Guild Wars 2

I’ve played a thief in GW2 since a week after the game came out. There are several instances where the thief seems not to have been play-tested, at all. Often it is the combination of AEO attacks, the thief’s medium armor, and short range armament, spell disaster for the thief.

The worst is the Golem Mark II event, where the sweeping ground attacks will kill a medium armored character, yet even the thief’s short-bow cannot reach from a safe place. I won’t even play this event, because it’s not fair for the people who might save me. Where is the fun in that?

There are others in the fractals. Once again, it is usually the ground AEO attacks the will kill a thief.

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I suspect that seasoned first person shooter players, like myself are drawn to the thief character, and play with more mousing/keyboard skills, because we are used to having to circle straif and aim—only to drive up the average damage by class, promoting you lower that damage, and thereby making the thief harder for beginners to play.

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I wish that I could use daggers/swords more, but they are no match for a thief’s pistols with bouncing bullets, which attack on a wavefront. I wish the dancing-daggers damage was increased enough, the character can have better AOE capability. In one-on-one fights with PvE, the daggars work well, but in an event, the shortbow and pistols hit more enemies harder, and safer, which is a shame because the thief’s dagger-animations are great.

I wish I could do with dual-daggers what the short-could do in an event, but functionally, they can’t.

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I wish that the thief and perhaps other characters can use more than 2 weapons, but we can only swap 2 in battle; I wish we had three.

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This is minor, but I don’t like any of the legendary weapons. An assassin-like character, with a pop-gun? To my sensibilities, the only thief-like legendary weapon, is the Incinerator, but because dagger-fighting doesn’t make a lot of sense for the character, I’ve pretty much lost interest in obtaining a legendary.

Hate to say it this way, but you simply need to get better. No melee build on the thief is meant to sit in the fray, either. It’s very much about getting in and out of the fight to recover from potential losses.

D/D is the best PvE set in the game in many cases, and skilled thieves will not have problems with the evasion frames in any content. It’s not bad design but in the case of crowded events, other people’s particles and bodies getting in the way and obstructig your vision.

As far as smaller encounters go, it sounds to me like you’re trying to stay back and not react to incoming damage at all but instead wish to simply not die when being hit. You’re going to have to time your evades properly to prevent any incoming damage, or you’ll need to re-gear into PTV with shadow arts as a form of training wheels so that you don’t die instantly when you do so that you at least can learn to time your evades better to get you on track to avoid all of it or avoid the necessary spikes. PvE is quite predictable and is one of the easiest aspects of playing the thief at 80, especially D/D.

If you’re front-lining WBT or a blob on a single mob, you’re probably playing the wrong class, as the thief just isn’t designed to do this kind of mindless play pattern or bring the negation/forgiveness to the table to be able to maintain monster aggro/AOE attacks without other people’s sprites/particles/bodies obstructing view to prevent necessary and in the case of soloing, very easy dodges.

Deceiver, you are wrong.

I often do entire events by myself, rarely have trouble taking veterans by myself. An hour ago, I was fighting a champion event by myself, and had warn through 1/3 of him before others came.

I’ve found the thief effective with pistols “front-lining.” With bouncing bullets, it might be the only profession that often kills sideways instead of deep.

When they first added the AOE rings in Orr enemies, the ones with they were likely to control medium armored-melee weaponed professions, as heavy armored characters could stand in it, but medium armored characters could not.

Please do the golumn event, and report back how it went for you ; )

When I did the golem event, I would use S/P and melee him. I often had enough dodges to keep myself out of the electricity and if I got hit anyways I would spam Pistolwhip in his multihit areas to regain the HP using Signet of Malice.

When there are water or fire fields down I spam a few clusterbombs to help others. Same thing with any other circumstance.

Visually, the Golumn event looks good, but it’s not at all fun for me.

Is it a fun event for you?

We’re getting rifles.

