The best way to beat a skilled d/p thief is to make your own, learn the tricks and timing involved, then you can reasonably predict and counter on your main class.
Thanks Ross, my friend will certainly appreciate this as he’s already keen on Mesmer. I can figure out most of the build from the vid, everything except your armor type >.< (it clearly doesn’t have vit so I assume Rabid of Knights maybe mixed with serkers). Interesting that you use Arcane Thievery over Veil (I like Thievery better I don’t mesmer and the ones I’ve seen prefer Veil).
As an aside I find it mind boggling that anyone does this ‘secret build’ nonsense in 2013 (in the old days it made far more sense because in the internets youth people didn’t figure out builds/strategies in games for yearsssssss, so you truly had a leg up if you knew a secret noone else did). But with the internet/forums/youtube thesedays there are undoubtedly already plenty of people already playing the identical prismatic triple stealth spec to you, so why not help the stragglers learn :\. Totally your prerogative though. Thanks for all the help.
Lastly I am curious if you think anything ‘beats’ the prismatic mesmer build, or is it in your opinion the best 1vX build for WvW?
The best way to beat a skilled d/p thief is to make your own, learn the tricks and timing involved, then you can reasonably predict and counter on your main class.
Congratulations on missing everything in this thread. Playing as a D/P thief does not magically grant your ranger the tools to kill them, etc, already covered in this thread.
The best way to beat a skilled d/p thief is to make your own, learn the tricks and timing involved, then you can reasonably predict and counter on your main class.
Nobody can beat – kill to be more precise – a D/P thief. Unless he takes high risks the thief can always safely disengage with combo-field stealth or shadow refuge. However, that does not make the thief overpowered or broken. A warrior with greatsword and sword/warhorn can also escape from every fight.
The ability to disengage poses a problem only in the open deathmatch arena of WvW. Without opportunity costs mobility is king. The problem with stealth and other skills to disengage is a fundamental flaw of the gamemode.
20 20 30 0 0 Sword / Pistol Scepter / Torch condi mesmer (this is probably the strongest 1on1 / 1onX spec i have played so far it is pretty laughable how easy it is to melt faces with it)
0 10 30 0 30 M/S GS Warrior
30 10 0 20 10 Condibunker Engineer
10 0 0 30 30 Double S/D / Double D/P Thief
There are several specs that can kill them, or atleast force them to hide in stealth 24/7 without being able to do anything. The spec is not that strong, it is very predictable unless we talk about a 10 0 0 30 30 D/P spec.
Thanks Ross, my friend will certainly appreciate this as he’s already keen on Mesmer. I can figure out most of the build from the vid, everything except your armor type >.< (it clearly doesn’t have vit so I assume Rabid of Knights maybe mixed with serkers).
As an aside I find it mind boggling that anyone does this ‘secret build’ nonsense in 2013 (in the old days it made far more sense because in the internets youth people didn’t figure out builds/strategies in games for yearsssssss, so you truly had a leg up if you knew a secret noone else did). But with the internet/forums/youtube thesedays there are undoubtedly already plenty of people already playing the identical prismatic triple stealth spec to you, so why not help the stragglers learn :\. Totally your prerogative though. Thanks for all the help.
Lastly I am curious if you think anything ‘beats’ the prismatic mesmer build, or is it in your opinion the best 1vX build for WvW?
<b>THE</b> PU build for mesmers is Blackwater as far as I can see. It has its strengths, but personally I think its weaknesses make it weak to the point that it fails under various circumstances (cant chase or cc for example). Can it be beaten? I dont know how other classes are faring against it right now. I do know that since it cant escape, once in a fight Blackwater is in a fight to the death. That puts the power in the mobile opponents hands imo.
My build, or ideas arent secret per’se. I just haven’t posted my build outright. However I did have someone pm me a while ago who’d pieced together my entire build almost piece for piece. He did it by watching vids and trawling my forum posts in which he gathered enough clues/info to do so. So it was kudos to him, I linked him the build and we had a good discussion on mesmers currently. There are benefit to sharing builds for critique, and so players can expand their thinking. I’ve offered builds in the past. However most players just grab onto the build of the month and never explore anything for themselves. Thus why we have build desolation within the ele and ranger classes, for example. Nobody’s exploring possibilities right now.
