Guild Wars 2

I need help fighting thieves in PvP. Since the last balance patch I am completely at the mercy of thieves as a chrono.

Any constructive advice is greatly appreciated.

Run Forest, Ruuuun! If an actual thief is targeted on you, your best option is kiting. Try to get to teammates so they can help you out. Then burst them when they aren’t expecting it/targeted on you so that your in charge. Distortion, blurred frenzy, and blink to loose line of sight are your friends.

An example of tricking a thief by kiting is funning towards the center at Foefire. However, right before you jump off, summon a clone with illusionary leap. Then, swap when you jump off so that the thief follows your clone to the bottom of middle while your on top. However, this is just an example. There are other ways. Sometimes, the key is just to simply trick or mind kitten with them. This is also one of the reasons I find stealth useful with thieves. If your running gs, you can also use illusionary wave to interrupt their stealthing. This can really throw them off.

Xstein pretty much sums it up. If you’re better than the average thief you will still be able to dodge the steal+precast BS but you will have a harder time vs them. Try to duo queue with someone on TS who you can ask to help you out when you get a thief on you.

Fighting against thief is definitely the biggest challenge for mesmer. It is just so easy to tunnel vision and get instagib by thief when you used most of your cool downs in middle of a fight.

The key is map awareness. Always keep an eye on where thief goes. If thief doesn’t show up, always assume you are in danger.

When you feel thief is probably chasing you, do random dodges to throw him off. Move to positions he can’t straight teleport on you. It usually comes down to mind games against thief, you need to guess when they gonna burst you rather than just play reactionary.

As a teef, typically mesmer/chrono isn’t always easy (esp evady condi ones). Clones can/will get in our way and the reflects/chronophantasma bursts can really hurt. For condi mes: don’t stealth until we do…about a few seconds after we do (if you think we get the full 4 heartseekers off in our blinding powder, wait about 5sec before stealthing yourself.. Always expect us to start with steal/backstab once we are finally able to target you. Keep your clones up as often as possible and time the shatters. (actually this applies to both DPS and condi builds lol). Its also a good idea to stand in our blinding powder circles often, this limits us on how much stealth we get and possibly forces us to use more initiative as we will move away, BP again and stealth twice (wasting a lot of initiative).

If you are NA and want to practice, hit me up in game. Chrono/Mes is one class I want to learn to fight better.

Use condi meta build but trade shield for another sword.
You will lose shield skills that are quite strong but you will gain a lot . with sword sword you will not feel the nerf to Illusionary reversion. It is easy to shatter 2 phantasm and a clone and so you can hit 2 times in a row with 3 illusions. This will give you a reduction on skills and 2 second reduction is bad in shield skills is meaningless. on sword skill (max cd 16 second) is quite huge ( your block has 9.5 secs ) . Usually thief will engage you , will make you use your shield, disengage and attack again. He will have cleaned all his condition and you will have burnt your shield skill. With sword offhand the music is really different becouse the cd is really short …. so when he will re engage you , probably you will have block ready again. I know that strong players say that meta will not change but now, for me , after illusionary reversion nerf, sword offhand synergies with mesmer traits much better . Sword offhand is not better than shield but with this build i find sword offhand much more effective. Shield 4 is great and you can block twice but it has an huge cd and you can use the second block only few second after the first. If you block an attack, i disengage for 8 seconds and go back probably your shield will be on cd … with sword offhand you will not have this problem.
Shield 5 is really strong but it does not create illusions . I can “waste” sword 5 to create an illusion for shattering even if i don’t get might becouse it has a low cd (16 secs ) but i can not waste “shield 4” for create a phantasm for shattering … so in my opinion if you go against a thief with sword sword the music is really different . For a not pro player like me , shattering with sword sword is much easier now than with shield and this means 2 things : more damage and much more sustain with restorative illusions …
THis is the build i am using. I don’t use moa becouse i often waste it …. but you can use moa if you prefer .. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQJQ8cncfClphdoB2qBEgilnj6sACgDreQP0FFdx+gDA-T5QHAB3XGAm9HA4oAAA

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

As a teef, typically mesmer/chrono isn’t always easy (esp evady condi ones). Clones can/will get in our way and the reflects/chronophantasma bursts can really hurt. For condi mes: don’t stealth until we do…about a few seconds after we do (if you think we get the full 4 heartseekers off in our blinding powder, wait about 5sec before stealthing yourself.. Always expect us to start with steal/backstab once we are finally able to target you. Keep your clones up as often as possible and time the shatters. (actually this applies to both DPS and condi builds lol). Its also a good idea to stand in our blinding powder circles often, this limits us on how much stealth we get and possibly forces us to use more initiative as we will move away, BP again and stealth twice (wasting a lot of initiative).

