Guild Wars 2

Ok, I fist understand that as a Guardian, I’m not a “roaming” class but that comes from too much time as my Ele…

I was wondering though, am I the only person that finds thieves to be a real pain in the butt as a Guardian? The normal D/D or condition thieves aren’t an issue but those D/P ones that stack blind just seem impossible. When I do get one down, he just uses permastealth and then I loose him. For gear, I’m going with mostly a set of knight’s armor rolled with zerker weapons so I’m not following the normal burst concept and trying more for survival.

Do I just really suck or are they just our nemesis? I rolled this alt as I was hoping to find something like my old pally from WoW. She’s a beast in PvE but sometimes I feel I’m lost in WvW.

When I run into a thief alone, first thing I do is equip my Shield and sword. Sword allows for a (# 3)r anged attack, and a (# 2) teleport to enemy, which is useful to catch up to thieves. Shield skills (# 4) gives protection, really useful against backstab damage. (#5) And when the thief uses shadow refuge I use this skill to push him out of it. This + a hammer or a great sword and i never lose a 1v1 to a thief.

I’m sure this thread will see a hundred posts from people explaining nothing while telling you how easy it is for them to kill thieves. (no offense, Kronyx^)

You may also get advice like “I just use scepter and altruistic healing” or the standard “guardians do so much self healing thieves are a joke, you must be doing it wrong.”

The fact is, while other classes are spec’ing to kill people guardians spec to run across the map, and then hide being other people.

My newest 80 is a thief, and I am horrible at playing it, but I took the trait to steal boons, because there was nothing else to take…

Long story short I remember that I could steal boons while fighting a guard that had popped Save Yourselves. I stole his retaliation and protection, and it left me feeling sorry for him.

I slaughtered the poor guy without needing to steal any boons, and without even knowing what the hell I was doing.

In recent memory I can only recall one guardian that did enough damage to be a threat, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes.

The 1 on 1 balancing in this game is some of the worst I’ve ever seen, and your chances of beating a thief that off-hands a pistol are non-existent.

You aren’t gonna beat one that used a pistol and off-hands a dagger either.

…you should probably avoid ones using a shortbow too.

That’s kind of what I’ve been trying to work on. I run with a GS/S+SH as I just find it more fun than the hammer. The idea I had of going with mostly knights gear is the right choice then?

Oh and thanks Ezeriel… /sigh

Ezeriel.9574:

Long story short I remember that I could steal boons while fighting a guard that had popped Save Yourselves. I stole his retaliation and protection, and it left me feeling sorry for him.

Don’t feel sorry. Guardian badly needs a “nemesis” to punish them for the ridiculously forgiving nature of the class itself. It makes me laugh that you’d steal those two especially, since they both offer benefits to the player for being so inept as to take a beating in the first place.

Depends if you are trying to kill the thief…or just want to roam. Killing thieves in WvW is almost impossible if they have good defense and know how to disengage vis shadow step and shortbow, however, for most gank thieves, you can most likely burst them down. Binding blade is a good check to see if they are nearby when they cloak.

I typically run into two types of thieves in WvW. The gank-spec ones that are just out for free kills, and thieves that have actually thought about their builds, and taken time to figure out what counters mine.

It’s pretty easy to tell the difference. Average gank-spec thieves don’t care whether or not you have boons (the good ones might, but they’re few and far between). They’re going to stealth, backstab, and try to deal as much damage as quickly as possible. Typically, their first backstab will only pop Aegis, at which point you can simply laugh as you melt their healthbar.

Unfortunately for them, the guardian is actually their nemesis. The lack of survivability of your average glass cannon ganking thief is their downfall; all you have to do is know how to counter them. Almost every weaponset in the Guardian toolkit has something that counters thieves in some way, and several of our utilities mess them up greatly as well. Once a glass cannon ganking thief is de-stealthed or CC’d, he’s dead. The other thieves are harder to deal with, but they also won’t kill you (or anyone else) nearly as quickly—you should have plenty of time to get help or drag them back into a friendly NPC/zerg if you’re outmatched, but honestly you really shouldn’t be outmatched.

Sword #3 will track a thief if initiated before he stealths, even after he stealths. Focus 4 will do the same. Focus 5 punishes thieves that try to get close to attack after stealthing. Scepter 3 roots them in place—an immobile thief is a dead thief—and 2 will punish them for sitting in shadow refuge, their only real source for long-duration stealth. Shield 5 will knock them away from you or out of shadow refuge; shield 4 grants protection longer than their stealth duration (use to mitigate a backstab). Torch 4 will deal massive damage and burn them, which applies even after stealth, and 5 can track them even in stealth if you initiate the channel before they stealth, and don’t try to control your character’s facing.

Mace 3 used after a thief stealths either blocks a thief’s backstab damage or applies protection. Hammer 3 roots a thief in place (immobile thief = dead thief), 4 can knock them out of shadow refuge or away from a stomp, 5 can be used to give yourself some breathing space (all of a thief’s really high-damage attacks are melee-range) or trap in a thief for a burst, since they don’t have much access to stability. Greatsword 5 can yank a thief to you for a burst, pull them out of a blinding powder field, or yank them out of shadow refuge just before it triggers the long-duration stealth, which completely screws most thieves up. It also will aim for and hit thieves in stealth, which can be used to both CC them until they’re de-stealthed, lay down a burst on the still-stealthed thief, and/or simply leave the DoT to tick on them if they were low-health (it’s not a condition, so they can’t remove it, and the initial hit can deal significant damage). Staff has enough AoE damage that you can sort of throw autoattacks around and wait until the downed thief destealths; you can take off a tenth of his healthbar per autoattack easily.

