So, is sPvP basically only for Necros, Mesmers, Thieves, and Elementalists?
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Posted by: Yasha.5963
Right at this moment? Mesmer, Guardian, Thief in that order. Expect them to get toned down a bit in the next few weeks though.
Rather than rolling the strongest class, you really ought to try all of them for a few hours in sPvP and see which ones you enjoy the most. That’s what I did, and I chose to main Ranger despite the fact that it’s objectively weaker than some of the other classes.
While some of the classes are a bit stronger than others, you can do well with any one of them if you’re a good player and take the time to learn how to spec and play it.
Wow, almost exactly the same experience for me.
You also always see the really well played “lesser” classes blowing people away as well. That said, thief and mesmer in particular are really easy to play and if you get good at it you’ll be devistating. I think guardian is a little harder but as everyone says they are a powerhouse in the right hands.
Just want to elaborate on a major reason why thief and Mesmer are so good: you can run glass canon builds but still have great survivability. Rack up the easy kills without dying, feels so good!
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Please give us spvp gear progression. 10% difference from baseline-best.
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Posted by: Yasha.5963
There are so many things I love about the pvp in this game, but one of the best things is the lack of gear gap between players in spvp. Even the gear gap in WvW isn’t that bad compared to some games.
One thing I noticed is that slight changes in your build can have a MAJOR effect on how well you do in pvp. It would be worth picking up a good build from the net (condition/toughness is probably the best) and going from there. You can adapt the build as you gain experience.
I cant tell if your a troll or not.
Let me explain something to you,
ANets vision for this game is that: All classes should be able to perform all roles
Ie all classes should have ranged and melee condition builds, support builds, damage mitigation builds, ranged and melee nuke builds and ranged and melee AoE builds.
The only bit in your post I agree with is the shadow shot being useful for travelling. Rangers can equal the melee DPS of a thief and do significantly more ranged dps. I did a calculation of shortbow vs shortbow if you want to check the thiefs 1200 range post.
but i’m glad you have found a class you enjoy
Likewise can’t tell if you are troll or just kitten.
OP is saying that thief excels in many roles, especially ones that he thought the traditional ranged weapon class “ranger” would be better at.
Thief definately has a great synergy between devistating melee and powerful ranged options. Ranger short bow is pretty good, but I couldn’t agree that it is “better” than thief short bow, and I’d be more inclined to say the opposite is true, especially when you consider that thief can afford to stack damage/crit and still have great survivability, something a ranger cannot do (unless they enjoy dying a lot).
Thief melee is of course amazing compared to Ranger, as is your claim that Ranger can equal them.
A key difference between thief and ranger is that you can spec for maximum damage as thief and still have great survivability due to the stealth and movement skills. As a ranger you have to stack toughness or you will die (lots).
If you use the traits that gives initiative when stealthing you can use cloak and dagger wait 3 seconds use it again and keep doing it infinitely being perma stealthed an still doing damage. Also if you wait till the end of the stealth and backstab right at the end you don’t get the revealed debuff so you can just stealth straight away. (This is probably a bug that needs fixing.) but to be honest its a really boring play-style. i tried it once and its basically just cloak and dagger wait 3 seconds cloak and dagger, just repeat till their half HP then cloak and dagger wait 2 1/2 seconds backstab cloak and dagger.
Thanks for this, I was wondering the same thing last night. Was playing in spvp against a thief that stealthed several times without actually fully coming out of stealth. I saw the dark whirl when it was about to come out of stealth and then it was gone. I played a thief in spvp for a while and knew all the stealth skills so I couldn’t figure out what was going on.
I thought it had something to do with cloak and dagger, but that skill uses a lot of intiative and I recall having to be really close to get it to work, so I was kind of perplexed.
Nope. Its probably the most engaging class I’ve played.
To play it well you need to juggle your pets and various skills with positioning and movement being really important for some builds. A longbow sniper is more of a stationary build, but can be fun knocking people of buildings and so on.
Its also fun because you can stand out of combat a little and assess whats going on, unlike straight melee classes. The cat and mouse against thieves/guadians etc is also a lot of fun and really rewarding when you pull it off.
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He could have used a variety of moves to dodge one tick of the roots and walk out of them, or used condition removal, or possibly even aegis.
This.
