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Play style of Thief....
patsfan32
Member Posts: 31
in Guild Wars 2
I did not get a chance to play a Thief during the BWEs however reading up on the profession it seems like an extremely fun class. What I get from it though is that the stealth mechanic is different as compared to all other MMOs.
My question is how exactly in Thief played, and how does this new kind of stealth mechanic fit in to it? My understanding is that it is short bursts of stealth so how exactly would you utilize that effectively?
I'd imagine a blink fest of stealth to completely disorient an opponent lol and while awesome to picture in my mind I doubt thats how it is, so if someone can shed some light on thief thatd be great. Thank you.
Comments
I assume it is really only used for escape purposes. Stealth that is.
-Azure Prower
http://www.youtube.com/AzurePrower
Wow a blink machine build sounds so much fun, what weapon would you need to use for that?
There is a damage association with stealth also. There is a passive that lets you do more dmg out of stealth so you can do a build based on stealth and backstabbing. There are other passives that affect stealth so there is a nice meta game that can be played with stealth.
It depends I guess. Shortbow for example has a blink skill that can be used quite often and off-hand daggers have a stealth skill that applies vulnerability. I don't remember about the other weapons. The nice ones are the utility skills. There are quite a lot of stealth and shadow step skills not to mention your steal skill which is a shadow step.
haha like that is what the enemy is saying? or is that what the thf is saying? id imagine with so much mobility theyd be the glassiest of glass cannons lol
If you really want to disorient people then roll mesmer.
Honestly, I felt thief to be the weakest link of all the professions. Anything thief can do other professions can do better. It was the class I was most looking forward to until BWE1. It simply was very underwhelming compared to others I tried. Of course, give it try and decide for yourself.
The first statement is probably very true although I havent seen or tried a thief build to disorient ppl. With the mesmer its much more easier and encourage to try and disorient and they really can bust your balls with all those clones.
The second statement I completely disagree. The thief is however a very easy class to mess up, by default they are glass cannons and don't really stack up their dmg well. When you settle for a build though, like for example I was cc/crit you can blow up folks in no time. The only other class that Ive seen kill people as fast is the Ele.
A condition ranger.
The problem is if thief doesn't kill someone by the time they run out of initiative then they're done for. Anyone toughness spec'd will outlast a thief's burst dps. And you can't stealth your way out of conditions. I didn't have much experience in WvW but did a lot of spvp and thieves were definitely on my easy kill list.
I ran a high-mobility condition/stealth hybrid build and had a huge amount of fun. For weapons I mostly ran shortbow and pistol/dagger (sometimes changed up for p/p of d/d, I like experimenting). With 21k hp and the ability to stack up to 10 bleeds with pistol #1 skill coming out of stealth (it becomes a burst with no intiiative cost when leaving stealth) I didn't have a problem killing anyone or staying alive. I was usually able to kill anyone 1v1, and if the odds were against me, I could escape quite easily with shortbow and shadowstep (I use the signet that gives a passive 25% speed buff as well).
I couldn't just facetank like I could on guardain, but after I got into the whole stealth dance thing I could solo PvE just as well. The only issue there was sometimes mobs would reset when I would stealth or shadowstep too far away, this was fixed by running with my girlfriend on her mesmer, with clones everywhere nothing reset, lol.
Edit: glass cannon build thieves are easy kills, for sure, I ate them like candy usually. I don't think it's a problem with the class, so much as the tendency for people to build them like a rogue/sin from another game. Glass cannon builds don't work well on any class in GW2, it's just not possible to kill everything before it hits you like in other games.
That happens to any class that specs to kill immediatly. Besides all high dmg dps builds can be countered. Stealth will save you most of the time, unless you get very bad conditions on you but the same applies to all "escape routes" there is always a counter. What Im trying to say is that the thief is not "bad" or worst than the other classes, you can(because I did) melt a lot of folks. But like with every class there is always someone specd in a way you can't really melt him right away.
As far as easy to kill it also happens with all classes. You can build a tank with pretty much every class, the only thing is you dont necessarily thing of a thief as a tank so folks don't look to build them defensively.
Dagger - Dagger explanation : http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/post/5203077#5203077
As Kuppa mentionned, Thief is the one of the most deadliest class when handled well. Just try stuff, builds, weapons, etc ... You'll discover some pretty neat mechanics
***** Before hitting that reply button, please READ the WHOLE thread you're about to post in *****
Well, first off there are already ~2 threads about this:
STEALTH/CLOAK Discussion
Thieves any fun?
That said, the theives have a number of different playstyles. They have:
High mobility playstyle (run speeds, teleportations, etc.)
High evasion playstyle (dodge amount increased, skills that proc dodging, blinds, etc.)
High dmg playstyle (run in unload a bunch of dmg, and then wait a bit for initiative to come back)
Stealth heavy playstyle (lots of short 3-6 second stealths during combat, causing confusion while you position yourself for a backstab or two)
Condition heavy playstyle (lots of poison, bleeds, cripple / vulnerability, venoms, etc.)
How you thief plays is kind of a mix of all of those. You can of course go all in, or you can mix / match between them, but they all can play very different.
In general the thief is not a class that takes hits well, and as such you'll want to keep dancing around your opponents / blinding them to avoid taking dmg. In PvP thieves tend to be somewhere between a spike class (sneak up, unload a crapton of dmg, and then run away), or an assist class (constantly running between points to assist). They are also good at ninjaing the NPCs in Forest. In PvE, thieves are basically a really good source of blind, vigor, and poisons. In a group, they aren't too much different from a combat rogue, although they don't have permanent stealth, but rather lots of short term in-combat stealths (which force a target drop).