D/P is all about forcing them to drain their initiative. Really any class can do it if you play it smart. A perfect push/pull out of a smoke field before they heartseeker through it will screw them over hard.
So easy to time that given the rapid cast times thieves get in skill lag. /s
Tin Foil Hat Hearer »—> Ranger Extraordinaire »—> “Be like water…”
Thanks Ross, my friend will certainly appreciate this as he’s already keen on Mesmer. I can figure out most of the build from the vid, everything except your armor type >.< (it clearly doesn’t have vit so I assume Rabid of Knights maybe mixed with serkers).
As an aside I find it mind boggling that anyone does this ‘secret build’ nonsense in 2013 (in the old days it made far more sense because in the internets youth people didn’t figure out builds/strategies in games for yearsssssss, so you truly had a leg up if you knew a secret noone else did). But with the internet/forums/youtube thesedays there are undoubtedly already plenty of people already playing the identical prismatic triple stealth spec to you, so why not help the stragglers learn :\. Totally your prerogative though. Thanks for all the help.
Lastly I am curious if you think anything ‘beats’ the prismatic mesmer build, or is it in your opinion the best 1vX build for WvW?
<b>THE</b> PU build for mesmers is Blackwater as far as I can see. It has its strengths, but personally I think its weaknesses make it weak to the point that it fails under various circumstances (cant chase or cc for example). Can it be beaten? I dont know how other classes are faring against it right now. I do know that since it cant escape, once in a fight Blackwater is in a fight to the death. That puts the power in the mobile opponents hands imo.
My build, or ideas arent secret per’se. I just haven’t posted my build outright. However I did have someone pm me a while ago who’d pieced together my entire build almost piece for piece. He did it by watching vids and trawling my forum posts in which he gathered enough clues/info to do so. So it was kudos to him, I linked him the build and we had a good discussion on mesmers currently. There are benefit to sharing builds for critique, and so players can expand their thinking. I’ve offered builds in the past. However most players just grab onto the build of the month and never explore anything for themselves. Thus why we have build desolation within the ele and ranger classes, for example. Nobody’s exploring possibilities right now.
That is not true, the blackwater spec ( its 20 20 30 one rite?) can escape very well because it utilizes a lot of stealth… (decoy, torch #4, mass invis, veil… you also have blink). I recently started to run it on my mesmer once i got Traveler runs and omg this spec is strong (and a kittenton of fun to play)
Thus why we have build desolation within the ele and ranger classes, for example. Nobody’s exploring possibilities right now.
I don’t think this has anything to do with it, people just work things out in games faster when there’s this many people that can chat to this many others. People have tested all the builds and found what works what doesn’t and everything in between. I agree that “the Blackwater build” is mehhhh imo, I prefer the ones like Doiids (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Maximised-Hybrid-Phantasm-Build-Roaming/first#post3007845). At the core of it though anything with Prismatic, triple or quadruple stealth, and Traveller runes seems like a very strong 1vX spec.
Rangers don’t have some undiscovered secret spec that let’s them do something we currently don’t know about, they just need some buffs to make them more useful in WvW scenarios (which are a long way off because spirit ranger is still so strong in sPvP and they do top-tier dps in PvE). Ele’s are honestly in an amazing place in WvW, the ones who complain are those who think the grass is always greener on the other side. Are they god-mode? No. But they’re a great class to roam solo, roam in a small group, or bring to the zerg.
In the old days (when I was like 7) if you found some combo in Streetfighter it’s entirely possible noone you meet in the next 5 years would know about it. You could tell your best friend if you wanted and then the two of you would be able to use a tactic on everyone you meet that they’ve never seen before. The internet just increased the ‘best friend’ radius (and many people like to mistake this as ‘not being innovative/creative’). It’s the exact same as it always was, it’s just that now you have 6 billion best friends who can tell you if they find something out.
The best way to beat a skilled d/p thief is to make your own, learn the tricks and timing involved, then you can reasonably predict and counter on your main class.
Congratulations on missing everything in this thread. Playing as a D/P thief does not magically grant your ranger the tools to kill them, etc, already covered in this thread.
Thanks for being mature and respectful to people trying to help. Seems you’ve spent the bulk of this thread insulting people when they were offering suggestions. I would recommend people don’t waste any more of their time.
I have no issue killing d/p thieves btw. But perhaps they either weren’t skilled … Or maybe it’s because I took the time to learn the d/p thief class.