You don’t have to destroy the vines, you can dodge roll etc out of them. That is probably what the thief did.
Its good to get a bit of breathing space, and against multiple foes as mentioned. Its saved my life a lot so I think its pretty good on the whole. BTW I think the thief elite “thieves guild” is stronger than the whirling one. Mesmer time warp and Moa are also grand.
Off-hand sword ability 4-Jaguar pounce: teleport to enemy rear and cripple. Ability 5- Wings of freedom: blind enemy and jump back, breaks immobilize/stun.
One can only dream….
I agree with the OP, I have not done Tpvp because of this point, although I have played about 1000 games of spvp.
I also think giving different awards for premade vs premade is fine; unlike WoW etc. the gear is cosmetic so it makes no “hard” difference.
The OP’s idea could also help facilitate groups coming together to create premades.
Until a couple years ago, my primary mode of playing games online were FPS games like TF2. Rage quitting in those games was common, but no where near as often or rampant as in MMORPGs. Chalk part of it up to getting to pick my server, but ultimately, people didn’t seem to need some secondary feeling to make the game feel worthwhile in those games. You won, you lost, but it was all fun (unless it was a premade roflstomp). In MMORPGs, a ton of the population is driven solely by the rewards they get from doing stuff rather than simply the enjoyment of the gameplay itself. Hence the willingness to grind and do chores to keep up just for something that makes them feel proud/awesome. Since so many seem to be driven solely by the reward rather than the gameplay, it makes sense to me that so many rage quit, since their only means of deriving pleasure is winning (the reward) instead of the game itself.
Yes! I note many people concerned with scores or rewards for spvp to “motivate” them. The thing I love about GW2 and the spvp hotjoin is that I can just play for fun, and I can play over and over again with everyone on an even playing field gear wise.
I really like the no questions asked hot join system, its given me pvp on demand and thats where the fun is at for me.
I don’t really understand why people would leave if they are losing, but I know that people may get interupted and have to pull out for a while and that seems fine to me. Great system.
The OP doesn’t understand the irony of a mesmer complaining about OP abilities of other classes.
Or the irony of a mesmer starting a thread called “PVP nearly unplayable”. If you go and play another class and get into games with 8 or so mesmers running around you will appreciate what I mean.
(edited by Yasha.5963)
I’m not sure if its all that bad, but LR breaking immobilize and on a 30sec CD would be nice.
I also notice that there are a few builds that seem impossible to counter as a ranger, they just kill you: its frustrating that there seems nothing you can do, no build you can make to counter these builds.
Another thing is I nearly always target ranger first because they are the easiest thing to bring down and is usually easy to finish them in downstate.
I love the longbow, but you almost have to have horn or GS for mobility, and shortbow just seems more reliable in pvp so I can only take longbow for the fun of it while kittening myself (usually coupled with shortbow-which then leaves you exposed to thief ultimate and other projectile reflect skills) .
Spirits? I run spirits a lot in spvp with a heavy toughness and healing build, but again its just for fun-I like running around with those three glowing pets and my normal pet. I’m pretty sure taking nearly any other skill is more powerful.
If you have low toughness, you’ll need protect me or the protection signet traited to apply its effect to you.
You need to pop the signet or protect me when the thief uses its burst skills.
You should also have ice trap or a rune on your weapon that does an aoe freeze when you change to it.
Straight after protect me, drop the trap or change weapons.
Freezing thieves really reduces their effectiveness and will alow you to get distance.
Put your pet on them, now that they are chilled your pet will be able to hit them-also helps if you take the trait for pet speed.
They will likely have used their intiative trying to burst you. They will either try and come at you (hobbling toward you in a humorous fashion) or blow a stealth cd. Cripple them with shortbow or chill them with axe as you strafe around them trying to keep a distance.
If you have low toughness you should be pumping out high damage quickly and they will soon use the stealth heal cd.
If they are still alive they will try and come at you again, because everyone knows rangers are easy prey.
Remember if the go stealth keep attacking the area around where they were. You can use axe to bounce of other enemies/objects and it will hit the stealthed toon.
The best way to protect yourself though, is to take a really high toughness build-your damage will be terrible, but thieves will rarely bother you again. Some will still surprise you and burst you down in one go, but most of the time you will be laughing as the thief tries to get its head around why you just wont go down. The fights go along similar lines, protect me isn’t so important, but you have a high chance of coming out on top. Don’t expect to be doing 10K+ damage with rapid fire though!
