I am Norn.
The chill of the Northern Shiverpeaks does not faze me.
A wade through one of its many streams is bracing, and puts me in the mood for a good hunt, and ale at a warm hearth when my work is done.
I am Norn.
There is game here aplenty, wood and ore and forage for those who know where to find it.
Survival is bred in our bones. Like others, I call these snowy mountains my home.
I am Norn.
I revere the Spirits of the Wild.
I respect all the lessons they have to teach me. Bear gives me strength and self-reliance. Snow Leopard teaches the value of strategy and stealth. Just like me, Raven is not above a bag of good tricks and there is wisdom and knowledge in its caw. Wolf guides my road, and advises the best time for loyalty and friendships and running with the pack, and when to leave and wander alone once again.
But I am not your average Norn.
They used to laugh and call me a runt. Perhaps it was meant as good-natured jest. Perhaps it was merely a way for their tales and legends to outshine all others.
Trust me, when even a Norn called “the Short” has a couple of inches over you…
You know you are anything but average.
It matters not.
Like other Norn, I live for the hunt. I will not back down from a challenge.
I have learned to use my size and speed to my advantage, to attack weak points and be where the prey is not looking.
I’ve heard the humans have a saying. “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
—
Looks like playstyle preferences win out in the end.
I tried. I still like the necromancer and the elementalist, and they are nasty in close combat with double daggers and have the advantage of long range spells, but there is just something magical about how thieves just rip stuff up or die trying.
That, and the eventual hope that I can use him in WvW someday, I want to play around with stealth, lone wolfing and hit-and-run tactics – it seems a complement to how my guardian is more of a group force multiplier, which gets occasionally frustrating when there is no group around to speak of. I need something to rambo with when I get tired of moronic brainless calls, and lord knows there’s been quite a number of those in my timezone lately.
No doubt by the time I get the thief up to a level that won’t just melt and die in WvW, I will find out that organization and morale has improved and there is a need for more group-oriented builds once again, but oh well, having the option for another gameplay style will be nice.
The thiefly weapon options are really hard to choose from. Double daggers is sick, of course, and even in just its five skills, there seem to be quite a few options for fighting. There is the death blossom (3) spin to win, which applies bleed condition damage while evading. There is the standard dagger autoattack chain (1) that applies poison and does very decent out-of-the-box damage. There is heartseeker (2) spam that can do a nasty amount of burst as the target has less and less hp. It’s amazing how the initiative mechanic gives thieves more choice in how to apply quick burst fast at the cost of some downtime, or maintain a sustained dps chain. And there is the stab-stealth (5) which can be followed up by a very nice backstab (1) if you can maneuver behind an enemy while in stealth. And I’m just getting comfortable with the thrown cripple dagger (4) as an opener, which also chains to more than one enemy and softens up a foe before closing the distance.
Sword/pistol is another combination I’m liking. The blinding powder field can be quite effective for keeping the thief alive in close combat, and the sword gives a decent cone attack that hits a couple of enemies at once and is reminiscent of my guardian’s sword.
I found the pistol mainhand to be a decent ranged option too, though I haven’t settled on which offhand is the best complement for it yet. I’ve not played with the shortbow much, but it seems like it has its own bag of tricks too.
Then there’s steal, which also takes some getting used to, but I suspect can be rather powerful, if one knows what to steal from and when to use the stuff you get best.
And there’s the whole mobility aspect to a thief, which I -really- need practice in, but seems potentially powerful in the right hands. Shadowstepping in and out of range, evading here and there, stealthing in and out, blinding to and fro.
Some day I’d really like to learn more about all the different professions, because they seem to play so differently, but we need to start somewhere, I guess…
…I can hear altoholism calling again. Won’t be surprised if I end up playing yet another character for the next week.
Why I Game 