Guild Wars 2

Thanks for posting in detail.

It takes MUCH more skill to react to a “I’m going to kill you in 3 seconds” move, than to initiate that move. That is why there are so many complaints about imbalance.

An average player learns the deadly thief combo and starts picking his assasination targets. But the average victim does not have the reflexes to react quickly enough. That is why people are getting 1 shotted left and right in hotjoin sPVP.

Thieves deserve further nerfs, but more importantly frenzy/quickness needs a rehaul

Take your post as an example. Look at how much people have to read just to prepare to defend themselves against thieves. But do thieves have to do the same amount of work in order to burst people down in 3 seconds?

stun break, immunity, damage reducer, or w/e you have to break out of the stun or defend yourself (If you do not have at least one of these on your bar, you’re doing it wrong)

this…

cant tell you how many times having a couple get out a jail stun breaks on the bar has won the fight.

Wow. You can give your opinion on what to do, but when someone says something that points out an obvious flaw in your thinking, you report them and have the message deleted?

I tell you again, your nonsense spouting off that mesmers do no more damage than other classes is unfound, ridiculous and proves this post is a waste of time to read.

Is this not constructive enough?

Mr. Gwawer has a very good question. Why is it that it takes all of that to have a chance vs. one class? Why, especially when the class can get by with only using 2 buttons?

You say professions should not be balanced around casual pug Pvp. What do you think the majority of the players are?

BTW: I am pretty sure Anet has already stated an esport scene is not in the plans, not that it should matter for proper balance.

I have this sneaky feeling you play these thief/mesmer classes.

THIS:

TLDR:
-If you see a thief running toward you with a smug look on his face, get ready for the teleport at or shortly after 900 range.
-Pre dodge FTW. Have your finger hovering over a stun break, immunity, or other defensive cooldown.
-Once you see a thief stealth, dodge and run for 3 seconds, pop a defensive cooldown, or an aoe knockback/stun
-Thieves will stealth every 4-5 seconds if you let them. Anticipate it.
-Backstab is their main source of damage. Don’t let them hit you in the back, make them waste their 3 second stealth, or play defensively when they stealth.
-Stay above 50% HP. Do not go below 25% HP. 100-50%, thieves do reduced damage. 50-25% thieves do high damage. under 25% HP, you’re dead without a cooldown or dodge.
-Stealth lasts 3 seconds. Attacking unstealths. Thieves can’t restealth for ~4 sec. Hitting with cloak and dagger is the only “spammable” way to stealth. You can still hit and damage thieves in stealth. Channeled abilities will continue to hit and face you toward stealthed thieves. There is no perma stealth.
-The thieves that are killing you repeatedly are probably glass cannons. Defensive counter, then burst, defensive counter, burst, defend, damage. It doesn’t take long to do significant damage to a glass cannon thief. Taking advantage of the “safe periods” to do damage then anticipating their burst is the key to success.

@gwawer – it is not about preparing to defend against a thief, it is about knowing how to counter them. A thief can take a glass cannon build and do ok and get some fast kills, but if he wants to play well he needs practice and knowledge of other classes. The OP has done you all a great favor by posting some valid anti-thief tactics. You would be wise to use them to your advantage.

Very nice guide to those who don’t know.

Unfortunately I main a necromancer and we start with no life force. Thieves have a longer fear than Necros. On top of that with plague signet being nerfed/not being able to be casted to someone behind you, we’re kind of screwed. There is also perma stealth bug that most thieves have been abusing in tPvP. I know this is an exploit, but it hasn’t stopped anyone from using it.

There are OP professions but there are also unprepared players.

Thieves and mesmers(shatter) have many openings that they can use to basically gib me, even with 3k armor. (Hopefully divinity runes are actually fixed). I should not go down just because I’m not a guardian in one burst. I sacrifice damage for armor, yet that armor can’t keep me up. Why is it that one mistake leads me to being downed, while thieves have many “retries” to down me. BTW i only have problems with thieves who abuse the stealth bug where they can go back into stealth within a second.

I have recordings of most of my tournament matches to make sure i saw it correctly.
ATM the stealth debuff bug is my only complaint for thieves. While for mesmers trying to dodge a magic bullet(nearly instant travel time) → immobilize → phantasm damage → Shatter for 13k + bleeds on a 3k armored character is pretty kitten powerful.

As you say i was prepared and used a stun break, unfortunately my shortest stun break on necro is 1min(not traited) while that combo that mesmers can be done 4 times b4 i get my next stun break up. Basically its a guessing game to when hes gonna pull off the combo.

Either way great guide for those bads out there. Thanks for taking time to write it.