Thanks for being mature and respectful to people trying to help.
Why do you insinuate that I’m not being respectful or mature? You didn’t read the thread, or you ignored it. That’s pretty disrespectful of those posting in it. You then posted nonsense that this thread has already discussed in detail. You believe that learning to play D/P grants your ranger magical abilities to overcome them. It doesn’t.
There are a handful of people in this thread so far that have been very informative to me and I thank them for their rationale, sound advice. Meanwhile many others have not only polluted the thread false information but have the audacity to argue about topics they clearly know nothing about. It what universe do you think any game is so perfectly balanced that every class can beat another if players are both equally skilled?(which is exactly what you’re saying if you believe you can just learn D/P then somehow beat them on your main regardless of their class.)
What’s actually constructive is explaining how to use certain weapons, traits, etc to fight back, videos demonstrating this are even better. Trying to yell very loudly that “I HAVE KILLED THIEVES ON ALL MY CHARACTERS AND I COULD TELL THEY WERE REALLY GOOD IM JUST BETTER” is not in the slightest way helpful (and also pretty deluded).
I just explained very clearly what is desireable rationale that helps people with questions, and what is unconstructive closemindeness that ignores all logic. Your post clearly falls into the later catagory. Somehow that makes me have an attitude? Lol.
As much as I would like it to be, this is not Street Fighter, this is an MMO.
In a game with many possible builds, it’s highly likely that a small number (or just one) of those builds is the very best at a particular role. An exceptionally well balanced game might have a variety of builds that are equally viable at a role, but GW2 is not an exceptionally well balanced game at the moment :P
So, judging from the many responses in this thread, it’s possible that the D/P Thief is the supreme open world dueling build for this game. That’s fine, there has to be one.
You could take the 2nd best dueling build and hope that the thief is less skilled than you by the required amount. You could adopt the same build and have a “mirror match.”
Or you could just hit him with your zerg, I guess. Strategy vs. tactics.
I do not believe there is any spec/class/build that “kills” them. The worst I’ve ever encountered on my D/P Thief are builds that I cannot kill – but they cannot kill me back. PU Mesmer is one of those builds. I remember I also stopped bothering to fight healing Guardians since fighting took too long.
I play a Mesmer, and I can beat a good d/p thief 50-60% of the time, IF he stays to fight. Now if he runs away, I will take that as a win because I will interpret that as the thief thinking to himself he can’t win the fight if he stays.
Generally I don’t consider making the thief run away a win because he can come back and gank you while you try and take an objective. However I would classify this as a win assuming you are running a ‘good build’ meaning one that can generally roam fine and you haven’t completely kitten it just to beat a D/P thief. Making a thief run away so that you can capture a camp or something is a win in my opinion (which is why I don’t consider just running something tanky a win, the thief is going to just gank you again while you’re capping and you’ll die.)
Mind elaborating on what you run? If you aren’t running traveler runes then I assume it’s some version of the triple stealth perplexity mesmer?
My build is in my signature and no it is not tailored to be anti d/p thief.
The best way to beat a skilled d/p thief is to make your own, learn the tricks and timing involved, then you can reasonably predict and counter on your main class.
This is the only correct answer. Know your enemy!
English is not my first language nor is it my second.
I find while I’m roaming I don’t have too many issues with D/P thieves on my Necro. With something in the order of 45k health (including death shroud) a respectable 2.6k~ armor, and enough condition damage to make my bleeds tick for 150 with no might, I can survive a few of their attacks, which very often nets me a chance to interrupt their BP+HS. The biggest tool in my kitten nal for the interruption is the fact that going into death shroud and using Doom are both instant and work at 1200 range, and in addition to stopping them from entering stealth, the fear itself does a fair chunk of damage (even more when I proc bleed from my traits/sigil, burning from my traits, or confusion from my runes) and the thief is out 9 initiative. With my Perplexity runes, I can apply 5 long lasting stacks of confusion with Spectral Grasp that are nearly guaranteed to proc once (if they enter stealth to get the passive condition removal, the skill that stealthed them procs, if they use shadowstep to remove 3 conditions, the outgoing teleport procs). The thieves have the potential to get away, but between my flesh golem’s charge and crippling auto attacks, grasping dead, and multiple sources of Chill, there are plenty of thieves who never get the chance. One of the few negatives in a Necro vs. Thief fight is that while it is not a guarantee that they can escape, it is a certainty that I will not.
