Guild Wars 2

Maugetarr.6823:

Oddly enough flanking strike is the most dependable weapon dodge for me.
Disabling Shot->often needs a short windup making it unreliable for dodginging
Infiltrators Arrow-> Alright for running, not for staying power, expensive
IS->does nothing to mitigate damage
Shadow return->Alright against melee for half a second, not so much against range, unreliable stunbreak vs. knockback/knockdown/blowout
Heartseeker->range dependent on conditions, no dodge attatched (don’t understand how this is adding to my survivability)
DB->Short dodge, high initiative cost, forced movement, windup + after animation
BPS->Decent defense against melee, limited use against ranged, expensive, traps you within a small AoE field
Pistol whip->Long windup, medium dodge, roots you
CnD-> I thought we were talking about survivability out of stealth

A thief can then have access to vigor 66ish% of the time while the other 2 classes can have it up 100% of the time, yes while traited, but traited into their power lines, sacrificing little to gain this. Additionally they can have fairly reliable access to protection multiple blocks and knockbacks, blinds from a distance, and a potion that refills endurance same as the signet that does + giving a powerful tool for getting players in downstate up. The point was that those classes and more can have equal survivability from movement while attaining better levels of control. Their access to vigor when traited is also passive while the thief’s is active.

If you only use the various weapon skills in an attempt to dodge, you aren’t going to have a lot of success. The skills aren’t meant for just dodging, they are meant to keep the Thief constantly moving, while dealing damage at the same time. You fire at your opponent with your shortbow while strafing, weapon swap to sword and use Infiltrator’s Strike, hit your opponent with a Pistol Whip, use Black Powder to blind, auto-attack with sword while strafing, weapon swap to shortbow and use Withdraw, auto-attack with the shortbow while strafing, use Choking Gas to diminish a possible heal, weapon swap to sword and use Steal, auto-attack with the sword while strafing, use a stealth skill, daze from behind with sword, use Pistol Whip, weapon swap to shortbow and use Disabling Shot, and so on..

Playing a movement focused Thief, means constantly being active; strafing around your opponent while dealing damage, going in and out of melee combat, and switching between weapons. Other professions simply don’t have the ability to do this as efficiently, because they don’t have the short recharge times from initiative, or as many choices of different movement skills. With other professions, you either attack, or run away. The Thief can do both at once. I don’t know how you play a Thief, but it defiantly has superior survivability from movement, compared to any other profession. It’s easy to see just by looking at the healing skills alone.

Kasama.8941:

If you only use the various weapon skills in an attempt to dodge, you aren’t going to have a lot of success. The skills aren’t meant for just dodging, they are meant to keep the Thief constantly moving, while dealing damage at the same time. You fire at your opponent with your shortbow while strafing, weapon swap to sword and use Infiltrator’s Strike, hit your opponent with a Pistol Whip, use Black Powder to blind, auto-attack with sword while strafing, weapon swap to shortbow and use Withdraw, auto-attack with the shortbow while strafing, use Choking Gas to diminish a possible heal, weapon swap to sword and use Steal, auto-attack with the sword while strafing, use a stealth skill, daze from behind with sword, use Pistol Whip, weapon swap to shortbow and use Disabling Shot, and so on..

Playing a movement focused Thief, means constantly being active; strafing around your opponent while dealing damage, going in and out of melee combat, and switching between weapons. Other professions simply don’t have the ability to do this as efficiently, because they don’t have the short recharge times from initiative, or as many choices of different movement skills. With other professions, you either attack, or run away. The Thief can do both at once. I don’t know how you play a Thief, but it defiantly has superior survivability from movement, compared to any other profession. It’s easy to see just by looking at the healing skills alone.

I do not only use weapon skills to dodge, which is where my complaint about the lack of vigor comes from. Right now my builds typically include X/X/X/15/X + withdraw + vigor on heal to try to gain some of the endurance regen located in the damage/crit damage lines of other professions. That battle plan sounds great on paper until you run across your first shatter mesmer that can keep you constantly crippled and confused while obscuring where they are actually attacking from. A GS hammer warrior can exceed your attack rate with 5 second weapon cooldowns, highly moblie AoE damage, and contant stun/knockback. Mobility is great for keeping pressure up in the thief profession, but I would consider it an offensive strength rather than a defensive one. Stealth is where the defense of the thief is. The ability to change tactics while unseen so you can go from close combat to range while taking the pressure off of yourself for 3 seconds is where our survivability is located.

