Guild Wars 2

How do you fight a perma stealth thief that basically backstabs -> invis -> pistol -> invis rinse and repeat? By the time I try to cast anything he is already invis.

AoE.

Stealth isn’t invincibility. Stealth just messes with targeting.

Admittedly, mesmers aren’t the best at ground targeted AoE, but it’s the best counter there is. Also, if you really want to mess with thieves, mesmers are the other stealth class. Offhand torch and decoy are good options, and if you stealth and the thief gets all bursty on a clone…well…thieves are helpless post-burst for about 20 seconds or so.

you need quick reactions.

dont shatter unless you know you have the thief immobilized.

let your illusions track/damage the thief since they attack as soon as they unstealth.

anticipate when they come out of stealth and counter cnd when possible.

the hardest thing to counter is their steal. if they manage to get it to connect, you’ll have a hard time killing them before they kill you.

against a good stealth spammer you will lose. What’s more OP than dealing 10k+ damage in one hit and go invis to anyone when needed and is as spammable as it can be?

Look at the Immortal Mesmer build and (almost) never lose to a Thief 1v1 again, certainly not the FoTM ones. I’ve had fight with some decent ones that have lasted minutes using that build, and usually ended up with them hightailing it once they realized they can’t just burst me down.

I loathed Thieves from not just my Mesmers but also my Engineers PoV, and was dead certain they’re grossly OPd, but once you tank up on either class you start realizing that the imbalance isn’t as obvious as it seems. They run out of gas very quickly, and usually that means they have to run from the fight.

Now the fact that they can escape with near 100% certainty is still a valid complaint against Thieves, but since using this build I’ve had to admit their burst isn’t as bad as I thought. Once you play that high survivability build for a while, it also gives you a chance to learn how to deal with Thieves better in general, and that means you can go for a less tanky build and still do better then before.

GL!

In the beginning thieves were my fear. However after playing them a little and getting more experience, they’ve become fairly easy. Use your weapons to your advantage. For example using the focus pull when you think the thief is close really messes them up, try hitting oxigen a lot more on the places you predict them. When they use shadow refuge (the stealth aoe) use greatsword 5 to knock them out, they’ll immediatly become visible again. Also when u immobilized a thief, he might go in stealth but you know he’s there, so keep on hitting. A good way to tell if the thief is still there is using your auto attack, when it continues it’s animation you’ll know you hit him. Also when you see a thief coming up to you with the venom buff on him already (the stone elite) then his opening will be steal/cnd steal, so counter this by using either invulnerability or proper dodging (but dodging in that case is really hard) also blinking away and immobilizing them with sword 3 after works really well. I’ve had so many times that I’ve killed him before he could even use a skill. Also some random dodging will help when you know there’s a thief around. Hope these tips helped

Windwalker actually made a really good point that bears repeating. Start with a really tanky build like mine, and then work your way back down. What this allows you to do is to learn the rhythms and patterns of a thief without dying instantly to the first one.

You’ll come to notice a few certain things. First, there are usually about 2-3 moments between the cnd and the following backstab. If you have a staff, use phase retreat, or just dodge roll. With dual swords you can put up the counter. You can also toss up decoy to really mess with them, then leap/swap into a daze+wrack+bf combo that will 100% any glass cannon thief, and seriously chunk even tanky ones.

Versus a typical D/D thief, I have multiple ways to survive that first burst (decoy, phase retreat, blink, distortion, s/s riposte). I use those or a combo of those to survive that first set of attacks. Usually, they’re specced to have their steal imobilize you (via basilisk venom). Both of those are on long timers, so I try to blink out of that, then decoy, so they cnd my clone. Once that happens, they’re done b/c all of the abilites are on cooldown. Once I shatter on them they typically die very fast. That said, like anyone I get caught off guard, or they’ll jump into a fight I’m already in and get me pretty quickly. I’m usually ok with that because imo that’s the point of the thief class, and I’m glass so I should die fast.