S/P and P/P thief here, with 10/0/0/30/30
Shadow trap between their starting location and me for their initial stealth
I stealth right behind them when they cross it while in stealth and daze them. After that most of my attacks rely on positioning pistol whip. When they use black powder I dodge it and immediately follow with pistol whip. The stun part interrupts heartseeker, which negates the stealthing effect. In case ini is up I’d use scorpion wire (yes, I use scorpion wire, shocking). SW also works when they try to flee.
Only problem is when they use shadow refuge which I can only interrupt with a necro-stolen fear or when I fought him before and know when he’s going to do that. If I know what is coming I’d switch to P/P and use unload. This mostly would be enough (on their low health) to get them down. I can confirm this if the bullets from unload keeps hitting one spot instead of moving around. Sword still on cooldown forms a problem to kill him in the stealthed SR spot, if there is a critter nearby i can use him to target unload in a straight line so I can still hit him.
If I didn’t time the unload right to hit him in shadow refuge there are two options. Either 1, he has pride and keeps fighting him (which is why i’d mostly use my own stealth (healing) and back off or 2 he runs … in which case I’d just continue with w/e I was doing.
PS: this build is primarily a team based build that relies on boon sharing. So while I have tactics in beating ppl 1v1, the build works better in small group fights.
Thanks Ross, my friend will certainly appreciate this as he’s already keen on Mesmer. I can figure out most of the build from the vid, everything except your armor type >.< (it clearly doesn’t have vit so I assume Rabid of Knights maybe mixed with serkers).
As an aside I find it mind boggling that anyone does this ‘secret build’ nonsense in 2013 (in the old days it made far more sense because in the internets youth people didn’t figure out builds/strategies in games for yearsssssss, so you truly had a leg up if you knew a secret noone else did). But with the internet/forums/youtube thesedays there are undoubtedly already plenty of people already playing the identical prismatic triple stealth spec to you, so why not help the stragglers learn :\. Totally your prerogative though. Thanks for all the help.
Lastly I am curious if you think anything ‘beats’ the prismatic mesmer build, or is it in your opinion the best 1vX build for WvW?
<b>THE</b> PU build for mesmers is Blackwater as far as I can see. It has its strengths, but personally I think its weaknesses make it weak to the point that it fails under various circumstances (cant chase or cc for example). Can it be beaten? I dont know how other classes are faring against it right now. I do know that since it cant escape, once in a fight Blackwater is in a fight to the death. That puts the power in the mobile opponents hands imo.
My build, or ideas arent secret per’se. I just haven’t posted my build outright. However I did have someone pm me a while ago who’d pieced together my entire build almost piece for piece. He did it by watching vids and trawling my forum posts in which he gathered enough clues/info to do so. So it was kudos to him, I linked him the build and we had a good discussion on mesmers currently. There are benefit to sharing builds for critique, and so players can expand their thinking. I’ve offered builds in the past. However most players just grab onto the build of the month and never explore anything for themselves. Thus why we have build desolation within the ele and ranger classes, for example. Nobody’s exploring possibilities right now.
That is not true, the blackwater spec ( its 20 20 30 one rite?) can escape very well because it utilizes a lot of stealth… (decoy, torch #4, mass invis, veil… you also have blink). I recently started to run it on my mesmer once i got Traveler runs and omg this spec is strong (and a kittenton of fun to play)
It is strong as I acknowledged, and yes stealth helps with escape. However 25% speed from traveler runes doesn’t hold a candle to the the movement speed/chase of other classes let alone a thief. And you’re right to ignore any mention of Blackwaters ability to effectively and consistently chase down an opponent. So yes, what I’ve said is completely true. The author of Blackwater himselkittennowledges these limitations.
Good D/P Thieves should never die unless they over commit. On my Mesmer 1v1 I can get D/P Thieves to retreat with another pressure, but the high stealth uptime gives them more than enough time to reset and come back. I imagine condi/stealth Mesmer builds can be a real headache for D/P Thieves.
Mostly I see good D/P Thieves trolling small groups, in those circumstances Moa Morph is your friend. Morph, burst, done – remove the irritation.
I think for most classes you need to push or pull them out of smoke field at a time when they’re already low on initiative. The problem with d/p is their stealth isn’t attack-based which makes it hard to counter (and fairly easy to play).
