Guild Wars 2

The thief is absolutely the most worthless class in the game for PvE.

You are about as fragile as a class with light armor, but have none of their range.
You also have only one complete condition removal skill (shadow return) which happens to have a long cool down.
The bleeding (the only damage over time effect the thief has) a thief causes pales in comparison to what a necromancer can do with a scepter and auto-attack.
We have only two area effect attacks in our entire arsenal.
Blindness doesn’t work at all on champion enemies.

All the thief’s more useful skills devour initiative which makes your only reliable way of handling most enemies a burst at the start and then kiting them with bleeds. Back stab is not nearly as useful against AI opponents with much larger health bars as it is against human players. And don’t even attempt this against groups of enemies.

At best, we’re a combat medic thanks to Shadow Refuge which lets us cloak and heal allies in an area. But other than that, we can’t do much of anything in a battle against hearty opponent like a champion or dungeon boss even in the ways of support.

Thief was made only for PvP and PvP only. Very little if any thought went into its design for fighting the AI enemies.

The shortbow needs either longer range or a faster fire rate. It’s the only real ranged weapon thieves have but it’s one of their weakest.

The bleeding on all the thief’s attacks which cause it is pitiful compared to the necromancer’s. It’s weaker and wears off faster. Applying poison for 2 seconds with lotus strike is worthless. Poison has to last longer than that to have any kind of effect.

Thieves have medium armor, but they still are about as frail as light armored class. Escapes are limited to roll for initiative and shadow step. Both have long cool downs which make escape harder than it should be. Shadow step is also useless underwater.

It always amazes me how arrogant and stupid you “Just learn to group! All problems solved!” posters are.

I just explained why it’s not an issue with having or not having a group. Ask someone else who understands English to read it to you if you can’t.

People who think this is just a matter of having group, it’s not. A group doesn’t prevent enemies from respawning right away. Is simple logic so hard for some of you people to grasp?

Groups prevent you from getting overwhelmed, but they do NOT prevent enemies from coming back quickly after they’ve been killed. The game is spawning in new enemies way too quickly. THAT is a game problem not player.

Giants are nothing but a nuisance to fight that’s why. They have an absurd attack range that KO’s in two hits and they don’t even drop anything.

There’s no good reason for anyone to bother fighting them. Even with a group of 10 or more, it takes way too much time for the meager reward.

That’s because Orr sucks period. No one likes it, they’re only there because that’s where you have to go to get level 80 things.

Even the areas next to Orr are full of enemies that respawn seconds after they’re killed and have annoying abilities. If it were actually a good idea to fight the enemies in Orr people would. But because they respawn instantly why bother?

I was just about set to start up a new character as a necromancer but I decided to do the smart thing for once (unlike before I started a thief) and get an introduction to how they work.

Now I’m almost completely disabused of the idea because this entire section of the forum appears to be nothing but bug reports and the devs calling bugs “new features.”

Is it worth bothering to try out a necro even?

Tulisin.6945:

Shooopa.5632:

Tulisin.6945:

Adaneshade.2409:

The fatal flaw in this whole argument is that you assume the “Uncatchable” trait is the same thing as the “Caltrops” ability. They are not, the caltrops on dodge from uncatchable do not last more than maybe 1-2 seconds (doesn’t say in tooltip exactly but the duration is crazy short) and has a very small radius. The actual utility skill “Caltrops” does have a 14 second duration but is on a 30 second cooldown. The situation you describe would be standing in that.

No thief EVER stacked 25 stacks of bleed with “Uncatchable”…..ever.

The “Uncatchable” caltrops last 4 seconds and depending on skills and situation you can lay down 2-5 fields of them simultaneously. They’re actually a surprisingly effective tool, doubly so when properly synergized.

No, they vanish much more quickly than that. I’m using them now and they only stay around for about 2 seconds at max.

That is odd, but I can definitely stack up to 4 bleeds on a single mob using only one dodge. Either the caltrops field is taking effect multiple times a second, or it lasts longer than two seconds.

I have no idea how you’re managing that because my dodge caltrops only give one stack of bleeding and they disappear very quickly after being dispersed. You’re sure that’s just from the caltrops and not building up from other attacks?

I wouldn’t call complaints about them baseless. Not when the devs themselves are in the forums even saying they know there are problems.