Mmmm if 1 class is versatile enough to mess with thiefs its actually mesmers. Ive had some very long fight agaist thiefs in WvW and im not even a regular PvPer or WvWer….

Sure, theyr burst hurts, but even on glass cannon gears like i ususaly run for now we have tons of options like blink, distortion, blurred frenzy, decoy and if you are using staff phase retreat, chaos armor and chaos storm helps a lot also. Just be sure you dont burn all your cooldowns in first burst, cos you know there will be a second and a third and a……

Survive as a mesmer a thief burst its not that hard, ive survived a lot of them and even managed to fight agaist 2 for quite some time before they managed to bring me down.

Hardest part its actually bringing them down. You have to be really fast on your casts, they wont be visible for long. With some luck youll have time to to cast iBerserker, mirror images and shatter and if you are lucky enough and they are glassy enough this might bring them down.

But ill be honest, most fights i end up getting bored after a while and i just stealth and go away, its like a troll Vs troll fight to see who trolls the other more :P

Yeah, a really good stealth spammer d/d thief is rough. Fortunately the vast majority of thieves aren’t at that level. A few tips:

Unless you’re in full rabid with tons of armor, you’ll want to stack some vitality so you’re not instagibbed by the steal/bs combo.

Don’t shatter when they stealth. Your clones/illusions will go after the thief immediately when they go vis.

They have to stay inside of shadow refuge for the duration to get the full stealth, so drop aoe/interrupts on it.

Make the most of your combo fields. Sword leap on an ethereal field gives you and the clone chaos armor. Staff retreat, obviously. Iduelist shots confuse when comboed with ethereal. Retaliation, confusion and chaos armor can really ruin a bkacstabber’s day.

If you can survive the initial burst and get a good combo off on the thief, you should be able to apply enough pressure to regain control of the fight.

Hi.

I will add my first Mesmer tutorial to the video guides I mkae today. When its done I add it to this thread as it help ALOT vs thiefs. It aslo include several 1 vs x number of thiefs and a 1 vs 3 thiefs (2 d/d 1 p/d)

Untill its ready to show I link this video. Its with the original shatter cat and not as effective as the Shatter Cat heavy vs thiefs but the general gameplay is valid and works.

How to Thiefs in Shatter Cat original build:

/Osicat

PS RUNE OF AIR!!!!!! ;D Its the thief killer nr 1
http://i286.photobucket.com/albums/ll103/osianic/Thiefdead.jpg

OK

Gameplay tutorial for SC ready, As its alot of thief I add the vid here. Teh tactics are especialy effective versus this class as you see in the later part of the video:

/Osicat

If it’s p/d, there is only one solution: stealth & leave him.
Seriously though, try to burst him. Most of the p/d thieves out there aren’t that good, but against a decent one there is little you can do.

Go bunker/pure illusion mesmer.
Too much health, too many illusions, they get too confused and give up.
Make sure your using chaos armor if not with staff at least with leaps in etheral fields

I don’t even mess with p/d thieves. My first main was a p/d thief, that runs with 22k health, heals & cleanses in stealth, blinds everytime she stealths, can pretty much stealth at will, and can stack 15+ bleeds ticking for 130+ very easily. Since my mesmer has no reliable way to cleanse bleeds, it’s really silly for me to waste my time fighting them. Even in fights that I’m able to transfer conditions, the fights still take forever. I built my thief to be a troll in wvw, and I refuse to be trolled, hah!

Null field + leap not only cleans conditions but also rips boons and gives chaos armor?

Dasboba.1652:

I don’t even mess with p/d thieves. My first main was a p/d thief, that runs with 22k health, heals & cleanses in stealth, blinds everytime she stealths, can pretty much stealth at will, and can stack 15+ bleeds ticking for 130+ very easily. Since my mesmer has no reliable way to cleanse bleeds, it’s really silly for me to waste my time fighting them. Even in fights that I’m able to transfer conditions, the fights still take forever. I built my thief to be a troll in wvw, and I refuse to be trolled, hah!

