Guild Wars 2

So, I’ve heard a lot of people discussing the thief class and the balance. My main has always been a warrior, but I decided to try a thief to give some fair feedback. Also, keep in mind that this will not apply to all thieves. It is just an average. Certain players are very skilled, but that doesn’t mean it is indicative of the class. Anyway, here is what I’ve found.

General Comments: The thief excels attacking opponents who are not ready for it. A thief will die in any fair 1 v 1. In fact, thieves are typically my first target as a warrior since they die the easiest.

sPvP: This is the main area where the thief can be good. The reason is that a lot of people are more focused on glory farming or testing new classes than focusing on the PvP. It is a lot easier for a thief to catch people off guard and get a kill. Verdict: One of the top 3 classes.

tPvP: The thief really isn’t that great except against pug teams. Any team that actually has bunker defenders will laugh as a thief tries to backstab them or kill in some other way. Especially with the mobility gains for the other classes, the thief isn’t that great. Verdict: Bottom half of classes.

WvW: Most WvW is a zerg fest. Thieves are ok with the shortbow, but can’t really handle any of the dps that is usually involved. They can spec to handle it better, but then they lose a lot of DPS. The other time where they can get 1 v1 kills is if they find an opponent out of place. You know, those wondering around the map solo (not smart). A thief can do a decent job there, but it depends on finding a player who is running quickly to get in position with their zerg or just doesn’t understand what to do. Verdict: About an average class overall

Dungeons: I know this one has a lot of debate, but thieves are not that great. Sure, they have their blinds and stealth, but they die quickly. I think that I need to up downed thieves more than any other class in a dungeon. If they spec more for survivability, their DPS is horrible. Verdict: One of the bottom 2 classes.

Overall: Thieves certainly do not need any nerfs and likely could use some buffs in a few areas. In particular, I’d say slightly more damage with the shortbow and less endurance needed for dodging. That would help with some of the issues in dungeons and WvW. Burst damage is fine as is.

^Agree.

The rendering lag in WvW stems the biggest whine about thieves but that has nothing to do with the profession so you can’t blame them.

I don’t think Thieves need a nerf at all, they seem to be exactly what they are supposed to be, which is the GW2 version of Rogues. So you get to be invisible and have a chance to gank ppl, but will suffer low survivability, in this case you are dependant on stealthing to get away.

I personally am dissappointed that Anet went with such a generic stealth-gank class. When I orginally saw the Thief trailers I thought they were gonna be awesome, I thought it would be better if their skills were more based on darting around and shadow stepping. But even with those few skills that do that they are mostly just another opportunist invisible ganking class.

Disagree with dungeons. With a bad player, Thieves are nothing but carry weight. With a good player, they have excellent DPS and rarely go down. The only difference between a Thief and other professions in dungeons is that Thieves have a higher skill minimum. Plus, Shadow Refuge is THE best support skill in the game, without exception.

Auesis.7301:

Disagree with dungeons. With a bad player, Thieves are nothing but carry weight. With a good player, they have excellent DPS and rarely go down. The only difference between a Thief and other professions in dungeons is that Thieves have a higher skill minimum. Plus, Shadow Refuge is THE best support skill in the game, without exception.

It’s not about good or bad Thieves in dungeons.

It’s about Thieves with enough money for at least 2 armor sets (one for dungeons, and one for everything else), and the ones without it. Combined with resetting traits every single time they want to do a dungeon (and again when they want to do anything else).

Therefor, Thieves are pretty bad in dungeons. They are the only class i can come up with that needs to do something completely different in dungeons, than in SPvP, WvW and open world PvE.
Just for this part of the game, they need different weapons, different skills, different stats from armor and different traits than they need for everything else (or they would be average in dungeons, but suck at everything else).

Thats not what makes me think of Thieves as a good dungeon profession.
And while i came up with great dungeon builds (which means average compared to other professions, using standart setups), I don’t want to rebuild my character everytime i enter and leave a dungeon.

@OP:

Thanks for trying stuff out for yourself, and your honest opinion after that.
You got a good grasp of what we Thieves struggle with (which is a lot), and at what we excel (which is very, very little), instead of flaming us with QQ after you got pwned by some random Thief in a SPvP pug match or a uncoordinated WvW run.

