Guild Wars 2

My brother and I are non-WvW players (you can assume its always 2 persons playing and sticking together) and only enter it for the sake of map completion. We also do not PvP ever.

Usually when we see any visible enemies, we’d avoid them. But the other day, we were both attacked and killed by a Thief. It was sad but kind of expected given our lack of PvP skills. I am not raging.

Anyway, since I am forced to enter WvW for map completion, I’m here today to ask for some advice on how to survive such encounters. Or good habits that will at least make his killing us more difficult. Ideally, we’d like to force the Thief to break aggro and let us WP out to another part of the map.

We have Lv80 characters of all classes so I will welcome general, as well as class specific suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

First off, try and do a little bit of Spvp it wont hurt you. Make sure you are using a Pvp build and play style. This is a PvP zone and people are going to PvP, so most of them are not going to leave you alone. As for theifs, the best way to learn to counter a class is to play it, so get yourself familiarized with their skills and such and figure out the best counters. And just a tip, most roamers don’t like “PvEers who are just going for map completion”

Is it a solo thief giving you problems?

Stay together and use all stuns and AoE’s you have on the ground around you. With 2 of you you may just be able to make him go away. But realistically, you will die anyway. A thief can take you down in a few hits before you have a chance to react, blind you, stealth, port away, regen to full, and repeat.

All you can hope for is that it’s a bad thief. Then AoE may just work. Otherwise you are dead. Decent thieves laugh at your AoE. At least from my experience meeting them.

As for escape.. forget it. Thieves are the most mobile class in game. Not only that, they can spam cripple you, and port towards you.

You should be able to see them from far away, they aren’t always in stealth. If you can recognize them, just move in other direction or towards friendly towers.

It depends on your class and thiefs spec. Permastealth d/p thieves are most common in www and you cant do much against them. Guardian/Engineer probably has more chances of surviving and escaping. d/d backstab thieves can’t do much vs armored targets(guardian, warrior, bunker ele, eng), other classes can only survive if spot thief in right time and time their dodges wasting d/d thieves skill rotation. S/d thieves destroy any bunker class but can be challenged by a warrior/necromancer since they don’t rely on stealth.

If you recognize the thief before entering combat, try ALT+F4 … if you do it fast enough you’ll survive.

I rarely die to backstab thieves. Of course, I don’t kill them either, because they always break away once they see they won’t one-shot me. Pistol/dagger thieves are more annoying because they are more confident, sometimes I can actually down them before they get me, sometimes not. I’ve never found thieves to be any more dangerous than any other class, just sneakier.

• Get run speed. Less time you spend on roads the less likely it is you bump into a thief. Constant Swiftness, teleports/leaps…

• Move with zerg. The blue badge on map shows you where to go.

• Stay close to safe zones. Run into spawn, tower/keep, off a cliff (if it kills you get no repair cost), into water (thieves hate getting wet).

• Take routes less travelled by. The maps are big enough to avoid the usual gank locations. For example each spawn area has 3 exists.

• Practice PvP. Good training opponents are warriors and rangers for their straightforward play style. Once you learn to dodge the Hundred Blades, reflect Rapid Fire, retarget after Hunter’s Shot, you are better off encountering thieves.

• Do not take defeating or forcing thief to escape as your goal yet. It will take frustratingly long time to get there.

• Wear Vitality/Toughness heavy gear.

• Select defensive utility skills/traits: Stability, condition removal, stunbreakers.

• Select control skills/traits. Crippling, knockbacks, stuns, area denial can help you escape better.

• Use invisibility if available. Invisibility is very annoying for the thieves to chase against too. Change your direction or go around a corner right after you enter invisibility.

Make sure you aren’t running Beserker/Rampager gear. That works in PvE, but is horrible in WvW. Thieves are specifically designed to punish glass cannons, but against a guardian or warrior in full Soldiers gear with defensive traits, they can barely do anything.

It will be difficult when you lack the PvP experience. The least time consuming action is probably to get an experienced roamer to help you out.

Going alone together with little pvp experience,you are playing right into a thief’s plans.

Stick to a larger group and hope they are going in the direction you want to go.

Do not feel to bad about your experience.I was once moving with 5 other players deep in enemy lands, when two Guild thieves struck.I was the only one left standing in a blink of an eye.My Necro managed to escape through Death Shroud.

Thanks all for the tips so far. I am taking notes. Pls keep them coming!

Korgov – special thanks to you for so many useful pointers.

