Struggling with Thief

[Gigawatt.7850]

I picked Thief as a main due to fantasy and all the different type of play styles. I finally got my first Elite spec(DE) a couple weeks ago and man I feel like in PvE and sPvP if I get sneezed on I'm dead. Is this just Thief in general? I hate to be one of those ppl that just give up and reroll but I'm really thinking about it.

[Lithril Ashwalker.6230]

dont get hit is usually the goal with thief. If you want help just ask me in game. Saerni/Zero/Zacharry usually help too, they also may see this post

[Gigawatt.7850]

37 minutes ago, Lithril Ashwalker.6230 said:

dont get hit is usually the goal with thief. If you want help just ask me in game. Saerni/Zero/Zacharry usually help too, they also may see this post

Will do, I'll add you!

[Overworld.9613]

Thief has a very low health pool compared to other classes. Only the Elementalist has a lower base health.

If you want to not get hurt, not being hit or killing an enemy before they get to start attacking is your best bet.

Most thief weapon combos have some dodge, reposition or evade in the weapon skills, abusing them will help you stay alive.

 

Each playstyle in each class has a different approach to using their heal skills, for theif most of our heal skills encourage getting right back into the fight and putting on pressure or allowing you to re-position for a spike of damage.

 

Their if the best class at speed-running getting into  the downed state so don't take it hard. I've been playing thief since launch and the best way I syated alive was trying to pre-win a fight and learn how to time a dodge for my region's ping.

[xblankk.4207]

Yeah, essentially what @Lithril Ashwalker.6230 and @Overworld.9613 said.

 

 

Have you played other classes, OP? They often have more clear and direct damage mitigation compared to thief. Most of what you're focused on is much more active damage mitigation. You have a lot of blind, dodge/endurance options, and stealth.

 

It's super enjoyable feeling out how the better that you get at encounters, pvp matchups, and when to most effectively use your tools - the more aggressive and diverse you can play. 

 

Feel free to add me as well. I mostly PvP and I'm G3 - so I'm not great, but not too bad lol.

Edited April 28, 2022 by xKole.9175

[Gigawatt.7850]

10 hours ago, xKole.9175 said:

Yeah, essentially what @Lithril Ashwalker.6230 and @Overworld.9613 said.

 

 

Have you played other classes, OP? They often have more clear and direct damage mitigation compared to thief. Most of what you're focused on is much more active damage mitigation. You have a lot of blind, dodge/endurance options, and stealth.

 

It's super enjoyable feeling out how the better that you get at encounters, pvp matchups, and when to most effectively use your tools - the more aggressive and diverse you can play. 

 

Feel free to add me as well. I mostly PvP and I'm G3 - so I'm not great, but not too bad lol.

I'll give you an add as well. Thank you!!

[Vidit.7108]

Deadeye, if you are using rifle, can leave you as a sitting duck if you're not careful. That said it has some more stealth than base thief, most notably its elite skill Shadow Meld, along with the Utilities Shadow Gust and Blinding Powder give you a great deal of stealth you can use to escape when enemies are crowding toward you. You also have Shadowstep to just instantly be somewhere else if you need to.

There are some big skill splits between PvP and PvE, for example Signet of Agility which gives you two extra dodge rolls worth of endurance in PvE, gives you only half of one extra dodge roll in PvP. If you are performing a lot of attacks quickly Signet of Malice is your best healing skill. 

[kash.9213]

You can search through this forum to find some build threads. I still go back to some of them to refresh myself on some stuff but you can gauge some kind of baseline when it comes to stats and trait synergy and function. You can more easily see a sort of baseline across the thief builds on Thief - MetaBattle Guild Wars 2 Builds or on Thief Builds | Snow Crows. None of those are exactly what I'd end up on but taken all together you might get a general snapshot of some basics like where your Health should be in which game mode for example then check out each builds description to see some examples of usage.