Nice post OP, I agree

Asum.4960:

Auesis.7301:

Disagree with dungeons. With a bad player, Thieves are nothing but carry weight. With a good player, they have excellent DPS and rarely go down. The only difference between a Thief and other professions in dungeons is that Thieves have a higher skill minimum. Plus, Shadow Refuge is THE best support skill in the game, without exception.

It’s not about good or bad Thieves in dungeons.

It’s about Thieves with enough money for at least 2 armor sets (one for dungeons, and one for everything else), and the ones without it. Combined with resetting traits every single time they want to do a dungeon (and again when they want to do anything else).

Therefor, Thieves are pretty bad in dungeons. They are the only class i can come up with that needs to do something completely different in dungeons, than in SPvP, WvW and open world PvE.
Just for this part of the game, they need different weapons, different skills, different stats from armor and different traits than they need for everything else (or they would be average in dungeons, but suck at everything else).

Thats not what makes me think of Thieves as a good dungeon profession.
And while i came up with great dungeon builds (which means average compared to other professions, using standart setups), I don’t want to rebuild my character everytime i enter and leave a dungeon.

I have a universal build and armorset that works in normal PvE, all dungeons and WvW, and I almost always stay on my feet for the longest while dishing out high DPS and keeping packs under blind control. I don’t know where you’re getting the constant respeccing malarky from. Regardless of that, having to respec doesn’t make a profession “bad”. The only thing we need more of in dungeons is more support options ie. increase venom share and boon share range and possibly increase stealth support options (more than just a 5 second regen). In any other area of dungeons, Thieves are fine.

Auesis.7301:

I have a universal build and armorset that works in normal PvE, all dungeons and WvW, and I almost always stay on my feet for the longest while dishing out high DPS and keeping packs under blind control. I don’t know where you’re getting the constant respeccing malarky from. Regardless of that, having to respec doesn’t make a profession “bad”.

While that is most certainly possible, whit such a universal Thief spec (might send me a link to it in a builder) you probably are way less effective in both things (dungeons and everything else) than you would be with a dungeon spec, or a everything else spec, more so than any other profession.

If you could respec on the fly for free, i would tend to agree with you more, but as it is now, it’s definately a handi cap if you have to respec for different activities, to be even close to the effectiveness of the average universal builds of other professions.

Asum.4960:

While that is most certainly possible, whit such a universal Thief spec (might send me a link to it in a builder) you probably are way less effective in both things (dungeons and everything else) than you would be with a dungeon spec, or a everything else spec, more so than any other profession.

And on what basis did you draw that conclusion? Dungeons are nothing but enclosed PvE environments with other players that you are forced to work with in order to complete them, hence control/support playing a slightly bigger role.

If you must know, I’m running 0/30/30/10/0 with a mix of Berserker/Valkyrie armor and a mix of Berserker/Knight/Cavalier accessories, sitting at around 3000 attack, 230% crit damage and 2.7k-ish armor, using S/D + SB. In-slot Shadow Arts and Critical Strikes traits and some utilities are the only things I feel the need to change depending on the situation.

Asum.4960:

If you could respec on the fly for free, i would tend to agree with you more, but as it is now, it’s definately a handi cap if you have to respec for different activities, to be even close to the effectiveness of the average universal builds of other professions.

Disagree here again – I pity a player that can’t afford to respec. It’s 3.5s a pop – you can make 3.5s in a matter of seconds if you wanted to.

OP, I totally agree with you about everything except your part about dungeons.

I’m full glasscannon. 20/30/0/20/0/ and I find myself resing my whole team far too often.

Quite a good summary. I also find thieves quite bad in dungeons and while it’s true that a good player will make it work, the same good player could probably perform even better on another class. As long as it’s not a GC BS build in a dungeon, it should be ok (too bad that’s what so many people insist on bringing though) as long as the person knows when to dodge.

Thieves should get a similar trait as guardian and elementalist (think mesmer has it to?!) wich grans vigor when doing a critical hit.. When I think about thief I think about and evasive character, and atm it aint since you dont have that many ways to gain vigor.