@Zatria: i don’t know what’s happened with posts, reports etc.
but i can answer you about the part

Why is it that it takes all of that to have a chance vs. one class? Why, especially when the class can get by with only using 2 buttons?

because that kind of thieves are cannonglass. means they have
14.095 HP
2130 armor (15points shadow arts)
IF a thief do something wrong, even wasting a attack, he is dead.

@Valhallen: may i ask you in what team ur playing?

pistol whip thief on high lvl tpvp not viable? do you even know what ur talking about?

imo there are 3 problems with thieves: haste, survivability (despite being glasscannon), caltrops

Do any thives run Dagger dagger condition builds like I do? i focus on Trickery Acrobatics. While i dont have the burst of a CD backstab thief, i can bring the pain by dragging out the fight and bringing the enemy down. I can tend to take on several opponents at once since i have so many dodges and such. I honestly havent rolled a burst spec yet but im intrested in hearing what people do to counter Condition thieves

Thieves aren’t a huge problem in 1v1. My Ranger can kill them more often than not unless they just utterly spam the crap out of stealth.

When they Cloak and Dagger you, it takes ~2 seconds for them to actually appear. You have just enough time to locate them and get in one MAYBE two attacks before they stealth again. Their damage isn’t about burst at this point, it’s about outlasting you and they can. All they have to do is keep stealthing and attacking you before you’ve used all your CD’s to avoid the damage, then it’s game over.

It isn’t really them that’s OP it’s the fact that they can get in multiple attacks after breaking stealth before you even get to see them. I understand they are squishy but not having to worry about being retaliated against for two-three attacks every 4-5 seconds (2-3 by the time they actually appear on screen) more than makes up for it and does make them quite powerful.

As for Mesmers, well, I usually lose to them regardless of what build they use unless they are just really bad. I rarely win against a Mesmer.

This is making the gross assumption that every Thief is kind enough to waltz into your field of view, wave and not use stealth or shadowstep. So as not to startle you, that would be bad manners.

The whole idea of a 2s faceroll is to pull it off by surprise on a target that won’t be able to or can’t react in time in the minuscule window of time they have. Toss network latency into that and perhaps you can see why everyone is kitten off.

There are two things that have kitten people off since the dawn of the internet in gaming: Dying instantly with no control over the situation and dying to mechanics that require vastly less effort than they themselves are using.

Shukran.4851:

@Zatria: i don’t know what’s happened with posts, reports etc.
but i can answer you about the part

Why is it that it takes all of that to have a chance vs. one class? Why, especially when the class can get by with only using 2 buttons?

because that kind of thieves are cannonglass. means they have
14.095 HP
2130 armor (15points shadow arts)
IF a thief do something wrong, even wasting a attack, he is dead.

Why if I build my Necromancer/Ranger/Elementalist/Engineer to be a glass cannon none needs a manual to counter him? The only existence of this topic proves Thieves are OP.

cool post OP, completely reliant on a 1v1 scenario where you have stun breaks, defensive utilities and full endurance available at the start of the fight, very realistic.

/sarcasm.

Really good write up and completely true, there were even a few things I picked up. I only have one disagreement with something you said “attacks break stealth” this is not exactly correct, well it is mechanically but the thief stays invisible for 2s when breaking stealth while they load in. This causes reaction issues because in a team fight if you dont see the thief enter (situational awareness issue) they can wreck you before you know whats hitting you. Compared to a warrior charging in and frenzy hundred blading I can react instantly as I know his there. The stealth issue isnt unique to thieves though, any class that stealths has it, even if you combo field stealth onto other classes, the same happens.

My only other issue with thieves right now is 10k back stabs (2500 armour, did put up protection but cannot be certain if it went up in time), I am ok with 6k backstabs that seem the most common (and thats even without protection which I am starting to use) but 10k is rather excessive when all they need to do is steal backstab and its over.

I can still play it better sure, I just think 10k is a bit high (I got 10k first time and 30s later went back because I assumed they used the signet but got 11.5k after that).

Thief using dagger skill “2”, Im playing with Ele 17k hp—>5k hp okay….
Instead of nerfing ele maybe some buff or pls who say im unskilled, okay but show me videos from 1v1 ele thief….

But thats no problem for PvE i use ele and i probably use thief or guardian at PvP
thats all
oh and 1 more : why the PVP players mostly (nearly 75-80% minimum) on free tournament minimum the team contain 1 mesmer 1 guardian 1 thief , sad thing when
2 mesmer,2guardian 1 thief…

I assume everyone that doesn’t have the reflexes to break stun on a thief is using their mouse to click skills. Pistol whip was fine this nerf is only to help the bads that only play spvp 8v8s.

This guide is great OP for those willing to listen, everyone really needs to try attacking the thief’s while they are in stealth more.

