Guild Wars 2

I rolled a thief to try it out, I love the weapon skills and the abilities seem interesting but I can’t seem to take any hits at all. I’m only level 9 granted, but it seems fighting most things even just one on one ends with me at half health at best if I melee.

I use my dodges, I use my evasive attacks, but it seems I run out of any way to evade things well before I kill my target and anything with a ranged attack just eats me alive since you can’t avoid projectiles without using “dodge”. Even ones that clearly miss as far as the animation goes seem to hit unless a dodge is used.

I also play Tera, so perhaps I’m simply to used to actively being able to avoid things by actually getting out of the way rather then having avoiding attacks be completely reliant on abilities. That said, it just feels so very clunky I figure I must be missing something.

I’m currently using sword/dagger and shortbow.

To my understanding the Thief is heavily reliant on the players ability to dodge, and out-smart their opponent(s), while you mentioned you are actively dodging attacks, you might want to work the terrain as well, if your having troubles with ranged mobs/players, perhaps putting trees/rocks/hills ect. between you and your adversary, may work surprisingly well, just a thought.

Hope this helps!

equip a pistol off hand and use black powder, GG

With sword/dagger you are able to “stun” your opponent by going in stealth walking up
behind them and then using your first weapon skill, you then get off 5 auto-attacks
or something else for 4 seconds, before you can stealth and daze the target again.

Sword/Pistol might also be a good option early in the game, since it has the ability to
create a field that blinds opponents near you, it also has a channeled
damage skill which stuns your target and makes you evade attacks for its duration.

With Shortbow, spamming clusterbomb while close up, allows you to use it more frequently. And try evade attacks.

Thief gets a lot stronger later on when you have all traits unlocked and have some decent equipment.

Quxudais.5142:

I rolled a thief to try it out, I love the weapon skills and the abilities seem interesting but I can’t seem to take any hits at all. I’m only level 9 granted, but it seems fighting most things even just one on one ends with me at half health at best if I melee.

I use my dodges, I use my evasive attacks, but it seems I run out of any way to evade things well before I kill my target and anything with a ranged attack just eats me alive since you can’t avoid projectiles without using “dodge”. Even ones that clearly miss as far as the animation goes seem to hit unless a dodge is used.

I also play Tera, so perhaps I’m simply to used to actively being able to avoid things by actually getting out of the way rather then having avoiding attacks be completely reliant on abilities. That said, it just feels so very clunky I figure I must be missing something.

I’m currently using sword/dagger and shortbow.

You are correct. You have to actively move in order to prevent damage.

Also take note of your enemy’s weapon in melee.

Large weapons are typically slow and easy to avoid without dodging.

Small weapons doesn’t must be used in a closer range compare to a Greatsword, so to avoid those, all you need to do is to back step out of reach.

Small ranged weapons like shortbow or pistol are more accurate than longbow due to their medium range. So all you need to do is either walk up to the target or shadowstep.

Large ranged weapons like rifle and longbows are dodgable without using dodge by simply staggering left and right until you’re close enough for shadow step.

And as a low level, don’t forget to buff with food and tools. If you can find a guild banner and players using AoE buffs, the better. Also use the boosts you get as rewards.

Other than that, simply play smart.

In open world PvE, Caltrops make a huge difference. Pick them up as quick as you can.

for leveling a thief, d/d with caltrops and death blossom spam in condition gear and s/p in power gear using black powder and P/W are usually the fastest and safest ways to level. as far as projectiles are concerned, smoke screen and dagger storm both work wonders if you are having issues with them once you have access to those abilities.

Malice will heal you when you do damage. Sword / pistol will let you pistol whip its a aoe attack (grab 2-3 mobs). This has little down time and lets you save cool downs for escape

For leveling, I would definitely use S/P or D/P (S/P for the AoE, high damage w/ pistol whip; D/P for blinds, which are always fun). Also, the SB is going to be a really good friend to you, use it more often. Kiting with the SB against melee-range, weak, susceptible-to-cripple types of NPCs can rack up a lot of kills for you.

Thieves are not simple at low levels. Ranged mobs will always give you trouble if they put you in a crossfire so avoid those situations until you learn the class. However there are some tools in the weapon sets to help you get started.

As well as dodges you have evades on your weapons. You can also blind opponents in smoke. You can also stun opponents. You can cripple opponents so they walk too slowly to reach you. Shadowsteps let you instantly close up on a ranged opponent. The difficult part is that you have to time your actions and not use up all your endurance and initiative at the wrong times. Auto-attacks will help you out. Pistol/dagger is a nice weapon pairing for early ranged combat and sword/pistol is a nice weapon pairing for early melee combat.

I liked to use dual daggers and caltrops, with trickery and acrobatics traits at low levels. Also you have to constantly be moving as a thief, and buying new equipment every 10-20 levels is near mandatory imo.

just buy blue armor pieces and weapons every 5 levels and buy/craft new jewelry every ~15 levels. Of course, if you drop some nice rares, you use them.
Also, if you still have problems, use food and oils to boost your stats.
As for skills, in PvE, the best ones are:
Weapon skills:
-Pistol Whip: Especially with Signet of Malice. Stun and chain-hit 3 opponents while evading stuff is great. If you heal with every hit, it’s only better(hint: Get SoM)
-Death Blossom: A condition focussed variety of Pistol Whip. More focussed on mobile warfare and less effective against ranged opponents(running around while the conditions tick is useless against range)
-Black powder shot: Just stand in it and kill stuff
-Choking Gas, Cluster Bomb: The shortbow is not to be taken lightly. AoE poison, blast finisher(weakness) and big damage with #2 really make quick work of hordes of squishies.

