Guild Wars 2

I don’t really have the tools to do anything other than pick off stragglers, or assassinate people in open field zerg vs zerg fights.

I mean, sure, I can occasionally scorpion wire someone off a wall if I’m lucky and it’s not obstructed or just outright misses. But the 900 range limit, lack of decent AoE, and melee-heavy attacks of the thief really limit what I can do besides assault supply camps and kill yaks.

I just get really annoyed whenever I end up in front of a gate or on the walls defending. I feel like the Thief is really kind of useless in any sort of assault or defense situation. I guess I could run supply, but that is a pretty thankless task, and doesn’t generally net me any EXP or Karma. Granted, controlling camps and supply is an important part of WvW, but I don’t like feeling as thought I’m being pigeon-holed into that role.

Am I off base here?

(double posted in the WvW forums)

well first its best not to double post

I’m sure you will get flamed in the WvW forum due to the fact that people who main other classes will complain

“yes but you can backstab me for 8k, oh and you can pistol whip spam me for 14k”

sadly people cant focus on anything about this class apart from BS and PW.

Now to the important point, As you have noticed there is a popular post here about the theifs range, Sign it, agree with it and love it. We are the only class in the game without a 1200 auto attack which makes our WvW experience very different to most other peoples…

Although the small skirmishes can be fun on a theif, the general WvW experience is weaker due to us resorting to cluster bomb spam… doing very low damage per second due to it having the arc the size of Jupiter’s orbit.

the AoE from whirlwind steal (warrior) and combined with dagger storm is good at clearing packs but that does mean you have to survive and that is another boring way to play.

necro has a longer range scorpion wire too. The problem is ANet wanted every class to be able to fill every roll, IE Melee dps, Range dps, Damage Mitigation, Melee aoe, Ranged AoE, Support etc, and the theif lacks in the range dps roll hugely. The only way to do good ranged dps is to unload spam or to condition spec using the pistol stealth spam.

just my two cents

EDIT: I’m not saying any other class fills all roles well either apart from the warrior, but we are focusing on purely thief here

I wanted the opinions of both the thief forum(where people were more likely to understand the specifics), and the WvW forum where a broader base of WvW experience could chime in. I expected a bit of hazing from the WvW forums, tbh, but it was worth a shot on the chance someone had good advice.

Agreed.

I run D/D and SB in WvW. I only use D/D when I’m fighting small skirmishes, but as far as large groups and zerging goes, I use my bow. However, when using my bow, I feel more like I’m complimenting the damage other classes do, and feel more like I’m in a supporting role. I could go with a condition build, and just spam Death Blossom to rack up some major damage, but it takes 10 seconds for the full damage to be dealt, and usually the conditions I throw down get cleansed in about 3 seconds, so even with the damage potential it has, it’s not viable as an aoe damage skill.

Shortbow’s best damage skill would be cluster bomb, but like the above poster said, it has a large travel range before it connects, and usually by the time it’s halfway through the air, enemies have already seen it, can determine where it’ll land, and easily dodge the projectile.

However, I feel with the way thieves are set up, this isn’t too bad. Our class is built more for 1v1, and I think that it’s a decent tradeoff to have less damage output when fighting large groups of enemies at a time. And to top it off, we’re the best class when it comes to chasing, and escaping. So what we lack in group damage, we more than make up for with mobility and 1v1 damage potential.

However, I feel with the way thieves are set up, this isn’t too bad. Our class is built more for 1v1, and I think that it’s a decent tradeoff to have less damage output when fighting large groups of enemies at a time. And to top it off, we’re the best class when it comes to chasing, and escaping. So what we lack in group damage, we more than make up for with mobility and 1v1 damage potential.

As I posted in the WvW forums, that just means Thieves are strongest in the areas of WvW that matter the least. Scouting or ganking small scale groups is fun, but doesn’t get your server any points. Capping supply camps is important, but again is the least beneficial, and has the most short term effect on scoring since they trade hands so often.

The more significant battles in WvW(taking towers, keeps, and orbs) leave thieves at a disadvantage. At best you’re spamming Cluster Bomb over and over, and hoping that people don’t just get out of the way. At worst you’re moving into dangerous proximity of the enemy zerg or walls.

