Guild Wars 2

I’ve seen a lot of complaints about Theives/Daredevils. I’ve been stomped many times by thieves/daredevils.

However, I’m not here to complain about it.

I’d like to know this: What’s the best class/build to hunt them with? Another thief/DD? What do I need to focus on to counter the common WvW builds?

Guardians/DH are good counters. Good burst and cleave, aegis, blocks, sustain, burning and retaliation.
You can kill them easily but you might not prevent them running from you. But honestly, no one can.

only way to beat a thief is dps him faster then he dps you. its not super hard condi warrior and as stated guardian pretty good at it.

big tip to note is Dodge is not a perfect eva mech in the game. there is a .1 frame in between dodge so if you time your skill to land on in between dodge frames you easily nuke down thief unless there con. in that case your basically dead no matter what you run XD.

but yeah knowing where you can punish probably help you with your match up.

Ranger/druids have some good counters to them. Sic em plus knockback roots and rapid fire causes a lot of problems for them, plus ofcourse the 1500 range to pewpew the ants in mah pants teefs like.

Offair.2563:

Ranger/druids have some good counters to them. Sic em plus knockback roots and rapid fire causes a lot of problems for them, plus ofcourse the 1500 range to pewpew the ants in mah pants teefs like.

Will have to try ranger I guess. DH is simply not effective.

People complain about the stealth, but the regeneration is absurd.

depends how good u know thief..
decent warrior will wreck thief, if thief has no condi cleanse any condi tit will kitten thief.

thief is not so hard too beat. its just that thief is 90% of the time choosing when too attack and when to get the kitten out while u have no choice in these situations.

If you see them coming they’re easier to deal with unless in an outnumbered situation.

If you play a dragon hunter with traps, scrapper with traited reveals and/or stealth gyro and rev can all deal with a thief without breaking a sweat even if they don’t see it coming.

Some classes and builds can largely ignore a thief either because they out regen or are too bunker to die. Also condi builds will hurt thieves a lot if they’re not running shadow arts so most thieves will choose a different target. Then again I do see a lot of SA, DD, Trickery thieves so take that how you will.

Sometimes I like to pick up my full zerker gunflame warri and go duck hunting.

“On My Mark!” → “To The Limit!” → weapon swap to rifle with intelligence sigil → activate berserk mode → OPTIONAL: if thief is close Taunt is activated → Gunflame → thief dead in one or two shots in a matter of seconds.

Thieves usually run squishy gear. This isn’t a counter to thief, but it’s fun on bad ones. A good thief will utilize shadow-steps, stun-breaks, blinds, necessary dodges and watch out for combat queues, especially when I swap to rifle as by then it would be in their best interest to begin using their stolen warrior skill to reflect the projectile etc.

I’m not sure what else I’d bother using if I encounter a thief… condi mesmer comes to mind.

Neural.1824:

People complain about the stealth, but the regeneration is absurd.

You’re right. D/P with SA and DrD has got insane regen. (Every other thief has not though).

Taobella.6597:

big tip to note is Dodge is not a perfect eva mech in the game. there is a .1 frame in between dodge so if you time your skill to land on in between dodge frames you easily nuke down thief unless there con. in that case your basically dead no matter what you run XD.

I’ve done this multiple times on thiefs but recreating it reliably has been impossible….but now that I know its in between dodges that they are vulnerable i might be able to. I’d like to see a video or more information on how to take advantage of this. I run gunflame….so having points in their dodges that I can land the hit would be amazing.

Any DH, druid or scrapper gives pain to most variant of thieves.

Though I think it’d probably be more enjoyable to roll a thief of your own. Winning because you brought a counterbuild feels really boring. Learning how to use and eventually discover the counters to a thief will help you against them no matter what you’re playing atm. And you’d faceroll harder when you do pick a strong counter in the future anyways…

reddie.5861:

depends how good u know thief..
decent warrior will wreck thief, if thief has no condi cleanse any condi tit will kitten thief.

thief is not so hard too beat. its just that thief is 90% of the time choosing when too attack and when to get the kitten out while u have no choice in these situations.

If thief has no condi clear, wouldn’t reaper be the best counter?

It’s not just about killing the thief, but also surviving. A thief can easily hit and run a necro. Like just disengage or sit on stealth while the necro is on shroud. Against a DH, in the other hand, he would hit aegis, blocks, protection, retal and such. While having to deal with huge bursts and pulls.

