Guild Wars 2

I have searched around the forum for advice on a support oriented thief build. I could not find a lot; I suppose the basic setup of the class is not as supportive as others, say, like a shout warrior, heal-heavy elementalist or a guardian. My idea of ‘support’ is more along the concept a ‘force multiplier’; in that sort of way.

Still I want to see if I can do it.

So may I ask what sort of (primary) support can a thief offer in PvE, WvW and dungeons? What sort of build(s) should I try?

Thanks!

A support thief will typically inflict conditions rather than share boons. There are a variety of ways to get cripple, blind, poison, weakness and they’re not restricted to one build. Support skills such as caltrops, shadow refuge, and smokescreen don’t really need special traits either. Venoms are quite weak without help from traits such as venemous aura. Traps aren’t used often enough to need specific traits.

If you want a suggestion then try running with 30 points in shadow arts to give yourself options on stealth, venoms, and deception skill cooldowns.

The only real way to build a support Thief is to go with a venom sharing build. Basically take 30 in Shadow Arts, 30 in Deadly Arts, take Leaching Venoms, Venomous Aura, Venomous Might, Quick Venoms, residual Venom and maybe Shadow Protector.
Take a couple Venom utilities, including Spider Venom, plus Shadow Refuge.

I can’t speak from experience I never ran a venom build, but from what I understand there’s quite a bit of utility for group play if you run a venom thief. Specifics of the build (among others) you can find here.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Guide-to-Thief-Guides/first#post1691681

Is this a “good” build? No clue, I never ran it. I’ve never been a fan of poisons myself and the conditions the venom thief spreads aren’t of the high damage variety (no bleed, no burn), but just about every other condition. Necros can also do this, but necros cannot spread the condition damage potential to teammates which is this build’s greatest strength. I imagine it will help a high DPS team out quite a bit when all of a sudden their attacks are chilling, immobilizing and causing vulnarabilities.

If you’re looking to spread boons to teammates like guards, that’s not quite going to happen though.

Just for kicks and giggles, I’ll run a venom build soon and get back to you. Very interesting concept and I’m tired of hearing how “selfish” thieves are…

It doesn’t just let teammates apply extra conditions, that would be terrible. The whole point of the build is that you also spread the benefits of the venom traits to teammates, like stacks of Might and life stealing.

Subjectively speaking, without necessarily going into any specific details in great length, how useful would a supportive thief be comparing to other support builds?

A supportive thief is a rare bread; at least in my experience. So, just want to gauge the usefulness, again subjectively, knowing playstyle matters more, of a supportive thief.

I play a support thief in a dungeon-running group that includes two elementalists and two guardians. It’s a blast (finisher). Here’s the build, and some thoughts on thief support:

Deadly Arts 20 [III (dmg on steal), IX (extra dagger dmg)]
Shadow Arts 30 [I (Deception recharge), III (stealthed allies regen), XI (stealth regen)]
Acrobatics 20 [III (vigor on heal), X (heal per initiative spent)]

I run D/D and SB; Withdraw is my heal. For utilities, I run Shadow Refuge, Blinding Powder, and a third determined by the fight (Smoke Screen against ranged; Caltrops for groups; Signet of Agility for extra condition removal, etc. ).

Thieves have a bunch of ways to help out a group, and I like that they’re a little more interesting and involved than throwing down a boon stick. Here are a few:

• (1) Poison / Weakness combo: If you trait 15 in DA, you weaken targets for three seconds when you poison them. Poison by itself isn’t a great condition in PVE (except maybe against targets that heal), but adding weakness for the 50% damage reduction on all non-crit hits makes it fantastic. Thieves have a bunch of non-venom ways to poison / weaken enemies. If we’re fighting one big boss, I’ll dagger autoattack from time to time to apply the poison; if we’re fighting a group, it’s 4 on shortbow to put down a poison field, then maybe a few shortbow autoattacks through the field to keep it up. Neither application takes very long.

