[QQ]: Thief Overview - with guest writer Siege, from 치 The Spearmen 치

[shawn]

ArenaNet calls their Thief a profession “unique" to Guild Wars 2 and, despite the many inevitable comparisons to the original Guild Wars Assassin, it is actually true. Team Quitter’s fifth profession overview enlists the help of Siege, a Thief fanatic with PAX experience who also happens to be the leader of 치 The Spearmen 치, a well-known multi-game guild. He’ll help us introduce you to some fresh and familiar features that make the Thief a rogue like no other.

http://www.teamquitter.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=26553

This one is really informative. (Not that the previous ones weren't, of course.) Siege gives some examples of Stealing, the pros and cons of the five weapon sets, and overviews the skills used in the thief teaser video. Strangely, this one doesn't have a tournament video as the previous ones did.

“The original Guild Wars assassin was very combo-oriented. They ran up to you and used a series of attacks that worked only in that order, and then did it again and again. In Guild Wars 2, every profession other than the Thief is restrained by cooldowns, forcing them to use their skills together in this manner. The Thief is the only exception. The initiative mechanic allows the Thief to use any skill at any time, making them the most reactive (and least predictable) class in Guild Wars 2 - quite the opposite of the original Guild Wars assassin.

However, from a standpoint of mobility, the Thief doesn't disappoint. If you've ever played GW1 Random Arenas against an assassin runner who griefed your team by wasting ten minutes sprinting and teleporting around the map like a wild noob, you'll be distraught to hear that GW2's Thief can be every bit as obnoxiously mobile and slippery.”

[Erring Ryft]

Hmm...might actually want to play one of those...kudos to Anet for getting rid of 123123123 sins, but I think I'll need to see more of this "stealth" and shadowstepping before I'm sold.

[Xilisys]

This review basically highlights all the reasons why I'm making a WvWvW only Thief first. Good review. I figured dagger/dagger would be the highest dps.

[Alaris]

Not happy about him not liking sword. One bad weapon means that many less options, given you really don't have many to begin with.

Not happy with him saying that other professions tend to play a given combo or spam-on-refresh. Refresh or not, I'd think gameplay would depend on situational factors; wasting a glue shot would be bad if the enemy is not moving anyway.

[Xilisys]

Not happy about him not liking sword. One bad weapon means that many less options, given you really don't have many to begin with.

Not happy with him saying that other professions tend to play a given combo or spam-on-refresh. Refresh or not, I'd think gameplay would depend on situational factors; wasting a glue shot would be bad if the enemy is not moving anyway.

I understand what you mean about the sword. As a thief, I would never pick a sword anyways because it's just not my style (not sneaky/quick). I don't mind as much.

As for spamming skills on refresh, I think he's just talking about how people spam all their skills when in a battle because they get jumpy. Who knows. You'd think they would be smart and not just spam skills to spam them.

[Alaris]

Based on the interview, seemed to me he was saying that spamming for other professions was a fairly good strategy, which only really failed with thief.

I doubt that's true, but admittedly the initiative means that you have to choose your attack, whereas the refresh means you use them or lose them. It's a different mentality.

[Erring Ryft]

I think it's more that you just have to manage a resource as well as timing with the thief, kinda like energy or adrenaline in GW. Just because Monks don't usually have adrenaline skills outside of RA doesn't really mean that their gameplay is less skill-intensive. In the same way, it strikes me that characters like the Guardian have skills that require far more attention to timing and position for proper team support, whereas the Thief needs to focus on keeping his resource available.

[shawn]

I like how Initiative works, similar to Rouge's energy, and I've always been partial to that resource in WoW. Ideally, you want to balance your skill use so you're around 50%-75% initiative, because if you're just scraping the bottom and hitting a skill once you have two or three initiative, you're unable to get any spike power. On the other hand, you also never ever want your initiative to hit 100% while you're in combat, because that's wasted dps that could have been spent attacking. It just requires some additional thought and finesse to play properly than a mana bar does.

[Alaris]

Energy is interesting... you can easily change player's behavior with just a few variables... how large is the pool, how fast it regenerates (or degenerate), how much you have at rest, and how can you boost it aside from just waiting...

Adrenaline, mana, and initiative... they're the same thing except for a few tweaks of these constants.

[Skyy High]

I really think the "once you hit 0 initiative, you'll only be using a skill every 3-5 seconds" thing is wrong. First of all, you'll always have your slot 1 skill; you'll never be doing nothing. Second, many skills have significant activation times / animations; the time it takes you to perform an Unload lets you regenerate 1-2 pips. Third, you have utilities to think about; if you have a window of time where you are low on initiative, that's a perfect time to pop your heal if you need it or use a utility.

There will certainly be time where you're low on initiative and you need to slow down your skill use to let it regen. I just don't see this as being any different from the periods of time that other professions will have where most of their big skills are on cooldown. There will be other things to do in those periods other than just sitting there and waiting.