So yes, there are ways of dealing with thieves if they’re persistent enough to keep trying to kill you. Yes, chances are they’ll be able to escape you if they want to—if so, let them unless you see a definite opportunity to secure the kill. It’s not like they’ll be doing anything else particularly productive, and they shouldn’t be able to kill you no matter how hard they try.

Ezeriel.9574:

I’m sure this thread will see a hundred posts from people explaining nothing while telling you how easy it is for them to kill thieves. (no offense, Kronyx^)

You may also get advice like “I just use scepter and altruistic healing” or the standard “guardians do so much self healing thieves are a joke, you must be doing it wrong.”

The fact is, while other classes are spec’ing to kill people guardians spec to run across the map, and then hide being other people.

My newest 80 is a thief, and I am horrible at playing it, but I took the trait to steal boons, because there was nothing else to take…

Long story short I remember that I could steal boons while fighting a guard that had popped Save Yourselves. I stole his retaliation and protection, and it left me feeling sorry for him.

I slaughtered the poor guy without needing to steal any boons, and without even knowing what the hell I was doing.

In recent memory I can only recall one guardian that did enough damage to be a threat, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes.

The 1 on 1 balancing in this game is some of the worst I’ve ever seen, and your chances of beating a thief that off-hands a pistol are non-existent.

You aren’t gonna beat one that used a pistol and off-hands a dagger either.

…you should probably avoid ones using a shortbow too.

TL;DR

1v1 me, we’ll see how your words stack up.

Teamkiller.4315:

Ezeriel.9574:

I’m sure this thread will see a hundred posts from people explaining nothing while telling you how easy it is for them to kill thieves. (no offense, Kronyx^)

You may also get advice like “I just use scepter and altruistic healing” or the standard “guardians do so much self healing thieves are a joke, you must be doing it wrong.”

The fact is, while other classes are spec’ing to kill people guardians spec to run across the map, and then hide being other people.

My newest 80 is a thief, and I am horrible at playing it, but I took the trait to steal boons, because there was nothing else to take…

Long story short I remember that I could steal boons while fighting a guard that had popped Save Yourselves. I stole his retaliation and protection, and it left me feeling sorry for him.

I slaughtered the poor guy without needing to steal any boons, and without even knowing what the hell I was doing.

In recent memory I can only recall one guardian that did enough damage to be a threat, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes.

The 1 on 1 balancing in this game is some of the worst I’ve ever seen, and your chances of beating a thief that off-hands a pistol are non-existent.

You aren’t gonna beat one that used a pistol and off-hands a dagger either.

…you should probably avoid ones using a shortbow too.

TL;DR

1v1 me, we’ll see how your words stack up.

^ This and if dueling ever happens I’d love to see how big your game is vs your talk. Thieves are easy as hell on my Guardian. To answer OP’s question how you build your Guardian, and how you want to play him will give you an idea of how you’ll fair in a 1v1. I.e. support / AH Guardians might have a rougher time than say offensive / meditation focused Guardians.

11:40 there is a 1 on 1 guardian fight…

13:30 is a 2 guard v. 1 thief

..and then various outnumbered fights with guards after that

…and keep in mind that since this was made, they have given thieves the ability to steal guardian buffs.

Those were some spectacularly bad Guardians, not gonna lie. Good gameplay on your end using pistol 5 to control damage, but Jesus Christ were those terribad Guardians.

^that’s not me

I am horrible at playing my thief, but as I had no idea how I wanted to play my thief, I looked to his videos to model my thief on.

And it works. It’s painful how well it works. It just shuts down your damage. Even with a GS, guardian attacks are slow, and Black Powder shot will keep you nearly permanently blinded unless you use Whirling Wrath.

….and if you do that, I just dodge and leave caltrops behind, leaving you crippled and bleeding, and I can instantly port back in and start all over.

I’m not bragging, there was no skill involved on my part, and for the most part D/P is kinda dull. The fact that it completely shuts down guardians is just a fact of life.

Gotcha. No denying D/P thieves can be strong, but like most things with this game it’s all the various traits / builds / weapon choices that can determine a fights outcome. For example with my hammer / scepter & torch meditation build D/P thieves don’t do much to me at all. With my playstyle being very much up in your face with strong upfront damage / keep you in place with immobilizes / purging conditions it’s pretty easy to force thieves into at least retreating. Hell, I’ve 1v2’d two thieves before and won. Granted the fights were annoying for sure, but still manageable because of how my build works and all that jazz.

TL;DR
Thieves can be annoying, but it’s your playstyle / build that will determine how well you can solo roam.

As someone who plays a Thief and roams in WvW, Guardians are a pain to kill. Unless you are particularly glassy, the amount of heals makes it very hard for me to actually kill you.

Typically there are two types of Thieves that roam – glass cannon one-hit wonders, and the more sustained damage type (D/P or P/D).

For the first type try to dodge their burst, then attack with Whirling Wrath or something like that. It should force them to back off since most Thieves who build like this wear berserker.

For the second type of Thief they are much harder to kill since both Cavalier (D/P) and Rabid (P/D) give a lot of toughness. Their damage is lower, so just try and hit them as often as possible and it should be a stalemate. Blocking CnD or running around to avoid Backstab works pretty well (the odd interaction with D/P #3 makes it so a good Thief will still land Backstab a lot though).

S/D fits into this category as well but I hate the weapon set so not going to say anything. It’s not very bursty though.

The problem is actually killing us, which is frankly impossible. Nobody catches a good Thief, especially not 1v1 in WvW. Even if I can’t win, I’ll just stealth away and you won’t win either. Maybe that’s why Anet wants those stealth revealing traps.

