Guild Wars 2

Finally got around to updating my thief’s armor. Colour scheme is White/White-gold/Mithril.

Couple of things I’ve done as a thief in WvW:

1. Scorpion wire. Good against walls, good against fleeing guys, good when two sides are skirmishing and not willing to charge yet. Probably everyone here knows this.

2. Shadow refuge. Oh lord shadow refuge. This is probably the bestkittenthing a thief can do. I spent about an hour or so inside an enemy keep after it fell, just by putting up shadow refuge and not moving out of the area circle while outside the aggro radius of NPCs. Its also prettykittengood for doing stealth revives. Drop it on downed players for stealth revives. Probably the best in-combat revive, which in WvW is extremely valuable.

3. Extreme mobility. Good use of the 25% passive movement speed increase, shadow step and infiltrator’s arrow basically means you will rarely ever be caught by chasers. This means you can scout positions (e.g. enemy trebuchets), or lure players back to your horde or draw them out of position.

4. The 2nd skill for the shortbow arcs VERY high. Its basically possible to hit people on top of walls with good timing of the secondary detonation. I’ve downed several players like that before. On defense, its also rather effective against the inevitable mob around the ram. Exploit all the various combo fields that will be set up with your blast finisher.

5. Of course, damage. Step into combat with shadow step or steal, deal damage, step out. Blast away with dual pistols. Sometimes, you don’t even need to bother finishing off downed players, just hit them with standard attacks until they die. As a thief, you can do this much faster than most other players thanks to the initiative bar. Run with a group to minimize attention on you, then jump in and rack up the damage count. If you’re downed, you’ve got a higher chance of survival and rally than any other class, just teleport towards a teammate hanging back (usually a ranger or elementalist).

So yeah, I disagree with this whole “lack of role” thing. I’ve got plenty of roles I can slot to in WvW.

Edit: Kittens! Hahahaha

For PvE, I’m running Sword/Pistol. Its a pretty glorious combination. You get two interrupts, which pretty much allows you to pound on some mobs without giving them a chance to hit back (especially fun on risen brutes). The dual skill does some pretty good damage as well in addition to the stun. Furthermore, the sword has a very wide hit area, like, 180degrees in front of your character, and hits up to 3 targets. Main downside is that you’re severely lacking in combo finishers.

A rather fun thing I’m using are the traits that give a chance for quickness on crit, bonus damage on dual skills, then upping precision as much as I can. When quickness triggers, Unload finishes well, unloading, in slightly under a second. With the +3 initiative bar, this means I can trigger unload up to four times for a pretty fun damage spike. Even if I don’t have enough initiative, quickness speeds up the autoattack too, stacking about 5 or 6 counts of bleed in the few seconds.

How Not To Die When Utilizing Steal

Step 1: Target foe, hit F1
Step 2: Dodge backwards
Step 3: Examine shiny new toy
Step 4: Profit.

Seriously , I’m loving the hell out of steal. Hair for an instant stealth, Mud for stacking status effects, the glorious axe spin, the shard that gives instant 5 stacks of bleeding, etc. All the steal abilities have a pretty nice use and greatly shortens most battles, ’cept maybe boss events.

Yep. The shortbow’s autoattack bounces. Couple this with poison field, and excellent mobility skills means a shortbow thief is much harder to kill, but also harder to use.

Dual Pistols has very good single target damage, especially if you’ve got the quickness thing. Downside is that if you’re facing multiple opponents, the only choice you have is to either put one down VERY quickly, or switch to another weapon set. Well, or run.

Gentlemen, I present to you my dashing rogue.

There’s a ton of small orange events in the Straits, this is where the bulk of the exp you can get from the map comes from. Stuff like Defend the Tank, Kill the Risen Giant, Take out the Risen AA cannons, etc.

Ask on map chat where the zerg is. Someone will probably reply with the closest waypoint. Then, just head to them, and try your best to contribute to the events. Alternatively, stand at one of the known event zones and wait for the horde to come to you before joining them.

Turrets and the tool kit. When they dance around, drag them in and cripple them, then let the turrets finish them off. If they stealth, just wait it out. The heal stealth only lasts a few seconds, and they can’t really do much in Shadow Refuge.

Don’t ever sit around with just one or two turrets, though, or else the inevitable thrown daggers will screw you over.

I actually had no major problems doing this at lower levels. Its MUCH easier than doing Survivor back in GW. The simplest way is probably to find an unexplored zone that you’re at the upper level bound of, then try to 100% it without dying. Shouldn’t be too difficult if you play normally. Here’s some tips.

1. Harvest everything you see. Its basically free exp.
2. Stick to areas where there are other players, help them kill stuff.
3. If you see a dead NPC or player without any threats nearby, revive ‘em
4. Pick your fights carefully. There shouldn’t be a problem handling up to two mobs, but if there’s three or more of them, just run.
5. Consider maximizing your toughness or vitality in the interim, maximize your own survivability.
6. Events usually give good exp, and you can get a solid chunk even if you’re not around to finish it.
7. If you’ve got an elite summon, equip it. Its usually excellent for taking the heat off you in a pinch.

Once you’re 80 though, just run a couple of events in Straits of Devastation and bam, Survivor done.

Traveler runes, do a dungeon or go through an area for your dailies.

Same as Warx. Dinged 70 without even noticing.

Indoors. IIRC the Fahar is up a spiral ramp.

I generally use Sword/Pistol as well. Excellent for PvE thanks to the sword’s REALLY wide hit range (It hits like, everything 180 degrees in front of you). And the two interrupts are hilariously effective against most mobs. Alternatively, I also switch to Dual Pistols as it does quite a bit of consistent damage, and is pretty good for boss events. If you’ve got a ton of +condition, think about using a venom as one of your utility skills to stack the conditions even more.

One thing you might want to look into getting is the auto-caltrops on dodge trait. It frees up one of your utility slots, and mobs just walk into them when you’re kiting.

Shadow refuge is pretty awesome to have. When the heat is too much, just drop a refuge and stop attacking. The stealth only breaks after a pretty long time, or if you use an attack. This is exceptionally useful when there’s a downed player in a fight: Drop a shadow refuge on him/her, then move to revive. You’ll be stealthed while reviving him, and if he isn’t bled out, you can usually get him back up before your stealth breaks. Oh, and one more fun thing: Drop a shadow refuge on a chest, and you can open it without attracting the attention of the veteran creatures usually guarding it.

You might want to look for elementalist help tips, then. One thing I can recommend is not to run off solo, but look for where other players are killing and tag along with them. They’ll be happy for the help. Another thing is that, most mobs in the starter areas don’t really congregate in groups larger than two or three. As long as you don’t keep running around, but moving around in a tight circle, you can manage your aggro.