Guild Wars 2

I would love for one of you skilled sPvP players to post or point me to a video of you guys rocking our world in sPvP….which happens to me occasionally but enough where I know there are some of you out there who just do not die to thieves under average circumstances. Period.

I try to tell people in my forums over and over that every time I run into one of you who knows how to play the game, I may as well be slapping you with a 12 inch fish by the time our combat hits the 5 second mark. Unfortunately I get flamed for this or the (obviously lesser skilled) conversation instigator just moves on to another thread.

I would love to have one of you guys give me a “THIS is how you fix Russian space station! kill a thief” video so that I can encourage people to learn their class and keep the game competitive.

Hopefully I am not shooting myself in the foot with this but I really like the fact that your class is a hard counter to mine. I think ANet gave you the perfect tools to stop us dead and more people need to know that.

That being said, I hope you don’t get nerfed and continue to challenge my abilities as well as make me a better player. Guardian is probably going to be my next class to 80 but I’m still not reliably good enough in sPvP to make this video myself…..I probably win about 50-60% of the vs. thief fights I have due to the fact that the g-skills are still not natural to me, as my primary plays very differently.

Thanks a lot and I’ll see you on the battlefield…….hopefully long before you see me :-D

edit: For example, this necro did a similar thing and I think it went quite well. His video was instructional and interesting. Most of all, he showed in it exactly how you deal with our class.

Say I post a video of me taking down a couple of thieves at once without much issue

Responses:

• “Those players suck, not impressed…”
• “Yeah, easy for guardian with 100% protection uptime.”
• “So you post the one video of you beating a few noobs, good job.”
• “Why don’t you fight me at x time on x server, and we’ll see who wins!”
• “See guardians are OP, I’m re-rolling, Anet fix this!”
• “Look at those boons, hacking!”

Hmm, sounds like fun, maybe I should post a video one day for some legal trolling.

edit:

cannons.8109:

you should post in the Structured PvP forum. I think only casual Guardian players (myself included) come to the Guardian forums.

I wouldn’t consider myself a hardcore player by any means, but there are plenty of quality guardian players here, that just don’t care to show off. I think it’s just a common mentality of the people who play this profession a lot.

The way I fight thieves is with retaliation. I LOVE your dagger dances, as soon as you open up, I run to you. Most thieves I know are glass canons, who rely heavily on stealth.

How to fight retaliation? Run away is about it until it stops, because any damage you deal out, we give it back.

Kind of off-topic, but that Armageddon reference had me imagining some Russian PvPer Guardian killing thieves with a spanner. Anyway, the only difficulty in killing thieves is if they’re dead set on disengaging and start using stealth and doing nothing but to run.

i know there are some awesome Guardian players in here, who specialize in PvP as wel. but for obvious reasons, they don’t post vids or share. just to keep it competitive ; ))

It’s simple: Retaliation. Thieves do all the work. Retaliation sources to watch out for are:
1. “Stand Your Ground!”
2. Light field with Greatsword equipped
3. Using a blast or leap finisher in a light field (common with hammer and greatsword since they can self-combo)
4. Signet of Judgement
5. Bunker guardian build, who usually have the minor trait that gives himself Retaliation for activating a virtue. Generally have a hammer as one of their weapons and will not stray far from a node.

After that, they tend to go either high defense (bunker guardian) and let Retaliation most of the work or go somewhat offensive and kill the thief first using Retaliation damage as the edge. Defensive will tend to have a lot of boons that tick for a while. Offensive will use some form of knockdown to stop the thief as well as gap closers. Both tend to have high toughness.

I don’t have much experience as a defensive build, but condition damage tends to work well and boon removal if you have it. Also, attacking when Retaliation is not active. Against offensive, you want to use hit and run to prevent them from getting in too many hits against you and make them waste their mobility and CC cooldowns.

I don’t use retaliation and I stomp all over thieves. I’m a meditation guardian. Its as offensive a guardian can get without going beyond stupid.

Thing is, no one ever said that thieves can ever win in a 1v1 against a guardian. What I’m trying to say is this is not the point of pvp. You’re not 1v1 in pvp, you’re 5v5, or 8v8. If I see a thief, yeah, I’m going to beat him. But if I’m distracted and you sneak up behind me, it really doesn’t matter how much defense I have. I wasn’t ready for a thief encounter and suddenly half my health is gone. I see these crappy thieves all the time. They jump me out of no where and expect to win in a 1v1. Then when I’m at 90% hp and they’re at 10% they start to run away. Flashing Blade, Judges Intervention, they’re dead. Then they go complain HURDUR GUARDIANS SO OP. No, you’re the idiot that smashes all his keys and expects to win. I’m the one that uses focus 5 to block all your heartseekers. I’m the one that uses smite conditions to remove that lovely stack of bleed you gave me.

Think for a moment. Do you really think Arenanet would make a class that is capable of winning, simply because they have the upperhand at the start of a fight?

Each class has their positions. Thieves seem to think they belong front and center in 1v1s. Wrong. They belong behind the opponent, striking them when they’re distracted. You don’t want to be focused. Me, I love being focused which makes killing thieves all the better.

Kita.7819:

I don’t use retaliation and I stomp all over thieves. I’m a meditation guardian. Its as offensive a guardian can get without going beyond stupid.

Thing is, no one ever said that thieves can ever win in a 1v1 against a guardian. What I’m trying to say is this is not the point of pvp. You’re not 1v1 in pvp, you’re 5v5, or 8v8. If I see a thief, yeah, I’m going to beat him. But if I’m distracted and you sneak up behind me, it really doesn’t matter how much defense I have. I wasn’t ready for a thief encounter and suddenly half my health is gone. I see these crappy thieves all the time. They jump me out of no where and expect to win in a 1v1. Then when I’m at 90% hp and they’re at 10% they start to run away. Flashing Blade, Judges Intervention, they’re dead. Then they go complain HURDUR GUARDIANS SO OP. No, you’re the idiot that smashes all his keys and expects to win. I’m the one that uses focus 5 to block all your heartseekers. I’m the one that uses smite conditions to remove that lovely stack of bleed you gave me.

Think for a moment. Do you really think Arenanet would make a class that is capable of winning, simply because they have the upperhand at the start of a fight?

Each class has their positions. Thieves seem to think they belong front and center in 1v1s. Wrong. They belong behind the opponent, striking them when they’re distracted. You don’t want to be focused. Me, I love being focused which makes killing thieves all the better.

Too true! I played a guardian for like 400 hours and now I am back on my thief(I like ninjas xD Especially since I am now a Ninja Viking…omg xD) and I killed Thieves easy enough aswell.

An assassin knows when to strike and makes use of timing and momentum. If people run away, we shall slay them, or atleast try to :P I still am too focussed on head on fighting and make my mistakes as the rookie PvPer that I am, but I am getting there.
Picking the fights is important, for ANY profession, but maybe even more so for thieves who think they can win any encounter. A hard counter is not a bad thing for us untill more people play Guardian and Warrior over anything else, I already see a crapton of guardians buffing entire zergs xD getting creepy :P