Guild Wars 2

These days, I finished 80 my first character in guild wars 2.
However, I found that thief in pve is not popular as other professions.
Thief can’t fight with multi-mobs each time.
Maybe you will say using shortbow or playing vitality traits can help.
But shortbow attack rate is slower than other weapon.
Vitality traits will cause your thief not enough damage to the mobs.
So that some dungeon parties always looking for specify professions like warrior, guardian instead of thief.
Someone said that thief got the highest damage in the game but I don’t think so.
Indisputably, you can see the damage pictures or video wherever.
But you will lose your hp easily while playing pve.
So why I don’t play ranger which can attack in a wider range,faster attack rate and also high damage as thief ?

Maybe WvW and PvP got lots of ways to play and great in these modes.
But thief is not useful and be worth in PvE.

These are just my feeling after 80 my thief these days. Hope that thief can become more worth in the future.
*Sorry for my poor English.

DogJustin.5270:

Vitality traits will cause your thief not enough damage to the mobs.
…
So that some dungeon parties always looking for specify professions like warrior, guardian instead of thief.
…
But you will lose your hp easily while playing pve.

The vitality trait line (Acrobatics), actually provides a large offensive boost via Might and possibly more dodge-caltrops from Trickery III. I easily get more damage out of the Vitality trait line than the power trait line (Deadly Arts), doubly so with might-on-dodge food.

Dungeon parties look for heavy armor classes because they’re more consistently survivable due to having a lower skill floor. That isn’t to say warrior/guardian can’t be played well, but they aren’t punished very harshly for just standing there and taking hits. Doesn’t really have much to do with thieves though, stay mobile and you’ll take just as little damage as anyone else.

You’ve got a wide number of options for avoiding/mitigating damage in PvE, starting with basic WASD movement. You can avoid a majority of damage simply by not standing still. High thief mobility allows you to increase your survivability even more by quickly getting out of sticky situations via shadow steps, extra dodges from acrobatics, etc. Worst case scenario, just run S/P with a bunch of life leech and Pistol Whip your way through pretty much anything.

Thief PvE isn’t for everyone, but it isn’t really in bad shape.

I invested in Critical Strikes, Acrobatics and Trickery and regularly land 6-8k Pistol Whips, tearing down multiple mobs and staying alive for long periods of time while sharing boons. Lost count of the amount of times Vigor has kept my party alive through mass boss AoE.

Thieves SHOULDN’T be as sturdy as Warriors and Guardians. However, it’s all based on the player. If you have a gimmicky Backstabbing glass cannon, boot him immediately. If they actually try and help the team (boon/venom sharing, various weapon CCs with complimenting DPS), then they can be infinitely more useful than a Warrior who spams HB/Frenzy because he doesn’t know any better since the rest of the game was a cakewalk for him.

I find 10/30/0/15/15 provide a very balanced pve spec. Acro for survival and Trickery for party buffs or for more calltrops for controls and dmg.

Our better utilities are Shadow Refuge, Calltrops (when not using the trait), Smoke Screen, Scorpion Wire.
Offhand pistol provide excellent utilities as well with Headshot and Blackpower Shot.
Shortbow’s Cluster Bomb also provide great support because of the Blast Combo Finisher.
Many players are also not aware that our Venom Elite can stun most bosses even when Defiant. It can be a lifesaver for that critical interupt.

I switch out weapons and skills, sometimes even traits, to adapt to different situations. It is best not to stick to a weapon/skillset for 24/7.

Bunmaster.9734:

Calltrops (when not using the trait)

They stack perfectly, no reason not to take both if you’re synergized for one.

Not as sturdy, no; our ability to just stand there and take hits isn’t that great. We do have many methods of avoiding damage, however. We’re much more pro-active about our ability to survive. Assuming you become good at this, Thief is very capable of dancing around like a fairy avoiding everything. I’ve outlived a lot of other classes by simply staying nimble.

Sword/Dagger is actually pretty good at AoE as well; It’s auto-attack does good damage and hits in a very generous cone which is large enough that you can hit enemies slightly behind you. Unfortunately with the recent nerfs Sword/Dagger suffers from a lack of burst options due to losing damage in both Dancing Dagger and Cloak and Dagger. It still has utility out the butt though.

You can also just go Sword/Nothing if you want a bit more burst with Stab. You lose Flanking Strike, Dancing Dagger, and Cloak and Dagger when you do this, but you still retain a pretty good auto-attack, and Infiltrator’s Strike for closing gaps. Compared to Sword/Dagger you have less utility, but more single target burst potential. Compared to Dagger/Dagger you have less utility, a bit less single target burst potential, but much better AOE potential with your auto-attack. I probably miss Flanking Strike/Death Blossom for a quick evade too much to dedicate myself to this, but its’ an option I’ve been exploring.

“Dungeon parties look for heavy armor classes because they’re more consistently survivable due to having a lower skill floor. That isn’t to say warrior/guardian can’t be played well, but they aren’t punished very harshly for just standing there and taking hits. Doesn’t really have much to do with thieves though, stay mobile and you’ll take just as little damage as anyone else.

You’ve got a wide number of options for avoiding/mitigating damage in PvE, starting with basic WASD movement."

To be fair warriors were meant to take hits, hence their base 18k HP (consequently they’re also punished less for having “glass cannon” traits and armor) whereas thieves aren’t. What do we have for toughness line traits? Stealth, where our true survivability comes from. Acrobatics is great and I have 30 there (motivated mostly for having dungeon viable HP though the 10% extra damage while energy isn’t full is good), and is mostly a mobility tree.

Also, power just scale better with warrior abilities and they can actually afford to put points into the precision tree due to the aforementioned higher HP base.

As for WASD movement… no, it is clunky, you need mouse turning and adjust camera rotation speed accordingly.

You are not technically incorrect; Warriors have more HP than us. They have slightly better armor than us as well, although their advantage in that category is not so huge.

Thing is though, you really need to examine survivability in terms of the amount of hits you can take, which is much more significant than simply noting that warriors have a larger number in a survivability trait than we do. Thieves are quite a bit more capable of simply evading hits entirely, which I feel makes up the difference in hit points. If you are active about your survivability you will mitigate more damage than the warrior who simply stands there and gets beat on, and because you are not so reliant upon hit points or armor to mitigate damage you can focus on more offensive stats as well.