Guild Wars 2

Hey guys.

I’m here because I’m considering abandoning my Thief for another profession.

It is NOT because I have read the forums, nor is it because I’m jumping on some kind of bandwagon. I’m here representing the Thief as I have experienced it… and my experience hasn’t been terribly good. I have a Charr Elementalist on the backburner (around level 42), and might switch to him… but I figured I’d come here and see if you guys might have any insights.

First, I’m interested primarily in PVE. PVP is fun in spurts, but if I wanted a real balanced PVP experience I would play League of Legends (which I’ve already hit Gold on, jsyk). Let’s face it, PVP balance here is pretty bad at present.

Second, I’m not necessarily interested in min/max-ing. I mostly play with a small group of friends, and when we need a bigger group we have a decent guild that we’re all members of. To be honest, I find that GW2 is extremely lenient when it comes to gear-checks compared to WoW or Rift, which are the other MMO’s I’ve played extensively. For these reasons, I’m okay with running groups that aren’t 3 guardians, a warrior, and a mesmer. People that will only run that stuff just confuse me. :S

Finally, I’m bringing some baggage to my Thief experience. I played a Rogue and a Feral Druid in WoW for upwards of 5 years. Stealth, to me, is something you turn on to go run around Stormwind invisible and gank people. Now, I’m open to other design philosophies for assassin classes, which is why I rolled Thief in the first place.

My problem is this.

I rolled the Thief, and persevered to 80, because I was under the impression that it would be a high damage, low survivability class which relies on trickery, evasiveness, and skill to execute opponents and get out alive.

Instead, what I have found so far is a medium damage, low survivability class which—while having some powerful/interesting spells—has several useless abilities.

My main problem is this: I’m squishy, yet warriors, mesmers, and others seem to out-DPS me frequently. I don’t feel very “Thiefy” in dungeons. I try to jump in for some damage, but end up getting smacked around so hard it’s not worth it. This is especially bad since the change to stealth not dropping aggro. So… I end up sitting around with an INCREDIBLY lame shortbow (shooting projectiles that are slow as hell and do this weird spirally thing that I can’t quite understand). I didn’t roll a Thief to be a ghetto Ranger.

I can’t figure out if we’re supposed to be melee-capable or not. Are we? Whenever I go melee on a boss, I get one or two-shot. Mind you, I am running Berzerker’s gear, because I can’t figure out how to be “tanky” without sacrificing all my DPS. Am I missing something? What is the typical technique, if any, for doing melee DPS on bosses with Defiance?

So what do you guys think? Should I swap out? Any tips? Any guides I should look at? Feeling very bummed right now because I feel like I invested time into a class that I am so far disappointed in.

well, for dungeons I run s/p and short bow. black powder ruins normal mobs days, and pistol whip puts you into evade for part of it, so you can do a bit more face tanking than normal. making good use of dodge rolls and shadow steps is crucial for dungeon thieves. mixing some soldiers of valkyrie gear into your armor also helps. full zerker in dungeons takes a while to get the hang of without constantly floor tanking so ease into it if it is what you want to do. we may not have the damage of warriors but we do have some usefulness. SR SoA and caltrops are all great for group utility for instance.

that said we could definitely use some work on the PvE side of things, but we aren’t way to bad if we are careful.

There’s a big learning curve going from open world thief to dungeon thief and I’m afraid you’re squishy until you’re near the top of the curve. Situationally, smoke screen becomes a top tier skill. Situationally, withdraw becomes an excellent heal. You’ve just got to test things out. There isn’t one solution to everything.

To get started, stick with the shortbow and then look for opportunities to ghost into the edges of melee when you feel safe and you can contribute. Try not to burn all your endurance on dodging when you’ve got evades/shadow steps available from skills. Look for opportunities to keep mobs under control with blind and cripple.

Thanks for the tips guys.

I’m using P/P right now as my ranged set because I guess I thought it would be more single-target ranged damage, and my S/P spec puts a lot of emphasis on crits and dual skills, which I thought would carry over better to S/P than Shortbow. Also, am I the only one that hates Shortbow? The projectiles are so slow it feels like I’m shooting spitwads, esp. Cluster Bomb.

Have you guys ever personally experienced being rejected from a dungeon because “Thiefs r bad PVE loloL” ?

Oh, one last thing. Can we get a buff to Pistol Whip now, Anet?

I am somewhat where you are. After the Feb patch I began to loose interest; I used to use stealth at times to drop agro as well. Though I was never big stealth user, this was a fun aspect of the thief for me. I adapted without trouble but the fun has been decreasing and it feels less like a thief to me really.