Interestingly the best thieves I’ve faced in recent months have been s/d, d/d, and p/d but that may just be personal preference of good thieves because these builds pump out much more steady damage. D/P has the slowest damage and their combo relies entirely on backstab hitting before they can 22222222.
Also remember that immobilize stops HS which means they can’t stealth (while x/d builds still can). They will be sitting in smoke field immobilized while you can hit on them freely, even melee from outside of the smoke field range if you’re careful. This would be significant for example for the ranger immobilize elite if they’ve already blown shadow refuge, or for warrior longbow 5. But it also requires their heal be on cooldown meaning you were already pressuring them.
To survive them at least, try and avoid backstabs (use the 180 turn often, run backwards, run sideways) and keep your health above 50% and/or dodges under 50 so they can’t follow up the backstab with heartseekers. Either they’ll get in a backstab eventually or they’ll slip up and you’ll catch them without initiative or escape skills. Or more likely, they’ll disengage when they see they’re having a hard time.
Thanks Ross, my friend will certainly appreciate this as he’s already keen on Mesmer. I can figure out most of the build from the vid, everything except your armor type >.< (it clearly doesn’t have vit so I assume Rabid of Knights maybe mixed with serkers).
As an aside I find it mind boggling that anyone does this ‘secret build’ nonsense in 2013 (in the old days it made far more sense because in the internets youth people didn’t figure out builds/strategies in games for yearsssssss, so you truly had a leg up if you knew a secret noone else did). But with the internet/forums/youtube thesedays there are undoubtedly already plenty of people already playing the identical prismatic triple stealth spec to you, so why not help the stragglers learn :\. Totally your prerogative though. Thanks for all the help.
Lastly I am curious if you think anything ‘beats’ the prismatic mesmer build, or is it in your opinion the best 1vX build for WvW?
<b>THE</b> PU build for mesmers is Blackwater as far as I can see. It has its strengths, but personally I think its weaknesses make it weak to the point that it fails under various circumstances (cant chase or cc for example). Can it be beaten? I dont know how other classes are faring against it right now. I do know that since it cant escape, once in a fight Blackwater is in a fight to the death. That puts the power in the mobile opponents hands imo.
My build, or ideas arent secret per’se. I just haven’t posted my build outright. However I did have someone pm me a while ago who’d pieced together my entire build almost piece for piece. He did it by watching vids and trawling my forum posts in which he gathered enough clues/info to do so. So it was kudos to him, I linked him the build and we had a good discussion on mesmers currently. There are benefit to sharing builds for critique, and so players can expand their thinking. I’ve offered builds in the past. However most players just grab onto the build of the month and never explore anything for themselves. Thus why we have build desolation within the ele and ranger classes, for example. Nobody’s exploring possibilities right now.
That is not true, the blackwater spec ( its 20 20 30 one rite?) can escape very well because it utilizes a lot of stealth… (decoy, torch #4, mass invis, veil… you also have blink). I recently started to run it on my mesmer once i got Traveler runs and omg this spec is strong (and a kittenton of fun to play)
It is strong as I acknowledged, and yes stealth helps with escape. However 25% speed from traveler runes doesn’t hold a candle to the the movement speed/chase of other classes let alone a thief. And you’re right to ignore any mention of Blackwaters ability to effectively and consistently chase down an opponent. So yes, what I’ve said is completely true. The author of Blackwater himselkittennowledges these limitations.
Wow no reason to get so aggressive.
The reason why i didnt comment on the chase part is because i agree, it cannot chase effectively. It’s still the strongest 1vs1 / 1vsX spec i’ve played so far. (if there are better let me know, ill try them)
If you are killing D/P thieves with your tanky ranger build then that’s all well and good, I’m happy for you – but they aren’t good. Saying it’s a 50/50 matchup if both players are good is just nonsense, the thief will never die, you sometimes will. That’s a 0-100 matchup.
.
as previously stated by someone else, if the thief gotta run, they have already lost. Also, since you seem to be the sPvP type, let me share some WvW experience with you; predicting the direction the thief will run off in isn’t exactly rocket science. All you need to do is fire off the longbow 5 and that “getaway” move fails.
but please do think the ranger sucks in all aspects, makes my life as a ranger much easier.
