Guild Wars 2

As a zerker shatter mesmer, I have a lot of problems in WvW fighting Sword Dagger and Pistol Dagger thieves. I hardly ever land shatters on a sword dagger thief, or survive the bleeds and poison from pistol dagger thieves.

Any tips on how to beat them in 1v1 situations, because currently that’s all I can fight roaming in WvW, which is extremely sad, but also very true.

Fighting thieves as a shatter mes in general, at least for me, is finding the right moment to hit F3 and then burst as fast as possible. Which can be quite frustrating against thieves.

S/D: Slippery as kitten. Pay attention on their infiltrators strike, and push the fight to their return point if possible. This way you’ll negate their (one of their) get-out-of-jail card. What weapon sets are you playing? A well placed immob/stun can end the fight pretty fast in your favour. Don’t let them take the lead, play aggressively. Personally, I prefer GS/S+X builds against this type of thieves (torch saved my butt so many times in WvW), but I can see how a well placed Chaos Storm might also work its magic.

As for P/D thieves;

A sad thing is a p/d mobility…double ranged shatter can keep backstepping/circling and baits easier,negating sneak attack is easy dodge when the first hit land, if you run energy sigils you can blow a evade for a paper shield.

Don’t be head on this is not conquest let him come to you,he has to..when in melee range he will have to CnD to maintain stealth…shatter… he won’t see the clones running to him. Honestly in wvw you shouldn’t lose to p/d you may not kill him tough or it will take longer.

I heard it was OP but the sample fact that CnD and sneak attack can be easily negated questions the community mental state or do they all turn to AI at the sight of stealth. Don’t spam with confusion on you have limited stealth and safety as well.

Sagat.3285:

Don’t be head on this is not conquest let him come to you,

I cannot emphasis this enough. The one thing you can be assured of fighting a sword or dagger thief is that they’ll come to you. As a mes you can set up for a trap.

I’m trying a zerker build in wvw recently (GS/S-S) and I find that in 1v1 situations vs thief it helps having 3 anti-melee options.

If I’m aware there’s a thief around, and he’s aware of me and moving in to intercept, I usually do this (start in S-S set):

• S-4: when the thief saw you and stealthened, count to 2 then activate it. Most of the times they’ll waste their opener on that.

• S-2: activate it right after the thief opened

• dodge (just because)

• switch to GS

• GS-3 in the general area of where thief was last seen, or GS-5 for the interrupt and the breathing room if he’s still on my back.

Most thiefs are now in stealth or trying to reset the fight, but if the above go well, you have a good chance of fighting them off.

Also have to remember if the thief doesn’t want to be killed he won’t, but at least you will have survived, for now.

S/D and P/D are drastically different builds, but both very difficult to fight.

P/D is conditions. It has high condition pressure, high survivability from shadow arts, good mobility from shadowsteps, and usually runs full dire. They are very difficult to kill. Quite honestly…it’s not possible to kill one solo if they know what they’re doing. They just have too much disengage potential. There are some things that help though.

You need enormous amounts of condition removal. The condition load from these thieves is very difficult to deal with, so you just need to try and hang on until you can burst them. Note that a lot of their condition application is in the form of projectiles. You can use this to your advantage with reflects.

You have a short burst window right after they unload from stealth. The normal reaction is to play defensive and recover from the conditions, but you actually need to burst right now. Cleanse a bit with a mantra or something then immediately try to unload burst. Lastly, make sure you shatter even if they might not hit. Shattering removes CnD targets, and leaves the thief visible and vulnerable.

That’s pretty much all you can do though. P/D thieves are nasty.

S/D are easy to fight with the right setup.basically,I use s/s and staff getting swordsman and warlok up,while fighting it they somtimes get hit by them and they hit alot,+ I try to get chaos armor up most of the time(null field,chaos storm,chaos armor) using phase retreat combo.And try to watch they they do the drinking plasma animation and inturpt it.