My warrior >>>>>>>> my thief in pve. Both in exotics.

I play my thief very well in pve too, but warrior is just naturally stronger against monsters.

However, when comparing the “fun factor” thief >>>> warrior. Warrior is pretty dull play style.

I think a large reason Thief is “weak” in PvE is due to the players. You can’t apply the same “do lots of dps” and “stealth tons” tactics to dungeons that you do to WvW and sPvP as dungeons have an abundance of AOEs and many NPCs have too many hitpoints for you to burst them down without taking damage in return.

I’m always annoyed to see Thieves running dungeons with Signet of Shadows for the movespeed … that extra movespeed for just you is not as helpful for you and the group as something like Smoke Screen when you know there will be several enemy NPCs with projectile weapons.

Thieves lack the team support abilities of every other class, thus they’re not sought after for dungeon parties no matter how much damage they can do.

After the recent patch I decided to give my warrior another run after I shelved him 3 months ago. I’m never going to use my thief for PvE content, why would I? My warrior outclasses the thief in every way.

I have soloed several champs, even the one at the end of the Plinx events, by using a stealth trick (if done correctly you wont take any damage). Not sure if that works now though. But it takes way to much time to be worth it, and is pretty boring fight.

And yes, I am talking about thief at endgame, especially harder endgame like 30+ in fractals.

As LOCO said, warrior does outclass thief in every way for PvE. Well, except the stealth-ress trick.

Once you l2p Thief because incredibly good and much, much better than most classes out there in PvE.
But the learning curve is apparently very long as most Thieves around play like a very bad WoW Rogue and understood nothing of evasiveness/blindspam/stealthing.

Warrior might get better damage but has nowhere near the survivability of a good Thief.

Out of all the classes I find the thief to be the most overall ineffective in PvE. I think of myself as an overall good player, I feel confident and comfortable with all classes. But outside of using stealth skills, especially the usefullness of Shadow Refuge by itself, there’s not much to brag about with the Thief. They are definitely better in a party than by itself. They are the best ressurecting class in the game, and with it’s downed state skills in a party it is usually able to get out of the way and get back up by itself no problem. Outside of a group however, the down state skills are nearly as bad as the engineers. You can’t ‘sneak’ away from ANYTHING. If you drop, expect to die, and that’s unfortunate.

If someone tries to play thief like a warrior they are doing something wrong…a good indication of that is saying, like the OP, that thieves feel like warriors.

I don’t consider myself the best player around, but still I don’t have problems in PvE. And obviously I have to use different builds for PvE and PvP.

SanityAssassin.8795:

If someone tries to play thief like a warrior they are doing something wrong…a good indication of that is saying, like the OP, that thieves feel like warriors.

No, thats where you are wrong. They should feel different, but in many ways they don’t (except the obvious difference with initiative vs cooldowns).

But if warrior played like thiefs has to do, they would have a ton more survivability. Even when a warrior play less optimal, its a very forgiving class, unlike thief where one missed dodge means you are downed.

The term “Balance” means you gets compensate for your class flaws, by being extra good in other areas. But when compared to warrior, it gets very hard to see that compensation, since warrior do more DPS, have more health, more armor, more weapons, better survivability, more support skills.

Why would a group ever prefer a thief over a warrior?

Warriors don’t have stealth res. And thieves can easily make it easy to pass trash mobs. Smoke screen can be pretty useful too.

Overall I’m noticing some people talking about the pros and cons but I continually see people constantly post about thieves and how bad they should be even though they are not. In most fractal groups my thief is the primary dps with my massive 24/7 hitting crits. Do people want thieves to get nerfed? I don’t understand why thief has been the most hated on class since November (when I first heard the massive hate for the class)

I thought I was a pve monster with my p/p sb thief until I ran my first dungeon. I must have died in AC 6 or 7 times. Was not what I expected the way I tear through above ground content. I utterly destroy a mob with 2 unloads. Most mobs never touch me. AC was an eye opener and makes me wonder if I should gear more tough/vit and less pwr/pre

Brutakus.2784:

and makes me wonder if I should gear more tough/vit and less pwr/pre

Berserker/valk equipment is fine, you just need to know how to avoid damage, that’s all this game is about, trust me. If you start boosting tough/vit you’ll just turn into a bad copy of a warrior. For starters, drop p/p altoghether and use shortbow.

