Guild Wars 2

Let’s say you get attacked by a thief as mesmer. What do you do? What is the best tactic to counter them?
What I do is gs 4->switch to sword/pistol -> pistol 5>moa but since moa is 180 sec cd this doesn’t always work.
Any tips?

When I encounter a thief in wvw, I immediately hit 2. This creates a clone of your corpse and teleports you to a random location. Then try to target him and hit 1111 this causes a small amount of damage and stacks confusion making it harder for hit to kill all your friends as well.

pro, have a look at some of my vids, osianic2 user on youtube, several thief encoynters in latest vid. and a vid only for mes vs thief,

thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Mesmer-vs-thief-s/first#post625189

people having a hard time against a thief on a mes is a waste of hard time lolz. Run staff/GS (not the stupid sword/pistol 99.94843% of mesmers that pretend to be pros run), spec in toughness/precision/condition damage. Always have Deceptive Evasion cuz you will need clones spam. Confusion Cry is nice for wvw so you see a Thief, start your chain with GS. Mirror Blade, iBerserker,1 roll,cry of frustration,swap to staff if he’s on you then just Chaos Storm and Phase Retreat from it for chaos armor. Try to stun them with sig of Domination when they’re inside chaos storm. You can spam lots of clones so just shatter spam as soon as you have three to replace them. If its a thief who thinks he’s cool cuz he’s stealthing 100 times per minute, just lure him near a cliff and throw him off with illusionary wave for maximum lolz.

@Nuka Cola

Since you’re obviously an expert…what’s wrong with Sword/Pistol? I beat all kinds of GS/Staff Mesmers with it. And Thieves. And every other class. Blurred Frenzy is great defense/damage on a glass cannon, iDuelist is a very good Phantasm, and Trick Shot is nice in all sorts of situations. And oh yeah, with Pistol offhand, you don’t have to waste a utility slot on Signet of Domination.

Ok, i step into a side discusson here just cause I feel for it. Sorry ppl if i drag it away form its original goal but its is about a important matter imo. The mesmer forums is so far extremy friendly and creative, dont want to se stuff like this in it.

@ Nuka Cola, on this forum there are SEVERAl wery wery good theorycrafers and PvP mesmers running differen spec and setups, some using S/P, some GS / S/F, and on it go. I for one run the setup with S/P – staff. The common theme of this players seem to be that the more experienced and serious they are the more humle they become. I had several discussions with players and In the end even in different oppionons they can see the strength of the other players spec.

I never claimed to found the “Proest of specs and setups”, and so havent any other of the ppl posting helpfull videos and guides etc. Ppl do thu claim they found a way to play the game in a succesfull way.

To go in with chest puffed up like you do, throw in your oppinion and trash-talk ppl in one and same time just make you look like a kid with a thought, jumping up and down and say hes oppinion and tell that only him and none else is correct.

Work on your personality, then get some solid ideas behind your oppinions and start theorycraft, film some if you feel like but dont be a pollution in this thread. Mabye get 3-5 years older before start post in forums.

/love osi

I think it’s mostly a question of gear. You need to have high enough toughness/vitality that you can survive the initial burst. Having a stun-breaker equipped helps also.

Most of the time in WvW, staying alive is more important than scoring kills. Right now there’s a lot of glass-cannons running around in WvW, but I think that this will change in the long run. Playing a glass-cannon is too much of a liability when an unlucky death can allow the enemy zerg to rally.

I’ve ran into enough incidence with Thieves just abusing stealth + render issue that makes us almost impossible to take him down without some correct judgement AND luck. AoE is the only solution to this problem apparently, and that is the Chaos Storm. At least it will help you sustain in an unfair fight a little longer if the Thief persist in taking you down while he’s in “god mode”. In the end, it’s still a Win/Win situation for Thief. They have the BEST escape mechanism in the game so if his cheap tactics fails, he’s 99% guarantee to make an escape if you somehow pulled the fight to be in your favor. If he chooses not to escape, then he’s just going to “reset” the fight while he replenishes his health and recharge his initiatives all in just a matter of a few secs while you are waiting on your skill cooldowns so the “rematch” will still put you in a serious disadvantage when you DON’T have access to chaos storm on CD to PLAY his game all over again. The only solution right now and not just for Mesmer but for ALL professions is that we’re all waiting on serious balancing issues with Thief profession, mainly in PvP aspect of the game.

