Thief: no cooldowns, a resource instead of timers

The thief breaks the game’s central rule. Every other class has weapon skills sitting on a recharge. The thief has none at all: spam what works until the bar runs dry.

In their place sits initiative: a shared pool spent on every strike and refilled slowly.

In practice it changes everything.

You can press the same strong skill five times in a row. Or stretch the pool across a long fight.

Instead of waiting for a cooldown you are constantly deciding how much to spend now and how much to keep. It is the most interesting mechanic in the game and the least merciful to a newcomer: empty the bar early and you stand there with an auto-attack, dying.

The thief also has low health and medium armour. The cost of a mistake is the highest of the nine classes.

Initiative, in numbers

The thief carries 12 initiative as standard, or 15 with the Preparedness trait, and it refills at one point per second.

Weapon skills cost between 1 and 8 points, and none of them have a cooldown at all. Look at a thief’s bar in the middle of a fight and every skill is lit up, every second of the fight, from the first pull to the last.

This is the only class in the game where nothing is ever on recharge and you can still be completely out of options.

Five seconds are enough to teach you the class.

Every thief has the same first evening. You find the skill that does the most damage, press it five times in a row because nothing stops you, and then stand there for eight seconds with a full bar of lit buttons and no way to press any of them.

Something is hitting you during those eight seconds. It knows.

That moment is the entire class in one lesson. Every other profession budgets your resources for you through cooldowns: press the button, wait your turn, the game keeps time on your behalf. The thief hands you the whole pool and steps back.

Spend it in one burst and it is gone. Spend a little and let it tick, and you have something in reserve when the fight turns. There is no rotation to memorise here, only a running judgement about how much of your future you want to spend on the current second.

It is why thieves who know what they are doing look so unhurried, and why the class is so brutal to learn. Nothing is punishing you except your own last four decisions.

Steal and stealth

Steal shadowsteps you to a target and takes an item from it, a temporary skill that depends on what kind of enemy you hit. So it is a gap closer, an attack and a random tool at once.

Stealth makes you invisible, and out of it come Stealth Attacks, one per weapon. Playing a thief is the loop of vanish, strike, vanish.

Dual-wield skills

With a one-handed weapon in each hand, the third skill becomes a combined one, drawn from both hands together. Dagger with dagger gives something different from dagger with pistol.

The number of combinations is therefore larger than the number of weapons.

Weapons and skills

Main-hand: dagger, pistol, sword. Off-hand: dagger, pistol. Two-handed: shortbow, rifle, staff, scepter.

Skill types: Deception, Preparation, Signets, Tricks, Venoms applied to weapons, and Shadowstepping for instant movement.

What it brings to a group

The thief works best against a single target and worst against a crowd. In group content it is taken for specific jobs rather than for damage: strip something, reach somewhere, revive an ally under stealth.

In WvW it is among the most unpleasant opponents you can meet, because seeing one before it hits you is close to impossible.

The elite specialisations

Daredevil (Heart of Thorns) brings the staff and a third dodge. The sturdiest version and the right one if you are only trying the class out.

Deadeye (Path of Fire) brings the rifle and sniping: you mark a target and build malice to load one large shot.

Specter (End of Dragons) uses shadow magic, Shadow Shroud and wells. This is the healer thief, and it plays as strangely as that sounds.

Antiquary (Visions of Eternity) adds skritt helpers and the risky Double Edge skills.

Advice for a newcomer

Do not make a thief your first character. It is a strong class that teaches you the wrong habits: you get used to having no cooldowns, and the other eight classes are built on them.

If you want one anyway, take Daredevil as soon as you hit 80. The extra dodge saves you more often than any button.

The comparison against the other eight sits in the overview.