Guild Wars 2

First of all, let me give a little background about myself. I’ve been playing MMOs for more than a decade. In most MMOs, I traditionally play the thief/rogue/assassin type class. Unfortunately, I found myself dying a lot in beta as a Thief so I initially switched to Ranger at release. As an 80 Ranger, I didn’t do to well and took a long break from the game up up until about a month ago. I never did greatly as a Ranger. I had a ton of fun in group WvW play but if I went off by myself, I was easily killed even in 99% of 1v1 situations.

Since I’ve returned, I leveled an Elementalist to 80 but it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea aside from d/d. After some further research and WvW experience, I decided I would go Guardian. I hadn’t always been one for survivability or “simplicity” but I’m not the best PvPer in GW2, despite being great at most other MMO’s (4 time Gladiator in WoW, three of which as a Rogue) and the idea of being able to help out my team while still being able to hold my own if I were to want to go roaming (this is my preferred thing to do in WvW but I often join the zerg for the reward incentives).

Not that I don’t love Guardian and find it viable for what I want to do, despite having an immense amount of difficulty tagging anything in zergs due to low fps and scepter speed/melee range, but I’m looking to level another character and perhaps find something more suitable to my liking. So far, I’ve narrowed it between Engineer and Thief.

My initial experience with Thief hasn’t been good. I’m frustrated because I see others doing so well, especially in sPvP, but I found myself dying instantly and frantically trying to accustom myself to the initiative/no-cooldown gameplay mechanic, which I must say I absolutely love. On the other hand, Engineer just doesn’t seem to have near as much potential for me – aside from support, range, and fun goofing off with a flamethrower. I’m in dire need of figuring out which of these classes is right for me as someone who doesn’t necessarily like dying instantly, wants to hold their own in 1v1 or maybe even be able to drop someone in a group without feeling like the whole attempt was futile, and being able to roam WvW without feeling useless.

tl;dr; Can’t decide between Engineer or Thief. I like WvW roaming and being able to hold my own and not dying instantly. Please take into consideration the patch notes changes and feel free to ask any other questions if it’ll help you help me.

And before anyone answers with this, I’ve tried both classes and have a lot of fun on each aside from the fact that Thief particularly seems to have a learning curve. Will I get used to it, eventually?

Well for roaming i would say a thief for sure not that engineers aren’t good. Both have good mobility but for roaming being able to get away from a bad situation nothing beats a thief.

Also this is more opinion but i feel the thief has one of the highest skills caps that rewards you for playing well.

You should check out that video the build is still the same thought today’s patch might change that but that video is one of the reason i went with a thief.

Also you will get used to it just the first few days getting the muscle memory to do what you need to quickly can hurt.

I’ve mained a thief since beta, and I usually play the rouge type of class in each game. I gave the engineer a try, but it wasn’t really my cup of tea, so I would definitely choose the Thief.

We rely on mobility and being everywhere but nowhere at the same time. We need to simply avoid getting hit, because we can’t take many hits before we die. You have to always be on your toes, jumping around blinding, interrupting, evading, shadow stepping and disappearing into the shadows – or you will die. I love the play style, which is probably the reason I never play any other class for more than a few hours before I’m back on my thief.

Our roaming capabilities are unparalleled. Passive speed boost, lots of swiftness and quite a few shadow steps make us the roaming king. Our love for deception make us very hard to catch, and even more difficult to see. We can enter and leave fights as we please, and we can hit like a truck.

Yes. You will get used to it, but it requires lots of practice. Your hands will get used to the quick tapping and you’ll learn it sooner or later.

Btw; welcome to the Thief!

I had an explanation written but I hate proof reading so I’m redoing it and making it simpler.

I recommend engineer. Thieves suck unless you make them good. Engineers are good unless you make them suck.

You’ll get used to thieves if you play them long enough.

Both can hold their own but engineers can do it better imo.

If you plan to play a dagger mainhand build on thief plan on being very easy to kill.

Thieves have better dps but less support, and CC skills.

I’m biased but you know what, when thieves randomly throw down SR and get other thieves revealed it really kitten es me off. Stop throwing down SR! Use blinding power!

