Guild Wars 2

Not a complaint thread, just my observations so far. Low level pretty much, at 31 now on my thief in pve.

After using the weapon sets, I have found S/P and SB to be the most useful. I expected D/D to be the real thing but for wharever reason, it seems not so great so far.
I had used P/D and SB for a long while, but I am doing much much better with S/P and SB.

Stealth seems ineffective for the most part..and rarely used. It does not seem to drop aggro really. For example HiS or CnD…aggro seems dropped, I go as far away as I can in stealth ( which is a really short time) but when I emerge from stealth even at a distance, the mobs are right after me again. Blinding Powder seems to actually drop aggro though..but that is not what I was thinking of as stealth.

So, not complaining at all. It just seems…off, somehow. Is there something else I should be doing? I just have this notion that I am not getting everything out of the thief. Especially the stealth thing. It seems a very small part of the thief and not overly useful. Perhaps this is what I find so odd.

Interesting and fun to play in any case, but I do feel I am missing something somehow.

With culling not existing again mobs, the second you leave stealth they will attack you, so stealth is not the greatest tool in PvE. Actually, your post sounds about right about where the thief is in pve.

thanks for the reply

Ok, so I am not imagining this rather lack-luster stealth performance in pve then. The ability seems close to useless. I hesitated to go to S/P since with P/D or D/D or S/D ( if i recall correctly) the CnD ability is the #5 for all..and S/P lacks this. But over time I came to see CnD as being no help really, and finally went S/P and have done far better.

HiS as well, I have not used it for a long time. Long cooldown, and when stealth ends the battle resumes no matter how far I have managed to get from the enemies.

Dodging is yet another thing: I can see how it would serve a thief well but if dodging refers to a double-tap on the movement keys, it seems kind of limited. It uses a lot of endurance.

I have read that you must really dodge a lot as thief but I find it rather impractical due to it’s intensive use of endurance. I can dodge only infrequently.

Thus, I feel as if I am “face tanking” mobs with S/P, which seems distinctly “un-thief” in nature. Mind you, it has worked better than anything else when it comes to fighting a group of enemies so I do it (aside from situations where SB is needed/best choice). But it makes me think I am doing things wrong…that there is a better way, especially since the thief is almost as far from a tank as one can get.

I suppose it is a totally different story in pvp. Seems the thief is almost a different profession of sorts for pve players.

For dodging, I suggest you disable double tapping & bind a key to it, a lifesaver especially at JPs

I’m not sure I understand the dodge part.

“I have read that you must really dodge a lot as a thief but I find it rather impractical due to it’s intensive use of endurance.”

it costs the same for everyone, and its the only thing that uses endurance…so what does it’s cost matter? Not trying to be rude, maybe I am misreading it.

OHHHH do you mean it’s cost makes it so you can’t “dodge a lot” relative to anyone else?

If so spending trait points in acrobatics makes endurance refund when you dodge so you can in fact dodge more.

Oh, yes, I was not clear enough. I just felt like a thief should be able to dodge more maybe but the endurance cost limits it. Perhaps at a higher level I can use skill points to regenerate some endurance on dodge. Seems in many ways I am just too low level to have a “real” thief yet too. At higher levels I assume things will be rather different. Even at this level I feel the changes from having more abilities as opposed to before.

Of course, these are just my impressions; the reality seems quite different from my expectations. I find myself dodging less than I thought I should, due to the endurance cost. I am doing ok, so maybe that means I am dodging enough anyway.

Still, I feel a bit more static than I imagined the gameplay for a thief would be. In large part, this may be also due to my use of S/P as opposed to D/D ( that set seems to have a lot of inherent leaping about).

Still having fun though

One of the most underrated skills in game even if have an great utility in pve and pvp is D/D 3’rd skill -DB
DB dodge the attacks // apply direct damage // strong bleed and is AOE. with 15 points in critical strikes, 15 on trickery you will be able to spam 4 DB -12 stacks of bleed + caltrops on dodge (1 from 10 points on trickery), you will aoe groups of 6-7 mobs easy

Im currently levelling mine with pistol dagger and caltrops utility i have no problem with melee enemies, range can be a little harder but i think once i can get enough into shadow arts for regeneration while in stealth ill be just fine.