Ruggan.4102:

TheGuy.3568:

I don’t necessarily disagree but you have to put things in context. Overall we can do fine in PvE but DPS minded players will feel squishy next to a warrior. The things we are good at are rezing and keeping a party from wipes. This is not useless. Some builds like S/D might not tank well but they do good in Survivability much like S/P pistol whip and D/P black powder/blind spam.

As far as healing goes 30 in shadow arts is still there and if you really are worried about getting heals foods like peach pies will give you heals continuously and have not been nerfed.

But I do agree compared to warrior it does seem a great deal imbalanced.

What we do have over warrior is
-better condition removal
-more escape tools
-more evades
-better stun breakers
-We actually have better healing overall if speced for it.

BTW spy kits got nerfed they have a 60 second cd so….

Edit:

Forgot 2 things. We have the best blast finisher in the game, and near permanent weakness and poison through dagger and Lotus Poison, or Shortbow all by it self no traits.

So what you are saying is.. the thief class should be kept around to keep everyone else from wiping and should be happy that foods and buffs that any other class can get should be enough to give some survivability… maybe? Now lets take a look at your what we have over warriors bit:
1) Better condition removal? Um sure if we are spec’d for it which means
a) We wont have the heal spec or
b) we wont have the dmg output that makes survivability an option…
2) More Escape: Not since now stealth does not reset aggro. So we can dodge and we can run away… sure there is the roll for initiative trait… but that is a dodge so yea.
3) Better healing if spec’d: Umm ok sure if we take an entire line of shadow arts we have a comprable heal to a warrior who starts with higher toughness, higher vitality, and a higher heal unspec’d… and they dont have to take an entire 30 points to make it a good heal. Oh and since our heals from SA are based on stealth and since you dont lose aggro when healed… either we stay stealthed and do no attacks so we can heal a little… or we go stealth, then attack for some decent but not awsome DPS since BD was nerfed and the thief has undergone 6 other nerfs.

See, I am tired of seeing Guardians, Mesmers, Rangers, Elementalists, Engineers, Warriors all SOLOing a Champion whatever it is in Orr or anyplace else for that matter while taking little effort to do so. All the while, the thief sits there and waits for the mob to die or has died himself. And then to top it all off, the other classes spit out “THIEVES NEED TO BE NERFED”

1 A and B make no sense as condition removal through traits and healing are all in the same line. The heal spec is the condtion removal spec. No other class can actually clease as well as we cna from stealth even ele and guardian fall behind due to Cool downs.

2. S/anything allows you to fight with a range hold out so you cna stun break and port out of immediate dps all at the same time if need be, No other class in the game has this option in such an accessible way.

3. I agree healing from stealth takes you out the fight but its trait healing not healing. We have other heals that will keep you in the fight. Now honestly I dont know what game you have been playing but this is GW2 the main form of defense for most classes is evasion.

A note: The changes to stealth make sure we don’t lose aggro You do not want a champion to lose aggro on you in a group fight ever it runs the risk of reseting the fight. The change was a good thing ans should not have effected your overall PvE.

My main is Dd ele. Yes i can solo champs in Ore but that’s not a big deal. A thief can do it with P/D and caltrops as another one of us pointed out to me many months ago it might take a bit longer but it can be done.

Soloing a champ no matter the class requires little effort it always requires plenty of it.

Even on ranger you have to time your pet swaps just so.

Brutakus.2784:

I thought I was a pve monster with my p/p sb thief until I ran my first dungeon. I must have died in AC 6 or 7 times. Was not what I expected the way I tear through above ground content. I utterly destroy a mob with 2 unloads. Most mobs never touch me. AC was an eye opener and makes me wonder if I should gear more tough/vit and less pwr/pre

Its easy to build a thief for survivability, just make sure you pick self healing traits and endurance-boost trait, use P/P and dodge around. Then you can enjoy a class that does less damage than most other classes, has virtually no skills for group or support, but at least you will stay alive almost as good as DPS specced warriors.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Warrior might get better damage but has nowhere near the survivability of a good Thief.

