what thief is the best class for?

[Jab.4169]

Hello there!

 

I went through a number of more - and less recent topcs here and I keep wondering what thief actualy shines at? For which content of the game thief is the best class for or at least in pair with the best (top tier meta) ?

Sometihng that group reaction to seeing that they have thief would be like 'hell yeah we have a thief ! ez gg'

[steki.1478]

Stealth in dungeons, roaming in wvw.

 

> @"Jab.4169" said:

> 'hell yeah we have a thief ! ez gg'

 

Unless you play scourge or firebrand in spvp (hopefully until next balance patch) or a mesmer at jumping puzzle, nobody would usually say this, anywhere, for any class, especially not thief.

[Jab.4169]

in fractals everyone asks for chrono or druid, and where i join groups that actualy are missing dps, i feel pressure that they would rather have elementalist in my stead.

i mean t4 fractals. So i guess chrono and druids are having some love at least for very end game fractal content.

[Cynz.9437]

Ganking noobies and making them cry on forums, duhh.

 

In pvp and wvw thief is roamer, although given current meta you kind of need to be good to be effective.

 

There is no place for thief in pve.

[Faaris.8013]

> @"Jab.4169" said:

> Sometihng that group reaction to seeing that they have thief would be like 'hell yeah we have a thief ! ez gg'

 

Well, the only time I had that reaction was when I logged in and joined my guild mates' squad for raids, went to the gate that leads to Samarog and opened it. They were searching for keys several minutes already. So yeah, there is that one thing thief shines at!

[Aldaryn.4376]

steki.1478 is correct, it's a rarity for anyone to be happy to see a thief, it if happens at all. I've even been ridiculed for playing a thief. Most of the abilities grant boons to you and no one else. This may be part of why people don't like it so much, save for stealth and a couple other skills. I would recommend going to the Metabattle website and looking at the thief builds there, if you haven't already. One thing I have found that thieves shine at is evasion, especially in pvp. It's not much but it can make the difference, for you at least, in almost any fight.

[Belishine.7493]

i had some groups get all happy when i play thief in fractals becouse they say i can do the most dps (dd deadeye).

[Theandil.6045]

> @"Jab.4169" said:

> what thief actualy shines at? For which content of the game thief is the best class for or at least in pair with the best (top tier meta) ?

 

PvE - Dying.

Ok he shine in solo roaming WvW, you will find many kuddos here on forums who cry about how stealth is OP and how Thief kill them.

sPvP if you are good in fast deCap and so, you can be usable there.

 

Ok for real, in PvE... Thief is not so meta when comes to raids or any high level content, due to at the moment many class outdpses you, and many class have something what thief lack a lot, its utilization with group. If you look on other characters they have many buff for share etc. And, thief not... you have only dps.. thats all what you can bring on the table.

[ReaverKane.7598]

Thief is a bit of a selfish class (clue is on the name), so it doesn't shine as much in pve as other more group synergistic classes.

That's not to say it's useless...

[Condi Daredevil](https://snowcrows.com/benchmarks/ "Condi Daredevil") is one of the best single-target DPS classes. But it's also one of the most squishy ones, so basically thief is one of those classes where you need to be good to be useful, not something i'd recommend for someone that has to ask the classe's uses in a forum. No offence mate.

For PvP and WvW is pretty much the same. In sPvP it's high mobility is useful to decap and out-rotate the enemy, but it requires proper experience. DE is one of the best counters for Scourge, due to it's high long range burst damage. But it's very immobile, so again needs a good understanding of the class to be viable.

 

In WvW it's awesome for roaming and taking out isolated targets, it's stealth allows to disengage losing fights so you can pick and choose. Also, again DE's ranged damage is somewhat useful in zergs as well...

[Aplier.7829]

T4 fractals most groups seem happy to have me on my thief (power). While we dont have the large burst of some other classes, staff vault spam is still enough to destroy most groups of trash mobs, and boss fights last long enough for our solid sustained dps to be relevant. Plus with how straightforward the rotation is, damage output is also very consistent from pull to pull, so even if we aren't at the top benchmark-wise I'm still at the top on some pulls and rarely ever at the bottom. And even in groups without a healer we can just slap on Invigorating Precision and have amazing self heals.

