Guild Wars 2

1. Get Toughness or Vitality Gear. (This is the single most important step, without health or armor you will melt, this is pretty much 101 against all classes.)

2. Use Dodge/Stun Breaker: Trait for them, there are many classes who have “When you take more then 20% of damage——” Or “When you go below 25% health..” abuse these traits, use your dodge when you think about it.

3. Shut up and listen: All thieves abilities have a unique sound, most of the time you can guess what thieves do or are going to jump you JUST by listening to the sound of there abilities, many people have the sound option off and don’t realize this little secret, this is why most thief veterans have no problem taking down other thieves, I KNOW when your going to steal me… thieves venom all have there own sound when you use them…(can you believe most self-claimed “elite” players have the sound turned off?)

4. Be Aggressive: sees thief… HES KILLING HER.. THEN HES GONNA KILL ME… OH MY GOOOOOOD…. Thieves have the hardest time out of any class finishing off an opponent, especially backstab thieves due to low hitpoints, low armor, and little endurance regeneration, if you see a friend downed by a thief, immediately rush to that person and autoattack the air, watch your combat log for hits.

5. AOE the ground under your feet: Thieves MUST be in melee range to hurt you effectively, no matter what skill they have, pistol/pistol is worthless, if you successfully counter a thief, Immediately run around in circles and AOE the ground under your feet, this is the WORST possible thing you can do to a thief, almost all of our abilities require flanking.

6. Attack the Air: Most players stand around when they see me go invisible, ATTACK THE AIR, I’M USUALLY behind your back, Turn around and keep swinging, even if you don’t think your hitting me, I die in 2-3 autoattacks.

7. Drop that greatsword and use weapons thieves arn’t familiar with: Part of a thieves life is learning what sounds weapons makes when they attack us and what animations they have, this is because a thief in pve dies if we don’t time our dodges properly, this may make us a bit more powerful then other classes just mindset wise because we “must” learn to dodge properly at level 5, whilst other classes don’t really have to learn to dodge at all until level 80, thieves must learn the animations/sounds of attacks/and weapon choices of every class he fights against to properly counter it, this means we have almost no idea how to counter “The Odd Balls” Yes, i’m looking at you Axe/Mace Warrior…

8) Use “pets” (pets, spirit weapons, minions, turrets, rock-dog, etc.). They aren’t fooled as easily by stealth and tend to continue to chase the invisible thief, but keeping damage pressure up on them, and giving you a clue where they are located.

9) acitvated retaliation, then type in /s lol u mad sir?.

Wow…just wow..ok.

1) You can have toughness or vitality, not both. If you have both your damage is 0. Either way a backstab+c+d+steal will do about18-20k, so even if you run max vitality you’re down to 8-10k health in a few seconds.

2) Stun breakers are on 1 minute timers. I’ll make sure to only fight every one minute and not use it on any other class I come across just in case i find a thief.

3) This had to be the funniest one. I’ll be sure to listen for thieves above the constant ’INCOMING!!! and mesmer blasts and arrow sounds and pets and so on…but honestly, that was amazing advice…lifesaving….

4) I stand a chance of killing a thief as long as I can catch him after he’s just killed another player.

5) Use an aoe, which I don’t have.

6) Swing the air and hope to hit something. What is it with you people and 2-3 auto attacks…Even if the thief had 14k hps (which is pretty glass cannon), my auto attacks would have to hit for 4.5k each…EACH…did you even think before you posted this?

7) Oh wow…it’s because every thief has learnt to counter every single weapon set and ability of all the other classes that they can backstab you for 10K, followed by c+d and steal for 5k each. That’s why! All other classes don’t need to bother to learn counters at all or dodge, that’s where our problem has been all this time. I forgot to dodge! or swap weapons!

8) Oh man! I also forgot to get my pet out, the pet i can’t summon and have no access to with any ability.

This list is amazing. keep going. Thief advice is the best sort of advice.

“Drop that greatsword and use weapons thieves arent familiar with.”

lol, one moment let me get my mysterious pitchfork to confuse thieves.

Thieves have 10k HPS, not 14k HPS, to get 14k HPS they need Vitality, which means less damage for thief.

