Guild Wars 2

I just hit level 80 with my wonderful Engineer, and am now ready to start another profession. I’ve tried going into the mists and checking out skills and whatnot, but I’m a big PvE player and the mists don’t seem to give me a good knowledge of dungeon and event survivability and usefulness.

So I’ve been looking at the thief and the warrior. The warrior keeps getting boring for me above level 10 (seems like just a bunch of signets in the utility slots), but the thief seems to keep moving along with fun things to do.

My question is, in PvE (with SOME PvP/WvWvW), how is the thief in comparison to the Warrior? In survivability? In handling groups of monsters? In dungeons?

Any advice is appreciated!

Go Guardian if you wanna survival+damage+passives w/o signets (and more passives with signets).You won’t be troubling if your class will be nerfed to the ground as well.

I thought about going with a Guardian, but the lack of ranged attacks really drives me nuts.

Thief range is capped at 900. Warriors have things other than signets, like banners. Dem banners dude, they are awesome.

Both professions are extremely viable in all types of PvE. You shouldn’t be put off by all-signet warriors any more than you should be put off by opener combo thieves. Those aren’t the only ways to play either profession.

For comparison: The thief is going to be innately more squishy (just due to armor/base HP differences) but should be more mobile. In open-world PvE where defense doesn’t really matter much the detriments of the thief are far outweighed by the benefits. Easy access to run speed and stealth makes exploring and traveling a breeze.

Elsewhere, they can both play support, they can both play glass cannon, they can both play heavily survivable. Thief may require more action on your part due to the higher mobility, but mobility allows you to increase your capabilities via action instead of stat points, which can be very rewarding. Warriors bring more mass-event utility via banners that boost everyone, whereas thief utility is usually limited to their group. Thieves, however, have some excellent methods for tagging mass-mob events.

The high risk, high reward gameplay of the thief is the most fun of the professions in my opinion. Play a thief well and you will hardly ever take damage in PvE. It’s rewarding having to stay on your toes.

If you want range, go back to your engineer. If you want damage on pve, go warrior. If you want to dodge everything, go thief on pve. If you want to pvp, then you shouldn’t be asking us and decide for yourself.

I am in the same boat as you. I leveled an Engineer to 80, and decided to roll a new toon, so I debated for a while on which class to roll. I have now rolled two Warriors, and only gotten them to about level 10 / 20 respectively, then deleted one and began a Thief (after a small stint to 20 on an Elementalist).

I am much more enjoying the Thief vs the Warrior. With the Thief, I have much better mobility, as well as dodge mechanics that allow me to complete many PvE events solo, or in a small group.

I would say to you to try out both until about level 20, and see which you like and go with it. For me it was Thief.

(PS – Edit)

Another thing I liked about rolling the thief is the fact that the professions I leveled on my Engineer can make some gear/weapons for my thief. That opened up two new professions that I could use on the thief. (Went Leatherworking/Huntsman on the Engi, Weaponsmith/Jeweler on the Thief)

Thief is more fun IMO, but Warrior is stronger. Warrior also has the added benefit of being immune to major nerfs.

bwillb.2165:

Thief is more fun IMO, but Warrior is stronger. Warrior also has the added benefit of being immune to major nerfs.

Pretty much this. You can do way more damage than a thief and will never have to worry from a nerf bat because Warriors’ are apparently in a good place right now.