Guild Wars 2

Some of the recent proposed changes made me think that maybe the developers do not understand why players enjoy being a Thief. It might be helpful for players to describe what players like about being a Thief in this game, and what elements they don’t care about. I have one of each class, and play them all regularly, but my Thief was my first main, first to 80, and still one of my go-to roamers. My current build is sub-optimal, but it’s basically a 25/0/0/25/20, focused on Conditions, boosts to Stealing, and Dodging around. I run D/D and SB. I play exclusively in PvE, mostly in open world content.

Like:

• D/D Death Blossom. This is a move that really sold the class to me. I love flipping around the battle field, laying bleed stacks. It’d be nice if it did a bit more direct damage, but it’s still a lot of fun.
• Attack spamming. I like that Thieves don’t have to worry about cooldowns, and you can just use the ability that you prefer to use at any given time, use them more tactically, rather than having to use each one as they “pop” in an “ideal rotation.”
• SB Cluster Bomb. Yes, it’s slow, but it’s fun to play with, and I like to play as a melee SB, throwing cluster bombs constantly at my feet as I move around. Having a spammable Blast Finisher is also great when lots of fields are around to combo off of. I love playing using ballistic grenade type weapons in FPS games, so I really enjoy the feel of lobbing a CB and then activating it at just the right moment to hit as many enemies as possible with the splash effect (although it can be very hard to see in large zergs, and I often have to rely on mental timing).
• Dodging. I love dodging around constantly. My Thief is my most acrobatic character, constantly on the move, constantly dodging, building short stacks of Swiftness and Might and just plain avoiding damage. My Thief is one of the only characters where I can actively avoid all incoming attacks from certain bosses (but only if I pay attention to what I’m doing).
• Shadow Refuge. I love using this to help rez my fellow players, or to catch a breather from a difficult fight.
• Steal. I love the movement on this ability, and I love the traits that stack all sorts of different effects onto a Steal, like buffs and added damage to the enemy.
• Escape. I love that the Thief is capable of disengaging from combat that is not going well. From Roll for Initiative, to Hide in Shadows, Shadow Refuge, Infiltrator’s Arrow, Disabling Shot, and of course plenty of dodges, my Thief has plenty of ways of say “nope, this is clearly not working out, I’m pulling back.” Thieves may not be very tough, but they’re very good at taking a losing battle and avoiding death.
• Downed State. Thieves have, in my opinion, the best downed state. It’s not great when you’re alone, but then none really are, but in a large group situation it’s lovely, because it has a solid teleport to move away from immediate danger, and a bouncing attack to ping as many targets as possible. The Stealth ability is useless though, way to short to ever make any difference.
• Thieves Guild. I just love bringing out my little buddies to lay waste to the enemy. Definitely one of my favorite Elites.
• The “tick, tick, boom” effect. I like being able to lay in a series of attacks on an enemy until they are maybe around 90% HP, and then just walk away, knowing that they’ll drop without me having to be there. That’s the most fun part about Condi damage, it takes a while to get going, but there’s just something cool about leaving an enemy dead before they even know it.

Dislike:

• Condition caps. They absolutely need to fix this ASAP. Fixing the way that bleeds and poisons stack in large amounts (like in a zerg against a Champ), and figuring out how to get conditions to effectively interact with inanimate objects and world bosses would solve so many issues for so many classes. Numerous suggestions have been offered, but over a year after launch and there is still no word that they are even considering fixing condition damage. This is my number one frustration with the game.
• Poor lunges. Thieves have a lot of movement options, but no good lunges. Most Thief moves are teleport-to-target, which are useless when you don’t have a target or when your target is on a different elevation. The only lunge we do have, Heart Seeker, is short range and has a delay, making it fairly useless for travel. We have Infiltrator’s Arrow, which is decent, but annoying to aim constantly. Thieves used to have a significant travel advantage over other classes, in that Signet of Shadows offered 25% speed buff, while the others only offered 10%, but now almost every class gets the 25% buff. I’d like to see something like a 600 range Heartseeker that can be used to leap across gaps like the Guardian’s Leap of Faith. This could even require a trait if necessary.

The only thing I like about the thief is how you have to pay attention to your initiative rather than waiting for cooldowns to finish. It forces you to put more commitment towards combat.

I like skirmishing in general (I play a Ranger as well for the same reason).

I want to fight while constantly being in motion. I don’t want to stand still to fight.

I’ve played a Thief to 80, and I just started a Warrior (25) – and I have to say, dual Swords on the Warrior plays quite a bit more like I think dual Daggers should play on my Thief.

The only thing I really like about Thief right now is Death Blossom – conceptually, it’s actually a crappy skill, but it’s awesome conceptually.

In other MMO’s I’ve always tried to recreate the whirling dervish rogue – the spinning blades, the throwing blades, the quick slices and bleeding out a hundred little cuts and holes.

This is what I tried to do with my Thief in GW2, but the Warrior does it better.

I want to jump, spin, dodge, slash, and then run away while my opponents bleed/torment out. Cuisinart of doom. Throw in some poisoning and crits too, just to make it more evil, and I’m happy.

It just doesn’t work that well.

I like thief because it is challenging to play, but when done right you own (:

oh and 2 spam

i like being nerfed every patch. i like playing high skill low reward class.

Zacchary.6183:

The only thing I like about the thief is how you have to pay attention to your initiative rather than waiting for cooldowns to finish. It forces you to put more commitment towards combat.

This and the teleports.

Mobility, fight control and the ability to stray far from way points with little worry of catching a zerg death. No other class in my opinion is even remotely as solo-able at least without external conditions imposed.

i like being sneaky, i like the fact that thieves survivability is very active (compare to guard or necro that can just stand and kitten facetank dmg in the face) and involves high risk; i like high mobility; playing a thief feels like playing an action game almost

things i dislike:
- other classes have little trade off compared to thieves: if warrior for example goes bunker they still do a lot of dmg, if thief goes bunker, they are still glass cannon and do no dmg
- traps…what are those…? feel very weak
- everything is tied to stealth (regen, condi removal etc.) yet stealth keeps getting nerfed and is not as reliable normal buffs/hals from other classes

I just like stabbing people with butter knives.

I love the capability of doing spike damage as a lone wolf, then disappear with invis/teleports/dodges, i always played class like this in every game.
I higly dislike the fact that playing thief its like walking on a thin ice, your actual build could break on pretty much every patch.

you have to actually pay attention to skill animations… too bad lag kills you.

After Dec 10th I am looking forward to running away (I mean noob killing)

Because of all the classes in GW2 it comes with the least amount of things I hate and the most amount of things I like from GW1.