How is Thief for OW/Story and mainly soloing?

[SunTzu.4513]

Greetings,

 

i never played any thief/rogue like classes in any mmo's. I never touched thief in GW2 too. I always thougth they are too squishy/hard to play. I want to try out something new and finally start to level up a thief. I'm mostly playing Story and OW content. I like to finish the complete story and maps on every toon i create. So how is thief doing in this kind of content? Is soloing stuff like HoT Hero points hard? Is thief overall a more complex class?

[Dayra.7405]

core-Thief wasn't my favoured, but I got through it 🙂 Best feature of it, is to get meditation HPs/MPs by placing a Shadow Refuge on it and ignoring all mobs there, (incl. the Champion of Balthazar near the hero point in Auric Basin.)

What I really liked, was playing everything again last year (and also EoD recently) with a (full-Marauder) Daredevil (Staff+Shortbow) - Deadeye (Rifle+Shortbow) Hybrid, just 2 clicks to switch builds, when out of combat. Daredevil as default, and Deadeye for the occasional bosses, you prefer not to meelee.

Edited August 17, 2022 by Dayra.7405

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Equip sword + pistol.  Use Black Powder to keep enemies blinded.  Doing this will let you easily beat anything without a break bar.  For OW and Story thief is really good.  You might have some trouble with some of the HoT hero points solo, but most of those can be beaten by just running around in circles while spamming Unload with a high regen build.  

[Valisha.8650]

Celestial specter is great for that

[nopoet.2960]

You have to be more aggressive than other classes.   Strike First/Strike Hard/No mercy

Oh and like @Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said blind is your friend.

[SlayerXX.7138]

Its good. Teleport are fun and make a couple of stuff easy. Namely some puzzles in story and traversing to high ground on map. Daredevil is a blast and excels in killing packs while dodging 80% of the time. Thief is a little squishy, but with all the dodges/range you should be fine. Thief is generally low complexity, high intensity.

Hero Points are somewhat problematic to solo. Deadeye and Specter excel, but you need hero points to unlock them. Core Condition Build with trailblazer/celestial will do the trick. Just try to keep your distance. Shadow Strike into repeater. Stealth for sustain. Pistol stealth attack triggers syphon 5 times and 5 of your 6 venom stacks. Build becomes busted for soloing stuff, when you unlock deatheye.

For OW/story thief has a great kit with much variety. 

[Stx.4857]

As far as soloing challenging open world content, Thief is probably one of the worst classes.  But for just doing the story all the way through and general map completion stuff?  Any class can do that.

 

While leveling, I would recommend sword/Pistol as your main set to cleave down multiple enemies, you also have lots of defense with this set thanks to stun on Pistol whip and pulsing aoe blind on Pistol #5.  Your backup weapon set can be pistol/Pistol.  This will let you deal good single target damage from range.  Or you can use a shortbow as a back up for ranged aoe damage.

 

As far as soloing champion mobs or difficult content like HoT hero points/group events etc.  Your best options are going to be condition based builds like condi spectre, pistol/dagger deadeye, or dagger/dagger daredevil.  

[Infinity.2876]

I noticed on ow blind is a really helpful tool on enemies without break bars because they don't attack very often so you would want to play dagger/pistol and swap to pistol/pistol for enemies with break bars. You can get something like this for an ow core thief

[ASP.8093]

Personally? I really like Thief in Story/OW (mostly Deadeye, sometimes Dareevil). It feels quick, flexible, kinetic. I also really like the class in competitive (Deadeye in WvW; sometimes Daredevil in SPvP) and cooperative (Specter DPS/support) play.

Thanks to the Initiative system, Thieves have an easy rotation in PvE and a lot of tactical flexibility in competitive play. But the can also feel a bit fragile and one-note.

Also, like, Core Thief has some gaps that the especs fill in (a much stronger melee playstyle for PvE Daredevil; better ranged options and a far, far stronger resource management for PvE Deadeye; condi power, resilience, and group support for PvE Specter). You'll want to pick those up instead of staying on Core for long.