I don’t really bother to try to kill thieves in WvW. This isn’t saying that isn’t possible, but by the time you pull it off someone else will certainly have shown up. I find that the best plan of action is to /wave at the thief and keep running as you spam invulns, bocks, blinds, and heals.

I made this video for someone else, but maybe it will help give you some ideas for fighting thieves. Guardian naturally counters thief, as we have access to a huge amount of anti-burst, but you need to learn the mechanics of thieves to take full advantage of it.

Hope it helps

Ezeriel.9574:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRcTKt47ixk

11:40 there is a 1 on 1 guardian fight…

13:30 is a 2 guard v. 1 thief

..and then various outnumbered fights with guards after that

…and keep in mind that since this was made, they have given thieves the ability to steal guardian buffs.

You posted a Video by Yishis…I don’t know what point you were trying to prove?

Did you maybe notice in this and his previous videos he also beats thieves in 1vX’s? Yeah, he’s a good player, unlike you, who said you barely know what you were doing, you didn’t steal any boons, and you still slaughtered guardians like they were nothing.

So I challenge you to slaughter me like I was nothing.

And it works. It’s painful how well it works. It just shuts down your damage. Even with a GS, guardian attacks are slow, and Black Powder shot will keep you nearly permanently blinded unless you use Whirling Wrath.

I don’t understand how you expect a guardian to just stand in your black powder. Maybe you’re one of those guys who stands in red circles but I assure you most non-terrible guardians won’t.

Edit: Also Yishis is not the one who came up with the D/P build and is not the first to use it like that. In fact even I used D/P before he started doing it. He only started doing it after the 4 second revealed patch.

If you’re well spec’d for roaming play, thieves generally aren’t a huge deal. More of an annoyance because of all their escape mechanisms. They only die if they over-commit when trying to kill you. Otherwise it just ends up being a tie. The only ones that are a bit of a pain are skilled s/d thieves due to the new boon steal (depending on how much your build relies on boons).

Ezeriel.9574:

I’m sure this thread will see a hundred posts from people explaining nothing while telling you how easy it is for them to kill thieves. (no offense, Kronyx^)

You may also get advice like “I just use scepter and altruistic healing” or the standard “guardians do so much self healing thieves are a joke, you must be doing it wrong.”

The fact is, while other classes are spec’ing to kill people guardians spec to run across the map, and then hide being other people.

My newest 80 is a thief, and I am horrible at playing it, but I took the trait to steal boons, because there was nothing else to take…

Long story short I remember that I could steal boons while fighting a guard that had popped Save Yourselves. I stole his retaliation and protection, and it left me feeling sorry for him.

I slaughtered the poor guy without needing to steal any boons, and without even knowing what the hell I was doing.

In recent memory I can only recall one guardian that did enough damage to be a threat, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes.

The 1 on 1 balancing in this game is some of the worst I’ve ever seen, and your chances of beating a thief that off-hands a pistol are non-existent.

You aren’t gonna beat one that used a pistol and off-hands a dagger either.

…you should probably avoid ones using a shortbow too.

Agree with parts of this, other parts I don’t. Doesn’t matter though.

The fact of the matter is, if you watched the consolation match between Guards and Thieves today at the SOAC tournament, you’ll have noticed that boon steal was huge. Prior to the match, we literally spec’d 4 of our 5 members to run S/D with BT (Trix VII) for insane boon removal (and then one of them dropped out for- lucky us- Jumper). I am certain that without that boon steal, we wouldn’t have won (and even then, it was a very close match O.o).

My point is that against boon steal thieves, if you’re gonna go solo, you just have to accept the facts and run a less boon-oriented build. For guards, this tends to be difficult, but I’m sure somebody out there has such a build. Maybe a meditation build. Idk. But, my biggest word of advice would be…
DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, RUN SHOUTS. Thieves will sweep up all your boons and… Well, gg. Anyways, if you can pull this off, you’ll be in a great position.

As for D/P blinds, I think the best build would be something including some combination of GS, Ham, and/or Sword/Shield or Torch. These weapons are really good for control, which is extremely useful if you can’t hit the thief a lot anyways.

General advice: run a Med or Consec build. Somebody will probably QQ me about this, but the idea is that these allow you to counter boon thieves while staying on top of them during fights, and that’s what you really need.

Arganthium.5638:

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, RUN SHOUTS. Thieves will sweep up all your boons and… Well, gg.

It’s gonna be a glorious day if they tweak warrior boon hate to start removing or ignoring boons as well. This is exactly the sort of counter that bunker boon spamming needs and honestly like you said…it makes for pressure to spec into different types of builds. Diversity is good. Doesn’t need to be overkill, just enough to give a serious threat to the otherwise excessive defenses.

Sil.4560:

Arganthium.5638:

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, RUN SHOUTS. Thieves will sweep up all your boons and… Well, gg.

It’s gonna be a glorious day if they tweak warrior boon hate to start removing or ignoring boons as well. This is exactly the sort of counter that bunker boon spamming needs and honestly like you said…it makes for pressure to spec into different types of builds. Diversity is good. Doesn’t need to be overkill, just enough to give a serious threat to the otherwise excessive defenses.

The good news is, as the elite warrior and highly skilled player that you are, you can always just ~walk~ away from a bunker guardian…. which is more than a Guardian can say against any class other than a Necro. =]

Arganthium.5638:

Ezeriel.9574:

I’m sure this thread will see a hundred posts from people explaining nothing while telling you how easy it is for them to kill thieves. (no offense, Kronyx^)

You may also get advice like “I just use scepter and altruistic healing” or the standard “guardians do so much self healing thieves are a joke, you must be doing it wrong.”

