Guild Wars 2

How do you survive? Coming from a Warrior main, I just keep getting smushed. Not by grabbing aggro, no, but because my Thief alt gets killed if an enemy as much as farts at her.

Like AC, where most of the Gravelings have sweeping auto-attacks; even if I try my best to stay behind them, at one point they will inevitable turn (even if they don’t intend to attack me) and down me, perhaps kill me even if there’s more than one…

It is frustrating a times to say the least.

I play a fairly durable Backstab build with 18.000 HP and 2200 armor and still get gibbed by untelegraphed auto attacks.

The blatant hate for melee classes in PvE is infuriating at times, especially when you compare it to the utter bore that is ranged combat.

Take the Ancient Cultist in the Cliffside Fractal for example. He has a leap attack which can be dodged if you’re at range, a forward top down smash and a 360 degree swing. All of these are telegraphed by a <;1 second animation that all look almost identical.

Yet one hit will take roughly 15-16k health off a Thief.

Great fun.

Other mobs are similar except that many of their attacks aren’t telegraphed properly or even at all. Sometimes you’ll be behind a mob and just BAM lose 15000 HP for no obvious reason.

Melee combat is this game is broken in PvE.

As a Thief you simply cannot go melee 100% of the time. You’ll always have to fall back to range and heal up before going back in. Until the next untelegraphed instant attack hits you for 90% of your HP that is.

If you’re hoping there’s some magic cure. There’s none.

I’m sure some posers will come posing there about how they play a melee glass-cannon Thief 100% of the time and that it’s all about L2Dodge etc. but after having done FotM into the 30s I can tell you that’s simply not true.

Mostly agree with Dee Jay,

As a side note, while fighting bosses, many of the big nukes usually happen at regular intervals… So you can more or less anticipate when the big hit is coming, back off/dodge and then resume you melee routine.

Like the others before me it’s very hard. I’m no glass cannon and I still prefer to stay in the back with my shortbow just opening combo fields and playing medic/killing adds. In simple instances like the current Tixx dungeon melee is perfectly viable but when it comes to bosses your better off keeping at a distance from it.

One thing that helps a lot is this ability called “dodge.” I didn’t know about this skill until I was level 20 or so, but once I found out about it my survivability went through the roof. I am not sure, but I think the default key for it is “v” on your keyboard. Try it and you will be amazed.

lol, I’m kidding. This happens to me all of the time too. I get nearly one shotted, so then I leap way back and watch everyone else fight until I get enough HP to run back in and try to hit the mob again. The most frustrating thing is everyone will say “just use a bow.” I made a Rogue because I wanted to stab people with knives. If I wanted to use a bow all of the time I probably would have made a Ranger. :p

Sword + Pistol, Signet of Malice, and Omnomberry Ghost is the best way to melee in my experience. You get the interrupt + evade with Pistol Whip, and it has 9 chances to proc the heals (per target).

Lymain.6723:

Sword + Pistol, Signet of Malice, and Omnomberry Ghost is the best way to melee in my experience. You get the interrupt + evade with Pistol Whip, and it has 9 chances to proc the heals (per target).

This. I use full Berserker Armor with Emerald Orbs, Emerald Accessories and my off-hand Pistol has a Superior Sigil of Blood. Teamed up with the Signet and the Omnomberry food, I essentially never die, at face-to-face distance, 24/7. Insane damage and survivability so long as you keep hitting things. The only reason I use Emerald instead of Ruby is for the little extra precision from the orbs and the Toughness is a situational crutch if I screw up, giving me a little window to escape. If something gets out of hand, I jump back, plant a Smoke Screen and Shortbow away to safety.

Melee can be nice in some situations (killing mobs that have reflection, heartseeker spam on low HP bosses, sword/pistol blind+auto attack on trash), but you’ll want to just stay back and spam clusterbomb in most situations.

Condition damage builds based on Death Blossom spam can survive meleeing.

While I agree with nearly everything Dee Jay had to say, it’s not too hard to melee at least 70% of the time in dungeons if you’re smart, even with a full glasscannon build.

I run 20/30/0/20/0 with full berserker’s gear, including jewels, with ruby orbs on everything and have around 13.7k of HP and 900 toughness. That being said, there are a lot of times where I find myself being the only one left alive in an encounter and am resing my teammates or waiting for them to WP back.

If you spec into Acrobatics, you end up with swiftness on each dodge and an extra dodge from the endurance regen. That combined with knowing enemy attacks and using stealth wisely can give you a lot of survivability. Glasscannon isn’t usually the best idea for dungeons/PvE but it can be a great source of DPS if, you know, you’re actually alive to put out that DPS

It does depend your spec. It also depends on the dungeon.