 

Best part of thief in fractal is our ability to easily handle most of the "puzzle" mechanics in fractals with our stealth and great mobility. Swampland wisps delivery is never a problem, Thaumanova fire room with no cooling rods, Underground Facility stealth to open the final lock uninterrupted, Volcanic can get to the final boss after the champion for /GG skip, any of various sets of switches that need multiple people due to immobilize effects that we can just shadowstep between to hit them all (Uncategorized we can literally dodge straight up the entire ramp with the electric thingies and hit all switches at the end ourselves), plus more. Also shadow refuge for skipping some groups of trash mobs, though that was more relevant in dungeons which are more trash heavy. I know those aren't necessarily things that are required for a group to succeed. But in the same way that having a healer along let's them take more responsibility on themselves to make combat easier for everyone else and a faster/smoother overall run, having a thief along lets the thief take on more mechanics responsibility to make non-combat easier for everyone else and a faster/smoother overall run as well.

 

Are any of those positives all that unique to thief? Not really (except maybe the spammable stealth). But when I join groups as a thief there tends to be a sense of "all right we've got a solid dps and XYZ mechanics will now be easier".

[Jab.4169]

Thank you for all your thoughts, its been very interesting to pick your brains about it.

I have been playing game ever since launch however it was in set of not very long intervals every year or so. So i managed to scrub about 1300 hours on my thief. I am full ascended and i have 150 ar, so i can play fractals all the way, however i always feel like thief isnt exactly in amazing place so i end up quiting the game for extended time.

I never tried other classes nor i intend to. When it comes to gw2 i just like the idea of sticking to my thief or not playing at all. As you well see not playing at all was winner over the years.

 

> @"Belishine.7493" said:

> i had some groups get all happy when i play thief in fractals becouse they say i can do the most dps (dd deadeye).

 

i did some deadeye in lv 90 fractal ( molten boss). my dps numbers were nearly twice higher than other team members at the ebd, however thats very specific fractal. I saw in other t4 runs that team members were rather taken aback if they saw a thief using DE trait. One guy was even kicked for it once.

 

[Belishine.7493]

ya most of the elitests are just jerkes but im jeneral thief is a must in way of dps for pve atlest from what i have seen

[Tails.9372]

Let's see, thief has two things going on for him: he's good at running away and he's good at hiding. So scouting seems to be the one thing where thief is actually "the best". Unfortunately he's pretty much outclassed in every other area of the game unless it's about "roleplaying as a cowboy" or something.

[LucianTheAngelic.7054]

Thief is solid in all areas of the game at the moment. Anyone who tells you otherwise is blatantly lying to you.

[Tora.7214]

if i were to chose a change for thief, it would be to make the grandmaster tiers of the Daredevil traitline to affect up to 5 people in your party, atleast that would give thiefs a couple of raid slots to help boost the raid dps

[Icy.2186]

Running and everything running related ( puzzles, solo roaming, decaps ). When it comes to fighting, youre either playing your heart and mind out and practicing all the time or getting shit on.

Dear lord is it rewarding though.

 

I dont know about pure pve dps numbers but staff DrD seems okay with the dps and when it comes to buffs and so on, as silly as it sounds but i rarely find myself or anyone in the group lacking 25 might fury and whichever boon you can think of because every class in the game seems to have every boon perma up anyway, and hey staff DrD can solo keep 20 to 25 vuln up which aint bad imo. Ultimately thief can get a little bit of buffs for the allies and get some usage out of steal against the instability that gives mobs a bunch of boons but at the loss of thiefs dps. You can do a lot of specific things with a thief but once you start needing to do 2, you fall behind. Because thief has to dedicate its entire spec to just 1 thing while most classes have a fuck ton of boons while speccing damage, while sharing boons or get a decent amount of damage with survivability a thief can only dream of.

BUT, hey, were speedy af boi.

[Azure The Heartless.3261]

> @"LucianTheAngelic.7054" said:

> Thief is solid in all areas of the game at the moment. Anyone who tells you otherwise is blatantly lying to you.

 

Solid, no.

Viable, yes.

Thieves still don't have 1v1 capabilities vs anything non squishy in structured pvp.

[saerni.2584]

Thief is the best class for salt.

[CreedOfGod.9764]

Thief is probably the best at total stealth up-time and vertical mobility. Sadly it isn't all that impressive since most other classes have just as much mobility+nearly as much stealth while being more durable and/or have more dps. Feels bad man :c

[TwiceDead.1963]

WvW:

Condi Deadeye is pretty good in zergs.