The fact is, while other classes are spec’ing to kill people guardians spec to run across the map, and then hide being other people.

My newest 80 is a thief, and I am horrible at playing it, but I took the trait to steal boons, because there was nothing else to take…

Long story short I remember that I could steal boons while fighting a guard that had popped Save Yourselves. I stole his retaliation and protection, and it left me feeling sorry for him.

I slaughtered the poor guy without needing to steal any boons, and without even knowing what the hell I was doing.

In recent memory I can only recall one guardian that did enough damage to be a threat, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes.

The 1 on 1 balancing in this game is some of the worst I’ve ever seen, and your chances of beating a thief that off-hands a pistol are non-existent.

You aren’t gonna beat one that used a pistol and off-hands a dagger either.

…you should probably avoid ones using a shortbow too.

Agree with parts of this, other parts I don’t. Doesn’t matter though.

The fact of the matter is, if you watched the consolation match between Guards and Thieves today at the SOAC tournament, you’ll have noticed that boon steal was huge. Prior to the match, we literally spec’d 4 of our 5 members to run S/D with BT (Trix VII) for insane boon removal (and then one of them dropped out for- lucky us- Jumper). I am certain that without that boon steal, we wouldn’t have won (and even then, it was a very close match O.o).

My point is that against boon steal thieves, if you’re gonna go solo, you just have to accept the facts and run a less boon-oriented build. For guards, this tends to be difficult, but I’m sure somebody out there has such a build. Maybe a meditation build. Idk. But, my biggest word of advice would be…
DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, RUN SHOUTS. Thieves will sweep up all your boons and… Well, gg. Anyways, if you can pull this off, you’ll be in a great position.

As for D/P blinds, I think the best build would be something including some combination of GS, Ham, and/or Sword/Shield or Torch. These weapons are really good for control, which is extremely useful if you can’t hit the thief a lot anyways.

General advice: run a Med or Consec build. Somebody will probably QQ me about this, but the idea is that these allow you to counter boon thieves while staying on top of them during fights, and that’s what you really need.

10/30/30/0/0 1h strength build is pretty much as boonless as you can get, and extremely powerful.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|b.1g.h2.d.1c.h19|1.1p.h1l|1n.7c.1c.7c.1c.7c.1c.7c.1n.7c.1c.7c|1p.61.1n.61.1n.61.1g.61.1i.61.1c.61|a2.u24b.u64c.0.0|16.1|w.1a.15.13.1i|e

is what I use right now. Scepter is good if your facing anything that tends to move alot or will try to kite you to death, sword with a ZD/JI combo can crit into the 7ks when done correctly. If you do use sword/gs as your weapons pick up vuln on blind, you can easily get a 12 stack from virtue, flashing blade, and ray of judgement, which opens glass thieves up for serious damage, If you can time a bane signet to Interupt their heal skill it is pretty much game over, but does require some practice.

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, RUN SHOUTS.

Shouts put you at a disadvantage against sword thieves 1v1 but why wouldn’t you do so otherwise? No other class really counters boon spam.

Even tho this is a nerf to our class, I feel like it’s done some of our guardians a favor, as now shouts isn’t the universal build to go to for both solo and group play. Also don’t use consecrations in a 1v1, bad idea.

Ezeriel.9574:

your chances of beating a thief that off-hands a pistol are non-existent.

You aren’t gonna beat one that used a pistol and off-hands a dagger either.

…you should probably avoid ones using a shortbow too.

This is complete ignorance, feel free to ignore it.

Long story short: if you’re not running a glass cannon build, you won’t kill most thieves if they don’t overcommit, but for the most part they can’t kill you either.

You can’t kill them because you’re not a CC machine, and Thieves simply have too much disengage for WvW. No other class can simply say “kitten it” and leave you swinging for air like Thieves.

On the other hand, and even more so after the mug nerf, they simply can’t take you down. I mean, they can take you down, but that requires committing to the fight, and if they stay long enough to be able to take you down, you can kill them first. They’re simply not a threat. Between protection, Aegis, all of your healing, retaliation, condition clearing, stability, and the small amount of CC you have, if he decides to try and trade blows, he’ll go down first.

Your real threat is sword/dagger thieves. Simply put they have constant boon ripping, together with higher mobility than you do, a billion stun breakers, and the ability to deal damage while nearly constantly evading. They are a pain in the kitten On the other hand, while they’re great at dueling, they lose effectiveness the more people there are in a fight, so if you’re afraid of those try having a friend or two around and it evens things out a lot, even if he brings a friend or two as well.

Amins.3710:

The good news is, as the elite warrior and highly skilled player that you are, you can always just ~walk~ away from a bunker guardian…. which is more than a Guardian can say against any class other than a Necro. =]

Being better at leaving a fight because class limitations prevent you from having an equal chance at winning is not balance.

Sil.4560:

Amins.3710:

The good news is, as the elite warrior and highly skilled player that you are, you can always just ~walk~ away from a bunker guardian…. which is more than a Guardian can say against any class other than a Necro. =]

Being better at leaving a fight because class limitations prevent you from having an equal chance at winning is not balance.

Neither is not being able to escape a fight.