I rarely get downed in CoF or TA or even Arah. However CoE is the bane of my thief. Especially the first mob right when you enter the dungeon oO, itactually gets a bit easier after that.

Thieves need room to maneuver and blossom (no puns), sometimes dungeons are a bit tight in that department. After a few runs you get an idea of where is best to position yourself. This helps tremundously.

Melee requires some toughness and hps, and good self healing and abusing your evades abilities like pistolwhip when needed. Some bosses just aren’t melee-able. Even smart guardians and warriors won’t try to melee some guys and you don’t get tankier than that.

Death blossom builds are not really tanky, they’re kitey. A s/p setup is the tanky-est you will get – and like has been stated, stack those self heals. Mostly malice, omnom pie or ghost if you need an extra boost. I get by with malice.

neclon.4510:

Melee requires some toughness and hps

This is good advice if you’re playing a profession whose defensive mechanism is stat-based. OP is having issues because they’re coming from a warrior who is built to stay alive by absorbing hits, not avoiding them.

As a thief, giving up offensive stats for defensive stats will just leave you impotent in both departments. There are ways to score some defensive stats without really giving up offense, though (like taking Acrobatics), and those are good choices.

There are situations where, unless you are spot on and have had relations with the target, you will just be a floor mat plain and simple. It sucks but this is our lot in PvE. A vast majority of the time you can stay on your feet though.. I tend to lean towards Vitality as a crutch. Stealth, dodge and evades are the other tools to mitigate damage. As stated prior Pistol Whip and Deathblossom are both abilities that can mitigate some incoming damage. I also fall back on condition removal on stealth. My best advice would be to just really watch the fights and know when you have to stay out. I personally switch between P/P and SB as a second weapon loadout depending on the situation until its safe to hop back in the action. Try a D/D Condition build out, run in drop bleeds run out kinda thing.

GL
Blood~

Generally you’re going to want just enough HP to take a hit without getting a close look at the floor, which means getting a bit of vitality where you can. The amount you’ll need will vary from dungeon to dungeon; in some of the easier ones running around at base, or base with some traits in Acrobatics is sufficient, while in higher level fractals you’ll have to itemize for it quite a bit if you want to melee. Personally, I’ve been satisfied with a base health of around 15,000 (before scaling reductions) in every dungeon in the game sans very high level Fractals.

Toughness is not a particularly valuable stat for a Thief – it’s strong for a class whose defense is based on being bulky enough to facetank a few hits, but you’re not going to get that without going full tickle monster (tanky condition damage), which has essentially no value for a Thief in PvE.

The plan, assuming you want to deal pretty good damage, is to have enough of a health buffer that you can survive a hit most of the time (so that you don’t become a master floor inspector), which gives you enough of an opportunity to escape, heal up, and re-engage. Defense above and beyond that is mostly wasted, and just cuts into your ability to deal damage.

UnicornViolet.3081:

The most frustrating thing is everyone will say “just use a bow.” I made a Rogue because I wanted to stab people with knives. If I wanted to use a bow all of the time I probably would have made a Ranger. :p

Haha, yeah that’s exactly it! Plus, 1 on the Shortbow has this annoying bounce feature. I really wish it was optional, perhaps with a toggle. Sometimes it is highly inconvenient.

Like when you hit a mob you’re not supposed to and wiping your party.

Currently running something like x/30/30/0/x with D/D or sometimes D/P .

Using Shadow Protector and Shadows Rejuvenation , and mostly shadow refuge + blinding powder.

Not only does this support the group quite good, it also alows to stay in melee .
You have perma regen and heal while in stealth + blind the enemy when entering stealth.. so he won’t hit you.

Sure there are some 1shot abilitys, you need to know them and dodge them.

But with this setup i am very successfull in PvE ( although i often use SB , there is just no need to go melee if there are more then 2 enemies … SB does more dmg )

I run a full Valk Thief that focuses on constantly stealthing and dropping backstab crits via the auto crit from stealth. I spend most of my time in dungeons in melee range constantly dropping high single target damage. I could swap it up so that I can perm weakness/aoe weakness via 25 in the first tree but honestly I’m a bit selfish with my Thief compared to my other characters lol. Generally the HP buffer is enough for when I screw up, and I usually melee pretty much everything and rarely shortbow. I do still carry team useful utilities, though. If I notice the group I’m in is having trouble with some mob pulls, I keep a S/P combo on hand for blind spam tanking.