This is the nature of my issue with the class.

I disagree.

Keeps and towers need supply to operate—and you need supply to siege them. Camps may not be huge on a raw points level, but having no camps will hurt you severely.

Thieves are great on keep walls, FWIW; Cluster Bomb is very strong. You also have AoE stealth tools that you can use to save/revive allies. You’re also strong in small groups against enemy siege groups since you bring group buffs & burst

I see Thieves as great scouts & skirmishers; we can cover ground fast and cap supply camps quickly.

There are other classes who complain about the opposite.

Disagree as well.

Shortbow is fine if you want AoE defense. In keep defense I have the 50% fall/stealth and I use it to jump off the wall with haste and finish off downed people then shortbow#5 to the door. Use refuge to rez people in combat. All sorts of crap besides dps to do.

We don’t have good AoE? Find a group of enemies, pick out any warrior. Steal ^ Dagger Storm ^ Whirlwind = best aoe in game?

Stiv and Elithrar do bring up some good points.

But I don’t see how people can defend using Cluster Bomb so much when other builds that rely on using the same attack over and over, such as Heartseeker or Deathblossom, are almost universally hated. That’s kind of what goes into my feelings on WvW. Why is CB the only really good attack for sieges? Shouldn’t we have more options, even if it’s only an auto-attack?

Keeps and towers need supply to operate—and you need supply to siege them. Camps may not be huge on a raw points level, but having no camps will hurt you severely.

And as I said, thieves are just fine at taking camps. But so is any class. It’s when a thief decides he wants to help directly with a siege that there’s problems.

We don’t have good AoE? Find a group of enemies, pick out any warrior. Steal ^ Dagger Storm ^ Whirlwind = best aoe in game?

And how well does that tactic work against people on top of a wall? Not very well, I imagine. Ah well, back to CB spam! Wheee……

The Whirl wind and dagger storm is generally only good against retreating or bottlenecked enemies…. and still often ends in a repair bill….

I spend much of my instance time stealth rezzing, I dont expect to have to do it all the time in WvW too….. Something just feels a little bit dull with the theif WvW experience unless you get a small group

and as has been mentioned, everyone can cap supply depots, thief is no better at it than anyone else.

Is zerg distraction an ability? I’m not a glass cannon spec and unless I do something stupid (which I do all the time because it’s fun) I can consistently get away from 10+ enemies chasing me around the map. It’s really fun for me especially when all but 1 give up and you get to turn around and kill them and they wonder where all their friends went.

I’m sure you will get flamed in the WvW forum due to the fact that people who main other classes will complain

I’ll be perfectly honest here: my main is a lvl 80 ranger, but I tried WvW with my lvl 30 alt thief. Gotta say I completely agree with the original poster. Yeah, thief is great for small skirmishes and raiding camps/checkpoints. But for laying a siege against a tower, a keep, or (god forbid) a castle… you might as well try slapping the gates with a wet fish for all the good your range will do you. I’m used to the longbow (great situational weapon for sieges) with the 1200 range auto-attack. Don’t get me wrong, I love my thief but not for WvW – think I’ll stick to PvE and structured PvP when it comes to my thief, and use my ranger for WvW.

The main problem with thieves, IMO, is that they just don’t have enough versatility and are way too one-trick-pony. They don’t have many weapons available to them, and the ones they do have don’t operate generally enough and are way too built around specific niches. Moreover, they really don’t have a particularly strong selection of utility skills like thieves should. It is my opinion that thieves are the least well designed class in the game currently, and need some pretty serious revamps.

Want my opinion? Thieves should have more utility skills than other classes. Steal should be a utility skill rather than an F skill, and they should have F1-F3 that operate as extra utility slots. It would require some rebalancing, but that’s really how they should have been set up.

Einlanzer.1627:

The main problem with thieves, IMO, is that they just don’t have enough versatility and are way too one-trick-pony. They don’t have many weapons available to them, and the ones they do have don’t operate generally enough and are way too built around specific niches. Moreover, they really don’t have a particularly strong selection of utility skills like thieves should. It is my opinion that thieves are the least well designed class in the game currently, and need some pretty serious revamps.