Thieves “Backstab” combo to get it +150% damage is also on a long one minute timer, so is steal, and they must use both at once to take you out.

Most Stun breakers are on a 30-45 second cooldown.

Thief VS Toughness = sad thief.

Daecollo.9578:

Thieves have 10k HPS, not 14k HPS, to get 14k HPS they need Vitality.

Thieves “Backstab” combo is also on a long one minute timer, so is steal, and they must use both at once to take you out.

Hmmm…I play a bs thief I have 14k health. Not traited for vitality…

I have no idea why people do so much crying about thief class – I had no problem with them as a war, necro or a ranger. I am very curious what kind of char is phearis playing, since having no aoe, retal and no pets leaves you only with one class: thief (maybe war, but he has aoe fear/0 dmg for 4 sec, shield block, aoe axe lolstorm, so no).

The main idea to win against thieves is to not get ambushed by them, just keep your eyes open and communicate with your team, watch each others back…

Lukin if you are so pro, can you make video where you fight decent thief on your necro or warrior. Id really love to see how you do it. Because I hear tonns of claims of “lol, I have no problems against thief.” yet not a single video to show them fighting against decent thief and win. Id love to see Warrior and Necro one since I play those classes.

Let me get a screenshot for you sir.
http://imageshack.us/a/img442/4864/gw074b.jpg

10805 HP Base, without vitality.

Are you sure you play a thief?

Daecollo.9578:

Let me get a screenshot for you sir.
http://imageshack.us/a/img442/4864/gw074b.jpg

10805 HP Base, without vitality.

Are you sure you play a thief?

which amulet do you use to have 10k hp. with berserk berserk you must have 14k hp due to 23* vitality berserk gives.

Shukran.4851:

Daecollo.9578:

Let me get a screenshot for you sir.
http://imageshack.us/a/img442/4864/gw074b.jpg

10805 HP Base, without vitality.

Are you sure you play a thief?

which amulet do you use to have 10k hp. with berserk berserk you must have 14k hp due to 23* vitality berserk gives.

This isn’t the base HP they start with, they need vitality to get that much health, berserkers only makes it 13kish, and the berserkers set out of SPvP does not give any vitality at all.

Daecollo: i don’t understand: lvl 80 in the MISTS, with PVP equip.
which PVP amulet do you use to have 10.8k hp? amulet means amulet+jewel.
the most burst damage amulet in mists is berserk berserf afaik. it gives you that 2.2k hp to go to 14095 hp. which is the BASE stat of every glass cannon thief .explain pls

1) A thief would only have 10k hps if you equipped the Rabid set. Why are you equipping Rabid set? Every other set gives minumum 14k hps…

2) I play a warrior. aoe fear on 80 sec timer? Endure pain is 3 seconds on a 90 second timer, and shield block is on a 20 sec timer for 3 seconds.

3) Axe lolstorm? You mean whirling axe? which is terrible damage, and is like a massively inferior version to the thief stolen one which grants invulnerability for its duration? Tell me again about how good our spinning axe move is again, I would like to hear more….

4) Lukin, i’ll remember to equip see through invisibility next time I play, hope the thief attacks me when i’m at max hps, have all my timers off cooldown and no other players attacking me and my team mates are at my side.

Shukran.4851:

Daecollo: i don’t understand: lvl 80 in the MISTS, with PVP equip.
which PVP amulet do you use to have 10.8k hp? amulet means amulet+jewel.
the most burst damage amulet in mists is berserk berserf afaik. it gives you that 2.2k hp to go to 14095 hp. which is the BASE stat of every glass cannon thief .explain pls

Thieves in SPVP and Thieves outside SPVP are a bit different, I was explaining that outside SPVP Thieves only have a base of 10k HP, he said “His Thief” assuming he had a level 80 thief and not a level 1 he plays for SPVP has a base of 14k HP, I showed him he was wrong.

Rabid Set is a pretty good set actually, but not for the common thief.

Since the thread has been placed in the sPvP forum, it’s reasonable to assume that it’s sPvP oriented, and therefore, what thieves have or don’t have access to outside of sPvP is irrelevant to the context of the discussion.