I felt the same way on my ele till i put more traits into defensive abilities like protection when switching to earth or regen and condtion removal when switching to water.

I use P/D in PVE and mobs stop attacking normally. There is that problem with “exiting combat” properly, but as far as combat goes, mobs will stop attacking you and you will get the first strike against them (and then, they will start their combat beheaviour which will take some frames too). Plus, the 5, 1, 1, 1 combo works well in PvE too for stacking bleeds.

S/P is nice for leveling because it let’s you maintain blind and auto-attack (I leveled with it before discovering how good P/D was, and I wish I had leveled with P/D, as soon as I discovered it, I mained it and completed all the high level areas of the map with it), so you can tank the mobs (except the dredge). But it’s very boring in PVE, and very stable (I don’t like to stay on the same place for too much time). Even if P/D also uses the same 2 keys most of the time (5 and 1 in both cases, P/D 3rd was nerfed to the point auto-attack is stronger), at least P/D keeps you dynamic in combat.

Aditionally, the perma-blind won’t work in dungeons and high-end level content and you won’t be able to tank with it, while P/D keeps it’s efficency.

I had eventually settled upon P/D, but then found that S/P was doing alot more for me on multiple enemies ( whch seems to be the situation for me more often than not). I rather liked P/D but with more than 1 enemy it did not seem very good, CnD was of no help really. The stealth was very very short ( as seems the norm in this game) and it did not drop aggro. I just felt it was a cool trick that did nothing for me really. A bit dissapointing cause I like that move! Same story for HiS. Could be that they are good moves in pvp but not pve.

Maybe D/D will be better for me later, when I have more skill points to use. It was the set I was first attracted to, but I was not happy with it as it seemed to eat initiative very fast. With some help from more skill points or different use of tbhem, I suppose it could be much better.

Funny, how people like different sets. Like I see thieves with P/P….I saw 2 last night. I love the idea of a gunslinger type thief but P/P seems not so good to me.

If you want to give D/D another try, take note of Rayya’s excellent suggestion but also add the utility skills Caltrops and Roll for Initiative to the mix as well as the Signet of Malice healing skill. Additionally, remember to Steal as often as possible with 5 points into Trickery to give you 4 (I think) initiative after stealing for an extra DB.

With this you will easily be able to bleed 6+ enemies to death with no survivability problems and then move onto the next mob straight away if you didn’t use Steal/RfI yet and/or Caltrops are still up.

Hope we helped!

well….more levels have passed, having much fun on my thief….I have sorta settled upon several weapon sets.

I still use S/P at times, but really have adopted s/d, p/d, p/p as my usual choices, and SB is just so useful for some situations ( though, I use p/p for ranged at times when I don’t wanna aggro anything else by mistake). My comfort level with the thief has improved and I returned to my p/d use of old. Caltrops and caltrops on dodge, along with traiting to recoup some endurance on dodge, have changed things a lot.

it really has helped me to kite and dodge. this is what made me use s/p so much before; i just felt i could not avoid things well enough. Other sets now feel much more useful.

I realy like s/d, and often have s/d and p/d as a swap.

still feel maybe I should toy with d/d too; I have not really delved into that again since starting out. the ini cost I did not like, and even now with 3 extra initiative traited…it puts me off hehehehe
aggro drop from stealth, well, I seem to be able to get a bit more use from that now, but I still do not feel strong about it.

Thieves have very obvious problems in PvE, mostly due to Stealth just not working right all the way around.

First, as you stated, it commonly fails to properly dump aggro, which is something that the Thief is dependent on as a squishy melee oriented class.

Second, the downed state is laughably terrible, like to the point that it can’t possibly be working as intended. Again, this is mostly because of the Stealth (Smoke Bomb) utterly failing at doing anything at all. Because of being squishy and being melee oriented, Thieves go down more easily than pretty much every other class (yes, including Elementalists), but their Downed state is worse than other classes.

This is an egregious problem that has made me stop playing the class just out of sheer annoyance.

D/D, however, is great and really fun to play.

