Guild Wars 2

There are a bunch of people on this forum who believe all classes including thieves are balanced, I’m going to simply seek your advice on how to defeat a skilled thief. I play a warrior and most other classes and I find it simply impossible to kill a thief.

Scenario 1: I faced a thief today 1v1 and he went invisible, I switch to my shield/axe and waited for him to initiate, ready on my stun breakers and defensive cooldowns. He popped out of stealth and hit me for 17k damage instantly with the steal/cloak+dagger/backstab combo in a matter of less than a second. My 2100 toughness and high vitality melted and match was over in a few more seconds.

Scenario 2: Thief kept on his shortbow and just kept mashing his buttons trolling me with his shortbow. Whenever I would bulls charge him/whirlwind/rush to him he would simply use one of his 4 blinks or 5 invis abilitys to get away and start attacking me. He than used his steal ability which for some reason makes him an invulernable mobile hundred blades (lol…) and I had been successfully trolled to death.

Scenario 3: Thief is afk drinking some mountain dew cause game is too easy, I quickly frenzy/hb him and he is down to 20% life. He uses his 2 blinks and 3 shortbow blinks to teleport to other side of the map. I run to chase him down but by the time I get there he is finished his mountain dew and also back to full hp, he blinks to me dealing 15k damage and then invulernable mobile hb/4 blinks/3 invisibility escapes me to death.

Anyone have an insight on how to defeat a thief, rather than rolling a thief?

OP, you do realise that Frenzy increases damage TO YOU by 50% yeah?

I used a greatsword when he was using shortbow for the huge boost in mobility but it still did nothing.

He never hit me once when I had frenzy, or if he was going to I would pop endure pain. If you read my post, I didn’t say oh he went invis and is about to backstab me let me pop frenzy and switch out of my shield.

Just hit endure pain when he steals to you and let him waste his backstab combo. Then fight as normal with half his utility skills on cooldown. If you still lose it’s a l2p issue.

Cloak and dagger hits at same time as steal, backstab comes less than half a second after. Even if I pop endure pain to stop the backstab which requires incredible timing, steal+cloak and dagger still does roughly 6-10k.

And if it does happen and he falls behind in the fight whatsoever, he will just invis/blink away and come back when his signet if back on cooldown.

Its not a l2p issue, a good thief will never die to anything other than another thief. If he feels he is losing the battle, he will simply invis/blink away followed by 2-3 shortbow blinks and no other class can catch him.

I think the opness of the thief is the stealth away when they are losing. No one should be able to stealth while taking damage.

Don’t stop moving, if you keep moving it makes it harder for thieves to hit you. Endure pain when you hear their attacks, they are quite audible if your music is not turned up to loud. Pop endure pain, can be used at any time. When he stealths smash auto attack or switch to a aoe weapon (longbow) and put your fire field below your feet, you wont unstealth them but you will still stack on the damage or they will run out of stealth if they decide not to attack. Once these guys 1 trick is up they will either stealth and recuperate for the next attack or just leave having used all their stuff to no avail.

Once a thief is visible you have a 3 second window to blow him up as he cannot restealth in that duration. After reading the part about trying to frenzy 100 blades I must say this, that skill locks you down and increases damage to you by 50%. If he is a good thief as you mentioned you don’t want to do this combo unless 100% sure you can land it and having endure pain as a backup, especially if you are all damage and no health or toughness. 2100 toughness is about the baseline, you say you have high vital, are you in the tactics tree? Look at the defense tree some goodies in there (free endure pain, free stability, free retaliation, reflect projectile on block = 3sec on shield and increased stance duration)

Chasing a thief with no swiftness is a mistake, I would just let them run off and go and cap the point nearest. I can normally fight off a thief, its the ones that will attack you when your already in a fight that usually get me. I’ll be fighting in a 2v2 or more then hear the “kitten kitten” and think “I’m gonna die” as I watch my delicious hp pour out. Doesn’t help that I’m an elementalist and get immediately targeted. It is quite funny in a 1 thief v 2 of us situation. The thief will try to kill my ele first (tanky support build), and leave the other guy who has no health but a crap tonne of damage to just slaughter him.

backstab combo is broken and will get nerfed. I play a thief

You can beat it using your skills, but i just doubt anet intended it to be this strong

There is a very small window between DBs where you can CC the thief but it is so narrow it’s pretty much a crapshoot if you’re going to get your CC off in that window or not. But that’s about all you can do other than tank the damage.

