Guild Wars 2

When I play WvW I rarely die. When I do its 9 out of 10 times by a thief. Ive racked up 783 hours and 11,140 wvw kills on my engineer and can handle all professions but this one. It doesnt really make sense. Anyone else finding this to be a problem? Btw, im not going to use a certain skill or weapon just to counter a single profession. Thats ridiculous.

Usually the fight goes like this…Im down. Or I just never see them in order to counter them while they keep hitting me. If I do get their health low enough they easily run off.

So let me know what your experience has been with this. Thanks

If they haven’t loaded the by the time they kill you, there isn’t much you can do to make it any different. You could load up on Vitality and Toughness Gear, but that probably is going to make you worse in many other situations.

If they have loaded by the time they start to have their burst, the burst alone won’t necessarily kill you. You then have to avoid the Heartseeker spam, which is predictable albeit still not a cakewalk to deal with. Use your blinds, invulns, and heals to stay alive. These glass cannon Thieves are probably the glassiest thing in the game, it doesn’t take much to kill it at this point.

You can probably kill a glass cannon or an average thief (knockdown/AoE/burst), but you won’t kill a smart and well-played thief by yourself. I hate to say it, but it’s working as intended by design due to stealth + high mobility + teleportations.

The intelligent ones that burst you and skirmish with the Shortbow afterwards can be particularly difficult to beat. I personally haven’t figured out a way that even reliably deals with these ones. Even if you get the advantage they simply reset the fight. I admit though, much of the time they underestimate you and that can be their downfall as well.

i demand a new class specifically geared at killing stealthed foes.
i dub this class
The imperial city guardsman
STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM

Lightsbane.9012:

i demand a new class specifically geared at killing stealthed foes.
i dub this class
The imperial city guardsman
STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM

You just made my day — hahahaha.

I would actually suggest playing a backstab thief, just go to pvp with a cookie cutter build and see what they gotta do to insta kill you. It will give you a kind of intuition on how to time a dodge correctly.

That or try spinning a 180 to deny them to you back. If you post your build we can try to suggest creative ways of using your skills to counter such debauchery. Or just chalk it up to culling.

Well even though you said you dont want a specific skill to counter them Self Regulating Defenses (Elixir S at 25%) and/or Elixir S itself is a thief saver.

Most of the time what happens to me is a Thief invisi bursts me, my SRD kicks in then I drop Barrage and while tiny switch to Grenade kit with Kit Refinement (100nade burst) then just follow up with frost and poison and that will probally be enough to down the GC Thief. When I am running SD build SRD still saves me but I most likely wont be able to kill the thief just make them run away.

Perma Stealth P/P Thieves are much more challenging mostly because they are played by better players. With the current culling problem with stealth there isnt much you can do to catch a fleeing Thief.

I personally think their needs to be a hard counter to stealth, either a skill that will reveal stealth or something that will prevent it for a short time. Just randomly AoEing everywhere is not a proper counter to a profession mechanic.

Probably depends on your Build and your situation.

If you encountered a thief head-on and he used stealth in front of you, most of the time he’ll go straight to you in around 3 seconds. Take your time and get your gear shield ready.

If he’s roaming w/ perma invisibility, all you can do is trust your instincts. I always have my finger ready for popping an elixir S. I usually react as soon as I see my health drop w/ considerable damage.

Generally, I kill thieves quite well. They are tied with staff elementalists, rangers and greatsword warriors as the easiest classes to kill for me.
Yesterday I lost twice to a d/d+shortbow thief however. It was the first time in weeks; He had condition removal on stealth and was pretty tanky, the fights took forever (2-3 mins each) and he knew how to use dagger burst after I spent my cooldowns and shortbow kite when needed. Afterwards I swapped elixir C for Pain Inverter -the asura racial- (since he didn’t use conditions) and I killed him 4 times in a row, with pretty much full hp.
I’ve died dueling to a condition damage p/d thief before as well (who also had cleanse on stealth) a couple of times but I killed him more than I died, those fights took even longer (5 mins+).
Overall I’d say bursty thieves are easy, no matter what weapon combo they use, the only ones that pose a problem to me are the ones with condition removal and perma stealth. Basilisk venom can also be a problem if you don’t have your cooldowns ready (elixir S/suply crate).

Hi, I’ve been trying out the static discharge build (30 firearms) and encountered a p/d thief. I killed him first time (most likely because of surprise) but after that I lost 3-4x in a row.

The conditions really hurt and there were mobs around to which he can CnD and sometimes I’d wrongly tab to mobs instead of him (plus the mobs tend to attack me when he goes stealth or my static discharge aoes to them).

Any more tips on how to handle them? I recently got my engi to 80 and the first built I tried is static discharge, will try either tanky or condi next.