Guild Wars 2

is a thief a good option to use in gvg? 20man vs 20? i love my thief and want to do gvg with it, but whats my role then?

TheAmpca.1753:

How to be a tanky beast in WvW fights due to insane regen and excellent condition removal as well as dealing out decent damage. All you have to do is press dagger storm and once it ends you spam cluster bomb. I guarantee you will not die and you will tag a lot of people. Don’t forget that your last pistol skill is an aoe blind so use it as well.

Don’t kid yourself, we aren’t pigeon holed into the lame backstab combo.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQNAV4alcmiP3ey5E+5EyWhKk7hF6UNV3jrSriPA-jEDBEEAEFwEBQJPFRjtQsIasqZRWZDT5CQFLp2bCxWco2cRTIg+LAA-w

Zerg vs Zerg =/= GvG

Thieves are fine in Zerg vs Zerg battles. A spammable blast finisher is always appreciated, even when others don’t say so (and continue to call us useless).

GvG on the other hand is a different story though. Currently, we don’t bring much to the table to warrant a spot in a GvG fight. If we spec to be bursty, we go down way to fast in the midst of the fight. If we spec to be able to take front line punishment, we don’t dish out much damage.

I would love to use my thief in GvG also, but unless we get a 1200 range attack, don’t count on being called on by a guild to participate.

Spammable blast finishers are great, particularly when you’re working on taking down a door since you can spam it at the door to heal and cleanse melee.

Cluster Bomb is also a good tool for hitting enemies who are on the ledges of walls since you can shoot it at the top lip of a wall (without exploding it) and the AoE damage will hit enemy players that are out of line of sight.

The role of a thief in a zerg fight, is to hunt down the glass staff eles, and glass range rangers. that stands a bit out of their zerg.

i got a d/d ele to, well i just love daggers in games. thiefs and ele’s. i love my ele to becaus he can use daggers etc. i hope they gonne keep the daggers on ele’s in future guils wars games

Build for mobility, every trait, and every single utility spot for it.

In GvGs stealth is absolutely a no go. Since stealth was meant to be a big part of the classes defense at first it would seem like there would be no place at all for thieves in GvG.

But there are ways to boost the other mechanic, mobility, to levels that can make you tanky enough to be a part of the melee train while still glass enough to dish out extreme aoe punishment.

The role in gvgs is not completely melee train but not fully caster backline either. Using your mobility you can be an excellent harasser (think poison cloud on enemy regroups) and completely shut down any oposing team’s harass player too. Use whatever off weapon set your comfortable with: s/d, d/d, d/p all good options.

Then retreat back to the train often to dish out amazing pressure on their melee via SB. The blast finishers for short bow are most effective MID fight not before the round starts which is a common misconception.

I cant really go into detail about specific build questions, but just know that thief can be a very effective class in GvG but you have to put in the work to get there.

bonus tip: get used to what the enemy team’s mesmer looks like, because the only time you should be stealing is taking that precious and wonderful plasma.

rmBossa.4621:

Build for mobility, every trait, and every single utility spot for it.

In GvGs stealth is absolutely a no go. Since stealth was meant to be a big part of the classes defense at first it would seem like there would be no place at all for thieves in GvG.

But there are ways to boost the other mechanic, mobility, to levels that can make you tanky enough to be a part of the melee train while still glass enough to dish out extreme aoe punishment.

The role in gvgs is not completely melee train but not fully caster backline either. Using your mobility you can be an excellent harasser (think poison cloud on enemy regroups) and completely shut down any oposing team’s harass player too. Use whatever off weapon set your comfortable with: s/d, d/d, d/p all good options.

Then retreat back to the train often to dish out amazing pressure on their melee via SB. The blast finishers for short bow are most effective MID fight not before the round starts which is a common misconception.

I cant really go into detail about specific build questions, but just know that thief can be a very effective class in GvG but you have to put in the work to get there.

bonus tip: get used to what the enemy team’s mesmer looks like, because the only time you should be stealing is taking that precious and wonderful plasma.

This is interesting, are there any videos from Agg doing GvG from a thieves PoV? Or would it be possible to have one made during one of your matchups?

No thief PoV yet, but I can let you know if one ever gets made. There are only 2 of us :P

Which leads me to another point, thieves are pretty dependent on the comp for boons and condi cleanse. So if your guild’s comp is not set up correctly yet, it would most likely be best to roll warrior, guardian, ele until you can make the switch.