Enjoy your Luxury and quit your complaining.

here are few suggestions OP :
1. weapon sets :
usualy 1 handed weapons +off hand are the way to deal with thieves
example 1 :
sword + shield :
sword 2 – will blind the thief even if you don’t have it targeted, use it arround 2 seconds after he went stealth, you will counter his backstab
sword 3- use it to punish thief that attacked you and force him to retreat
shield -5 use it to knock back the thief out of shadow refuge / smoke field
scepter + focus
scepter 1- auto attack usualy works fine at 200-400 range, it is easy to dodge it at 700 +range, is an fast attack good for harrasment
smite 2- good area damage works with VOJ pasive . put it behind you to punish the thief , if he is stealthed and attempt an backstab.
scepter 3- an imobilize is always good for toe vs toe against thief even for 1 or 2 seconds.
focus 4 – blind +regeneration
focus 5 – don’t need any explanation here.
2. utility’s sets
save yourselves is always an good utility for 1 vs 1
JI is good finisher/harrasment against thieves
sanctuary , can be used to take advantage over the fight if you train it for ground targeting and kick thief out of shadow refuge and prevent him to attack you.
3. armors and traits:
a. knights / bersek are best in slot for 1 vs1 situations
b. clerics are used more for support , groups and long term fights.
c. soldier are good for tanking survive initial burst and will not provide you much advantage in 1 vs 1 fights.

Teamkiller.4315:

DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, RUN SHOUTS.

Shouts put you at a disadvantage against sword thieves 1v1 but why wouldn’t you do so otherwise? No other class really counters boon spam.

Even tho this is a nerf to our class, I feel like it’s done some of our guardians a favor, as now shouts isn’t the universal build to go to for both solo and group play. Also don’t use consecrations in a 1v1, bad idea.

1. Why would you use shouts if you were roaming anyways, lol. Spirit weapons, signets, and Meds are all better in solo situations.

2. The consecration that I was really talking about was Sanctuary, as that’s a really good way to control thieves. It’s also extremely annoying. -.-

Bakitten291:

Arganthium.5638:

Ezeriel.9574:

I’m sure this thread will see a hundred posts from people explaining nothing while telling you how easy it is for them to kill thieves. (no offense, Kronyx^)

You may also get advice like “I just use scepter and altruistic healing” or the standard “guardians do so much self healing thieves are a joke, you must be doing it wrong.”

The fact is, while other classes are spec’ing to kill people guardians spec to run across the map, and then hide being other people.

My newest 80 is a thief, and I am horrible at playing it, but I took the trait to steal boons, because there was nothing else to take…

Long story short I remember that I could steal boons while fighting a guard that had popped Save Yourselves. I stole his retaliation and protection, and it left me feeling sorry for him.

I slaughtered the poor guy without needing to steal any boons, and without even knowing what the hell I was doing.

In recent memory I can only recall one guardian that did enough damage to be a threat, and he dropped like a sack of potatoes.

The 1 on 1 balancing in this game is some of the worst I’ve ever seen, and your chances of beating a thief that off-hands a pistol are non-existent.

You aren’t gonna beat one that used a pistol and off-hands a dagger either.

…you should probably avoid ones using a shortbow too.

Agree with parts of this, other parts I don’t. Doesn’t matter though.

The fact of the matter is, if you watched the consolation match between Guards and Thieves today at the SOAC tournament, you’ll have noticed that boon steal was huge. Prior to the match, we literally spec’d 4 of our 5 members to run S/D with BT (Trix VII) for insane boon removal (and then one of them dropped out for- lucky us- Jumper). I am certain that without that boon steal, we wouldn’t have won (and even then, it was a very close match O.o).

My point is that against boon steal thieves, if you’re gonna go solo, you just have to accept the facts and run a less boon-oriented build. For guards, this tends to be difficult, but I’m sure somebody out there has such a build. Maybe a meditation build. Idk. But, my biggest word of advice would be…
DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, RUN SHOUTS. Thieves will sweep up all your boons and… Well, gg. Anyways, if you can pull this off, you’ll be in a great position.

As for D/P blinds, I think the best build would be something including some combination of GS, Ham, and/or Sword/Shield or Torch. These weapons are really good for control, which is extremely useful if you can’t hit the thief a lot anyways.

General advice: run a Med or Consec build. Somebody will probably QQ me about this, but the idea is that these allow you to counter boon thieves while staying on top of them during fights, and that’s what you really need.

10/30/30/0/0 1h strength build is pretty much as boonless as you can get, and extremely powerful.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/guardian/?3.3|b.1g.h2.d.1c.h19|1.1p.h1l|1n.7c.1c.7c.1c.7c.1c.7c.1n.7c.1c.7c|1p.61.1n.61.1n.61.1g.61.1i.61.1c.61|a2.u24b.u64c.0.0|16.1|w.1a.15.13.1i|e

is what I use right now. Scepter is good if your facing anything that tends to move alot or will try to kite you to death, sword with a ZD/JI combo can crit into the 7ks when done correctly. If you do use sword/gs as your weapons pick up vuln on blind, you can easily get a 12 stack from virtue, flashing blade, and ray of judgement, which opens glass thieves up for serious damage, If you can time a bane signet to Interupt their heal skill it is pretty much game over, but does require some practice.

The build is very good, totally agree.

Not so sure I agree with the use of Scep though. It’s weak and easily avoided. Its only real grace against thieves is its ability to immobilize, but that’s about it.

Arganthium.5638:

The build is very good, totally agree.

Not so sure I agree with the use of Scep though. It’s weak and easily avoided. Its only real grace against thieves is its ability to immobilize, but that’s about it.

I actually use the scepter almost like a melee weapon, it promises the hits, and if they get just out of normal melee range you are 90% of the time still making contact with it. Also, I generally get about 1.6-2k crits with it depending on enemy armor and buffs currently on me. Also smite is great to cast on you when you think a thief is about to backstab, as it hits rapidly and does pretty decent damage. Immobilizing on a smite while you are on top of them with the auto attacks will also drain ALOT of health off very fast, and you can also use bane signet to do some damage and keep them on smite longer. Normally I just use it to interupt/stop fleeing foes though. Also, Ji- > chains -> bane signet is a hell of a way to gap close on someone lol.

