[PvP / WvW ] Thief Advice for New Player

[SexyHair.9104]

Hey guys. Long story short I decided to give GW a second shot, made it to 80 and jumped straight into WvW. I'm way in over my head.Does thief suck or am I bad? I do very little damage, get one-shot by basically any other profession with no reaction time and generally serve as a glorified rock in the enemy team's shoe. And by any other profession I mean everyone and their mother is playing Necro, Ele, Guard, Ranger and Mesmer along with some of the less flavor of the decade classes who still floor me.Also all the guides I've been referencing give similar advice but impossible advice in practice. Try not to get hit; get one-shot. Burst enemies from stealth; tickle their noses with a feather.Anyone who can provide a comprehensive guide on why I'm playing like a potato and hitting like a spitball through a coffee-stirrer will earn an eternal place in my heart and on my couch.Much love brothers.

[Steve The Cynic.3217]

What's your gear like? Are you at least in full Exotic (orange) or better?

And yes, thief is squishy. For a squishy class, "don't get hit" is the bestest possible advice.

There's a well-developed line of reasoning, a fairly accurate one, that any and all GW2 classes should be played as much "glass cannon" (fragile when hit (glass) but deadly when attacking (cannon)) as possible, since your "true" protection against incoming damage is avoidance. That means that a "correctly" tuned GW2 character is squishy no matter what his class is. Any incoming damage you avoid is totally negated. That might be because you have some ability or other that blocks (aegis) OR because you dodge-rolled. Guardians are good at blocking, while thieves, especially the Daredevil specialization, are excellent at dodge-roll evasion.

To practice dodge-roll evasion, go out into dangerous places and stay alive while fighting monsters, but begin with the Ettins and Oakhearts in Queensdale. Study their movements and animations, and learn how to read them so that you can dodge their big knockdown attacks. Once you get so that you can fight them without getting knocked down, even the Veteran ones, move up to harder things, like, say, Kessex Hills Ettins, which take more killing and therefore have more opportunities to launch those attacks.

And remember the age-old advice for "trinity" MMORPGs, usually screamed on team chat by the healers: "Don't Stand In Stupid!". What it means is that you don't stay in "red" circles on the floor because that's where some big ENEMY attack is going to land. Get out (dodge-roll is your friend), and if you are late getting out, get out anyway so that you aren't exposed to whatever's going on in there any longer than you have to be.

The biggest difference, combat-wise, between WvW and Personal Story PvE is that in WvW, most of the enemies are other players, and they don't fight like NPC mobs fight. Dodging, blocking, and so on are just as relevant in WvW as they are in PvE, possibly more so.

Oh, and try not to run around by yourself in WvW until you've got the hang of all that.

[Fluffball.8307]

Thief in PvP is a very high skill profession. It's not a brawler; you use it to decap enemy points and to ambush people already fighting your teammates. Your greatest asset is your mobility.

In WvW, it's a bit cheesey. You typically try to surprise attack people and then if they survive, you run away and try again (again, mobility is a thief's greatest asset). If you're really good with thief, you can eventually duel with it. A more useful application of that tactic is ganking wounded zerg-ers trying to heal up in peace. When they leave the frontlines to recover, you blast 'em. (Edit: This paragraph is a bit negatively biased in the wording since I'm not a thief main (anymore), but you get the gist of it.)

A couple things you can do to ease into WvW roaming: 1) Try dueling other people to get a hang of how fights go in GW2, especially the various professions. 2) Try playing the other professions so you understand what you're fighting. You might also discover you like the durability of something like a WvW roaming warrior (which can be VERY hard to kill.)

[sokeenoppa.5384]

You are 75% mastered thief, when you have mastered all the other classes. IMO its pointless to PvP with thief If you dont know ur enemies, what skills to avoid, what skills to interrupt etc.