Guild Wars 2

Hiya thieves! Elementalist here, though I’m getting a bit tired of the profession and am interested in trying out a thief.

I’m interested in what kind of builds thieves are able to pull off. I know they have some great burst specs, but I don’t know much more than that. I’ve played thief before in numerous MMO’s, and I find that they are often the “easy to play, difficult to master” class. Being able to out-smart and out-skill your enemy is often vital, and it’s one thing I love about thieves.

I’m not sure how true all this is in GW2, but I’m interested in hearing more about GW2’s thieves and about what they are (and are not) capable of doing. Thanks.

It’s quite hard to master a thief, against any decent opponent as a Thief you will have to split the second, trick, fake, improvise and more – or you’ll go down in 3 hits after he blocked your burst.

Beside burst spec you can also go with condition spec or stunlock spec.
Condition = damage over time, more mobility/trickery.
Stunlock = constant dazes, stone, immob, interrupts.

You can play thief in many different ways btw, it’s not just how you deal damage but also the cohesion and results of your traits and utilities.

You should state if you’re looking for PvE or PvP advice.

There are many different things you can do with a Thief – it’s correct to assume that you’ll be a lot more involved when playing as one. Thieves rely on positioning and tactics more than any other class besides Mesmer.

Me, I run a Sword/Dagger + Shortbow build and dance around targets with stealths, immobilisations and evades. Dancing Dagger is my form of a burst between 2-3 targets (it does huge damage if you land a whole initiative bar’s worth). Sometimes I’ll run Sword/Dagger + Dagger/Dagger if I need to get a target out of the way extremely quickly (run S/D in a fight for a while, switch to D/D mid-stealth and burst to death). It’s a mix of damage and survivability.

I’ve been running a control build for a while, that I’m very happy with. It takes practice, and a bit of well timed shots to use well. It’s not a burst build, instead using bleeds and careful immobilizations with venoms. Pistol and Dagger, with Short Bow as a weapon switch.

Here’s a link of videos of my build along with advice if you’re interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7dqpQVfOhw

Hope this helps and good luck!

Thanks for your responses all. For the record, I’m more interested in PvP than PvE. There are many builds good and bad that work decently enough for PvE; PvP is where you really get to test your wits and skill.

The idea of a control build sounds pretty neat. I usually play a healing+condition dmg D/D or D/F build on my ele, which I find pretty fun, though I’m incredibly tanky, which can cause things to be a bit boring at times.

I’m going to start leveling up my thief, thanks all. On a side note, if anyone has any recommended builds/guides for leveling up a thief, I’d be interested in hearing about that.

Lowell has put together a great guide over in the GW2 Guru PvP Thief section. Even though it’s a little outdated, it’s well worth the read.