4121

I’ve been using Scepter/Pistol to start combat (having heavy confuse, a block/counter, and a stun is great for doing some initial damage and avoiding the first few attacks), and a staff to date. I’m thinking of replacing the staff with maybe sword/torch for better survivability (if probably lower damage; condition clones and the warlock are pretty good on the damage).

4122

Some simple thief PvE tips:

Try Dagger/ Pistol. Your #5 skill will be an AoE blindness with a 5-second duration. If you save all your initiative for that skill, you can keep it up more or less forever. This makes melee mobs simple, even if there are adds.

Ranged mobs are more difficult, unless they are alone. You can line-of-sight pull around a corner to group them up.

Your weapon switch should almost certainly be a shortbow. It has the AoE’s you need to tap every critter in a dynamic event.

Lastly, load Scorpion Wire if a group looks too tough. Pulling a critter out of a group does not aggro the group, so you can break up encounters and fight them one at a time.

4123

Since couple people here talking about WvW, I will describe how it looks from highly organized PvP guild point of view. We have played group PvP since early days of UO, were active in many games including SB and DF.

We generally move in a single group, but each group is given a number and grouped by purpose. We have shock melee, squishy AOE and general purpose groups. Our commander gives orders to everyone or individual groups, with reports relayed back over voice chat. You typically hear something like “I see about 20 invaders taking supply camp, PUGs”, “Group 3 get in position to flank, everyone charge in 5.4.3.2.1”, or “Move back to the choke, cover our retreat with AOEs”.

PUGs are generally seen as necessary evil. We can take on 5-1 odds in the field, but once invaders are entrenched with defensive siege it becomes more problematic. As a result we need support of PUG on our side to serve as a blunt weapon. Generally speaking, we won’t be seen issuing orders in chat to general population - these are not followed precisely and timely enough to be useful.

So as PUG, how can you help (or impede) our efforts.

  1. Look at what organized groups are doing. Are they dropping a lot of siege at strange locations and hanging back? This is effort to capture something. Stay around, hang back and don’t go charging until you see entire group moving somewhere.

  2. Do not drop your own siege, do not take supplies if they are short. Your badly placed arrow cart or balista is generally waste of money and resources. You have no idea if this attack is distraction, hit-and-run or scouting action. Save your siege equipment for defense - you generally can’t go wrong there. You can help use build our siege, but we have enough supplies on our own to build anything that we drop.

  3. If you are following us - do not attack random enemy caravans, guards, else… if we walk by something without attacking, it isn’t because we haven’t seen it, it is so enemy doesn’t get map notification and knows we are coming.

  4. How do you know where to go? Look at the map. You will see where action is by looking at crossed sword symbols. Start walking toward closest fort or tower that is held by our side, then move to closest action from there.

4124

Thanks, I’m doing most of that now. Even with dual pistols, I get the blindness on #5.

This one boss is killer because they added anti-kiting. He just ‘magically’ appears wherever you are. You just can’t get away from him. Even if you die, he appears on top of you.

4125

Just hit 30 with mine too. Sceptre & Torch/Staff traited for clone killed effects(includes replacing). Rarely shatter. If two close on me, kill one and clones dying maims the other.

4126

Sword/Pistol is my go-to combo on Thief, at least at low levels, because the #3 attack is a stun, followed by a huge number of high damage frontal cone attacks. Pair that with the heal on hit signet and you can bull your way through a lot of fights. The shortbow is, of course, the second weapon…

Overall though, yeah, a lot of the story missions are harder on thief in my opinion. The class just dies so easily. If you pick the “wrong” storyline, you may have trouble, as the story balance is, well, there is no balance. Some are a joke, some are brutal. They’ve been fixing a couple each patch it seems.

4127

It sounds like you are doing it wrong. :)

To do what Oghier is describing with #5 from the off hand pistol, you don’t kite. I haven’t tried it myself yet but it should work like this:

You get the main hand with the highest dps autoattack (#1) (which is IMO a dagger against single target and sword against multiple targets, IIRC sword’s #1 is a cone). You get close to the enemy, hit #5, the enemy is blind and can’t hit you. You hit him with autoattack ONLY (so you are not using the initiative points on anything but #5) and use #5 every time the smoke cloud disappears.