Tulisin.6945:

Adaneshade.2409:

The fatal flaw in this whole argument is that you assume the “Uncatchable” trait is the same thing as the “Caltrops” ability. They are not, the caltrops on dodge from uncatchable do not last more than maybe 1-2 seconds (doesn’t say in tooltip exactly but the duration is crazy short) and has a very small radius. The actual utility skill “Caltrops” does have a 14 second duration but is on a 30 second cooldown. The situation you describe would be standing in that.

No thief EVER stacked 25 stacks of bleed with “Uncatchable”…..ever.

The “Uncatchable” caltrops last 4 seconds and depending on skills and situation you can lay down 2-5 fields of them simultaneously. They’re actually a surprisingly effective tool, doubly so when properly synergized.

No, they vanish much more quickly than that. I’m using them now and they only stay around for about 2 seconds at max.

Tulisin.6945:

Shooopa.5632:

That’s because they don’t have anything else. The only thing a thief can do at all is one-hit wondering. Their condition damage sucks, their HP sucks, their armor sucks, their ranged attacks suck… They’re not good at anything else but attacking a single target.

Absolutely true in the case of people that are extremely bad or extremely immalleable at playing a thief.

What can they do? Their only status effects are poison and bleed without utility skills, and the skills which apply bleeding and cripple like death blossom and dancing dagger cost a good deal of initiative. Their short bow is laughably weak compared to the ranger’s long bow, and its area effect attacks are way too slow.

Just about everything the thief can do, someone else can do better. The necromancer does more condition damage and has many more effects available, the ranger is much more powerful at range, and warriors and guardians do much more damage toe-to-toe with much less risk.

The thief’s unique feature is the backstab. It’s little wonder why that’s the only thing most people are using – otherwise they’d be foolish not to pick another class.

If they’d hurry up and get guesting working we wouldn’t have these problems.

Is this how AreaNet handles problems in their games? This is like putting a used ban-aid on a gaping deep cut.

I liked it for what I played, but the class I picked to start with (thief) has gotten progressively worse and worse to play with in PvE, and it just constantly gets weaker as devs make changes to it. I’m not going to stick with it if they keep that up, so I want try a new character.

I really wanted a necromancer, but 99.9% of the threads in its section are about bugs and how terrible its skills are compared to all the other classes’. If the only viable class options are heavy sword-swinger and sword-swinger with a shield then I want to know so I don’t waste time bothering.

Balanced class tweaks.
When was the last time the thief class got rebalanced instead of outright nerfed?

And enemies that are challenging instead of annoying.
A massive health bar does not make an enemy challenging. It makes them annoying and pointless to fight. You make them challenging by making players think about how they can fight them instead of leaving their computer for 10 minutes after turning on auto-attack.

Now that I’m nearing the end of the story for my first character I’m wondering what I should make next. I was all set to start up a necromancer but everything I read in the forums makes it look like they’re even worse to play as than my thief – instead of a never-ending parade of one-sided nerfs they say they get game-breaking bugs the devs pretend are features.

I don’t like generic melee combat so I don’t want a warrior or guardian but the ranger is said to have pitifully low health so no dungeons for them, and I don’t know anything about the mesmer other than they’re supposedly as fragile as a glass-cannon thief.

Is it worth bothering to try rolling a necro, ranger, or mesmer? Or is it just nearing the time to uninstall?

sorrow.2364:

Right now thieves are far from underplayed… Guess why so many people play thief?

I didn’t say they were underplayed. I said no one is ever going to stop kittening unless they’re removed from the game entirely.

By whining to AreaNet how badly they need to be nerfed. And it really works obviously.

SKuDDer.1860:

Personally, these arguments about being a 1 hit wonder are not an excuse. Every class has to wait on cool-downs, but can no where near output that kind of burst damage thieves can with little that can be done to dodge or avoid. And thieves can do plenty of sustained damage when they are fighting with a group.

They just don’t want the combo adjusted because as of now, most who use it never die and always kill their target. I’m abusing now on my thief till its fixed and its awesome.

All these, “its your fault you aren’t paying attention, you have no skills, l2p, have better awareness” comments are just as invalid for WvWvW, sorry I can’t pick out the thieves from the group of 10,20,30+ that jump right in and smoke players, you are right that is my fault for not knowing he’s about to teleport from 1200 range with basil and venom prepped, and not dodge roll the second he CND and steals. I must be getting old, my reaction time cant handle that .25 seconds anymore.

