Guild Wars 2

I come here looking for useful information for my low-level alt and… the entire place is almost nothing but QQ. It’s either people saying thieves are op (hint: it’s not the class but the player behind it that makes something OP)… or it’s people crying over nerfs.

There’s no useful threads about playing thieves in the first five pages, and only about four or five threads of non-QQ – all of which have devolved into either circlejerk QQ or flamewars. Usually both at once. 99% of posters just QQ without even offering alternatives.

This isn’t the Blizzard official forums; smarten up. If your thread can be summed up with someone mashing their q key, refrain from hitting that post button, for the sake of the very health and reputation of this forum.

And since yes, I do realize the mild irony inherent to this post, I shall follow it up with the following: My thief is pretty low level (ie. still in Caledon Forest). When I’m fighting mobs, I do alright against single target, even veterans, as long as they are alone. But send in a couple adds and I usually get turned into delicious thiefburger. Is it a failure of my playing? It is an intrinsic failing of the class that it can’t handle multiple targets from an incoming damage perspective? Is it because I’m only level 11 still? Have I been coddled by the powerful necromancer downed-state lifedrain? (Seriously, what even is that 1 key skill on thief downed state? Am I throwing my internal organs at them?)

There will be a lot of complaining, however that is primarily what you will see in forums. If you want useful forums I suggest joining a guild who has their own forums for tactics and strategy. I echo several of your statements, however I also realize that when someone reads this they are going to be insulted. You are bashing the whole of thief forums essentially, and that just rude on your part. Now to address your issue.

I would suggest for a low level thief to try using the shortbow until you have learned how to handle kiting multiple mobs. Circle kiting seems to be the most effective since the mobs take extra time usually to turn and move forward.

SB3 will give you an evade when you need on and are out of dodges
Pistol Whip also offers a very nice evasion while doing DPS

Give these two a try and let me know how it goes. I know personally leveling up I used the shortbow often until I could get adequate gear since it gives you so much more survivability through evasion and positioning. The Shortbow Combined with the Sword/ Pistol for PW makes you considerable more survivable.

GL

Hello Sovngarde. Thief is squishy. You have to use the classes evasion to deal with large packs of mobs in PvE.

The best way I have found to do this against PvE mobs in large packs is use death blossom with snare and kiting. Later on you can get untouchable which leaves caltrops whenever you evade, they did get nerfed last patch but untouchable’s radius got increased I believe.

Anyways what I always did when leveling was run around and gather up a mass of like 3-5+ mobs, circle kite them with snare so they ended up in a ball then start death blossoming over the group back and forth mixing in evade for more snare and condition damage and just repeat that til everything fell over.

This tactic works excellent against non ranged mobs, if you get a pack of ranged mobs shooting at you try LoSing them around something or just use shadow refuge and try to reset the fight. I always found ranged mobs in numbers difficult to deal with personally, perhaps someone else can offer a good strategy on those.

As for the QQing, its mostly caused because thief has been nerfed pretty much every patch in the game and people are sick of it by now. Also, the last patch broke a lot of things for us so there has been extra whining since then lol.

I second the short bow + sword/pistol suggestion. It’s especially useful for your mob problem. Pistol Whip does damage to multiple targets, and you can always just save your initiative to blind your enemies, auto attack, blind enemies, auto attack*….you get the idea.
*Don’t fight dredge with this strategy.

Um isn’t making a thread QQing about QQing kinda compounding the problem?

I also suggest you to pump your first traits into acrobat. It helps alot with kiting espeacily if you have vigor on heal and endurance return on dodge. The other traitlines have pretty bad first traits, which hardly favor low level thieves, except maybe shadowarts, yet it wont help you with kiting.
You still can go the blind autoattack way, but it is boring as hell and beeing mobile and dodging like mad is more fun.

The forums usually aren’t too bad.