• (2) Stealth heals / regen: With some investment in Shadow Arts, you can safely revive your unlucky / terrible comrades. Putting in 15 points gives you an extra second on most — but not all — instances of stealth, and taking trait III gives Allies a short burst of regen for the duration of the stealth. (This includes you, too.) Since I’ve got a ton of mobility from the swiftness-on-dodge trait in Acrobatics, I can quickly get to most downed allies before their timer is up, and Blinding Powder with the extra duration usually lasts long enough to bring them back up. For anyone else, I’ll throw down Shadow Refuge, enjoy the doubled regen, and stealth anyone nearby who will also be able to help with the revive. I enjoy playing medic, but YMMV.

• (3) Tons of combo finishers. 2 on shortbow is a cheap (three initiative) blast finisher with basically no cooldown. Before big fights, I’ll blast combo with the elems’ fire fields to give us easy stacks of area might, and during fights I’ll combo with whatever is around from time to time to help out as needed. We’ve got an expensive whirl with 3 on dagger that I’ve used to proc Cleansing Bolts, and leap with 2 on dagger for an extra stealth through Smoke Screen, etc. I can’t grant my allies regen, might, etc. normally, but with easy access to relatively spammable (i.e., low initiative cost) finishers, I can make sure some boons are up pretty much constantly.

• (4) Damage. I still provide excellent DPS despite spending a good portion of my time applying conditions, proccing combos, and healing the fallen. Ignore the grousing about the stealth nerf to the thief D/D CnD BS, etc. rotation — it’s still amazing single target damage. With my build, I’ve got the mobility and toughness / vitality to run full Berzerker gear and almost never die. Plus, anyone can do mindless damage — it’s fun to be useful.

Cheers.

I kinda play a supportish role I think, laying out aoe blasts and stinky cloud from the sb and blindness/fields and some control from S/P shaddow stepping all around (and usually end up locking down that pesky mesmer). Always equipping Refuge and using Black Powder for down allies.

The venom share is more about helping keeping your team up and running. The conditions should mean the team is taking less damage thanks to weakness, chill, and immobilize. Leeching Venoms also provides small but kinda steady heals. It’s more of a bonus, just like with the might buffs.

The range on share could use some help, but it’s not that hard to keep 1-2 teammates close enough. Finally getting a visible ring to see was REALLY nice. With communication, you might be able to keep the venoms shared with everybody, but it’s always been kinda spotty with me and half donkeying it.

Best thief support, my opinion, is that spiffy shortbow blast finisher. Spiffy and spammy!

Like others have stated, the closest you get to an AoE buffing build is a Venomous Aura build. This is what my Thief is, even though it is often mocked by much of the Thief forums since it doesn’t play much like a “thief” in their opinion.

My own personal version is Deadly Arts 30 / Critical Strikes 10 / Shadow Arts 30. It runs Spider Venom, Skale Venom, Shadow Refuge, and Basilisk Venom for my AoE buffing situations. (When soloing, I remove SR and replace it with Signet of Shadow. Also I remove BV and replace it with Thieves Guild.) Beyond the skills, I run a S/P & SB weapon setup and use Knight (Power/Precision/Toughness) gear. Between venom proc heals and a couple sources of “heal of crit” gear/food, you end up with a tanky Thief who can take hits and quickly heal back the damage. (Though as a general warning, my personal build needs to pack a bunch on condition removal since I don’t have any +Vitality beyond my 10 pt trait in Critical Strikes. I run Hide in Shadows, Lyssa runes, Sword #2, and a condition removal proc sigil on my SB.)

There are far too many different support builds when you look at the various classes. While I adore running my support Thief, you could easily find some other variation of this concept in another class if that’s what you want to do.

