Guild Wars 2

I’m really disappointed at how squishy the thief class is in PvE. I have cloth wearing toons that survive better even in close combat. Just to even -try- to survive I have to place all my trait pints in toughness and it doesn’t make a huge difference at least at mid levels so far. I’m seriously considering not playing a thief any longer because there is no survivability if I get more than one mob on me and really, that happens all the time in this game, which is fine if I had any ability to remotely handle it without dying every other time. It’s really taken the enjoyment out of the class for me. And no actual stealth more than a few seconds? Really? The DPS seems to have been nerfed or just isn’t what one would expect from a dagger wielding specialist. I’ve tried all the weapon combos etc and have great gear for my level but doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference. Seriously, they need to make this class more survivable either health wise or DPS increase wise.

Signet of Malice + Caltrops on Dodge + Any kind of AE attack, Dagger Storm for emergencies.

Enjoy coming out of 9-pulls of level 80 mobs at 100 % HP without having to wear any defensive gear or pour points into defensive trait trees. The problem is probably that you’re playing the thief as “a dagger wielding specialist” in PvE which heavily heavily rewards AE damage and just pulling massive amounts of mobs at once. Unless you’re focusing on LDB, dagger isn’t really the way to do that.

If you play melee, you are going to have to invest in defense. Even with evade and so forth, you are going to take hits, draw aggro nd so forth. If your hell bent on glass cannon, then great. Be prepared to take the concequence of it, which is you will get hit hard.

If you could just punch everything in the face super hard and never be hit or take any dmg, or have a draw back, it would be broke.

So either go to range dps so you can just maxmize dps and get out of the melee, or start investing in tough/vit so you can take a few swings wihtout going straight into down state.

I’ve tried all the weapon combos. What would you suggest for mid level PvE play? I don’t seem to see much difference in the bottom line DPS and definitely not in survivability even with mobs that are a level lower than mine. I’ve -never- had so much difficulty with a class in this game (admittedly I haven’t tried Mesmer yet, lol) and I’ve played rogues classes very successfully in other MMO’s (not just WoW).

Depends what you want. If you are like me, and you like doing D/D, I ended up doing 30/10/10/20/0, with traits set up for deception CD. This usually allows me to hit hard, get decent crit (around 50% with gear), adn still have hp adn defensive capabilities to get myself out of tight spots. It means that if I do get hit, Im not goign to lose 3/4s of my hp.

If you are mid level, I remember myself still investing in crit, and acrobatics. If you are doing dungeon content, having HP makes things work out well enough. You will get hit hard, but last long enough to pop defensive skills to get you out of melee to recuperate adn switch to range weapons to keep dps up.

Daggers btw provide better defense then sword for melee, because your AA regenerates endurance for your evade. If you use DD, death blossom is also an activatable evade if timed right.

Iron Wolf.5973:

Daggers btw provide better defense then sword for melee, because your AA regenerates endurance for your evade. If you use DD, death blossom is also an activatable evade if timed right.

This is where signet of malice comes in. When sword autoattacks also triple heal, it makes sword a defensive and offensive powerhouse compared to dagger, and that isn’t even counting the availability of weaken, daze, and condition removal for sword.

Im not sure how you are differentiating sword to dagger with the triple heal, because the dagger AA also hits three times, unless its based on an ICD on the passive of signet which Im not aware of.

Daze is stealth based, the weaken makes non crit attacks glancing, so they deal 50% dmg.

Now the problem I find iwth signet of malice on melee is a few things. The first is that because youre in melee, you will be hit often enough that the AA is not likely to keep you out of red, forcing you to back up at some point in time. If you are forced to use the signet, you lose your life on hit passive for 15 seconds, and during that 15 seconds you really have to be on yoru toes to make sure you dont take any big damage. Also, the using hte signet provides a comparatively small heal. Considering all that, the signet honestly feels better in the hands of ranged thieves, not melee.

Hide in shadows then becomes more useful in melee for a few reasons. Its a big heal, meant ot negate big dmg or dots, and it puts you into steath, enabling either a backstab, or getting out of a pinch if needed. Since it also removes all conditions on use, it provides itself a better usage.

With swords, you can remove conditions via the teleport, but that consumes initiative taht could be better applied to dealing dps. The skill is, to me, meant to replace the fact that because you are using sword you do not regenerate endurance on hit like daggers do, and need the extra evades. But the dagger kit incorporates an evade into its dps, while dealing a 3stack AE bleed.

All this considered and because the game is a bit more hairy then usual, I personally believe having daggers is better spent, not only for the AE bleed, the evade you get it with it, and the ability to quickly regenerate endurance so you can evade often to avoid attacks. Granted sword probably does deal higher single target dps, and its skill set seems to speak that.

But sword or daggers, I think the point is that one way or the other, you need to invest in some def stats. If sword dps with the signet does the trick, then all the power to you. Thats the nice thing about hte game. Two people can play completely different and still accomplish the same thing.

Thanks for the input. I’m totally frustrated at this point. I’ll see if I can work things out that I can stomach this class. It’s always been one of my favs…until now.

I felt the same way as you before I discovered pistols. Having a pistol off hand is a must for pve leveling because of one skill: black powder. I’m not even sure how we’re supposed to level without it. I like dagger/ pistol for some situations and sword/ pistol for fighting multiple enemies (or those mole people who are immune to blind).

Thief is my main class, but I do feel that they are much weaker in pve situations than the other classes I’ve tried. I think the key to playing the thief is trying to not let the enemy hit you, whether it be from blind (my preferred method) or evasion (like the dual dagger build). Other classes have ways to block, mitigate or heal damage, we are supposed to avoid it, I think.

Dagger AA has a three-attack chain, that results in 4 hits total (two fast small hits, one hit, one hit). Sword also has a three-attack chain, each attack causing one hit per target upto 3. The result is that a full AA chain of sword will heal 9 times on 3 targets, while a full AA chain of dagger will heal 4 times. Sword doesn’t necessarily do “higher single target DPS”, but sword offers more utility, survivability, and AE damage. AE damage that, notably, does not require you to invest in condition damage like dagger AE does.

On paper, you might feel like Signet of Malice is tough to leverage, but I can assure you with almost no healing stats I can fairly easily use signet of malice and dodge caltrops to stay full HP in melee range of 5+ level 80 mobs. NPC AI is terrible enough that the vast majority of damage can be simply avoided by not standing still, and >500 HP/second gained from Signet of Malice alone will negate any hits you do take. Personally, I also take Assassin’s Reward for spot healing which is great for getting out of sticky situations.

You’re doing him a disservice by insisting that he must invest in defensive stats. They’re an option, but they certainly aren’t a requirement. They may even be a detriment in open-world PvE where you’re giving up valuable offensive stats in favor of defense you don’t need.

Black powder is extremely useful as well but, again, not strictly necessary. By all means, do whatever works, but don’t say “x is required for thief PvE to not be terrible”.