Guild Wars 2

I personally main thief and know most of it’s flaws and weaknesses, one being that it’s survivability being based on evades and blinds. I have seen a drop in the amount of newbie thieves running around in PvE lately and was wondering if the class should not be too much of a “high risk, high reward” styled class or shouldn’t have such a steep learning curve. Let me know your opinion

About 4 years ago I started GW2 and began with a thief. I’ve chosen it for two reasons: style and stealth. If I had my current knowledge back then, it would have been a walk in the park. It sadly felt so squishy, most of the time I was running away from enemies or hiding in the shadows. The stealth was great for exploring, but as I did not know anything about the traits or even combos, it was mostly shadow-refuge only :S.

After one year I switched to engineer as main, where I stand till today. Every attempt of reviving my old thief results in a bleeding nose. Condition, damage, stealth – no matter what I try, I lack the training and the perfection to play this class correctly. To add insult to injury, I started a guardian few months ago with no experience on that class at all. It is my most powerful character now (damage wise).

I even tried to do the unthinkable and maxed out the defensive stats for once. Still feels like balancing a raw egg on my head. Now the thief is degraded to a mule again, until I find enough motivation for the next attempt to revive it. I think it is just me and not the class itself.

When I come across newbies who play thieves, I show them the possibilities and the ways to improve. May they have a better experience …

Imho all classes with a basic set of weapons and straight mechanics like warrior, guardian, thief & ranger are good for beginners. Revenant, mesmer, elementalist & engineer require knowledge to use properly and basic understanding of some game mechanics. That is why I do not recommend them as starters. But when I see a newbie on one of those, the last I would do is ask him to switch his class ^^.

Excelsior.

I personally see more thieves than I would like. Or better: I hear them. Wandering trough Tyria, minding my own business, and I hear rapid dual pistol fire and the distinctive thief dodge noise quite often. Yesterday I even saw a female Charr thief! That was rare³!

About beginner friendly.. Uhm.. All of the game is, when played properly, beginner friendly. Fine, I went from Maguuma Jungle right to newbie areas, but when I put my Engineer on vacation and started my “career” as murdering thief with his Asuran twin brother, I never felt bad or being in trouble. It was the real opposite. I recorded several videoclips just to see my animations frame by frame, the sound and look of the dodges, I love to stab my foes with that dagger stealth attack and in general it feels just “cool” to play this class. One of the few classes that are not cheesy “ninja” or generic “rogues”, but actual thieves. So aesthetically I do not see a reason why this class should not be popular.

About the playstyle, well, I am not sure what happens in HoT-based content because it shifts up several gears and goes into turbo mode, but since we talk about beginners, it’s probably THE class to be. It has a nice mix of button mashing melee-dagger-action with stealth passages, shadow-stepping and salto-over-people’s-heads awesomeness as well as the situations where I could take out a bunch of enemies with my dual pistols from an elevated point (a rock in this case) by pumping all of my initiative into “unload”. They showed up, I surprised them with some lead, dead, repeat. After 15 seconds I paced trough a pile of Ettin corpses. It was probably the safest fight I had in days. And satisfying as hell. If I would’ve been in trouble I could’ve stealthed myself away. How cool is that?

Also the way of deciding how to use your initiative is just great. No cooldowns, so if you want to burst someone down, do it. This is giving me freedom I want and need when I play. Not every beginner is also seeking for mind-numbing gameplay.

The problem with cheesy, actual “beginner friendly” classes are that they look super boring. I saw some newbie fight in the Metrica Province and it looked so boring and spammy to press only 1 skill button that I am glad I started with Engineer and now switched to thief. Another “press 1 button” game like FF14 or your generic Asia grinder would’ve made me quit already. GW2 combat is great and to get the fun out of it, it requires a class that is fun instead of dumbing down fights with stupid pseudo-popular classes that do not show anything to new players.

I am by far not a super player. I’d say average to below-average, because I enjoy the game more instead of getting super nervous and sophisticated. But I still died only 4 times yet. And these were very stupid deaths. Almost suitable for the “Benny Hill Theme” song.

I started as thief and it was good profession to start. I used sword/pistol and pistol/pistol. All you needed to do is start with 2 or just walk to the enemy and then 5 (to blind) and spam 3 (stun and evade)and 1 when out of initiative . If you need to attack in range use pistol 3. Normal and veteran foes die fast. But you are glassy and die fast if get hit.

The class is definitely not so noob friendly – but when i joined game i assumed it will be just as hard as playing rogue for first time so i kept playing no matter how much i died. Frankly pve in this game is way more forgiving on thieves than wow was to rogue back in wrath for example. The real wall, really really steep wall is pvp actually. It takes sooooooo long to get decent on thief there. But i guess that is the beauty of the class – you feel good when you beat enemies you shouldn’t. The only problem is, on top of being hard class to master, it also got nerfed so many times it is often simply not worth it to play.

In WTS enemy team said that they simply ignored the thief. That is just sad to what the class succumbed to compared to first years.

i thought thats supposed to be the whole point of thief: playing the game on a higher difficulty than everyone else and getting satisfaction from that

but yeah the class isnt the best choice for a new player, probably the worst class to begin your gw2 experience with

Getting good at GW2 involves knowing the finisher combinations. Thief is just so reliant on finisher type combinations that the initial skill floor is higher. Also because the hp/armor is highly unforgiving the class relies more on well timed dodges and positioning—which you need anyways to land CnD if you are using offhand dagger.

Being good at thief relies on being good at the fundamentals. In a pvp setting it also involves knowing your enemy to exploit their weaknesses. Thief is, more so than other classes, a good way to learn about the game overall. The stolen skills for instance give an opportunity to learn combo fields and to learn some skill interactions—like the warrior whirl projectile reflect.

Would argue it’s more noob-friendly now more than ever before. Daredevil single-handedly pretty much put the skill floor below core warrior imho.

Zedek.8932:

Yesterday I even saw a female Charr thief! That was rare³!

Hey, we female charr thieves aren’t THAT rare! We’re just so good at our jobs you don’t hear us.