Thieves are my favorite food at the moment, so soft, so over confident, so surprised that they can barely scratch me, yum yum.
Not sure if this is a bug: Spirits disappear (including elite) when I go into the water in Raid on the Capricorn. This really limits a spirit build on that map.
Also I cannot see if spirit of fire triggers the burning effect. I tried testing on golems in the mists but did not see the burning condition icon and the combat meter did not show any burning damage.
I have played about 50 games of Spvp.
I am not looking for a WoW clone, I love guild wars. Is it wrong to want to take some well implemented features of one game and add them to another that I like for the sake of improving it? No.Furthermore, someone’s opinions are not invalid simply because they have not played 1000+ games. If you do not like the suggestions, that is your right not to like them. However, suggesting that people should not, or could not have a valid opinion without playing 1000+ games is ridiculous. I dunno how well your brain works, but for me (and most people) its not too difficult to extrapolate enough information to form an opinion based off of just playing SPvP for one single afternoon session.
You didn’t even know something as basic as the fact that you get points for killing players-in fact you added that as a suggestion for how to improve the game.
So yes I think someone who essentially knows next to nothing about the game will have no valid suggestions to make.
I think about 1000 games trying out various builds and exploring all the possibilities of the system will give a player the knowledge needed to perhaps post some insightful and useful suggestions about possible ways to improve the game.
So go play another 950 games or so across a variety of classes, figure out the basics of how this all works and then use your enthusiasm to give feedback to enrich the forums.
I’ve also played against some great necros and the other class that is often said to be UP – elementalists. I can’t really understand why people complain about them so much to be honest. With a good build and sensible play these classes are a powerhouse.
I think removing a dedicated healing class was one of the greatest inovations arenanet made, especially for pvp. Also, I think it is nonsense to say positioning is not important in this game.
Amazingly I don’t like ANY of your suggestions.
Point 3 implies that you haven’t played much spvp and much of the rest sounds like you are looking for a WoW clone. You are also off on points 6a and 6b, again probably because you haven’t played much.
Please play 1000 or so spvp games to get a feel for all it has to offer and all the rules and THEN come and give us some feedback.
A mesmer complaining and getting “whooped by Rangers everytime”, is this a troll thread OP?
About the stealth- abilities can still hit even when there is no targeting; its one of the great things about the game. When someone goes stealth we aoe the area, or use an attack that “bounces” off several foes- we can target your pets and if you are close the attack will bounce to you.
It keeps track of wins, not losses. And anyway as Streaks said it’s not visible to other players.
However, you can work out your ratio of wins/losses because the character sheet tells you the number of games you have played per proffession and the number of times you have won.
I don’t understand why anyone would leave based on that alone though.
Personally I only find the auto-balance frustrating if I have been on a losing streak and then after finally getting on a winning side I get “auto-balanced”. Otherwise, its no big deal.
I have often seen the tables turned after an auto balance as well, so don’t worry about it too much; it lets us have this constant stream on pvp on demand, which is really nice.
As far as I can tell mesmer are a hard counter to everything. They have great survivability and great damage, no matter what class/build I use they are one of the toughest classes to play against, even more so if played well. In fact I have found the best anti-mesmer build is a glass canon- you have to kill them before they get their illusions out, something tanky builds can’t do.
Another thing, mesmer “pets” seem much better than other “pets”. They fire skills off relatively quickly, their ranged skills are quick (pistol shots) they do a lot of damage and can be pumped out relatively quickly. I have never felt threatened by a ranger pet or necro pet.
Smoke and mirrors.
Glass Cannon is actually weak against mesmers unless you catch one off Guard. Tanky, Ranged, Condition damage are all effective.
Keep in mind that these pets you also look down upon compared to Mesmer Illusions also stick onto the real mesmer like glue.
You’ll find that most mesmers are a great deal weaker than they seem once you’ve got an idea on how they play. Right now most the issue is players are just intimidated and don’t how how to keep a clear head against them.