I get a good chuckle out of my Mesmer and Moa w/thieves

But most die easier to my necro.

Cerby.1069:

Taobella.6597:

big tip to note is Dodge is not a perfect eva mech in the game. there is a .1 frame in between dodge so if you time your skill to land on in between dodge frames you easily nuke down thief unless there con. in that case your basically dead no matter what you run XD.

I’ve done this multiple times on thiefs but recreating it reliably has been impossible….but now that I know its in between dodges that they are vulnerable i might be able to. I’d like to see a video or more information on how to take advantage of this. I run gunflame….so having points in their dodges that I can land the hit would be amazing.

i am just giving you my insight as a 7000 hour thief <3 if people want thief to be better they need to allow other classes know of there punish frames for anet to properly balance it.

i ask one of my friends to help me with the recording. as you can view he start a dodge at .3 frame in you start gun flame it should hit. in the last clip i still casted it at .3 frame but i assume because of him not being directly on top of me cause me to miss.

Taobella.6597:

Cerby.1069:

Taobella.6597:

big tip to note is Dodge is not a perfect eva mech in the game. there is a .1 frame in between dodge so if you time your skill to land on in between dodge frames you easily nuke down thief unless there con. in that case your basically dead no matter what you run XD.

I’ve done this multiple times on thiefs but recreating it reliably has been impossible….but now that I know its in between dodges that they are vulnerable i might be able to. I’d like to see a video or more information on how to take advantage of this. I run gunflame….so having points in their dodges that I can land the hit would be amazing.

i am just giving you my insight as a 7000 hour thief <3 if people want thief to be better they need to allow other classes know of there punish frames for anet to properly balance it.

i ask one of my friends to help me with the recording. as you can view he start a dodge at .3 frame in you start gun flame it should hit. in the last clip i still casted it at .3 frame but i assume because of him not being directly on top of me cause me to miss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sihmw2bDBY

That was awesome! Thankyou so much for that! that will help immensely.

Its like right as soon as he lands behind you, ya have to start the windup. Oh man that is gonna take some practice….especially when i don’t have positional ques.

Cerby.1069:

Taobella.6597:

Cerby.1069:

Taobella.6597:

big tip to note is Dodge is not a perfect eva mech in the game. there is a .1 frame in between dodge so if you time your skill to land on in between dodge frames you easily nuke down thief unless there con. in that case your basically dead no matter what you run XD.

I’ve done this multiple times on thiefs but recreating it reliably has been impossible….but now that I know its in between dodges that they are vulnerable i might be able to. I’d like to see a video or more information on how to take advantage of this. I run gunflame….so having points in their dodges that I can land the hit would be amazing.

i am just giving you my insight as a 7000 hour thief <3 if people want thief to be better they need to allow other classes know of there punish frames for anet to properly balance it.

i ask one of my friends to help me with the recording. as you can view he start a dodge at .3 frame in you start gun flame it should hit. in the last clip i still casted it at .3 frame but i assume because of him not being directly on top of me cause me to miss.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sihmw2bDBY

That was awesome! Thankyou so much for that! that will help immensely.

Its like right as soon as he lands behind you, ya have to start the windup. Oh man that is gonna take some practice….especially when i don’t have positional ques.

No problem i like helping other players improve.

More questions: It seems that the current meta for roaming is a couple people running daredevil. Seems that when I’m running around I mainly run into a duo like this when dealing with supply camps. One I can sometimes handle by basically annoying the heck out of them until they decide to leave the fight, but two and I’m pretty much toast (this would be on my built-to-annoy mesmer, whom I refer to as “wet noodle” due to her dps, or lack of).

So.. being at a bit of a stalemate (or loss) with these guys constantly… is there any point to even trying? I’ve tried Druid and DH, but I just do not have the experience with those classes in WvW. Is mesmer a case of “wrong class, don’t bother”?

You should totally try, unless it’s a obvious suicide. How else you gonna improve? I don’t think that rev is a counter to DD (it can be quite the opposite) but I’ve won enough 1v2 thieves while roaming around. The thing is that I have been playing rev since HoT release.
Stick to one class, find a good build and keep fighting and eventually you will learn what you have to do against each class/build, not only thieves.

as shout druid never had issue can counter thiefs with GS better then LB the only issue when they feel they cant manage to kill me they run off hard to catch then also medi burn DH the ammount of burning pressure they cant stand

Neural.1824:

More questions: It seems that the current meta for roaming is a couple people running daredevil. Seems that when I’m running around I mainly run into a duo like this when dealing with supply camps. One I can sometimes handle by basically annoying the heck out of them until they decide to leave the fight, but two and I’m pretty much toast (this would be on my built-to-annoy mesmer, whom I refer to as “wet noodle” due to her dps, or lack of).