Toughness most of the time helps me live long enough to play the stealth game with them. The mantras let me heal during the fight regularly. Condition removal lets me wipe off their debuffs. Also switched to a hydromancy sigil on my weapon recently, it’s nice to be able to debuff anyone just by changing weapons. I do use the staff phase retreat regularly now because it kites well in a circle.

That takes care of most thieves. There are some rare ones that hit me over 4k per hit. It’s hard to recover from the initial burst so sometimes I have dropped. Really depends on my server lag at that point if I can recover. Decoy is insta-cast so it’s usually a good counter to their opener, then clean up anything on you while in it and switch to staff if you aren’t on it to phase retreat and start over. If me and “that guy” fight I’m looking for every opportunity to daze them and mess up their flow. Hydromancy does this per the wiki.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilled
“Movement speed decreased by 66%; skill cooldown increased by 66%; stacks duration.”
It’s proc is only for enemies in close range but you don’t have that problem with thieves, they want to be close.

My only problem has been actually killing them, so many just run if you they don’t kill you the first attempt or the second. They don’t stay if they don’t win and nothing makes them stay that I have. I consider them running me winning now lol

The best way to kill thief is by using their own weapon against them – use stealth as afthen as you can.
In 3w I personally run GS/sw+pistol or sw+torch. In utility a Decoy is a must.
When I’m faceing thief (whih is unlikely, b/c they do it from behind) I clone swarm them. When he gets to me – Decoy and QQ thief.
When he sthealts I wait for my clones form GS to show me where he is by their attack.
As me as glass cannon I normally use iBerserk → 2 →iWave (if too close to you)→ swap to sw → PD(he will do the dirty job – you have to just stay alive) → BF (if he is at your range) or MB.

Good tactic for GS Xion, hope some ppl try that out as I know from my guildies its viable.

Psirca yes, a thoughtness build especialy with a timed disorsion make it hard to thief kill you aswell, have support mesmers in team to run this. In solo/smal team its as you said a struggle to kill. I often run nowdays in 2-4 man team when guild not raiding and find as we already have a healing survival player in group to pull dmg on him and a support its betetr for me stay dmg fully as we need to down those marked players.

Also for rest stuggle, remember most thiefs in wvwvw is fragile, so a 3 clone WV + a sowerd 2 is often enought to leav anything jumping you even if they in stealth.

Stealth and try very hard to get a zerker off. Once he’s up don’t shatter him since he will pretty much cripple the thief immediately when it comes back out of stealth for the rest of the fight. You need decoy unless you’re running traited staff.

If they use shadow refuge us gs 5 or focus 4 to pull them out immediately before they get their stealth (if you pull them out of the field while the ring is still there they will drop stealth immediately). Other than that it’s just trying to keep your distance and dodge at the right moments… Granted this is really for a heavy stealth thief using dagger.

Thieves have very low HP, and their whole strategy relies on initiating the fight with burst damage. The key to defeating them is to survive the initial burst (if they attack you first) and just DPS them. If you attack them first, then they should go right down without any problems.

A well played thief will kill you with a burst combo regardless of your toughness or vitality.

To survive the initial burst, if they attack you first, you need to separate yourself from the thief immediately, this means either blink, #5 on GS, #4 with focus, or some sort of stealth utility.

F4, Decoy, side roll, back roll, shatter, magic bullet and blurred frenzie.

Confusion. It deals 2x damage in WvW compared to PvP. 4000 damage per skill activation and watch glass cannon Thieves drop themselves.

How do I counter a thief (or bursting in general)?

I believe it’s called Distortion.

if you’re going glass cannon vs glass cannon,

if the thief gets the jump on you, the only thing that will save you from being downed is quick reactions, whether it be blurred frenzy, distortion, stealth, blink, etc.

if you get the jump on the thief, they die instantly as well. shatters still hit them in stealth

@ Embolism:

Where did you get this information? I for one never noticed that to be 200% of PvP damage..