Lv 80 Guard, Ranger, Ele, Thief, warr, engi
Currently @ some T1 server in EU
I play a Mesmer, and I can beat a good d/p thief 50-60% of the time, IF he stays to fight. Now if he runs away, I will take that as a win because I will interpret that as the thief thinking to himself he can’t win the fight if he stays.
Generally I don’t consider making the thief run away a win because he can come back and gank you while you try and take an objective. However I would classify this as a win assuming you are running a ‘good build’ meaning one that can generally roam fine and you haven’t completely kitten it just to beat a D/P thief. Making a thief run away so that you can capture a camp or something is a win in my opinion (which is why I don’t consider just running something tanky a win, the thief is going to just gank you again while you’re capping and you’ll die.)
Mind elaborating on what you run? If you aren’t running traveler runes then I assume it’s some version of the triple stealth perplexity mesmer?
Engineers with condi pressure destroy them with ease. King thief himself Yishis said on his youtube that engineers just bring too much conditions for a thief to cope with.
This sounds believable but I am suspect because then you say that other condi classes can do it to (which is so wrong, ranger warriors necros etc don’t have anywhere near enough condis to kill the standard D/P thief build because it has really good condi removal. However I know the least about Engis (by far) so I could totally believe that they might beat them. Could you link a build?
Pretty much any kit/nade engineer build has complete condition coverage besides torment with good uptime. There are several “popular” condition engi builds:
You should not have any problem with D/P thieves, you’re a hard counter, even if they stealth just keep tossing nades and they can’t come close. I’ve only ever died 1v1 with a HGH build to S/D because I give him 25 might and can’t keep up boon coverage.
Mortryde/Cold/Thugmentalist Bara
really bad engineer
Get out of stealth, hit, back in stealth, heal, repeat.
I usually choose stealthy classes in mmo’s but in this game stealth has no counter.
If sic ‘em revealed debuff lasts for 10 seconds, I can’t wait for the thief tears.
agreed. i think it’s a scrub build for scrubs. Some of we thieves choose the higher moral ground and don’t exploit such a broken mechanic.
It’s not only the healing thieves, it’s the stealth mechanic all together in my opinion. Sure some builds can exploit it more than others.
The fact that a backstab thief can crit for 14 k on medium armour, and jump back to stealth in literally 3 seconds later is overpowered. Not to mention whole group stealth along with a “get away from literally every situation” card on their pockets.
At the moment a roaming thief can chose if he wants to die or no.
Ooh- also if you are downed, you have zero chance of fighting back no matter what.
Yes, playing well is going to beat a bad thief, I already stated that’s stupid to discuss. We are talking about good players of equal skill. Saying that “any class can beat a good D/P” is just complete nonsense, they can’t. I’m wondering if there is a single spec that can because I assure you most cannot.
“Perma stealth” is not an exploit and they aren’t any lesser of a person than you are for using it. You speak as if leap finisher in a smoke feild is a glitch that ANet didn’t program in intentionally. If anything the D/P theives are just smarter than you because they realise it’s the best roaming spec for Thief. If you want to play D/D or something because you enjoy it, that’s totally fine. But if you refuse to play D/P because you think those players are ‘lesser people’ than you – then you’re just bad (and childish).
Thanks Ross for the Mesmer perspective. I can see how a good condi or hybrid Mesmer would be a pain for them because both classes use very similar mechanics to outmuscle everyone else. I assume neither spec can prevent the other one from fleeing the fight if they want to though?
Every class can beat a D/P thief of equal skill. It’s fact. And it’s been done.
D/P thief is a crutch build, it is what you play when you like to PvP with training wheels. I typically just laugh at them and move on.
Yep, scrub build for scrubs relying on an exploit of stealth mechanics to perma stealth.
A player “exploiting” mechanics to gain advantage and achieve victory is the very opposite definition of the term scrub. A scrub is someone who makes up their own rules of game play and victory contrary to the actual in game rules/mechanics.
Thanks Ross, my friend will certainly appreciate this as he’s already keen on Mesmer. I can figure out most of the build from the vid, everything except your armor type >.< (it clearly doesn’t have vit so I assume Rabid of Knights maybe mixed with serkers).