Try playing an elementalist and then you will see that the Thief is one of the best classes atm.
Nearly every Utility Skill of the Thief has is uses and isn’t simply UP or just dump.
He can be a Support, Damage Dealer, Roamer, etc. and be very good at it.

If you heavily spec into Damage, you’re doing big damage. At the same time you can have 2 slot skills avaible for being supportive. Try the same thing with an ele and you will notice that eles are way more squishy, aren’t doing nearly the same damage and have to spec into dealing damage with every skill, trait point and attribute to be effective (=no room for support skills) and press like 20 buttons in 20 sec. And then there are thiefs and warriors dealing way more damage by only pressing 2 skills, whereas they have more survivability.

Don’t complain about your first world thief problems when there are classes having so many bugs and balancing issues…

You do know you can detonate the cluster bomb while it’s still in the air? And that doing so causes more damage and effects a much wider area than if you let it hit the ground?

(copied from WvW forum thread, not sure if this was posted both places – thought I was replying to Thief forum one)

WvW as a Thief makes my kitten hard.
1st of all, dagger storm is ungodly OP in WvW until anet fixes the culling issue – jump off the wall for auto smoke bomb passive (or HiS / whatever) and pop dagger storm; 90% of the time you won’t even render before finishing your 10k damage PBAoE. There are very few skills in the game that hit more than 5 targets, and Dagger Storm just kinda owns everything in range. A coordinated bum rush that includes a few storming thieves is absolutely devastating.
Thief wall poke is mediocre, but this is an extremely overrated aspect of what you’re doing overall in WvW. Cluster bomb with squishy gear hits hard (easily 5k+) at 1200-1500 range. Poison AoE from shortbow is also decent for wall denial. Scorpion wire is pretty good, too.

Now, what thieves truly shine at:
1- Scouting. Thieves are slippery and fast, perfect for watching flanks/checking marked towers/scouting supply camp raids before they arrive. Having eyes everywhere on the map is crucial.
2- being uncatchable. People say ele/warr can catch up to a thief? They can’t, unless you get caught really badly due to poor play. Worst case, you use stealth to juke them. If any class is going to lead 5 enemy invaders on a merry chase across the map and into 50 friends, its a thief.
3 – Killing people. Pretty obvious. 1v3+ is possible with cooldowns (if low levels are mixed in).
4 – Soloing stuff. Thieves can easily take out supply camps, cannons, and dolyaks ANYWHERE on the map safely and easily if nobody responds. If people do? Just run, they can’t chase you down before combat resets and you waypoint to spawn (or just keep running.)
5 – scorpion wire and chain CC like devourer venom and stealth shortbow auto combined with extreme map traversal speed make thieves ungodly good at catching people and pinning them down until backup arrives.
6 – fast movement speed for supply running to build siege/repair gates.

tl;dr A lot of Thief strengths aren’t as obvious if you just follow the zerg around defending/assaulting head on. Their real strength is in surprise attacks, skirmishes, raiding, and scouting.

I don’t like WvW at all so I rarely play it, only for monthly achievement. From my limited time in WvW I can say that shortbow is nice for zerg fights

Certain classes do certain things better.

Eles are gods of defending on walls, but, arguably, suck at smaller skirmishes on even grounds.
Guardians are fantastic in even-ground fights but suck at taking down walls.
Thieves are good at picking people off and small fights but is lacking in larger fights.
Etc etc.

Anet marketed the game as taking out the holy trinity, but didn’t introduce all too many new professions that could make that notion completely true.

Warriors are medium-high damage, medium mobility, semi-tanks.
Guardians are low mobility support tanks.
Rangers are medium-high mobility, single-target ranged high damage dealers.
Thieves are high mobility, high damage assassins.
Elementalists are medium-low mobility AoE damage casters.
Necros are DoT and CC-based casters/summoners.

You see all those classes in pretty much every single MMORPG. The only two classes that are different are Engineers and Mesmers, and the only class taken out of the equation is the straight healer/buffer, with it’s role distributed thinly throughout the other classes.