Step 1: Get offhand sword.
Step 2: Mash 5
Step 3: /laugh

But in all serialness, do your best to negate their burst. Blurred Frenzy, and Illusionary Riposte are VERY good at this, once that initial burst fails make sure you hunt them down otherwise they’ll just make another attempt when their CD’s are up.

Cygnus.6903:

@ Embolism:

Where did you get this information? I for one never noticed that to be 200% of PvP damage..

Confusion damage in WvW uses the PvE version, which is about 2x more powerful than the PvP version.

What about Mirror Of Anguish ? Im a Mesmer myself but didn’t really took the time to test it vs Thief even though i planned to. Wouldn’t reflecting their Stun or whatever right back in the face on their initial attack give the Mesmer enough time to dodge or get away from the Thief burst ?

I know it’s on a long CD though and can only be used once every minutes and half so obviously it doesn’t work all the time (if it actually does , maybe someome who tried it can elaborate on this ?)

Make clones, and then use stealth and teleportation to my advantage. I use staff and scepter/focus, with Decoy and Blink. Eventually, I will kill the Thief, an ally will show up, or the Thief will get bored and run away (people who play Thieves generally don’t have a lot of patience). I very rarely have a problem 1v1 against Thieves. And that’s playing as a level 18 Mesmer..

But Thieves are really not that hard to beat at all. The only difficult thing about them is surviving their burst damage. If you can do that, they are nothing more then a normal damage profession with low survivability.

I’m sometimes spec’d 30 points in illusion, taking the trait that puts all shatters on you. if I get jumped by a thief, I hit F1 through F4 (if I wasn’t panicking so much, I’d not hit the stun). This puts distortion on you, long enough to react, at least, or get out of the stun, it also does initial damage, which they aren’t expecting, and puts 5 stacks of confusion on them because every shatter causes confusion. 5 stacks of confusion on a hasted thief makes them kill them self quickly. I’ve insta-killed more than a few face-roller thieves just using this, without any illusions out this way. The self-shatter stuff is also good for pinging out people who are hiding.

Discord.1543:

I’m sometimes spec’d 30 points in illusion, taking the trait that puts all shatters on you. if I get jumped by a thief, I hit F1 through F4 (if I wasn’t panicking so much, I’d not hit the stun). This puts distortion on you, long enough to react, at least, or get out of the stun, it also does initial damage, which they aren’t expecting, and puts 5 stacks of confusion on them because every shatter causes confusion. 5 stacks of confusion on a hasted thief makes them kill them self quickly. I’ve insta-killed more than a few face-roller thieves just using this, without any illusions out this way. The self-shatter stuff is also good for pinging out people who are hiding.

thats not how that trait works, it only makes yourself shatter 1x, not put all the illusions shatter effects on you. so if you shatter with no illusions out, it will only shatter once. the max you can get is a 4x shatter with 3 illusions out.

NatashaK.9418:

When I encounter a thief in wvw, I immediately hit 2. This creates a clone of your corpse and teleports you to a random location. Then try to target him and hit 1111 this causes a small amount of damage and stacks confusion making it harder for hit to kill all your friends as well.

LOL!! thank you this post made my day. I was half asleep when reading this and actually thought it was a viable tactic until I read it again.

Alt+F4

/15char

Thobek.1730:

NatashaK.9418:

When I encounter a thief in wvw, I immediately hit 2. This creates a clone of your corpse and teleports you to a random location. Then try to target him and hit 1111 this causes a small amount of damage and stacks confusion making it harder for hit to kill all your friends as well.

LOL!! thank you this post made my day. I was half asleep when reading this and actually thought it was a viable tactic until I read it again.

I’m glad someone else caught this… I laughed pretty hard at this too.

haha that was a sutile and good one +1

on the side, added 2 thief fights in my last vid to start with.