-Thieves have the minor trait Feline Grace which makes dodges only use 35% endurance (it still costs 50% but then 15% is returned).
-Thieves can trait to gain vigor on heal.
-Thieves can trait to gain vigor on steal.

Using a d/d condition thief I’m very seldom out of ways to avoid damage with lots of dodges, death blossom, roll for initiative and withdraw (which is both an evade and grants vigor)

Auesis.7301:

If you must know, I’m running 0/30/30/10/0 with a mix of Berserker/Valkyrie armor and a mix of Berserker/Knight/Cavalier accessories, sitting at around 3000 attack, 230% crit damage and 2.7k-ish armor, using S/D + SB. In-slot Shadow Arts and Critical Strikes traits and some utilities are the only things I feel the need to change depending on the situation.

I’m interested in knowing more about this build and how you get those stat numbers. 3k attack and 230% crit damage seems pretty high (I haven’t hit 80 on my Thief yet.) but I am always interested in knowing more about sword/dagger as a weapon combo since it seems to often be neglected.

Rainu.6871:

-Thieves have the minor trait Feline Grace which makes dodges only use 35% endurance (it still costs 50% but then 15% is returned).
-Thieves can trait to gain vigor on heal.
-Thieves can trait to gain vigor on steal.

Using a d/d condition thief I’m very seldom out of ways to avoid damage with lots of dodges, death blossom, roll for initiative and withdraw (which is both an evade and grants vigor)

And how do you do in WvW or sPvP? I run a similar build and it works well in dungeons, but fails in PvP.

I totally agree with the original post. Thief is already not that great, but those nerf requests are still coming. I am already considering leveling another profession.

brunohstein.9038:

Rainu.6871:

-Thieves have the minor trait Feline Grace which makes dodges only use 35% endurance (it still costs 50% but then 15% is returned).
-Thieves can trait to gain vigor on heal.
-Thieves can trait to gain vigor on steal.

Using a d/d condition thief I’m very seldom out of ways to avoid damage with lots of dodges, death blossom, roll for initiative and withdraw (which is both an evade and grants vigor)

And how do you do in WvW or sPvP? I run a similar build and it works well in dungeons, but fails in PvP.

I totally agree with the original post. Thief is already not that great, but those nerf requests are still coming. I am already considering leveling another profession.

I do quite well in WvW, running with a group (not a zerg) and using Short bow for sieges. Spvp is just a piece of cat babies so I don’t do it anymore and just hope that Anet will fix it before it’s completely dead.

Rainu.6871:

-Thieves have the minor trait Feline Grace which makes dodges only use 35% endurance (it still costs 50% but then 15% is returned).
-Thieves can trait to gain vigor on heal.
-Thieves can trait to gain vigor on steal.

Using a d/d condition thief I’m very seldom out of ways to avoid damage with lots of dodges, death blossom, roll for initiative and withdraw (which is both an evade and grants vigor)

Yeah you have those sources for vigor, but since Anet Said every Class should be able to take on any role its evasion that should make the thief be able to “tank” stuff for abit.. And that the guardian and ele has vigor on crit is weird if the thief does not.. Both of those have great healing and great survival, guardian from blocks and ele from heals..

No matter what is discussed ppl always see it differently.. I wanna see the thief as a evasive thank, therefor vigor is mandatory, but that might be because there is no class that really has what im looking for.. Wtb thief without stealth or ranger without the dumb pet hehe..)

Don’t forget the smoke fields (especially OH pistol 5) if you’re going for a more tanky build. I don’t deny that some other classes are better at tanking but I’d say thieves still have plenty of it through other means.

Edit: One more thing. I don’t think Anet meant for all classes to perform equally in all roles (or if they did they’ve failed spectacularly). Some classes can tank better, some can burst better, some can provide more support, etc. It doesn’t mean all classes can’t tank, burst, support, etc., to some degree but they seem to have various strengths and weaknesses.

Finally an accurate reflection of the thief. The reality is that if you die to a thief outside of 8v8, you are probably doing something wrong.

style.6173:

tPvP: The thief really isn’t that great except against pug teams. Any team that actually has bunker defenders will laugh as a thief tries to backstab them or kill in some other way. Especially with the mobility gains for the other classes, the thief isn’t that great. Verdict: Bottom half of classes.

Edit: Sorry, I meant to put quotes here.

