Guild Wars 2

I recently created a mesmer and have been levelling her up and playing a bit of WvW at lvl40 (scaled to 80 but obviously without exotic gear or top tier traits)

Anyway thiefs have been basically killing me without a chance to use decoy. Its basically me walking around then BOOM! I’m dead. check the combat log and all these massive numbers from CnD, Backstab, steal etc. I’m aware thiefs do high damage since my main is a guardian but normally I can go toe to toe with a thief until they stealth and run away.

Mesmers on the other hand seem to explode. So my question is how do people combat thieves? Most classes seem to build themselves around surviving a thief’s burst like I have my guardian. How do I build my mesmer to stop the burst from being so deadly but not so much as to stop me from doing damage. i.e just stacking toughness and vitality. I just want to survive longer than a second and actually have a chance of fighting back.

any suggestions from the mesmer community on builds, traits, skills, weapon choice, tactics would be much appreciated.. (and if your not wanting to give away trade secrets publicly feel free to message me) thanks.

I too have had this problem being not at cap and lacking a good mix of major traits there is very little we can do but avoid thief’s like the plaque.

However many suggest carrying a main hand sword on swap and using #2 Blurred frenzy gives you vital distortion and timed right can break a thief’s opener giving you time to use decoy, but i still against a high level and skilled thief it’s a case of only prolonging our inevitable death.

Someone else may have better advice though.

I guess you will get many answers how mesmer can own thief, which is basicaly true if you find the BAD one. If you find skilled thief who know what he is doing you will not survive(if he gets the jump on you). If it is duel, front to front, you can block/diversion the first burst and then it is lil more equal. But if you are traveling and thief surprises you, no you cannot reac as all damage happens in 1 second. All his attacks are qqueued before your responses, even if you manage survive steal/preloaded CnD and stun break venom, stealth will aply but backstab will hit you anyway.

But as i said, it depends on thief. As my main toon is thief, i have never ever met mesmer i couldn’t kill, using 10/30/30 build with massive stealthr egend, prolonged stealth. I met few who put really good struggle/fight but thiefe damage is off the normal scale atm with constant bursts (ever 3-4) sec.

All i can recomend is to travel with friends and apply team strategy. My typical strategy as thief is to spot target, even if they spot me, you can surprise them by shadowstep 1200, shortbow 5 900, steal 900 distance, and cnd/backstab, if i get jump it is always same… basilisk/preload cnd, steal, backstab, haste is overkill .

I am honestly unsure how to counter thief jump burst, all those ppl saying you hit deploy,dodge are wrong as good thief apply his combo actualy before you even move your finger to your own skill :P, you cannot even use block/dist. shatter self fast enough, just there is no time to react. The damage is aplied so fast and it is too big.

Only thing which helps is… observe, constantly scan area, never let thief to get jump, if you see them, they cannot surprise you. If they super fast appropach you with shadowstep, Sb 5 , hit stealth before they arive close enough for steal then aply your strategy

Some situational awareness is required when full glass.

With Toughness thieves are irrelevant as any other class. Mind you, having the best gear possible makes a difference in WvW.

What can you do? Well, one option is to learn WvW with tanky set – say WvW rares. More tank – more time to get what the heck is going on.

As for countering surprise cc in general you might try the VII talent in the Toughness tree.

Oh one more thing, if you manage somehow to survive the steal/CnD/backstab, mostthiefe then use repeated heartseeker as finisher, or use one whole sequance of autoattack (3 attacks) which is eactly when they can use cnd again for another burst.
Problem is that after the burst combo they can double dodge for the same result and be practicaly invulnerable till they land cnd again. I strongly sugest to use blink as one of the offensive/defensive skills, it helps alot

Get some toughness, that’s the first thing to do. The Thief’s damage is pretty much always direct damage, and your health pool as a Mesmer is high, so it’s not really worth getting vitality at early levels. Even just going 10 into the Chaos trait line will give you “gain 10 seconds regeneration at 75% health” and “3% reduced damage for each illusion you have up”. Condition damage can easily be taken care of by skills, if it even becomes a problem at all. Condition damage is pretty uncommon in Worlds PvP, mostly because it’s a lot easier to beat down doors with direct damage. But luckily there are other roles in Worlds PvP then banging on doors, like pulling enemies down from walls, scouting for incoming zergs, or running for supplies (portal is great for this).