White Raven – no worries. If I feel bad, its because I am ‘forced’ to wander into PvP territory for map completion. But knowing that, I accept my lumps. Just trying not to keel over and die too easily. LOL.

Silinsar.6298:

It will be difficult when you lack the PvP experience. The least time consuming action is probably to get an experienced roamer to help you out.

^this, but I think it’s even easier following the zerg. It may take more time because it doesn’t follow “your schedule”, but it is less dangerous than roaming

@OP, which classes are you both playing? obviously if you run into an amazingly well played thief nobody can help you, since you don’t play PvP I’d suggest watching a roaming thief video on youtube, then you can predict (hopefully) the thieves next move and counter

Korgov.7645:

• Get run speed. Less time you spend on roads the less likely it is you bump into a thief. Constant Swiftness, teleports/leaps…

• Move with zerg. The blue badge on map shows you where to go.

• Stay close to safe zones. Run into spawn, tower/keep, off a cliff (if it kills you get no repair cost), into water (thieves hate getting wet).

• Take routes less travelled by. The maps are big enough to avoid the usual gank locations. For example each spawn area has 3 exists.

• Practice PvP. Good training opponents are warriors and rangers for their straightforward play style. Once you learn to dodge the Hundred Blades, reflect Rapid Fire, retarget after Hunter’s Shot, you are better off encountering thieves.

• Do not take defeating or forcing thief to escape as your goal yet. It will take frustratingly long time to get there.

• Wear Vitality/Toughness heavy gear.

• Select defensive utility skills/traits: Stability, condition removal, stunbreakers.

• Select control skills/traits. Crippling, knockbacks, stuns, area denial can help you escape better.

• Use invisibility if available. Invisibility is very annoying for the thieves to chase against too. Change your direction or go around a corner right after you enter invisibility.

Exactly this. You could also ask your guild for help or other ppl in the map chat of WvW. Thieves might still try to engage a big group of players, but if you’re not fighting the thief and keep running (group swiftness) and supporting yeach other, he has to give up or waste his time. Don’t listen to the “you can’t escape them anyway” posts. Thieves can be outrun effectivly, if you follow the hints given by Korgov.7645. They might get close to you, but then they will be less effective due to their low initiative. So don’t get iritaded, if a thief chases after you and reaches you, keep running and try to find save spots (like keeps, towers, etc.).

If all doesn’t work and the thief is still after you and u can’t shake him, try to invite him into your group (select him and use the party menu to invite). There is a small chance he might accept and you could ask him to leave you allone. Otherwise there is only practice. I have practice in chasing thieves for they were the most annoyence when I started WvW and therefoer I started my WvW builds focus on them, but you can get the same practice in running from them.

Azraelle.1683:

d/d backstab thieves can’t do much vs armored targets(guardian, warrior, bunker ele, eng)

Lol, i am a guardian with 3400 armor and 19k health with defensive traits and they back stab me for 5/6k damage when i am without defensive boons (and they can spam it).

This game has no resilience vs critical damage (this game has no resilience at all), and you can raise the critical damage what scale WAY better than defensive stats like toughness. Critical damage is too kitten powerful in this game.

Obviously if vs ligth armor they can output a 12k critic, sure they do less damage vs high armor if only hit by 5/6k. But 1/4 health in 1 spameable hit is really high anyway.

urieldhynne.2743:

Azraelle.1683:

d/d backstab thieves can’t do much vs armored targets(guardian, warrior, bunker ele, eng)

Lol, i am a guardian with 3400 armor and 19k health with defensive traits and they back stab me for 5/6k damage when i am without defensive boons (and they can spam it).

This game has no resilience vs critical damage (this game has no resilience at all), and you can raise the critical damage what scale WAY better than defensive stats like toughness. Critical damage is too kitten powerful in this game.

Obviously if vs ligth armor they can output a 12k critic, sure they do less damage vs high armor if only hit by 5/6k. But 1/4 health in 1 spameable hit is really high anyway.

Why are you ever without defensive boons? Quite easy to spec for 100% uptime on Protection, Regeneration and Retaliation for guardian. Not to mention all the various blocks and blinds you have to negate backstab.
Thief cannot down a decent bunker guardian. A decent thief will never get downed by a guardian either, but that’s a different discussion.

Ragnar.4257:

urieldhynne.2743:

Azraelle.1683:

d/d backstab thieves can’t do much vs armored targets(guardian, warrior, bunker ele, eng)

Lol, i am a guardian with 3400 armor and 19k health with defensive traits and they back stab me for 5/6k damage when i am without defensive boons (and they can spam it).