It is honestly something I have been picking up alot lately in Spvp and WvW, as it actually does a good amount of single target damage, and does keep the damage on people, which is hard to do with a sword against classes that have high mobility against us.

1. Why would you use shouts if you were roaming anyways, lol. Spirit weapons, signets, and Meds are all better in solo situations.

I’ll put it in a way a non-guardian might understand. Shouts are to the rest of our utilities what deception skills are to the rest of a thief’s utilities. Similar analogies to other professions: cantrips for eles, elixirs for engineers, etc.

Basically they for the most part outclass our other utilities and can be “traited” to make them even stronger than they already are, compared to our other utilities. I trust you’ve seen our 200% boon duration build that offers permanent retaliation and almost permanent uptime on almost all other boons in the game?

They are, in fact, superior in 1 on 1 situations than spirit weapons and meditations. And they still are, with the exception of fighting S/D thieves, maybe.

2. The consecration that I was really talking about was Sanctuary, as that’s a really good way to control thieves. It’s also extremely annoying. -.-

Except you forgot it’s on a 120 second (96 if traited) cooldown with a cast time of 1.5s (less if you use a differing trait, however). Yes, it is a very good way to control thieves, but you can only control them for an extremely short duration of time compared to the lengthy cooldown associated with it.

You can take it from someone who runs a near full consecration build and uses only 1 shout (stability/retal/stunbreak). The patch has barely affected me because I’m not boon dependent like those other silly guardians and I can dish out immense damage compared to say, the healway build, but I still don’t feel as comfortable against thieves as I do with full shouts, even after the patch.

Amins.3710:

Sil.4560:

Amins.3710:

The good news is, as the elite warrior and highly skilled player that you are, you can always just ~walk~ away from a bunker guardian…. which is more than a Guardian can say against any class other than a Necro. =]

Being better at leaving a fight because class limitations prevent you from having an equal chance at winning is not balance.

Neither is not being able to escape a fight.

Enjoy your Luxury and quit your complaining.

If you’re trying to compare our escape vs thieves, or some highly mobile-specced class, then you’re right. Other than that though with smart use of weapon skills, and using shelter and/or renewed focus + utilities at the right time you can avoid some messy encounters. I.e. turning around for a sec while retreating to throw a hammer #3 on a zerg / group chasing you will almost always hit at least 1-2 people. Or using ring of warding to make a choke point or using it your lockout a choke point to buy yourself time while your chasers bop into it or try to use up dodge rolls to get through it. Then of course there’s the various leaps, blinks, and knockbacks from the other weapon sets you can use as well. So there’s options.

Teamkiller.4315:

1. Why would you use shouts if you were roaming anyways, lol. Spirit weapons, signets, and Meds are all better in solo situations.

I’ll put it in a way a non-guardian might understand. Shouts are to the rest of our utilities what deception skills are to the rest of a thief’s utilities. Similar analogies to other professions: cantrips for eles, elixirs for engineers, etc.

Basically they for the most part outclass our other utilities and can be “traited” to make them even stronger than they already are, compared to our other utilities. I trust you’ve seen our 200% boon duration build that offers permanent retaliation and almost permanent uptime on almost all other boons in the game?

They are, in fact, superior in 1 on 1 situations than spirit weapons and meditations. And they still are, with the exception of fighting S/D thieves, maybe.

Actually cantrips have a closer semblance to meditations than shouts(with the earth cantrip being the only cantrip that’s closer to a shout as it gives boons.) Shouts versus spirit weapons are indeed strong in favor of shouts, but they’re not stronger than meditations. Equal footing perhaps, but not better.

Setun.4368:

Teamkiller.4315:

1. Why would you use shouts if you were roaming anyways, lol. Spirit weapons, signets, and Meds are all better in solo situations.

I’ll put it in a way a non-guardian might understand. Shouts are to the rest of our utilities what deception skills are to the rest of a thief’s utilities. Similar analogies to other professions: cantrips for eles, elixirs for engineers, etc.

Basically they for the most part outclass our other utilities and can be “traited” to make them even stronger than they already are, compared to our other utilities. I trust you’ve seen our 200% boon duration build that offers permanent retaliation and almost permanent uptime on almost all other boons in the game?

They are, in fact, superior in 1 on 1 situations than spirit weapons and meditations. And they still are, with the exception of fighting S/D thieves, maybe.

Actually cantrips have a closer semblance to meditations than shouts(with the earth cantrip being the only cantrip that’s closer to a shout as it gives boons.) Shouts versus spirit weapons are indeed strong in favor of shouts, but they’re not stronger than meditations. Equal footing perhaps, but not better.

I would challenge any non-leaderboard-ranked meditation guardian to duel my shout guardian and I’d be willing to bet a significant amount of money that my shout guardian would win (or at the very least draw). And I’d be willing to do this in spvp, where shout guardians are nerfed to begin with.

And my analogy was more of “these utilities are just superior”, and that’s why you see shout guardians in far more abundance than medi just like cantrip eles are more common than arcane…not saying the other two can’t work but they tend to fall short of the better utility skills.

I’d be willing to take that bet. Should make for a fun fight! Also shouts tend to be more popular as they’re easy on the learning curve aspect, but I get your analogy. Shout builds definitely have more obvious pros than other builds, much like shout warrior builds. Meditations seem to require much more situational awareness and keeping track of conditions on you / knowing when to purge them with smite condition or contemplations of purity.