As I just posted in another thread, ranger pets do not “stick like glue” you have to actively tell them to attack the mesmer and they drop target on stealth. I have been playing a tank condition build and its great- I can beat guardians, withstand and turn the table on thieves, warriors etc, all the classes troublesome to a glass cannon. But against any half decent mesmer its a no go.
You can’t kite them because of how their pets work, you run out of dodges because there are so many pets and player attacking you, and despite being tricky to target with numerous get aways they can deal a truck load of damage.
I’ve got to the point where I can see which is the real mesmer without having to call target, and I’ve also of course played one. I’m still hopeful of finding a build that works against them. I’m not convinced that they are “OP”, although every spvp I’ll be cursing the kitten mesmer as I res in the graveyard.
All I can say is they are the hardest class to play against on every class that I’ve played. I mean you come across builds and players of any class that just blow you away, but with mesmer its like all the talented people must be playing one because they nearly all blow you away.
I’m kind of suprised a Ranger is having problems against a mesmer, as they have 3 of the major annoyances to a Mesmer.
First. Ranged. The further you are away from a mesmer, the less of a threat they seem. You get a better grip on the situation from a vantage point. Rangers excel at this. Mesmers damage does actually drop off a fair bit at range for several reasons. (I’ll elaborate if needed.)
Second, Conditions. Bleeding shot is painful. Even if we disengage we may not be able to cleanse it unless we build specifically for clearing out conditions from ourselves, and we have to sacrifice a lot of utility to counter something like that.
Third, PETS. sicking a pet on us is like targeting us without a disengage. They track us, they pressure us, they disable us if we’re not careful.
Rangers are one of the counters to Mesmer when played correctly. The point is knowing your enemy.
“Mesmer is OP” is smoke and mirrors. The fear of its power and presence stems from the fact that it’s entire concept is mind games. You just need to be more on top of yours.
1) Mesemer pets follow you even if at range. They can also miraculously appear in places where other pets/people can’t go. Mesmer also have ranged pets.
2) This applies to many classes
3) When mesmer go invisible, ranger pets drop target and do not retarget them automatically when they reappear. It takes a bit of time to find the real mesmer again and you have to then manually set the ranger pet on it. All the while dodging the major incoming damage from the mesmer active pets. Note that mesmer pets auto lock on to targets that come out of stealth.
Mesmer are the only class I find difficult on ranger, although I’m still hoping to find a build that can take out an average mesmer in a 1 on 1 fight.
Mesmers are a pretty solid hard counter to thieves.
As far as I can tell mesmer are a hard counter to everything. They have great survivability and great damage, no matter what class/build I use they are one of the toughest classes to play against, even more so if played well. In fact I have found the best anti-mesmer build is a glass canon- you have to kill them before they get their illusions out, something tanky builds can’t do.
Another thing, mesmer “pets” seem much better than other “pets”. They fire skills off relatively quickly, their ranged skills are quick (pistol shots) they do a lot of damage and can be pumped out relatively quickly. I have never felt threatened by a ranger pet or necro pet.
Nothing wrong with stealth finishers, its a good use of a cd.
In terms of making sense within the theme of a class, a thief stealth stomping has a very assassin feel, which suits it. Guardians being able to res faster with traits and so forth also seems appropriate.
However, the downed state is a key element to this game and classes that have strong skills related to the downed state-stomping/rezzing/multiple ways to avoid being stomped have a large advantage over classes that do not.
The issue I see whether this large advantage has adequately been incorporated into overall class balance.
Interestingly the classes we hear most complaints about being OP are the ones with strong downstate related skills (including stealth stomping etc).
Thanks Angela, that’s a big help. I must have been out of range of downed players or something.
From what you say though I can’t see that the Earth spirit is much use- a 20% chance to apply 1 sec of protection on attack; and I have heard people say the abilities have a 5 sec cd.
I’ll have to keep testing sun spirit, but I just can’t seem to see it prock anything.
I’ve been using them in pvp and the casting time is a downside.
In terms of improving them, how about making the traits more interesting.
Really at the moment you have to take Vigorous Spirits, Spiritual Knowledge, and Spirits Unbound to make them viable, and I’m not sure that one spirit is any more powerful than say a trap or sharpening stone- in the current state its like I have to take three talents just to get sharpening stone to work.