In theory, the enemy will always be under blind and will not be able to hit you until you run out of Initiative. Having the IX trait in the last line should help with Initiative gain in this situation.

4128

I never had any of the troubles you guys had with the thief. I saw a video on a pvp thirf with a shortbow / pistol dagger, and that is what I have gone with for almost the entire game. It is really easy to kite with the pistol dagger, because you can hit somerone, teleport away, and then cripple them.

4129

Yeah, and there are more than one ways to play a thief. I’ve solo’d my thief to level 80 and I’ve finished the story line without much problems (except some early story missions, those were pretty hard) using dagger/dagger and only on a few bosses I had to switch to shortbow. Around level 55 I was struggling for a while but my gear was pretty bad and after crafting better stuff and - more important - changing my build entirely to use synergies efficiently, everything was fine. Around me everything just bleeds until it’s out of blood. :D

4130

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the early stories vary wildly in difficulty. Depending what you choose, you can have an entirely different experience from someone else of the same class.

They’ve been soliciting feedback on which specific story missions are farked, and patching them.

4131

Like I said, the boss on this one quest glitches and will ‘appear’ where you are. I can tell its a glitch and a not a feature, because of the awkward way he jumps around the screen as I run in fear and the fact that I’ll die inside a building, rez far outside and a second later he ‘appears’ on top of me!

4132

Blind only lasts for 1 attack, regardless of duration.

4133

Yeah, but the field the pistol 5 drops is a combo field. basic attacks will causes blindness. Chars always attack faster then mobs, so they are permanantly blinded for 5-6 seconds each cast.

4134

People swear by the staff, and while I love chaos armor/storm, for solo PvE I seem to do better with Greatsword. I have sword/focus offhand, but find myself probably not switching to it as much as I should.

4135

I used Sword/sword and sceptre/focus or pistol while leveling, now I use Sword/pistol sceptre/Focus for WvW purposes.

If you’re having trouble with survivability try the s/s sceptre/anything combo - Block/counterattacks seem really undervalued - It’s basically having two extra dodges that also hit back for decent damage and give you a free clone to shatter as a bonus.

4136

I use double daggers mostly with my thief and don’t have any problem with PvE; currently level 70. Dagger and pistol is also good, but for randomly exploring the world, I prefer a bit more aoe (2 out of 5 skills hit multiple foes with 2 daggers), and the 5th double dagger skill is also a brief vanish that sets up the backstab.

My elite skill is the silly spinning aoe, which is fun for the kind of huge fort defense combat where you can tag a lot of foes with a single skill use and run around picking up loot when they’re all dead – and it’s not bad even when you’re all alone because you can always vanish to shed the aggro.

4137

That’s what I get for reading too many forums. Most people swear that scepter is the worst choice for any reason ever in the history of GW2. Or something.

4138

Yup. Scepter could maybe use a couple minor tweaks, but it’s a great weapon especially if you have the +33% confusion duration trait (in the Illusion line). I’ve continually been told about how awful the weapon is yet I continue to do really well with it.

4139

Does this strategy work well against large groups of WvW enemies, and if so am I right in thinking that you still need to have lots of teammates fighting the same enemies with you to help distribute/buffer their attacks, given how fragile the Thief can be when facing many enemies at once?

4140

I’ve played almost exclusively thief and I’m just not having survivability issues. I obviously have picked the wrong layout or something because if anything I’m having damage dealing issues.

Even in WvW I can charge right into a group of 20 that are facing me and not die; dodge a couple times, shadowstep, shortbow away, roll for initiative, shortbow away, dodge is back up by now and I still haven’t even used a stealth skill. I’m always the last non-runner to die, but I feel I’m lacking damage. I’m great at running supply even through enemies sieging a tower, but I keep trying to find a way to fit more damage in without losing my elusiveness.

I’m going to try going back to sword/pistol (been running pistol/dagger or dagger/pistol depending on my mood) as my switch, as pistol whip is pretty solid. The problem I had with sword was that the return part of the #2 skill lasts too long for me. I’d 2 in and whack some people, want to chase as they ran, hit 2 again and the thing returns me to where I started even though it was 10 seconds ago or something like that and I’m completely out of the fight. Happened so many times I gave up on sword.