Guild Wars 2

How come it is so viable in PvP? Don’t people have condition removers? No such thief can take down me. I can pretty much remove their conditions at will.

I think it is a viable build. I sometimes bring out the daggers and I have not maximized everything for dagger damage. But you need good gear. I think it is the most fun, but not necessarily the best build.

I agree with the one who said that crit percentage should be roughly 50%. It is not essential to have 100% crit damage, and you can afford a small trade-off to be a bit more tanky. However it should still be around 80% in my opinion.

Exotic gear is a must for this build though (if you want to have fun)

Why is venomsharing about damage? I thought it was more for crowd control purposes. Keeping mobs in place or preventing them from certain actions can sometimes be better than pure damage.

I do have points in shadow arts, but where is the need for this? I have played several hours of WvW after the patch and I have not stepped into a trap even once.

And if someone wants to make that effort to kill one thief – then well good effort on that. Maybe they deserve that one kill then. And having wasted those badges.

Even unstealthed it is not impossible to get away (from a zerg it might be impossible, but that is not what we are talking of here? Here people seems to be concerned about 1v1 battles and traps). Shadowstep, dodge and swiftness and the shortbow and you can get away from mostly anything. And probably buy at least 30 seconds so that you can use refuge again. And then you can return and kill the guy who wasted a trap for that…

Come on…it does not make sense that that build would work in PvP. There are tons of condition removal skills available. I play thief too and I hardly get damaged by that build at all unless I do a terrible mistake. The little damage I take I can easily heal.

As for good builds there are plenty. But gear, weapon sets and utility skills need to be planned too. If you have the wrong gea/set up for a build it won’t work.

I actually run the same build in PvE and WvW. I am probably not top damage in PvE, but my damage is more than good enough to help my group to get through a dungeon without any problems. When I solo mobs go down fast and in WvW I can easily kill a lot of players 1v1 and do a great job with supply camps etc. And if I don’t manage to kill I can usually escape 9/10 times. But don’t expect all that to come by itself. It takes planning and trial and error. At lvl 20 I almost gave up on my thief. I am glad I didn’t. I have even stopped playing my alt characters.

I played WvW yesterday. These traps are not that cheap and takes 4 seconds to put down. I do not see it being a problem at all. In fact, I did not get unstealthed once by any traps when I played yesterday.

A lot of good stories here! Keep them coming. Love all of them so far and can recognize myself in many of them.

I was thinking the same as the poster above me. I would do a condition build with the shortbow or possibly some hybrid build as you get both conditions and direct damage.

The shortbow is mainly our AoE weapon and in my opinion not so viable on single targets.

I use S/P for PvE. The pistol whip stun and evade can be quite useful for controlling mobs. And considering that there is both a stun and evade built into the skill I find the damage to be okay. Even though with the quickness nerf I would have appreciated it if the damage nerf could be revised again.

Also the cleave is really useful for clearing out trashmobs. Pistol whip cleaves as well.

Also I find it really useful to be able to remove conditions. For example I use it to remove the condition from the last boss in CoF P1 and at the same time try to get behind him.

Nope, there are a lot of posts stating that thieves are weak in PvE. But as I said, as it is a slightly more difficult class to play (does not mean that you do not find very good guardian or warrior players) some people mistake that for the class being weak as they encounter people who do not fully master their class. But let’s face it. It’s not rocket science either to play a thief. You just need to stay mobile and know your evading skills.

Shadow refuge is great for bypassing mobs as you say.

I almost quit my thief around lvl 15-20 and rerolled a guardian. It was the toughest levels and I really struggled. After lvl 30 it started getting more fun.

I don’t know about you, but I just love the steal skill. I use it all the time whether it is spvp, WvW or PvE. I am wondering what are your most satisfying stealing moments?

I think mine has got to be when I steal the whirling axe from a warrior and then return the 100blades favor to them and they do not realize that they can dodge it. I just love the irony of it.

I also use a trickery build in PvE and it is quite nice to see you buff your whole party with all those buffs.

Thief! Sometimes I regret I did not roll my thief an Asura. It is an awesome class where you have to dodge a lot and the Asura dodge animation is the coolest in the game.

Having that said I did consider an Asura ranger who would go and study the Sylvari. But I am probably not the ranger type.

