Guild Wars 2

Thief is extremely squishy. I am level 50 and run a pistol whip build for pve, the damage is great, but it’s just so easy to die with 2 adds on you.

I feel like I can do nothing but die and rely on my signet heal procs to try and outheal incoming damage. It feels extremely wrong as a mechanic.

And don’t get me started in PvP. Melee isn’t a viable option in group PvP. No ways to mitigate damage at ALL, and very easy to die as any melee spec.

Even stealth doesn’t mitigate damage, people can AoE you while in stealth, I’ve died numerous times IN stealth.

We need something in the form of stuns, and not these little pistol whip .5 second stuns either.

Also I feel like a melee warlock, I mean I summon thieves to help my dps, that feels not very thief like, or robots.

Thief as a class just is off, big time, against anyone who is half competant, you will simply get shut down and blown up.

its very easy to drop caltrops and just kite things while ther life just ticks away or stealing wiht the poison trait or all kinds of condition damage attacks. condition – stealth – kite . shortbow is great for taking on moe then one mob. theives arent warriors. your not supposed to be all up in the opponents face. try some different things especially with conditions and you will see a difference.

This might be a first. I think the theif has too many excape tools. One one stealths in WvW might as well move on since chances are they are 3 hops away fro ma shortbow or chaining stealth to get further away.

It really isnt fun to try and chase a thief down with all the stealth heavy builds ive been seeing lately

Use a shortbow.
Your nr1 ability hits 3 targets at the same time.
Your nr4 ability is a cripple on the target (only 1 target), and you leap backwards.
Combine this with your 2 regular dodges.
Now you can kite multiple mobs forever.
Your nr5 ability is a teleport that can get you out of hairy situations quickly

I used to die in Personal Story quests, with daggers.
I could not kill veteran mobs with my daggers.
With my shortbow, I don’t die anymore.

This way of playing (during leveling, personal stories, public events, etc) is sooo much easier. Your dps is low, but your survivability is 10-100x better. In groups (public events, etc) you can try to put down a poison field (ability nr4). Or use your awesome AoE (ability nr2).

But I rolled a Thief to play melee.
I ended up playing a friggin hunter.
I’m not a happy kittycat.

Thieves have crazy levels of mitigation available when needed. Check out signet of malice, assassin’s reward, shadow protector. Most of our true excellent mitigation is in acrobatic maneuvering though. normally it’s your top priority to not take a hit. I love a style of play that capitalizes on both the avoidance and damage reduction aspects of defense

don’t take this the wrong way but…. the Thief class is fine and has all the tools it needs, the problem is with you.

Time to start taking survivability more seriously. Time to learn how to utilize evasion, stealth, positioning, control conditions like Blind, Cripple, Immobilize, and Weakness.

Time to start paying more attention to what your enemies are doing. If you expect to actually win fights by standing around and pumping out Pistol Whip all day then you’re gonna have a bad time.

I don’t mean to come off as too harsh, but you should know that most Thieves don’t have the issues you are having. You just hit a hump in your learning curve. A better solution to your problems would be to practice more and learn what you have been doing wrong, rather than assuming the issue is with the game itself.

Thieves have teleports , mobility , blinds ,stealth and evades built into attacks to prevent damage how many more do you need? O_O

Oh we have plenty of ways to avoid getting hit, the problem is the cooldown for those abilities mean we still get hit.

Shooopa.5632:

Oh we have plenty of ways to avoid getting hit, the problem is the cooldown for those abilities mean we still get hit.

We arent supposed to be gods. Just Demi-gods.

Teleports and mobility don’t help against ranged.

1 stealth ability heals. We have 1 singet that heals but you have to actually be doing damage, and the heal is ridiculously weak.

I use everything at my disposal, I know how to double tap dodge to evade, and avoid AoEs.

I know how to Stealth correctly. I know how to kite.

Saying Shortbow is our only option in WvWvW is ludacris, the damage sucks, you have fluff AoE, sure you can kite, what good is kiting vs ranged and casters? You have to spam dazes to interrupt, and it eats initiative up where your dps drops even more.

I know exactly how to play this class, the class is very weak in anything other than sPvP. Matter of fact its rather a joke.

The ONLY reason we even can do SEMI well now, is because people are learning how to combat Thieves, learning Thieves abilities and how to utilize dodges.

Thief is probably THE weakest classin WvWvW now. And maybe the 3rd strongest in 1v1 scenarios. Under Mesmer and Guardian. When in fact Thief should be #1 in 1v1 across all aspects, that is just how Stealth classes work in MMOs.

But I guess I could try the shortbow, should I prioritize precision and power stats? What build should I run at 50? I do like the healing off of Shadow Arts, but I like the initiative gain off of Critical strikes and Trickery.

