Guild Wars 2

Hi dear players.

After playing as guardian and necromancer I decided to try something different. And mainly because I want to see how medium armors looks I decided to choose one of 3 classes that using medium armor. Out of those 3 classes thief looks the most mysterious, mostly because I have absolutely no idea what they do and how. And here are my questions.

What exectly is “thief”? How does their sneak work? I tried out one once, but I haven’t found “sneak” skill anywhere, only few skills that grant invisibility for a second or two, but that just doesn’t feel… sneaky enough. I probably should play more as thief, but I don’t want to waste hours to find out nothing, but disappointment.

Also, what is their role? I suppose it is damage, but if more detailed? Are they like the most squishies, but most damage dealing class? Are they only viable at PvP or also at PvE? Can they be anything else, but damage?

And last, but not least, how effective dual guns are? Dual guns are probably the main reason I want to play this class. Swinging a big sword is sure fun, but shooting people is always more fun.

1. dual pistols is competly useless

2. They are one of the highest single target proffesions in the game, however we are very sqishy, second after elemetalist but elementalist can be tankier if correct buit.

3. thief can work as support, but that cant tank simply.

4. they can be effective in pve with bow/main hand sword

PvE with a thief is definitely a challenge if no one else is around to take the fire for you. With the right investment, they are the single best class at pure avoidance. They are also probably the single worst class at taking a hit. They’ve got a serious glass jaw.

Your invisibility is as close as you’ll get to sneaking. Most of them only last a few seconds, but short bursts is typically all you need, given the frantic pace of playing a thief. Emphasizing stealth in a build can be extremely amusing, once you get past the preconception that you should be able to just walk around stealthed.

Double pistols is… eh… it works, I guess. It suffers from pretty schizophrenic skill design. Its primary damage attack, Unload, is very much power/crit based, while its auto-attack and stealth attack do most of their damage through bleeds, making gearing a dual-pistol a brain hemorrhaging nightmare. It’s got pretty good utility, (a short but massive vulnerability stack, a pbaoe blind and possibly the game’s only spammable daze) but the temptation to squeeze every last point of initiative into Unload means you’ll often find you don’t have enough to take advantage of it. And since the daze and blind are both on the off-hand pistol, it’s far more common to take advantage of them paired with a sword or dagger main-hand. Main-hand pistol arguably pairs better with off-hand dagger, which offers a gap-maker, multi-target cripple and easy source of repeated stealth.

If you are still interested in Pistol/Pistol, I’d be cautious in PvP. People recognize it instantly as an Unload spam set. They’ll frequently counter with things like retaliation, which given Unload’s rapid attacks, will turn you to paste in seconds.

Thank you both for answers. I’ll wait for some more opinions/advices, meanwhile reading guides.

Well, just a quick note, we got a HUUUGE adavantage over others in pve in come circumstances, as we can stealth past mobs in up to 12 seconds, and just ignore them competly, shadowrrefuuge for skillpoitns and chain cloak and dagger if you jsut want to get past mobs. that is uber good, you can also stealth your party for 12 secs with shadowrefuuge which got its uses.

Welcome to the shadows.:)

Melifor.4815:

What exectly is “thief”? How does their sneak work? I tried out one once, but I haven’t found “sneak” skill anywhere, only few skills that grant invisibility for a second or two, but that just doesn’t feel… sneaky enough. I probably should play more as thief, but I don’t want to waste hours to find out nothing, but disappointment.

“Sneaking” is a combination of stealth and shadowstep (or teleport/blink/etc). Using F1 (Steal) gives you an early access to shadowstep and your beginning heal gives you access to stealth.

Sneaking is not only hiding and creeping; it also mean doing something before anyone else notices.

Your sneak attack activates when you go in stealth, so to sneak an attack on an unaware target, you first go in stealth, press F1 to steal, and auto-attack for a sneak attack (assuming that you are using a melee weapon, you don’t need to get close if using a ranged weapon).

Also, what is their role? I suppose it is damage, but if more detailed? Are they like the most squishies, but most damage dealing class?

It depends on how you build a Thief. One thing to keep in mind though, if you build to deal more damage, you have less survivability. If you build to survive, your damage suffers.

But — with enough experience and practice, you can deal high damage with high chance of survivability. Since Thief has no damage mitigation like Guardians have, we have to use dodge and evade to avoid damage and that requires a lot of knowledge and experience invested in the profession.

Are they only viable at PvP or also at PvE? Can they be anything else, but damage?

IMHO, they are viable anywhere if you know how to play the profession. As for other role, I suppose you can go Venom Share, but that is too limited, restrictive and situational.

And last, but not least, how effective dual guns are? Dual guns are probably the main reason I want to play this class. Swinging a big sword is sure fun, but shooting people is always more fun.

Dual pistols are fun to use, but “effective” will need some context. In general PvE, you can use any weapon set and it will be as effective as anything else, I suppose. But in structured PvE like dungeons, you may want to get familiar with other options. As for other formats (WvW, PvP), you should consider other options depending on your play style.

Most of the time, a lot of party members don’t really care what weapon you use as long as you know what you’re doing.

Dont go dual pistols, its the currently second worst weaponset after S/P, really dont go pistol offhand without dagger mainhand.

Just to add onto Tower a bit, S/P can have its uses in dungeons/fractals where some mobs and bosses are virtually immune to blind spam, but it falls short in a PvP environment where people can walk out of pistol whip.

Especially the mobile builds, i feel very bad for them xD Well, s/p is kinda bad in my opion, remember it got 3 target limit and autoattacks deals actually higher damage and this is also actually a AoE too, in dungeons, sword/dagger vs large groups and you want to melee, while shortbow if u range them, against bosses got d/d and shortbow.

Btw, mauge to add into the blind immunity, we got shortbows for that, clusterbomb is kinda nice in dungeons, and weakness combo (poison field + full clusterbomb = AoE weakness)