Guild Wars 2

Confession… I am new and still pretty poor at playing the chronomancer. The class/build has a lot of combos that I am still trying to become proficient with. My main issue is keeping D/P power based thieves and similar combat mobility melee classes. I am currently working with a fairly typical chrono-condi build just to dip my toes into the Mesmer waters. I don’t seem to have the same problem in sPvP but thieves don’t clock nearly as hard there.

I think I am hamstrung by my old habits running a thief for so long relying too much on combat evasiveness. On a thief I rarely have problems blowing up Mesmers so it may be an inherent problem but it may simply be a L2P. If it is L2P, help me L2P. How do you manage stealthy power based thieves?

Thanks for any help.

Here is the build but I do swap stuff out as I am learning:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAreWnknBlphNqBeoBEgilnj6sACgEDdxynDoeQP0FF-TVzCABT/AA0TPgDKBp4ACUgJIFOBAAckAuU9nJOEAZp8DQNBpohY59HCAgAsz6sMnZgje0je0je0m5Rn5RnZSB8oyK-w

Most basic tip is when he stealths, activate your scepter block – they are most likely setting up for Ambush. If not available – distortion.

That being said, remember you can double up your skills with Continuum Split. I suck at this and I forget to use it all the time, but say you have your clones/phantas out – you go conti split – stealth – gravity well. Conti split ends, you have access to another stealth – gravity well. Personally I use Moa cuz… Well probably cuz I’m a kitten. A big furry one. But using this simple strategy it is virtually impossible to lose a 1v1 with cds up since you can double moa someone. Obviously they’ll be desperate for a heal when moa ends if they’re not dead yet – F3 shatter.

As for general gameplay against them – being annoying and frustrating mesmer style usually does the trick. A bad thief in this situation will start spamming heartseeker -just dodge and you’ll be fine, blink in emergencies. A good thief however knows to wait for your blink, will #3 to get at you and keep going. This is where your blink/decoy combo is the most useful and in 90% of cases the thief will waste initiative killing your decoy while you’re in stealth swapping weps or setting up your phantas. Big problem is their constant dodging which will mess you up but you can’t really do much about it with that wep combo.

The first thing I noticed is that you’re using the wrong food. You should be using the 20% condition duration food, as that adds more pressure than any other food. Other than that, the build is fine. You could experiment with losing signet of illusions for a different utility, but that will work.

With 3000 armor, you’ve got some serious wiggle room when fighting power builds. Even the glassiest thief isn’t going to take out more than half your health in a full combo, so you’re pretty safe. You just need to make sure you aren’t giving them freeby combos over and over. This means appropriately using your blocks (scepter/shield) to stop them from landing backstabs.

You’ll also need to deny them stealth if you actually want to kill them. For d/p this means interrupting the heartseeker through black powder. You can use chaos storm, gravity well, shield wall, or diversion to accomplish this. Make sure you follow up an interrupt with heavy burst. If you miss the interrupt, stand in the black powder. This is a trick you should know, having played thief, but standing in the black powder means the thief can only get 1 leap combo off; trying for another will cause revealed.

Burst the Daredevil and if the condi stack is high enough and they have already used Shadow Return, then weapon stow to deny evade cleanse. Then just focus on survival for the 4-5 seconds it takes for the Thief to melt to the confusion stack.