-Signet of Malice: Screw Hide in Shadows and Retreat, they are pvp skills. SoM is nice due to passive heal.
-Caltrops: A must have. Just get this asap. It allows you easy positioning against melees and good damage in general. Also, it triggers SoM :>
-Signet of Shadows: Must have. Really. Even more than Caltrops. Speed is everything in PvE and the active can save your neck when you are knocked down and some Ettin is swinging some big club at your head.
-Daggerstorm: Once you reach evel 50, you will never want to run around without this again. It just absolutely MURDERS everything. Cripple, bleed to keep melees at bay, bouncing attacks to clear groups quickly, ranged reflect to utterly destroy everything else. Again. This one just LOVES SoM.

@Quxudais go D/P + SB for PvE.
Just keep your blinds up (#3 at 4 Initiative / #5 at 6 Initiative)
Use Heartseeker from the Smoke Field to gain Stealth -> Backstab.
Rinse, Repeat.

Dagger off-hand (for a direct-damage build) just really can’t compete when the mobs willingly stand in your smoke field.
edit: kitten that Dancing Dagger nerf.

To those saying that you can use your weapons’ dodge/evade (i.e. Death Blossom, Disabling Shot, and Pistol Whip are the ones I’m thinking of off the top of my head) – how exactly do you manage to time those evades correctly?

Both Death Blossom and Disabling Shot have this weird delay for me, which means that by the time they actually start dodging, I’ve already been hit. Not to mention that DS has on more than one occasion failed to make me jump backwards, even on flat terrain. Also not to mention that DB has only a 1/4 second evade, despite its 1/2 execution time. And unlike PvP, in PvE, enemy AI always faces you in 1v1.

Pistol Whip seems to have a good (though I couldn’t find exact amount) evade time while you’re slashing the enemy, but it’s also a 3/4 second cast, and when you factor in human reflexes, it’s often nigh impossible to use it effectively to stun even after a telegraphed attack.

The only useful skill to evade for me has been Withdraw – which is great dodge/roll away/heal – and though its not spammable, it has only 15 second recharge.

This is why I’ve gone with blindness for PvE, and it works fairly well. I accidentally tried to take on two vets and three regulars with a D/P the other day, thankfully all were melee, and smoke field did well enough that I never got downed, despite getting close to it.

Normally I use Shadow Shot in smaller skirmishes, to close the distance to ranged enemies while blinding them. If timed correctly, you can also use Shadow Shot to evade ranged attacks. But more importantly, if you’re dealing with only a couple of ranged, it costs less than Black Powder shot, and is just as effective imo. Not to mention it’s great for those melee mobs when they run at you only for you to shadow step away from them

YOu don’t need to have the text “evaded” pop up to evade attacks.
For example disabling shot: You create distance and cripple your opponent. Yes. You certainly need to time it, so he whiffes his attack… Oh, wait, you don’t. Just use it to stay out of attack range.
As for DB: You walk towards your opponent, he prepares to fire an attack, once you reach melee range and you just jump right through him and create distance towards the other side with a dodge roll while dropping caltrops. That way, you can keep opponents pretty much in place while still “running away from them” and avoid drawing aggro of more mobs. Again. Evading opponents and evading their attacks are two different things and you don’t need a text to tell you, you successfuly evaded an attack. Just evade the opponent and you don’t have to evade his attacks. It’s friggin PvE. They do not have a bunch of distance closers and instant spells, you HAVE to evade utilizing the evade mechanic. And if they do, that’s what the evade key is for.

The only thing the evade on DB is good for is crowd surfing. Just jumping into a huge blob of opponents, bleeding them all with 2-3 spammed DB, then dodge rolling out.

naphack.9346:

[snip]
It’s friggin PvE. They do not have a bunch of distance closers and instant spells, you HAVE to evade utilizing the evade mechanic. And if they do, that’s what the evade key is for.

All good advice, but mobs do have distance closers. Flame legion swordsmen have a very annoying leap and knockdown ability, as do some human hammer npcs (admittedly the latter is rare) – that execute in like half a second. I feel like that leap+knockdown is more or less death for any thief.

As I said, most do not and the ones which do, that’s what the evade key is for. The DB evade is meant for crowd surfing anyway. Basically, against opponents with small weapons and fast attacks, you just jump right into the pack with 2-3 DB and then dodge roll out(caltrops) and run while they bleed.
It’s no rocket science.

ZenonSeth.5739:

All good advice, but mobs do have distance closers. Flame legion swordsmen have a very annoying leap and knockdown ability, as do some human hammer npcs (admittedly the latter is rare) – that execute in like half a second. I feel like that leap+knockdown is more or less death for any thief.

Thiefs have fair amount of stun breaks, though. Roll for Initiative is amazing.
Or Shadowstep, which stun breaks when you first use, then stun breaks again when chaining.

I’d use the S/P combo, but don’t bother with Pistol Whip, just autoattack. This allows you to effectively aoe farm melee based mobs, if you blow initiative on pistol whip you may wind up running short and be exposed to attacks.

Btw my fav stunbreak is infiltrators signet. It doubles as an initiative source when you don’t need it and allows you to get off an easy CnD, even when you get knocked back by your opponent. If the teleport part bothers you, you can always drop target before using it.

Go spend 15 minutes trying to not be hit rather than killing. Fight some ettins and kill them without losing any health. swim past some krait and don’t let them snare you, etc.

I levelled with d/d & sb, and always ran caltrops and shadow refuge. The last utility was often signet of shadows, shadowstep, blinding powder, or smoke screen.

Also, if you do find yourself getting knocked down… there are several abilities you can use while on your back. (steal, signet of shadows, etc)