Anyway, the first thing you want to do when a Thief attacks you, is teleport away. You aren’t going to run out of his damage range, so you need to use Blink, or Phase Retreat on the staff. You can also stun him or pull him away with Into The Void, but using teleportation is much faster. After getting out of the Thief’s initial burst range, you want to start creating clones to throw off his focus on you. Try not to dodge roll around too much, since that will distinguish you from your clones. Instead, you have to be brave and stand still until you can see the Thief going for you. When this happen, you then start to use stealth and teleportation skills like Decoy, Blink, and Portal. But you should only move when the Thief has spotted you. All of this will result in the Thief loosing focus on the fight, which means that you will either kill him because he’s too busy finding you to worry about his health, or see him run away from you because Thieves tend not to have a lot of patience. The Thief is also a burst profession, so if he’s run out of initiative juice, he going to be an easy target for you.

The best advice, though, is to play a Thief and learn the tricks, so you’ll know what to look out for. But generally, Thieves are pretty predictable.

Hope this helps.

Kasama.8941:

Get some toughness, that’s the first thing to do. The Thief’s damage is pretty much always direct damage, and your health pool as a Mesmer is low.

Mesmers Have a pretty high health pool don’t they? The fact Mesmer have High health is the reason not to go vitality, but you are right, toughness is a must if your worried about thieves getting the jump on you.

I find it really funny that every class has to trait to counter the thief :P

Mjk.7562:

I am honestly unsure how to counter thief jump burst, all those ppl saying you hit deploy,dodge are wrong as good thief apply his combo actualy before you even move your finger to your own skill :P, you cannot even use block/dist. shatter self fast enough, just there is no time to react. The damage is aplied so fast and it is too big.

Which is what I’ve been saying all along.
All these posters saying things like “lol you’re bad if you get killed by thief, you just dodge/invul etc” are delusional. Mesmer is based around active defenses, which require the player to actively avoid damage and that’s really hard to do when the enemy has invis and teleports, hits with massive burst. Even if first thief burst doesn’t kill you, they can invis several times, which makes active defense difficult because you can’t see when they are about to hit you to dodge. And they apply massive burst every time they pop out of invis.

Here’s what you do if you get jumped on by a thief: invis and run away. I’ll fight the thief if I see him coming, but even then it’s probably the hardest matchup, because almost all mesmer defense is active and thief is exceptional at circumventing that.

This is opposed to a class like Guardian, who has lots of passive defenses (armor, aegis, protection) for whom it makes little difference if they can see the thief or not.

djmckie.4876:

Kasama.8941:

Get some toughness, that’s the first thing to do. The Thief’s damage is pretty much always direct damage, and your health pool as a Mesmer is low.

Mesmers Have a pretty high health pool don’t they?

They have medium health.

Classes with high health: warrior and necro

Kasama.8941:

Get some toughness, that’s the first thing to do. The Thief’s damage is pretty much always direct damage, and your health pool as a Mesmer is low, so it’s not really worth getting vitality at early levels. Even just going 10 into the Chaos trait line will give you “gain 10 seconds regeneration at 75% health” and “3% reduced damage for each illusion you have up”. Condition damage can easily be taken care of by skills, if it even becomes a problem at all. Condition damage is pretty uncommon in Worlds PvP, mostly because it’s a lot easier to beat down doors with direct damage. But luckily there are other roles in Worlds PvP then banging on doors, like pulling enemies down from walls, scouting for incoming zergs, or running for supplies (portal is great for this).

Anyway, the first thing you want to do when a Thief attacks you, is teleport away. You aren’t going to run out of his damage range, so you need to use Blink, or Phase Retreat on the staff. You can also stun him or pull him away with Into The Void, but using teleportation is much faster. After getting out of the Thief’s initial burst range, you want to start creating clones to throw off his focus on you. Try not to dodge roll around too much, since that will distinguish you from your clones. Instead, you have to be brave and stand still until you can see the Thief going for you. When this happen, you then start to use stealth and teleportation skills like Decoy, Blink, and Portal. But you should only move when the Thief has spotted you. All of this will result in the Thief loosing focus on the fight, which means that you will either kill him because he’s too busy finding you to worry about his health, or see him run away from you because Thieves tend not to have a lot of patience. The Thief is also a burst profession, so if he’s run out of initiative juice, he going to be an easy target for you.

The best advice, though, is to play a Thief and learn the tricks, so you’ll know what to look out for. But generally, Thieves are pretty predictable.

