Guild Wars 2

I’m totally in love with my thief :-)

I just got mine to level 80 few days ago and it seems that a lot of folks are quite negative on this forum. I am not experienced enough yet to figure out what the new patch would do to us, but to me, the thief AoE like the necro, run like a warrior, disengage/blink/stealth like a mesmer, and with access to stability/condition removal.

To demonstrate, I decided to take my new thief to get some Tier 1 WvW Zerg fight action. A lot of people think that thieves are useless ZvZ, but I find that our perma poison super useful. Since I’m a new thief, I would love to get some feedback on my gameplay though.

I intentionally choose semi-long (i.e. uncut) videos to show close quarter combats with a lot of enemies around (Tier 1). Because that is what a lot of people say where thieves are useless. I don’t believe them :-p

Great access to boons/stability to fight close to the frontline - Fight with the frontline in the choke point.
Hills – 4 min

Apply massive poison condition in ZvZ - Fighting in small choke points vs ZD (top european zerg busting guild):
NW Camp – 5 min

Showing how slippery the thief class is - Surviving/contesting in the lord pit when outmanned.
Garrison – 13 min
Garrison – 3 min

Showing how good we are at escaping - Not dying, even when your own zerg wipes. This translates to high up-time on our weapon/guard stacks.
Bay – 8 min
Garrison -2.5 min

um a thief is not wanted for ZvZ or GvG. Maybe 1 for scouting, but that’s it. The only class worse in this area is ranger.

PS your twitch stream kinda lags, I don’t know if it’s just lagging for me or for everyone.

Excalibur.9748:

um a thief is not wanted for ZvZ or GvG. Maybe 1 for scouting, but that’s it. The only class worse in this area is ranger.

That’s just so spectacularly wrong it borders on hilarious.

Excalibur.9748:

um a thief is not wanted for ZvZ or GvG. Maybe 1 for scouting, but that’s it. The only class worse in this area is ranger.

Yesterday a blue zerg was up on the hill north of longview (which was had a ton of arrow carts but no trebs in them for some reason) doing the usual catapaulting the north wall. Our zerg was somewhat smaller than theirs (probably like 2/3 the size, maybe less). When we gathered and approached them, they prepared to charge us. Me and another thief decided to cloak and dagger into their zerg and run straight through them to the two catapaulters. We took both catapaulters out in a matter of seconds and destroyed them before the enemy zerg could realize what happened.

I don’t see how you can say that a thief is not wanted for WvW, there’s so much things a thief can pull off that most other classes can’t.

laggy for me too

you dmg is bit low while i am doing 1-2k dmg on AA on shortbow you do 0.5k

i love my thief even in group play but it doesnt matter how you look at it, every other class can do it better than us and contribute more than us (maybe not rangers )

the only thing thief is better at is doing fast huge dmg to get down ppl
so basically i go for the backline and harvest them 1 by 1
my tactics are FIFO – first in first out like with daggerstrom+shadow step to cripple and 2-4k aoe dmg and making some confusion when my team will burst them making them using all their burst on me
or LIFO – last in first out after my team burst i jump to the backline and start harvest the necro, ele who do the aoe dmg until i get focused and jump out

Thieves are great in both ZvZ and GvG, most guilds run at least 1. Of course you have more guards, wars, staff ele’s etc but thieves bring a lot to the table and can sustain just fine – you just need to get the single target burst mentality out of your head. Saying they are not wanted is just plain wrong.

Blast finishers, daggerstorm, warrior steal, ranger steal (most visible and one of the best waterfields) SB does excellent damage to multiple targets. Choking Gas is very powerful on enemy regroups. Signet of Malice will help you sustain.

In GvG thieves do the same as above, only periphery pressure is more of a focus. SoM can be swapped out for Withdraw. Most good guilds run at least 1 thief in GvG.

People love to cry on message boards.

Stealth classes have historically attracted the player who loves to whine the most.

I’m loving my thief, even with the Dec 10 changes it won’t make any difference to me as I don’t run those traits on my D/D. With the initiative regen I should end up even stronger.

I do great in zergs/small man/solo.

The strength of a thief is knowing when to fight and when not to fight, and who to fight. Hit and run, deliver big damage and then stealth, rinse and repeat. You’re not a sustain class, so don’t try to be.

Manage your initiative and don’t fight when your abilities are on cooldown.

The Hammer.5960:

Excalibur.9748:

um a thief is not wanted for ZvZ or GvG. Maybe 1 for scouting, but that’s it. The only class worse in this area is ranger.

That’s just so spectacularly wrong it borders on hilarious.

I’ll just put this here. Looks like a lot of people are still very much uninformed.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/WvWvW-Warriors-Only

Excalibur.9748:

I’ll just put this here. Looks like a lot of people are still very much uninformed.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/WvWvW-Warriors-Only

It sure does…

Here’s a great Za Drots theif in ZvZ…

…and here’s one of our CoN thieves in GvG action.