That’s because they don’t have anything else. The only thing a thief can do at all is one-hit wondering. Their condition damage sucks, their HP sucks, their armor sucks, their ranged attacks suck… They’re not good at anything else but attacking a single target.

Spifnar.4712:

The coefficient on BS when it’s not from behind is about the same as C&D

They could easily make a from-behind backstab only be +50% more damage (it’s now 100% more), but apply a bunch of debuffs. 5 stacks of vuln, 5 of bleeding and poison.

Which would drop our D/D burst, but make D/D conditions a lot more viable.

That’s a good idea so you know it won’t happen. Why don’t they just axe the thief class entirely at this point?

At this point why not just remove the class entirely? Because obviously the only way anyone will ever be satisfied is if no one ever plays as a thief.

I have zero faith in AreaNet to balance the classes at this point. May as well just remove all of them except warrior and mesmer.

The more I hear about this Mad King the more I like it.

The stuff he says and does is reaching Borderlands levels of crazy. And I love Borderlands.

You’d have to be really, really terrible to not be able to handle someone using dagger storm.

It’s a really an awful skill when you get down to it because not only are the daggers thrown in completely random directions, but you CAN NOT DODGE.

You CAN NOT DODGE through its entire duration.

A thief who gives up their mobility for any significant period of time is a blood smear on the ground.

You hit like a truck, but you should never stick around in once place too long.

Use black powder (a pistol off-hand skill) to blind enemies and prevent them from hitting you or death blossom (dual daggers) to avoid an attack before it hits and deal bleeding damage.

You have skills that cloak you and let you teleport short distances. Use them to launch sneak attacks and to run away if a fight goes badly.

Stealing is an excellent opener to an attack because it teleports you right into melee range and gives you an item that either buffs you or hurts the enemy. With the Hidden Thief trait it cloaks you too so you can start off with a back stab. With the Kleptomaniac trait it gives you three initiative. Don’t forget about it, it’s very useful.

I can’t stress the importance of ALWAYS having shadow step as one of your utilities enough because not only is it an escape, it’s also a condition removal.

Don’t trait yourself exclusively for power, you’ll probably get armor and weapons that boost those numbers high enough. Look instead for traits that match your ideal attack methods.

• The first trait line Deadly Arts boosts your power and the traits are most useful to thieves who use venoms often.

• The second trait line Critical Strikes is self-explanatory because it boosts precision (critical hit chance) and the traits are mostly based on effects that can trigger from criticals.

• The third line Shadow Arts boosts your toughness and its traits are best for helping teammates.

• The forth line Acrobatics is tied to HP and how long buffs last. The traits in it mostly apply to movement and dodging. I don’t know what I’d do without Feline Grace, which effectively gives me three dodges instead of two.

• The fifth line Trickery is an odd one. It boosts the damage your conditions inflict per second, and the cooldown rate of your class skill Steal. This line is mostly based on your steal skill, but it has Uncatchable which leaves caltrops behind you whenever you dodge and Preparedness which gives you three extra initiative to play with.

You’ll probably have to experiment with all kinds of different builds to figure out one you like. Unlike the other classes, most the thief’s major grandmaster (tier three) traits aren’t very game-changing. So you might want to not dump 30 points into more than one line. But again, it’s all up to you and how you play the game. Different builds will work extremely well for some situations and not at all for others.

MajorMelchett.6042:

That’s the point of the thead, the cultural weapon that costs 63k karma that you buy for looks can apparantly be gotten via much cheaper means – and this is only for certain weapons on certain races.

So it’s again just another vanity thing.

I mean, you barely even see your own weapons even when you’ve got them ready. Why do people care this much?

I like the skins. I got a scythe one and sold it for about 20 gold. That’s more money than I made playing the game up to level 80 and exploring 77% of the map.

Shooopa.5632:

Someone also mentioned there was a place where some flame legion guys were discussing what to do after their shaman died and said he’d come back. And eventually realize he’s not coming back and start complaining it’s a waste of time waiting for him.

Found it, it’s at Vermin’s Folly in the Iron Marches.

“He’s been dead a long time now. When exactly did he say he would rise from the ashes?”
“I don’t know. But he said it, so it must be true! Should we try setting him on fire again?”

“He’s dead. I’m leaving. Maybe I can still make it to the flame citadel.”
“No! It’s a test of our devotion! He’ll come back twice as powerful! You’ll see!”

