Guild Wars 2

Hello Guardian forum! I’m posting this as I’ve ran into about a half dozen or more condi thieves over the past week. All of them were running pistol/dagger, and I believe they had runes of perplexity, as at any one time, I would have 2 to 5 stacks of confusion on me.

Now I haven’t done WvW, and any sort of organized pvp for long enough to call myself a pro, but I’m certainly no scrub either. I most enjoy WvW roaming. I of course have a burst med build, with distribution of 0/1/6/6/1, however I like to run GS/Hammer for fun! I’ve actually had a lot of success with this combination even though people tell me that GS is best paired with scepter or sword, and focus. I’ve had successes against every class (including thieves), but this build by thieves just seems to take the cake (away from me) every time

When I fight one, it goes roughly the same without much deviation: I’m not able to push their health much further than half, as they’ll stealth frequently. I am dazed frequently, which is a problem due to their perplexity runes, and no matter how much condi removal I bring (normally, I run the purity trait in Valor, signet of resolve, smite condition, and Contemplation of purity) I seem to have multiple stacks of confusion and poison/bleed on me. And these conditions (especially the confusion) wear me out rather quickly. I do believe I fought a p/d thief at one point, but I’m next to positive she didn’t have runes of perplexity, as we dueled for a good 3-4 minutes, and neither of us could finish the other. It’s those confusion stacks!

My question is, are there any guardians out there who have reasonable success against these guys? I don’t necessarily mean able to chase down and kill them, but at least cause them to retreat indefinitely? If so, what build, weapons, and utilities do you like to use? I’m hoping that with minor trait changes (perhaps sigil changes), or a change of weapons, I could at least put forth an effort that would give me a chance to win. I’m talking like something that if I saw a condi thief out in the distance, and I had like 10-20 seconds, I could switch out traits/weapons/skills, and be ready for that condi thief.

One possibility is that I am indeed a scrub lol! One time I was roaming with a ranger, and we encountered a thief like this. The thief not only managed to survive against the both of us for a good 3+ minutes, but actually forced us to retreat, and picked me off (me being the slower). I mean is there anything I can do vs. a build like this? Perhaps this thief build is very weak against something else, and just so happens to do well against med guards? I don’t want to jump to a conclusion and say that they’re OP, but it’s looking that way to me!

Too much text, don’t fight SA thieves 1v1 and you’d probably be better off with 2/1/6/1/4 vs them for the condi removal.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_Meditation_DPS_Variant

Here’s the build I run in PvP, which is really good vs thiefs
I do have sword instead of scepter
And travelere runes over Pack.

But it’s what you prefer

They’re OP at what they do, just like guardians and warriors are “OP” in a zerg. Being a nuisance for anyone roaming solo.
I mean it. Their build is CREATED for 1v1’s, like really only for 1v1’s. Almost everywhere else a perplex p/d thief sucks. A meditation guard can be useful in almost any scenario where a thief like this simply becomes useless when there are more than 5 people with brains together.

You don’t have to beat them, they “just happen” to do well against every single solo player and build except good necromancers. A decent p/d thief will win or run away from every 1v1 they encounter. You can’t surprise burst them down either, they’ve got 20k hp and 3,2k armor.

I do not suggest you to try to tweak your guardian build in attempt to make yourself stand a chance against these guys, the best that can happen is you scare that thief off untill he resets combat and then he’ll come back and be more careful. Worst case you’ll just hurt your build too much and won’t be able to kill anything anymore. The best you can do without weakening the build is to run that -36% condi duration food over other foods.

Go underwater where their stealth is crippled. :/ If they want to make my life miserable, I intend to send them into the hell of underwater combat.

In all seriousness I don’t; best I can do is not lose and they realize what a bore they are. Don’t use purity though; that passive condi clear every 10 seconds doesn’t really make a difference. You care about clearing bursts of condis, not just clearing that occasional stack of bleed. You want to take all 3 medi traits to get enough pressure to at least threaten them and purity is just not worth it.