I role a S/D Venom Share build in WvW and it is amazing, Works great in small groups and in small team fights. I am working on full celestial jewelry, but a full soldier’s set works great too. 30/0/30/10/0 are the traits. I take everything that says venom in it so gain might, extra strike, faster recharge, life steal, and venomous aura.

You still hit hard, but your job is not damage. You are there to spam your immobilizes, chills, and stuns on foes to hold them down. People complain about stealth being an issue, try fighting this build where you can’t even move or attack for 10 seconds or so. Factor in the venoms you gave to your teammates and you increase that time even more.

So want weapons are best for a venom support build? Or a support build in general?

I enjoy using all of them in fact. But I know some powers are better for certain jobs.

Also what stats should I spec into?

Thank you all again!!

I see sword as most useful for a support build because you have the immobilize and great evasion with it.

as for stats, my venom share setup uses clerics armor and weapons with soldiers accessories. mainly because of the wonky way in which leeching venoms works. for weapons that work with it, I like S/P for the added control and utility of the pistol off hand and pistol whips high hit volume for venom procs.

Conditions seem to be hitting me quite bad. What sort of conditions removal tools do I have?

Venom Share and high bonuses to healing.

Share ur venoms and blast finish water fields….

Other than that I can think of no way a thief is a good support char

Oh My God.8423:

Conditions seem to be hitting me quite bad. What sort of conditions removal tools do I have?

If you use sword, you have spammable purge with Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow return

Adaneshade.2409:

If you use sword, you have spammable purge with Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow return

15 ini for 3 conditions is certainly spammable. Best be careful with them words.

Jinks.2057:

Venom Share and high bonuses to healing.

Share ur venoms and blast finish water fields….

Other than that I can think of no way a thief is a good support char

So should I equip some Healing Power stat? It sounds like Thief can offer some good heal too. How does it compare to those other supporting classes?

ensoriki.5789:

Adaneshade.2409:

If you use sword, you have spammable purge with Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow return

15 ini for 3 conditions is certainly spammable. Best be careful with them words.

I don’t understand…

Oh My God.8423:

ensoriki.5789:

Adaneshade.2409:

If you use sword, you have spammable purge with Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow return

15 ini for 3 conditions is certainly spammable. Best be careful with them words.

I don’t understand…

The first person stating that the sword skill was spammable was sort of incorrect, the second person was responding sarcastically, to clear conditions with infiltrators strike+shadow return costs a total of 5 initiative per condition, as a thief can have at most 15 initiative at any given time thats a total of 3 conditions you can remove with it before your out (coincidentally also meaning you cannot use any other initiative attacks either) which is hardly “spammable”.

Also for your other question I’d be reluctant to stack healing power, non of the thieves heals scale particularly well with it and we don’t get anywhere near enough group healing that utilizes it to make it worthwhile.

Dasorine.1964:

Oh My God.8423:

ensoriki.5789:

Adaneshade.2409:

If you use sword, you have spammable purge with Infiltrator’s Strike/Shadow return

15 ini for 3 conditions is certainly spammable. Best be careful with them words.

I don’t understand…

The first person stating that the sword skill was spammable was sort of incorrect, the second person was responding sarcastically, to clear conditions with infiltrators strike+shadow return costs a total of 5 initiative per condition, as a thief can have at most 15 initiative at any given time thats a total of 3 conditions you can remove with it before your out (coincidentally also meaning you cannot use any other initiative attacks either) which is hardly “spammable”.

Also for your other question I’d be reluctant to stack healing power, non of the thieves heals scale particularly well with it and we don’t get anywhere near enough group healing that utilizes it to make it worthwhile.

Ah, thanks!

So as a thief, there is really no effective way to remove conditions, for example, like Healing Spring.