So.. being at a bit of a stalemate (or loss) with these guys constantly… is there any point to even trying? I’ve tried Druid and DH, but I just do not have the experience with those classes in WvW. Is mesmer a case of “wrong class, don’t bother”?

The problem is if you don’t do any damage then why do they have to leave? 2 of them will wear you down eventually and despite what many claim mesmer doesn’t have rediculous levels of sustain to make it not worth their time.

Condition mesmer is enough to make most classes run from a fight with you and it’s very faceroll. A power shatter can instagib a thief but is itself weaker to thief in this “balance” and with 2 there’s very little reason you should live longer than 5s. Essentially if you are not a condi mesmer then don’t expect to win against 2 thieves with even the slightest amount of skill.

Neural.1824:

More questions: It seems that the current meta for roaming is a couple people running daredevil. Seems that when I’m running around I mainly run into a duo like this when dealing with supply camps. One I can sometimes handle by basically annoying the heck out of them until they decide to leave the fight, but two and I’m pretty much toast (this would be on my built-to-annoy mesmer, whom I refer to as “wet noodle” due to her dps, or lack of).

So.. being at a bit of a stalemate (or loss) with these guys constantly… is there any point to even trying? I’ve tried Druid and DH, but I just do not have the experience with those classes in WvW. Is mesmer a case of “wrong class, don’t bother”?

You are going to run into the problem ytou decribe fighting a 1v2 on most every build no matter the profession of the enemy if that enemy a tightly coordinated team. The main issue is you can often down one but if the enemies partner quick , he will usually be able to rez before a stomp or finish.

If you face Thieves in such a scenario they can often rez while stealthed.

Wait for them to black powder (small ring of smoke around them) and throw an interrupt/ knockback.
Force them to use shadowstep early on etc etc.
Condi is mediocre against them if they run escapist’s absolution.
Once you’ve played thief, you’ll realize that they have a crazy amount of inherent weaknesses if their mechanics aren’t pulled off correctly. If they’re running a dagger offhand and go invisible after hitting you, just dodge. They’re essentially dazed if they try to spam a stealth attack on you.

Note the way they dodge, if they’re essentially gliding along the ground, immobilize, chill and torment won’t work on them. If they seem to be stomping after every flip, then they are susceptible to conditions but they will have amazing burst whilst evading. If you get conditions after they leap well, I really hope you traited some condi removal lol.

Black circle on the ground + leaping from thief usually means anywhere from 2-8 seconds of stealth. Usually it’s around 4-6 in combat depending on their health. Just blast that circle, it’s essentially a target for you. As dumb as it may sound, walking into it can throw the thief off badly.

You want to counter thieves? Bait out their defences because that’s how they beat most classes right now. Mobility is what makes them so good in wvw. They ensure you waste all your active defences and stuns before going in for the kill. No good thief is going to try out dps you head on unless they realize you’re a healer or on cooldowns.

Most Thieves don’t bother fighting a DH alone as it tends to be a very uphill fight if the DH is somewhat competent. If you’re tired of being constantly ganked by a DD, just run DH.

In my experience as a thief, the hardest 2 classes to beat as a roamer right is the Soldier staff+lb druid by far, followed by condi chrono and DH. Condi chrono isn’t really a threat though as they cannot catch up to you if you choose to ignore them. The druid on the other hand, has a very high potential to burst you down due to might stacking and range with bristleback and smokescale bursts. DH is self explanatory.

Weo weo.6378:

In my experience as a thief, the hardest 2 classes to beat as a roamer right is the Soldier staff+lb druid by far, followed by condi chrono and DH. Condi chrono isn’t really a threat though as they cannot catch up to you if you choose to ignore them. The druid on the other hand, has a very high potential to burst you down due to might stacking and range with bristleback and smokescale bursts. DH is self explanatory.

Yes. Condi Chrono has a bit of trouble catching up to thiefs/DD, and, in my experience, “isn’t really a threat” is an understatement. My main strategy when I catch someone in WvW is to keep them occupied until someone with actual damage ability shows up.

