Guild Wars 2

Ok, so I have been staying away from Thief because I just suck at it.

I have always loved the stealthy characters in games.
Pretty much in every single Elder Scrolls my main was a sneaky assassin.

I havent really done any PvE with my Thief yet. I literally just remade a her.

But in PvP IDK what im doing wrong if its the builds im using or what, but it seems like no matter what I do, i just instantly die the moment an enemy attacks me.

Im not sure if its just because im not dodging right or what, but it seems like if i play another class every thief i fight just destroys me and is able to jump in and out of stealth.

Im never able to stay stealth for very long in fights, and i seem like i do 0 damage.

I just dont get what im doing wrong.

And im not sure if its better to run a power based build or a Condi based build with them.

My next question is, how are Thieves for PvE? Are they wanted for dungeons and stuff, are they semi easy to Lvl i dont mind if they are not the easiest thats w/e, i just hate trying to Lvl a character with it being nearly impossible to do anything alone.

A thief requires quick reactions and accurate predictions to kill people.
Likewise other people require quick reactions and accurate predictions to kill thieves.

Always be one step ahead of your opponent, for instance you can know when a warrior will cast eviscerate before he even knows he’ll press the button himself. Sometimes it ofc can be fully random and hit you at the right moment and kill you. To be able to be one step ahead of your opponent you need a lot of experience and knowledge of other classes, but to be able to process the knowledge and experience you will also need to know how to utilize the thief to its maximum.

In sPvP Thief is the only class I’ve played where I have never at any moment been thinking “Oh look there’s a -class + build-… free kill huehuehue..” All classes and builds can be a challenging attempt in 1v1 for thief. As a thief you should try to avoid 1v1’s as long as you can gain anything better by going elsewhere, you have really great mobility in spvp.

Thief was my first class, and in the beginning I never had an easy time in PvP, pretty much everyone was ganking me, and elementalists could pretty much choose between ganking me or just as simple, run away, back then. This ofc started having an impact on my motivation and I started watching some vids on youtbe and noticed Wild Bill (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F8FcUCoyBQ&feature=kp)
after watching I learnt a lot of nifty tricks and decided to try out his P/D build, suddenly I found myself killing people in 1v2’s and 1v3’s in spvp, even naked a couple of games.

But in an sPvP perspective, I was a bad addition to the game, I was completely annoying to the other team while I did more bad than good to my own team, but it did give me more motivation to stay on thief. Afterwards I swapped to D/P + SB while perma stealth was still possible (0/6/6/2/0 with might on signet and 2-3 signets) and I could appear out of nowhere backstabbing for 10k+ on squishy opponents, and during my time on P/D I had learnt a lot about the other classes and I could outplay them better. I enjoyed this build a lot too, eventually it got boring and like P/D it was never really good for the team and frustrating for the opponents. Eventually I started playing more with D/D+SB 5/6/0/0/3 and D/P or S/D+SB 2/6/0/0/6, and I began learning to optimize myself for tPvP and avoiding mistakes and awkward situations and with high mobility I was moving around the map quickly to aid my team with quick and clean kills and AoE pressure and back-capping. Suddenly I felt like a so great addition to the team that I even felt like I was carrying the pugs I play with.

Sorry for wall of text, but could be useful to share some experience.
Here are some of the best direct dmg builds I’ve played for sPvP:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Made-a-thief-need-a-bow-build/first#post3982277
I placed them in tiers based on how great they perform.

And as for leveling try S/P, you’ll have a nice cleave on AA, Pistolwhip for evade and blindfield to keep yourself from getting hit.

As a their, don’t be a hero. You see someone on your team in a duel, get in there and kill.(if you feel nice and they duel isn’t one sided, I tell them I’ll let them duel it out, then I come for the kill in the end)

Don’t be the first in the fight

If you are going to make a 1v1 YOU choose how.that fight is going to happen, you always fight on your terms , if at any point the odds fall from your favor you wanna get out. In fights kill the squishy people or the near death then get out and pick a new

You wanna go into fights, with one target and when he is down, you move to another. Tale them down one by one.

Understand how your enemies are going to play, and outplay them.

This is from my noob self :P but I hold my own pretty well.