If you have a block ability it makes sense to put that up and either have them 1) waste ini or 2) stop DBing while they wait for the block to end, thereby giving you a chance to CC them.

Jordan.9132:

Cloak and dagger hits at same time as steal, backstab comes less than half a second after. Even if I pop endure pain to stop the backstab which requires incredible timing, steal+cloak and dagger still does roughly 6-10k.

And if it does happen and he falls behind in the fight whatsoever, he will just invis/blink away and come back when his signet if back on cooldown.

Its not a l2p issue, a good thief will never die to anything other than another thief. If he feels he is losing the battle, he will simply invis/blink away followed by 2-3 shortbow blinks and no other class can catch him.

No more timing than is necessary to dodge a specific blow. Avoiding steal and cloak and dagger is more difficult. If you toughness is not 0 then you should only be taking about 5k damage from the steal and cloak and dagger combo MAX. All the people who quote ridiculous numbers for the backstab combo are either 0 toughness or got hit in WvW or are warriors who had frenzy up.

Seriously take the time to roll up a thief and test it on the golems. A signeted backstab does max about 8k damage to the heavy golem. The whole combo hits for about 10-12k on golems. If you’re getting hit for all your hitpoints you have 0 toughness, and low vitality.

youre not drinking mountain dew. the thief is drinking mountain dew.

prolly the other thieves that you faced were drinking mountain dew.

coz the game is too easy

Swap wep mid combat 12k 100% crit evisc their face

Beating a thief who has the jump on you is pretty hard, especially on a warrior as their burst damage is almost instant death… Especially if you’re running glass.
Not running glass and running a balanced or Bunker build might be a good start..

Your best bet is to Stunbreak About-face button endurepain/or shield 5, or even GS 3 out of range heal Pwn. Thief-backstab build has about a 4 second window to burst you down, if that fails he loses.. and if he doesn’t have the jump it’s even harder to do.

Running away as a burstbackstabber is pretty hard, as you only have shortbow with 2 teleports for a maximum of 1800 meters one 3sc stealth, and none of the awesome utility skills another build may have but in exchange no burst.

One tip when they stealth:
Move backwards. If they don’t stun/immobilize you, it’s going to be horrificly difficult to hit you in the back while you’re walking backwards. At least it is kitten hard for me

Also you can kinda see the precast of Cloak and Dagger for like 0.5s, if you’re prepared for it and know the animation, popping endure pain/ shield #5 is not that difficult.

When the Thief comes into 900 range (the range of Steal) simply Dodge towards him.

Voila, you deny him Steal (for Bladewhril thingy), C&D and probably even Basilisk Venom all in one move. His Backstab might even fail….after which it should be an easy fight.

Because a Backstab Thief rarely has more than 16.000 HP.

BS thief has 14k hp usually

bwookie.3807:

Jordan.9132:

Cloak and dagger hits at same time as steal, backstab comes less than half a second after. Even if I pop endure pain to stop the backstab which requires incredible timing, steal+cloak and dagger still does roughly 6-10k.

And if it does happen and he falls behind in the fight whatsoever, he will just invis/blink away and come back when his signet if back on cooldown.

Its not a l2p issue, a good thief will never die to anything other than another thief. If he feels he is losing the battle, he will simply invis/blink away followed by 2-3 shortbow blinks and no other class can catch him.

No more timing than is necessary to dodge a specific blow. Avoiding steal and cloak and dagger is more difficult. If you toughness is not 0 then you should only be taking about 5k damage from the steal and cloak and dagger combo MAX. All the people who quote ridiculous numbers for the backstab combo are either 0 toughness or got hit in WvW or are warriors who had frenzy up.