Depends on the Mesmer build. My build destroys p/d thieves. Lots of small attacks that all proc retaliation and chaos armor? Yes please! Ever since I changed my runes and food, I’ll actually purposefully stand in caltrops for the retal and chaos armor hits, as it can’t stack more than 3 bleeds onto me.

I guess confusion bombs cannot take down a perma invis thief isn’t it?

The confusion phrase lines up with their stealth phrase, so I can’t really damage them, but they can take my health down 10-20% at a time until I go down. :/

Dess.4391:

Hardest part its actually bringing them down. You have to be really fast on your casts, they wont be visible for long. With some luck youll have time to to cast iBerserker, mirror images and shatter and if you are lucky enough and they are glassy enough this might bring them down.

Yeah, once you’ve learned to survive them, here comes the hardest part: killing them.

With my condition/confusion bunker build I can only hope they blow itself up. I can’t even count the times when their final doom was using a stealth skill to escape at like 10% health, but having stacks of confusion on them. Once the dust settles, there will appear a downed thief out of stealth.

Works best if I play with them for a while, making them think I’m harmless, a bunker and doing almost no damage. And then, after a lot dodge rolling and phase retreating, I suddenly stop moving – in a Chaos Storm, letting them hit me while a F2 confusion shatter explodes on top of their head. From this point on, their lifespan becomes dramatically short …

SirV.7245:

How do you fight a perma stealth thief that basically backstabs -> invis -> pistol -> invis rinse and repeat? By the time I try to cast anything he is already invis.

i fought a thief like that last night. the problem is that if you dont have the right build, weapons, and utils it’ll be extremely tough. I won because I used focus sword mainly, and staff if i really needed to get out of a situation.

The breakdown was if thief showed up for backstab, i would use staff to put down chaos storm right on top of me then phase retreat out (which gives me chaos armor in the combo field). switch to sword focus and then wait for his next move. if he did heartseeker spam then i just use blurred frenzy, mirrored images, mindwrack, diversion, then ileap to keep him in place and prevent him from going into stealth (i have IP traited). if he used unload (pistol spam) then i drop temporal curtain with the focus and reflect projectiles (this is traited). I will drop iWarden right after to try and get extra dmg and if he goes stealth iwarden does some aoe so it’s safe for me to stand on top of it. At the end of the day they’ll probably just stealth and run away like the kittens they are if you play more defensive. If you use conditions then mirror images into blurred frenzy with cry of frustration shatter will melt him if he continues his attack. decoy is a must against these skill-less kittens

I don’t know why ANet created a class that requires zero skill to play – and justified it by saying “aoes hurt them”. AOEs are also the most easily avoided things during stealth… since there’s this giant red circle you can steer away from – assuming the person dropping the aoe even knows where to put it since the kitten thief can be anywhere. And even if he gets hit by an aoe, it doesnt bring them out of stealth and is never nearly enough to deal a finishing blow. But mesmers are OP so lets continue to nerf them.

ps. if you have clones out it helps to stand still and look like them (sheath your weapon if they do) this way he’ll have a hard time knowing who’s who – and then when your clones get LOS on it and move thats when you go in and try to do as much dmg as possible. Shattering on time is key to defeating these spineless kittens. I’m sure you understand my distaste for thieves -_-

my experience as confusion bomber in wvw:

d/d : invul their burst while confusion bombing them normaly hits them quite hard. if not dead, activate chaos armor 1-2 secs after they stealthed and drop a chaos storm on top of you. you likely will get aegis messing up their next burst. furthermore they will get lots of conditions via chaos armor/storm. get some clones up for more conditions. switch to scepter and blcok if you like. start channeling confusion images when they start stealth animation. that normally leaves them with a good stack of confusion when they attack next.
next burst can be taken if they got confusion on them, killing them OR can be avoided with stealthing yourself via decoy/torch or with a nice daze from diversion. mess with them with blink/prestige/decoy.
not that hard of an encounter if not 90% of your skills are on cd :P