It’s just, there’s recently been a fairly important patch that has some not entirely positive changes for thieves (Also a few bugs arising aswell) causing forums to be filled with more posts complaining about it (Also people who play other classes posting to just say “HA, SUCK IT OP THIEVES”)

As far as leveling goes at low levels:

Sword/Pistol gets good recommendations (I didn’t like it personally… That and you’re screwed if you ever try using it’s main selling point against dredge (They’re immune to blind)

I personally used Dagger/Dagger using Death Blossom and Caltrops to stack bleeds on things, with the evade on Death Blossom and the high uptime of Cripple from Caltrops I could avoid damage and when I got low on health I could step back long enough to get a heal off (Or run away if really necessary)

The Bleeds also have the advantage of being AoE (Means I could take on 2-3 things without worry) and also don’t become affected by Glancing Blows (Which meant I could take on things 4+ levels higher than me without worry)

Sovngarde.7502:

(Seriously, what even is that 1 key skill on thief downed state? Am I throwing my internal organs at them?)

It is Trail of Knives. You’re throwing a 3-bounces knife with a 1-sec cripple on it. It usually leads to a trail of tears one way or another. It’s what you got for damage while down on land. In theory the cripple might slow them down enough for you to get to use shadowstep, er, shadowlurch, whatever skill and then the smokey poofy thing and pray someone comes along to help, or die, something.

But mostly it’s your damage knifey thing. No one is throwing your internal organs. At least until after you’re done with them. Yar.

Someone has to QQ so you don’t have to.

Welcome to the Thieves’ den.

well without knowing your exact build I can’t give direct help but for pve and leveling as long as your not trying to go pure stealth backstab style build you can build to be decent in single target and aoe with most weapons.

As others have said stuff like sword/pistol can really trivialize anything susceptable to blinds, stuff like death blossom + caltrops (even if not geared for condition damage) can tear down a large group of npc’s over time (drop trops, bounce twice through the group then kite and watch em fall the bits) throw in signet of malice and any other heal on hit stuff you feel you want to buy (heal on crit pie and sigils or such) and you can often keep your health up.

Once you hit 30 you can get your dagger storm which can do massive damage to a group of npc (with care though, it can often bring new ones to you) and again combined with signet of malice can be used as a heal in situations with lots of npc’s.

If you prefer going for a d/d backstab style build it comes down to choosing your utilities carefully for defense (blinds and such) and ensuring you kill priority targets fast (if you got 2 mobs, on does CC the other is just damage take out CC first)

Sovngarde.7502:

And since yes, I do realize the mild irony inherent to this post, I shall follow it up with the following: My thief is pretty low level (ie. still in Caledon Forest). When I’m fighting mobs, I do alright against single target, even veterans, as long as they are alone. But send in a couple adds and I usually get turned into delicious thiefburger. Is it a failure of my playing? It is an intrinsic failing of the class that it can’t handle multiple targets from an incoming damage perspective? Is it because I’m only level 11 still? Have I been coddled by the powerful necromancer downed-state lifedrain? (Seriously, what even is that 1 key skill on thief downed state? Am I throwing my internal organs at them?)

P/D should be your weapon set of choice when leveling up since it has the most skill in keeping targets away from you. Only use stealth when necessary.

If you have not spent your Skill Points yet, you should rush for Ambush trap skill since it is very useful in evenning the odds, especially fighting multiple mobs. If you don’t have enough Skill Points I suggest to visit other starting areas for extra skill points. You have to have Ambush, I think you need 26 skill pts to get it.

And always choose your battle, if you see adds that you think you cannot handle, just run away and drop aggro. There is no shame in running away, after all we are Thieves and we call it “Tactical Retreat” or “Baiting”.

Good luck.

QQ moar about QQing, lol joking.
I think we need a stickied thread so anyone who comes to this forum to QQ can post there and leave the thief forums for their intended use, thief discussion. The state of this subforum is just sick

Sovngarde.7502:

I come here looking for useful information for my low-level alt and… the entire place is almost nothing but QQ. It’s either people saying thieves are op (hint: it’s not the class but the player behind it that makes something OP)… or it’s people crying over nerfs.

There’s no useful threads about playing thieves in the first five pages, and only about four or five threads of non-QQ – all of which have devolved into either circlejerk QQ or flamewars. Usually both at once. 99% of posters just QQ without even offering alternatives.