Seriously take the time to roll up a thief and test it on the golems. A signeted backstab does max about 8k damage to the heavy golem. The whole combo hits for about 10-12k on golems. If you’re getting hit for all your hitpoints you have 0 toughness, and low vitality.

Wow you are claiming steal+cloak/dagger+backstab = 5k dmg in total?
I know on my ranger i run ~1800 toughness and still get hit for EACH of those for >4K.

Jordan.9132:

,I’m going to simply seek your advice on how to defeat a skilled thief.

Play one and find out the strengths and weakness of the class instead of coming to the forums like everyone else who does not play a thief and talk about the “OP” of them. I challenge anyone on here who talks about the OP of the thief to play one and then come back and tell us how you did.

After all, it is so easy, right?

I never lost to a Thief on my Warrior.
Endure Pain, Defy Pain, Shield Block = 11s invul (when traited for stances).
Hammer > burst Thief as they have no stunbreakers or just one, they die in 4 hits.

You’re playing Warrior wrong OP.
You don’t “wait for him to open”, you dodge the spike or use CDs.

How to beat a Thief.
30 Toughness Tree, –
1. Cripple/Stun/Chill/ adds +200 toughness.
2. Hammers do 25% more damage to knocked down targets.
3. Gain Retaliation on Critical Hits, 5 seconds, 15 second CD.

Use Axe/Mace and Hammer.

Proceed to Win.

I challenge anyone on here who talks about the OP of the thief to play one and then come back and tell us how you did.

After all, it is so easy, right?

I did.

After a couple of hundred games on my Ele I checked out a thief, and after about an hour of 8v8 I jumped into some tourneys with a few team mates and was of more use to them than with my roaming Ele build. It’s not rocket science to Infiltrators Arrow your way to a point holder under attack, and then Devourer Venom → Mug → C&D → Backstab → (insert finisher or fight reset of choice) to kill someone. My team mates even kindly lined the victim up so that his back was to me as I was getting into the fray, once they knew I was on the way to relieve them.

There’s no skill requirement in doing damage as a thief. Most of the finesse with the class is in making a clean getaway. The damage is the easy part, assuming you have half a brain-cell and don’t do dumb stuff like HS-spamming into a Mistform or something.

So yeah, I did try it, and found that with an hour of practice (rather than the dozens of hours I spent playing the Ele) I could easily provide a more swift and decisive impact on a fight than my Elementalist could, with no significant cost to my mobility, and no significant difference to my defensive playstyle (since people survive on cooldowns and dodges, moreso than just having a big pool of HP and toughness).

I’d much rather see how all these supposedly pro thieves deal with playing a non-bunker Ele with an hour of practice.

Ifrit.7296:

bwookie.3807:

Jordan.9132:

Cloak and dagger hits at same time as steal, backstab comes less than half a second after. Even if I pop endure pain to stop the backstab which requires incredible timing, steal+cloak and dagger still does roughly 6-10k.

And if it does happen and he falls behind in the fight whatsoever, he will just invis/blink away and come back when his signet if back on cooldown.

Its not a l2p issue, a good thief will never die to anything other than another thief. If he feels he is losing the battle, he will simply invis/blink away followed by 2-3 shortbow blinks and no other class can catch him.

No more timing than is necessary to dodge a specific blow. Avoiding steal and cloak and dagger is more difficult. If you toughness is not 0 then you should only be taking about 5k damage from the steal and cloak and dagger combo MAX. All the people who quote ridiculous numbers for the backstab combo are either 0 toughness or got hit in WvW or are warriors who had frenzy up.

Seriously take the time to roll up a thief and test it on the golems. A signeted backstab does max about 8k damage to the heavy golem. The whole combo hits for about 10-12k on golems. If you’re getting hit for all your hitpoints you have 0 toughness, and low vitality.

Wow you are claiming steal+cloak/dagger+backstab = 5k dmg in total?
I know on my ranger i run ~1800 toughness and still get hit for EACH of those for >4K.

