Guild Wars 2

Good afternoon,
I am having some problems with fighting thieves with my guardian. I was wondering if anyone had any tips on does or don’ts.

For pretty much any non-bleed thief, you can use stability to counter the initial backstab combo (or just stunbreak their Basilisk Venom), then proceed to let them kill themselves on your Retal provided you have good sustainability. Just make sure you dodge or block the CnD attempts when they get close. Protection does help if they do land some burst. Usually once they are at about half health and know they can’t kill you they will run or pop Shadow Refuge. If they’ve popped it, you can use your shield 5 or GS 5 to knock them out of it and pretty much ensure their death as they now have a 4s reveal debuff. If those aren’t available, DPS the area using AoE and your number 1 melee skills. When your chain animation is completing, you are hitting the thief. Also, CC in general is very effective against thieves (except maybe S/D thieves), because most tend to run glass cannon and run maybe 1 stun breaker, sometimes none.

Bleed thieves are a real pain. These guys typically run D/D and spam deathblossom, or P/D and spam 1, or both. They also almost always have caltrops, stay out of the red circle!! If they are running DB, force them to blow their initiative by dodgeing away from the DB and out of the caltrops. Sigils of energy really help here. Once they have used DB about 3 times, they are likely out of initiative. Take this time to CC and do as much damage as possible.

For P/D, the key is to dodge the CnD, as sneak attack is their primary damage source along with caltrops. If the thief gets close to you, he is probably going for a CnD. Blocking or dodging this makes them blow half of their initiative. If you hit about 8 or 9 stacks of bleeds, it’s time to use a cleanse. Smite condition, Pure of Voice, and Absolute Resolution help a lot here.

Special mention goes to D/P thieves, who use the Black Powder for both stealth and blind. Stay out of the blind puddle and force them to move out of it or use the leap finisher for stealth. If they stealth repeatedly, keep turning as wildly as possible and spamming an auto-attack melee. Turning and moving constantly helps prevent receiving the full backstab damage.

Are you playing glass cannon? If not, you should have no issues fighting a Thief when it comes down to damage/defense. (Means you should be dealing way much more damage in % compared to his health against his damage in % in your health)

If you are playing glass cannon, you’ll have to work some well timed combo to down him before he starts the Stealthing crap. Something like Scepter’s Chains of Light + Sword’s Zealot’s Defense, or a Greatsword’s Binding Blades (pull) + some damage when he’s low, etc…

Are you talking about PvP?
Fight inside the location circles, always. If they stealth and run off, it’s points for you. It’s annoying as hell as it may take really long if he’s well played, but in the end you should be able to claim/defend the location. You probably won’t kill the Thief though.

Are you talking about WvW?
Give up and run. If you’re not glass cannon, he shouldn’t be able to down you easily, so just find a tower or location with NPCs and run towards that.

Of course, this only applies to well played Thieves.
If the Thief’s not very good you shouldn’t have any issues…

Things you should look for:

- Did they run towards you, hit you with their offhand weapon and went stealth? That’s Cloak and Dagger, and noob Thieves like to abuse this, if they’re scared of you they’ll keep their distance, and run to you only to Cloak and Dagger and stealth.
Just run towards them and dodge or block, avoid this twice and they’ll get desperate.

- Are they keeping the distance and only coming out of Stealth to shoot you once or twice, then go back to Stealth?
Just give up, these guys won’t die at all and they’ll try to slowly kill you with their low damage and conditions… run anywhere else, their damage is craptastic low, only fight back if they attempt to go melee and they’ll quickly run off.

- Are they using combos for Stealth? (Pistol offhand will make a small circle, and they’ll do a jumping like attack before going stealth)
This means it’ll be an annoying fight, as this can be abused endlessly… and that the Thief isn’t all that noob, so expect to have a harder time.

- Are they backstabbing you after Stealth? (They’re dealing damage when they’re stealthed, check if they have a “Revealed” debuff)
If not, run. The revealed debuff lasts for 4 seconds so they can’t restealth, but it’s only applied if they dealt some damage during stealth.
Some annoying Thieves will just wait for the Stealth duration to run out, attack you from range/melee, and quickly go stealth again. Just save yourself some frustration and move somewhere else.

Well most of these only works in WvW and open fields, as they can just run if things get bad and they can just annoy the hell out of you forever… luckily though these kind of Thieves aren’t playing for the objective (meaning they’re not really attacking a location or defending), so as long as you play the objective you should be fine.
Don’t expect to win a 1v1 against a Thief though, unless he’s average → bad skilled.