Hope this helps.

This is exactly what i was writing about in earlier post. While i thank you for the advice and the OP probably also, the source of the problem is before you press the button binded to blink (even you already have finger on it) you drop dead :P Tho of course i agree than more vit/toughtness might help you in certain cases. But i tell you this, last time i had mesmer in WvW and not my thief, i got 9k hit by steal, 6k preloaded cnd, i reacted by pressing decoy and immediately dodge, … i had like 2k hp left after cnd, i got stealth animation and never got dodge as following backstab for 15!!!!!k finished me, bit of overkill tho.

This is where the problem is, the thief’s burst aplied in 1-1.5 second, fater when hasted. There is plainly no time to reac to the burst. All what can help is .. observe observe and observe, never let thief to get jump on you and preferably travel with friends:D

djmckie.4876:

Kasama.8941:

Get some toughness, that’s the first thing to do. The Thief’s damage is pretty much always direct damage, and your health pool as a Mesmer is low.

Mesmers Have a pretty high health pool don’t they? The fact Mesmer have High health is the reason not to go vitality, but you are right, toughness is a must if your worried about thieves getting the jump on you.

I find it really funny that every class has to trait to counter the thief :P

Yes I meant high, corrected it.

The Mesmer actually has a medium base health pool. Elementalist, Guardian, and Thief has 10k base health. Mesmer, Ranger, and Engineer has 15k base health. And Warrior and Necromancer has 18k base health.

The Thief is balanced out by being squishy and not having any real AoE attacks. So if the Thief wasn’t great at 1v1, it really wouldn’t be good at anything.

One of the biggest imbalances in regards to thief is the Mug trait that applies damage on steal. I’ve been hit for 6.5k before. This is obscene amount of damage, especially since the skill includes a teleport and is very likely followed up by another 5k+ hit before you can even react. It’s pretty sick.

Edit: and thieves guild elite gives thief 2 NPCs who hit for 4k each and just stealth and let the NPCs go to down on you. When you turn to assault the npcs he pops out of stealth with a backstab… gg.

Kasama.8941:

djmckie.4876:

Kasama.8941:

Get some toughness, that’s the first thing to do. The Thief’s damage is pretty much always direct damage, and your health pool as a Mesmer is low.

Mesmers Have a pretty high health pool don’t they? The fact Mesmer have High health is the reason not to go vitality, but you are right, toughness is a must if your worried about thieves getting the jump on you.

I find it really funny that every class has to trait to counter the thief :P

Yes I meant high, corrected it.

The Mesmer actually has a medium base health pool. Elementalist, Guardian, and Thief has 10k base health. Mesmer, Ranger, and Engineer has 15k base health. And Warrior and Necromancer has 18k base health.

The Thief is balanced out by being squishy and not having any real AoE attacks. So if the Thief wasn’t great at 1v1, it really wouldn’t be good at anything.

I have decided to correct ppl constantly spreading false informations about thieves. Thief can use sword = aoe, true hp on lvl 80 berserker thief is slightly under 12k. My thief is not full glass cannon 10/30/30/0/0 and is VERY far from squishy, it is all about l2p issue with thieves and their survevability. I am not sure how much you know about thieves but i play both and my thief aoe>>> mesmer aoe, just pure cluster arrow spamming with or without haste , or combo poison aoe arrow with cluster arrow for nice aoe weakness. Also thief’s shortbow’s default attack is bouncing between targets which could be considered as aoe.

Btw cluster arrow can crit 6k for me, but i am far from dmg cap of other thieves who reported 8+k cluster arrow dmg. Not bad when you can shoot like 3 in few sec with haste .

Hope this cleared few things.

This is exactly what i was writing about in earlier post. While i thank you for the advice and the OP probably also, the source of the problem is before you press the button binded to blink (even you already have finger on it) you drop dead :P Tho of course i agree than more vit/toughtness might help you in certain cases. But i tell you this, last time i had mesmer in WvW and not my thief, i got 9k hit by steal, 6k preloaded cnd, i reacted by pressing decoy and immediately dodge, … i had like 2k hp left after cnd, i got stealth animation and never got dodge as following backstab for 15!!!!!k finished me, bit of overkill tho.

