Guild Wars 2

So I’ve just been giving my mes a spin in pvp, and while I was doing insanely well yesterday (must have just been bad players I guess), today I faced some glass thief who would just burst me down in practically two seconds if I didn’t use an evade quickly enough. How do you go about killing one?

get good at pop stun breaker. They use venom to stun you. If you get out of the stun with any stun breaker and get out of range they are toast. But you have to be fast with the stun breaker or you’ll be toast.

If you can manage to survive the initial burst (Stun Breaker + Blurred Frenzy, or something like that) and they stealth away for a second attack, Illusionary Riposte (Off-Hand Sword #4) and/or Illusionary Counter (Scepter #2) can be used to block Backstab / Cloak and Dagger, make a Clone, and deal a good chunk of damage.

Superior Runes of Air can also hit glass Thieves pretty hard if you get lucky with the Lightning Strike trigger. I’ve been fortunate enough to see a Thief crumple beneath a Lightning Strike and two ripostes, followed up by a shatter from the subsequently spawned clones. I don’t think that thief knew what happened by the time he was downed, either.

Sinaya.4201:

If you can manage to survive the initial burst (Stun Breaker + Blurred Frenzy, or something like that) and they stealth away for a second attack, Illusionary Riposte (Off-Hand Sword #4) and/or Illusionary Counter (Scepter #2) can be used to block Backstab / Cloak and Dagger, make a Clone, and deal a good chunk of damage.

Superior Runes of Air can also hit glass Thieves pretty hard if you get lucky with the Lightning Strike trigger. I’ve been fortunate enough to see a Thief crumple beneath a Lightning Strike and two ripostes, followed up by a shatter from the subsequently spawned clones. I don’t think that thief knew what happened by the time he was downed, either.

haha it’s great when that happens. And good post by the way

Some thieves have gotten wiser when it comes to their burst. A good portion of thieves will fake their burst at the start of the fight in order for you to waste your stuns or invulns. So just be wary of that happening.

I know many mesmers are inclined to try to pop mirror image and then mind wrack, but nowadays thieves aren’t going full gc and if they do, then they know how to prepare for the mesmer’s burst.

Honestly thieves aren’t easy, but you have to get your timing down. I know it sounds so cliche and it may not be what you want to hear, but timing is an underrated quality. Also it helps to be familiar with thief skills and what you may expect the thief to do.

Since you say a glass thief I would guess it was either a Dagger/Dagger or Dagger/Pistol thief. The latter would be more dangerous in its current state.

If I understood you right you are new to sPvP and was playing hot-join, which in turn mean tons of burst thieves following burst guides from YouTube. Therefore I’ll give you an answer to counter those thieves. It would btw help a lot if you could say what weapon sets he was using.

D/D The burst will be fast, but will also leave the thief vulnerable after its initial burst. He probably used basilisk venom, break this stun!! If you get stoned by a thief he is probably going to drop his burst asap. Some better thieves will fake this, as someone else has already mentioned, and make you waste your stun breakers and invulnerability. When I play my Mesmer and meet thieves I try to anticipate their burst and go invulnerable when it drops.

Now it’s your time to burst! If he is glassy then he will die extremely fast. Just be sure to dodge his CnD (pretty easy to see its animation, just YouTube it) and you will do fine. Use knockback, stun and invulnerability and he will drop easily.

D/P These guys can be a real kitten to fight. The opening will be the same, just break stun and stay alive, after thakittens a completely new opponent to fight against. They can stealth by dropping black powder (combo field) and doing a heartseeker through it (leap finisher). They also have access to backstab, interrupt, gap closer, blind and a ton of damage. Played right these are way more dangerous than D/D thieves.

After the initial burst you will have to stay out of his blind fields. If you see him drop one he will probably do a heartseeker through it – INTERRUPT THIS! That will have him waste 9 of his 12 initiative, which pretty much equals dead thief in hot-joins. Other than that it’s just to fight a normal fight; burst him, avoid his bursts. The only thing that makes this build different is its ability to chain stealth and run away. If you have the thief low on hp and he drops a black powder, move inside it. If he try to chain stealth by doing a second heartseeker through it, he will reveal himself and you can finish him off. The other option is he running away for 3-4 seconds before you can spot him again.

For more tips on how to fight thieves, there’s a ton of explanations in the thief forum. We have a tendency to get asked a lot about how to kill us.

