Thief

This article is about the Thief profession. For the summoned Thief ally, see Thief (summon).

“

Experts at stealth and surprise, thieves move through the shadows, vanish into thin air, or steal items from their opponents and use them as weapons. Thieves practice an agile, acrobatic fighting style, which makes them very hard to hit.

— GuildWars2.com Thief

Thief is a profession of masters of shadows and assassination who use Steal and initiative as their profession mechanics. With Steal, thieves teleport to their target and create a makeshift weapon derived from that enemy to gain the upper hand. Weapon skills of thieves have no recharge and instead use initiative as the resource for quick bursts of damage. Thieves are elusive and hard to catch, teleporting through the shadows by shadowstepping. They are experts in stealth, becoming fully invisible to then surprise their enemies with a powerful Stealth Attack unique to each of their weapons. As an adventurer profession, thieves wear medium armor. With certain expansions, thieves get access to elite specializations:

With the Heart of Thorns expansion, thieves can choose to become daredevils, acrobatic combatants that vault over their enemies' heads with an improved dodge roll to empower their damage or mobility, learning physical skills to face their enemies head-on.

With the Path of Fire expansion, thieves can choose to become deadeyes, lethal snipers with cantrips who mark an enemy for death with Deadeye's Mark, building malice with their attacks, before entering stealth and consuming their malice to unleash a devastating Malicious Stealth Attack.

With the End of Dragons expansion, thieves can choose to become specters, deepening their knowledge of shadow magic to cast wells and enter Shadow Shroud, damaging enemies with shadows while tethering their own with an ally's to empower them.

With the Visions of Eternity expansion, thieves can choose to become antiquaries, aided by skritt assistants to plunder the most disparate collection of relics, and gamble with Double Edge skills that can be activated even while recharging at a risk of backfiring.

Abilities

Profession mechanic

Steal

Thieves have the ability to steal an item from an enemy that they can use as a bundle. In terms of game mechanics, the thief does not literally steal an item, but instead creates a bundle based on the targeted creature's classification that the thief can store for later use. The stolen item will be taken from a pool of several possible items for each creature classification, including opposing players in PvP.

  Steal — Shadowstep to your foe and steal from them.

The thief's weapon skills have no recharge time; instead they use initiative. This resource allows the thief to use attacks back-to-back and more quickly in a unique pattern. The downside of initiative is being unable to use weapon skills while waiting for initiative to regenerate over time. Thieves also have their own special weapon skill types; Dual Wield skills, Venoms that empower the thief and nearby allies, Stealth Attacks and shadowstep skills.

Thieves are less powerful in terms of durability in comparison to some professions. They must rely on stealth, evasion, surprise attacks, and debilitating and damaging conditions to overpower their opponents. An experienced thief can take on multiple targets but preferably one at a time.

Skills

Primary article: List of thief skills

Utility skill types

• Deception — Focus on turning the tide through stealth, teleports, blinds, and summoning allied thieves.
• Preparation — Skills that function similarly to traps but are manually activated by the thief.
• Signet — Signets grant passive effects while equipped, and produce a powerful effect when activated. The passive effect is lost while the signet recharges.
• Trick — Skills that focus on making the thief even more slippery and hard to catch.
• Venom — Apply a creature's venom to the thief and nearby allies' weapons to inflict conditions on the next attacks.

Other skills

• Stealth Attack — These special skills replace the first weapon skill of the thief's skill bar while in stealth.
• Dual Wield — When thieves wield two one-handed weapons, they combine both weapons to create a Dual Wield attack, which takes the place of their third weapon skill.

Thieves are also adept in Shadowstepping, certain skills allow the thief to disappear from one location and then instantly appear at a different location by traveling through the shadows.

Skills unique to elite specializations

• Daredevil: Physical — Skills that focus on damage and crowd control.
• Deadeye: Cantrip — Skills that interact with the Deadeye's profession mechanic, Deadeye's Mark, to crowd control enemies, and provide mobility and stealth to the Deadeye.
• Specter: Well — Skills that focus on debilitating enemies or supporting allies. All these skills also shadowstep.
• Antiquary: Double Edge — Skills that deal damage and support the antiquary that can be cast while on cooldown with a chance of backfiring.

Specializations

Thieves have five core specializations, and four elite specializations:

Core

 Deadly Arts — Focuses on use of poisoned, and exploiting enemies with low health. May enhance dagger and dual wield skills.

 Critical Strikes — Focuses on critical hits and critical damage. May enhance fury, pistol, harpoon gun, and signet skills.