To quote myself…

4. You think that thieves make awful support classes
This tends to be something that people complain about when they define a “support class” as one that gives boons to all of its teammates, but could never survive a 1v1 on its own. Rather than going into detail about how this is misleading, I’ll just give you some reasons why thieves can make a good support class.
For one thing, thieves are irrefutably the class with the highest mobility in the game. We have teleports all over the place, tons of ways to boost our speed, and a great capacity to evade often. Thus, we are able to insert and extract ourselves from skirmishes in the blink of an eye. Use this to your advantage. If you see a teammate struggling to fight a bunker guardian, go help him or her out! Burst the guardian for a few seconds with (for example) the S/P Infiltrator’s Strike + Pistol Whip, add a few more bursts in there, then use Shadow Return and find somebody else to fight. I promise you that this will drive other professions completely insane.
Or maybe you and your party can work out a strategy where they will just damage as much stuff as possible, and then you can be the clean-up crew for them, wiping out enemies with moves like Heartseeker or Pistol Whip w/ the Executioner Grandmaster Trait.
Another idea: did your friend just get Downed? Maybe they were killed in an enemy-heavy zone. Use Hide In Shadows, Blinding Power, and then lay down Shadow Refuge with a 20 in Shadow Arts to get them up and fighting again.
One last thought: you know how annoying it is to fight entire mobs? Even if you have great AoE, it can be a real pain in the kitten, especially when you’re fighting higher-level hordes, like the Risen. Thieves specialize in 1v1, though, so make the most out of that. Find somebody who looks like maybe they’re causing a bit of trouble, and take them out. Reducing the size of the swarm one by one will make things surprisingly easier for your allies.

If you define “support” as sharing boons with your allies and whatnot, you’ll be disappointed. However, this idea of “support” is a very narrow view that, I believe, doesn’t make much sense.

For condition removal you have:

Infiltrators strike+Shadow Return: 1 condition removed (5 initiative cost Sword weapon skill)

Signet of Agility: 1 condition removed on yourself and 1 from all allies in range (also refills endurance at the same time Utility skill) <Only one that effects allies>

Hide In Shadows: Removes any and all bleed, poison and burning (upto 3 conditions removed with all stacks of bleeds counting as 1 condition Heal skill)

Withdraw: Removes any and all chilled, immobilize and cripple (Upto 3 conditions removed Heal skill)

Roll for Initiative: Removes any and all chilled, immobilize and cripple (Upto 3 conditions removed, also evades backwards and restores some initiative Utility skill)

Shadowstep+Shadow return: Removes 3 conditions (Utility Skill)

Shadows Embrace: Removes 1 condition upon stealth and another condition every 3 seconds in stealth (Trait)

Dasorine.1964:

For condition removal you have:

Infiltrators strike+Shadow Return: 1 condition removed (5 initiative cost Sword weapon skill)

Signet of Agility: 1 condition removed on yourself and 1 from all allies in range (also refills endurance at the same time Utility skill) <Only one that effects allies>

Hide In Shadows: Removes any and all bleed, poison and burning (upto 3 conditions removed with all stacks of bleeds counting as 1 condition Heal skill)

Withdraw: Removes any and all chilled, immobilize and cripple (Upto 3 conditions removed Heal skill)

Roll for Initiative: Removes any and all chilled, immobilize and cripple (Upto 3 conditions removed, also evades backwards and restores some initiative Utility skill)

Shadowstep+Shadow return: Removes 3 conditions (Utility Skill)

Shadows Embrace: Removes 1 condition upon stealth and another condition every 3 seconds in stealth (Trait)

Just want to say a massive THANKS to all for the most constructive advice!

THANKS!!

There are also the traits shadow’s embrace and fleet of foot. If you planning to enter and exit stealth frequently then shadow’s embrace becomes quite useful.

I love that Pain response doesn’t exist.
So bad we forgot about it.

