Thief PVE Group Fight

[lakka.8642]

New to thief and I was leveling at core Tyria (lv32 now). How do you fight against a group of mobs, especially a group of ranged mobs? I played necro and leveled to 80 but I never felt so squishy as a thief. I'm on S/P thief and all I know is to use black powder to blind mobs and auto attack them. Most of the time I died because of the pressure from the group. Is it just because the class is too squishy or I can use some other strategy to fight against them? How can I improve my gameplay?

[Nabbut.7480]

Just kite and Unload with P/P.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

If you are a Sword/Pistol Thief, use Steal and Infiltrator's Strike to get into melee-range.

Probably use a Shortbow as your 2nd weapon to access Infiltrator's Arrow, which is basically your best in-combat mobility option anyway. You can use it to teleport around the area as you want.

Use your terrain. Hiding behind trees/rocks and other obstacles forces the NPC AI usually to just run towards you. It is not smart enough to just move an inch to the left and shoot again ^^.

When in melee-range, stack up several mobs by walking in circles. Go into stealth before your first attack and attack from behind.

If you use Hide in Shadows or Blinding Powder, you can activate it when the fight starts. Run away or get into melee-range and start attacking. By the time you HP is low, it should be off cooldown.

Blinding Powder also allows you to recover instantly when an opponent knocked you down/away.

Signet of Malice works great with the sword auto-attack and Pistol Whip to heal up during the fight. Same goes for Dagger Storm.

Thieves Guild is a good option for tougher mobs and bosses, using the clones as tanks.

Thief is by design very squishy. The longer the fight takes, the higher is your chance you leave it as a corpse. So using utility skills like Haste is great to boost up your damage.

Smoke Screen is also quite powerful, due to its large radius. You can combine that with Dagger Storm for example, to constantly blind your opponents while you whirl around.

[Antycypator.9874]

Critical Strikes -> Take Invigorating Precision, so you can forget about your healing skill.If you play P/P, you can take Deadly Aim (Critical Strikes) — it makes your pistol skills pierce.S/P — just pistol-whip [3], but honestly, I would recommend playing D/D. S/P is too slow for PvE unless you have quickness (Haste).D/D — It's just using Cloak and Dagger [5], then Backstab [1], or Heartseaker [2] (below 50 or 25% HP). Death Blossom [3] is good for evade. Dancing Dagger [4] can strike 3 mobs.Take Prepare Pitfall for AoE damage and CC.

[Astyrah.4015]

@lakka.8642 said:How do you fight against a group of mobs, especially a group of ranged mobs?

use this ⇓

@Antycypator.9874 said:Critical Strikes -> Take Invigorating Precision, so you can forget about your healing skill.If you play P/P, you can take Deadly Aim (Critical Strikes) — it makes your pistol skills pierce.

kite and line them up and gun them all down in one or two uses of dual-pistol skill 3 -- depending on what stats you have on your gear (ideally Power+Precision for max burst). Invigorating Precision will heal up little chunks of damage you might've taken (not reliable to heal/sustain you fully at a low level -- level 32)

slot the utility skill "roll for initiative" for stunbreak and for escaping sticky situations also as a refill for your pistol 3 spammage.

@lakka.8642 said:I'm on S/P thief and all I know is to use black powder to blind mobs and auto attack them.

try Sword/Dagger if you must melee, your skill 3 is an evade and helps you survive in aoe situations. or as suggested by @Antycypator.9874 use dagger/dagger, your skill 3 will hit 5 mobs and give evasion frames at the same time.

[Taril.8619]

Critical Strikes with Invigorating Precision.

Get up in their face and drop Black Powder.

Use the utility skill Smoke Screen and laugh at their pathetic projectiles.

Use Dagger Storm and laugh at their pathetic projectiles while everything around you dies a horrible dagger filled death.

But really, Thief PvE is highly focused on using Invigorating Precision to stay alive when solo.

[lakka.8642]

Thank you all for the tips. My main struggle is with these.

I'll change No Quarter to Invigorating Precision and I'll try S/D the next time I get my leveling weapon choice reward.