Yeah, shouts are easier to use because you can just spam boons. Like I said, the change isn’t all negative for guardians, while it is kind of a “nerf” it does force the mindless boon spammers to step aside for a bit to let some other pioneering builds in, and those who continue to use shouts will have to be situationally aware and not just spam 6 7 8 when they’re off cooldown.

And if you are up for a duel, I’ll meet you in spvp then? My name is “A Reliable Goldfish”.

Amins.3710:

Neither is not being able to escape a fight.

Enjoy your Luxury and quit your complaining.

rofl, escape is crap when most scenarios in PvP situations demand that you are present to prevent something from being capped or otherwise destroyed. It also presumes that a guardian is in some need of running away in the first place. Fleeing a battle for an objective does not give victory. The idea that a class should be “strong against classes that stay to fight me” because other classes have the ability to flee said battle is completely absurd and the most lazy excuse for balancing I’ve seen.

I’d also say that Setun is correct in that guardians have a number of ways to actively pull back or in some sense escape in WvW situations as it is. Knowing the moment to withdraw is often as important as actually having the proper abilities to do it.

I’m actually at work atm until 7am, but I’m off tomorrow all day if you want to set something up then. Other than Monday my next day off will be Friday. If anything add my account name to your friends list and if we catch each on we can set something up. =)

Teamkiller.4315:

Setun.4368:

Teamkiller.4315:

1. Why would you use shouts if you were roaming anyways, lol. Spirit weapons, signets, and Meds are all better in solo situations.

I’ll put it in a way a non-guardian might understand. Shouts are to the rest of our utilities what deception skills are to the rest of a thief’s utilities. Similar analogies to other professions: cantrips for eles, elixirs for engineers, etc.

Basically they for the most part outclass our other utilities and can be “traited” to make them even stronger than they already are, compared to our other utilities. I trust you’ve seen our 200% boon duration build that offers permanent retaliation and almost permanent uptime on almost all other boons in the game?

They are, in fact, superior in 1 on 1 situations than spirit weapons and meditations. And they still are, with the exception of fighting S/D thieves, maybe.

Actually cantrips have a closer semblance to meditations than shouts(with the earth cantrip being the only cantrip that’s closer to a shout as it gives boons.) Shouts versus spirit weapons are indeed strong in favor of shouts, but they’re not stronger than meditations. Equal footing perhaps, but not better.

I would challenge any non-leaderboard-ranked meditation guardian to duel my shout guardian and I’d be willing to bet a significant amount of money that my shout guardian would win (or at the very least draw). And I’d be willing to do this in spvp, where shout guardians are nerfed to begin with.

And my analogy was more of “these utilities are just superior”, and that’s why you see shout guardians in far more abundance than medi just like cantrip eles are more common than arcane…not saying the other two can’t work but they tend to fall short of the better utility skills.

Just because something is popular does not mean that it is better, it just means more people are comfortable using that build. Personally, I stick with meditations as it fits my build and play style better. Once i get some free time I wouldn’t mind dueling you, well as long as you aren’t running healway… (sorry but i consider 100% retal uptime as cheap as you can get in a fight)

Sil.4560:

Amins.3710:

Neither is not being able to escape a fight.

Enjoy your Luxury and quit your complaining.

rofl, escape is crap when most scenarios in PvP situations demand that you are present to prevent something from being capped or otherwise destroyed. It also presumes that a guardian is in some need of running away in the first place. Fleeing a battle for an objective does not give victory. The idea that a class should be “strong against classes that stay to fight me” because other classes have the ability to flee said battle is completely absurd and the most lazy excuse for balancing I’ve seen.

I’d also say that Setun is correct in that guardians have a number of ways to actively pull back or in some sense escape in WvW situations as it is. Knowing the moment to withdraw is often as important as actually having the proper abilities to do it.

And this is where we say… please reference the OP’s Topic.

Thank you for playing.

Amins.3710:

Sil.4560:

Amins.3710:

Neither is not being able to escape a fight.

Enjoy your Luxury and quit your complaining.

rofl, escape is crap when most scenarios in PvP situations demand that you are present to prevent something from being capped or otherwise destroyed. It also presumes that a guardian is in some need of running away in the first place. Fleeing a battle for an objective does not give victory. The idea that a class should be “strong against classes that stay to fight me” because other classes have the ability to flee said battle is completely absurd and the most lazy excuse for balancing I’ve seen.

I’d also say that Setun is correct in that guardians have a number of ways to actively pull back or in some sense escape in WvW situations as it is. Knowing the moment to withdraw is often as important as actually having the proper abilities to do it.

And this is where we say… please reference the OP’s Topic.

Thank you for playing.

Actually he’s merely replying to your comments. If anything you were the 1st one to go off topic about this, so thank you for trying to look like a tool and shrug off his counter argument. <3

Setun.4368:

Amins.3710:

Sil.4560:

Amins.3710:

Neither is not being able to escape a fight.

Enjoy your Luxury and quit your complaining.

rofl, escape is crap when most scenarios in PvP situations demand that you are present to prevent something from being capped or otherwise destroyed. It also presumes that a guardian is in some need of running away in the first place. Fleeing a battle for an objective does not give victory. The idea that a class should be “strong against classes that stay to fight me” because other classes have the ability to flee said battle is completely absurd and the most lazy excuse for balancing I’ve seen.

I’d also say that Setun is correct in that guardians have a number of ways to actively pull back or in some sense escape in WvW situations as it is. Knowing the moment to withdraw is often as important as actually having the proper abilities to do it.

And this is where we say… please reference the OP’s Topic.

Thank you for playing.