This game has no resilience vs critical damage (this game has no resilience at all), and you can raise the critical damage what scale WAY better than defensive stats like toughness. Critical damage is too kitten powerful in this game.

Obviously if vs ligth armor they can output a 12k critic, sure they do less damage vs high armor if only hit by 5/6k. But 1/4 health in 1 spameable hit is really high anyway.

Why are you ever without defensive boons? Quite easy to spec for 100% uptime on Protection, Regeneration and Retaliation for guardian. Not to mention all the various blocks and blinds you have to negate backstab.

For a d/d theif just blind/block him and mess up his CnD. That leaves him compltely vulernable with only #1 to hit with.

Sit down next to a Enraged supplycamp boss

MarkusParkus.8467:

@OP, which classes are you both playing? obviously if you run into an amazingly well played thief nobody can help you, since you don’t play PvP I’d suggest watching a roaming thief video on youtube, then you can predict (hopefully) the thieves next move and counter

Hi MarkusParkus – My brother and I have all classes (all Exotic equipped and none going all-beserker) and they all need to get through the WvW areas in turn. The only constant is there will be 2 of us at any time and we know to stick together. Therefore, I will appreciate any advice class-specific or otherwise.

No worries about the dying. As I said before, we are prepared to since we need to explore WvW. Just trying to improve our chances of survival that’s all.

Your advice regarding the video is appreciated!

Well, the easiest way would be then, if one of you would allways go with thief. So u have shadow refuge available. That should protect you enough. Or you both choose combinations where you can keep up swiftness and maybe additional some defensive boons. Otherwise I can only remind you to Korgov’s post.

mesmer/engineer – stack confusion on that dude and lol as he kills himself

Well, it’s pretty well been covered. But I’ll add a few general comments.
Most people find WvW daunting when they first enter. The maps are surprisingly large and difficult to navigate with obstructions everywhere. Plus there are bad guys lurking behind every bush (apparently!)

In truth, ganking isn’t a particularly popular sport in this game, unlike other MMOs. The reason being I think because there isn’t a lot of solo travel. Most people stick with a group or at least one or two other companions.

One trick to watch for is the ‘flipped’ sentry or lone Dolyak, These are often used as bait by gankers who will be hiding nearby in stealth, hoping that you will try to take back the point. They will usually wait until you are well into the fight and hopefully at low health before attacking.

Another trick is to lurk near a mob, close to a path. These mobs often take a pot-shot at passers-by so you get in the habit of ignoring the odd hit. But the ganker’s opening attack (from behind of course) can be masked by this and they can take you down to quite low health before you realise what’s happening.

A favourite combination for a ganking ‘team’ is mesmer/thief. Both have stealth. The mesmer clones add confusion that’s even worse for a single victim. Probably that’s also the best counter.

But don’t treat WvW as some sort of unpleasant grind that has to be endured in order to get your ‘whatever’. Join in and have some fun. I promise you, killing people is a lot more fun than fighting fake monsters. Get a good tanky build and join the Commander’s zerg on Eternal Battleground. You’ll probably find you enjoy it.

Step 1: 99% fool proof way of beating a thief is to always keep a few walls and gates between you and them (~1% use exploits to bypass them).

Step 2: Generally speaking the key is to instantly fight back with whatever you have that hits as hard as possible. Stay clear of the smoke fields they drop, use hard CC’s (stun, daze, etc.) to keep them from pressing the attack, and eventually they’ll break off to recover. Whenever possible refer back to step 1.

Step 3: Escape. Once a thief breaks off in stealth, the fight is over, don’t try to track it down, just get out of combat and use any and all leaps, teleports, etc. to put as much distance between them and you as possible, so that catching you will require they use up their initiative. Once they catch up, refer back to step 2.

If you are forced into fighting a Thief, make the Thief realise that he can’t win, and he will simply run away. Either play aggressively and stay up in his face, or make a bunker build so he will get bored from trying to take you down. Generally, Thief players don’t have a lot of patience, and they very rarely risk fighting with someone they might lose to. Alternatively, get more players to run with you.

You have all classes at 80? Use your thieves and spec for stealth. See an enemy in the distance or one gets the jump on ya? Stealth and run.