Arganthium.5638:

To quote myself…

4. You think that thieves make awful support classes
This tends to be something that people complain about when they define a “support class” as one that gives boons to all of its teammates, but could never survive a 1v1 on its own. Rather than going into detail about how this is misleading, I’ll just give you some reasons why thieves can make a good support class.
For one thing, thieves are irrefutably the class with the highest mobility in the game. We have teleports all over the place, tons of ways to boost our speed, and a great capacity to evade often. Thus, we are able to insert and extract ourselves from skirmishes in the blink of an eye. Use this to your advantage. If you see a teammate struggling to fight a bunker guardian, go help him or her out! Burst the guardian for a few seconds with (for example) the S/P Infiltrator’s Strike + Pistol Whip, add a few more bursts in there, then use Shadow Return and find somebody else to fight. I promise you that this will drive other professions completely insane.
Or maybe you and your party can work out a strategy where they will just damage as much stuff as possible, and then you can be the clean-up crew for them, wiping out enemies with moves like Heartseeker or Pistol Whip w/ the Executioner Grandmaster Trait.
Another idea: did your friend just get Downed? Maybe they were killed in an enemy-heavy zone. Use Hide In Shadows, Blinding Power, and then lay down Shadow Refuge with a 20 in Shadow Arts to get them up and fighting again.
One last thought: you know how annoying it is to fight entire mobs? Even if you have great AoE, it can be a real pain in the kitten, especially when you’re fighting higher-level hordes, like the Risen. Thieves specialize in 1v1, though, so make the most out of that. Find somebody who looks like maybe they’re causing a bit of trouble, and take them out. Reducing the size of the swarm one by one will make things surprisingly easier for your allies.

If you define “support” as sharing boons with your allies and whatnot, you’ll be disappointed. However, this idea of “support” is a very narrow view that, I believe, doesn’t make much sense.

My idea of support is very similar to being a force multiplier: in other sense, being a buffer or a debuffer. So I am interested in builds that makes the team or any one around me better.

So based on that premise, is thief still a good class?

Oh My God.8423:

Jinks.2057:

Venom Share and high bonuses to healing.

Share ur venoms and blast finish water fields….

Other than that I can think of no way a thief is a good support char

So should I equip some Healing Power stat? It sounds like Thief can offer some good heal too. How does it compare to those other supporting classes?

Well i have zero healing but 30 stealth and heal for around 1400 a person if i remember correctly.

Maybe get up to 2k not sure honestly mate.

Oh My God.8423:

My idea of support is very similar to being a force multiplier: in other sense, being a buffer or a debuffer. So I am interested in builds that makes the team or any one around me better.

So based on that premise, is thief still a good class?

You have plenty of ability to weaken enemies as a Thief. Between blinds and venoms.

Support is not limited to buffing, to this “force multiplier”, as others already wrote. In fact, I don’t get why you call this force multiplication a.k.a “more dps” support to begin with… We have very different idea of what support is.

I’m running with 15/30/0/25/0 in PvE. My main weapon is the shortbow. I do 4K+ cluster bombs while throwing out buffs for melee like retaliation, cleansing, might, heal, depending on the combo field. You can stack might up to 20+ in a fire field, or keep healing continuously in a water field while aoe nuking. I can keep up perma weakness in aoe with a poison cloud every 10 sec or so in the meantime. If the mobs can be blinded, I can switch to D/P and keep up blind on more mobs while backstabbing and ‘heartseeking’, because I make use of the blinding field at stealthing as well. We could go on with shadow refuge and other utility skills and so on, but in my opinion, theif provides more support in the real sense of the word than some other classes who simply buff dps – which I wouldn’t call support, I would call it what it is, buffing dps.

Oh My God.8423:

Just want to say a massive THANKS to all for the most constructive advice!

THANKS!!

One of thing to consider with a Venomous Aura build is your armor Runes. Once you get high enough to access Superior grade runes (at lvl 60+), it is possible to use Superior Runes of Lyssa. There is an unstated cool down of 50 seconds on the full set proc, so it would only affect you every other Basilisk use. Yet it does remove all conditions and grants you almost every boon (for a few seconds), which helps out in the condition removal department.