Thank you for the advice, all! I’ll keep this in mind next time I roam!

The greatest weakness of this type of thief is the fact they have to stab you to gain stealth for the most part and that skill costs a fair bit of initiative.

If you can predict when they are next going to try and stealth off of you (usually a 3-5 seconds after their pistol burst from stealth) and dodge to avoid it that will leave them at a disadvantage.

Other than that it’s all about timing your burst so that they drop without having the chance to react otherwise they will always just disengage and come back at full HP.

yes its hard setup to fight against but doable

becareful from confusion they can stack 5 (8 with perplexity) so smite condition fast to cleanse it
the 5 bleed stacks will do 500 dps and preety much avoidable
but if they manage to stack 5 bleeding , 2-4 torment, 5-8 confusion, poison then you are in trouble and need to use cop
so dont let them get to it

if they steal from you dodge away, use aegis , shelter when they burst with sneak attack
and pressure them hard all the time so they will have to go in SR then back away far enough . if you pressure them they will focused on AA and not offense with torment etc… so the only dmg will be 3-5 stacks of bleeding poison and sometimes 2 stack of torment which means 800-1000 dps which is very low for them
if you do it right you can win or go into never ending story of SR spam every 45 sec

Thieves are built to get away whenever they please, which has been a problem in every game with every kind of stealth class, and it’s always the same boring feeling when you are up against one.

As a Medi Guard I love fighting thieves in sPvP. I find them so squishy, it just takes one good burst and they usually go down. Either that or decide to run away and find a different fight. If i see a thief in a 1v1 I know that I will down them 85% of the time. The trick is to use up your blinds and protection skills at the start of the fight. Thieves always try and unload all their skills on you. So you protect yourself at first, let them use up their initiative, then you unleash your burst skills and they can’t do much about it

Thieves are weaker in pvp due to the lack of condi food, and I do believe there is no dire amulet. Also, stealth abuse isn’t as useful because you can’t cap under stealth, and unlike wvw you can’t just run away forever in conquest mode (unless you want to lose)

You need to play aggressively and try to dodge the CnD as good as possible. Then you have a chance.

My honest opinion is just swapping to WoR for the reflect back on them, give them a taste of their own medicine. You most likely can beat them in straight melee combat so dance around the wall with your scepter, and if they come in for melee combat swap to your gs.Lastly if you feel like you aren’t able to gapclose properly you could toss in Judge’s Intervention

Just don’t fight condi thieves. Dire p/d is a stupid build, especially with perplexity runes, and anyone running it isn’t worth your time.

My build utilises a very high Hit Point pool (26K fully buffed) that I use to absorb condition damage and mitigate high burst. The beauty of the build is that it also crits often (50%) and hits for 6-9K on a special move (1-5) and white damage is in the 2K range per swing. So for condi thieves its a matter of timing the stealth. Often, they dont even get a chance to use their build because they are dead before they know what just happened (see my latest vid in the Jinpaa Reloaded series for examples – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaazlAbmJMM

Otherwise its as a few have said here – its timing to block those hits and leave them vulnerable – the tricky part is making those opportunities count which is hard with no burst or heavy conditions.

Svenghali.4716:

My build utilises a very high Hit Point pool (26K fully buffed) that I use to absorb condition damage and mitigate high burst. The beauty of the build is that it also crits often (50%) and hits for 6-9K on a special move (1-5) and white damage is in the 2K range per swing. So for condi thieves its a matter of timing the stealth. Often, they dont even get a chance to use their build because they are dead before they know what just happened (see my latest vid in the Jinpaa Reloaded series for examples – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaazlAbmJMM

Otherwise its as a few have said here – its timing to block those hits and leave them vulnerable – the tricky part is making those opportunities count which is hard with no burst or heavy conditions.

you fought against zerk s/d build and not p/d condi . your build lack condi cleanse while having great burst dmg

Roll over and die… Even with 2 condi cleanses from meditations they still kill me so I don’t bother when they are good I just try to run to teamates if I can stay alive long enough.