IMO those three important spirit traits should be baseline and then you can buff the spirits up with traits, like increasing fire spirit damage or add bleed proc to stone spirit (or at least give more than 1 sec of protection! I mean wth is that anyway, a joke?).
I know no one likes spirits, but does anyone know the answer at least to question 3- how do you get the elite spirit skill to res your allies?
I’ve been playing around with a spirit build for 8vs8 spvp to try and get some more survivability and group utility. It seems to work ok-I can get right into the action, beat most classes 1vs1 depending on how good they are and I think the spirits are helping the group.
However, there are a few things I don’t understand about how the spirits work.
1) When it says 20% chance to apply buff, does that mean every second there is a 1 in 5 chance for the buff to apply? Or is it every 5 secs or something else?
2) What damage does the burning buff do from Sun spirit? I can’t see any info on burning damage when I try to run tests on golems; the combat log just says “cross fire did xxxdamage” and is the fire damage affected by my condition damage stat?
3) The elite spirit has a great passive group heal, mine ticks for about 480. Is the healing amount affected by my healing skill? Also, how do you work the active skill to revive allies? I press the button but nothing happens, the skill just goes on cooldown.
4) Am I actually helping my team with these buffs? At first the 33% protection sounds fantastic, but it says for 1sec? Does that mean I have a 1 in 5 chance (if untraited) to provide 1 sec of 33% protection every second?
Is that really worth it? I give up a lot to have these spirits out, no stun breaks, no traps, little damage (I have ok condition damage but it only stacks about 6 times). I love the extra survivability and the elite skill really can help the team but its on a huge CD-longer even than the Mesmer “I win button” (as if they needed one).
How would 5vs5 reduce a zerg mentality. Surely 8vs8 actually increases your strategic options.
One of the most boring aspects of WoW BGs was the “defending”. Sitting on a point for a whole game that no one ever attacks, and if they do its a whole zerg that you just die to anyway.
Also you say that players won’t afk for glory because you don’t need it for gear upgrades. However, you can use the same logic against your argument that players just zerg for the points.
I’m partly being the devils advocate, because I have seen the games you talk about; but I also get a lot of close games and non zerg games, and almost all the time it is a fun experience.
Did you mean “players without skillz , outclassed & underwhelming in sPvP?”
Because otherwise your title makes no sense at all.
I see that you are level 80. That could be the problem. Too much pve.
Just play spvp everyday for 3 or 4 hours for a couple of weeks and you’ll get better. (And quit that pve kitten it’s bad for your pvp skillz).
Immobilize is the bane of rangers. Thats how I die on my ranger 90% of the time.
On my thief however, I can shadowstep out of it (even with my bow skill-which is spamable).
Balanced?
I think a few classes could stand to see buffs on their downed state (engi/ranger) but don’t think others need it nerfing or that the whole thing should be removed. Stopping the stomp and getting the revive in is one of the major differences between a good and bad player.
Guardians usually think this. Because they can stomp with aegis without getting knocked back/knocked down/etc.
Stomping isn’t a function of your skill, it’s a function of how much access your profession has to blocking, stealthing or stability.
This is very insightful.
I mainly play thief or ranger in spvp, and I notice two things about thief in regard to this issue. 1) I rarely die because I have so many escape tools, so my thief is not often in the downed state anyway and 2) my thief is very good at stomping because of stealth.
This gives thief a huge advantage over ranger in a critical aspect of the game (and that advantage is not balanced by weakness elsewhere). If this kind of inconsistancey regarding the downed state was balanced out a bit more- either through normalizing downed state/stomping power or by taking that advantage into account as an intregal part of class balance I think it would be an improvement.
Interestingly, three of the classes seen as most “OP” in spvp (mesmer, thief, guardian) also have the best downed/stomping power.
I’m pretty sure I can teleport away either with the shadow step skill or the shortbow teleport skill on my thief in spvp, so I was also perplexed when I noticed that LR basically did zip in pvp.
Guide: How To Survive Longer Against Heart Seeker Thieves in Tournament PvP
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Posted by: Yasha.5963
Cloak and Dagger is 6 initiative, which is half of a standard initiative bar and just under half, when traited. Add in the Revealed debuff that stops stealth for 3 seconds and it’s not THAT frequent. You actually need to LAND C&D in order to stealth as well, which is not always the easiest thing to do vs skilled players. If you miss it, bye bye 6 initiative.