Arc.9374:

Since the thread has been placed in the sPvP forum, it’s reasonable to assume that it’s sPvP oriented, and therefore, what thieves have or don’t have access to outside of sPvP is irrelevant to the context of the discussion.

This is assuming your thief is taking a set that has vitality on it, or uses vitality.

There are very effective condition thief builds.

Daecollo, these tips sound like they’re coming from somebody who hasn’t really played any other classes other than the Thief class.

Yes, this is spvp talk, ergo the name of the forum. He and I weren’t wrong at all.

Even if you were correct (and you’re not), and thieves ran with 10k hps, Auto attack would still have to swing at 3.3k+ a swing. Which is completely impossible no matter how you spec.

Merciless.5349:

Daecollo, these tips sound like they’re coming from somebody who hasn’t really played any other classes other than the Thief class.

I’ve played Necromancer, Thief, and Warrior up to 80.
If I spread classes too much then I don’t know if I could play them as well.

When I SPVP, I actually do use Rabid Set, with a mix of condition damage, I’ve used backstab before, but I like having more toughness and less HP.

Improbable yes, Impossible No.

he’s caught in a lie of ignorance. He’ll walk away. Full glass cannon thieves have 14k except Daecollo’s guildies which unequip their amulets to taunt their prey.

Why would you take rabid over any of the other amulets, even in a condition build?

Absolutely no reason at all.

Precision/Condition Damage/Toughness.

Would you like to group with me and see what I can do?

The thread needs to be renamed. This is not 7 ways to kill a thief. It is 7 pieces of advice on how not to insta-die to a thief and in some cases it’s bad advice.

I can give you a method to kill a thief that works 50% of the time, which is way better than any of this stuff: roll a thief. You will see from the soaring thief population that more and more people are taking this advice.

If Anet do not do something about thieves soon, it’s going to be Thief Wars.

At 10k hps fall over in a few Aoes is what I imagine you’ll do.

Also….really? you favour having a few percent of extra damage reduction over what the other amulets give you?

Just admit you’re wrong dude, you’re really looking foolish now.

phaeris.7604:

At 10k hps fall over in a few Aoes is what I imagine you’ll do.

You greatly underestimate the toughness stat.

Yes, if only there were some way to avoid aoes, like evades or big circles painted on the ground.

VictorTroska.3725:

Lukin if you are so pro, can you make video where you fight decent thief on your necro or warrior. Id really love to see how you do it. Because I hear tonns of claims of “lol, I have no problems against thief.” yet not a single video to show them fighting against decent thief and win. Id love to see Warrior and Necro one since I play those classes.

You don’t need to be pro to fight a bs thief similar to 100b war, its simple to keep him in sight and a bit away from you. For necro example (since I am too lazy to write both for war and necro):

I am a usually traited condition necro with staff+scepter and warhorn. With nightmare runes on my armor. I use well for blinding, corrupt boon and either spectral armor or plague signet for stunbreak usually and i do not change utilities for fighting thieves. Stats are not that important but I have 24k hp and 2k armor. Tactics are basic, lets say a 1×1 situation when we both do not have any cds, etc.:

First a thief will have to steal from you and apply basilisk venom to have a chance for backstab – and its usually their opener. Basilisk venom is a breakable stun, so simply use stunbreak after you turn grey+dodge to avoid primary burst. Or you can avoid it by planting a mark on yourself to fear him instantly when he comes to you. Either way now you have a distance between you and a thief, start using your scepter to cripple him, or/and marks to see where he is in stealth (don’t put them in one place, spam them around you) and start dropping conditions. Since thief just used a steal from you now has a 3 sec fear, when he uses it you use death shroud + 3 to fear him away and not get close enough for attacking.

Everything else is situatational since now he has no way to jump near you with daggers and stun + cloak + backstab since steal is on 45 sec cd. Just drop conditions, atack even if he is stealthed since you can still hit him, and dodge.

If on rare occasion you fight more than 45 sec, and your stunbreaker has still 45 sec cd, use DS to block the second burst for 1.5 sec stun and dodge again. When desperate thieves usually will start spamming HS to catch up with a target and it is not effective if you are not below 25% hp so they are just digging their own graves by spending initiative.