d/p:
chaos armor and stealth is your friend. if out of chaos armor try to time your stealths so that the thief unloads on your clones. or just use your clones as cover. clones survive their unloads quite a while so being totally invul because of self generated cover is nice. either they are a little bit ranged → good to hide behind clones OR they are quite close → good to confusion bomb them.
spam winds of chaos and bomb them and normally they will die. sometimes they will run. if youre getting killed by them you were very unlucky :>

iirc they only cleanse conditions 1 per 3sec while stealthed so winds of chaos+chaos armor+chaos storm+confusion usually allows for some good periods of bleeds/confusion.

Chaos Storm at your own location+ Chaos Armor should also help, + Distortion Shatter, and of course your own stealth spells. Add in some clones, and it should be confusing enough.

Im a glass cannon berserker mesmer.
i engage with spatial surge, stealth with decoy and immediatly dodge roll. 9 times out of 10 the thief will think you broke stealth and hammer the clone. At that moment iberserker/power spike, mirror blade/power spike, mind stab.
If they dont drop suddenly after with a spatial surge or two and another mirror blade use Mass Invisibility (love it even for personal use) and either dodge roll a couple clones to draw them out of stealth or run like a kitten if your first barrage didnt even tickle them lol. But honestly, stealth spamming thieves stealth spam for a reason, they are using full berserker gear and often you can blow 1/3 to half their health off with iberseker.

be aggresive against thief, they go in panic

Xavori.3768:

Also, if you really want to mess with thieves, mesmers are the other stealth class.

This.

I did this now (running 20/0/30/0/20 with Scepter/Torch + Staff), and while my gear still needs re-doing the mix of traits and abilities (Decoy, Torch #4, sometimes MI or Veil) work really well in taking the sting out of Thieves.

Most simply run away if they fail their opening due to me stealthing.

I main’d a Thief and now a Mesmer. I play shatter. For sure you need blink to survive their burst, just using decoy you will end up dead in stealth from autos.. You will almost always eat steal+C&D so you have to blink before the backstab. They will almost always go right into stealth at this point one way or another or Spam heartseekers then stealth. If HS, then Decoy^Evade (always evade here, don’t heal until ~200 units away and in stealth, HS tracks even after decoy is hit due to lag). If it’s SR push/pull them from it (I use focus and GS for this) and then continue the fight. If it’s not SR then simply count a couple seconds then evade backwards (clone), MirrorI, BF+MW. Chances are you revel a dead thief.

Against a condition based stealth spam it’s way harder. I would try to kite and get 3 phantasms out and leaving them. They will instantly attack them each rotation but also give them free C&D targets. I use the reflect heal so channel that right after they start opening. With the con remove food you will clear the first bleeds and they will have just put a few on themselves. Once you get the 3 phants up, wait for their opener, then use a KD. Make sure you get them to blow shadowstep+return from a KD before you go for it all (wait 20 seconds or force a return) then KD them again after they come out. With 3 phants up, you should be able to KD them then shatter on them if you time it right. You really need to pay attention to what they have blown. Always assume they have Shadowstep and SR. Always evade if they run at you, they are trying to C&D. You have to evade early due to latency.

TLDR: A Thief’s biggest weakness is KD/KB that’s why I use GS + x/Focus

Stiv.1820:

TLDR: A Thief’s biggest weakness is KD/KB that’s why I use GS + x/Focus

What is KD/KB and SR?
I run a nuker mesmer with no condi removal skills (double swords+staff), which works well against glass cannon backstabbers. However, i have worries about condi-perma-stealth thieves, who keeps dodging and stealthing. The only times I won is due to my confusion stacks (chose asura race utility (retaliation and confusion), using a torch. I want to know the basic thief mechanics like how the heck they can dodge all the time? It’s impossible to sword 2 immobilize him and shatter. Even if I do, they’d stealth away, heal up and come again.

neptunechild.4831:

Stiv.1820:

TLDR: A Thief’s biggest weakness is KD/KB that’s why I use GS + x/Focus

What is KD/KB and SR?