Another condition removal source are your Sigils on your weapons. If you’re running a character build that is Precision heavy, you can run a couple of different condition removal sigils. At the Superior tier, you can have a 60% proc chance whenever you critically hit. I personally run a removal sigil on my ranged weapons (land & water) and on my underwater melee weapon. (Underwater combat seems to be particularly heavy in the condition department, so I try to use as much removal as I can in those circumstances.)

Oh My God.8423:

Arganthium.5638:

To quote myself…

4. You think that thieves make awful support classes
This tends to be something that people complain about when they define a “support class” as one that gives boons to all of its teammates, but could never survive a 1v1 on its own. Rather than going into detail about how this is misleading, I’ll just give you some reasons why thieves can make a good support class.
For one thing, thieves are irrefutably the class with the highest mobility in the game. We have teleports all over the place, tons of ways to boost our speed, and a great capacity to evade often. Thus, we are able to insert and extract ourselves from skirmishes in the blink of an eye. Use this to your advantage. If you see a teammate struggling to fight a bunker guardian, go help him or her out! Burst the guardian for a few seconds with (for example) the S/P Infiltrator’s Strike + Pistol Whip, add a few more bursts in there, then use Shadow Return and find somebody else to fight. I promise you that this will drive other professions completely insane.
Or maybe you and your party can work out a strategy where they will just damage as much stuff as possible, and then you can be the clean-up crew for them, wiping out enemies with moves like Heartseeker or Pistol Whip w/ the Executioner Grandmaster Trait.
Another idea: did your friend just get Downed? Maybe they were killed in an enemy-heavy zone. Use Hide In Shadows, Blinding Power, and then lay down Shadow Refuge with a 20 in Shadow Arts to get them up and fighting again.
One last thought: you know how annoying it is to fight entire mobs? Even if you have great AoE, it can be a real pain in the kitten, especially when you’re fighting higher-level hordes, like the Risen. Thieves specialize in 1v1, though, so make the most out of that. Find somebody who looks like maybe they’re causing a bit of trouble, and take them out. Reducing the size of the swarm one by one will make things surprisingly easier for your allies.

If you define “support” as sharing boons with your allies and whatnot, you’ll be disappointed. However, this idea of “support” is a very narrow view that, I believe, doesn’t make much sense.

My idea of support is very similar to being a force multiplier: in other sense, being a buffer or a debuffer. So I am interested in builds that makes the team or any one around me better.

So based on that premise, is thief still a good class?

If that’s the case, then no, I think you would be much better off rolling guardian or mes.

Arganthium.5638:

Oh My God.8423:

Arganthium.5638:

To quote myself…

4. You think that thieves make awful support classes
This tends to be something that people complain about when they define a “support class” as one that gives boons to all of its teammates, but could never survive a 1v1 on its own. Rather than going into detail about how this is misleading, I’ll just give you some reasons why thieves can make a good support class.
For one thing, thieves are irrefutably the class with the highest mobility in the game. We have teleports all over the place, tons of ways to boost our speed, and a great capacity to evade often. Thus, we are able to insert and extract ourselves from skirmishes in the blink of an eye. Use this to your advantage. If you see a teammate struggling to fight a bunker guardian, go help him or her out! Burst the guardian for a few seconds with (for example) the S/P Infiltrator’s Strike + Pistol Whip, add a few more bursts in there, then use Shadow Return and find somebody else to fight. I promise you that this will drive other professions completely insane.
Or maybe you and your party can work out a strategy where they will just damage as much stuff as possible, and then you can be the clean-up crew for them, wiping out enemies with moves like Heartseeker or Pistol Whip w/ the Executioner Grandmaster Trait.
Another idea: did your friend just get Downed? Maybe they were killed in an enemy-heavy zone. Use Hide In Shadows, Blinding Power, and then lay down Shadow Refuge with a 20 in Shadow Arts to get them up and fighting again.
One last thought: you know how annoying it is to fight entire mobs? Even if you have great AoE, it can be a real pain in the kitten, especially when you’re fighting higher-level hordes, like the Risen. Thieves specialize in 1v1, though, so make the most out of that. Find somebody who looks like maybe they’re causing a bit of trouble, and take them out. Reducing the size of the swarm one by one will make things surprisingly easier for your allies.