Also, I feel many more changes are coming and though I am doing OK on thief …it is the fun factor loss and the feeling that the class is just going to keep loosing fun for me in pve. So, I decided to shelve it today actually. Over the past few days I hardly played it and instead played other toons. I realized that I simply expect the class to be less fun with each month that goes by, and decided I will just focus on other toons and see what happens in the future.

If it is not fun, I just have little incentive to play and I would rather just stop now before I feel forced out by the loss of my fun. I’d rather choose than feel “pushed” out. Maybe all be well, but I have big doubts. I’ll just have to see what happens.

Like my warrior; it just feels dull for me. I have not played it in a long long time. A different situation but same sort of thing: lack of fun. I feel the thief is headed in a similar direction for me and can’t see investing more time and work on it at this point.

Forunately I have a couple other toons I like pretty much.

I feel you there, Brtiva. I feel like the nerfs to Thieves have been for the sake of PVP dominance, but paradoxically have done almost nothing to PVP Thieves and really hurt PVE ones.

Again, I emphasize that this is not about strength of the class, but the “feel” of the class — the quality of its design, whether or not it lives up to our expectations as players.

I’m in the same situation as you, pawstruck. I mainly play PvE, And the higher level I got the weaker and more inadequate I felt. It was fun at first, but the novelty of teleporting around everywhere wore off when I realized that it does little to help me against large groups of enemies. And like you said, the shortbow (our best AoE option) feels really clunky and not “thiefy” at all.
Do I like the playstyle of the thief? Generally, yes. It definitely has the feel I was expecting of a rogue-type class (with the exception of the shortbow). Where I think the thief falls short is the usefulness of their design philosophy in PvE. Thieves are meant to be tricky, hard to catch, and sometimes just be downright annoying (i think this is what sets them apart from assassins), but this philosophy only works in PvP. You can’t “trick” mobs, you can’t annoy them, your dodges don’t do much when so many of them are after you, and if you run away from them you accomplish nothing. All of the advantages you would have over a player are lost on mobs.

I currently have six level 80 characters, and Thief was my first and will always be my main character. I have found that in mostly Berserker gear and being on the offensive all the time, I have to put in a LOT more effort to remain alive than with other classes, and the payoff isn’t worth it. I go melee on everything – every single Fractal, ordinary dungeons, guild missions, everything. I also rarely go down – I guess I’m completely accustomed to PvE with Thief after so long (I put a silly amount of hours in to her). And yet, every time I switch to my Berserker Warrior, it makes me want to cry. Naturally hearty and tough and at the same time practically throwing out number porn at every turn with the push of a button. It’s frankly depressing how little effort I have to put in with my Warrior in comparison to my Thief, when both are designed for damage output and my Warrior completely outshines my Thief in every way imaginable.

I’m not giving up on Thief just yet, but in PvE, they need serious work to be relevant in a team environment. Venom sharing is sub-par, stealth is being reduced in effectiveness with each patch and we have hardly any naturally supportive traits. We have some mediocre boon sharing and 5 seconds of regen that we can give out with two utilities. Gee, I bet everyone wants us for that.

I feel like I’m just going against the grain for the sake of it at this point – there is no reason for me to be a Thief in PvE when I have a Warrior in reserve. It just feels like a portable “skip mobs” dispenser, and most people can run without your help anyways.

Pawstruck.9708:

I feel you there, Brtiva. I feel like the nerfs to Thieves have been for the sake of PVP dominance, but paradoxically have done almost nothing to PVP Thieves and really hurt PVE ones.

Again, I emphasize that this is not about strength of the class, but the “feel” of the class — the quality of its design, whether or not it lives up to our expectations as players.

Yes, exactly.

I am doing OK, I have not even been in the downed state since lthe beginning levels . I got mauled in the beginning; thief was my first toon here and I had no feel for the combat here yet….and thief does not forgive. But it is a great teacher and taught me fast, and made all my other toons feel very easy to play.

But the fun has decreased, the feel is less and less and less like a sneaky thief. I find myself feeling less distinction in the gameplay than was there previously for me.

I always liked the challenge of the class and the play style. But feb. patch was a sort of watershed for me. For the first time, I felt a real dissatisfaction. And now, I just keep thinking “OK, what next?”. And I have tired of it.

I had 2 toons on another game that were serial killed in the fun department; I stuck with them for a VERY long time in the hopes that the absurd changes would be compensated in some way. Never happened.