If you are NA and want to practice, hit me up in game. Chrono/Mes is one class I want to learn to fight better.

As a thief, how do you think this patch changed the matchups between thieves and mesmers? Mesmer sustain took a decent hit without much being given back, but thief did lose some damage and some endurance regen.

OriOri.8724:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

As a teef, typically mesmer/chrono isn’t always easy (esp evady condi ones). Clones can/will get in our way and the reflects/chronophantasma bursts can really hurt. For condi mes: don’t stealth until we do…about a few seconds after we do (if you think we get the full 4 heartseekers off in our blinding powder, wait about 5sec before stealthing yourself.. Always expect us to start with steal/backstab once we are finally able to target you. Keep your clones up as often as possible and time the shatters. (actually this applies to both DPS and condi builds lol). Its also a good idea to stand in our blinding powder circles often, this limits us on how much stealth we get and possibly forces us to use more initiative as we will move away, BP again and stealth twice (wasting a lot of initiative).

If you are NA and want to practice, hit me up in game. Chrono/Mes is one class I want to learn to fight better.

As a thief, how do you think this patch changed the matchups between thieves and mesmers? Mesmer sustain took a decent hit without much being given back, but thief did lose some damage and some endurance regen.

You can just go watch sinderener stream. He beat misha(on condition chrono) several times in a row. He said he couldn’t do that before the patch.

Yea that’s what I figured. Thieves were technically nerfed, but the sustain of other classes was nerfed substantially harder than the hits to thief damage.

Don’t forget thief sustain was also nerfed as well as its damage.

OriOri.8724:

Yea that’s what I figured. Thieves were technically nerfed, but the sustain of other classes was nerfed substantially harder than the hits to thief damage.

Luckily, I think condition mesmer is still a pretty risky 1v1 for thief. They are much better off +1 us. It takes like less than 1 sec to kill a mesmer if thief does a successful ambush attack. If they 1v1 us, it will take them maybe a minute and requires tons more mechanical skills to win.

OriOri.8724:

Bigpapasmurf.5623:

As a teef, typically mesmer/chrono isn’t always easy (esp evady condi ones). Clones can/will get in our way and the reflects/chronophantasma bursts can really hurt. For condi mes: don’t stealth until we do…about a few seconds after we do (if you think we get the full 4 heartseekers off in our blinding powder, wait about 5sec before stealthing yourself.. Always expect us to start with steal/backstab once we are finally able to target you. Keep your clones up as often as possible and time the shatters. (actually this applies to both DPS and condi builds lol). Its also a good idea to stand in our blinding powder circles often, this limits us on how much stealth we get and possibly forces us to use more initiative as we will move away, BP again and stealth twice (wasting a lot of initiative).

If you are NA and want to practice, hit me up in game. Chrono/Mes is one class I want to learn to fight better.

As a thief, how do you think this patch changed the matchups between thieves and mesmers? Mesmer sustain took a decent hit without much being given back, but thief did lose some damage and some endurance regen.

Condi chrono’s were usually a challenge before and even after the patch (I find condi chronos are verbally kitteny anyway, as my stream has witnessed several times…more-so than any other class). PvP is one thing (There is no Dire or Trailblazer stats in PvP nor food/consumables so condi builds are not as “tanky” in PvP as in WvW). Because of this you can’t truly measure a good fight between Daredevil and Condi Chrono (unless the fought in a guild arena with the chrono using tanky condi stats then I take this all back).

I went up against probably 4-5 diff condi chronos (1 in kodan form…weird seeing ppl running around with that although I heard some classes use it as it can hide certain attacks/bursts) and came out on top about 70% of the time vs before was probably about 80-85%. Its all about watching for the shatter condi burst and not wasting a cleanse on a minor stack of condis…mind you I also don’t run bandits defense either so I sometimes forget I need to be on high alert.