Guild Wars 2

I seem to suffer from squirrel syndrome, so maybe putting it in writing, er, typing, will help me with my S/D meta thiefness.

Ideally, isn’t my role in a sPvP match to roam? At the start, make sure we win the opening Mid fight and dropping back to help Home if needed. After that, kind of hanging between Mid/Home to help hold them, with popping out to Far to decap when M/H are solid and the other team has people down.

Is that it or am I totally botching it?

What I’d expect from a Thief:
- Outnumber fights and finish them quickly and efficiently.
- Decap points that are free.
- Focusses squishes / high dps that are on vulnerable allies, making them back-off is already a gain.
- Steal on Lich Form asap (or similar situations.) Or other situations an enemies Stability will win the fight for them.
- Poison / Clusterspam the downed
- Map-specifics, steal their beast / kill their treb etc.

You seem to be doing most, if not all, of it already.

As a S/D thief you role is to roaming every time. Your contribute in teamfight is low, so at start don’t go mid but check the cross point for an invasion to your close, or go far to take time for capping. You have to avoid 1v1 (unless is against a mesmer or another thief), just focus on decap free point (always always always looking at minimap) thanks to your fast moving and stealth, and moving around your point to hold until your team come, or for help a mate and do a 2v1.
S/D thief is not for damage or burst down target, it’s for surviving and moving as fast as you can for decap and helping mates on point.

Thanks, I’ll work on improving my execution of those tips and practice my mini-map reading.

Thief is more of a tactical class and is used to bring instability to the enemy team. Because your shortbow/shadowsteps give you so much mobility you can often step away from a teamfight with invisibility, go for far and decap, maybe even cap. So at least one of them has to go back and not everyone can win a 1v1 against a good thief, so they may send even 2 ppl back, which in turn gives your team the advantage at a contested point. At the same time, the opponents have no guarantee of recapping far fast enough or even to kill you because you can disengage so easily. And if that’s the case you arrive back at the teamfight earlier than the guys the opponents sent for you.

That was just one example, of course, you can also focus squishy targets, in fact you should (but maybe not as S/D thief, idk, i play D/P). What you should NOT do is trying to decap (or even worse, cap) a point against a class that you can’t kill quickly, that’s just a waste of time and therefore your team’s resources.

TL;DR: Thief is used to tip the balance of teamfights and to apply tactical pressure which he can do by moving fast and disengaging easily (and yes, stealing stability from necro elites and SB bombing is pretty sweet too)