Another thief is your best shot to kill a thief. Keep in mind that rolling a power thief will typically cause a player to die a lot more frequently. Most people that complain about thieves have no idea just how difficult they are to play in an evenly matched fight.

If you don’t want to die to a thief, just roll a meta bunker. You might die in an outnumbered situation but most bunker builds are pretty much immune from 1v1 play outside of a massive skill differential between players.

Well, unless you’re also playing thief, you can’t catch them if they decide to run away. That alone makes it a pretty boring ‘fight’ if you can call it that. They can cover 3,000 range in the time most classes would take to go 900 or so.

You need them to commit to killing you, then turn the tables and burst them before they have the chance to run.

My favourite thing to do as an Engi is Detection Pulse a Thief that just used Shadow Refuge, then 1-shot them with Grenade Barrage. The majority of them have no idea what happened and you can just burst them down where they stand.

They know what happened, they just can’t do anything against it – isn’t that great?!

look at it from the positive side, it’s +200 power :P

It sucks but thives should know by now not to even bother with shadow refuge, and I don’t mean because of revealed I mean the amount of aoe/cc since hot. Blinding powder is much better if you want s stealth utility.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

It sucks but thives should know by now not to even bother with shadow refuge, and I don’t mean because of revealed I mean the amount of aoe/cc since hot. Blinding powder is much better if you want s stealth utility.

until they realize that standing in blinding powder destroys it.

I don’t get it?

Fat Disgrace.4275:

It sucks but thives should know by now not to even bother with shadow refuge, and I don’t mean because of revealed I mean the amount of aoe/cc since hot. Blinding powder is much better if you want s stealth utility.

To be honest given the amount of dodges thief gets from Daredevil it’s not like they need stealth more than DP provides.

Dd line is probabe balanced if for not d/p.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

I don’t get it?

If you see a thief laying blind powder down anywhere, jump into the BP = they can’t stealth.

DrD isn’t balanced for D/P – D/P is just self sufficient and can make any line work.
D/P is also pretty mobile – good luck getting to one in time.

Black powder is the pistol 5 skill, blinding powder is the utility that stealths you and is a blast finisher….

true
still the stealth lasts a few secons which doesn’t really help anyway.

ETA: (Targeted skills and stuff – and engi reveal applies to any skill they use and they’ve got mainly AoE skills – so you can’t really escape that anyway – but it’s a very long topic)

It’s only for a few seconds but if you wanted to get away, that’s plenty of time to repostion your self, it’s also a blind which helps a great deal not to mention the blast.

Dp is only mobile at chasing, not kiting, any thief build has as much mobilty as d/p…that is ofc they don’t shadow shot on ambaint creatures.

Fat Disgrace.4275:

It’s only for a few seconds but if you wanted to get away, that’s plenty of time to repostion your self, it’s also a blind which helps a great deal not to mention the blast.

Dp is only mobile at chasing, not kiting, any thief build has as much mobilty as d/p…that is ofc they don’t shadow shot on ambaint creatures.

I know I’m using it and am still using SR and my beloved signet of shadows.
They can just stealth, jump away stealth again and then use SS – to me that’s mobile, no idea whether that counts as kiting or not.
Sorry, really unconentrated right now – I rather leave you guys alone

Fights are fun off my condi-chrono with thieves who think i’m gank bait. So many of them bounce off my shield and while they’re in that range is the perfect time to unload a shatter or two and either smoke em or scare em off.

It’s the good thieves who give me a fun fight.

Jana.6831:

If you see a thief laying blind powder down anywhere, jump into the BP = they can’t stealth.

Bound thief and any one that doesn’t have auto target on can easily skate past this “trick”. Going into the blind field against a decent thief allows them to get a free shot on a player.

It’s still very hard to stealth multiple times with the same field if an enemy stands in there.
And you don’t have to stand in BP like a helpless chicken – it’s a myth that standing in BP does any harm – the one blind doesn’t matter if you’re prepared for it – the blind from SS is harder to predict as in a melee fight you don’t always realize you’ve just been SS-ed.

Jana.6831:

Fat Disgrace.4275:

I don’t get it?

If you see a thief laying blind powder down anywhere, jump into the BP = they can’t stealth.

This is advice I cannot give. More often than not, doing this will get you killed.