WonderfulCT.6278:

I had an explanation written but I hate proof reading so I’m redoing it and making it simpler.

I recommend engineer. Thieves suck unless you make them good. Engineers are good unless you make them suck.

You’ll get used to thieves if you play them long enough.

Both can hold their own but engineers can do it better imo.

If you plan to play a dagger mainhand build on thief plan on being very easy to kill.

Thieves have better dps but less support, and CC skills.

I’m biased but you know what, when thieves randomly throw down SR and get other thieves revealed it really kitten es me off. Stop throwing down SR! Use blinding power!

Engineer is a strong choice, but the support and damage the short bow can add is pretty strong. Dagger thieves usually go with berserker, so yes most of them die fast…

I completely agree on your statement regarding SR! Smoke screen is much better (and hilarious to use against engineers).

Voting for Thief as well.

Even tho i am still kinda “new” to the game, i always (like you) choose the rogue type, and thief here is awesome.

As Geiir said above, we have to always be on our toes, blind, evade, stealth etc, which makes the class much more fun to play.

And yes, if u get used to it you will be able to survive a lot (SR it there to help you), while other classes don’t have many good options to survive, giving you a bigger “bonus” if u want to wonder around WvW, because if u are in a bad situation u can easily escape and return when u are ready again.

P.S sorry for my English.

There are some pretty dominant 1v1 Engineer builds out there, but IMO, the thief is better over all when it comes to roaming simply do to the fact that thieves are the best class in the game when it comes to getting away from large groups of enemies.

I’m not taking the patch notes for today into consideration, as the leaked notes are unconfirmed and the entire meta can change by a single small change that could be well overlooked in notes… (e.g. what happened to Ranger a few patches back — BW OP)

Engineer is powerful. Extremely powerful. If you know how to play it well, you’ll be near invincible while dishing out a lot of area-of-attack damage with your grenades and bombs, while having an absurd amount of damage migration tools. The Engineer has a learning curve that is mostly about making the most of the profession and how/when to switch to weapon kits. The tactics are pretty much the same independent on what profession or build are facing; stealthies just need to be thrown grenades at in order to kill them.

The thief on the other hand is extremely weak. Don’t stop reading there. You have very little armor and health and you absolutely need to maximize (critical) damage in order to take someone down. Condition builds do not work against anyone who’s got half a brain. Because of that squishy nature, you really need to learn the ins-and-outs of whatever profession AND build you are attacking in order to take them down. A bad player can be taken down almost instantly with basilisk/steal/c&d/backstab, but a semi-decent player will break the stun and evade the bulk of the damage, putting him/her into a position to finish you off. Unlike the Engineer, learning the Thief is easy — but you need to learn the mechanics of every other profession and build, and that takes time.

So, take your pick. The Engineer is easier to master, but when caught cannot get out as easily as a Thief. The Thief is ‘weak’ but mastering exploiting the weaknesses of other classes makes it extremely potent, but requires more invested time (It’s best to create every other profession to learn about them).

I would say thief as well. The learning curve pays off – but be prepared to die a lot while you’re still learning, as timing is crucial (much more so, I find, than with other professions). Also, a thief has such ridiculously good mobility that pretty much nothing can catch you if you’re not letting it catch (up to) you. Conversely, said mobility can be used to pursue an enemy if they’re trying to get away.

The engineer is … well, the engineer. This class has loads of problems on it’s own – not saying it can’t be fun to play and can’t be made to work in a WvW roaming situation. But it’s certainly much, much harder to pull off.

Edit: these are the Thief forums, of course there’ll be a bias present here ;p

Sarej.3802:

My initial experience with Thief hasn’t been good. I’m frustrated because I see others doing so well, especially in sPvP, but I found myself dying instantly

the thief is the most OP class in the entire game !
they can perma stealth, and hit enemies for 35k+ backstabs
also it’s a rumor that they are invincible while in stealth.

at least, this is what the majority of the non-thief population say

Engies are atm the most OP class out there.
If you want to have a great roamer and still do amazing on zergs, go engie.

Imho you should not play what you like. What you should do is play the class you are the most effective with(consistency and reliability) and everything else will fall into place. Took me 500hrs of spvp to realize this.