Thank you. Very helpful post. I do fight in WvW and have been doing pretty well. Yesterday, faced a thief that shot, went stealth, came out and shot. I thought I could take him, but had never actually fought one 1v1 and got pwned. Thanks again for the information.

wiht my build i love when burst thieves try me, they kill theirselves 10 out of 10 times.

Hey if that’s your 1st 1v1 don’t worry about it too much, you will get more used to it. If your adrenaline starts going try and calm yourself because it will make you far finger keys and make dumb mistakes.

I find the heal shelter is huge, I have watch thiefs spam heart seeker while I block every thing and now they are out of initiative. The rest depends on what kind of weapon set and build you are running for specifics that will really put you over the edge and murdering thieves rather than dying or just running.

Also if you are running hammer banish is a great way to combat thieves that are coming in for cloak and dagger or heart seeker spam.

What weapon set are you running?

And if you don’t mind saying your build What build? This way we can tailor a response that is more focused to your options available.

Mysticjedi.6053:

Thank you. Very helpful post. I do fight in WvW and have been doing pretty well. Yesterday, faced a thief that shot, went stealth, came out and shot. I thought I could take him, but had never actually fought one 1v1 and got pwned. Thanks again for the information.

What you’re describing here is a Pistol / Dagger thief, one of the most annoying builds to fight. As I stated in the above post, these guys are not like your average D/D burst spec. They rely on stealth very heavily both for their offense (bleeds) and defense. Deny them as much stealth as you can by blocking and dodging CnD when they try to get close to you. Having a focus offhand can help when you want to get into melee range and fake them out.

That’s if you really want to fight them, which is a long, drawn out ordeal. In reality, you can just run away and they aren’t much threat, As Danicco pointed out.

Stand your ground → Thief kills himself.

Condition Thief → laugh and ignore. If he makes a mistake root him with something and pummel his kitten in.

Yeah, get the 15 Virtues, use a hammer.

Take into account that the only thief you will ever be able to kill in WvW is a bad thief or a thief that goes 100% all-in. We are one of the least mobile classes, while they are almost always very mobile. As soon as the thief realizes he can’t kill you, he’ll make a run for it and there’s no way we can catch up with them between Shadow Refugee, Heartseeker spam, Infiltrator Arrow, Signet of Shadow and Shadowstep ( abilities very common in WvW ). If you see the thief coming you may switch one of your utilities to Signet of Wrath/Bane Signet and/or Judge’s Intervention to quickly catch up to them when they start running ( I say switch to because both signets are weak and I wouldn’t reccomend anyone to slot them regularly ).

That being said, unless the thief makes heavy use of kiting/stealth, the actual fight shouldn’t be too hard, especially if you are using a greatsword. Always try to land a Binding Blade as soon as their health drops below half so you can try and interrupt their heal or pull them out of Shadow Refugee (automatically unstealths them).

Wolfheart.1938:

Take into account that the only thief you will ever be able to kill in WvW is a bad thief or a thief that goes 100% all-in. We are one of the least mobile classes, while they are almost always very mobile. As soon as the thief realizes he can’t kill you, he’ll make a run for it and there’s no way we can catch up with them between Shadow Refugee, Heartseeker spam, Infiltrator Arrow, Signet of Shadow and Shadowstep ( abilities very common in WvW ). If you see the thief coming you may switch one of your utilities to Signet of Wrath/Bane Signet and/or Judge’s Intervention to quickly catch up to them when they start running ( I say switch to because both signets are weak and I wouldn’t reccomend anyone to slot them regularly ).

That being said, unless the thief makes heavy use of kiting/stealth, the actual fight shouldn’t be too hard, especially if you are using a greatsword. Always try to land a Binding Blade as soon as their health drops below half so you can try and interrupt their heal or pull them out of Shadow Refugee (automatically unstealths them).

That all depends on your build / weapon choices. Under the assumption that I have nothing on cooldown, only super tanky thieves can escape my hammer / scepter & torch combo. Two 2+ sec immobilizes, a knockback on hammer which can lead to a free windup to immobilize, and a warding ring that interrupts kitten near everything will keep them all in place, especially if using Judge’s Intervention with all that to keep the distance close.

While this is probably the best setup for killing a thief in WvW, it’s not as good as our most prominent builds for general purposes. Also notice how half of your spells suddenly become useless as soon as the thief stealths. Can’t target scepter immobilize, difficult to land banish/immobilize (blind on stealth for extra difficulty), warding ring allows you to hit them once or twice with autoattacks/mighty blow and that’s assuming he doesn’t infiltrator arrow/shadowstep out of it. And as soon as you don’t get him down with your first CC chain, he whips out a shortbow and is >1200 range away from you with 0 chances for you to catch up.