That’s because the warrior actually gets to enter the fractal, while the thief stays at Lion’s Arch, safe from all danger….

SanityAssassin.8795:

Warriors don’t have stealth res. And thieves can easily make it easy to pass trash mobs. Smoke screen can be pretty useful too.

Aaaannd…. That’s all, folks !!!

Kyrion.2749:

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Warrior might get better damage but has nowhere near the survivability of a good Thief.

That’s because the warrior actually gets to enter the fractal, while the thief stays at Lion’s Arch, safe from all danger….

You don´t know what you are talking about, I ’ ve seen many thieves in 40+ fotm, I´m lv 49 in fotm and I´m a thief, and I have run lv 48 fracs several times. Actually most of the times I play fotm I just play lv 40+ fotm. And I have seen many warriors in those levels dying several times, more than other classes in the run, I’m not saying every warrior I have played with dies much, but there are many dying over and over again…

Stop saying things with no basis.

BlueDragon.7054:

Kyrion.2749:

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Warrior might get better damage but has nowhere near the survivability of a good Thief.

That’s because the warrior actually gets to enter the fractal, while the thief stays at Lion’s Arch, safe from all danger….

You don´t know what you are talking about, I ’ ve seen many thieves in 40+ fotm, I´m lv 49 in fotm and I´m a thief, and I have run lv 48 fracs several times. Actually most of the times I play fotm I just play lv 40+ fotm. And I have seen many warriors in those levels dying several times, more than other classes in the run, I’m not saying every warrior I have played with dies much, but there are many dying over and over again…

Stop saying things with no basis.

He’s saying that because thieves have a reputation of being weak in dungeon and are kicked for being precived as too weak. In truth, there seems to be a popular idea that only the Soldier classes are worth having in dungeons. There’s complaint posts about classes getting kicked from dungeon parties, dotting most of the boards.

Warrior here, I really feel for thieves. In the same way that you are useless in pve, I’m useless in spvp, and it makes me cry to see thieves in dungeons trying so hard and playing extremely well and just not doing the amount of damage that I can with brainless greatsword spam. There really is no justice in that.

What confuses me is that there are plenty of posts about warriors HB not being effective – even posts about axes dealing more DPS. And what I find is that it’s the same everywhere: there seems to be a great delusion going on in these forums where everyone’s class that THEY play sucks against everyone elses class. Which of course, makes no sense.

In my opinion, thieves are the very best at DPS in PvE, but not without a host of disadvantages. They deal dps better because of the insane damage multipliers they can achieve – with 25\30 in DA&CS, You can get up to a 45% damage increase on top of the 3000 atk power you’ll probably have. And to my mind, no other class can hope to get that much additional damage.

Now, this would probably mean the warrior is still ahead in dps due to their buffs, which is why a thief really shines when used in conjunction with a warrior, because that might will only make your multipliers stronger.

Also, anyone who thinks thieves have no support, and I mean NO support has to be a joker. Granted they will have less than other classes, but their support is of the offensive type – cripple, weakness, blind, stun. These conditions are completely viable for PvE – anyone who thinks they are ‘above’ these beneficial conditions and refers to the game as ‘ezmode’ will never be able to deny that they HAVE wiped in the past. It won’t have just been on bosses.

I’m not trying to say that they are indisputably the best class: there are better options out there for support. But I do believe they have some things going for them, and are the best in certain factors. Finally, I don’t really believe at all with my experiences that thieves are just ‘OK’ in PvE…

I’m a bit late but i was googling for my thief PvE problem and found this thread.
I tried a lot of things for solo PvE in Orr and found a good spec with full Condition and good survivability. It worked well until i tried a guardian.
My thief is full exotic and lvl 80 the guardian is full blue an lvl 40. On my way to make 100% world map, my thief came to the same area as my guardian is and now i am shocked how hard it is, to play a thief. With guardian i can easily pull 5 mobs on the same level und kill them in a few second without any health problems. With thief i am always in a hurry. The dmg is too low and i have to move all the time, but moving means to have a big risk to pull more mobs as you can handle.

