Guild Wars 2

So, as an uplevel (lvl 25 currently), I try to help my server in WvW by flipping control pts, flipping camps, running supply, and manning siege. What I find is that my biggest issue is getting ganked by thieves while running supply. They like to stay stealthed and then pounce on me (funny most of them target me, the uplevel mesmer, vs. the lvl 80’s that are around….I must be DANGEROUS….lol). Only 1 time was I able to get away using a combo of Blink, TC, and pooping out clones as fast as I could whilst running to my tower.

Keeping in mind that I’m level 25 and don’t have many Trait pts to spend, and my gear is woefully “Glicko’ized”, can you guys/gals give me some hints or tips on how to either 1) get away from these guys, or 2) have half a chance of facing them until help arrives? TIA.

With no intention of sounding mean; If you run into a fully tricked out thief and you are level 25 there is nothing, let me repeat, nothing you can do. You would have your hands full being fully tricked out at level 80.

Avoid them at all cost, and/or try to stealth away.

Good luck.

Take a torch offhand, decoy, blink, and possible even veil. There is no possible way for you to normally survive an attack made by a competent thief as an uplevel. Your only course of action is to break stuns, turn invisible, and run away really fast.

Edit: make sure that every piece of your gear is as high level as possible, including trinkets, and make sure that it all is toughness and vitality.

Thanks guys.

@Knatty, I completely understand and frankly was afraid that was the answer. They can hit so hard and so fast that with my gear I go down pdq. What I’m trying to figure out is if there is anything I can do to at least survive a bit longer. I think if I can get through their initial burst and get in a quick heal, I at least have a fighting chance against the “average” thief.

@Pyro, I currently run w/ Staff and Scepter/Focus, Focus mainly for TC to “run away really fast” (and also to run as fast as I can to/from the supply camp). If I run torch OH, I lose my speed, and I’d hate to give up the utility of the staff to run something like Sword/Torch – Scepter/Focus (scepter damage is soooo lame). Hrmmmm…….

@Thorson: This is probably the one time I’ve ever recommended someone use a torch for any reason in any situation, heheh. What I would recommend is having focus in one set, and torch in the other. You will use this setup for running supply, where you really don’t need that staff utility when you’re just running supply. Your only consideration is staying alive, and the torch gives you a blind and a stealth, which is exactly what you need.

I don’t care much for any thief in the game because they are specifically setup to gank and not much else. 9\10 of the time if they take more DMG then you within the first 5sec they stealth and run like a kitten.

It wouldn’t bother me nearly as much if there was actually wvw score points awarded per player kill but there is not, making PK more about kitten then anything. These same thieves probably get their teeth kicked in spvp where 1v1 fighting is expected.

@Pyro: very good point, thank you. That makes perfect sense. I was stuck in this mindset that I needed to keep staff around for fighting at the supply camp if/when I get jumped, but frankly I just need to stay alive! I can swap to staff once I get back to safety or when I want to flip a control point or camp. :^)

@Justine: completely agree. It’s frustrating that the reward system is such that they will get a badge from me even though they are lvl 80 and I’m uplevel. Many times they just sit and wait for the uplevels, ignoring the lvl 80’s that are also running supply. Why work for a badge when you can take the uplevel with relative ease? Sad……

Thorson.9218:

@Justine: completely agree. It’s frustrating that the reward system is such that they will get a badge from me even though they are lvl 80 and I’m uplevel. Many times they just sit and wait for the uplevels, ignoring the lvl 80’s that are also running supply. Why work for a badge when you can take the uplevel with relative ease? Sad……

Not sad, smart.

You and everyone else are all carrying the same supply. It’s all going to the same place, for the same purpose. All other things equal, every one of you is worth the same as a target. However, uplevels die faster and easier. The faster they kill, the less supply gets run.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Thorson.9218:

@Justine: completely agree. It’s frustrating that the reward system is such that they will get a badge from me even though they are lvl 80 and I’m uplevel. Many times they just sit and wait for the uplevels, ignoring the lvl 80’s that are also running supply. Why work for a badge when you can take the uplevel with relative ease? Sad……

Not sad, smart.

You and everyone else are all carrying the same supply. It’s all going to the same place, for the same purpose. All other things equal, every one of you is worth the same as a target. However, uplevels die faster and easier. The faster they kill, the less supply gets run.

Understood. But then wouldn’t it be smarter to try to kill ALL of us vs. just the uplevels? I have zero issue if they’re trying to stop supply, that goes with the territory, but they’re not even killing Yaks!!!! They’re just ganking uplevels….that’s the “sad” part. The overall strategy of preventing supply I totally get.

Pyro offers some really sound advice here. Minor runes with Vitality and Toughness are dirt cheap on TP. The extra defense goes a long way in WvW.

Thorson.9218:

Understood. But then wouldn’t it be smarter to try to kill ALL of us vs. just the uplevels? I have zero issue if they’re trying to stop supply, that goes with the territory, but they’re not even killing Yaks!!!! They’re just ganking uplevels….that’s the “sad” part. The overall strategy of preventing supply I totally get.

The 80s often take too long for them to kill. A lot of WvW-ers run very tanky specs. What ends up happening is that the thieves run into a stalemate, where neither party can kill the other. In this situation, whoever gets reinforced first wins. Whether or not you should engage depends on how far you are from your teammates.

At the risk of sounding like a kitten (I can live with that) I’ll give you the best piece of advice.

Finish leveling. You can easily hit 80 in a 5 or 6 days of doing hearts, some crafting, map completion, etc.

Stay in the lowbie zones and just get map completion. If you do all the level 0-15 zones you should be 35 or so. Then do all the 15-30 zones and you’ll be 50. 60-80 is a breeze. Throw some cooking in there for good measure and you’re set.