The best way to learn how to defeat a class is to try playing it yourself, and not qqing in forum about it…

P.S. I have no idea what are you calling a decent thief, but no thief that calls himself decent will use something as gimmicky as a pure BS build in tpvp that is just for 8×8 nab pwning and maybe stealing a boss in first tpvp map…

Maybe I could meet you guys in SPVP, group with you and show you what I can do, talking on the forums seems to proove nothing.

Listen to the sound in this game? Not going to happen.

Hyperacusis. Just one more problem that game developers don’t seem to know about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperacusis

As for the topic here, Thief is the only class I can’t kill with my Mesmer. Hyperspeed and invisibility? Romulans come to mind.

phaeris.7604:

Yes, this is spvp talk, ergo the name of the forum. He and I weren’t wrong at all.

Even if you were correct (and you’re not), and thieves ran with 10k hps, Auto attack would still have to swing at 3.3k+ a swing. Which is completely impossible no matter how you spec.

I think he meant 2-3 auto attack chains. If your ranged that would be 6-9 attacks.

I’m sorry, the game or this guide wasn’t made to suit your disabilities… :/

Would you mind if I made a video titled “The Best Thief in the Whole World” and showed off what I could do with just 3 skills?

Then maybe you could relay some tips from that?

Cribbage.2056:

The thread needs to be renamed. This is not 7 ways to kill a thief. It is 7 pieces of advice on how not to insta-die to a thief and in some cases it’s bad advice.

I can give you a method to kill a thief that works 50% of the time, which is way better than any of this stuff: roll a thief. You will see from the soaring thief population that more and more people are taking this advice.

If Anet do not do something about thieves soon, it’s going to be Thief Wars.

Well the point of these threads are to give advice… some good, some decent, some bad, but still advice… to people who are obviously struggling with thieves when there are a lof of us that aren’t.

But most of the time, the advice is shrugged off and insulted and the “nerf thief” posts continue, mostly based on simply saying “well that doesn’t work!” because none of this is full-proof… movement, timing, lag, situations will always sway the conflict, but when everyone is saying it’s just thieves defending thieves, it’s not true. I played a thief for all of 2 games, the rest of my time has been spent playing Engineer and Guardian, neither of which have I found thieves to be particularly threatening 1v1. I’m sure there have to be other professions that feel the same. Does that say I never die to thieves? Of course not, I die all the time to various professions and playstyles. But on the whole, I kill a lot more of them than they kill me.

There is advice out there, but people gravitate towards complaints rather than contributing and learning in the few productive threads this board generates. The game is 2 months old, there’s no way Anet should start nerfing anything hard, it should be a little at a time. It’s like tuning a guitar… if it’s out of tune, you don’t scream about it and just start winding big in the opposite direction, you just nudge it that way little by little until it sounds just right.

Yeah, but it would be funner if we did “Best thief in the world vs newb thief who uses rabid set.”

Daecollo.9578:

I’m sorry, the game or this guide wasn’t made to suit your disabilities… :/

Perhaps I didn’t make the point clear enough. Your tip about listening to the game is pure kittens, because that isn’t even the slightest factor with all the other classes. Sometimes I win againt those guys, sometimes I don’t, but the balance so far is in my favor.

With a Thief it’s different story. I don’t think I’ve actually killed one yet.

Merciless.5349:

Would you mind if I made a video titled “The Best Thief in the Whole World” and showed off what I could do with just 3 skills?

Then maybe you could relay some tips from that?

Yes please do this but leave the video unedited and have it in tpvp where you can’t hide behind 5+ other players, show all 3 maps please.

I’m keen to see what 10k hps in spvp/tpvp can do…

The thief backstab burst is not effected by your advice. Your advice requires some form of reaction time.

I remember this one thief. I was going up this hill in WvW and he was at the top of the hill and alone. I thought, ok, I’m ready, let’s do this. So I started moving towards him and he was looking right at me. I knew he saw me and I knew he knew I saw him. Suddenly, he disappears and my initial thought is “where did he go”. Unfortunately, that was also my last thought before I saw the downed state. Three hits (steal, cnd, backstab) downed. I’m not tanky but it was a real kick in the pants. Even if I had gone more tanky (which is only about 400 more toughness anyway) he would have finished me with 2 heartseekers.

