Guild Wars 2

When I first heard the hammer was a ranged weapon, I though we would throw it, Thor-style. Or at least a spectral version of it.

I love the idea of a ranged hammer, and love most the skill animations…but does Hammer Skill 1 look “off” to anyone else? Is it final, or will it get some tweaking?

It just doesn’t look like a ranged attack, it looks like you’re just smacking the air, then a random, not-very-noticeable projectile happens. :\ Compare to the mesmer greatsword, which is giant lasers of doom, and very clearly a ranged attack in it’s entirety.

Hi! Kirin here, author of Kirin’s Guide for Aspiring PVE/Support Thieves . When I’m not running fractals with my guildies or exploring the vast zones of Tyria, you can usually find me casually roleplaying in Divinity’s Reach and Lion’s Arch.

But while I have a lot of love for the gameplay of Guild Wars 2, it really comes up short on some basic roleplaying features that the games best-known for RP have (games such as Everquest 2 and City of Heroes). Thankfully, none of my suggestion below should be too difficult to add!

So please consider some of the following, ArenaNet:

A Biography field we may fill out ourselves, and other players can view by right-clicking on our character.
Whether a player just chooses to write a short paragraph describing what their character looks like, a true biography describing the character’s past, or just a like to some external webpage about their character, few things as as good for getting you in the mood to RP as reading a bit about a character when you approach them. Many MMOs have this function already(EQ2, City of Heroes, Star Trek Online, and WoW via an interface mod).

“Talking” emotes when we use the /say channel.
The best part of this is it requires very little work on your part, ArenaNet! This “talking” animation already exists for NPCs. Just make them play on a player-character when they use the /say channel, and chatting with other players instantly becomes more immersive! (Extra credit if you have a slightly different animation when our text ends with a question mark or exclamation mark, though that’s not needed.)

More Town Clothes!
Seriously. We will pay cashy-money for these, ArenaNet. They don’t need special abilities like the pirate costume either. Just give us some snazzy tunics, pretty dresses, or just workman’s clothes that have nothing more than a unique appearance. We want to pay you for these things! Take our money!

That’s all for now! Thanks for hearing me out, and thank you for such a great game!

Salutations, Little Bird,

You do not know me, of this you may rest assured, but you may still wish to listen to what I have to say. I have been watching you for some time now. Watching how others have not recognized your potential. Watching how others have dismissed you as a poor soldier, or unfit to work well with others. Watching them mock and underestimate you for far too long.

Where others refuse to see your potential, I see an opportunity. You have much to offer this world, despite your murky and…“controversial”…past. To that end, I’m offering you a chance; a chance to prove them all wrong. You will have resources at your disposal that you would never have alone. You will have allies who, like you, have been egregiously overlooked by the fearful, the small-minded, and the tragically mundane. Together, we will chase away the dragon’s shadow, and we will do it our way.

I am the King of Crows, and if you’ll let me, I will help you to soar. Think it over. You can meet with one of my birds at the enclosed location, if you so desire.

— CK

The Smiling Crows

TSC is a light-roleplay guild focused on fostering a friendly and uncomplicated atmosphere for Guild Wars 2 players. We do a little bit of everything, from running explorable-mode dungeons, to WvW pvp. We do not enforce any RP, so if that’s not your style of play, you can still find a place in the guild.

We welcome people of all genders, faiths, and sexualities, as long as they read and follow our very short set of rules. We do ask that all members be over the age of 18, as the guild is intended for adults, but exceptions may be made for relatives or children of other guild members.

Rules
The Smiling Crows don’t have a lot of rules, but there are the big 3 you need to know about:

1. Don’t cause drama.
Drama just causes headaches for everyone, so try not to start any. This includes your attitude towards guildies and non-guildies, so don’t be a kitten to strangers. It makes us all look bad.

2. Don’t harass people.
Don’t harass anyone for their sex, religion, race, sexuality, whatever. If you make a comment that offends someone, mistakes happen, just apologize (even if you still don’t see what the big deal is) and don’t say that thing anymore. See rule #1.

3. Don’t talk about politics or religion in guild chat.
We all have different opinions, and typically strong ones on these two subjects. Just don’t bring them up. Go post it on Facebook instead, it’s not appropriate in the guild.

That’s it, three simple rules. Failure to follow them, after repeated warnings, will get you kicked from the guild.

Ranks
We try to keep this very simple. No reason to over-complicate things.