BrendaEM.2096:

Visually, the Golumn event looks good, but it’s not at all fun for me.

Is it a fun event for you?

Generally yeah. And I always feel better about myself simply because I am dealing more damage up close on a squishy profession while every Knight armored yahoo in existance plinks it from the boxes.

BrendaEM.2096:

I’ve played a thief in GW2 since a week after the game came out. There are several instances where the thief seems not to have been play-tested, at all. Often it is the combination of AEO attacks, the thief’s medium armor, and short range armament, spell disaster for the thief.

Thieves perform far better in melee range, they have more tools to survive, and their ranged weapons are severely lacking in damage.

The worst is the Golem Mark II event, where the sweeping ground attacks will kill a medium armored character, yet even the thief’s short-bow cannot reach from a safe place. I won’t even play this event, because it’s not fair for the people who might save me. Where is the fun in that?

You can melee the golem just fine, the only attack that can kill anyone in that event is the electricity field. One use of Withdraw if it pops on you and you are out of range of it. Reposition, and attack again. It’s not hard to melee the golem

There are others in the fractals. Once again, it is usually the ground AEO attacks the will kill a thief.

Like what? I usually use D/D and S/P in Fractals and don’t range often, other than the Dredge powersuit / ice elemental which need to be kited anyway.

I wish that I could use daggers/swords more, but they are no match for a thief’s pistols with bouncing bullets, which attack on a wavefront. I wish the dancing-daggers damage was increased enough, the character can have better AOE capability. In one-on-one fights with PvE, the daggars work well, but in an event, the shortbow and pistols hit more enemies harder, and safer, which is a shame because the thief’s dagger-animations are great.

Actually both pistols and shortbow do very low damage compared to dagger/sword.

I wish I could do with dual-daggers what the short-could do in an event, but functionally, they can’t.

You are talking about pve events that spawn lots of mobs and they die so fast by AoE that you can’t get a hit? If that’s the case then that’s the major problem with all melee weapons. Always have a shortbow for afk-tagging. But otherwise why bother with ranged attacks at all?

all your issues will be solved if you go 64022

I do agree that thieves deserve an overall buff, as in a little more tankness and overall (mainly ranged) damage without buffing burst, but from your arguments, seems like you’re just bad at thief. I’m sorry.

I do remember when thieves could run a bit faster, and also before a time when low Orians did the AOE ring around themselves, which both changed how I play.

Trancid, I am sorry that you would judge my skill soley by the shape of my gripes.

One of the pleasures of being a thief, is to sweep in do a lot of damage, and revive others, so naturally, I would dislike a situation whereas I would become a liability needing to be revived. That’s not to say that I don’t fight until I am backfighting.

The thief can stealth and res, stealth from resing, as well as protect buff and res.

My build is optimized with pistol mastery, sidestrike, and riccochet which admittedly don’t hit as hard as the daggers, but with duel pistols, 2 unloads can do a lot of damage to the front of crowd, letting me think in broad brush strokes, as well as taking down bosses, by circle-straifing around their backs.

Two unloads do 16 shots each with a 50% chance of ricochet. Each of ~8 ricochets have a 50% chance of ricocheting themselves, so I think it will likely hit: one for 16, two for 8, 4 for 4, and 2 for 2. The cool thing about this: it’s not a central attack. Bear in mind that this is a suicide attack for some Karka that seem to have reflect, but I hadn’t bothered to study which skill does, cause, as pretty as the island is, I’ve never liked it there, and I am out of there after the Karka Queen has done her thing.

Dancing daggers can only hit 3, which means that if I use them in an event, I am not likely to make a lot of drops. What the thief needed was a better AEO attack, such as the daggars.

The shortbow and pistols are pretty short ranged. A Ranger can knock an enemy right out of my range, but everyone knows that.

So, what I’ve asked for was thief consideration for a few events, appropriate legendary, a little better dagger action, or perhaps a little better range; what thief would not want those things?