The problem is, you don’t have time to react before you are downed. Even if you do a preemptive dodge, he can just wait for your dodge to end and then pop you. No venom needed. No stunbreaker needed. It was… ok, let’s fight.. dead. Seriously.

So your advice, does not fix the problem. I don’t have a problem fighting thieves 1v1 when they are not specced like this. Sometimes I win, sometimes they do. But a burst backstab build is ridiculous.

So… while your advice has been said before, it does not fix the problem. Thieves are not broken. There is a particular build of the thief that is.

And to respond to the whole toughness/vitality opinion, my toughness and vitality are fine in 1v1 and 1v2 (outnumbered) against all other classes including warriors. So why should I have to downgrade all of my other abilities just so I can counter a cheap trick that probably would not be negated by doing so anyway? Logic is flawed.

Thief vs anyone else – no need to dodge, no need for toughness gear, no need to aoe, no need to shut up and listen, no need to use unusual weapons. I think thieves are fine, but these posts need to stop, they’re ridiculous.

Good points were made reguardless of vitality. ty

@aydenunited

I know mate, but the point is, a thief needs no special knowledge beyond his basic weapons set, and tbh not all of that, to kill just about anyone in the game. It’s always some variation of CnD, mug, BS and HS, or shortbow harrassing.

Is it not a bit lopsided that the whole community needs to take a degree course in how to kill thieves and mesmers, but they can just turn up with a basic knowledge and STILL win most fights.

This whole situation is classic class imbalance. Most MMOs with PvP go through this exact thing. It might as well be scripted.

1) Community moans about OP class
2) OP class players say l2p we’re not OP
3) Some of the community reroll as OP class, others leave, others continue complaining.

The future of GW2 depends on what Anet choose step (4) to be. In WAR, step (4) was to ignore balance concerns over Bright Wizards, and step (5) was the game going into a spiral. In The Secret World, step (4) was to ignore the concerns over Assault Rifle and step (5) was TSW becoming practically a PvE-only game.

Interestingly, WoW made Step (4) to address balance concerns by adopting a r-p-s model, which apparently is sustainable but it does rather rely on people not minding that 80% of PvP is decided before you enter the map.

You might be tired of seeing nerf threads, but those are the ones that need to be taken note of. This “advice” thread is not part of the solution, and you know what that means.

Alot of things could use a nerf, but thief is hardly hard to beat once you can predict and learn how it works, otherwise your just going to have problems.

This isn’t like bright wizards who can kill you from far away and your unable to do anything.

This isn’t like rogues in wow who could permastun you and kill you.

Well, sometimes you down very fast when facing thief, true. But remember, fight start after your down. If you are talking about 1v1 only, you can choose some counter class against them.

@Daecollo

I don’t agree, and I think comments like that cloud the waters unhelpfully. PvP is not 1 on 1, so “predicting” what your opponent is going to do is not possible. Even if you do choose to single out a thief and ignore all other considerations just to try to beat him, what if there are two thieves in the match?

Bright Wizards used loads of pseudo-plausible rationalisations to stave off the nerf bat. I sincerely hope thieves are less successful in flannelling the devs.

What are thieves strengths?

Supposed to be or actual?

If you go with supposed to be, I’ll reference the advertisement on the front page (which I’ve argued this before and its hard to see an advertisement as true, but for the sake of argument…). Stealth and Surprise with an agile defensive style. (notice the lack of the word damage, burst, assassination, death and destruction)…

If you go with what they are… I’ve seen thieves do massive AoE damage to huge groups of people killing lots of foes… I’ve seen massive spike damage that instantly kills unsuspecting victims…. I’ve seen thieves run from a group of 3-4 people getting away at speeds that are quite ridiculous (like they are running out of combat while everyone else was running in combat)… I’ve seen thieves use bows and pistols do drop people very quickly (not either of their advertised abilities but potent nonetheless)… shall I continue?

Not a good come back Daecollo.

Good.
Now, what do thieves do for other allies?

Its funny how these people overrated Thieves when Mesmers are the ones who are the true face-roll class.

Would be nice if ANET didn’t nerf Thieves so these people would leave <3