Officer: Helps schedule events and run the guild.
Sage: Offers to help and advise other players in an semi-official capacity, but lacks the full responsibilities of an Officer.
Member: Regular members.
Recruit: New members, get bumped up to member after a few weeks if nobody has any complaints about them.

Roleplaying

The Smiling Crows encourage, but do not require roleplaying. No roleplaying in Guild Chat or Voice Chat, please, that gets confusing.

For those that choose to roleplay:
The Smiling Crows are a loose band of misfits and eccentrics run by the mysterious “Crow King”, a seemingly-wealthy individual who only communicates via letters or other members of the guild. Nobody has ever seen his face. It is implied that the Crow King is funding your adventures as a sort of sponsor, and is always observing your actions via his network of spies and informants. There is not a rigid command structure, but there are Senior Crows (designated by the Officer and Sage ranks). They largely only settle disputes, however, rather than give any orders. Each individual Crow is left to find a way to fight the forces of evil in their own unique, and often unconventional, way. Individual Crows who make the organization look bad may be stripped of the Crow King’s support and protection.

For non-roleplayers:
Please do not harass the roleplayers when they are trying to roleplay.

If you wish to join, please contact Nymera Frostpaw on the Tarnished Coast server, via mail or Tell.

You might enjoy my support thief guide here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Kirin-s-Guide-for-Aspiring-PVE-Support-Thieves

As for specific builds, I think it varies based on how you support your party, and what works best for your playstyle. Any build with Venom Sharing and Lotus Poison is off to a good start.

- Signet of Malice is a godsend for survival, especially with sword/pistol or dagger/dagger. Get it! The trick I’ve found with SoM is to not use the active heal, since it’s weak and triggering the cooldown will remove the life drain effect. Instead, Pistol Whip and Death Blossom become your “heals”.

- Take 15 Acrobatics soon as you can. Feline Grace is three dodges on full endurance, and we need the bonus Vitality at low levels.

- Always be moving, unless Pistol Whiping or in a blind field. Dodge, circle strafe, kite…a stationary thief is a dead thief. Our playstyle is mobility!

Hope that helps!

Dual pistols do appear to be a bit weak currently, but our other weapons are much better.

As a new thief, I’d try dagger/dagger. We have low HP, but a lot of evades that make us a highly mobile playstlye. Get two daggers with Signet of Malice and try this:

Death Blossom, Death Blossom, dodge back, drop Caltrops, Death Blossom. If anything is still alive, hit it a couple times then do a Heartseeker when you get the Init back.

At early levels, this basic attack pattern destroys small groups of 2-3 mobs, and Signet of Malice keeps your HP up. If you get overwhelmed, use your Caltrops to flee.

Good luck!

Thank you all for the encouragement! Hopefully if we all pool our knowledge and experience, we can put an end to the myth that thieves have poor party support. We may not be Guardians, but we’ve still got a lot to offer.

I’ll be cleaning up the typos in the guide soon as I get home this evening; the edit post tool is not playing nice with my phone.

PART III: Thief Meta Roles

“Damage-Dealer” should not be our role. In GW2, everyone is a damage-dealer to some extent, and we’re not even the best at damage. Combining everything we know above, we can organize the PvE thief into some roles that are more unique to Guild Wars 2:

The Combo Blaster (Shortbow)
The importance of combo fields cannot be understated in Guild Wars 2. A good use of combo fields can turn an impossible battle into a victory, and no combo finisher is more powerful than the ultra-rare blast finisher. Thieves have the easiest access to a blast finisher in the entire game, and we can spam it continuously! In a hard battle, your role as a Combo Blaster may be one of the most critical in the party. It’s achieved by using Cluster Bomb, Shortbow #2, on top of a combo field. This can work with the Shortbow Poison field, but it really shines with your party’s combo fields. Make sure they are using them, and they know that you are planning to blast them for huge additional effects!

Cluster Bomb tips: Cluster Bomb has a very high arc of fire, and can hit the ceiling to cause a premature explosion (hey, it happens to a lot of thieves!). To prevent this, be mindful of the ceiling and try to get in a bit closer. Currently, it appears Cluster Bomb is NOT causing a Blast combo when detonated manually (this is from my personal tests, so correct me if I am mistaken.), which means in a party setup it’s usually better to let it fall and take advantage of the finisher.

The Mitigation Debuffer
Lotus Poison allows us to cause almost 100% Weakness uptime. Off-hand pistol allows us to cause almost 100% blind uptime. if you really want to screw up the enemy, you can even combine these two in a dagger/pistol setup. Our debuffs do amazing damage mitigation, and while it may not be as obvious as the Guardian’s flashy blue force-fields, we are doing just as much to keep our party alive.