Hey man as a guy who mains a thief, guards are generally not easy targets so I really disagree with “thieves so OP!!!” arguments. (I also am leveling a guard and went up against thieves, so I kind of have experience in both sides of the fence).

Can’t exactly share trade secrets, but!

Generally, sit back and chill. Us thieves love making people uncomfortable with our mobility, it makes people make a lot more mistakes than they would otherwise (esp with the stigma of thieves “one shotting” people so people freak out. That is more myth than truth for the most part, only happens in IDEAL situations). Just keep that in the back of your mind before frustration kicks in.

Also, thieves aren’t doing all these cute mobility/stealth based plays to be trolls or just to mess with you — this frustrates so many players and forces mistakes, leading to all this “THIEVES OP!!!!” crap – and the repeated thief nerf bats. Every. Single. Patch. But my point here is that mobility and stealthiness is a necessity for us, we cannot face tank and we can’t dodge much more than any other classes. Read: very little margin for error, esp if we get immobalized or taken out of stealth.

No need to be all defensive about this mr. Silver, if you read carefully my post I never raise balance concers. I just state what’s truth, that being that it’s really hard (read almost impossible) for a guardian to catch up to a skilled thief that wants to run away due to stealth + high mobility. The problem is of course alleviated by slotting specific weapons/utilities ( some common, some weak ).

On the other side, any thief that tries going toe to toe against a guardian without spamming blind from pistol off-hand is as dead as a dodo. Gotta love almost oneshotting glass cannon crappy backstab thievs with Sigil of Wrath + Wirling Wrath combo :d

Tl;dr – Guardians easily kill any thief that doesn’t make heavy use of kiting/blind, but has troubles finishing them off before they run away.

P.s. Regardin balance : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRcTKt47ixk. Look at how pathetic and weak is this heavily nerfed thief Imagine what he would’ve done without the nerfs. Granted he’s a great player fighting noobs, but give him a ranger and tell me if he manages to pull off a 1 vs 3 =) Better nerf Irelia.

Hahaha I didn’t mean to sound defensive my apologies if it sounded that way. My only intent was to point out the strengths of guards vs thieves, people focus too much on what guards lack vs thieves. And yes if a thief wants to run away he can do that better than almost any other class (and I personally can pretty much hunt down any roamers within 2000 range of me with shadow step + infiltrator strike, I run S/P or S/D depending), but thats the same thing as saying if a guard wants he can provide the most team support than any other class. Just a class mechanic.

I really wish Yishis would stop making those videos… what gets lost in transition here is that a player of his skill would own with just about any class, including the ranger. On the flip side, just because he is able to do this doesn’t mean I or the average thief can pull this off. Thief nerf bats wont really bother Yishis, as he made a video previously with just as much pwnage with a d/d thief not abusing perma stealth. It’s the avg thief (and oh lord… PvE… ugh) that thieves will get kicked around in.

BUT! The above video is a good example in what I mean by thieves making people rush and do things that makes no sense, while Yishis is executing a well thought out gameplan. Note, no major attempts to CC or AoE him, just a lot of people freaking out trying to bullrush him with autoattacks… The longer fights are against the more skilled players NOT freaking out, that’s all I was advising.

I know poor thief defenders always get Yishis-slapped in the face =P While I do not believe that the thief is perfectly balanced ( I think it’s still slightly overpowered in WvW ) we can all agree that knowing how to counter them helps a lot more than it does with other classes, so thieves get exponentially worse the more people get a clue on how to fight them. So… yeah… my point was… ugh, nevermind. I’ve said more than enough, I’ll let other people post

P.S.:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?annotation_id=annotation_794295&feature=iv&list=PLE50VtH1YHTOygGC9_umIOED3kKgsXfeW&src_vid=ZCWywAXmVP4

Yishis has been doing this for a LOOOONG time, as you can see, before and after the most recent nerfs and the nerfs before that. If you check out the videos you will note he kicks just about the same amount of butt regardless of the nerfs, a testament to his skills and knowledge of the game.

Ofc people see these videos and go into a panicked rage, because if HE can do it, then EVERY thief can go 5 on 1 and win, right? Right?

I haven’t taken count but I don’t think he killed too many guards though, it’s mostly squishy targets like rangers and such, so there’s something =D.

Enough with my 2 cents, I’ll shut up now =(

I find it hard to kill a non kitten thief on my guardian. Although, it is pretty easy to avoid being killed by them.