This is where the problem is, the thief’s burst aplied in 1-1.5 second, fater when hasted. There is plainly no time to reac to the burst. All what can help is .. observe observe and observe, never let thief to get jump on you and preferably travel with friends:D

You should never take your eyes of the battlefield, and never stay in corners or hilled areas for too long. When you run around, always try to run at the highest place possible. This will make you able to see for longer distances, so you can see the Thief coming from a long way away. Also always use your left mouse button to look around when you are running. If you don’t use it, you get tunnel vision and become very easy to sneak up on from both the side and the back.

The times a Thief has bursted me down in Worlds PvP, I can count on one hand. And it has never been in 1v1 fights. My Mesmer is currently level 26 with 135 kills.

Mjk.7562:

I have decided to correct ppl constantly spreading false informations about thieves. Thief can use sword = aoe, true hp on lvl 80 berserker thief is slightly under 12k. My thief is not full glass cannon 10/30/30/0/0 and is VERY far from squishy, it is all about l2p issue with thieves and their survevability. I am not sure how much you know about thieves but i play both and my thief aoe>>> mesmer aoe, just pure cluster arrow spamming with or without haste , or combo poison aoe arrow with cluster arrow for nice aoe weakness. Also thief’s shortbow’s default attack is bouncing between targets which could be considered as aoe.

Btw cluster arrow can crit 6k for me, but i am far from dmg cap of other thieves who reported 8+k cluster arrow dmg. Not bad when you can shoot like 3 in few sec with haste .

Hope this cleared few things.

We are talking about Worlds PvP here, not sPvP. It’s a totally different game. There are a ton of bad players on Worlds PvP, compared to sPvP, because when you stick to zergs you never really learn to fight 1v1.

Kasama.8941:

This is exactly what i was writing about in earlier post. While i thank you for the advice and the OP probably also, the source of the problem is before you press the button binded to blink (even you already have finger on it) you drop dead :P Tho of course i agree than more vit/toughtness might help you in certain cases. But i tell you this, last time i had mesmer in WvW and not my thief, i got 9k hit by steal, 6k preloaded cnd, i reacted by pressing decoy and immediately dodge, … i had like 2k hp left after cnd, i got stealth animation and never got dodge as following backstab for 15!!!!!k finished me, bit of overkill tho.

This is where the problem is, the thief’s burst aplied in 1-1.5 second, fater when hasted. There is plainly no time to reac to the burst. All what can help is .. observe observe and observe, never let thief to get jump on you and preferably travel with friends:D

You should never take your eyes of the battlefield, and never stay in corners or hilled areas for too long. When you run around, always try to run at the highest place possible. This will make you able to see for longer distances, so you can see the Thief coming from a long way away. Also always use your left mouse button to look around when you are running. If you don’t use it, you get tunnel vision and become very easy to sneak up on from both the side and the back.

The times a Thief has bursted me down in Worlds PvP, I can count on one hand. And it has never been in 1v1 fights. My Mesmer is currently level 26.[/quote]

There are situations when you cannot costantly sweep area around you with your keen eyes, like when you are battling someone. That’s exactly when i usualy go down vs thief, i start dueling a person, poof – bad luck, insta gibed by roaming thief.

Mjk.7562:

There are situations when you cannot costantly sweep area around you with your keen eyes, like when you are battling someone. That’s exactly when i usualy go down vs thief, i start dueling a person, poof – bad luck, insta gibed by roaming thief.

But then we aren’t talking about 1v1. During fights I use my ‘look behind’ key a lot, though, and I also move around my target all the time, so I don’t stand with my back to one area for too long. However, the example you mention can be said about all professions really, the Thief is just better at sneaking and bursting, so you notice the impact that is has more.

as a mesmer you have different choices depending on the build.

as a rule of thumb, Distortion (F4) is your best friend when you’re going as an all out dps mesmer.

-with GS you can use skill #5 then #4 to soft CC him.
-with Shatter build it’s about effectively using distortion and diversion.
-with sword builds just use skill #2 and #3 mainly, skill #4 if using offhand sword as well.
-with domination builds, you have diversion, mantra of distraction, and signet of domination, which is quite a lot of CC.
-with heavy condition builds you’ll most likely have a scepter and a staff, you want to put as much confusion on the thief before he engages you, so he takes quite some damage, when he’s attacking you i advise use distortion, and skills like scepter skill #2, and staff skills #2, #4, and #5.

that’s my take on survivng thieves as a mesmer (i main mesmer)

feel free to ask.