People say that thieves in dungeons are weak, but they usually do not know what they are talking about or have never played thief themselves and only seen bad ones. Thief is not the most straightforward class to play and one mistake will probably mean death. If it happens a lot this can of course be an annoyance to your teammates in PvE and lots of people mistake that for the class itself being weak when it is often a question of those playing the class who could use some more practice.

A thief can bring quite a lot to a dungeon. Shadow refuge can save others from death, you can resurrect people safely or you can use it as a combofield to gain life stealing etc.

In CoF part 1 and in CoE thieves can be very handy as well. You can just use shadowstep to get past the boulders and the security system fairly easily.

All in all it is a very fun class to play and my favorite by far. I also find it very satisfying to steal from warriors and return the 100blades. Ironically most of them don’t know how to dodge it.

In the beginning I found it really hard to level as a thief. Especially at lower levels trying to use D/D. And especially before I had access to all skills and knew how they were working. Then I got used to it and it was a breeze. The learning curve is a bit steeper than some other classes, but that is also part of why thief is so fun. It is not as forgiving as for example a guardian.

Hah! Mister Tiddles gave me the giggles. For a Charr though, I am not so sure how good that is! Definitely engineer-like, but maybe he has been exposed too much to the Asura? How can any Charr take him seriously? The name itself I would say 7.5/10, but as a Charr I’d give it 6.5/10.

For this one I tried to stick to regular naming conventions and for my atypical Charr Mesmer (the sole idea of creating him was to make a ridiculously big character and see how it would work in PvP when people only would see my clones all over the place) is Khaan Mirrorshade. Obviously he belongs in the Ash Legion and prefers the stealthier approach.

It’s a great name 8/10.

My guardian is Khara Leafblade.

9/10 Great name! Sounds very Asuran in my opinion.

My necro is Amaryllia Mistvale. Wanted something atypical for Asura.

Well a few more norns and less humans would not hurt

Anyways, I would not let that slot be any major factor for what character I choose to play. There are many other things that are more important.

If you read my post properly you will see that my argument is that it already is unbalanced and this will not in any way unbalance the game.

From a utility perspective I don’t need the slot. I have 15 slot bags and haven’t even thought of upgrading as I usually don’t have problems with space.

DancinPuppeh.8421:

If Norn and Charr could carry more nobody would be any other race, cause you can’t just give Norn and Charr a bonus like that without something in return for the other races

I am not saying you should not give the other races something although they already have that jumping puzzles are easier to complete. They could even have made it clear that this is a form of racial advantage.

I don’t think a bonus slot would make much of a difference.

Setun.4368:

Race / class combo doesn’t matter at all in pvp. Only thing that has any influence is your skill with the class vs other peoples skill, and the build you choose to roll with. I noticed a ton of people roll Asuras under the premise that they’re harder to see or some jazz when pvping, but I haven’t had a problem spotting them and pounding them into dust lol. I will say that the snow leopard racial elite form is mega sexy. Free invis and a 1800 meter sprint that’s insanely fast is fantastic.

Matter of fact I recall watching a video where a Norn elementalist would invis sprint to a target in snow leopard form, knock them down with the charge, switch back to normal form and utterly blow up her target. I can’t find the exact video to save my life, but it was pretty awesome to watch!

I have also thought about that Asura may be harder to see, but in practice they are not really.

So instead I made Charr Mesmer as big as I could and hope that people will only see my clones

Ballads.2509:

“If your not cheating your not trying.” Your doing what ever it takes to get the most accomplished in the amount of time you have. If designers want trash mobs cleared they need to give them real rewards – and make MF effect the drops, when trash groups drop a yellow or 2 each group it will make sense to find efficient ways to kill them rather then skip them. While this can cause problems with trash farming you can counter this by making it only the trash behind “gate” bosses. Another method is 2 part trash drops that would need to be combined with mob drops to be of real value (ie. boss drops necklace missing 3 jewels, 3 different groups of trash have a chance to drop 1 of the jewels, mystic forge and blamo.)
I never try to “cheat,” i only try to win. Designers of MMOs should know by now players will seek any method possible to beat the time/reward meta. They need to either add loot or put in hard counters (ie bosses that call for trash mobs to help,) to stop this natural result of players seeking to maximize their play time dungeons. Until they do you can blame players for playing the game in front of them.