Good stuff! I would just like to see thieves viewed as more than “just a spammable blast finisher”. I look forward to the video!

S/D Evasion thief, ala Jumper style for GvG would be good I think for training down squishy targets.

Other than that, I don’t suggest you play one.

Speccing Condition damage, Signet of Malice, Caltrops, Shadow Trap/Refuge, Roll for initiative. Going 0/0/10/30/30, and just getting tons of condition damage and toughness, and healing power being good as well.
With this you can jump 1v15, and unless 2 backstab thieves nuke you simultaneously, and hit you while not dodging, you can get out alive with Shadow Trap/Refuge. Using this i used steal right as a guy was running through the entrance to SM, which brought me along inside. I then Spammed d/d 3 skill and dodged, used all abilities and just kept dodging and stuff… At the end i killed 2 ppl before going down.

As someone already mentioned, use signet of malice, go dagger storm, after that use shortbow and spam cluster bombs (if you want more heal explode them, if you want blash finisher, then don’t) and auto attack. And ofc avoid getting targeted/hit.

Thief is not all about stealths and backstabs. I discovered this some time ago and since then thief is my favourite proffesion.

Big Tower.5423:

The role of a thief in a zerg fight, is to hunt down the glass staff eles, and glass range rangers. that stands a bit out of their zerg.

TheAmpca.1753:

TheAmpca.1753:

How to be a tanky beast in WvW fights due to insane regen and excellent condition removal as well as dealing out decent damage. All you have to do is press dagger storm and once it ends you spam cluster bomb. I guarantee you will not die and you will tag a lot of people. Don’t forget that your last pistol skill is an aoe blind so use it as well.

Don’t kid yourself, we aren’t pigeon holed into the lame backstab combo.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYEQNAV4alcmiP3ey5E+5EyWhKk7hF6UNV3jrSriPA-jEDBEEAEFwEBQJPFRjtQsIasqZRWZDT5CQFLp2bCxWco2cRTIg+LAA-w

In my experience, that’s fairly bad advice. Even with SoM I still die fast as hell when I try to Dagger Storm an enemy zerg, because AoEs still hit you perfectly fine.
If I try Cluster Bombing them, I have to get far too close and they all splatter me.
As a Thief, I just don’t bother with zergs, period, and focus only on roaming.

GvG, picking off ranged clothies + blasts + poison(weakness) fields.

ZvZ

Tag kitten don’t die and blast

In a ZvZ thieves are utterly useless. I mained a thief w/ 1.5K hours, the majority WvW, and it’s really not worth it. That’s why I rerolled and tried a bunch of other level 80 professions.

ZvZ – Shortbow is seriously the nastiest AoE weapon kit in the game, absolutely wreks if no one messes with you.

SPvP – Thieves are a great class to have, just not more than 1 or 2. A thiefs role should be bursting down clothies/poor guardians with their 14k hp pool (you can kill them in 2 seconds if you spook em).

NEVER NEVER NEVER, engage someone if they know you are there, try to always assist someone. your job is to be a giant prick and pick unsuspecting people off before they can properly react. Then you just switch to SB and support until your kill rotation is off CD.

In GvG you don’t want to be glass cannon as you’ll be a liability. Your main role is to secure stomps. Stealth stomps and better yet, shadow step stomps are highly valuable to your team as they not only thin enemy numbers they rally your downed.

Your secondary role is to harass staff eles and try to get them down quickly. They provide third team a lot of fields and utility and thieves are great at making them panic and shutting them down.

Poison fields don’t hurt either.

Forz.1725:

This is interesting, are there any videos from Agg doing GvG from a thieves PoV? Or would it be possible to have one made during one of your matchups?

Ill make a vid for our next match, hopefully we roll a good week and it can be against a top team for contrast. Theres a difference against well disciplined opponents, the positioning involved is so intense, I really encourage more ppl to get into the game mode.

Heres a vid i found tho from an EU thief from [INC]. Contrary to what I was talking about he runs 100% harass with s/p on their back line. The cleave on that set works well in GvG as you can see. But Im not too big on full harass setups as it can be countered and can leave your team a man down with you dead or not able to contribute anything. But the beauty of GvG is that it’s focused so much on your guilds comp as a whole, what can work for someone won’t work for another player or team.

very interesting
might have to try something like this out on my Thief.