Guild Wars 2

What would make thiefs desirable in raids? Right now it is really hard to get a spot as a thief, and you keep having the feeling that you would add more to the group if you took your Ele instead…

The AA damage might help a bit. I’d like to see Choking Gas and Dancing Dagger get some good poison, and most condi utilities could use lower cooldowns.

Wings that require one or two players with very high mobility, possibly to the point where vertical ports are necessary to deactivate some device or something would give us a spot. Also, sections that require on demand or prolonged stealth would give us a spot IF Sneak Gyro would get killed in those sections.

Thief has their own strengths already, only they can’t be utilized in raids because content is designed that way. If they would require very high mobility or stealth they’d be useful.
Autoattack is also something that needs buff especially sword and pistol auto. Other autos are almost good.

I think there’s 3 main directions that could be taken to make thieves viable:

1) Give thieves a unique DPS boost for groups – This would be something like spotter, banners, etc. High end groups will always focus on grabbing professions that have unique buffs first, which is why groups want to have banners from warriors, spotter/frost spirit/gotl/sun spirit from rangers, alacrity from chronos, etc.

The best way for this to be done for thieves would be through buffs to venoms. Venomshare is already one of the best raid options for thieves, but it needs just a bit more love before it becomes popular with raid groups.

2) Give thieves top DPS – If Thief dpscould be higher than other professions’ DPS, then groups will want to bring thieves once they have their group stacked with all the DPS group buffs in order to make the best use of them possible. This was the case for thieves a while back for dungeon speed clear groups before other classes surpassed thieves. This would probably be a very unpopular move if ANet went this way.

3) Adjust boss mechanics so that the strengths of thieves are utilized – This would be my choice. This could be done by creating a boss fight where you need either a lot of blinds, stealth, or someone to use high personal mobility to move around.

Either way, I think thief DPS needs to be a bit more competitive with current builds, even if it’s not made to be distinctly superior.

the announced changes sound pretty good for raids. thief dps was already strong and its getting buffs to dagger/staff/sword. with regards to specific bosses i can see thief being top dps class on VG (easy to backstab) and gorse (staff is already massive dps here with all 3 attacks from #2 hitting consistently. especially if burnzerker is fixed). sabetha is a bit tricky since you stack a lot in front of her so no backstabs and no staff #2, but 30% buff on AA sword sounds nice.

COndi thief is lacking, its not far behind other options but it needs love.

Hopefully future wings introduce mechanics that favor something like quick movement + burst (run around platform killing unmovable adds or something like that) or stealth, or some blocks to utilize the new basilisk venom.