Hello fellow mesmers
The thief counter really depends on the build you are running.
For example, if you are running shatter build with illusionary persona, as soon as you see the thief goes close to you in order to steal or vanish, you prepare yourself to hit Distortion (sword second skill or the last shatter skill). Either way, you will evade his/hers attack . The key feature is to apply your stun breaker skills ASAP. This means Mirror images (no casting time, quite useful against thieves) or Blink.
If you’re running full glass canon build (Legion build) then you do not need to wait for the thief to come close to you. Simply dodge roll or blink away as soon as you see him/her in range. This will occasionally prevent the thief from stealing or reaching you before his stealth expires. If the thief has the trait “apply daze when stealing” and gets you off guard then it gets tricky. Signed of midnight is a useful spell in this situation. It will break stuns and also blind your target, which if timed properly will make the thief miss his back stab (or his CnD).

However, take into account that the thief has a low health pool. A simple daze or stun, even cripple will do the job (Pistol skill 5, Diversion, Sword block ability, Mantra for 2 dazes +1 if speced, Signed of Domination even GS 5 ability, Temporal Curtain , iBerserker or even go stealth with Prestige → Totally confusing for the thief). The idea is that we have many abilities to survive and deal with such a class. I’ve tested many of them my favorite is (shatter spec with illusionary persona): Distortion, Mirror images, Mind wreck. Deals about 3000-4000 damage, scares the crap out of the thief and allows me to start nuking him.

Mantra of Resolve (or whatever the condition removal one is), decoy, mass invisibility, lots of dodge rolling, pistol #5. At that point it’s healing and whittling them down.

My main is a 80 Thief, my alt is an 80 mesmer (currently benched because of the illusion nerf).

First thing to survive thief burst in WvW: Level to 80 and get decent gear. Squashing lowbies is my main occupation when I WvW with my thief. When I see the green arrow besides the name I know that my chances to down or kill the player, even when I have to jump in a zerg, are quite good. You can’t and shouldn’t expect to survive a 1on1 against any level 80 character when you are level 40.

Second thing: Combat awareness and reaction time. If you are roaming alone you should see the thief before he starts his combo. Very few if any thieves will start combat from stealth as it always costs initiative or a CD to enter stealth which could easily be used to deal damage or escape the fight. So if you don’t see the thief before he attacks you you did something wrong.
In Zerg situations this is of course not always possible as there are many players around and a thief could more easily run into you stealthed. Here quick reactions are the key. Due to the culling problem it’s often hard to see when a Thief coming from stealth attacks you, you have to rely on the damage indicators. When big numbers float up, dodge or blink away.

From personal experience as a thief I don’t like attacking mesmers. Keeping track of clones and illusions is annoying (again, if you are 80 it’s harder to track you because that green arrow is gone). You always should have a possibility to stealth (I slot Decoy on my Mesmer). Produce some clones, stealth and try to get into an advantageous position. Stack conditions as most burst thieves won’t have many options to clear them. Cripple or daze takes away most of a thiefs mobility and gives you time to deal damage.

I believe that in a balanced 1v1 between thief and mesmer (40lvl vs 80lvl its obvious who wins) what matters most is whether the mesmer will manage to react after the thiefs steal. If u manage to “reset” the fight after steal then imo the mesmer has a much greater chance at winning a duel because thief has a much more limited resources in a fight, since his skills depend on initiative while mesmer can hold his own much better at a face to face duel. Thats why thieves try mostly to jump u quick and not need to start a skirmish (at least backstab thieves). So if actually the mesmer manages to stop the thief from insta-killing him then he gets the upper hand. How to stop him? I believe the most reliable ways are:
blink
Phase Retreat
shatter skill #3 (daze) with illusionary persona traited
shatter skill #4 (distortion)
blurred frenzy (distortion but less effective than shatter #4 since it roots u in place)

My personal preference is the daze shatter skill, since not only will daze him at the beginning and stop his attack sequence, but also will give u the time to start attacking him, spawn some clones and shatter or get some phantasms up or whatever

p.s. Any stealth skill is very unreliable to escape from a thief imo, because many tend to combine their steal+backstab with the venom that immobilizes u. In that case u will still take the damage no matter what. I prefer to keep my stealth skills (if any traited) for the duration of the fight to buy time for cds or create some more confusion

hope this helps

Kasama.8941:

Try not to dodge roll around too much, since that will distinguish you from your clones. Instead, you have to be brave and stand still until you can see the Thief going for you.