Thieves missing Steal is basicly your only defense against them (unless they are awful), you need to learn the distance they can port to you from and dodge when they reach it. Then you have 20secs to pressure them and prepare for another Steal. If they hit Steal do not try to Shatter – it will be wasted (Prot is burried under too many boons) – keep illusions up and play defensively until the buffs have gone.

When it comes to dealing a finishing Shatter if you are close try to Daze them as you Shatter (this will remove their ability to 3 spam and avoid the damage for a moment).

Watch for Shadow Refuge if you are close try to knock them out but if they are good (you should be able to tell by how they have played so far) DO NOT try to blink and knock – you’ll be out of a stunbreak and a CC if they are just spamming dodge inside it. If they are rubbish though a blink and knock can win you the fight.

Can’t stress enough though – play around Steal.

Okay well clearly killing P/D is never going to happen. But at least now I know how to tackle S/D thieves a bit better now. Are there any builds make to hard counter them, I know interrupt’s work well.

DoomKnightMax.6592:

Okay well clearly killing P/D is never going to happen. But at least now I know how to tackle S/D thieves a bit better now. Are there any builds make to hard counter them, I know interrupt’s work well.

Are we still talking power spec? I tried condition shatter in pvp and I had good results even against celestial ele. Thieves usually melt SA just slow downs the processs a bit,toughness is useless against condi. I was on the receiving as condi thief vs condi shatter it’s works if you’re good(remember the mobility and melee aspect of p/d).

He lost because he didn’t negate enough of my condi but I think you can run dire instead of rabid with the spec. Confusion,torment,burn are a deadly mix,add poison and others and energy sigils it’s pretty good.

DoomKnightMax.6592:

Okay well clearly killing P/D is never going to happen. But at least now I know how to tackle S/D thieves a bit better now. Are there any builds make to hard counter them, I know interrupt’s work well.

P/D is a terrible spec. I’m not really sure why the prevailing wisdom in this thread is that it poses some kind of challenge. If you at least have cleanse mantra they’re completely harmless and even if you don’t it’s probably still possible so long as you have your wits about you. (Shatter generally suffers against condition specs without ledge abuse so this is something of a sad commentary on the state of condition Thieves. The spec sucks, kids).

S/D is a whole other beast, this is probably the most difficult matchup for shatter in the entirety of the game. WvW heroes tend to play Shadow Arts which isn’t that tough but Trickery/Acro or Trickery/CS or Trickery/DS is a much bigger problem.

In any case they are 99 times out of 100 going to spec Trickery. The heart of the issue with S/D Thieves (and Trickery more generally) is that it relies far more on how they play than how you do. Steal is instant cast: it has no travel time, no wind-up and no animation. You can avoid it or you can fail to avoid it and the outcome will drastically affect how the game plays out. There isn’t a lot you can do, other than to play conservatively. One tip I can offer is to try and count out the 20 seconds between the last F1 (assuming you’re even still fighting) and then try to gain distance or use preemptive invulns/blocks. It won’t stop the proc but it’ll deny the plasma consumable. The plasma is a tremendous steroid so keeping it down if you can’t yet outright kill them is a must.

Here I used terrain, clone placement, and condi’s to manage a pistol condi thief. My build is hybrid damage.

Pretty much loading up a thief with condi’s is a good way to knock them down, and because of the way you can build condi it’s more forgiving vs thieves, and can accomodate good condi cleanse.

tetrodoxin.2134:

Fighting thieves as a shatter mes in general, at least for me, is finding the right moment to hit F3 and then burst as fast as possible. Which can be quite frustrating against thieves.

S/D: Slippery as kitten. Pay attention on their infiltrators strike, and push the fight to their return point if possible. This way you’ll negate their (one of their) get-out-of-jail card. What weapon sets are you playing? A well placed immob/stun can end the fight pretty fast in your favour. Don’t let them take the lead, play aggressively. Personally, I prefer GS/S+X builds against this type of thieves (torch saved my butt so many times in WvW), but I can see how a well placed Chaos Storm might also work its magic.

As for P/D thieves;

haha….i just loved ur image xDDD its just so real ..its was i did when i was owned by P/D already haha