Contiguous.1345:

But don’t treat WvW as some sort of unpleasant grind that has to be endured in order to get your ‘whatever’. Join in and have some fun. I promise you, killing people is a lot more fun than fighting fake monsters. Get a good tanky build and join the Commander’s zerg on Eternal Battleground. You’ll probably find you enjoy it.

This is exactly what I was going to say. Join in and play WvW while you’re getting your map completion. Especially if you’re on a lower tier server – you can be a great asset and help out your team.

You don’t need to have played PvP before or be good at “PvP” to play, have fun, and be good at WvW. I’ve never played PvP in anyother game but absolutly love WvW.

Thank you all for the advice! We will be figuring out the best way to incorporate this info into our game over the next few days.

I find it funny that it really never occurred to me to run.

If anyone has anything further to add, I will still be checking in on this thread. Thanks again in advance!

my greatest advice to you guys is to bring full BM bunker ranger.
Why? Thief gonna think its easy to kill it, its a ranger, its the natural “hate” target for all classes in WvW. Sadly, for the thief, BM Bunkers take forever to kill. Giving one of you the ability to escape without a problem.

once both your rangers are done with WvW, go for mesmers, then D/D eles, engineers, necro, thief, warrior and guardian

take the “easy mode” professions last, or you will simply give up getting the achievement for the other ones.

Let us know what you do and how things work out.

D/P thieves are weak, and usually very cowardly. If you’re too hard to kill, they’ll give up.

The most important thing I would suggest, is bringing a class that can keep up a high uptime of Regeneration (and any other passive healing effect you can get your hands on) and wearing something like Cleric’s gear, so you have at least 1k Healing Power. That’s what I’m wearing on my Ranger currently, and I literally let D/P thieves attack me, put up regen, and use the /sit or /sleep emotes to make them feel bad about themselves. Also you want to take the lowest cooldown heal you have. Spam heals but make sure you have backup plans for interrupts, or decent duration stability. And if you’re not interested in fighting, don’t stop to fight, just keep healing and moving toward the nearest escape from battle, be it a tower, or camp, spawn entrance, whatever.

Second, you can escape from thieves, they are very mobile but you can be more mobile, with leap skills. On Ranger I’m talking about chaining leaps from the Sword 2 skill, but any class that can leap/dash without a long cooldown and has either run a speed signet or keep a good swiftness uptime can escape from a thief. They can teleport and chase you but bringing it back to my earlier point, if you weren’t dying anyway, they won’t.

D/P gankers are after easy meals, it’s all their easymode gameplay can get.

Don’t be one. Be as annoying as possible to damage and you’ll have no problems. Do it consistently and they’ll learn not to even bother with you, and your problems will lessen as the match up goes on.

justkoh.4073:

My brother and I are non-WvW players (you can assume its always 2 persons playing and sticking together) and only enter it for the sake of map completion. We also do not PvP ever.

Usually when we see any visible enemies, we’d avoid them. But the other day, we were both attacked and killed by a Thief. It was sad but kind of expected given our lack of PvP skills. I am not raging.

Anyway, since I am forced to enter WvW for map completion, I’m here today to ask for some advice on how to survive such encounters. Or good habits that will at least make his killing us more difficult. Ideally, we’d like to force the Thief to break aggro and let us WP out to another part of the map.

We have Lv80 characters of all classes so I will welcome general, as well as class specific suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

Get the right build. Get the right gear. Practice as a duo in spvp.

If one of you is a broken Op class like a guardian then you will have an easy time in WvW. Just make sure it’s a boon duration abuse guardian. Check the guardian forums.

The thief is a class relying on broken mechanics for people who need to get carried regardless of the target’s skill so no worries.

There is no such thing as too tough to kill for a thief. They all get to enjoy combat where their opponent is at 50% or less health before the opponent gets to click. I enjoyed my thief. Several ranks in WvW. Frankly, it was boring because it was stupidly OP. It became as challenging as picking off rabbits.

As for fight near mobs, no, never. Thieves are always blinking in and out. Critters in the area, if they even had aggro, will now aggro you as you try and AoE hit the invis thief. Now the thief enjoys having npcs join in to help kill the target.

Toughness in this game is a huge red herring stat. I now have seven level 80’s. I have tried all 7 as “bunker”. Except for the d/d ele, they all fail. [D/D ele had to have been designed for blind players. They don’t have to target anyone, just bounce around like a pinball and let the automatic benefits of attunement swapping do all the work. Another bonehead class creation by Anet.] This game is totally, 100%, offense oriented on power/crit/critdmg. Offense gets all the points. Defending is universally unrewarding. There exist no defensive builds than can win against the pressure of full output of max offensive damage.

