Guild Wars 2

Hi just like my title states I am trying to decide on either playing a thief or ele. After the patch I am just curious which is better for pve for doing fractals, farming, and some WvW.

I wanna play a more melee role not sure how well ele does that compared to thief. I like thief except I started one and their survivability at low lvls is very poor. That or I am just playing wrong lol.

Ele I enjoy as well but I don’t like switching elements every 10 secs gets really annoying.

survivability for thief is directly proportional to your build and skill at actively avoiding damage.

D/D-deathblossom

x/P-blinding powder

are the generally accepted PVE solo weapon sets. shortbow for kiting/large groups.

some people like dagger mainhand for more damage, others like sword for its ability to hit more then one target per swing.

i think elemental dagger/dagger is still a good build for them, but im fuzzy beyond that.

for WvW thieves are relegated to roaming, no direct siege participation now that shortbows range was nerfed.

fractals, i hear shortbow or p/p in your second slot, first slot varies, x/p is weaker here since many enemies and i believe all bosses are immune to blinds.

S/D with 30 points in trickery is widely considered a good fractal choice. can hit multiple targets, multiple forms of evade/get away abilities, and its ability to strip boons combined with trickeries boon stripping and boon granting is decent support too.

deathblossom i think will do good damage in fractals as well.

there is also the stealth support one…but im fuzzy on that one sorry.

hope this helped

of this, as long as things stay relatively the same, i see myself doing S/P+shortbow in PVE and S/D+either P/P or shortbow in fractals.

doing either S/D or D/P in WvW roaming

Thief seems to be what you are looking for sir!

I main one and have done all the content your are interested in. I like the active play that forces you to be aware and dodge or die. It makes it more interesting to me.

For a new Thief let me suggest this
S/P + SB

For weaker mobs you can use skill 5 , stand in it, and auto-attack to deal cleave damage while blinding them all and laughing. (Laughing optional)

There is also Skill 3 which will daze (just as good as stun in pve) followed by a flurry of attacks. During the flurry you will evade. This is another way to deal damage and be safe.

For SB

You can use skill 5 to shadowstep a short distance to get to a safe spot.
You also have skill 3 with an evade and a cripple arrow. If you get in a bind while learning some mobs behavior you can chain skill 3 and maintain evades as long as you have iniative.

Last and most important

LoS – Line of sight, you can hide around a corner and then aggro mobs they will usually walk right up to you and stack so you can cleave them all down

Circle Strafe- Running in a circle around a mob will allow you to outpace it due to the choppy turning the AI uses. If you have further questions let me know I will try to assist.

havent played ele, but from my understanding they are a solid all-around profession in pve/wvw and pvp. Regarding thieves, they can do well in wvw, but tend to take a decent amount of skill to play in high end pve (monsters hit harder and there is a low margin for error…if you miss your dodges, you can easily die).

I think it comes down to your playstyle and goals.
Thieves are all about hit and run, opportunist style play.
Eles tend to either have more staying power in their tanky builds, or more range options, and lots of aoe.
Thieves swap weapons only to access the skills they want. So shortbow would be used for ranged and mobility, while melee may be used for the majority of a 1v1 battle.
Eles swap attunements to access specific skills and to deal with cooldowns on skills, so they tend to swap often.

I’ve played both for many months and I would recommend Elementalist. You can fill more roles than you can with a Thief. Just play which is more fun for you though.

It’s not hard to burst on an Elementalist either (meaning you have that option as well):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD1S_sP90Ao

Ordamus.1978:

Hi just like my title states I am trying to decide on either playing a thief or ele. After the patch I am just curious which is better for pve for doing fractals, farming, and some WvW.

I wanna play a more melee role not sure how well ele does that compared to thief. I like thief except I started one and their survivability at low lvls is very poor. That or I am just playing wrong lol.

Ele I enjoy as well but I don’t like switching elements every 10 secs gets really annoying.

Thief kills things, moves quickly, and can escape anything.

Ele dies, and dies some more.

Why is that a choice for you?

ARM.3912:

Ordamus.1978:

Hi just like my title states I am trying to decide on either playing a thief or ele. After the patch I am just curious which is better for pve for doing fractals, farming, and some WvW.

I wanna play a more melee role not sure how well ele does that compared to thief. I like thief except I started one and their survivability at low lvls is very poor. That or I am just playing wrong lol.

Ele I enjoy as well but I don’t like switching elements every 10 secs gets really annoying.

Thief kills things, moves quickly, and can escape anything.

Ele dies, and dies some more.

Why is that a choice for you?

Ignore this guy, he has no idea what he’s talking about and appears to be stuck in the month post-launch where Elementalists were considered the weakest class.

yeah, I have lost many duels as a thief to elementalists. They can be very tough to kill, with good aoe burst damage. Basically the bane of thieves. Then again, vs a noob elementalist, a noob thief should win -that’s probably because a solid ele build takes a bit more skill to get started with than a solid thief build (skill floor), at the other end, (skill ceiling) both can improve drastically with player skill.