I run a nuker mesmer with no condi removal skills (double swords+staff), which works well against glass cannon backstabbers. However, i have worries about condi-perma-stealth thieves, who keeps dodging and stealthing. The only times I won is due to my confusion stacks (chose asura race utility (retaliation and confusion), using a torch. I want to know the basic thief mechanics like how the heck they can dodge all the time? It’s impossible to sword 2 immobilize him and shatter. Even if I do, they’d stealth away, heal up and come again.

knock down, knock back
sr= thief skill shadow refuge. place where thief stay like in house

btw, glass canon thief not a problem for mesmer, problem is survive thief, like d/p or s/p

drongas.4189:

be aggresive against thief, they go in panic

This is actually true. I mained a thief when the game released, and shatter mesmer was one of my worst nightmares. They have endless dps unlike thieves.

glamour mesmer build, feedback, nullfield temporalcurtain , chaosstorm,hounds of balthazar feedback again…byebye theif

drongas.4189:

neptunechild.4831:

Stiv.1820:

TLDR: A Thief’s biggest weakness is KD/KB that’s why I use GS + x/Focus

What is KD/KB and SR?

I run a nuker mesmer with no condi removal skills (double swords+staff), which works well against glass cannon backstabbers. However, i have worries about condi-perma-stealth thieves, who keeps dodging and stealthing. The only times I won is due to my confusion stacks (chose asura race utility (retaliation and confusion), using a torch. I want to know the basic thief mechanics like how the heck they can dodge all the time? It’s impossible to sword 2 immobilize him and shatter. Even if I do, they’d stealth away, heal up and come again.

knock down, knock back
sr= thief skill shadow refuge. place where thief stay like in house

btw, glass canon thief not a problem for mesmer, problem is survive thief, like d/p or s/p

So I fought a P/D last night a few times 1 on 1 and have a better idea. I feel like my setup is a hard counter to them. All I had to do was auto attack/#3 with GS and only use clones to instantly shatter. I use Sword/Focus + GS. I have sigil of generosity on GS and Focus. Use mirror for heal with the food that gives 100% chance to clean 1 condition each heal.

Pretty much just auto attack with great-sword and lul. Kite and try to Dodge Cloak and Dagger and that’s it (use F1-3 whatever is up on the dodge clone). You will transfer whatever bleeds you do have every 10. If/when they do get into stealth by a C&D, their heal or blinding powder, just use Mirror for their opener. You clean the bleeds and they have 3-4 on them. If you don’t have mirror up just decoy/distort after a couple seconds then get rid of the clone (if you distort make sure you let 1 bullet hit you first or they won’t break stealth and distort is useless unless you time it at the 4th second, if you decoy do it after a couple seconds since it’s long enough stealth to force them out of their stealth). When they use Refuge wait a second (let them blow their dodges that good thieves will spam after refuge) then knock them out of refuge. If I used clones it was to blow them up instantly. Don’t let them hang out.

It may just be my build but the trick no matter what is to not use clones/phants like normal. Only use them when you are going to blow them up right away. edit: and of course stay out of the red circles :P

add blind (which all pistol thieves have access to), and due to the changes made to non target-able illusion skills when blinded its auto lose. Good thieves have unlimited blind capability; for all intents and purposes unlimited stealth, and have the upper hand when attacking from stealth. Mesmer’s have really poor condition removal. you can’t counter with stealth because you will run out of stealth capabilities before a thief will. I play both thief and mesmer classes and have seen both sides of the issue.