What people fail to realize about Heartseeker spamming thieves is that these guys are utter pushovers. They run around with 10-14k health and < 1000 toughness. Look at them wrong and they crumple. Congrats, you win. Instead of going on the defensive against HS spamming thieves, try going on the offensive. If you get multiple thieves on you, then you are probably dead – try to gtfo. If that fails, after you die, be on the lookout for them and avoid them unless you have the numbers to confront them.
Adapt people. Glass cannons are just, what the name implies. Throw 1 cc on them, hit them hard and they will be history.
Well, I play a glass canon thief (about 15k health), but hardly ever die in spvp because as soon as I am in any danger I can get away. It is almost impossible to lock me down. I have numerous cc breakers some that also take me far away from danger.
My shortbow basic attack (trick shot) hits as hard as Ranger’s long bow, but also hits three targets and is nearly twice as fast. The cluster bomb aoe comboed with poison field lets me crit groups for 3-4k and I can spam it. When someone is low on health I can teleport and HS *3 stealth and stomp, change to SB and teleport away (or use another teleport skill).
It is quite easy to dominate as a thief, high survivabilty great burst damage, pretty much no downside. Perhaps that is where some of the agnst is coming from; but it sure is fun to play one.
I mainly play ranger and thief in spvp. Thief is definately the easier class in spvp. I’ve also played mesmer a bit, which is quite strong but more complex than thief and for me wasn’t as satifying.
The ranger is good if the other team leave you alone (depending on build). A similar thing could be said about thief, but thief has so many escape tools that it is almost impossible to get locked down.
When someone decides to focus you on ranger, unless you are specced for survival you are likely dead, and have no options to really get away (although I’ve seen really good rangers keep distance well).
Its just a different skill cap. Thief you can go pretty much full burst daamge build but still have amazing survivability. Ranger you can get close to the damage output of a thief but have very limited survivability.
The only difference in the two coats is that you are using different runes, and on one you have a full set of runes on all your armor.
I think the most OP thing about heartseeker is how it constantly evokes “spam heartseeker much noob” in chat from the deceased.
You don’t see too many abilities get this kind of treatment-sometime 100-blades gets it, but not to the extent of HS.
Good elementalists are really strong, average elementalists are kill fodder.
’em legendary elementalists. Legendary as in “everyone heard about them from friends, but no one has ever seen them personally”.
.
I say this because I have played against very powerful and skilled elementalists in sPvP. I also noticed that some are exceedingly weak. You need to think about your build more if you think elementalists are too weak or pick an easier class like thief.
The elementalists I have encountered in spvp that are good are nigh unstoppable.
Jump into the mists and try them both out. They have similarities but feel quite different, although both are a lot of fun.
Good elementalists are really strong, average elementalists are kill fodder. There is a lot of scope for builds esp for ele, try playing around with it a bit more.
BTW I like that there is at least a couple of classes I can kill in downed state relatively easily. Ranger and ele seem the easiest. Warrior if you can get to them quickly, guardian and necro you have to time the knockback and fear, but seem to go down fast after that.
Mesmer can be a pain-you have to note that the illusionary downed mesmer will appear slighlty before the real mesmer reappears from stealth, so if you notice that and get to them quick its not too bad.
Thief has about three moves depending on spec, but when they go invisible you just have to auto attck the area and hope to kill them, then down them fast before teleport comes off cd again.
At any rate I think downstate abilities should be looked at in terms of class balance. By that I mean, strong downstate abilities are very powerful in pvp so should be taken into consideration when looking at the overall power of a class.
In the PvP BGs thief is pretty amazing. Right from the start I was topping the charts, usually with a bucketful of kills, I think 25 kills is the most I’ve got so far.
Things in their favor, are a constant speed buff (depending on build), nice ranged attacks and awesome melee burst which is hard to escape from because it is also a gap closer.
They are kind of easy mode though, you have so many ways to get away and turn the tables.
Downsides are a low health pool (specced for maximum burst), but unless you get one shot you can usually always get away and wait for a better chance to attack.
Warrior is also good but I have found it harder.
Anyway just go to the mists as soon as you can and created one of each and play them a few times.
For Theif I recommend you take shortbow and dagger dagger, its the easiest and most faceroll way.