Edit you can ignore or skim through:

Some things to think about, especially in WvW where there's some flexibility with trait and gear synergy, is that people out there are plotting and have some time to prep and how players will modify skills and output. I might instigate a gradually moving fight and drag and face-turn the other group or player until I know it's a good time to blink around and hit them up with a bunch of Interrupts which I've modded for Lifesteal. You might also get hit with something that does extra output based on your Health percentage, so you need to keep your eyes on a swivel, not only on the UI, but on the horizon and on line of site breaks in the area. There might be some basic answers for why you feel yourself getting blown out right away that a few changes might clean up. 

Think about your keybind layout (on any class) over time while you play. You want to get to where you don't have too much hand liftoff or repositioning so that it's fluid like you're playing a piano and have your go-to mitigation like an evasive Dual Skill on an easy to land key (I have that skill on left-ctrl so I only have to lightly lean over my lower left palm so there's almost no action to overthink). Toggling in and out of Action cam can make some actions funky but can also make movement and reaction more snappy and instinctive, but only mess around on that if you're comfortable with it (in action cam, target a little above and to either side a little and notice when the character border says you can grab the target).

Set camera pan speed to max or near max and always look around, even in transit. Like I said, expect people to be plotting and you might head that off and catch mesmer before they open portal or a thief jumping your people. Or you might catch a squad drive or ambush (remember about checking horizons and line of sight breaks) that you might head off and dismantle or at least slow down or alert to. 

Some things are considered Shadowsteps that you might not have expected at first, like Death's Retreat, so read skill info so you can catch possible synergies.

Edited April 28, 2022 by kash.9213

[ASP.8093]

17 hours ago, Gigawatt.7850 said:

I picked Thief as a main due to fantasy and all the different type of play styles. I finally got my first Elite spec(DE) a couple weeks ago and man I feel like in PvE and sPvP if I get sneezed on I'm dead. Is this just Thief in general? I hate to be one of those ppl that just give up and reroll but I'm really thinking about it.

Tbh, I think Deadeye is disadvantaged in SPvP compared to other thieves:

1. The arenas mostly focus combat around fairly small areas, often with some fairly easy-to-use obstructions to help you hide from ranged attacks.

2. Daredevil and Specter both get a little bit of extra defense (things like more hp, more dodges, condi cleanse, 2nd health bar) baked into their specs. The difference between 13k hp and 15k hp is actually pretty big — but going for the Marauder amulet means you lose a *lot* of damage. (If you play WvW with mostly-Marauder gear, you've basically got more the same damage output as an SPvP Deadeye with the Berserker amulet.)

3. Deadeye has to sacrifice a bit more to get good mobility than the other thief specs. This means you can't play the thief's ideal role ("roamer") as effectively, or have to sacrifice more of your flexibility/effectiveness in combat to do it.

4. Revealed lasts longer in SPvP than PvE or WvW. This can cause trouble for Rifle Deadeye since you're using stealth so much.

5. WvW Deadeye gets a ton of mileage out of gear like endurance-boosting food and Sigil of Celerity that you just can't get in SPvP.

 

I really like Rifle Deadeye in WvW and PvE, though. (It's a bit lackluster in instanced content like Fractals and Raids, though — Viper's P/D is usually way stronger, but harder to play.)

[Zacchary.6183]

22 hours ago, Gigawatt.7850 said:

I picked Thief as a main due to fantasy and all the different type of play styles. I finally got my first Elite spec(DE) a couple weeks ago and man I feel like in PvE and sPvP if I get sneezed on I'm dead. Is this just Thief in general? I hate to be one of those ppl that just give up and reroll but I'm really thinking about it.

In general, its best to take advantage of what each elite spec has in a build when doing general PvE. Elsewhere really depends on what's needed. Daredevil is great for evasion and mobility, synergizing well with d/d conditions. DE has a range advantage with rifle and is great at self buffing through Silent Scope and M7, so long as you keep scoring kills, and has extra access to stealth. Specter is a support spec and can provide excellent group healing if specced right. That said, I would also listen to the other thieves in the thread.