/osicat

Prior this patch, I would pretty much end with “Steal” + “Backstab” by a following series of heartseeker on session basis. Mine game style permitted to:
“Roll” + “Blink” right away the “Backstab” toss “iBerserk” + “Mirror Blade” see his distance, if still on me “Illusionary Wave” + “Mind Stab”; if into the low, “Ether Feast” right away, otherwise “Cry of Frustration” before “Ether Feast”.
If he was a baddie, he would be dead by “Spatial Surge” and/or “Retaliation”, if he specced right, on it’s way to “Steath”.
Since he would stay 2 sec at least in it, i would counted 3 “Rolled+Rolled” and proceeded to “Steath” now, depending mine actual HP, I would used “Mass Invisibility” too.
“Temporal Curtain” + “Illusionary Leap” + “Swap” by this time “Thieves Guild” would be up, banging all on me so, “Blurred Frenzy” closed by “Into the Void” + “Phantasmal Warden” + “Ether Feast” if not dead yet, “Mind Wrack” back to to the distance “Roll” “iBerserk” + “Mirror Blade” .. “Steath” + “Blink” + “F” or clone bombing.

Sure, it was effective but still, complex to connect and also, a glorious show for both’s, winner and loser eye’s. Right now, after the infamus changes (11-15) is more like hope this thief doesn’t know how easily can mine class be denied the use of it’s core abilities.

Depends on the theif, but if I am thinking the typeof thief you mean, you need a counter for their initial steal and murder combo. Staff 2 is very good. Distortion MIGHT work, but I haven’t done that one.

The main problem is that after you counter their burst what do you do? there’s very little in the mesmer’s arsenal, especially in WvW, that can assure that you finish off a good thief. They’ll just stealth and leave.

The best way to finish off a Thief IMO is conditions, given how low their base HP is. Ramp up 10+ Bleeding on a Thief and it will likely topple over and die even if it stealths and tries to escape. Confusion (especially in WvW) can make a Thief kill itself in an instant, giving it no chance to escape at all.

Why i feel a shatter build is working vs em. Like embolism say the condition is doing a good jobb, same time the acctive immunitys and high burs hit them like a truck.

Have a 60% focus on thiefs in my latest vid. hope it help.

/osicat

Mesmer are actually blessed v thief due to the large amount of teleports and blocks and stun breaks the class gets.

GS is probably the worst weapon to use vs thieves because it has none of those things. Staff and sword/X both have excellent options for avoiding the initial thief burst, and once you’ve done that the fight is a lot easier. Illusionary persona is also a good tool, as is blink.

A good thief will still just run away from you though and unless you’re lucky there’s not going to be much you can do about it.

block on off-hand sword, distortion, mirror images, sword clone/swap/blurred frenzy, mindwrack, sword pet, switch to staff, phase retreat and iwarlock (dodge as required)

As soon as I hear the dagger sound if I didn’t see the thief I hit my o-kitten button (mapped to block)

Decoy and roll backwards (i.e. right into the thief and pass him).

Mesmers cannot chase down a thief, even a bad one. You’re only bet to win is someone that is very green or under leveled thieves. So even if you do a nice counter, you’ll best chances is for a draw, and most likely he’ll run away.

I guess it depends how you define “bad thief.” I’ve met plenty of bad thieves you can kill via use of blink + temporal curtain pull.

But you’re right that there is no reliable way to beat a good thief except hoping you get lucky on your guess.

Decoy+dodge roll doens’t do much when you’re immobilised. The times I die to a thief is when I am jumped and I use that tactic to escape (which doesn’t work) – because I’m immobilised. Biggest defence vs a thief is to see them coming so always look around when running. I would almost always blink (if you have staff you could use the teleport) if I am jumped. Decoy is a good choice vs a thief, I wouldn’t be afraid to use it if they stealth (to attack, rather than run), don’t be afraid to mass invis either. Personally I think Cry of Frustration would end up being more effective than Mind Wrack, 8x confusion against a class that hits so fast is going to be very painful, add to that the thing that gives you retaliation when you use it (15 seconds for 3 clones). That’s alot of self inflicted damage for them. Of course you have to be able to survive long enough which is why vit/tough is far better than the old glass cannon armour (I have two armour sets and I always end up using my vit/tough gear).

If you are near water, try luring them in, from my experience it’s almost guaranteed win (those trident clones are awesome).

