Guild Wars 2

I need help with this.

I’m a Mesmer and this is how a typical battle goes:
Shadow step, stunlock
steal
shadow step
then I explode.

I know I’m mostly wrong with my terminology that I’ve used, I don’t know anything about the class.
Can any one give me some tips?

Please and thank you

Mesmers have an inherit weakness against the thief regarding mobility. Even if you survive a thief spike, it is way too easy for the thief to disengage from the mesmer and try again.

However, despite the massive disadvantage we have against this class the best way to kill thieves is to use their own tricks against them, namely stealth.

Decoy, the Prestige, and Veil are all very effective against thieves. I found that the best way to fight thieves to spawn quick clones then stealth to drop target. Afterwards, if the thief is bad he will waste intiative on clones and kill himself.

Because thieves have a high attack rate they are very susceptible to frustration and confusion. You can generally murder a thief by clone spiking with frustration then using confusing images to stack high numbers of confusion.

If the thief disengages from the fight and you have no stealth CDs up, you should disengage as well or attempt to drag the thief underwater where they are very weak.

Overall against a good thief, a mesmer is massively disadvanged due to the lack of a good snare. You can try to wall drag him with a focus but most of the time if the thief wants to get away he can just shortbow arrow then stealth.

If the thief resets the fight get out if you don’t have CDs. Never chase at a disadvantage.

Carrying a greatsword can also be good for thieves by zerking them for the cripple and beaming them if they try to run.

If taking the initial spike from a thief pop the prestige immediately or decoy to immediately gain the advantage.

If you dont have these up, phase retreat, blink, or pop chaos armor.

Super in-depth analysis. Thanks for the help!

Confusing Cry grants 5 sec retaliation per clone shattered on Cry of Frustration. This in combination with confusion make glass cannon thieves blow up so very nicely.

I don’t have an issue with thieves really.
The only one I have trouble with is the heartseeker build, and with my current clone set up they waste all their initiative spamming heartseeker on my clones without stopping to make sure they’re hitting the real Mesmer.

Best and easiest tip i can give is carry a staff.

Working on a vid collage of different times in pvp when i got jumped of juming thiefs, so far only posted a vid of a wery bad thief who kinda alerted me early but have betetr vids, will put em together. Basicly, staff nr 2, decoy and chaos field. after that snare and use immunitys. Get shatters of and thay dead quite often. The big burst thiefs in my experience usualy cant take alot of beating so shatters x 4 reset and new x 4 do wonders.

Note this vid the thief is not wery good. But it show how fast they go down in they take dmg, even in stealth. In a 2 sec burst he get 11 stacks of confusion on him aswell.

Two thoughts that can help with thieves:
1) Even though invisible you have a good idea of what they’re going to do, and where they’re going to be. If you see one coming it’s not hard to time their attacks, or at the very least be ready to fire an appropriate skill the moment you see damage. Illusionary counter is a good way to intercept a heartseeker or the like.

2) If a thief insists on going invisible, and skirting around, or trying to run away, keep your illusions up and scattered around. The moment the thief’s invis ends they’ll attack immediatly. This also helps cull the rendering issues, especially against thieves who are aware of them and try to use them to their advantage.

Thieves were an initial annoyance for me in terms of classes I found challenging. They’ve fallen way down the list now. Unless I come up against a thief gank squad, I don’t fret.

Oh, one other helpfull tool: Moa. If you see a thief start spinning around like a children’s toy, turn him into a giant chicken for his troubles. Thieves love to pull this one out, so it only serves you well to turn him on his head.

When I think a Thief is about to Shadowstep to me, I’d use some kind of reactive defense: this could mean Chaos Storm, Chaos Armour, Blurred Frenzy, a Block, etc. This will mitigate their first strike, allowing me to Blink, Phase Retreat or simply dodge out of danger.

When a Thief stealths, I’d also stealth; preferably timing it so I’d appear after the Thief appears, although if I think the Thief’s going to attack immediately I’d stealth without delay. Decoy in particular is quite excellent as an unsuspecting Thief could waste their initiative against the Clone. The Prestige is also good as it inflicts AoE Blind and Burn, which will likely hit the Thief stealth or no.

Confusion and Retaliation are very powerful against Thieves due to their fast attacks and low HP. After you’ve dealt with their initial burst + stealth I’d definitely try to hit them with stacks of Confusion and/or apply Retaliation to myself: most of my Confusion kills come from Thieves.

The above is theory of course, in practice a lot depends on whether you see a Thief coming. If you don’t see them coming then you need to be ready to Blink/Phase Retreat really really quickly, else you’d easily die to their burst.

Osciat, wtf that thief died from chaos storm and chaos armor!?! Sorry, something wierd there.

He died to a quadruple Mind Wrack followed by a triple CoF, not to Chaos Storm.

I have retaliation on cry of frustration Kilger so he take some dmg back even if i are immune to dmg, also yes its 4 x mindwrack + 4 x cry of frustration = 1,5-2,7 × 4 + 300-600 × 4 + 12 stacks of confusion al this while chaos storm, retaliation and BF sword go on for ~4k.

Even if you dont gear for condition dmg a 12 stack of confusion on a thief make him sad.

TheRamosOnline.2670:

I don’t have an issue with thieves really.
The only one I have trouble with is the heartseeker build, and with my current clone set up they waste all their initiative spamming heartseeker on my clones without stopping to make sure they’re hitting the real Mesmer.

OUCH. that’s mean LOL! I unloaded my pistols on a mirror once, i was sad. And using stealth against us isn’t very nice either