Actually…I kind of laugh at bunkers. With S/D I can stand a chance against them 1v1. And, given enough time and depending on how good the bunker is, I eventually can solo kill. Thieves are not terrible for tPvP, you just need the right build.

skinnyb.5920:

senoph.2930:

Auesis.7301:

If you must know, I’m running 0/30/30/10/0 with a mix of Berserker/Valkyrie armor and a mix of Berserker/Knight/Cavalier accessories, sitting at around 3000 attack, 230% crit damage and 2.7k-ish armor, using S/D + SB. In-slot Shadow Arts and Critical Strikes traits and some utilities are the only things I feel the need to change depending on the situation.

I’m interested in knowing more about this build and how you get those stat numbers. 3k attack and 230% crit damage seems pretty high (I haven’t hit 80 on my Thief yet.) but I am always interested in knowing more about sword/dagger as a weapon combo since it seems to often be neglected.

They’re lying out their teeth. There’s no way they have those numbers with Valkyrie/Knight pieces. I’d like a screenshot.

My build is 20/30/0/20/0 and I have FULL berserker gear w/ ruby orbs on everything in every slot. That’s power/prec/crit dmg twice over and I still only have 2200 power, 2000 prec, 900 toughness, 13.7 HP, 55% crit rate, and 105 crit damage before foods and maintenance oils.

I honestly have no idea how u can have such a low power, i run full carrion condition build where power is secondary status with no deadly arts at all and even with that i have over 2.6 k power. And about crit dmg, he probablly made mistake typing

Asum.4960:

Auesis.7301:

Disagree with dungeons. With a bad player, Thieves are nothing but carry weight. With a good player, they have excellent DPS and rarely go down. The only difference between a Thief and other professions in dungeons is that Thieves have a higher skill minimum. Plus, Shadow Refuge is THE best support skill in the game, without exception.

It’s not about good or bad Thieves in dungeons.

It’s about Thieves with enough money for at least 2 armor sets (one for dungeons, and one for everything else), and the ones without it. Combined with resetting traits every single time they want to do a dungeon (and again when they want to do anything else).

Therefor, Thieves are pretty bad in dungeons. They are the only class i can come up with that needs to do something completely different in dungeons, than in SPvP, WvW and open world PvE.
Just for this part of the game, they need different weapons, different skills, different stats from armor and different traits than they need for everything else (or they would be average in dungeons, but suck at everything else).

Thats not what makes me think of Thieves as a good dungeon profession.
And while i came up with great dungeon builds (which means average compared to other professions, using standart setups), I don’t want to rebuild my character everytime i enter and leave a dungeon.

@OP:

Thanks for trying stuff out for yourself, and your honest opinion after that.
You got a good grasp of what we Thieves struggle with (which is a lot), and at what we excel (which is very, very little), instead of flaming us with QQ after you got pwned by some random Thief in a SPvP pug match or a uncoordinated WvW run.

Just run tank stats everywhere, you only need the one suit.

Run S/P in dungeons as main tank with perma-blind on bosses. Pretty much ez-mode…

And S/D in any pvp meta as control tank. Works great, but does have a high minimum skill threshold so expect to take a beating while you learn the complex build in PvP.

skinnyb.5920:

senoph.2930:

Auesis.7301:

If you must know, I’m running 0/30/30/10/0 with a mix of Berserker/Valkyrie armor and a mix of Berserker/Knight/Cavalier accessories, sitting at around 3000 attack, 230% crit damage and 2.7k-ish armor, using S/D + SB. In-slot Shadow Arts and Critical Strikes traits and some utilities are the only things I feel the need to change depending on the situation.

I’m interested in knowing more about this build and how you get those stat numbers. 3k attack and 230% crit damage seems pretty high (I haven’t hit 80 on my Thief yet.) but I am always interested in knowing more about sword/dagger as a weapon combo since it seems to often be neglected.

They’re lying out their teeth. There’s no way they have those numbers with Valkyrie/Knight pieces. I’d like a screenshot.

My build is 20/30/0/20/0 and I have FULL berserker gear w/ ruby orbs on everything in every slot. That’s power/prec/crit dmg twice over and I still only have 2200 power, 2000 prec, 900 toughness, 13.7 HP, 55% crit rate, and 105 crit damage before foods and maintenance oils.