If the Thief is abusing culling, then make sure you have Illusions on him while he goes invis, Phantasms perfected. Don’t shatter them while he is invis, wait for the Illusions to start attacking what looks like empty space. That is where the Thief is.

This is due to the fact that your Illusions can see the Thief regardless of culling, just like an NPC can.

Using stealth yourself (and abuse culling back!) helps immensely as well. Unless they use Thieves Guild your culling abuse > theirs due to Illusions.

CD’s and high toughness. AoE confusion on blind. Stand amidst your illusions and shatter them when he comes to you, stealthed or otherwise. 1100+ CD damage with your mass confusion stacks. Let him come hit you, it’s not going to bother you one bit

If you’re going to be a glass cannon playing scorched earth with another glass cannon, expect to be broken.

Confusion specced IP Mesmer with Rabid gear — Thieves are by far the easiest class for me to counter in WvW.

Open up with mirror blade & iZerk, they heal/stealth, then I decoy & roll. they come out of stealth attack one of my clones, I dish all damage I can before they stealth again, if they go into stealth again and their health is low, I mind wrack my illusions. Super easy especially against full glass cannon thieves, in my experiences anyway.

I go GS & Staff. Staff has chaos storm which is great defensive skill, also has iMage which does 6k crits and phase retreat is good for moving away from enemy.

For armor, accessories, weps etc

I have knights armor: Power, Prec, Toughness
Ruby Orbs on the armor: Power, Prec, Crit
Valkyrie accessories: Power, Vit, Crit
and Soldier Weps: Power, Toughness, Vit

Blink is your friend when it comes to one hit backstabbing thieves. If you get paralyzed from thin air (the opener on bs thieves), blink away and avoid most of the damage. Even if he manages to land his combo, blinking away would avoid some of the heartseeker spam (need some quick reflexes). Having illusionary persona trait (illusions 30) allows you to shatter 4 and become invulnerable and mitigate his initial burst. Unless you’re in a specific confusion/condition dmg build, shatter 2 doesn’t do that much, and he’ll just eat the damage while killing you.

I have a thief (condition p/d spec) and a mesmer(shatter spec) fully geared. With both of them I eat backstab thieves for breakfast. But i seem to have trouble when playing with the mesmer against condition+stealth thiefs. Ironic I know, but i do win most of the encounters with the thief against mesmers so it checks out.

Problem is, against good condition thieves you need to have some condition removals and be a tanky build (and most mesmers don’t usually go that way). Another good strategy, against P/D thieves at least, is to try to block/dodge his Cloak and dagger and interrupt his healing (which cloaks him). Denying stealth to a thief, no matter what build, is probably the most effective counter against it.
Cloak and dagger → block (staff 5, sword block) / dodge
Hide in shadows → interrupt (pistol 5, shatter 3)
Shadow refuge → Greatsword 5, focus 4, and quickly remove him from the aoe (if he’s in there for more then 2-3 seconds, don’t bother)

These are the most used ways a thief will stealth, cloak and dagger being the bread and butter. The other ways you can’t counter and are more situational

I like thieves. They are the last remaining class that dares to 1vs1 me in wvw. Everyone else I have to chase.

Zid.4196:

I like thieves. They are the last remaining class that dares to 1vs1 me in wvw. Everyone else I have to chase.

I think it’s more the fact that Thieves tend to shadowstep right to you and start initiating their combos, then promptly die to Confusion backlash: at least that’s what tends to happen when I encounter Thieves in 1vs1 WvW. It’s not so much they don’t run, more the fact that they don’t get the chance to run. >.>

@Embolism… tested the 18 stacks of confusion today by 1 Iduelist and 2 clone + mindwrack and feedback? Its utterly bugged and extremly op.

My most recent iduelist+ethereal field showed it’s not bugged anymore.

Not that it really matters. With confusoin doing double damage in W3 right now you don’t need anywhere near 18 stacks to shred someone, even if you arn’t specced condition damage. If you are…just lol. Condition mesmer with 8 stacks of confusion = about 2800 damage per activation. A thief will kill themselves in about 2 seconds with auto attack damage.