Anet has zero idea on how to create viable class variety. Every single class gets pigeon-holed into “A” spec. WvW commanders and guild leaders all require warriors all have to hammer, sword/horn. Boring. Guardians have to have shouts and have one weapon be staff for skill 5. For roaming they are all GS/hammer. [GS btw is the most effective weapon of every class that has it available. This weapon in universally too good.] Stability is required for all of WvW and now 90% of pve via living world content. Ele’s need to be staff. Mesmers have to have a focus for pulling off walls and siege. Etc. So many weapon, trait, and armor combinations are just junk in WvW.

Out of frustration I have chosen a different path to survive thieves and d/d eles. Search for another game that successfully eliminates the min/max paradigm that creates a best-only build.

It is funny,but mine and another Necro just obliterated two thieves a few minutes ago. They just melted to AOE’s. So sweet payback.

justkoh.4073:

My brother and I are non-WvW players (you can assume its always 2 persons playing and sticking together) and only enter it for the sake of map completion. We also do not PvP ever.

Usually when we see any visible enemies, we’d avoid them. But the other day, we were both attacked and killed by a Thief. It was sad but kind of expected given our lack of PvP skills. I am not raging.

Anyway, since I am forced to enter WvW for map completion, I’m here today to ask for some advice on how to survive such encounters. Or good habits that will at least make his killing us more difficult. Ideally, we’d like to force the Thief to break aggro and let us WP out to another part of the map.

We have Lv80 characters of all classes so I will welcome general, as well as class specific suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

I will escort you for a fee… or maybe you’ll be lucky to run in to bad thieves like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MchWVFRoU8Q&feature=youtube_gdata_player

You’ll need to tell us what your classes are for WvW for any meaningful ways of how to kill a thief. The methods are class specific and I won’t go into all of them for all classes (tbh I only know how to stomp them on the classes I play, but I see other classes doing just fine vs. them as well). They aren’t some OP god class once you understand them and get a bit of PvP skill under your belt. They are actually one of the weaker, more predictable classes in 1vX combat. You’ll probably want different builds/gear for WvW than you do for PvE in general, but we can get into that once we know your specific classes that you want to learn.

Here is an example of an eng beating off a thief. Listen to how bored he sounds and how easy the thief is for him to predict (playing a thief for a short while will help you with this greatly).

urieldhynne.2743:

Azraelle.1683:

d/d backstab thieves can’t do much vs armored targets(guardian, warrior, bunker ele, eng)

Lol, i am a guardian with 3400 armor and 19k health with defensive traits and they back stab me for 5/6k damage when i am without defensive boons (and they can spam it).

This game has no resilience vs critical damage (this game has no resilience at all), and you can raise the critical damage what scale WAY better than defensive stats like toughness. Critical damage is too kitten powerful in this game.

Obviously if vs ligth armor they can output a 12k critic, sure they do less damage vs high armor if only hit by 5/6k. But 1/4 health in 1 spameable hit is really high anyway.

It’s not spammable. And if they able to kill you then you are bad player.

Join up with 3 other people and take camps/sentries and kill dolyaks. No reason to play with just the 2 of you, though 2 should be able to take every camp.

Or like others have said, run with the zerg.

Turn around!

Seriously, thieves get a lot of their damage from backstabbing you – when you turn to face them their damage drops, by a lot. (And you can do this on any class.)

Check the keyboard options and bind the turn around key to one you can use fast, then practice using it before you go into WvW. When a thief attacks the first thing you do is hit that key, instantly reducing the amount of damage they are doing to you.
Keep facing them in combat and if they disappear for a moment, turn around – keep turning and keep moving. If you see them, attack immediately – never turn your back.

Blocks and Aegis are also good as they can interrupt some of the thief’s attack chains (which can depend on a successful hit for the next attack to be effective), and high toughness reduces the damage they do.

Also, clear any poison condition before you heal (because poison reduces your heals by 33%).

Almost all sneak thieves are after easy kills and depend on high backstab damage and poison nerf to your own healing to win. Once they realise you know how to avoid those and are aggressively taking the fight to them (which keeps you facing them) then they’ll back off, disappear into stealth and wait for easier meat.

When you see their Shadow Refuge, drop aoes on it to keep them hurting and then head off at speed. (If they leave shadow refuge before it finishes they drop out of stealth, and by the time the refuge has finished you should be well away.)