[Gigawatt.7850]

Thank you everyone for all the suggestions and support. 

[Nemesis.8576]

It's just hard to make good thief builds.  Once you get the Daredevil elite spec, then you can make something reasonable.  Thief seems fine until you get to the expansions, then it becomes problematic.  Of course, you could say this about most of the professions.  I don't know why the hell things got so much more difficult in the expansions.  It doesn't make any sense.  What the hell does level 80 even mean?  There's so much inconsistency with the health of level 80 mobs that the level seems completely worthless.  Yeah, I know there are different types of mobs, but that does not explain the differences between hit points on the same types of  mobs that are at the same level.  Here's a radical idea.  Balance the professions against the actually mobs.

[Gibson.4036]

I see a bunch of mentions of evasion. Blind and Weakness are also helpful survival tools. On Daredevil staff you can keep either up on enemies.

[Stx.4857]

Thief can deal with normal mobs fine thanks to blinds, but the real challenge is when you encounter champions and break bar enemies that you can't blind.  You are left with evades and sustain, and Thief has very poor sustain.  That's why the only Thief builds that are really good at killing champions are condition builds like deadeye Pistol Dagger or condition spectre.  

[SlitheSlivier.1908]

Have you picked a wvw server yet? I play mostly there and can help you for sure,  I'm Eredon Terrace. But I can also help in pve.  I've been playing rifle deadeye a ton.

 

Apart from that, check out Vallun's guides on YouTube, they are super useful

[Sugar Min.5834]

Dodging does improve your survival rates but doing that often dropped your dps a lot, really a lot. It defeats the purpose of playing as a thief. I play thief to kill fast not to dodge fast. After years of non stopping stealth and dps nerfs and God knows what else will be next, I too thought of dropping my 5 year old thief. She is not fun to play anymore. And it seems now she is just as squishy as Ele after the recent high handed Invigorating Precision nerf 🤦‍♀️

I'll probably switch back to Ranger. At least ranger has a pet to tank instead of dodging all the way, and I have seen some rangers (warriors and necros too) all with better survival rates and has way better dps skills like a one-hit AOE instant kills on groups of veterans. My thief can't do that, not even one on one fight.

Edited May 9, 2022 by Mil.3562

[GrayHawk.7560]

At least in PvE with DE try run P/P trickery, Crit Strikes and DE.  In Trickery take either bottom, top, middle or bottom, top, top (if you run one pistol in each hand so the weapon swap keeps you on P/P, Crit Strikes run bottom, middle, bottom, even in its nerfed state Invigorating Precision is OK for a bit of extra sustain. In DE take the whole middle line.

 

For gear until you're used to things you can run with Marauder for the extra health, either scholar or pack runes.  Keep the weapons berserker or assassin's though.  Sigils try force and any of strength/blood/paralyzation/accuracy.

 

Utilities healing signet, power signet and thieves guild are the primary the other two slots are flexible.  Personally my LI version uses the precision signet and either shadow step, haste or roll for initiative.

 

That should be a good start.  Cast thieves guild, Mark your targets and every 5 kills your thieves guild will be full recharged so you have a permanent 3 companions to tank, CC and deal extra damage for you.  This helps a lot with survivability.  Your marked target will also explode on death dealing some decent AoE damage so killchaining is very easy.  Playstyle is basically mark an enemy, kite it spam 3, when you have 5 malice use your stolen skill, press 1 then go back to spamming 3 until Mark is up again then repeat.  If you run the version with a pistol in each hand you can weapon swap for extra initiative.  Use P4 and thieves guild for CC.  With the above you should pretty much have permanent 25 might, fury, swiftness, quickness and vigor so yoi do very well on self boons.

 

Can't really add much re PvP, don't play a lot of it.