(in this vid we swap out for another thief for some rounds)

Sorry to spam a bunch of vids, but you get the picture, and hopefully you guys will enjoy.

in the zvz the thief did very well

but in the gvg the thief in some fights had hard time to take down the backline fast and more use of Infiltrator’s Arrow which result with 1 less effective member in the group so it was more 19v20 (or 14v15) and he hardly use the full potential of the d/p and spamm only 1 (so he would have been more useful with d/d cnd on hand for 4-5k dmg )
and nice vids!

guild roaming – thief pov:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6PDtDkdEIs
and smaller one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi5pnOMhDLw&feature=youtu.be

Our guild usually runs a thief night once per week 20+ thieves in wvw and has no problems farming enemy zergs open field in T1. We have been doing so since release. It is tricky to command but it is a whole lot of fun. We are doing one tomorrow night around 5:30ish pst, if your on JQ shoot any [SG] a tell.

messiah.1908:

but in the gvg the thief in some fights had hard time to take down the backline fast and more use of Infiltrator’s Arrow which result with 1 less effective member in the group so it was more 19v20 (or 14v15) and he hardly use the full potential of the d/p and spamm only 1 (so he would have been more useful with d/d cnd on hand for 4-5k dmg )
and nice vids!

You are totally wrong about 19v20. Somebody was hitting him, so it’s already “19v19”, roflmao, so stupid to write that thief, that is taking down key targets is a Zero in GvG. It\s not all about AoEing, you know?
Thief is both good and fun in WvW & GvG.

The Hammer.5960:

Excalibur.9748:

I’ll just put this here. Looks like a lot of people are still very much uninformed.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/WvWvW-Warriors-Only

It sure does…

Here’s a great Za Drots theif in ZvZ…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9ElLOBQt6E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyGBMQio7oo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGYvS_dlgqg

…and here’s one of our CoN thieves in GvG action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDm8TMJZnDE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VkQIgKv7ow

(in this vid we swap out for another thief for some rounds)
Sorry to spam a bunch of vids, but you get the picture, and hopefully you guys will enjoy.

LOVE the videos. I have fought ZD a few times this week. They are a strong group and I have a lot of respect for them. I’m going to adjust my (home-grown) build a bit based on what I see in your videos.

One thing I would add though that might not work for most of us 1) your thief seems to be quite high in WXP rank (i.e. Applied Fortitude) so he can sacrifice vitality for DPS – say go with Knight instead of PVT stats and 2) he is in a known group so I think his build is more GvG than ZvZ. For example, he can use dagger storm generously because he can expect to get stability/condition removal from the guardian in his party at crucial moments.

As for dmg, I have no idea what the current meta is and its just a build that I threw together (no time). But generally, in Tier 1, ZvZ battle, folks run mostly PVT gears (power-toughness-vitality). Also, I was using mostly SB #4. If I wanted more dps, I would use SB #2. I feel that DPS is a job better left for our dd Ele/Necro/etc..After all if there’s only 1/20 in a zerg that is a thief (as others mentioned) and you go down, who is going to poison/blast/etc..? There isn’t that kind of redundancy for us compare to guard/warrior/ele etc..in terms of roles.

For video lags, some of the early videos I didn’t have the buffer setup correctly. Also, sometimes what you see is lag is actually I have a quick “look behind” hotkey setup and that could mess up the stream. Finally, I play the game on my 13" macbook pro..LOL.

@Haro.6758, I’m in JQ too and love to join. Maybe 20 of us can pop our thief guild at the same time and run 60 thieves all at once :-)

Cost.6917:

messiah.1908:

but in the gvg the thief in some fights had hard time to take down the backline fast and more use of Infiltrator’s Arrow which result with 1 less effective member in the group so it was more 19v20 (or 14v15) and he hardly use the full potential of the d/p and spamm only 1 (so he would have been more useful with d/d cnd on hand for 4-5k dmg )
and nice vids!

You are totally wrong about 19v20. Somebody was hitting him, so it’s already “19v19”, roflmao, so stupid to write that thief, that is taking down key targets is a Zero in GvG. It\s not all about AoEing, you know?
Thief is both good and fun in WvW & GvG.

i said “in some fights” and “hard time” not ZERO
again even in 19v19 a necro would do much more than a thief
the thief role in gvg is the hardest i think and imo it didnt go all well in those videos – sry

the thief role is to take down the ele or necro fast OR draw to him the fire for 2-3 enemies so the battle will be 20v19 fast or 19v16 so his team has more easy time to win.
if he just shadow step or #5 sb he just running away contributing nothing while he could stay more in stealth with d/p and spike hard key targets from behind. but running with the group is the role of necro who can do more aoe dmg and more spike dmg.

but good job staying alive (i know its hard)

In the GvG video you see my guild facing Mya – at the time one of the top GvG guilds in EU. Our thieves role was harrasment and support and his job was made very difficult by an excellent group of opponents. :P

I would welcome someone to give an example of thief PoV at that level of GvG doing a better job if you can find it! (I’m sure they are out there but I could not find one ^^)