Guild Wars 2

Hi,

I’m just looking for input on ways to kill a p/d thief.
If the P/D thief is good, i’ll most likely lose to him in a 1v1, unless he screws up badly or i’m lucky. My biggest problem is how they can cloak and dagger off our pets, letting them escape any situation. Also, as a trapper ranger, another problem i have is how they have no reason to step on my traps, because they kite.

One trick i have is to set the traps where my pet is, so when he needs to cloak and dagger he’ll step on my traps. After that, i’ll immediately switch pets and burst him down and it’s game over. That, is very hard to pull off though, as they have that healing skill and utility skills that gets them invisible.

This thread is dedicated to players sharing their knowledge on how to kill P/D thieves, i figure if we all share what we know, we can build a strategy against them.

AlexRD.7914:

Hi,

I’m just looking for input on ways to kill a p/d thief.
If the P/D thief is good, i’ll most likely lose to him in a 1v1, unless he screws up badly or i’m lucky. My biggest problem is how they can cloak and dagger off our pets, letting them escape any situation. Also, as a trapper ranger, another problem i have is how they have no reason to step on my traps, because they kite.

One trick i have is to set the traps where my pet is, so when he needs to cloak and dagger he’ll step on my traps. After that, i’ll immediately switch pets and burst him down and it’s game over. That, is very hard to pull off though, as they have that healing skill and utility skills that gets them invisible.

This thread is dedicated to players sharing their knowledge on how to kill P/D thieves, i figure if we all share what we know, we can build a strategy against them.

Use Spiders

Any other suggestions? I like using wolves.

Use a ranged pet. Always wpvp with them.

P/D Thief’s are not all the same build, some are direct damage like the 30/30 ones, some are Venom / condition. Some have condition removal when stealth and can also heal each time they stealth or/and use Venom.

Once they stealth start counting in your head because they will need to use 1 attack within 3 sec for the burst at which point you dodge. Keep an eye on bleeds, they stack them non stop so look at how much they hot for. Some will tick for +130 and some for much less!

At the end of the day he can just run away!

I would imagine using condition removals to counter these P/D thiefs. Healing Spring and Signet of Renewal might help but this kind of setup restricts your movements just because of Healing Spring itself as the only guaranteed condition removal. Up side is you get regen over time while that thief is busy doing their rounds in condition stacks/re-stealths.

You could also use a brown bear when Healing Spring is down to remove further conditions. That should give enough time for Healing Spring to finish its CD and be ready for re-use. Rinse and repeat I guess.

As for taking the thief down well…. due to their vast amount of stealths with no counter against it, your window of opportunity is quite low so surviving their bursts of conditions is more important than winning the killing blow. In my opinion.

But that’s just the general way of dealing with it. I’m sure people have something simplier.

With 5 BM you could always Wolf+F2 then drop traps on him!

Try and dodge their from stealth skill it stacks a ton of bleeds on you.

As a 30 point BM I use a pair of wolves + shortbow. You just need to lock out their skills for a few moments to kill one.

First I get close. I close the distance before I let my wolf attack because the chain needs to go precisely. The second reason being that when I switch wolves, I want to minimize the time it takes for my second wolf to close the gap. Also preferably I like my snow wolf to be out first; that way the second wolf can do a fear at the end of the CC chain.

Now the combo; I fire daze shot, cripple shot, watch the wolf do his a pair of big hits, last one being a knockdown. Then immediately I switch to the next wolf, and he will do a second knockdown immediately. If its my gray wolf out I will then do a fear as soon as the thief starts to get back up. My buffs are quickness, sharpening stone and Rampage. So that’s 6 seconds (I’m BM) of quickness + upwards of 15 bleeds + poison + 8k+ in wolf hits. Even if he manages to stealth away he won’t clean the conditions off him fast enough. I’ve popped enough thieves this way including P/D types.

Though its all situational. If they are packing a stun break or two the battle can become more protracted.

there is no reliable counter against P/D thief especially in wvw. Not only ranger but alsoall other classes. A good P/D thief is impossible to be killed 1v1 theoretically. Generally speaking GC thief or warrior has better chance against them. Have to say ranger is one of the worst class against them. but it doesn’t mean u have to die, just run away coz it will take pretty while for them to get u down, usually it’s long enough to run to help.

P/D as well as other thief builds are difficult to deal with just by virtue of the class. You constantly have to reacquire target on them after they’ve hit stealth and your pet has to begin combat again. You are going to be on the back foot of the fight by design. It takes a better player to beat a thief than it does to play one. That is just the mechanics of the class.

The pets attacking thieves after they’ve come out of stealth is my biggest gripe, sometimes it takes them a long time to decide they actually want to attack again and by that time the thief will usually just pop stealth again.

This is particularly difficult for me b/c I have a lot of my damage coming from pets on my current build. For you, I’d say make sure you are really amping up your condition damage and go full on trap ranger. Throw traps, 50% larger, conditions lasting twice as long etc. and you should have less problems. I know I didn’t have many issues with them as a full on condi/trap ranger. Happy hunting.

The biggest problem I have dealing with Thiefs is deciding which waypoint to use after the fight.

I see many comments here based on theory…..and a few that say they do actually beat Thiefs.

I am in WvW most of the time because I prefer it to PvE. I have watched countless fights between Rangers and Thiefs …..and like the Lochness monster, I have yet to see it, or a Ranger win. Countless times I have seen Thief vs 2 Rangers = both Rangers dead.(I watch those type of fights to try and learn something).

One time the Rangers were actually doing pretty good. Thief bailed with stealth and didn’t return. I guess that could be counted as a moral victory ?

I hope you use throw mud :O At least, the area on this is huge, and if he has to avoid it because you missed, hopefully you picked a good choke point. If this is wvw, I’d say just run away :P Not worth trying to beat him when it takes too long anyway.

The best strategy I can offer is to start counting when he disappears. Ranger is unfortunately one of the worst classes against thief, but I try to keep the range on the p/d, rather than trying to close distance to melee him, by the time you get there, he’d be gone.

I’ve been playing my thief since day one. The pistol/dagger build is extremely brutal. I recently modified mine for a large stacking uptime on might that really punishes people for staying in combat with me over a long time. Its more brutal then my standard p/d build.

The point is, I’m not afraid of rangers…. nor was I at any time. Its unlikely I’d be afraid of anything.

Some tips though;
1.) If your dodging all over the place, we can renew stealth with your pet; true. The trick is, if your pet dies, let him. Then continue dodging. The bulk of the p/d thief damage comes from conditions and sneak attack (the #1 pistol attack when we come out of stealth). If you prevent us from easy access to stealth it slows us down a little.

2.) Don’t use ranged weapons, I’m pretty sure ours is better ;p The worst rangers right now are the bow ones. Melee rangers can be absolutely brutal (I know I have one!).

3.) Your conditions are meaningless. My build absolutely sheds everything you can do. Yea we have a talent that removes conditions in stealth. My new one sheds bleeds/poisons/burns when i’m lower then 75% health. Nothing you could cast on me will stick. I use stealth to remove conditions, heal, and then exit it to hit you.

Sbow, spam 1…..works really great and finds thieves before they find themselves.