You’re only hope is to avoid thieves altogether as a lowbie, so why not just spend a few days leveling up? Why even waste your time with gear concerns until 80?

Godmoney.2048:

At the risk of sounding like a kitten (I can live with that) I’ll give you the best piece of advice.

Finish leveling. You can easily hit 80 in a 5 or 6 days of doing hearts, some crafting, map completion, etc.

Stay in the lowbie zones and just get map completion. If you do all the level 0-15 zones you should be 35 or so. Then do all the 15-30 zones and you’ll be 50. 60-80 is a breeze. Throw some cooking in there for good measure and you’re set.

You’re only hope is to avoid thieves altogether as a lowbie, so why not just spend a few days leveling up? Why even waste your time with gear concerns until 80?

You make a fair point, and not knowing that I already have 3 lvl 80’s I can see where you would say that. I leveled all of them in PvE, and frankly I’m tired of it. It’s boring, repetitive, and a grind. I’d rather have some fun, and right now I’m finding WvW fun and exciting because it’s so dynamic (relative to PvE anyway). Since I play on a low population server, we’re always the underdog and rushing to save this tower, that keep, our BL….it’s VERY fast paced. Flipping control pts and camps is good xp (as well as joining in on retaking our towers/keeps), arguably as good or better than PvE, but I can’t get much done with a spike through my noggin’……hence my request for guidance from the mesmer community for how to survive against the one class that is causing me issues 1v1.

I realize I’ll likely lose to a “good” thief right now, but since I can hold my own against everything else, I guess I’ll just keep plugging away and learn how to beat them. By the time I’m 80, it should be a pretty even fight. ;-)

Thorson.9218:

Godmoney.2048:

At the risk of sounding like a kitten (I can live with that) I’ll give you the best piece of advice.

Finish leveling. You can easily hit 80 in a 5 or 6 days of doing hearts, some crafting, map completion, etc.

Stay in the lowbie zones and just get map completion. If you do all the level 0-15 zones you should be 35 or so. Then do all the 15-30 zones and you’ll be 50. 60-80 is a breeze. Throw some cooking in there for good measure and you’re set.

You’re only hope is to avoid thieves altogether as a lowbie, so why not just spend a few days leveling up? Why even waste your time with gear concerns until 80?

You make a fair point, and not knowing that I already have 3 lvl 80’s I can see where you would say that. I leveled all of them in PvE, and frankly I’m tired of it. It’s boring, repetitive, and a grind. I’d rather have some fun, and right now I’m finding WvW fun and exciting because it’s so dynamic (relative to PvE anyway). Since I play on a low population server, we’re always the underdog and rushing to save this tower, that keep, our BL….it’s VERY fast paced. Flipping control pts and camps is good xp (as well as joining in on retaking our towers/keeps), arguably as good or better than PvE, but I can’t get much done with a spike through my noggin’……hence my request for guidance from the mesmer community for how to survive against the one class that is causing me issues 1v1.

I realize I’ll likely lose to a “good” thief right now, but since I can hold my own against everything else, I guess I’ll just keep plugging away and learn how to beat them. By the time I’m 80, it should be a pretty even fight. ;-)

The second fastest leveling in the game is done by zerg-surfing in WvW (if you can.) The fastest is by crafting, but it’s also expensive. PvE does not offer enough back to back events to compare. If you’re struggling running supply, then that is an activity you may want to leave to the rest. If you insist on running that supply, then consider the locations you keep getting ganked at. If an ambush is in the same relative spots each time, try taking a different route. Sure it might be a longer run, but you’ll get there faster than if it takes you three tries to get through for one run of supply in the end.

I also agree with the other posters… stack up the stealth, escapes, and blinds (blink, veil, torch, decoy) and so on. Run speed is our biggest issue compared to other professions when running supply. You might consider a pair of minor runes of the air and a pair of minor runes of speed (for +20% swiftness duration) in your set up to extend the length of swiftness from your focus, too. Other runes may be better for combat, but those will help you keep going.

If you just want to escape:

Use Staffs #5 chaos storm, look at the oposite direction you want to escape, use staff #2 phase retreat, it will port you away and give you chaos armor(protection, 33% Run speed, regeneration). After this you use blink to get away further, after this you can try to use decoy to stealth. If its a longer escape way, you shall drop focus #4 temporal curtain to buff swiftness again and after the thief goes through the curtain you pull him away. You should be able to avoid all those baddies this way, but skilled thiefes will kill you anyway, and this is working as intended.

@Tiger: Yes, zerg surfing is stupid fast leveling. The very few times I’ve done it (my compy is crap so with more than 20 people on the screen at one time my fps goes to kitten….about 1-2 fps = free badge to the other team), I’ve gone up 1 level in 1 full sweep of the map. 10 minutes max. And the loot/badges just roll in. But it’s not all that fun for me, especially given my compy limitations. I’d much rather run w/ a 5-10 man team like I did last night. Now THAT was fun, my fps didn’t suffer as much, and I got in a lot more fights and helped my team a lot more.

@Gorma: Thank you very much for the tips! That’s exactly what I was looking for. I’m still getting used to all of the mechanics and utility of this class, and I learn a few new things about it every day. This is NOT a noob class for sure if you want to play it well, and I love the challenge of finding all of the synergies/combos that work in different situations. Now I know why I put my first Mesmer aside (difficult to play well for a noob) but kick myself for doing it because if I had stuck with it I would likely have it as my main vs. my Guardian (GW2 Easy Mode, LOL). And yes, I read all the other class forums and they all complain about the Thief, so I don’t feel so bad. ;-) They’re a lot easier to make run away on my Ranger though……my Engineer, not so much (hah!).