As an aside I find it mind boggling that anyone does this ‘secret build’ nonsense in 2013 (in the old days it made far more sense because in the internets youth people didn’t figure out builds/strategies in games for yearsssssss, so you truly had a leg up if you knew a secret noone else did). But with the internet/forums/youtube thesedays there are undoubtedly already plenty of people already playing the identical prismatic triple stealth spec to you, so why not help the stragglers learn :\. Totally your prerogative though. Thanks for all the help.
Lastly I am curious if you think anything ‘beats’ the prismatic mesmer build, or is it in your opinion the best 1vX build for WvW?
<b>THE</b> PU build for mesmers is Blackwater as far as I can see. It has its strengths, but personally I think its weaknesses make it weak to the point that it fails under various circumstances (cant chase or cc for example). Can it be beaten? I dont know how other classes are faring against it right now. I do know that since it cant escape, once in a fight Blackwater is in a fight to the death. That puts the power in the mobile opponents hands imo.
My build, or ideas arent secret per’se. I just haven’t posted my build outright. However I did have someone pm me a while ago who’d pieced together my entire build almost piece for piece. He did it by watching vids and trawling my forum posts in which he gathered enough clues/info to do so. So it was kudos to him, I linked him the build and we had a good discussion on mesmers currently. There are benefit to sharing builds for critique, and so players can expand their thinking. I’ve offered builds in the past. However most players just grab onto the build of the month and never explore anything for themselves. Thus why we have build desolation within the ele and ranger classes, for example. Nobody’s exploring possibilities right now.
That is not true, the blackwater spec ( its 20 20 30 one rite?) can escape very well because it utilizes a lot of stealth… (decoy, torch #4, mass invis, veil… you also have blink). I recently started to run it on my mesmer once i got Traveler runs and omg this spec is strong (and a kittenton of fun to play)
It is strong as I acknowledged, and yes stealth helps with escape. However 25% speed from traveler runes doesn’t hold a candle to the the movement speed/chase of other classes let alone a thief. And you’re right to ignore any mention of Blackwaters ability to effectively and consistently chase down an opponent. So yes, what I’ve said is completely true. The author of Blackwater himselkittennowledges these limitations.
Wow no reason to get so aggressive.
The reason why i didnt comment on the chase part is because i agree, it cannot chase effectively. It’s still the strongest 1vs1 / 1vsX spec i’ve played so far. (if there are better let me know, ill try them)
It wasnt aggression. Anet’s mad auto forum skillz inserted a “kitten” where no curse words were used. I looked at editing it but decided not to bother.
If you are killing D/P thieves with your tanky ranger build then that’s all well and good, I’m happy for you – but they aren’t good. Saying it’s a 50/50 matchup if both players are good is just nonsense, the thief will never die, you sometimes will. That’s a 0-100 matchup.
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as previously stated by someone else, if the thief gotta run, they have already lost. Also, since you seem to be the sPvP type, let me share some WvW experience with you; predicting the direction the thief will run off in isn’t exactly rocket science. All you need to do is fire off the longbow 5 and that “getaway” move fails.
but please do think the ranger sucks in all aspects, makes my life as a ranger much easier.
If the Ranger can’t chase, does that mean he’s already lost too?
I play a Mesmer, and I can beat a good d/p thief 50-60% of the time, IF he stays to fight. Now if he runs away, I will take that as a win because I will interpret that as the thief thinking to himself he can’t win the fight if he stays.
Generally I don’t consider making the thief run away a win because he can come back and gank you while you try and take an objective. However I would classify this as a win assuming you are running a ‘good build’ meaning one that can generally roam fine and you haven’t completely kitten it just to beat a D/P thief. Making a thief run away so that you can capture a camp or something is a win in my opinion (which is why I don’t consider just running something tanky a win, the thief is going to just gank you again while you’re capping and you’ll die.)
Mind elaborating on what you run? If you aren’t running traveler runes then I assume it’s some version of the triple stealth perplexity mesmer?
Engineers with condi pressure destroy them with ease. King thief himself Yishis said on his youtube that engineers just bring too much conditions for a thief to cope with.
This sounds believable but I am suspect because then you say that other condi classes can do it to (which is so wrong, ranger warriors necros etc don’t have anywhere near enough condis to kill the standard D/P thief build because it has really good condi removal. However I know the least about Engis (by far) so I could totally believe that they might beat them. Could you link a build?