Overall I see no balance in the melee classes.
With a thief you are:
– always moving
– always stress
– always waiting
– a bad fighter under water
– need minutes for a fight

With a guardian you can:
– pull all mobs you see
– deal a huge amount of dmg with great sword
– no moving, just relaxed button smashing
– need seconds for a fight

There’s no denying that Guardian and Warrior are well-suited for PvE … probably too much so.

However, two of the best 26+ fractal groups I’ve been in each had 2 outstanding Thieves in them. Thieves can be extremely good in several fractals, and they are by far the best class to have at least 1 of if you get the Dredge fractal.

Thief simply is not as “roll face on keyboard” in fractals as some Warrior and Guardian builds, but when you are skilled at PvE with a Thief (note: different skillset than PvP with a Thief), you are amazing and I love having you in a high level fractal group … even the 30+.

Thief is fine in PvE.

Strengths:
- Melee Single-Target DPS is great, higher than Warrior if allowed to backstab chain.
- Cluster bomb synergize with Guardian. Empower + 5 Clusterbomb in Purgin Flames is 25 stacks of might to all. Overall best combo finisher in the game.
- Decent Ranged DPS.
- Evasive, access to 5~8 dodges (Shortbow #3, Signet of Agility refill)
- Stealth – the only way to shave chunks of time in speed runs. Depends on situation, Mesmer portal is better.
- Anti-projectile – Daggerstorm, Smoke Screen.
- Black Powder – Super dmg mitigation on nonchamp trash mobs.

Weakness:
- Requires player to dodge almost everything. Since zerk thief only has 11k HP. At Fractal 40+ every boss or miniboss can 1 shot you.
- Lacks boons and overall group buffs unless we sacrifice trait points for them. Unlike Warrior’s Banners which is just as effective used by pure berserker spec…

I’d say we are totally fine. We bring a lot to the table, but the catch is you have to play well and not die due to the fragile nature of our class.

Very nice list Orpheus. The power of Black Powder is hard to overstate in PvE as it is just so darn good.

At 40+ fractal, can’t boss or miniboss pretty much 1 shot anyone though? :-p

I think the primary reasons Guardians are so good in fractals are:

• Aegis allows them to botch a dodge/block/etc. without being 1 shot
• They have the largest selection of projectile blocks/reflects of any class in the game
• They can’t so much as wipe their butt without someone nearby getting a boon ;-)

worse healing lol? How about the dodge healing skill that has 15 sec cd. Worst healing you make me laugh.

Sebrent.3625:

Very nice list Orpheus. The power of Black Powder is hard to overstate in PvE as it is just so darn good.

At 40+ fractal, can’t boss or miniboss pretty much 1 shot anyone though? :-p

I think the primary reasons Guardians are so good in fractals are:

• Aegis allows them to botch a dodge/block/etc. without being 1 shot
• They have the largest selection of projectile blocks/reflects of any class in the game
• They can’t so much as wipe their butt without someone nearby getting a boon ;-)

Depends on the attacks the bosses use. But zerker thieves die to a lot of things zerker necro/warriors don’t die to.

Guardians are the core of the party. I don’t think there is any room for argument there.
I’m blessed cuz I play thief and my fiancee plays guardian so my botched dodges are covered by her Aegis.

Orpheus.7284:

Sebrent.3625:

Very nice list Orpheus. The power of Black Powder is hard to overstate in PvE as it is just so darn good.

At 40+ fractal, can’t boss or miniboss pretty much 1 shot anyone though? :-p

I think the primary reasons Guardians are so good in fractals are:

• Aegis allows them to botch a dodge/block/etc. without being 1 shot
• They have the largest selection of projectile blocks/reflects of any class in the game
• They can’t so much as wipe their butt without someone nearby getting a boon ;-)

Depends on the attacks the bosses use. But zerker thieves die to a lot of things zerker necro/warriors don’t die to.

Guardians are the core of the party. I don’t think there is any room for argument there.
I’m blessed cuz I play thief and my fiancee plays guardian so my botched dodges are covered by her Aegis.

No arguments here. Given the high base hp of those 2 classes, it is quite possible for that scenario.

Same for guardians being the core. They just have too much that makes them laugh at PvE compared to other classes.

You’re a “lucky god” of a Thief. Thief + Guardian is effective in all areas of the game … I’m sure you two are a nightmare to run into.