There are very few games I would consider buying the art books for. GW2 is one of those illustrious few.

The vistas are such a great idea, you get rewarded for taking time to look at the artists’ work. Now if only some of them weren’t so painful to get to.

I love ENB enhancements. They turned Skyrim with its dull, muted colors into a digital painting. And on something already fairly good looking as GW2 the effect is phenomenal.

The highest price of a teleport I’ve seen is about 3 silver. That’s less than the reward for doing the daily events and can be covered by doing 3 dynamic events.

I only use it when I’m going somewhere I have something to do. Just be smart about when and where you use it and you’ll do fine. Also, remember teleports within major cities and the Asura gates are always free.

I think it’s random. My 80 gets anything from karma jugs to cotton bolts.

That’s not permanent at all. And notice you can’t attack anything while it’s active. Otherwise you get the “revealed” condition which means you can’t stealth again for 3 seconds.

Heartseeker spam? Still? Are people still that clueless?

You use heartseeker when the enemy’s dropped below 50% HP or to close the distance when steal is recharging. Otherwise it’s a waste of initiative.

The cultural weapons aren’t even that great when you compare the stats to other level 80 weapons.

You’re much better off saving up for something off the trading post or making yourself the weapons you want.

Leveling is the easiest thing to do in this game because not only does doing anything at all give you XP, but the climb to higher levels is almost a flat line.

You don’t do things in this game to level up, you do things because you decided you want to.

BowmasterSol.3457:

For anyone unfamiliar with Mad King Thorn’s sense of humor way back when, here is a link to a challenge mission in GW1: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Scarred_Psyche

There is some very good banter back and forth between him and Palawa Joko.

Some of those are ingenious. Especially the chamber pot insult.

The camera itself is poor irregardless of what you’re playing as.

The ONLY things I’ve seen that are horribly overpriced so far that are actually worth anything are the precursor legendary weapons. Everything else is just fluff and vanity items or are usually found in a decent amount of time.

I found enough rare large skulls to make a Godskull Kriss only a day or two after my smithing got high enough to let me make it. That may have been a fluke, but boy that was sure some convenient timing.

If you’re really so obsessed with having weapon and armor skins then you probably already have bought gems and traded them for in-game currency.

The only problem I have (and I’m not alone) is figuring out how to take part in the Mad King book event.

I was more confused watching one of those fights happen as soon as I visited Lion’s Arch than watching a trailer for Hotline Miami.

Aren’t they all just cosmetic items?

Why is this such a huge deal to you?

No wonder he was killed by his own subjects.

When the only way to figure out how to activate an in-game item needed to take part in something, is to search the internet you know there’s something wrong with the event.

Now who actually knows how to use the thing? I can’t even find the first ghost which the NPC says is standing right next to her and I follow her instructions.

I have no idea how the candy scanner works at all. The game says there’s a ghost right next to the NPC who gives it out, but I don’t find anything.

It was because of someone elses’ luck I found the first ghost, got a page from a book of some sort and now I have no idea what to do after that. I searched what should obviously be an area it’s talking about but even if it’s the right place the scanner wouldn’t tell me.

I left the main lobby of Lion’s Arch and now I can’t even use the item she said to search with.

Does not compute.

“Search for spectral energy”? Where?

And once I left the circle on the map I lost the item I was apparently supposed to be using to do whatever she wanted.

Could this quest be any more vague?

But I’m not even looking for a WvW group, I wanted a general purpose group. And the only two so far I’ve gotten in touch with are located on full servers.

Game design this poor is practically an insult to players.

What’s really killing the game is this insipid WvW thing.

It’s a great idea in itself. But AreaNet made the insanely stupid decision to make it apply to PvE too! So if you picked the wrong server back when the game launched and all you find are bots instead of real human players on it, you’re stuck with them.

You’re screwed.

I’ve been trying for days to get out of Henge Of Dervani to find guilds who actually play the game together and they’re still full at 3 AM.

It’s looking to be my very first and very last MMO ever.

Don’t bother.

The servers are now staying full 24/7. Your best bet is to find another game unless AreaNet realizes how stupid it is to have the world system apply to both WvW and PvE.

The only overflows in this game are when you go to Lion’s Arch.

Having people on your friends list doesn’t mean you can play with them. It’s absolutely utterly pointless to have them on the even even if you’re not on the same server with them because you’ll never see them in-game.