I don’t appreciate you calling me a liar. When I say 230% crit damage, I refer to the base 150% + 80% from equipment + traits. So by the definition you work with, I have 80%, although 230% is the ACTUAL critical damage that you get. You’re looking at the 4 defined stats (Power, Precision etc.). I’m referring to the totals underneath that actually matter (Attack, Armor etc.).

I have the wrong accessory equipped here – 86% should be 80% and I should have more Toughness.

2200 power + 200 from traits + weapon damage is your attack. So about 3300~ so that’s about right with full berserker @ skinnyb

aww right power, attack…attack, power … I jumped the guy with 2200 power with no reason

You can’t handle the truth!

Oh and … you should check your pockets while you posting new “got killed by invisible nemesis” thread.

Just an update: I just played for about 5 hours in WvW on warrior. I didn’t die once to a thief. Mesmers and Eles are way stronger classes to fight against… at least for me.

Yea, but, you know, these are absolutely fine, we just suddenly had a huge income of highly skilled people that for some reason all chose to play shatter mesmers or d/d bunker eles.

Actually i’m so disappointed. I main thief and i’m 35rank. I play roamer with backstab build 25/30/0/0/15. I have played 3-4 tournaments today and faced a lot of bunkers at enemy team. It’s so sad because ANet said that thieves are the best profession to nuke 1 target quckly and at the moment i can’t kill anything except other thieves. Actually there’s no more glass cannons at tPvP except mesmers who can kill me after 1 stun breaker after my Basilisk Venom. It’s so sad that i think there’s no place for thief in tPvP and i feel so useless sometimes facing bunkers everywhere. Let’s roll fkin immortal ele who can deal with 3 players and still stand 3 minutes at one point. I don’t know if im lame after that 35ranks or thieves sucks at competetive pvp? I have no idea what to do. Or maybe it’s caused by capture point gameplay?

you just need to play smarter and not go gc 100%

Coming from a mesmer. I play mainly in WvW and will dodge and drop decoy as soon as a thief starts to open up on me. They are busy heartseeking or DBing my clones and I am still invisible. Then once i am sure they have burned through their ini I throw in illusionary leap (which is kinda buggy) blurred frenzy and MW and that usually gets them to almost jack health because you guys have 12,000 in WvW right? And then I can stun and interrupt them SEVERAL times which alot of other professions can do. So my only real issue is with culling and lag. Which I’m sure you all agree is not a class base but system based flaw. Thieves may be OP in some respects but then again so IS every other class… in some respects. Mesmers with shattering warriors with adrenaline guardian=block block block. Necros can drop more condi than anyone and have that annoying death shroud. Im sorry everyone is calling to nerf you guys. They are calling on it for mesmers too… It’s sad when people blame game design not their lack of adaptability.

The truth is thieves are op versus weak players who just started playing and complaining about them. Versus good players and versus actual meta-bunker-game they are unplayable imo.
Do i have to play smarter? What do you mean? People sometimes call me hs spam, backstab noob, so what am i supposed to do? ANet didn’t give me any other abilities to make a damage… Anyway i don’t think i spam HS im just using it while people have <50% hp. In teamfights there’s nothing to do expect spamming cluster bomb. It’s not me, it’s the way how they designed thieves.

How does one get to 10k Crit Damage? The highest I’ve ever had was 6.4k Crit. That’s BS + 20% Dmg from Executioner, 10%+ from hitting behind, +25% from vuln. And then full berserker exotic gear w/ rune of the rage. Even more so I see people constantly saying its 12k or 15k. Are you guys including Cloak and Dagger damage also? (It’s like 3k max, but mostly around 2k, but then that would make a little bit more sense)

Also, theives are only “OP” against untrained players that don’t know any better. As a warrior I kill thieves constantly because I know every single move they have. I haven’t tried any other classes (I am trying guardian then mesmer) but I feel that if people wise up, they’ll start killing us off like flies (considering we still want to go for maximum damage output on D/D).

Then again, once you know each classes weaknesses and strengths and you know what build they have you’re most likely to win in any situation.