Yes, the stealth, which people simply go completely bonkers over in pvp situations ( I don’t get involved in anything with pvp), is completely underwhelming.

We need it, but it just is “so-so”. I feel a bit let down by this. The thief is really fun, but in the end, this is the limiting factor for me: stealth is just underwhelming.

Thief would be much more fun if stealth actually was more useful instead of…whatever it is now. It just does not drop aggro reliably, and is so very very short in duration. I find I use it infrequently due to it’s lack-luster character, yet I feel the need to use it. It is our main tool…but not too good.

Maybe I had better luck with it, but I always felt the duration of stealth to be just right. Aggro drops often when I use it, usually the mob just pauses a moment or start to return to its spot before I attack again.

Only time when aggro doesn’t seem like it drops is when the mob is in mid attack during it, mob in the game for the most part have long casting animation, long enough for you to come out of stealth, causing the mob to re aggro you when it’s done its attack . That just coming down to timing and knowing when to stealth.

But really I use stealth to reposition my self, which is what the design of stealth really is
about, you shouldn’t be trying to use it to drop aggro too much at the risk of reseting the mob if you are soloing. Not much of an issue of there others around.

Thing about the down state is the stealth is only 2 seconds, again as I said mobs have long enough cast animation that it will re aggro you when you come out. What I try to do is save my 2 until 3 is up to pop that between attacks, and teleport away, that usually drops aggro enough for me to res my self.

Anyways when used properly, stealth is still a pretty strong tool in pve imo.

Personally, I started with D/D. I picked my build from some random YouTube D/D thief video, I’m running 25/30/0/0/15.

However, after I got to 80, I just didn’t feel that D/D was that useful in PvE. In my opinion, D/D has too much in it. There’s a ranged cripple, a stealth, a condition skill, an auto-attack that works well and Heartseeker.

I had also noted that during events, I found myself using SB almost exclusively. Not necessarily a bad thing, but not really what I wanted to be doing. So, I started looking for new weapons.

I found that swords come with a frontal aoe to them, a lot like Axes on Warriors. So, I decided on that. Then it came down to whether I’d use a Dagger or a Pistol as my offhand. After looking at the numbers, I figured that S/D was the way to go, as it seemed to provide the best damage, along with some stealth.

However, I’m currently running S/P simply because of Pistol Whip. As a thief, you have to spent a lot of time dodging. Not really a bad thing, but that often means running around in circles, in which case I could just as well main SB. Pistol Whip evades attacks while channeling, plus it has pretty good damage with a frontal AoE. I like that.

Sadly, the off-hand pistol skills are rather lacking for PvE. However, Sword/Pistol goes excellently with my piratey thief.

d/d however becomes more viable when you unlock the master traits and even more so when you unlock the final traits.

The CnD is sometimes used to gain the added benefits of going into stealth offered by passive traits, i.e. gain 2 initiative when in stealth, stealth blinds nearby foes, remove one condition for every 3 secs in stealth, etc (i dont recall what those traits are called off the top of my head). It is also used to flank the enemy and backstab the living bejesus out of them for an absurd amount of burst damage esp if you activate signets before the burst, which again synergizes with signet traits that gives you might buffs.

In short, if you want to stealth for the sake of hiding from mobs or get running, CnD isn’t the answer, hide in shadows or blinding powder works better. D/D becomes quite deadly when the master tiers are unlocked, whether you decide to go burst D/D based on backstab (I’ve run into a lot of trouble with this PvE) or condition damage based on caltrops and DB (I LOVEEEEEEEEE this build).

Other roles of stealth besides accruing the passive traits benefits:

1. Shadow refuge in particular will not only stealth for over 5 secs (i think it goes up to 8?) it also heals you while you are under the zone of shadow refuge.

2. In dungeons or vs champions you can run to fallen allies, pop shadow refuge and revive the ally while not taking damage in the process.

3. Running the hell away from mobs you don’t have the patience to deal with esp if they are trash mobs. Again, shadow refuge excels at this.

And as previously stated with the dodging, spend some traits into acrobatics. It will allow you to roll several times more than the avg bear and offers buffs such as gaining might upon doing a dodge roll.