The Puller
Scorpion Wire makes you the best puller in the game, due to it’s ability to split up enemy groups. Learn to use it well, and parties will love you!

The Team Reviver
This one is not immediately obvious, but has to do with our Initiative system: Every other class in the game is cooldown based, meaning to be most effective they need to be using cooldown as soon as they come up (yes, there are a lot of exceptions, but we’re talking in broad terms here). Thieves, however, use initiative, which allows us to use many abilities all at once, in exchange for sort of a cooldown “debt” that is paid by having them all unavailable to use when Initiative rebuilds. What this means for the team, is that a thief can burn all their Initiative very quickly, then run over and revive a teammate while his/her Initiative rebuild with no reduction in damage or debuff ability. We can create a window of opportunity to allow use to run around the battlefield at zero cost to us, as long as we do not let our Initiative cap out. Combined with our crazy mobility, this makes us the best-suited to reviving downed party members! (This only applies to downed party members, not dead party members. Dead party members take far too long to revive, and need to use waypoints.)

The Aggro-controller
Guild Wars 2 does not have taunts like other MMOs, not does it’s aggro system follow a single predictable pattern. Thieves, however, share with Mesmers the unique ability to control aggro in a defensive way, and we’re better at doing so than the Mesmers are. This boils down to one thing: The ability to stealth party members. Stealth is an immediate aggro-break on most enemies, and can save the life of a damaged player desperately trying to escape the enemy or a downed player about to get killed by the enemy. We have two tools for this: Blinding Powder, and Shadow Refuge. At least shadow Refuge should already be on your bar, and if needed, you can take both these skills to have the ultimate toolkit in party aggro control.

Still not enough group stealth for your tastes? Drop a cluster bomb on a smoke field.

In conclusion

This got long-winded, but I hope you’re starting to see just how incredibly valuable the thief is in parties. It may be awhile before we can convince other players of this, as our party roles are not obvious to an outside observer, but keep playing well and eventually people will learn that having you along is making their dungeon runs so much easier. Guild Wars 2 is a different beast than other MMOs, and un-learning the old ways is going to take some time for the average player.

Farewell, fellow thieves, and remember: You may be a lair and a cheat, but you’re the party’s liar and cheat!

(I will edit this post with corrections or updates as needed, so please give feedback!)

PART II: How do I support my party, AKA “What do I do if not pure DPS”?

I’m not going to go over the intricacies of specific weaponsets, as there are already guides for that. Instead, I’m going to focus on the ways we support others in dungeons and world events, and how it makes us so effective at PvE.

The Perma-blind (Sword/Pistol or Dagger/Pistol): This is one of our easiest functions to pull off, though many players will find it a bit tedious. By conserving our Initiative and only using it for Black Powder, we can keep up blind nearly 100% of the time on enemies in a small group. Some players prefer doing this with Dagger/pistol, so they have heartseeker as well for finishing enemies or quickly getting back in melee range; the trade off is the dagger only hits one enemy at a time, so do whatever is best for your situation. This is less effective on bosses, who only suffer a 10% chance to miss from Blind, but on non-boss enemies it reduces their damage to practically nothing.

Venom Sharing Basilisk: Many thieves overlook Basilisk Venom, do to it’s 1-second duration and use of an Elite skill slot, but there is one moment where it truly shines: when combined with the Venom-sharing trait found deep in Shadow Arts. This trait allows the entire party to gain Basilisk venom on their next attack: with a bit of coordination, this can mean up to a 5-second total lockdown of the enemy, even a boss. Basilisk Venom is also one of the fastest-recharging Elites in the game, with a mere 45 second cooldown, allowing multiple uses during battles.

Shadow Refuge – Best Darn Support Skill: Always but this on your skillbar in dungeons. Always. Shadow Refuge is not only the single best support skill a thief has, it’s a strong contender for the best non-Elite support skill in the game. Shadow refuge is a medium-sized Dark Field that lasts for 3 seconds, and every one second pulses to give stealth and healing to all allies within the field. The best use of Shadow Refuge is op party members who have been put into a downed state, as it both causes them to lose all enemy aggro due to stealth, and gives them back HP. Shadow Refuge can also be used to grant a long-duration stealth to the entire party: if a person stays in a Shadow Refuge for the entire 3-second duration and does not break the stealth by attacking, each pulse stacks the duration of stealth. By the time the Refuge fades, you should have 10 seconds of stealth remaining, which is enough to sneak by certain enemies to get a more favorable positioning.