I vote for this thread to be closed down permanently.

yawn you make it sound hard just throw a few knockbacks( i am a ele) then watch his hp plummet if he is trying to big burst you run away and go to the forums.

Here is the issue: all classes are not out of the box equally easy to play, which leads to bad players doing far better than they should be doing against even or better skilled players on other classes.

You put low skilled mesmer or thief against an even or slightly greater skilled elementalist (and by skill let’s just say experience with class and gw 2pvp), and the elementalist will lose probably every time. A thief or mesmer can do the exact same sequence against every class they encounter with a higher level of success than an elementalist who tries the same thing.

OP may not like it because he’s convinced he out plays everyone, but I assure you this isn’t the case as some classes have a very strong early advantage as they simply have to understand how their attacks work, whereas several other classes have to learn how other classes attacks work (as well as their own) to be effective against them.

Not even going to read this wall of text, if you truly think the game is already balanced you’re not living in the real world.

didnt read the OP apologist post.

thiefs are OP. severe nerfs needed. thats all.

Lol, I can’t wait to fight whomever takes your advice. I enjoy playing very strategically on my thief using slows, stealths, blinds, and bleeds to maintain control over the opponent, so it’ll be a hayday fighting the people expecting just burst damage.

I disagree with you. I think a lot more balancing needs to take place and it’s way to early to say that this game is not balanced. ANet didn’t hire wizards to develop the perfect game drop a Classic. Tweaks are definitely needed, and lots of them.

However, I really appreciate your tips and will put them to use. Good work.

iNauticus.2450:

Lol, I can’t wait to fight whomever takes your advice. I enjoy playing very strategically on my thief using slows, stealths, blinds, and bleeds to maintain control over the opponent, so it’ll be a hayday fighting the people expecting just burst damage.

Pretty much this. The OP needed 20,000 characters (seriously, it’s 4 posts!!) to say how to “beat” thieves and the advice pretty much amounts to “be prepared to pre-dodge or pop your long cooldown stun breaker the second the thief starts attacking you.”

Of course, this assumes it’s 1v1 against the thief and all your skills are off cooldown (cause you haven’t fought anyone else recently). Then if it’s not the burst build thief, you’re completely screwed…

If someone has to pop their long cooldown stun breaker just to negate your very first strike as you’re coming out of stealth, there’s pretty much something out of balance…

Valhallen.1693:

Once you see the thief stealth, dodge roll and run away

I think this quote sums up peoples complaints nicely.

I beg to differ if you ever fought my mesmer Pres Mitt Romneny you would understand what an OP spec is

But you did a great job with the thief post people really learn to take stun breakers, buffs, and defensive cds in their slot skills instead of ZOMG I NEEDZS MORE DMG ATTACKS!!!!11

My favorite thing a thief says is “YEA BUT I USED ALL MY ABILITIES TO HIT YOU FOR 13k! IN ONE SHOT”.

Like I didn’t use all my abilities to defend against that shot, but apparently that doesn’t count.

Low IQ peoples who think anet dev are like humans computer designing the game perfectly balanced.

Humans are still humans, were imperfect therefore our games are imperfect.

This game is far from balanced in pvp thats why 40% of the players in sPvP play thieves.

MasterDeere.3417:

Low IQ peoples who think anet dev are like humans computer designing the game perfectly balanced.

Humans are still humans, were imperfect therefore our games are imperfect.

This game is far from balanced in pvp thats why 40% of the players in sPvP play thieves.

Your statistics are a perfect example of how humans are imperfect, because they are completely and utterly flawed.

I read the advice and as a thief do not agree with it. If I am targetting someone and they dodge, I won’t use my steal on them. If by some luck they dodge at just the moment I steal, or they use their stun break, I will just switch to shortbow and evade away.

A lot of the time my steal will be up again before their stun break is off CD, so I can give it another try at that point, knowing that if I was wrong, I can always evade away again.

Even a glass cannon won’t die if you never hit it.

Derps.7421:

I beg to differ if you ever fought my mesmer Pres Mitt Romneny you would understand what an OP spec is

You should use the MOA elite. That way you can turn your enemies into “Big Bird” right before obliterating them.

“If someone has to pop their long cooldown stun breaker just to negate your very first strike as you’re coming out of stealth, there’s pretty much something out of balance…”

Cant quote for some reason

I’m confused at this do people find it upsetting to have to pop a stun breaker when they are stunned or use a defensive utility when they are being burst? Thieves are fine they might need some light tweaking but other wise learn to dodge/stun break

the moment you have to explain people how to counter one class out of 8, is the moment you found out the OP class.

if all classes were equally powerful, there would be guides for the other 7, or no guides at all.