On crits with glass cannon build, yes. On non crits that’s the damage it does. A lot of thief builds use steal w/mug and cloak/dagger. I’m not counting backstab which can do anywhere from 6-10k. With some outliers. But average combo is around 15-17k damage. If you have more health, or have protection boon you’re not going to be downed and can heal after the burst negating a lot of it. Nerfing mug or cloak/dagger isn’t really targetting backstab. If Anet wants to nerf backstab all they have to do is tone down assassin’s signet.

“Seriously take the time to roll up a thief and test it on the golems. A signeted backstab does max about 8k damage to the heavy golem. The whole combo hits for about 10-12k on golems. If you’re getting hit for all your hitpoints you have 0 toughness, and low vitality.”

slightly under 9k, 20-30-20, scholar, zerker – (not 30 power, only one signet (might stacks))

As guardian or ele I have very few problems against thief.

Guardian: Most fights end almost as soon as they start; I begin casting ring of warding and teleport to the thief, he is stuck without stability unless he is lucky and doesn’t walk into the surprise line and has a teleport ready. Spam whatever AE/spirit hammer skills and its over. Other fights I pop shield of wrath and absorb either half or all of his backstab combo, or use ring of warding + shield of wrath against DB thieves for the retal.

Ele: After playing ele, they seem like the most dangerous target for a thief… 2 Arcane shields, 2 knockdowns, mass aoe… do people really have trouble with their CDs available?

tl;dr Immobilize/knockdown are your friends

if thief or mezmer were counterable then 80% of the game wouldnt be playing them in spvp

What BishopX said. Personally, i’m done with pvp in this game until thieves and mesmers are balanced. This kitten is out of control…every match is overrun with those two classes, and its getting ridiculous.

Dravyn.4671:

What BishopX said. Personally, i’m done with pvp in this game until thieves and mesmers are balanced. This kitten is out of control…every match is overrun with those two classes, and its getting ridiculous.

what about the bunkers??
isnt that the last trend topic complain in spvp??
roflmao, bad players are so cute

Arc.9374:

There’s no skill requirement in doing damage as a thief. Most of the finesse with the class is in making a clean getaway. The damage is the easy part, assuming you have half a brain-cell and don’t do dumb stuff like HS-spamming into a Mistform or something.

So yeah, I did try it, and found that with an hour of practice (rather than the dozens of hours I spent playing the Ele) I could easily provide a more swift and decisive impact on a fight than my Elementalist could, with no significant cost to my mobility, and no significant difference to my defensive playstyle (since people survive on cooldowns and dodges, moreso than just having a big pool of HP and toughness).

I’d much rather see how all these supposedly pro thieves deal with playing a non-bunker Ele with an hour of practice.

What you ran into was the ‘unskilled player’ factor. A thief capitalizes on unskilled players or people who don’t know what in the world is going on. I’ve run into plenty of warriors, guardians, engineers, and mesmers who could survive a thief backstab build.

That’s why I only used it for a brief time. It’s too gimmicky and you’ll end up a useless player if you encounter skilled players who can survive the burst. So yes, killing unskilled players or glass cannons is probably easier with the thief than with any other class but running up against a guardian who knows what he’s about is pretty rough.

Honestly, the only problem I currently have is the ability to interrupt C&D with steal yet still have C&D hit. Every other class can only use one skill at a time so I’ve always counted that as a bug. If a thief hits C&D → steal, the attacks should happen in that order.

I also think that’s the only reason why people have so much trouble with that gimmicky backstab build. It’s a lot of damage in a couple seconds because 2 of those hits are going off simultaneously while freezing you in place. If thieves had to Steal → C&D, it would be a much more reasonable reaction time.

Remember that frenzy counts as a stun break. Let them open on you, break thief CC with frenzy and then bull’s charge and burst them down. If they go stealth, throw a blade trail forward, and swing behind and around you. You should be able to hit them. I always found it best to counter attack thieves, that way you burst them and they can’t burst you.