As an added thought, if other players and or monsters are around its even tougher against a p/d thief because they will have tons of stuff to cloak off of. I kited around 6 players once on my thief and picked them off one by one cloaking off of them and a dolyak. I was using P/D & D/P. You can pretty much spam what ever skills you want if you are specced so that you gain initiative faster and on skill use etc. I have also been killed by a really annoying P/D thief with Quip while I had a ton of allies around

The change to agro tables for stealth will help with NPC’s around. Now instead of us having to kill them all or run away at least the Thief will have agro when they come out of stealth instead of them just going on us.

A P/D thief will only blind you if they hit you with a melee attack (C&D) and it is also their main access to stealth as well as their main form of DPS (C&D dmg + the opener from stealth). Starve them of this and their DPS is crap and they get no healing/blinds/con-remove etc etc.

If you are talking about the pistol OH blind field (used in combat) that’s NP for us, just don’t stand in it. The bullet from that will only blind once, auto it away. If you run into a d/p constantly leaping into their blind field just sand near it, they will hit you with heartseeker and it will screw up thief stealth rotation (only the first HS is a free one, the two followups will break stealth, they leap out of the blind field then back over it twice more). Blink straight into it when you see it if you have to.

with my mesm build easy against p/d. i use traited focus so mostly thief pistols atack just reflected

Lol Stiv that’s not entirely true. D/P #3 is a highly spam able blinding shot that teleports you to your target for a second dagger strike. It also has a very short animation. It goes pistol shot+blind into teleport to target and strike in less than a second. Skill 5 is a smoke field so not only will melee characters trying to hit you miss 99% of their attacks but projectiles fired from the field also reapplies blindness. Try skill #3 (blinding shot-teleport-stab) skill 5 for smoke field, weapon swap + cloak and dagger. The next auto attack is an unload like skill that fires repeated rapid shots, each applying bleeds and blindness from a smoke field. Swap skill 5+heart seeker combo for up to a four second stealth. Rinse and repeat. There are other combos as well but this is a good one. It is really, really challenging to counter a thief that is really good at this for a Mesmer who’s attacks are target based and not AoE. And you have to get illusions off for them to hit and this type of thief is a medium armor class that is typically built for survival so a few phantasms hitting wont be that big of a deal when you can fully heal back up passively from stealth. I’m just saying if you think this is easy to counter you have not experienced a master at it yet…

On a helpful note to the OP. There are a few things that you can do to give you the best chances against this build but you may have to sacrifice other things to get there. Most people don’t want to gear/trait to fight this type of thief and not be as effective at combating the slew of other builds out there. One thing that might work as others have said is to trait into the focus and master it. IWarden causes reflection when traited and is actively spinning so you can stand in its animation. you can also place spectral curtain on top of yourself and keep it between the thief and yourself while he/she is in pistol mode. If you are like me and trait into distortion also causes reflection than shatter 4 is really invaluable. I love popping it on really hard hitting rangers pelting me with their longbow (point blank shot back in their face) or a warrior just before he/she gets kill shot off. ^.^

For the bleeding, poison and blind that this sort of thief build or variation there of will undoubtedly apply all i can say is null field ( long cool down, slightly less long if traited) can get you a few seconds of reprieve just long enough possibly to get a couple phantasms up before the thief stealth’s again. Boon removal might prove useful as you will see that this sort of thief can stack them on, applying new ones on dodge, stealth, skill activation etc. I have really learned to love using arcane thievery against all sorts of things (D/D ele, invincible guardian/engineer etc.) It is also another one of our best sources of condition removal and a way to throw blind back in the thieves face, along with poison and however many stacks of bleeding.

You can also use blurred frenzy defensively just to alleviate damage until your skills come off of recharge. It is a really great defensive stall-er. For those thieves that like to get up close I like feeding them shatters via Illusionary Persona. All that said, you have to be really good at using all of these strategies to out class a person that’s really good at these types of thief builds. Otherwise the next best thing is travel with friends. Focus fire and lots of really hard hitting aoe and very well timed crowd control can put a stop to the fight fast. Solo though, I think this build may be a hard counter to most mesmer builds, including the one I like to role. Hope this helps.