 Shadow Arts — Focuses on stealth, healing allies, and blinding enemies. May enhance dark aura and venom skills.

 Acrobatics — Focuses on dodging, mobility, and healing. May enhance sword and underwater spear.

 Trickery — Focuses on stealing and managing initiative. May enhance trick and steal skills.

Elite

 Daredevil — Gains access to staves, a set of physical skills, increased endurance bar, and additional dodge mechanics.

 Deadeye — Gains access to rifles, a set of cantrips, and replace the Steal mechanic with deadeye's marks.

 Specter — Gains access to scepters, a set of wells, replace the Steal mechanic with siphon, and gain shadow shroud.

 Antiquary — Replaces the Steal mechanic with Skritt Swipe and gain access to multiple artifacts while also acquiring a set of double edge skills.

Traits

See list of thief traits.

Equipment

Armor

The thief is an adventurer profession and wears medium armor.

Weapons

See also: List of thief skills#Weapon skills

There are eight possible weapon sets for this profession and two weapon sets while underwater. The thief can switch between two weapon sets in combat.

• Two-handed
  • Rifle — Long ranged abilities that rewards carefully calculated shots with a powerful burst. (Deadeye specialization or Weaponmaster Training)
  • Short bow — Mobile ranged weapon with various AoE attacks and a shadow step ability.
  • Staff — Pummel enemies with area-of-effect melee damage and mobility. (Daredevil specialization or Weaponmaster Training)
  • Spear — Overwhelm the enemy with conditions via chain attacks. (Janthir Wilds)

• Main-hand
  • Axe — A hybrid mid-range weapon that can do a large burst of strike damage or conditions, depending on the off-hand weapon. (Expanded Weapon Proficiency)
  • Dagger — Jump on a foe, attack quickly and inflict many conditions on them.
  • Pistol — Ranged shots from pistols leave enemies vulnerable to following attacks.
  • Scepter — Support allies with boons and barrier or inflict conditions on an enemy. (Specter specialization or Weaponmaster Training)
  • Sword — Flanking sword attacks provide extra evasiveness and control enemy movement.

• Off-hand
  • Dagger — Gives access to skills that allow quick escape by crippling the enemy or vanishing from sight.
  • Pistol — Ranged weapon used to quickly retreat or to daze the target by a shot to the head or a pistol whip.

• Aquatic
  • Harpoon gun — Bombard foes with ranged attacks - good for kiting with several attacks that cause movement impairment.
  • Spear — Rapid melee attacks spiced up with the usual thief tricks.

Crafting

The following crafting disciplines can create items that are useful to the thief:

• Weaponsmith — Daggers, spears, swords.
• Artificer — Staves, scepters.
• Huntsman — Harpoon guns, pistols, shortbows, rifles.
• Leatherworker — Medium armor.
• Jeweler — Jewelry.
• Chef — Food.

Personal story

In the biography step of character creation, thieves must choose what they believe is the most important characteristic to have in their line of work - anonymity, determination, or subterfuge. This choice is merely cosmetic and determines their starting head armor, which can be hidden or transmuted after character creation.

In my line of work, it's important to understand the power of _____.
	Anonymity — My talents lie in the art of stealth, infiltration, and escape. I do not draw attention to myself. To protect my identity, I hide my face behind a mask of darkness.
	Determination — I mean business. I'm the bruiser, the muscle, the bear you don't want to poke. My headband keeps my vision clear, no matter how physical I get.
	Subterfuge — A mask draws attention, and an uncovered face allows people to identify you. I prefer a more subtle subterfuge. A drawn hood lets me blend into the crowd, and no one knows I was there.

Lore

At first glance, the thief profession appears similar to the ancient Canthan practice of assassination: both make heavy use of shadowstepping to take their victims by surprise, and practitioners often rely on their knives to make swift, deadly attacks. In truth, however, the two are unrelated.

Notable thieves

• Caithe
• Captain Mai Trin
• Minister Caudecus
• Dougal Keane
• Zafirah

Gallery

Concept art

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Pre-launch promotional screenshots

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Icons

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  Official icon

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Trivia

• The thief was previewed under this image until its unveiling on March 11th, 2011.
• While being a confirmed reworking of the original assassin with no lore parallels between the two, the thief was the second profession unveiled not to be in the original Guild Wars.
• This profession was originally leaked by an early video showing the second Guild Wars 2 demo.
• Invisible Stalker was an unimplemented elite skill that would have allowed the thief to continuously attack without breaking stealth.

External links

• Thief on the official website.

References

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Thief