Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone,

My main is currently elementalist, however the idea of of playing a thief as a main has been crossing my mind lately.

My issue with that is I like to play all aspects of the game (sPvP, WvW, PvE, etc.) but WvW has always been played more than the other modes. I would like my thief to main staff but I’m curious if there is any other way a thief is useful within a zerg v zerg fight other than stealth. Elementalist “auramancer” is a nice support which is what I like, but outside of sPvP it’s a little too easy to maintain interest. A support thief isn’t what I’m looking for like an auramancer, but is there some way I can still be useful within zergs outside of stealth and raw dps.

I was looking on metabattle as well but I only see roaming builds.

Zergs are cancer to Thief.. they don’t have the passives or sustain to deal with all of the random Cc/Aoe running around. Normally you run the roaming build as pick off stragglers on the fringe of Zergs

main reason you will not find a thief in zerging is because almost all there core def mech are hard counter to wards.

basically if you want to zerg with a thief you only do it up to about 25v25 anything past that thief just cant make impactful move until the fight is completely one sided.

So their usefulness really comes from picking off the backline?

Lotus Bane.9387:

So their usefulness really comes from picking off the backline?

That or Ninja Nursing which took a huge hit when HoT Dropped

Does the Trickery trait line help the group at all?

best way to play thief in zerging if you really want to try be a team support is use choking gas to control position placement of other team zerg. means you should most likly go with a venom share build.

Lotus Bane.9387:

Does the Trickery trait line help the group at all?

primarily if you’re going for boon sharing (thrill of the crime and bountiful theft)but it aint much compaired to rev. other than that, uncatchable is good for hindering a handful of enemy mobility in combat

Lotus Bane.9387:

Does the Trickery trait line help the group at all?

Not really, no.

The boons you can provide will be corrupted quickly, anyways, and at best you’re looking to 50% uptime.

The thief does not contribute to support conducive to optimizing group performance in any way whatsoever. Since WvW zerging is all about maximizing support and stacking defenses, the profession as a whole contributes next to nothing in large, organized group play since it’s also inherently squishy and poor at taking hits.

You either need to play tremendously well on a burst build and hit their backline at just the right time to prevent taking tons of hate by other backliners who haven’t casted their abilities yet while also avoiding getting stomped by the frontline in the attempt to move in, or play some kind of ninja-nurse medic in an organized mid-scale group of ~15. Massive ZvZ there’s very little place. Forget about the rare possibility of sniping commanders and high-priority targets – those days went away with HoT buffing defenses so much and repeated subsequent nerfs to the thief’s capacity to burst well and get away since then, direct or indirect.

Thief has some of the best stomp finishing available. I’ll provide an example. I was in an SM fight recently, all three teams, with an opponent holding the castle. The enemy zerg came into lord with large numbers, but positioning not being perfect a number went down. I use SA with stealth on steal on a 20 second cooldown. The instant those players went down I was there stomping them. This helped a lot to whittle down their numbers consistently.

Thief can venom share basi-venom which helps get people down. Zergs often move around so getting people immobilized in some fashion will help yours win the fight. Another option is using a main hand pistol to Body Shot people and prevent them from keeping up with the group.

Thief can also use mobility to get past the enemy zerg and finish off or down an enemy that was using the zerg for cover while recovering their HP. Someone who retreats with all cooldowns running and 30% HP is a solid target even if they are 2400 distance away from you.

Thief with SA can stealth res very effectively in large fights in enclosed spaces where preventing downs from dying can turn the tide of the battle.

Naturally at a certain scale the guardian reflect walls and group stability will be “better” for large groups. But that doesn’t mean thief can’t perform unique roles within the zerg environment. You aren’t going to fill the guardian’s role, or the ele’s/necro. You shouldn’t measure your success by how well you copy other classes.

A revenant provides just as much diving potential and isolated target killing but with much better group utility, and sticking around to spike players using Impact Strike every 30-40s does not warrant their use in blobs. Lava font power ele is just as good for securing kills while having the benefit of providing a ton of AoE/backline hate damage and zoning, plus boons and heals.

When it comes to finishing downed players in mass-scale, my meatgrinder power reaper does a MUCH better job than any thief I know (including my own), and can steal over 50 boons on engage + bomb for 20-30k AoE unblockable damage, with next to identical mobility to the thief once the zergs collide and people start dying since every kill assist via cleave resets Death’s Charge.

If you go thief for group play, you are basically taking the role of sand in an otherwise well oiled machine.

Most of your kits aside from Venomshare are inherently selfish and don’t benefit a group in a significant enough way except for providing stealth, and in a zerg that’s hardly going to be useful for anybody but other thieves, except for stealth revives.

That doesn’t mean that thief ain’t fun though. When you do pull off those amazing moves it’s super satisfying.

Just lonewolf it. Roam, have some fun.

If you’re only interested in zerging then there are better classes to play tbh. The most you can do for group support is venomshare and maybe SA for stealth resses/stomps and such. I don’t really play anymore but I assume Thief is probably still a top tier roamer, but if you’re dead set on zerging they’re really good at picking people off from the backline and such.

In a zerg you thieves are basically useless. Sure, with a small group you can pick off the weaker link, though honestly as someone who mainly plays thief in WvW, we’re by far the least effective class in zergs. We do better roaming, though since they’ve merged servers it’s all zerg all the time.

You can build to ride the zerg and contribute just fine, you’re even likely to be the only one to get away alive if the fight goes bad, but for flat utility for your squad you’re not really adding anything. You’re better floating in, out, and around the action alone or with a couple of others thieves, you’re performances daily progression is how you contribute. Sometimes you’re in and out Stealing crowd control and area damage to herd or spread a squad and sometimes you’re ganking daily farmers on their way to SM.

Your weapon in zerg/blob fights would be SB.
What it brings: Blasts, poison fields – both spammable. Blasts are great if you know the water-ele and/or commander and you know when there will be fields. Poison is nice: 33 less heal, interrupting the downed, visible aoe field to pressure the enemy zerg, warrior banner doesn’t work in poison.

To pull that off you have to know your thief inside and out – you have to react before anything happens and that is the hard part. I’m currently failing with this, no idea why, maybe it really is the blobs. I can pull thief off easily for zergs/blobs up to 50, over that it becomes really painful. But maybe that’s true for everybody.

I can only play thief as that’s the only class I like but I can hop on any other class and am probably twice as effective than any random on it, because I have to be that observant as a thief that everything else is a breeze. And yes, I’m also more effective on any other class, I know that.

The thief class is by far the worst class to bring to a zerg. The class really doesn’t offer much to a team. About the only thing it does well in a zerg is finishers but that is hardly worth rolling a thief for.

In skirmish play the thief is really only a strong option around other thieves and mesmers. Other classes have good group stealth and more team synergy.

In duels with good players, most thieves get a beat down. They have no “moves” experienced players have’t seen hundreds of times before and know the counter to all of them. Most of the time a good thief is just a flat out better player that would be more lethal in another class.

The class is a solid roamer and scout. It is also a lot of fun if you like fast paced no mistakes style play. Thieves are cannibals and we are our own most dangerous enemy so prepare to die a lot if you go this route.

In sPvP, it is a relatively poor performer that generally is taken for its decaps and +1 ability. HoT brought other classes that do both nearly as well and with far more team boosts.

PvE, well anything works there except in raids which also isn’t a particularly good place for thieves.

Venom shares (better in smaller zergs) and choking gass.
poison reduces heals on a large froup of peeps and it also puts a large red circle that people run away from. Or better yet dodge trough