I am very much against the whole “pretend to be a clone” tactic. In small scale fights, especially 1v1’s, it is easy to tell the clones from the real Mesmer for a good player. This discussion isn’t about how to defend yourself against bad thieves (the ones that will fall for clones), it is the ones that will know that clones attack slow and don’t have an off hand weapon.

That is not to say that clones are still not useful, they can still take hits (position yourself with clones between you and your target, less useful against melee opponents). When they are going into their Heartseeker combo (hs-hs-hs-hs-hs, ad infinitum), if you invis then they will jump onto a nearby clone.

The whole “pretend to be a clone” strategy works wonders against people new to the game, will protect you against bad players, will add more targets to sift through in larger scale combat.. but in small scale combat you should never assume that anyone will fall for the clones… use them to intercept ranged attacks, and for damage.

thanks for the info guys. interesting reading. From what you have all said this is what I’ll do:

Sounds like I’ll run with a sword/pistol (for blurred frenzy (counter the thief’s opener) and the pistol stun) and a staff for (2,3,4,5) which I’ll have to faceroll the keyboard to get them out as fast as possible (2 first)

use the heal which has extra heal for each illusion that is up since I will be having a lot of them up quickly.

spec 30 into toughness, get to lvl 80 as fast as possible and get a bunch of rare’s.

for my utilities I’ll use decoy, blink and mirror images and basically cover the field with constant illusions. Then (f4) distortion and then quickly create more for mind wreck.

and finally I need eyes in the back of my head. i.e don’t tunnel vision when moving around.

@ djmckie.4876 – yes it is a bit annoying that I have to build my character in a way to survive thieves but I believe if I can survive them I can survive against all the rest as well.

There is a trait that cause shatter effect to be duplicated on yourself.
If you are dropped by a thief. activate the blurred frenzy. The skill that summon two clones can be cast during that. so could mind wrack.
This combination inflict ridiculous damage instantly. If the thief is the glass cannon sort, it will likely die.

Before the last patch to win a fight against a thief was about poping your clones and stacking confusing + crippling + interrupts .. always been a hard figth but far from impossible..

However with the patch a well played thief will keep spaming blind, dodge and stealth therefore it is very difficult to keep the clone production at any reliable rate….

So, I’m sorry mate but if you want to kill a thief you better roll one or a guradian, mesmer are still a good class against regular players that can’t identify the mesmer, but any abore average player will kill a mesmer regardless of profession.

Hope this is a troll post, i’m a rank 30 sPVP thief and a skilled mesmer beats me 9 times out of 10. Best class in the game by faar. Got hit with 15k damage just yesterday.

edamber.1549:

Hope this is a troll post, i’m a rank 30 sPVP thief and a skilled mesmer beats me 9 times out of 10. Best class in the game by faar. Got hit with 15k damage just yesterday.

There are exceptional players playing every profession it doesn’t mean I trolled or your rank 30 means jackas.

Carkara.1846:

Before the last patch to win a fight against a thief was about poping your clones and stacking confusing + crippling + interrupts .. always been a hard figth but far from impossible..

However with the patch a well played thief will keep spaming blind, dodge and stealth therefore it is very difficult to keep the clone production at any reliable rate….

So, I’m sorry mate but if you want to kill a thief you better roll one or a guradian, mesmer are still a good class against regular players that can’t identify the mesmer, but any abore average player will kill a mesmer regardless of profession.

My guess is that you are a phantasm mesmer , dont do claims like this without al facts correct. Atm shatter mesmers produce clones like a gattling cannon but I see where you comming as I fought a phantasm mesmer last night who dint get a phantasm out for 1 min min while I killed hes friend.

overall I still claim thiefs can be killed, even good ones. Il add a smal thief section in my next vid posted today. Adding straegys etc in the post when I post video.

/Love Osicat

Thief section in start of my latest guide:

If I get Moa off, and assuming it is “THE” glass cannon thief build, then they don’t stand a chance!

If I don’t get Moa off, RUN!

until Anet fixes the rendering issues or that you can’t stealth to the point where you can only be tab-targeted for 0.5 secs…

HeeHee.5208:

If I get Moa off, and assuming it is “THE” glass cannon thief build, then they don’t stand a chance!

