Thief... cheesey?

[Fluffball]

Fluffball

A lot of the difficulty has to do with your profession and your chosen weapon. For anyone looking for a "hammerdin" type of easy cheese, I recommend a dual pistols thief. They're basically unkillable. I got to level 3 of the survivor title (IIRC, I really didn't know what achievements were till the last minutes of the stress test) before I slipped.

1) You're ranged, so you have plenty of time to react or flee.
2) There is an attribute to make critical hits with pistols cause cripple, so you're effectively immune to melee.
3) You have a skill called "Smoke Screen" that blocks 100% of ranged attacks for a period of time (as well as blinding in a few different ways.)
4) The normal stuff that other classes I assume have, such as non-activated healing (i.e. mending from GW1 but better), blinds, dazes, etc.

Alaris
Mind you, thief has lower survivability outside of skills, and the range on pistols is less than longbow staff and rifle afaik, which means that you have to play well to earn your survival ability. I died tons on thief, granted I did not play a lot and I am not too good with stealthy types usually, but...

I had been really curious what other heavy-thief players had experienced. I think PvP is a whole other story so did any of you play a lot of thief in PvE and what were your thoughts? I semi feel pistols are cheesey, but in a group I think they lose their appeal as you do very little damage compared to other weapons or professions. And that's where the balance lies I think.

[Alaris]

For the record, I did some PvP with the thief, but it's one of few professions I didn't play that much. It was not going to be in my top 5, and it didn't make my top 6. Not that I think there's anything wrong with it, just not my type. But the point is that I my comments are more based on theory than gameplay experience.

I assume that thieves are balanced, which means they can probably dish out damage and stay alive as well as anyone else. The difference here is that thieves have to stay at mid-range or do hits & run at melee to be effective, and because they are fragile they need to rely on skill usage for survival more. This makes them potentially a difficult profession to play well. The initiative system means they can do hit & run attacks, using stealth in-between bursts of attacking for example.

But like I said, I didn't get an in-game feel for what worked well with that profession, I'd be curious what people who actually played it thought about it.

[Erring Ryft]

I didn't get to play a ton of thief either, but I felt like dual pistols were a good weapon switch, but not all that awesome to use all the time forever. I only PvE'd with it, but the damage seemed low enough to not make it a big deal (maybe that changes with higher level equipment). Felt nothing like hammerdin levels of boring.


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[Fluffball]

I guess my question was does the invincibility in PvE make it feel like wurm faming. I think I've basically made the decision to not use these other than to get r4 survivor and in events.

To be fair, I didn't try much i the way or ranged characters, so this may be the norm.

[Erring Ryft]

I kinda wonder if it'll really always have that amount of survivability - let's talk hammerdin for a sec. If the build didn't change after I left D2, the idea was to run into the middle of everything and hammer spam as a PBAOE until everything fell over. Not much could kill you since your armor was good and your damage was usually unavoidable by the monsters.

I don't think pistols are going to let you do that against larger groups. 1v1 it might get a little cheesy unless the opposition has condition removal, but I don't think you'll be able to hold out indefinitely against larger numbers, which seem to occur with a decent amount of frequency in PvE and WvW.


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[Alaris]

Anything can become cheesy in 1vs1 PvE if you play well though, especially with weapon swap.

[Erring Ryft]

Anything can become cheesy in 1vs1 PvE if you play well though, especially with weapon swap.

Gadzooks! The point is found!


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[sorudo]

i dislike pistols in general within a fantasy game so i didn't use that, i did use the sword/dagger combo and it worked great.
you can jump in, take down the enemy and when you're surrounded you can just shadowstep back.
i didn't got to try the bow tho so i really need to try that next BWE, up until now the thief feels pretty weak but it's a typical tactic prof.

[Alaris]

up until now the thief feels pretty weak but it's a typical tactic prof.

Agreed. I think the thief has a good potential at being as strong as anyone else in the right hands. Just using the optional skills more and playing well the dodge/shutdown game should really make a difference. I have never been too good at that in RPGs, I am decent at it in action games though (the difference being in physically dodging vs using skills that shutdown your foe).

[Ringsgold]

Pistols may make you invincible in PvE but they're boring imo. Shortbow gives you enough mobility to get out of anything, along with nice ranged AoE damage and cripple. I like to have dual daggers or sword/dagger for my other set to finish off ranged enemies with backstab and heartseeker.