Hope this helped

Glass thieves aren’t too bad to fight in spvp, survive the initial burst with distortion shatter or stealth with decoy, illusionary leap – blurred frenzy – mind wrack shatter – dead thief.
Try to play mesmer as an aggressive mobile class.

Thanks for the help guys, just played against some thief that used basilisk venom so I blinked away, next burst I used blurred frenzy and in between I was dropping phantasms, magic bullet stun, Gs knockdown etc. etc. and he died pretty quick after using up his stealth.

Since almost all thieves have a habbit of hitting Steal(traited with Mug) + cloak and dagger + basilisk venom as an opener, I like to start with the second his attack hits: Pop decoy + 1 Clone diversion, roll away, mirror images and Ether feast with 3 clones up, followed by casting chaos armor and swapping weapons to the scepter to be able to block the next burst, when he appears from stealth again I like to shatter my 3 clones with a cry of frustration and inflict a blindness with scepters block.

After thakittens just a matter of rotating skills and making sure you take full advantage of the phase retreat + chaos storm combo

As a shatter build that is ofcourse.

@Colesy. Hello.

Sadly I have no sPvP video in my guide bank but this vid show the moves etc I try use when facing a bursty thief. It work well for most of my builds With smal manipulations depending setup.

enjoy and hope it help.

/Osicat

colesy.8490:

So I’ve just been giving my mes a spin in pvp, and while I was doing insanely well yesterday (must have just been bad players I guess), today I faced some glass thief who would just burst me down in practically two seconds if I didn’t use an evade quickly enough. How do you go about killing one?

The question is not what we do the question is what were u tryin? with some Builds and Gearmixes there is simply no chance against a good GC thief. With others i would say it is almost a freewin.

pvp means 20/20/0/0/30? or what do u play

My love goes hand in hand with Shatter. With shatter u got good chances against them. Try not open with the casual immobalize mind wrack combination. Find yourself near the walls or a corner wait for him and when he comes open with immobalize dace .. now he have to use cc breaks or get massive auto hit dmg. if he get´s low enough just dodge in his direction (can´t move 360° because walls and corner leading him the escpape path) and shatter even he use stealth u will hit him (no escape).. if he survie and comes back to you. just give him the real dmg with mind wrack shatter .. maybe he´s still alive .. kinda boring but then use sealth wait short for coodlwons and repeat he will give up or die. JUST DONT RUN into the open field.

0:48 and 3:15

i know its not tpvp and no wall use but it´s about the mechanic. The Dmg is not that high at pvp but still enough for this mechanic use. Maybe u need one auto hit more but no matter what he will think about attacking u after u land this combinations.

The worst thing ever is wasting a backstab on a clone

Have fought some good mesmers in my time and the worst as a bursts thief is to realize that the mesmer just dodged away leaving a clone behind. This reveals the thief for 4 seconds (3 in WvW) and that is a huge problem for a glassy thief.

use moa>free win gc thief

drongas.4189:

use moa>free win gc thief

are u serious?..
u Think u got enough time to cast this enldess spell against a GC – as long he isn´t stupid he will cancel it or just kill u before u´ve finsihed it.

Even it works there is no way to symbolise that u are just out of chance, let me say – u already gave up when u use Moa i prefer a death in a good duell insteat of using this fight spoiling skill.

Phase Retreat on venom and trolol can begin.

Vash.1920:

drongas.4189:

use moa>free win gc thief

are u serious?..
u Think u got enough time to cast this enldess spell against a GC – as long he isn´t stupid he will cancel it or just kill u before u´ve finsihed it.

Even it works there is no way to symbolise that u are just out of chance, let me say – u already gave up when u use Moa i prefer a death in a good duell insteat of using this fight spoiling skill.

u rly need fight again thieves more. after his backstab, u have a couple sec for what u wanna do. he have debuff after stealth before use it again. if he turned u inda stone, u use decoy instantly. and if u see him just a 0.5 sec. but start cast moa, u cath him under hide. gc thieves not so cool guys as u can think, much more hard fight against surv thief. they use brain, gc thieves just spam skills and after when transformed into moa.
i use this skill just because i dont have a choise. tw is useless in 1v1. mi only for escape. i never dont run away so moa very good in my situation when enemy try escape from me or i just see gc thief

colesy.8490:

Thanks for the help guys, just played against some thief that used basilisk venom so I blinked away, next burst I used blurred frenzy and in between I was dropping phantasms, magic bullet stun, Gs knockdown etc. etc. and he died pretty quick after using up his stealth.

that’s pretty much what I do. Just counter his stealth with CC and he’s done.