I completely disagree. Trash mobs shouldn’t have as good drops as bosses and it is working ok already. If anything they could be dropping special crafting materials for dungeon specific craftable armor/weapon sets. Instead I think the mobs should be made nearly unpassable unless killed. Maybe a couple could be skipped with clever tactics, but a whole dungeon is just wrong in my opinion.

I completely agree with OP. If only the bosses are considered to be the challenge of a dungeon, then in my opinion, it is broken. It is not supposed to be easy to go and just grab tokens. And then people complain when they have gotten their armor set and say there is not enough end game content…

I felt sick when someone showed me how to let two bosses fight each other in AC. What’s the fun in that when you don’t even play the boss fights properly?

I see some people say they should be able to play the game the way they want. And that is fine with me, but I think it is wrong to expect to be rewarded for minimal efforts.

Hehe, but there is no snow in Kryta?

I play a norn female thief and if I ever can afford it I will consider to go for this set and transmute it.

I wish they were covered up a bit more though. It looks really cold! Even for norns…

I disagree that this particular boss is too hard. I had a group with a couple of 35s and the rest 80s. At least two people in the group had no idea how to do the boss, but we still managed to beat it on the first try.

What I do think is a problem though is that people claim “We need an elementalist for part 3”. Maybe it is possible to complete without one although it is difficult, but the main problem is already that people think an elementalist is needed. No dungeon should rely on a single class.

My assumption is simply that Norns are stronger than smaller races such as Asura and therefore can carry more weight. I don’t mean they have bigger pockets, but in terms of weight it makes sense that a Norn can carry more than an Asura. Many RPGs have weight included one of them being The Elder Scrolls Series and possibly their new MMO will include that as well?

I don’t have a bag problem. I have 15 slot bags and I don’t have the need to upgrade.

My argument is that it does not directly make your character perform better. And it is a fact that “cosmetic” differences makes it easier for smaller characters to complete jumping puzzles. Why would it be so much more imbalanced that Norn could have a couple of more slots? None said it would have to be 20 more slots.

I’ve seen a few topics where people are not too happy about the racial skills. Considering that Norn (and Charr) are really big massive races it would only make sense that they could carry more loot/equipment than other races. It would be a relatively small boost, but still very useful for us who collect everything and constantly have our inventory clogged up with everything you can imagine. In my opinion it would be a fantastically useful racial skill which would not affect game play too much.

I don’t find the class overpowered at all. I think the best proof that the class is fairly balanced is that there are some threads were people complain it’s not good enough and the other half of the threads complain that it is too good. So I guess it means that it is somewhere in the middle and that means fairly balanced.

I wish it was slightly higher on the DPS side and I think that if a lot of thieves actually managed to stay alive their DPS would be better too.

Warriors don’t have stealth res. And thieves can easily make it easy to pass trash mobs. Smoke screen can be pretty useful too.

If someone tries to play thief like a warrior they are doing something wrong…a good indication of that is saying, like the OP, that thieves feel like warriors.

I don’t consider myself the best player around, but still I don’t have problems in PvE. And obviously I have to use different builds for PvE and PvP.

Well Thief is not for everyone. It might not be as straight forward and in my opinion boring as guardian, but it is definitely viable in PvE if played right.

Usually the people who complain try to play every class exactly the same way. And with some other classes that might work.

I like my norn thief. She looks pretty cool as well. Cultural armor is ok, except for the mask, but it can be hidden. I don’t think size should be a factor in your decision. After all you use blinding powder etc to gain stealth. The norn female voice acting is in my opinion pretty good too. No, you won’t get a cute girl and you will get a girl who sounds like she could beat up a couple of dozens of people, but it really fits the norn in my opinion.

And yes the Sylvari look really cool, but I don’t like their voices. If they had sounded slightly more hippie-like or plantlike it would be good, but they sound like urban creatures.

I respectfully disagree with OP. There is a saying that “There is honour among thieves”.

In fact I would have more trouble with Norn necromancy or Norn engineers (they seem to be a bit too advanced for their simple lifestyles). But I am open minded and not every character has to be the stereotype either.

Good name! Sounds very Norn-like.

My character is called Gaardfrid. I chose to go without a second name even though I find it really awesome with characters with good second names. My name is nordic inspired, but in essence it’s just gibberish and doesn’t really have a meaning.