Guild Wars 2

I am still sort of new to this game, and there are classes I haven’t played and so consequently, things I still don’t know. So perhaps some of you can enlighten me? I just played a random PUG match on Capricorn. Myself and another player tried time and again to take the ruins from this single thief and neither one of us could hit him almost at all. I went through literally every single cool down of mine and by the time myself and the other play died (only 2 sharks on us) we had managed to get this thief down to 1/4 ish hp…. He was just doing the underwater dodge animation side to side again and again and all my skills kept missing, I watched as no damage happened….

Is there a bug, preventing guardian skills from hitting? Is there some cool down thieves have access to allowing them a huge amount of endurance and dodge? I just can’t figure it out. It was just this one guy on the point the whole time, and he never lost it. The best we got was half capped, so neither team had the point.

I’ve heard that thieves have a skill underwater that gives them evasion and that many thieves at ruins just spam it for invincibility. Not sure if this is true or not since most thieves I’ve seen at capricorn avoid water altogether.

Yes, it is a skill that gives them evasion and costs something like 4-5 initiative. It basically makes them invincible for as long as they can spam it. It’s kinda cheap.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow_Assault

The best way to figure out how to beat other professions in this game is to take a few days and play those classes. Thief is a unique class in that it uses initiative instead of cooldowns for its weapon attacks. Each move costs a set amount of initiative and the initiative regenerates over time. Thieves also have traits they can obtain to increase the amount of endurance they can use for dodging. Aside from dodge, they have a weapon skill that flanks behind their target and evades while they’re in the animation. I can’t recall what guardian underwater combat abilities are, but the balance in this game is definitely not focused on underwater fighting. It’s quite possible that you shouldn’t be able to beat a thief in that situation. Again, keep an open character slot and play around with the different professions, It really helps a TON with learning how to counter people in certain fights.

IIRC underwater thieves with spear have (maybe in different order):
1. normal attack (up to 3 targets in front of you)
2. flanking attack (evade during animation)
3. block with counter attack (recovers some initiative used)
4. pull
5. channeling attack (evade all attacks channeling part of cast bar)

With some traits you can either block or flank(evade) enemies indefinitely.

Yey another op thief skill.

Shadow Assault is pretty broken, as any half decent thief can easily maintain perma-invulnerability if slightly traited for init regen.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xv6d9q_shadow-assault_videogames#.UKkdvIfoRzg
(IDK why every video upload site compresses my vids to 384/480p)
or http://www.mediafire.com/?kk8x4bpk1o26r13 , if you can’t see whats happening. Also, you’ll have to copy the mediafire link :/

Any semi decent thief can pretty much hold ruins permanantly, or just simply solo any underwater boss.

this is also possible on land for quite a bit a thief spamming deathblossom roll for initiative and withdraw can keep up a pretty hefty time on evade on him.

Thanks for all the info guys! Thief is just one class I haven’t gotten around to playing yet to learn, and honestly probably will be the last if I ever do, it’s just not my playstyle. So I honestly had no idea about some of these mechanics, it’s all good to know! Not that my guardian is setup well for water combat at all, but still, I knew I wasn’t thaaat bad in the water on my guardian.

yep thief 5 underwater is way OP

barti.7685:

this is also possible on land for quite a bit a thief spamming deathblossom roll for initiative and withdraw can keep up a pretty hefty time on evade on him.

Just to clearify, though Withdraw is on a 15 second cooldown, it requires the Grandmaster Trait: Hastened Replenishment, to be able to recover initiative. And Roll for Initiative’s on a 60 sec cooldown.

As for Spear. Yeah, 3 evasion/block skills. It’s certainly hard to hit, though it find Ninetails Strike and Flanking strike more cost effective then Shadow Assault. That and the rooted channel off Shadow Assault feels a bit weird. Kind of like Blurred Frenzy, but underwater.

Noticed this as well. Thief spams the same ability underwater that evades all attacks, but get still does damage to their player. They can also do this on land with heartseeker and death blossom as stated above. Thief is broken from the ground up, and as long no cool down and spammable attacks exist like this it will always be. Can’t imagine what was going through devs heads when designing this mess.