Guild Wars 2

Im a former WoW rogue player, but had to hang the cape up after losing interest after some time. I started getting that mmo itch and gw2 seemed like a good solution. Much if the same but enough different to make it interesting.

Of course I starting working on my thief right away and though I’ve got quite a ways before i start worrying about endgame, I figured now would be the best time to prepare and get in-the-know.

For a newbie what are some things I should be aware of when playing the thief? I know its a very general question, but since I have no knowledge every answer is correct! At this point I’d like to do any PvP or WvW and s/d seems to be a decent all round option. What tidbits can you guys lend?

Thanks!

http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

The link above is a good resource for the top and most used builds in any given area of the game.

I feel the biggest thing to note about the thief, especially in PvP environments, is that it simply cannot take damage. You are complete glass in pretty much all builds and you don’t have a lot of defensive boons, blocks, or heals to tank damage. Thus, you need to survive by AVOIDING damage altogether by using your blinds, evades, stealths, and superior mobility. Your key to success with the thief is learning how to survive reliably and consistently.

Shortbow is your best friend, weapon-wise. You are pretty much always going to have one equipped, and you are going to do so because of

1. the aoe auto attack
2. the blast finisher on the second skill (use this with combo fields, especially fire, water, and smoke fields)
3. the on demand evade on the third skill
4. the on demand teleport on your fifth skill

It is useful in all areas of the game, so get used to it. If you want to get really serious, I would suggest running around in sPvP with only a shortbow for a few games so you learn how to best use it.

For your second weapon set, you have 2 primary choices:

1. burst
2. sustain

For burst, you’re going to be using a dagger mainhand and will be heavily reliant on stealth. In stealth, your auto attack turns into a stealth attack, and dagger’s stealth attack is backstab, which does a lot of damage when flanking an enemy. Your goal will be to enter stealth, backstab an enemy, apply pressure, and renter stealth to set up another backstab.

You have 2 main ways to enter stealth. 1 with offhand dagger, another with offhand pistol. With dagger, your number 5 will stealth you if you land the melee-ranged attack. It does a lot of damage and applies vulnerability, but it’s not the best skill for PvP because players will be moving, blocking, dodging, and blinding you a lot, making you miss. With offhand pistol, its number 5 is a smoke field that blinds opponents. While the blind is nice, a leap finisher through a smoke field will produce stealth, and your dagger number 2 is a leap finisher. Thus, you want to black powder (number 5) and then heartseeker (number 2) to enter your stealth, and then backstab.

For sustain, you want to use sword/dagger. The goal here is to whittle down your opponent with auto attacks while using your number 2 (teleport and condi cleanse), number 3 (evade and boon strip), and number 5 (stealth) to avoid damage.

You should be able to see some powerful thief builds in the ranked arena section in the link I provided.

The only other thing I can suggest is look at some streams of top thieves, such as caed, on twitch. Watch how they play and react to different scenarios, and then try to emulate their play. Other than that, just practice and you’ll get it eventually.

As a thief, be ready to die a lot if you are unfamiliar with combat and basic movement. As I said, the thief profession doesn’t hold your hand when it comes to survivability, so how well you survive is entirely based on your own skill. As you get better, you’ll see drastic improvements in both efficiency and survivability. So keep at it.

~ Cheers.