Thank you for summarizing my thoughts in a clear, concise fashion that does not involve ranting. I believe that thieves are, inarguably, the most controversial class of them all, due to:
-initiative
-stealth
-shadowsteps
-Backstab
-mobility

I also recognize your need for a thief guide for the earlier levels; I apologize that I do not have the time to write one up at current moment, and, to be honest, I don’t think my guide would be all that good anyways. However, you can check this out. It’s the guide that I’m compiling for thief builds and guides, and one of the mentioned guides, I believe, is geared towards starting players. It would be the one labeled “GW2 Guru’s Guide for the Beginning Thief”. Outside of that, I’m afraid I can’t be of much help; the thief, for me, is a profession that not everybody can play, because it takes a specific mindset that extends beyond just “LOL BACKSTAB” that it would seem like a lot of other thieves have. I can’t say that I know that you have that mindset yourself; you’ll just have to play around with the profession and learn it thusly. Experience makes the best teacher.

However, the one thing that I would mention is that, at level 11, you don’t have the gear nor the traits required to take on mobs very easily. If you’re going to try taking on mobs, I would suggest a Sword / Shortbow build, as those focus more on control than single-target murder. Outside of that, I think you’ll just have to get stronger before you can take on mobs like a pro. If you’re like me, you’ll end up investing 30 points into Acrobatics, and find yourself dodging through mobs and blasting the heck out of enemy NPCs like nobody’s business.

Just FYI, the entire place is QQ right now because the March 26th patch made a change that was meant to nerf Thief in PvP and ended up HEAVILY nerfing the PvE damage/utility of several builds that were already a little underpowered instead. It also introduced a couple of bugs that cripple several builds. As soon as they compensate for those mistakes, the griping will subside again just as it did when they over-nerfed pistol whip for PvP purposes and then a few weeks later compensated PvE builds with higher auto attack damage.

As far as your question:
Weapons
When you’re leveling, you pretty much NEED Shortbow to tag as many mobs during events as you can so that you get more experience and loot, so it should always be your secondary set.

Thief is an incredibly squishy class to solo with if you’re actually getting hit, but they’ve given us everything we need to compensate for that fact with spammable Blinds.

For primary set I went back and forth between D/P and S/P depending on the zone.
I used D/P the majority of the time because it lets you easily zip from one mob to the next and the kill speed is crazy fast as long as you can consistently fight against a single mob.
[Shadow Shot], let your auto attack chain finish once, [Shadow Shot], auto attack chain, then [Heartseeker] to finish them off. You can keep most mobs blind the entire time and take literally 0 damage. And it still gives you the option to use [Black Powder] instead of [Shadow Shot] if you get adds.

S/P is better any time you’re in a dense area where you pretty much have to pick up more than one mob at a time or if you are fighting against something that hits you with high dps conditions like destroyers. [Infiltrator’s Strike] is the king of condition removal.

So my advice for Leveling Thief as quickly as possible:
Keep a Dagger, Pistol, Sword, and Shortbow.
Use D/P most of the time, and swap the Dagger out for Sword any time you get into a dense area or have to fight against destroyers. And as always, use your Shortbow for group events for the blast finisher and to tag as many mobs as you can.

Builds
I think most of the people recommending Shadow Arts or Acrobatics builds have been at 80 for too long. At 80, you can get some of the best builds going in those trees with good synergy between survival and damage, but most of the best traits in those trees are level 35+. Also at 80, you get a rather large amount of stats from gear so the stats you get from the trees don’t matter as much as the Traits.

But while you’re leveling, that’s just not the case. [Hide in Shadows] and [Shadow Shot] or [Black Powder] provide you with 99% of the survivability you’ll need while leveling and 50 power could actually double your killing speed, so the stats you get from the trait lines are incredibly important.

For low level builds I prefer sticking to Critical Strikes and Deadly Arts. Once you fill up those two trees, THEN I would move to Acrobatics until you can open the next tier (At which point I’d drop Acrobatics and move back to filling out Critical Strikes and Deadly Arts again first.)

This begins to change at 60 when you finally start getting 3 stats on your gear and can put together more cohesive builds. But until then, I still think building straight power/precision and relying on Blinds and [Hide in Shadows] is the way to go.