The #1 power tree, you notice a HUGE dps loss if you ignore it. Really hurts.

Martym.6971:

Teleports and mobility don’t help against ranged.

1 stealth ability heals. We have 1 singet that heals but you have to actually be doing damage, and the heal is ridiculously weak.

I use everything at my disposal, I know how to double tap dodge to evade, and avoid AoEs.

I know how to Stealth correctly. I know how to kite.

Saying Shortbow is our only option in WvWvW is ludacris, the damage sucks, you have fluff AoE, sure you can kite, what good is kiting vs ranged and casters? You have to spam dazes to interrupt, and it eats initiative up where your dps drops even more.

I know exactly how to play this class, the class is very weak in anything other than sPvP. Matter of fact its rather a joke.

The ONLY reason we even can do SEMI well now, is because people are learning how to combat Thieves, learning Thieves abilities and how to utilize dodges.

Thief is probably THE weakest classin WvWvW now. And maybe the 3rd strongest in 1v1 scenarios. Under Mesmer and Guardian. When in fact Thief should be #1 in 1v1 across all aspects, that is just how Stealth classes work in MMOs.

But I guess I could try the shortbow, should I prioritize precision and power stats? What build should I run at 50? I do like the healing off of Shadow Arts, but I like the initiative gain off of Critical strikes and Trickery.

The #1 power tree, you notice a HUGE dps loss if you ignore it. Really hurts.

The class is weak at zerging and taking/defending in wvw. Thief excels in small combat with a team. The reason why short bow is so good is because of the mobility you get. Three IAs and only the most dedicated/angry people will chase you down. Cluster bomb can also hit for quite a bit if you go glass cannon build. The arc is also useful for defending so you’re not just waiting for people to break in. If you’re 50 your still a good ways away from max traits which is the most important thing after a good set of weapons.

Thief is about as versatile a class as you can play choosing a build is up to the player.

Martym.6971:

Teleports and mobility don’t help against ranged.

Teleports do. If you teleport while there’s a projectile in the air, it misses.

If you are running pistol whip you have black powder which is one of the best blind fields in the game.

If you get adds ditch the pistol whip and just cleave down the mobs with auto attack whilst using a dodge and dropping black powder every four seconds.

if you have some precision the damage is great and you won’t even get touched.

signet of shadows active effect is a 1200 range aoe blind for 6 seconds, drop it on a ranged mob and this gives you more than enough time to get up on him.

Yeahhh Pistol Whip + Black Powder = Blinds for everyone you’re hitting (which means their attacks will miss on you).

I’ve tried all the weapons, and nothing comes close to PVE levelling with Dual Daggers. Sustained Damage + the most damage of any of the weapons.

yeah daggers are awsome, dancing dagger + caltrops .. means you can easily handle large groups of mobs as long as they not too many pure range..

So I should go dual dagger and shortbow swap?

(Dual dagger bleed build?)

What spec and stats cover those 2 builds the best? (+Condition and a mix of power and precision?)

Critical Strike traits and +power trait tree?

like others i use dual dagger 99% of the time .. ill switch to shortbow whilst im learning a zone boss fight, to see if/when its possible to go back to daggers..

there are lots of specs that work well with this, either spec into or buy a rune that gives swiftness on kill, i use rune as its longer duration, tbh i have a realy generalist spec with a few points in most of the trees.. just to get nice little things that i think are usefull to the way i play…

if you want to use dagger to kite .. good things to go for are condition duration, dagger damage , crit chance, extra initiative …swiftness… vigor … do it for a bit and it will become apparent what you need to make it better.

Martym.6971:

…snip…

I know exactly how to play this class

…snip…

you do? really? so then why are you posting here asking for advice? apparently you already know how to play, which is an incredible feat consider you’re only level 50. you must be really good based on what you say about yourself. Clearly you, the master of the Thief class, know everything you need to know about how to play this game and your failure to do well with Thief, despite your obvious and inarguable skill and mastery are solely the fault of the incompetent game developers and their inability to make the Thief class playable. That is definitely what is going on.

If you want to be evasive as a Thief, I suggest using a different weapon set. Sword/Pistol is probably Thief’s least evasive set. That said, you still have 2 dazes that act as interupts (pistol whip and head shot) and Black Powder (blindness + blindness field), and a stun break (Shadow Return), so if you decide to keep at it, you’re hardly left high and dry. That all said you also have a good deal of your utilities and traits are evasive as well (eg. Roll for Initiative, Blind Powder, Last Refuge and a good deal of the Acrobatic Traits) . I’d suggest switching out Signet of Malice for one of the other heals.