Of the six classes left, they are bottlenecked in their effectiveness. Yeah, you can gear a thief to be tankier, but will they ever tank as well as a Guardian can? No.
Will a Warrior ever deal more single-target ranged damage than a ranger? No.
Can a ranger deal more AoE damage than an Elementalist? No.
Even the names for the classes define their roles. Do you ever see “Ranger” and think “he’s going to be great at melee range”?

That is just how MMO class systems work. Unless they were to subtract many class-defining factors, like weapon limitations and range limitations, all classes cannot ever do everything with the same effectiveness.
Every class has their limitations.

Try Condition Thief, you will love it, we melt people.

Pretty much ^
Run Venomous Aura and use Devourer venom and Basilisk venom. Use it while running along side a zerg and laugh as you enemies get aoe immobilize and stone.

I’m a great killer.
I’m a great rezzer.
I’m a great scout.

My ranged set is Pistol/Pistol. Melee is Dagger/Dagger.

If I am defending a keep I build siege and use that instead of a SB. Just makes more sense.

I can see how people could have problems if they are trying to kill with aoe, but if you run with 2 or 3 other people and assist, you kill just as much just as fast.

I think you’re just doing it wrong..
Just read the suggestions given here, they know what they do..
Of course there’s alot of different playstyles..
Thief is my main, the more I play it the more I understand my own build to match my playstyle
Play with the skills, traits, etc.
I have some armors and skill sets to use in PvE, PvP, WvW, and dungeon runs..

> and as has been mentioned, everyone can cap supply depots, thief is no better at it than anyone else.

What makes a Thief “better” is their speed. You can cross the map faster, and with only one other person, cap a supply camp quickly.

I think the problem is that some just don’t like the playstyle of the Thief in WvW. We have a (useful) niche. Same goes for sPvP (roamer); not everyone likes it. Which is fine, as there are 7 other classes to play.

Dronin.3957:

We are the only class in the game without a 1200 auto attack which makes our WvW experience very different to most other peoples…

Im all for this, as long as its a trait you need to take to bump the range. IE: like the engineer trait.

not sure why i can’t quote, but i can’t.

@elithrar you do not need a 2nd player if you’re an 80 thief. Caltrops + Signet of Malice + Dagger Storm + some sort of aoe (Pistol Whip, cond. Death Blossom, det’d Cluster Bomb) lets you quickly and easily solo supply camps in either glass cannon or tankier gear.

@wanting 1200 range for thief, just no. Unnecessary power creep.
edit: IMO venoms kinda preclude having 1200 range. +300 range on Basilisk/Devourer/Ice Drake would be huge. The only way to fix that would be doing something really funky with venoms + 1200 range weapon, which just won’t happen.

It frustrates me the amount of people who get so upset with the 1200 range.

I find myself consistantly reminding people that it is ANets vison for this game that
EVERY CLASS CAN PERFROM EVERY ROLE.

Ie if your a theif and you want to Ranged dps in WvW then you should have that functionality and do a similar amount of damage to everyone else

just the same as if your a necro and you want to do a significant amount of direct damage or melee damage your should have that facility!

All the classes are meant to be flavors, they are not supposed to force you into certain roles. This was GW2’s big selling point, and it has yet to be realised.

You bring a different flavor of ranged DPS as a Thief. 1200 range is not the be-all, end-all of ranged play.

@yertle — agree that we can solo, but “quickly” was my operating word. One enemy player can force you to reset the fight, so often much better with two if you have the option.

you bring lack luster ranged dps is what you do,

Interesting fact, did you know that the rangers short bow hitting from behind can out dps the thiefs shortbow hitting 3 targets?

As I`m here reading about thieves…I came up with something good for WvW …Here`s a good idea to keep you busy in WvW with a thief…you say that you cant contribute…I say nay ! Get a grp of 4-5 to camp out from their waypoint and gank them as they come out 1-2 at a time heading to the battle to reinforce….trust me it`ll help and will be apreciated that you`re stoping a few from coming back in…now isnt that a bit more fun ? Now that I think of it get 3 groups of 4 ….and take em out before they get in big numbers ….I think it`ll work miracles

I don’t think shortbow needs a buff, it’s already very solid.
Maybe they could give us access to rifles?
(Not that I’d use one, but at least people will stop complaining about the “range issue”)

anyone else notice the issue with orbs in the sense they only benefit tanking and front loaded damage stats?