There’s very little sense in trying for a build that will try and chase a daredevil down. If they’re playing a normal build, pretty much nothing but a druid running GS/Staff can catch up. If the daredevil runs away, it’s not killing you in that time, and if it resets, so can you.

Thus a daredevil that will be afraid to try and kill you is a build that will perform best. That doesn’t mean you can just go walking around killing Daredevils. The whole point of the specialization is damage mitigation since the amount of powercreep from HoT is so big it’s a necessity. Keep it afraid to put pressure on you and there’s nothing it’ll really do. Keep aware such that you don’t get ganked, and it can’t do anything no matter what.

I believe DH is an overstated counter for WvW. It melts thief in sPvP, but thieves can get the stats they need to actually function in fights in WvW. Traps are easy to negate if the thief goes in under the assumption traps are there. Shortbow and P/P can almost permanently kite the DH’s longbow.

The definitively best dueling build in the game right now is bunker druid. It also counters thief innately. It won’t make you better at beating thieves in general, however. Only playing one will. Berserker is also an excellent choice if looking into more interactive play, and PU condi mesmer before the bunker druid was the reigning champion of duels and shouldn’t have too much trouble against the daredevil, as dodges proc confusion’s extra damage, and the build supplies plenty of blinds and cover conditions to make cleansing difficult without SA, which most people no longer run.

Or you can simply get really good at the profession you’re playing. While daredevil is thief on easy mode, it still does to a degree depend on its play to succeed. A good thief building against the profession’s counters (Hello D/P-defensive DrD) is going to be very difficult to bring down. A core thief should melt to anything with HoT.

DeceiverX.8361:

Jana.6831:

If you see a thief laying blind powder down anywhere, jump into the BP = they can’t stealth.

This is advice I cannot give. More often than not, doing this will get you killed.

For some reason I have never been killed when doing so – but when I didn’t do it.

Jana.6831:

DeceiverX.8361:

Jana.6831:

If you see a thief laying blind powder down anywhere, jump into the BP = they can’t stealth.

This is advice I cannot give. More often than not, doing this will get you killed.

For some reason I have never been killed when doing so – but when I didn’t do it.

They’re still going to get stealth, anyways, even if the HS hits.

The only way they’d reveal themselves is if they HS’ed again and hit you while being in stealth, in which case that’s just the thief being horrible and not knowing the mechanics of D/P.

Plus you end up blinded from BP.

Better than 12 s stealth with SRej.
ETA: Honestly: I duelled a former buddy quite a lot and he told me I shouldn’t stand in his BP, so I didn’t do it and he won every time. I didn’t do that with other D/P thieves and I won ‘every’ time.
I get that if it’s a D/P + staff thief this could be dangerous.
Last time I won a fight while doing so I was at 5% health – but I used steal and SoH.

When im bored I will run a vanilla thief build and let me tell you, the smartest thing you can do when you see a BP field is stand in it. No thief (unless traited for +200 power when revealed) doesn’t want to get revealed so you will either force them to reveal themselves by HS or sb2 and hit you, or you will cut their stealth shorter, giving them less time to prepare or less time to gtfo.

I would agree above if you was also stealthed. Would seem silly if you wasn’t.

To be honest I think it depends on the situation. If you have the thief on the ropes then by all means stand in black powder to deny stealth, if the thief is fairly healthy then you are just making backstab easier for them by running over.

Having said that I almost never stand in it as a power mesmer due to the latter and that it will blind me for CC which is much more useful for denying stealth. Other classes I play like DD core ele I find it’s best to AoE the area to deter repeated HS, course a decent thief won’t BP combo within easy reach of you often.

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

When im bored I will run a vanilla thief build and let me tell you, the smartest thing you can do when you see a BP field is stand in it. No thief (unless traited for +200 power when revealed) doesn’t want to get revealed so you will either force them to reveal themselves by HS or sb2 and hit you, or you will cut their stealth shorter, giving them less time to prepare or less time to gtfo.

muhahahahahahaha. you can stand in BP field as long as you want. Thief will jump on you at least 3 times and get “block, invul, blind”.

Standing in BP allows the thief to get a “free” shot on you with HS, Bound or Vault and the thief will still stealth. If that shot hits with any kind of force, the next shot is likely a well positioned Backstab or Hook Strike. If they want to stack stealth, they will just move away and drop another BP.

I am sure in some fights in might make sense but to apply that statement in a blanket form will get a lot of players killed.