@metaphorm – I know how to play the class, it isn’t rocket science. The only reason I am asking for build for bow and dagger is because I am comparing it to the build I already have,

I like hearing everyones point of view of how they play the same specs, this game isn’t a cookie cutter WoW archetype, where every spec is the same spec for each class, in PvP, and PvE, AKA PvP rogue spec in WoW, and PvE Rogue spec.

There’s many variations of each spec, in this game.

But you should have already knew that if you were the “elite pro” thief. So take your obvious trolling, stupidity and rudeness elsewhere.

if you knew how to play the class you wouldn’t be dying to a couple of level 50 PvE mobs. wasn’t that the problem you described in your opening post?

metaphorm.6904:

if you knew how to play the class you wouldn’t be dying to a couple of level 50 PvE mobs. wasn’t that the problem you described in your opening post?

I have soloed 6 mobs at the same time with cooldowns, and sometimes I run into problems because I run a pistol whip build as I stated, and when cooldowns are not up stuff happens. Mainly because I exp in areas with mobs 2 levels over me, most of the time. And you know how fast mob respawns are.

I don’t run a bow build really at the moment because it levels slow compared to S/P, even with deaths compares to sbow, S/P is faster.

Everyone has crap happen to them in PvE, and if you read the original post completely, being the professional thief you are, you would not have derived what you did from it, because the main rant was a PvP rant about melee specs in WvWvW being sub par.

So please quit posting here, I don’t care to read what you seem to be “seeking” to accomplish by trolling, offer specs so I can compare, or shut up and quit posting in here. You are contributing absolutely nothing in the last 2 posts, but wasting my time.

Martym.6971:

Thief is extremely squishy. I am level 50 and run a pistol whip build for pve, the damage is great, but it’s just so easy to die with 2 adds on you.

Try injecting your build with some vitality.

Martym.6971:

I feel like I can do nothing but die and rely on my signet heal procs to try and outheal incoming damage. It feels extremely wrong as a mechanic.

Signet of Malice sucks without healing power… why the hell would you build healing power anyway? Time to rethink this strategy.

Martym.6971:

And don’t get me started in PvP. Melee isn’t a viable option in group PvP. No ways to mitigate damage at ALL, and very easy to die as any melee spec.

Nonsense, I shadowstep right into the middle of zergs rather often so I can chew on some poor player’s face. Once I get noticed I stealth and escape with little to no problems at all. Damage mitigation is for tanks, just have some condition removal and a couple escape utilities and you’re untouchable.

Martym.6971:

Even stealth doesn’t mitigate damage, people can AoE you while in stealth, I’ve died numerous times IN stealth.

Yeah, it’s stealth. You’re not dimension hopping…

Martym.6971:

Thief as a class just is off, big time, against anyone who is half competant, you will simply get shut down and blown up.

I disagree, it’s awfully rare for me to get shut down 1v1 in WvW (I don’t do a lot of sPvP). I feel like you need to re-evaluate your skill level and make sure you’re actually as good as you think you are, lots of players have a hard time accepting they’re not nearly as pro as they think… just saying.

Here is the build I currently use: Shadow Games
I roll with HiS for my heal and damage condition removal, SR for when I need a second to think or save an ally if I’m feeling heroic, BP for that POOF! WHERE’D HE GO?! effect, SoS for the speed boost (remember that using a signet’s active will remove it’s passive until it’s off cooldown), and either Reaper of Grenth or Thieves Guild depending on how I intend to approach a situation. RoG is my aggressive dive into a zerg elite and TG is my defensive I have no actual back up elite.

the problem is your language use. here are some things you have said

• “Thief neds more control…”

• “I feel like I can do nothing but die…”

• “It feels extremely wrong as a mechanic”

• “We need something…”

• “Thief, as a class, is just off…”

do you understand that your attitude is the problem here? in your opening post you’ve made it clear, based on what you have said and the words you used to say it, that you feel that your difficulty is the fault of the class itself. you don’t appear to even for a moment allow for the possiblity that it is you who is having trouble and need to learn something.

if you wanted to ask people for help and advice wouldn’t you do that by saying “i’m having some trouble, can you please teach me a bit about this class and suggest some strategies i can use to help out in these situations that i have found difficult?”

Thieves have plenty of control That’s not an issue. Survivability could use a little work, but not much. Just a slightly higher base health pool would go well towards that.

The only things keeping Thief from being a perfectly balanced class are bugs and oversights such as player culling, melee range misses, friendly spell visual effects making it impossible to see the target, etc.