Actually he’s merely replying to your comments. If anything you were the 1st one to go off topic about this, so thank you for trying to look like a tool and shrug off his counter argument. <3

And Amins is replying to Sil’s. Stop being ignorant. PvP is not WvW. This topic is WvW related, so Pv kitten ue need not apply.

Yes, Thieves’ disengage is not OP in PvP at all, because PvP is a short duration, small team, objective based round, game mode. Running away to survive beats dying most of the time, since you avoid respawn times, but staying power beats both, seeing as the point of the whole thing is capturing and holding points.

In WvW the ability to simply turn around and say “kitten this, I’m out” is ridiculous. When you find someone roaming in your territory you can’t simply say “meh” and ignore it, and you can’t, for example, have a person in every single camp and every single Dolyak just sitting around for every 1 thief you know is running around. Leaving them alone means they get to run around and do whatever they want. “Well, he’s not capping this camp while I’m here!”. Ok. What about that other camp that’s 10 seconds away for the thief? Or the Dolyak heading to your keep? He’ll be there before you, that’s for sure. Or maybe he won’t. Maybe he’s just sitting around waiting for you to leave.

Additionally, you never know when you turn a corner and suddenly there’s an enemy zerg heading to you. Or you find yourself in an otherwise fair fight that suddenly went sour…. etc. In all those situations “staying power” means kitten all. You’re going down. A thief, on the other hand, can easily turn tail and go be somewhere else. In WvW this is invaluable.

The problem is that disengage does not have the same value in PvP and in WvW. And this thread is about WvW.

I find i rarely lose to thieves, we have too many ways of just totally negating their opening burst if we are paying attention, and after that its fairly easy to beat the down.

But i have given up trying to kill them, they just run and i cant catch them, so i dont bother. I beat them up a bit, then just carry on with what i was doing when they run. Its only usually a problem if they keep comming back and catch me with everything on cd, but thats pretty rare.

With my main that is a guardian when i see a thief is dammn hard, or he will escape and none dies wich is already nice imo, or i am obliterad in 2 or 3 seconds, when on my thief guardians are my main target becouse it is the easyest profession to get down due low health pool and toughness is a placebo since there are no tanks or very bulky professions, still criting 3k+ or sometimes 8k per hit, their healing is not a problem my iniciative recovers fast, i can reset my combat, mug heals when i needloved the update, i apply conditions faster than a guardian can take them out with meditations, apply poison when they try to signet heal to reduce healing, its just a matter of hit n run then burst.

P.S i dont like to talk about my guardian stats but is somehting arround 240healing power ; 2400 toughness and 20k to 25k health, it funny how game accepts massive DPS and burst damage and not the other path as to counter it.

Symbol DPS builds work great against thieves. Of course its hard to catch them with this build, but 1v1 you usually won’t die to a thief.

I usually encounter thieves on my way to help the zerg. They try Backstab which bounces off Aegis, and then I pop Retaliation and Staff #3 and bail, giving their location to our side’s roamers over map chat. If they want to chase me all the way to the zerg, good luck to them.

I kind of see my guard as used for helping the main group/zerg, and thieves are not good at stopping a guardian who wants to brush them off on their way to somewhere else.

Teamkiller.4315:

Don’t really get why you think we’re asking for sympathy of any kind. Some dude is looking for tips on how to pvp against thieves in wvw and we gave him tips. You come in and try to accuse guardians of being OP or something in comparison to warriors and blah blah blah here we are.

This from the user who’s first post in the thread is telling someone to 1v1 him. Right.

Any, OP asked if anyone else has trouble with thieves. That looks to be about it. I was saying that, in line with some of the other comments in the discussion, that yes, perhaps guardians do need some sort of problem like this worse than other classes for thieves to be their “nemesis” in this sense to offset their other obvious advantages. That said, again, thief overkill escape is a problem for every class.

And trying again:

Amins.3710:

And this is where we say… please reference the OP’s Topic.

Thank you for playing.

I don’t need this condescending and rude sort of remark. “Thank you for playing.” Who do you think you are? Until you can learn to respond like a civilized human being and actually provide a relevant argument, I’m not interested in what you have to say. I thought we’d gone over this in the past.

Teamkiller.4315:

I trust you’ve seen our 200% boon duration build that offers permanent retaliation and almost permanent uptime on almost all other boons in the game?

Erm, how is 200% boon duration pulled off? Or did you mean 100%?

@Sil, as an apparent Warrior advocate, why exactly do you post in the Guardian forums? Also, a lot of your comments are condescending as well. Dish it out but can’t take it much?

Unless you’re vocal around this place, nothing ever seems to get changed or looked at for balance. It’s taken us months for Anet to even apparently look at the warrior forum. I believe that guardians are an overly forgiving class and that things like boon hate need to go even further. The more exposure they have to these sorts of opinions, the more likely they are to consider it.

As far as being condescending, I just plain don’t like the class at this point. I find a lot of the players I have encountered who play it to be incredibly arrogant and oblivious to the fact that they’re using class imbalance as a crutch and would like to remind them that they aren’t half as wonderful as they seem to think.

Not all users, of course. I’ve just found a good number of them to be that way, to the point where it’s a pattern. Hence the wording “a lot” and not “all”.

Using mesmer doesn’t really help your case if you’re talking about fighting other players. Everyone knows how powerful that class is compared to a number of others.

Oh, and by the way, telling me you’re reporting my post can easily be considered trolling in itself. I’ve clearly stated my reasons for posting here, one of which you’ve deliberately ignored, apparently for the sake of removing some words that make you uncomfortable. Don’t like my opinion of guardian? Tough. There’s nothing wrong with my post. What is the purpose of your post?