If I don’t get Moa off, RUN!

until Anet fixes the rendering issues or that you can’t stealth to the point where you can only be tab-targeted for 0.5 secs…

Finaly somebody gets the core of the problem with thieves:D

Torafugu.1087:

There is a trait that cause shatter effect to be duplicated on yourself.
If you are dropped by a thief. activate the blurred frenzy. The skill that summon two clones can be cast during that. so could mind wrack.
This combination inflict ridiculous damage instantly. If the thief is the glass cannon sort, it will likely die.

My main tactic if I’m running around and get jumped on by a thief, especially if it is the kind that spikes, is to use blurred frenzy, throw down a veil and get him out of my face. Then I switch to staff and get my clones up as quickly as possible. I like the idea of using blurred frenzy then mirror images immediately after, I’ll try that out.

If you’re running a low toughness-traited mesmer, I don’t think youshould be running on your own. The best advice that I can give that hasn’t already been mentioned is that you shouldn’t run around with a greatsword. If you get jumped, your only skill is the no.5 and you’re shooting in the dark if you try and pull that one off. Staff and sword are fine, and you can always switch back to greatsword when you feel you can put some good damage in.

You’ve got some good input here, just work on your skills and you’ll come out of it better off. Once you work out how thieves play, they’re not as threatening as people make them out to be.

Surbrus.6942:

I am very much against the whole “pretend to be a clone” tactic. In small scale fights, especially 1v1’s, it is easy to tell the clones from the real Mesmer for a good player. This discussion isn’t about how to defend yourself against bad thieves (the ones that will fall for clones), it is the ones that will know that clones attack slow and don’t have an off hand weapon.

That is not to say that clones are still not useful, they can still take hits (position yourself with clones between you and your target, less useful against melee opponents). When they are going into their Heartseeker combo (hs-hs-hs-hs-hs, ad infinitum), if you invis then they will jump onto a nearby clone.

The whole “pretend to be a clone” strategy works wonders against people new to the game, will protect you against bad players, will add more targets to sift through in larger scale combat.. but in small scale combat you should never assume that anyone will fall for the clones… use them to intercept ranged attacks, and for damage.

I only speak from experience. It might be that it’s easy to recognize the Mesmer from the clone when he is dodging and running around all over the place, but that is simply just a sure sign that you’re playing against a bad “clone player”. I’ve played against plenty of good Thieves, but they don’t kill me 1v1.

What usually happens is the Thief tries to burst me down (always with daggers), but only get me down to around 30% health before I get distance to him. At this point I already have a clone in play, but the Thief is still able to follow my movement, so I use this time to dodge and move round until all three clones are up. Then I change position, using tactics like teleporting behind the Thief while he’s facing me, or using decoy and roll behind him or to the side. I can also get the Thief to move around, by using AoE attacks like Chaos Storm or Feedback. During all of this I only use my 1 skill while the Thief is facing me, and then use other skills while I’m behind him or he’s busy attacking a clone. I only move if I can see he’s spotted me. All of this then goes back and forth; the Thief will get me down to around 30% health, and then will lose sight of me for long enough that I can heal back up.

If the Thief is at my level, I can also get him down to 30% health, at which point the Thief usually goes into stealth and runs away to heal. Some give up at this point, others come back and try again, at which point the above just happens all over again. A few die because they are too busy chasing me/clones, to keep track of their health (which is the whole idea of my clone build). If the Thief is much higher level then me, he might get me down to 10-20% health instead of 30%, before I can get distance to him. Most of the time when fighting higher level players, I will run away if he kills my clones too fast, but sometimes the high level Thief will run away from me, because they either get bored, or intimidated, by the never ending clones.

Thobek.1730:

I recently created a mesmer and have been levelling her up and playing a bit of WvW at lvl40 (scaled to 80 but obviously without exotic gear or top tier traits)

Anyway thiefs have been basically killing me without a chance to use decoy. Its basically me walking around then BOOM! I’m dead.

You’re level 40, with level 40 gear, what do you expect? Many people would like you to believe that you can be competative in WvW at low level because you’re levelled up to 80, but it’s simply not the case.

A little example, I tried playing my warrior, who is level 41, in WvW. I came up against another warrior who was likely lvl 80. My entire Hundred Blades totalled around 2000 damage to him. When he did Hundred Blades to me, every hit did around 1800 damage, for a total of over 12000 damage.

In other words, you really need to get to 80 before complaining about balance issues, as any 80 player will probably destroy you 1 v 1. Thieves are just more obvious about it due to their burst damage and their penchant for stealthing in and taking out squishy cloth-wearers…