Now, once bitten is twice shy. I am not investing anymore into the class when I fully expect it to become less and less fun, more indistinct, and less capable as well.
My heart is just not in it anymore and I would prefer to walk away now, rather than feel even more let down later.

Auesis, What do you feel adequate “compensation” for the work you put in as a Thief to stay alive and doing top DPS should be? Thinking from a design philosophy perspective, there aren’t many options.

You could just buff the damage on Thief skills. This is an option and almost certainly needs to occur in some areas (lookin’ at you, Sword/Dagger and Pistol/Pistol). However, artificially inflating the Thief’s numbers to be #1 DPS just because they are difficult to play is quite a philosophical leap. “Hard to play = high DPS, easy to play = low DPS.” Well, then you’ve got questions like: What does it mean to be “hard to play” a class? Complicated rotations? Difficult positioning? Necessity of dodge? Why should anyone want to play an “easy” class (Warrior?) at all if they’re looking to maximize their group effectiveness?

As I said, certain sets and spells NEED a buff, either in damage or effectiveness… but I’m not sure it’s the answer to all of my complaints.

I’m not looking for more damage, although it would be welcome. In fact, simply messing with numbers is NOT enough. It’s a fundamental problem with the Thief as a PvE profession as it stands – it doesn’t do anything exceptionally well EXCEPT damage, and the damage isn’t exceptional enough to make it preferable to a Warrior, who has to put in almost no effort to do the same damage in an AoE spread while also being heavily armored and healthy. So instead of damage, I want it to be able to do more stuff that’s actually useful to other team members – simply making all the benefits of Shadow Arts a small AoE effect on allies would be a start eg. cleansing conditions from allies near you while you’re in stealth WITHOUT having to stealth them with the pathetic access to stealth utilities. Same with the regeneration trait, or the grandmaster version. Buffing traps to the point that they are worth a kitten ie. not having to run in to the middle of a group of mobs to make Needle Trap work on more than one of them. Increasing venom share range and perhaps reducing the cooldowns on the venoms slightly (40 instead of 45), or even applying more Vulnerability per Skale Venom charge. Give boon steals to Leeching Venoms (against Dredge…epic win). Anything. ANYTHING to make it a truly desirable PvE class. You can argue stealth ressing, but you’re not meant to be on the floor in the first place. I didn’t roll a Thief to be a medic. Nice-ish damage and ressing…there’s no depth to that, and with every patch reducing stealth’s effectiveness in PvE, it’s getting worse and worse in terms of the question – “why would you bring a Thief?”

If you want to melee bosses, I think basically it comes down to still kiting them, but ducking in and attacking between their swings. Keep in mind I’ve not done this on a thief really, but for instance that champion at the end of Plinx’s event I’ve soloed as a warrior with axes, and what impairments that guy isn’t immune to wash over him in an instant (no I didn’t tank his damage, can that even be done?).

I’m not sure if AI can attack on the move, but they sure don’t seem to want to. Getting into range makes them stop and swing, and what you’ve done by then is approach, hit them as they’re stopping to attack, and start side-running away, or dodge if it’s too close. By the time their attack would have hit you, you’re usually just outside their range again, and they flail at the air in futility.

Thief could potentially do this I think since they’ve got blinds, stealth, the odd daze (or stun, I always forget), etc. and more evades. Also caltrops, lots of them. I’d be wary of being too glassy though since you will occasionally be hit and you don’t want to get downed. Thief downed state in PVE now, might as well be bypassed and just drop dead. Also, to do this with groups of not-bosses, you’d really want a sword for the cleave I think, else it might end up as an infinite loop of kiting, killing, and them respawning on you.

Stooperdale.3560:

There’s a big learning curve going from open world thief to dungeon thief and I’m afraid you’re squishy until you’re near the top of the curve. Situationally, smoke screen becomes a top tier skill. Situationally, withdraw becomes an excellent heal. You’ve just got to test things out. There isn’t one solution to everything.

To get started, stick with the shortbow and then look for opportunities to ghost into the edges of melee when you feel safe and you can contribute. Try not to burn all your endurance on dodging when you’ve got evades/shadow steps available from skills. Look for opportunities to keep mobs under control with blind and cripple.

This in a nutshell. I find zerg harassment easier than dungeons. Constantly switching utilities, etc, and trying to find the sweet spot with melee/ranged.

To be a PvE dungeon player and reasonably justify playing Thief, you pretty much have to just really find a lot of personal enjoyment in the Thief class and also not care much about objective performance.

Otherwise, you’re honestly best off developing your skills with some other class.