If you define “support” as sharing boons with your allies and whatnot, you’ll be disappointed. However, this idea of “support” is a very narrow view that, I believe, doesn’t make much sense.

My idea of support is very similar to being a force multiplier: in other sense, being a buffer or a debuffer. So I am interested in builds that makes the team or any one around me better.

So based on that premise, is thief still a good class?

If that’s the case, then no, I think you would be much better off rolling guardian or mes.

No other class provides that niche that VS thieves do, though. It essentially allows the other players to become walking CC machines even though their own builds lack that feature all together. A great example is a GS warrior paired with a VS thief, the warrior can literally pin down anything and kill it because of the added CC to his attacks. It takes the ability to avoid attacks away from the enemy when all of the thief’s allies are spamming them with immob/stun/chill etc.

Adaneshade.2409:

Arganthium.5638:

Oh My God.8423:

Arganthium.5638:

To quote myself…

4. You think that thieves make awful support classes
This tends to be something that people complain about when they define a “support class” as one that gives boons to all of its teammates, but could never survive a 1v1 on its own. Rather than going into detail about how this is misleading, I’ll just give you some reasons why thieves can make a good support class.
For one thing, thieves are irrefutably the class with the highest mobility in the game. We have teleports all over the place, tons of ways to boost our speed, and a great capacity to evade often. Thus, we are able to insert and extract ourselves from skirmishes in the blink of an eye. Use this to your advantage. If you see a teammate struggling to fight a bunker guardian, go help him or her out! Burst the guardian for a few seconds with (for example) the S/P Infiltrator’s Strike + Pistol Whip, add a few more bursts in there, then use Shadow Return and find somebody else to fight. I promise you that this will drive other professions completely insane.
Or maybe you and your party can work out a strategy where they will just damage as much stuff as possible, and then you can be the clean-up crew for them, wiping out enemies with moves like Heartseeker or Pistol Whip w/ the Executioner Grandmaster Trait.
Another idea: did your friend just get Downed? Maybe they were killed in an enemy-heavy zone. Use Hide In Shadows, Blinding Power, and then lay down Shadow Refuge with a 20 in Shadow Arts to get them up and fighting again.
One last thought: you know how annoying it is to fight entire mobs? Even if you have great AoE, it can be a real pain in the kitten, especially when you’re fighting higher-level hordes, like the Risen. Thieves specialize in 1v1, though, so make the most out of that. Find somebody who looks like maybe they’re causing a bit of trouble, and take them out. Reducing the size of the swarm one by one will make things surprisingly easier for your allies.

If you define “support” as sharing boons with your allies and whatnot, you’ll be disappointed. However, this idea of “support” is a very narrow view that, I believe, doesn’t make much sense.

My idea of support is very similar to being a force multiplier: in other sense, being a buffer or a debuffer. So I am interested in builds that makes the team or any one around me better.

So based on that premise, is thief still a good class?

If that’s the case, then no, I think you would be much better off rolling guardian or mes.

No other class provides that niche that VS thieves do, though. It essentially allows the other players to become walking CC machines even though their own builds lack that feature all together. A great example is a GS warrior paired with a VS thief, the warrior can literally pin down anything and kill it because of the added CC to his attacks. It takes the ability to avoid attacks away from the enemy when all of the thief’s allies are spamming them with immob/stun/chill etc.

This is true, although that’s pretty much the only support spec (“support” as defined by OMG) that thieves have on them. On the other hand, mes and guardians both have a wide variety of support builds available to them, if they want them. So… Eh.