In general we are good roamers.

 

PvP:

We can decap and +1. We may be good at it, but so is pretty much every class except Necro...

However, unlike other classes, Anet has deemed this to be our only role for sPvP and will balance us "accordingly".

 

PvE:

We are great for solo open-world. We are also the kings/queens of the Rule-of-Cool department, _**which is important.**_

But we don't excel at anything, when it comes to the high-end PvE stuff, really. Our condi-builds can shine in raids and fractals, though.

 

Overall:

Playing thief requires more effort for a bit less reward, compared to the others.

Arguments can be made that multiple-kit Engineer is in the same boat.

[sokeenoppa.5384]

Thing where thief is good is maintain ur sustain dps without any effort. Rotation is so easy, that basically my dog can do it. Is it best dps? No, but ill take "noob" thief over "noob" weaver anytime. Sadly in high end pve ppl usually know theyr class so..

[Nemezijus.6851]

I main thief and I can only confirm what the most have said above:

The biggest issue with thief is survivability, but with a good choice of foods and traits (Invigorating Precision and Signet of Malice is a must if you get downed a lot) you should have no problems to survive.

1. Staff/SB daredevil is awesome for open world PvE. The cleaving, mobility and damage under critical hits can be really high with minimal rotation steps and you can do well against mobs due to cleave. All you need to learn is how to manage your Initiative. Thief is very fun to play, since you don't have to worry about complex rotation and cooldowns of skills.

2. Fractals T1-T2 is also a faceroll as long as you have team members who can pull themselves. Since thief is not a support class you can sustain yourself but not pull others. With a good equipment composition you can solo some of the fractals. You can find videos of solo thieves doing high tier fractals (even CMs) if you need an inspiration.

3. Dungeons - before expansions thieves in dungeons played the role of giving group-stealth mostly, with SB you can generate >10 s long stealth for your group allowing to skip most of the mobs. Nowadays, I encounter less and less groups demanding thieves to stealth others and with daredevil staff you can just do a dps role. As with fractals, you can solo most of the dungeons with practice. So nothing is impossible.

4. WvW - mobility and stealth makes thief great for roaming and scouting, you can stealth easily when spotting a blob or solo one-two enemy roamers/scouts if you encounter them. Deadeye is great in this role for very-high single target damage. In zergs, thief can be a good flanker with p/p, rifle or even SB, to chip off blobs of enemies. Don't underestimate the effectiveness of shortbow, attacks 1,2 and even 4 can deal quite some damage on multiple targets. While 5 can be used for panic escapes.

5. PvP - no matter if you are on a winning or losing team you will always get the most salt and insults, so... do it if you have a thick skin lol.

 

Thieves are not wanted in raids and high tier fractals, unless you do them with your friends or guild. Some of my guildies do raids and CMs with thieves, so its possible, but not that efficient.

[Sir Vincent III.1286]

> @"Jab.4169" said:

> Hello there!

>

> I went through a number of more - and less recent topcs here and I keep wondering what thief actualy shines at?

 

World completion achievement.

 

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

Thieves are best at blinding fields and stealth, and they are a strong competitor for best CC and evasion spam.

 

Back when dungeons were being run, bringing a thief was easy-mode. The elites had their damage cranked to the maximum, but they had no break bars. Black Powder and Smokescreen let thieves disable entire groups of elites with ease. Smokescreen was particularly good, because it either stopped the projectiles or it stopped the melee enemies that walked into them. Since speed running was considered the best thing since sliced bread, a well timed Shadow Refuge made getting through most of the dungeons much easier. For the luls, I would often use sword/dagger or dagger/dagger, and endlessly evade the enemies attacks. I would call it evade tanking, and while it took practice if done right you could melee a champion for the whole fight.

 

For Serpent's Ire, there's no class I want on a CC team more than a thief. Choking Gas spits out 100 CC per second, Trip Wire 300, Basilisk Venom 600, Distracting Daggers 300, Fist Flurry 200, and all of the skills are on short cooldown. While the CC is not as explosive as the Chronomancer, in the long term it is endlessly sustained against enemies.

[yiksing.9432]

I can only speak of wvw. A good thief can keep 5 or so people occupied instead of doing what they are supposed to do.