If that wasn’t enough, any projectiles going through a shadow refuge get life drain! Really, this skill is amazing and you should always have it in groups.

Scorpion Wire: This skill makes you the best puller in the game, bar-none. For those not familiar with the skill, Scorpion Wire does the same thing as it’s namesake character from the Mortal Kombat games: it yanks the enemy towards you, instantly. The real hidden value of this ability, however, is that the enemy affected by Scorpion wire does not appear to be aggroing until after they are pulled; essentially this means a careful scorpion wire can be used to break up a group of linked enemies, by yanking one of them out of the pack.

Lotus Poison – Perma-weakness: 15 trait points in Deadly Arts gets you one of our best support traits, Lotus Poison. Every time you poison an enemy, you cause 3 seconds of weakness. Combine this with a mainhand dagger, or a Shortbow, and you can effectively keep Weakness on an enemy 100% of the time. The value of this to your party cannot be understated. Weakness on the enemy offers more damage reduction than protection on every party member. Fight dirty, thieves, it’s what we do!

Smokescreen: We’re not the only ones with a placed wall that blocks projectiles, but these skills can be essential on some pulls (particularly against rangers in Ascalon Catacombs). Coordinate with other party members to chain one projectile-blocking wall after another, and you have some seriously damage mitigation!

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Welcome rogues, scoundrels, and cutthroats! You may have heard, (incorrectly I assure you), that the thief is predominantly a PvP class, and has a limited or ineffective role in PvE parties. Luckily for us, this is not actually the case; thieves have an impressive array of support skill that may not be immediately obvious to a player coming from MMOs that utilize the holy trinity. Once you see how the thief’s abilities apply to the unique mechanics in Guild Wars 2, however, you will see that the humble thief is a force to be reckoned with.

This post is focused on dungeons and overworld gameplay, so there are no PvP tips here. There are plenty of other resources for PvP thieves, and if that’s what you’re looking for I’d start with Lowell’s excellent Thief PvP guide. This is also not about specific weapons or builds so much, but rather, our roles and abilities in PvE and dungeons.

If you disagree with something in this article or wish to add something, please say so! While I am a successful PVE thief, I am by no means the very best, nor am I always right. If there’s an error, I’ll fix it!

(Due to post length restrictions, this will be three posts long.)

PART I: The Theme and Starting Guidelines:

This is important for more than just roleplayers and lore nuts, because understanding the “theme” of the class helps you understand the design of the mechanics, and the intent behind the thief. The Thief in GW2 is primarily a “skirmisher” and a “dirty fighter”. You should always be moving, in and out of melee range as needed, and always trying to throw your enemy off balance with your deep bag of tricks.

Always Have an Exit Strategy! A downed thief supports no one. The Thief is not a rogue in other MMOs, who can stay behind the enemy and merely manage his “threat”. That’s not how aggro works, and at any moment an enemy can turn and decide you are now it’s new best friend. Always have situational awareness of who the enemy is targeting, and always have an exit planned. A dodge and cripple, a stealth: always have a way to quickly move out of melee range at a moment’s notice.

Always have one ranged weapon! Even if you like melee, as I do, the thief is not built to stay in melee 100% of the time. You are a skirmisher, and your range from the enemy must be adaptable. Right now the Shortbow has an edge over pistols, but depending on your build and if you already have another shortbow thief or a hammer guardian, you may be better off with pistols.

Don’t get tunnel vision! Under specific abilities I’ll explain the various ways you support your party, but remember that you have a lot of party support, and the lives of your teammates are more important than landing an extra Heartseeker or Pistol whip. Always keep and eye on your allies HP, and be ready to dodge-roll away and help them immediately if needed.

Don’t be concerned with your DPS, not at first! This is the big paradigm shift from previous MMOs that a lot of thieves are struggling with. Your DPS (damage-per-second) is not the defining feature of your class. Especially when learning story-mode dungeons or early explorable-mode dungeons, the amount of damage you deal is not that important. A warrior or an elementalist is almost always going to out-damage you, unless you are
a pure-damage glass-cannon build…and this game will punish you hard for taking a glass cannon into a dungeon. Some expert thieves may learn to pull it off, but starting out: don’t worry about your damage that much. There are no time limits or rage timers on bosses, not that I have ever seen.

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