So essentially the biggest whiners when it comes to thieves are noobs or people that want a cuddly class they can see coming? Well in general classes you see coming will light you up anyways. Take a D/D ele. And mesmers you can see coming but don’t always know which is which. But this can be figured out eventually. Being well rounded is way more viable than griping about the power of another class.

snatch.2584:

Actually i’m so disappointed. I main thief and i’m 35rank. I play roamer with backstab build 25/30/0/0/15. I have played 3-4 tournaments today and faced a lot of bunkers at enemy team. It’s so sad because ANet said that thieves are the best profession to nuke 1 target quckly and at the moment i can’t kill anything except other thieves. Actually there’s no more glass cannons at tPvP except mesmers who can kill me after 1 stun breaker after my Basilisk Venom.

Oh, it’s so sad that the problem of people getting oneshotted by nubs got so bad that every single one of them had to alter their build to counter you and now the fact that they’re building specifically to counter you is your chosen proof that your class is weak.

Others might expect that the class that everyone’s building to counter is quite powerful enough already, but apparently enough is never enough.

Building to counter?
Anyways thief is still useful lol, you just have to pick your targets wisely. If theres a bunch of bunkers you go “lol kitten it” and move on.
However that being said, going against Thief burst, is just protecting yourself from damage in general, from all professions. It’s not some Thief specific thing.

^Thank you. Every SINGLE class has a dmg mitigation ability and crowd control all of which are necessary for EVERY Build in the game in WvW pvp and pve… Class bashing is getting annoying. And I main a mes.

snatch.2584:

The truth is thieves are op versus weak players who just started playing and complaining about them. Versus good players and versus actual meta-bunker-game they are unplayable imo.
Do i have to play smarter? What do you mean? People sometimes call me hs spam, backstab noob, so what am i supposed to do? ANet didn’t give me any other abilities to make a damage… Anyway i don’t think i spam HS im just using it while people have <50% hp. In teamfights there’s nothing to do expect spamming cluster bomb. It’s not me, it’s the way how they designed thieves.

So, try something besides pure damage, there’s a whole big world of roles to fill out there.
Just to name 3 other than dps……

Support: With smart supportive use of your shadow refuge, blinding powder, and poison share; you can get some clutch revives, set up ambushes with your group, and provide some amazing venom benefits to your whole party.

Tank: with proper armor set/build thief can actually be surprisingly tanky! Great at distracting enemies while your buddies pick off the squishies.

Crowd Control: Try out sword main hand, sooo much crowd control. It’s really a ton of fun.

PPL that complain about thieves are just ppl who keep getting ganked.
Thieves that complain about thieves are just ppl who want thieves to be like rogues.
PPL that think of thieves as more than an opportunist ganking class (^) are good players.

Simple rule of GW2: good thieves don’t die.

Chain stealth + good DPS + solid defences and yes, you can get all that in one build. No other class besides possibly mesmer can achieve this, and they don’t even come close in mobility.

Backstab thieves get whined about the most, but they really are pretty one-dimensional. Chain stealth thieves with someone who isn’t brain dead at the keyboard are the real problem, and those need the everloving kitten nerfed out of them because no class should be as utterly without drawbacks as that.

snatch.2584:

The truth is thieves are op versus weak players who just started playing and complaining about them. Versus good players and versus actual meta-bunker-game they are unplayable imo.
.

This is quite true. As I’ve said before, thieves are the easiest class to kill. They are great at killing each other, but they are not as good as killing other classes against anyone with above average skills (on a consistent basis. Everyone can get lucky sometimes)

Thieves are crap at killing each other if they notice each other.
Thieves are vultures, fine a straggler or someone looking weak, and dive into them.
Other sets can have more staying power or deal less damage in a burst with some kind of utility(S/D, P/D, SB).

Honestly I’ve never had many problems in dungeons as a pure damage thief (Just need to learn timings). I do agree with a lot of your points about PvP, but I must say that Dagger Storm is incredibly good in WvW, if only because there’s a large population of players who are unwilling or unable to counter it.

+1 to you OP.
You display a deft understanding of GW2 game mechanics and despite all the cries of overpowered-ness, you still approached the Thief from a neutral standpoint and observed the classes Strengths and Weaknesses objectively.
For that I applaud you.