Guild Wars 2

There are good thieves and better thieves and most specially the annoying thieves! These are the ones that doesn’t really fight and will hide 90% of the time. How do you guys handle this type?

I only have 1 toon, which is memser, so I don’t know what skills they are using. I am only familiar with the shadow refuge. I don’t know how many stealth skills they do have that made them stealth 90% of the time.

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Actually i try to put up 3 phantasms and keep them up, as soon as they show their face, the phantams hit like a truck. Works very well with my tanky power build.

sPvP? WvW? What type of build and gear are you using? Weapons? If you are glass cannon you can pretty much kiss it because some will kill you in three seconds flat. Even if you teleport or use Distortion they just re-stealth and re-do it while your CDs are still ticking.

That kitten me off so much (7k backstabs?!) that I went full Toughness which, coupled with Chaos Armor, makes me giggle at their attempts. Now my bane is condition damage since my HP is minimal but Arcane Thievery and Decoy and a multitude of clones helps.

@lordbachus – yes that is a good one, I also keep up as much illu as I can.

@Kanto- It is in WvW, never saw thieves like those in sPVP thank God. I’m using “Immortal Mesmer” by pyroaetheist, it’s a pure defensive counter build.

I don’t have problems surviving them, they can’t kill me but i can’t kill them and it’s really getting on my nerves. They don’t fight, they just hide. I hope there’s something we can do to put away their stealth buffs using some of our skills, I don’t know.

if you’re against a thief using an offhand dagger then they’re probably using “cloak and dagger” on your clones to essentially stealth whenever you like. Not worth fighting a good thief, you’ll never kill them.

I never seem to have too much trouble with thieves due to how squishy they are. If you see them stealth, get 3 clones up, as soon as they come out of stealth and start laying into you press f4 for invulnerability.
Now they are attacking but doing no damage which they wont realise for about 1-2 seconds. At this time i usually use mirror images, illusionary leap, blurred frenzy and then shatter. Sometimes i just shatter without using blurred frenzy or if i see them go invis before blurred frenzy has finished i shatter aswell. This usually downs them pretty quick.

If they are not dead and the fight continues, switch to staff, lay a chaos storm at your feet, Now if he attacks he takes damage and his first attack will be blocked, use phase retreat to teleport away, use blink decoy etc and just generally be a pain whilst trying to do damage using phantasms and shatters. If he’s still not dead switch to sword pistol as your skills should be recharged now and you can rinse and repeat.

To be honest it never usually lasts that long. The only time it ever does is when they go invis and run away for a bit and come back. But by then you usually have enough time to heal up and all your cooldowns are back.

just be clever, use the environment to confuse. I always blink in the opposite direction the player is facing therefor he just sees me disappear and he won’t see me reappear in his field of view, i usually try and blink and go behind a rock or something while he tries to figure out where i am. Remember you can go invisible too! so if you see him go invis, use decoy or mass invisibilty to give you time to setup, get your distance or just confuse in general.

Goodluck!

The main thing that screws Mesmers vs C&D spamming thieves is the dodge roll clone. Even if you go to dodge C&D they will hit your clone. To deal with this you got to manage your F1-4 and try to use them every time they try to C&D. Also, don’t use clones outside of a burst combo.

Especially vs P/D you can’t leave phantasms up they just get free stealth. Try to just ranged auto attack them until they come in for a C&D then dodge + one of the shatters at the same time. F1 whenever possible they will get hit by both your clone and you and hopefully loose 6 init. prioritize F1, F2, F4, F3 in that order . F3 will not cause them to lose any init, it will just stop them so use that last, then repeat with whatever is up. If you are sword, you can also just swap to BF when they come in for a C&D. Just do it early because C&D hits from farther than you would think due to latency and BF has a tiny wind up time to invulnerably. This isn’t ideal because you are locked out of range for 10 seconds and you don’t want to be melee since you won’t know when to time dodges of C&D.

Hopefully you have a GS or focus to knock them out of refuge and you should have a decent shot. If I know there is a pesky troll thief and I see him coming, I’ll actually quickly just turn off the dodge clone trait because it makes them 10x easier.

The best way to fight a thief is to play a thief. Sure people here can give you suggestions but nothing beats first-hand experience. Learn their moves. Learn the cooldowns. Learn the traits. Read the thief forums to see what the most popular strategies are and, more importantly, why people use them. Then you go back on your mesmer and do what mesmers do best: mindscrew the hell out of your opponents!

@Jofu, mobility, stealth and fast reactions help alot. So do good understanding of your opponent. Find some thiefs to duel for a few hours, helped me tons. Can ask around in spvp forums.

Also, my first tutorial is alot about thiefs. After the first part you come to the wvwvw part (action) . Its mainly thiefs I combat.

This is another a bit older vid about thiefs I made. Might also be helpfull but I think the first build Is alot ore effective versus them.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nwriBEuIiVQ&feature=plcp

/Osicat

I don’t have much experience with the Immortal Mesmer Build but I play Condition Tank and rely on timing shatters well to kill them and focus on outlasting them by reflecting damage with feedback and keeping their bleeds off me with Null Field.