Pretty much any kit/nade engineer build has complete condition coverage besides torment with good uptime. There are several “popular” condition engi builds:
You should not have any problem with D/P thieves, you’re a hard counter, even if they stealth just keep tossing nades and they can’t come close. I’ve only ever died 1v1 with a HGH build to S/D because I give him 25 might and can’t keep up boon coverage.
I love the opening comment in the first vid
“Q: Why Runes of Perplexity since “they’re broken / OP”?
A: Perplexity being “broken” is a matter of opinion. I agree they are very strong…."
Anet’s opinion are that they’re broken and will be changed. Only opinion that matter now.
D/P thief is a crutch build, it is what you play when you like to PvP with training wheels. I typically just laugh at them and move on.
Yep, scrub build for scrubs relying on an exploit of stealth mechanics to perma stealth.
A player “exploiting” mechanics to gain advantage and achieve victory is the very opposite definition of the term scrub. A scrub is someone who makes up their own rules of game play and victory contrary to the actual in game rules/mechanics.
incorrect. a scrub is someone who plays cheesy builds that are easy mode training wheels. anet even admitted that they never intended perma stealth. they just don’t know how to fix it.
D/P thief is a crutch build, it is what you play when you like to PvP with training wheels. I typically just laugh at them and move on.
Yep, scrub build for scrubs relying on an exploit of stealth mechanics to perma stealth.
A player “exploiting” mechanics to gain advantage and achieve victory is the very opposite definition of the term scrub. A scrub is someone who makes up their own rules of game play and victory contrary to the actual in game rules/mechanics.
It is not player’s fault. They are just playing the game best way they can (or see fit). Everyone would do the same.
It is Anet’s fault. They obviously aprove this stealth mechanic, since it’s here from launch. Yes they want stealth to have no counter, which in a game with open world pvp is terrible.
I don’t have any trouble with them on my power necro, and I never did when I ran conditions, either. It helps knowing what can hit them in stealth, what they need to pull off their combos, etc.
S/D is another story if they are good, but d/p isn’t that bad.
My build is in my signature and no it is not tailored to be anti d/p thief.
Don’t know how I missed that, cheers. Very interesting to see that you run Chaotic Interruption over PU. Again I’m not a mesmer main so maybe this isn’t that odd, but I’ve only seen people playing PU condi or hybrid, or shatter in WvW. Gonna check out your youtube vids also to see this in action.
Pretty much any kit/nade engineer build has complete condition coverage besides torment with good uptime. There are several “popular” condition engi builds:
You should not have any problem with D/P thieves, you’re a hard counter, even if they stealth just keep tossing nades and they can’t come close. I’ve only ever died 1v1 with a HGH build to S/D because I give him 25 might and can’t keep up boon coverage.
Thanks heaps for the Engi info. I am absolutely terrible at Engi (it’s the only class I have less than 200 sPvP games on, I hate playing it lol). I assume after the perplexity nerf (which we don’t know how strong/weak of a nerf it will be) that at the very least the HGH build should still hard counter D/P?
Because as this thread demonstrates 95% of people have no idea what a good D/P thief is, let alone what beats it. They have magical beliefs that all classes can do everything and don’t understand the limitations of their own classes. They also invent their own ideas about what their opponents are/are not allowed to do and in place of logic just yell scrub/coward/l2play. Just not gonna bother replying to that 95% as they’re clearly beyond help.
D/P thief is a crutch build, it is what you play when you like to PvP with training wheels. I typically just laugh at them and move on.
Yep, scrub build for scrubs relying on an exploit of stealth mechanics to perma stealth.
A player “exploiting” mechanics to gain advantage and achieve victory is the very opposite definition of the term scrub. A scrub is someone who makes up their own rules of game play and victory contrary to the actual in game rules/mechanics.
incorrect. a scrub is someone who plays cheesy builds that are easy mode training wheels. anet even admitted that they never intended perma stealth. they just don’t know how to fix it.
Don’t know how I missed that, cheers. Very interesting to see that you run Chaotic Interruption over PU. Again I’m not a mesmer main so maybe this isn’t that odd, but I’ve only seen people playing PU condi or hybrid, or shatter in WvW. Gonna check out your youtube vids also to see this in action.
Unfortunatly I haven’t been recording much lately, so none of the videos on youtube have this spec in them, except for the one where I pull people to their deaths in stonemist, but that is hardly very relative to this threads discussion :p