Pre-30 – 10/10/0/x/0 – (Back Fighting or Mug + Furious Retaliation or Concealed Defeat)
30-60 – 20/20/0/x/0 – (Dagger Training + Critical Haste)
60+ – you’ll have a decent idea of how you want to build, and leaving behind Deadly Arts and/or Critical Strikes is ok.

I have a new thief myself, just hit level 30. I definitely recommend putting your first 10 points into Uncatchable (0/0/0/0/10). Caltrops every time you dodge is a lifesaver and it does good condition damage too, inflicting up to 3 bleeds ona target just from dodging. I typically use it offensivelyby engaging a mob, standing on them, and dodging away when they take their first swing at you. They’ll take 3 bleeds and be crippled a few seconds longer, making it really easy to slide them up with dagger auto attacks.

This, in conjunction with the actual caltrops ability and death blossom that a few others mention above works wonders on a crowd, and I barely ever have to switch out of D/D for any situation. I still keep a Shortbow as a backup because you never know when you need a ranged option or quick escape. Good Luck.

Well the GOOD news about leveling thieves is that it does get a little better after you’re past level 40 and the master traits are unlocked, dealing with mobs at lower levels is a pain. Stuff like assasin’s reward and stealth buffs like regain health in stealth, regain initiative faster, etc, makes surviving a lot easier past level 40 or so.

I defn second (third? fourth? several people agreed on this) S/P for mob control at lower levels as well as shortbow. Just make sure to take out ranged targets first, melee mobs are a lot easier to handle by circle kiting.

And in defense of this forum, I really did learn a lot and had a lot of my questions answered here. The reason for all this griping is because it is so soon after the recent patch, in which we were nerfed across the boards basically with little to no buffs to go with it. Burst DPS thieves are all up in arms about it, ergo all the fireworks.

As a whole this is a really helpful place to get some info though.

WyldKat.4712:

Sovngarde.7502:

(Seriously, what even is that 1 key skill on thief downed state? Am I throwing my internal organs at them?)

It is Trail of Knives. You’re throwing a 3-bounces knife with a 1-sec cripple on it. It usually leads to a trail of tears one way or another. It’s what you got for damage while down on land. In theory the cripple might slow them down enough for you to get to use shadowstep, er, shadowlurch, whatever skill and then the smokey poofy thing and pray someone comes along to help, or die, something.

But mostly it’s your damage knifey thing. No one is throwing your internal organs. At least until after you’re done with them. Yar.

You can also execute a stealth attack with that poisons. I killed a thing with that once and rallied.

@OP: Use a Trickery/SA/Acrobatics Leaping Death Blossom + Sigil of Corruption Thief Build to AoE level. Or if you prefer crit damage, I’d suggest sword main hand + Sigil of Bloodlust. Sword #1 cleaves (hits 3 targets), does decent damage for this class, and adds weakness (all non-crits become glancing blows). Note that pistol whip was not worth using unless you have Haste; it is less useful now due to Anet hammering quickness down to 150% speed boost.

Also, You wrote:

[…] This isn’t the Blizzard official forums; smarten up. If your thread can be summed up with someone mashing their q key, refrain from hitting that post button, for the sake of the very health and reputation of this forum. […]

In response, I actually suggest you move to the guildwars2guru.com thief forums, if you haven’t heard about them already. Fact: They do a better job of managing their thief forums. And GW2Guru’s forums are chock-full of build catalogs, discussions, and thief guides. Thus, Much more helpful than this QQ Inferno.

Lastly: If you’re making a thief for endgame PvE, Re-roll to Warrior or Guardian. I almost quit this game when nerfs converted thief gameplay into melee ranged drudgery. But Warrior and Guardian gameplay stand so vastly superior to thief that I literally fell in love with GW2 again: who says first love doesn’t happen twice?

Anet is blatantly butchering thief mechanics and stat tables to appease QQ’ers while using rogue-like promises heralding a granduer of class balance to keep the thief players hopeful and subscribed to the game. (I wonder if their PA crew wears Swindler Masks).

My intention is simply to benevolently warn you. Thieves used to take planning and execution to play well. Now end-game thief builds are adjusted to present only high-risk/negligible rewards. Prepare to work hard and master the game as a thief only to be decidedly sub-average.