and positioning. By tactics I mean how to set up your attack, knowing what skills to use when, how to confuse your enemy, etc. Melee is honestly what I would recommend to you (partially because I’m heavily biased against p/d condi builds and I’m not afraid to admit that I think those builds are stupid and shouldn’t even exist). But take shortbow as an off-hand for utility just because you’ll learn to love it.

So, summarized answer: Thief will take some practice but once you get it down you will be free to do whatever you want on other professions and still be able to jump in and be fairly competent as a thief player. (Will not require hours of practice and dedication).For any builds you need you can look up meta battle or ask around for some. Good luck with learning!

Ario.8964:

Hey, glad you decided to jump back in. Thief is still really srong but the issue you may have with wanting to do different game modes is that there are certain builds for each mode that you will want to run so you will end up practicing on multiple builds (some of which can take awhile to get used to so that’s a fair amount of practice at the start, later you don’t have to practice as much to be competent and helpful) Overall, I don’t find thief as a class terribly difficult to play so you can stop searching, you have found a wonderful class to play

BUT, the thing that takes awhile to learn for thief is tactics and positioning. By tactics I mean how to set up your attack, knowing what skills to use when, how to confuse your enemy, etc. Melee is honestly what I would recommend to you (partially because I’m heavily biased against p/d condi builds and I’m not afraid to admit that I think those builds are stupid and shouldn’t even exist). But take shortbow as an off-hand for utility just because you’ll learn to love it.

So, summarized answer: Thief will take some practice but once you get it down you will be free to do whatever you want on other professions and still be able to jump in and be fairly competent as a thief player. (Will not require hours of practice and dedication).For any builds you need you can look up meta battle or ask around for some. Good luck with learning!

Thank you for your response.

Do you think the various specs are particularly tricky to pick up? I am torn between this class and Mesmer. Do you believe that in order to beat opponents in PvP you must have much greater skill due to inherent class weaknesses, or is that just classic forum whining?

Most of it is forum whining as I play a ton of Mesmer and Thief and don’t really have as much trouble as people claim to have. Yes, there are some parts of the game where skill is required more on thief because there are weaknesses to the class because really not the way the class is but because of the way the game mode is. Despite there being those types of problems sometimes it’s not as bad as people make it out to be because with a super versatile class like Thief you’ll learn how to adapt to the situations you’re in.

Regarding picking up specs, some are harder than others but mostly it depends on how you play naturally that determines how hard it is to play some of the builds. Like for me, I prefer to put out a ton of direct damage so when I try a p/d condi thief I actually fail pretty hard because that’s not how I’ve learned to play. I even have trouble with s/d from time to time because I main d/d for wvw roaming and outnumbered fighting. For you, the first thing you will probably want to do is try out some of the builds and see what you have a better natural feeling with and go from there.

Summarized spec answer cause mine sorta went ranty: The specs are tricky at first but if you take some time to analyze the possible uses of the skills you have available and how all the stuff in the build is supposed to go together you will notice some pretty impressive results during gameplay. If there’s anything else I can do to help or if you have any more questions feel free to ask cause I’m willing to help as best I can

If u want an assassin thief is that class, just don’t expect a lot of on shot kills unless you are in wvw…

I always play the assassin class in every game. I play d/p thief here.