Orb buffs do not increase condition damage, obviously this has to be an oversight on A-nets part.

(copied from WvW forum thread, not sure if this was posted both places – thought I was replying to Thief forum one)
WvW as a Thief makes my kitten hard.
1st of all, dagger storm is ungodly OP in WvW until anet fixes the culling issue – jump off the wall for auto smoke bomb passive (or HiS / whatever) and pop dagger storm; 90% of the time you won’t even render before finishing your 10k damage PBAoE. There are very few skills in the game that hit more than 5 targets, and Dagger Storm just kinda owns everything in range. A coordinated bum rush that includes a few storming thieves is absolutely devastating.
Thief wall poke is mediocre, but this is an extremely overrated aspect of what you’re doing overall in WvW. Cluster bomb with squishy gear hits hard (easily 5k+) at 1200-1500 range. Poison AoE from shortbow is also decent for wall denial. Scorpion wire is pretty good, too.
Now, what thieves truly shine at:
1- Scouting. Thieves are slippery and fast, perfect for watching flanks/checking marked towers/scouting supply camp raids before they arrive. Having eyes everywhere on the map is crucial.
2- being uncatchable. People say ele/warr can catch up to a thief? They can’t, unless you get caught really badly due to poor play. Worst case, you use stealth to juke them. If any class is going to lead 5 enemy invaders on a merry chase across the map and into 50 friends, its a thief.
3 – Killing people. Pretty obvious. 1v3+ is possible with cooldowns (if low levels are mixed in).
4 – Soloing stuff. Thieves can easily take out supply camps, cannons, and dolyaks ANYWHERE on the map safely and easily if nobody responds. If people do? Just run, they can’t chase you down before combat resets and you waypoint to spawn (or just keep running.)
5 – scorpion wire and chain CC like devourer venom and stealth shortbow auto combined with extreme map traversal speed make thieves ungodly good at catching people and pinning them down until backup arrives.
6 – fast movement speed for supply running to build siege/repair gates.
tl;dr A lot of Thief strengths aren’t as obvious if you just follow the zerg around defending/assaulting head on. Their real strength is in surprise attacks, skirmishes, raiding, and scouting.

Pretty much this.. here was my night last night and this morning..

1. Primary scout for the eastern half of the map while we tried to retake one of the borderlands and responsible for upgrading camps and towers
2. Responsible for key tower defense and early warning letting our zerg respond in enough time to counter enemy zerg
3. Shadow refuge in a camp is very important to not allowing them to cap and give your boys time to bring the noise
4. Coordinated with a small strike team to perform supply camp harassment to starve enemy supply while we trebbed down a wall to take a keep
5. Paired up with another thief during a Stonemist defense to play “Spin to Win” with coordinated Daggerstorms and Whirlwinds (we both made it a point to steal from warriors). During this we wiped 2 attempts on the inner gate.. and totally wiped them in the Lord’s room while the Lord was down.
6. Ganked two dudes trying to harass our supply caravans
7. Clusterbombed span our stacked zerg in front of a gate to provide AOE healing with ranger healing spring
8. Tracked enemy zerg to provide commander up to the minute information regarding location.. picked off people falling behind
9. Stealth stomped behind enemy lines to prevent enemies from continuing to fight
10. Regularly flanked the rear of the enemy zerg, picking people off, and causing havoc with some “Spin to Win” fun
11. Camped near enemy spawn to give updates when key big guild zerg entered the borderlands to give our forces enough time to respond (while we built waypoints across the maps)

And that was last night and this morning…

Yeah I enjoy my thief and the value I bring to WvW 20X more than my ranger.. Only thing that annoys me is not being able to speed buff the Yaks..

Now to the important point, As you have noticed there is a popular post here about the theifs range, Sign it, agree with it and love it. We are the only class in the game without a 1200 auto attack which makes our WvW experience very different to most other peoples…

Us and Guardians, you mean. Scepter is 900 range, and so slow-moving and non-tracking that just side-stepping often means it misses.