Black Powder basically makes you invincible against melee enemies.

metaphorm.6904:

the problem is your language use. here are some things you have said

• “Thief neds more control…”

• “I feel like I can do nothing but die…”

• “It feels extremely wrong as a mechanic”

• “We need something…”

• “Thief, as a class, is just off…”

do you understand that your attitude is the problem here? in your opening post you’ve made it clear, based on what you have said and the words you used to say it, that you feel that your difficulty is the fault of the class itself. you don’t appear to even for a moment allow for the possiblity that it is you who is having trouble and need to learn something.

if you wanted to ask people for help and advice wouldn’t you do that by saying “i’m having some trouble, can you please teach me a bit about this class and suggest some strategies i can use to help out in these situations that i have found difficult?”

That’s an opinion. I don’t feel I am having problems “contributing”. I contribute. I just don’t feel it is enough compared to other classes.

Maybe I am asking too much, but I am used to being a Rogue in WoW, able to kill 4 people 1v4, and in Rift, 1v4, I can’t do that in this game, the class is extremely limited compared to other games, and I do not agree in the least survivability is where it needs to be.

How can it be? Stealth is not permanent. You running from people hitting 2 stealth cooldowns doesn’t sound like “survivability” to me. It’s running. Survivability, implies you can survive and still contribute as a melee extremely well, which I feel you cannot do to the extent I wish.

As I said before, that’s the 3rd post where you have contributed NOTHING, and you need me to spell out everything for you, besides trolling even more than you already have besides using your head.

Cyric.7485:

Martym.6971:

Thief is extremely squishy. I am level 50 and run a pistol whip build for pve, the damage is great, but it’s just so easy to die with 2 adds on you.

Try injecting your build with some vitality.

Martym.6971:

I feel like I can do nothing but die and rely on my signet heal procs to try and outheal incoming damage. It feels extremely wrong as a mechanic.

Signet of Malice sucks without healing power… why the hell would you build healing power anyway? Time to rethink this strategy.

Martym.6971:

And don’t get me started in PvP. Melee isn’t a viable option in group PvP. No ways to mitigate damage at ALL, and very easy to die as any melee spec.

Nonsense, I shadowstep right into the middle of zergs rather often so I can chew on some poor player’s face. Once I get noticed I stealth and escape with little to no problems at all. Damage mitigation is for tanks, just have some condition removal and a couple escape utilities and you’re untouchable.

Martym.6971:

Even stealth doesn’t mitigate damage, people can AoE you while in stealth, I’ve died numerous times IN stealth.

Yeah, it’s stealth. You’re not dimension hopping…

Martym.6971:

Thief as a class just is off, big time, against anyone who is half competant, you will simply get shut down and blown up.

I disagree, it’s awfully rare for me to get shut down 1v1 in WvW (I don’t do a lot of sPvP). I feel like you need to re-evaluate your skill level and make sure you’re actually as good as you think you are, lots of players have a hard time accepting they’re not nearly as pro as they think… just saying.

Here is the build I currently use: Shadow Games
I roll with HiS for my heal and damage condition removal, SR for when I need a second to think or save an ally if I’m feeling heroic, BP for that POOF! WHERE’D HE GO?! effect, SoS for the speed boost (remember that using a signet’s active will remove it’s passive until it’s off cooldown), and either Reaper of Grenth or Thieves Guild depending on how I intend to approach a situation. RoG is my aggressive dive into a zerg elite and TG is my defensive I have no actual back up elite.

Thanks for contributing. Very nice post.

But at the same time, I don’t feel that mechanic is right, and you can’t say “when you are noticed”, because people are learning the games mechanics still, and as I said in my original post, I feel when people learn sound animations and class mechanics that they are battling against, it will severly weaken thief more.

Extremely smart dodge double taps already murder our offense in melee specs.

Thieves are very good imho .. but i can understand why people would have the perception that they are weak and die a lot.

choosing traits and slot skills and weapons is not as obvious as it is for some other classes..
there is some very good info from thieves on the forums on ‘how to thief’ but this is getting lost .. we need a thief 101 sticky i think.

i dont want to come to the thief forums and just read LTP noob every time someone genuinely says “i die all the time wtf!!!”

its not an easy class to get your head around…

the game is still young and we should be supporting eachother with best practice.

Martym.6971:

Thanks for contributing. Very nice post.

But at the same time, I don’t feel that mechanic is right, and you can’t say “when you are noticed”, because people are learning the games mechanics still, and as I said in my original post, I feel when people learn sound animations and class mechanics that they are battling against, it will severly weaken thief more.

Extremely smart dodge double taps already murder our offense in melee specs.

I don’t entirely agree with you here as I feel someone who is incredibly adept at dodging can really just toss a monkey wrench into anyone’s PvP gameplay. Then again, I don’t entirely disagree with you either as I think you’re correct regarding people still learning the PvP class mechanics. That being said, we thieves are still learning too. We’ll all grow wiser and more crafty as a community, new tactics will be discovered and developed, reflexes will be honed, newer and more efficient builds will surface… and through it all, I’m confident the thief will adapt and overcome.