You can see a few fights against theif players in this video one is a perma stealth build and shows how I deal with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT9HxcoBE4M

for me it works like this
(glamour build staff+scepter/focus)

1. they go invisible to backstab u
-staff nr 4
-cast nullfield on the ground

2 they attack (3 stacks of confusion+ all the stacks they get by entering and exiting glamfields)
- now as they become visible for a second u have 2 options:use feedback for extra glam confusion, or pull’em with temporal curtain and cast focus 5)(I prefer to hold on to my temporal curtain though)

3. they shadowrefuge
-whenever u see the little hut, if u have temporal curtain, u can pullem out of stealth (in order to stay in stealth, they have to stay in that circle for a few seconds, put a temporal curtain down and knockem out of it before hut dissapears) u will meet a very confused thief right there.

4. Now it’s time to attack him directly as u can target him, let him taste your strongest attack (I either use my clones and shatter them in his face or cast veil which is a glam field for extra confusion stacks plus again focus nr 5)

5 . now he will stealth again and attack right away, ill cast my chaos storm right below my feet and use staff n2 to gain distance as i know that he is always close by my back(if u have portal equipped, cast a portal and take some steps forward and when attacked cast portal and port right behind him)

6 cast nullfield below your feet again when he stealths so the conditions he uses to stunn u and all his boons are gone when he enters the field

In my case my confusion stacks are up to like 17 if it is a bad thief XD and every move he makes costs him around 1.5 to 2k dmg

tips for other or the same build:
i usually cast hounds of baltazar when i see a thief right away, as they tell me exactly where he is at, same with clones

- cast veil, chaosstorm when u know he is close by right below your feet
-feedback will reflect his ranged attacks quite well
-save your dodges till u are on cooldowns
-thief will always try to come very close to u and can stun u, so nullfield is quite helpful
-if he is in stealth and u have stealth skills equipped, use them and move randomly
- if u have blink equipped:If he is a little further away from u and goes invis, stand still and play bait for 2 max 3 sec and then blink away as far as u can

There is no reason to kill a thief who cant kill you. you both bunkered to the point where you cant burst. so you are just playing hide and seek pretty much. if you kill a thief by putting 17 stacks of confusion on them and then they kill themself …. you could have done anything to kill them at that point because they are dumb.

I shoot them with my princess wand and for some reason it makes them run away :/

In WvW if i can catch the thief beforehand (which can be troublesome, cause if the thief doesn’t wanna be seen it will make sure) i tend to run my glamour build, with my scepter/focus and staff i throw down staff #5 at my feet, throw down a glamour field ( as in my experience most thieves i run into are /D thieves) this gets blind up, confusion (can help make that CnD or Backstab be a miss) than once i see that thief pop up again, i toss down dual portals, focus #4, detonate the skill, pull the thief through both fields. This stacks on the confusion, hit #5 focus skill after you use the pull to hit them with #3 scepter to add more confusion.

This build/set up has alot of control, confusion, a good block, lots of blind so you can have lots of fun

In my experience, this tends to either force the thief to die to confusion (if they spammed) or to stealth and retreat. Always a good ego bruiser to the thieves who expect an easy kill.

Hope that helps a little, this is what I learned to do against them through trial and error.

Good luck, mesmer can be absolutely fun

I have had little trouble with thieves the last few days since i have my new build.
Finding the right build is an continues process so even my current one will probably be very different again in one month, but i am quite satisfied that thieves don’t trouble me anymore (aside from a GC bs thief that runs into me during a fight offcourse, not much to do against if your things are on cooldown).

There are many ways to counter thieves as a mesmer as you can see from the replies from other people.
But going for a balanced build helped me quite a bunch.
With 2000 P, 1600Prec, 2000 T, 1400 Vit, Staff/GS i can soak up a bunch of damage, avoid a lot of damage and still easily put out enough damage to down anything GC pretty fast.
Added to that i have -56% condition duration from runes + food.
It makes my encounters with permastealth p/p bleed thieves quite amusing

In staff mode you have chaos storm to cast on yourself, if the thief is in melee he will get his plans screwed. You will also have chaos armor for atleast 10 seconds, it really helps more than what you at first may think, having a thief proc blind or cripple during his hs spam shuts him down.
You also get your phase retreat on a very low cooldown, even better when traited, and if you use a staff it is preferred to be traited so that staff 4 and 5 have a lot shorter cooldowns.
The warlock also hits like a ton of bricks against any thief.

In GS mode you can cast your berserker, it wil cripple the thief, hurt him bad, or make him waste a dodge. It will also hit the thief while you cant see him yet.
Your iWave is to be kept in reserve until he puts down his shadow refuge to knock him out.

lordbachus.6091:

Actually i try to put up 3 phantasms and keep them up, as soon as they show their face, the phantams hit like a truck. Works very well with my tanky power build.

This has always worked for me. Lose the Clones and get as many Phantasms up as you can.

If a thief dares to jump me, I have my body trained to instantly hit staff 4 followed by staff 2. This gives me chaos armor to mitigate any chain he is doing and puts some distance between me and my attacker. I also have a phantasm up and look to cast a 2nd if he’s visible. After that, I drop chaos storm at my feet, switch to my sword/torch, sword 3 (leap giving chaos armor), when it snags him i switch locations with the clone, sword 2 and mind wrack. At this point, he’s wondering what just happened to him.

I run both a crit dmg and a condition dmg builds with the same weapons (only different attribs) so these are always available to me to use.