Guild Wars 2

The Topic basically says it all. It’s pretty rare if i win a 1v1. They normally have to be pretty bad or I’ve caught them off guard. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m doing something wrong.

I would be ‘really’ gratefull for contructive and helpfull comments. I am not complaining about how overpowered thieves are. I would just like to know my fellow Rangers ideas and tips on how to survive. I am always striving to be better and to understand my class more. Thanks!

some classes are just better against others. just avoid them if u can

I’ve set up my build with 2 immunities (protect me and signet of stone). Generally when a thief realizes he can’t heartseeker me to death he runs away.

So I’m not exactly winning, but I’m not losing either.

Would probably help if we knew what you were running as far as weapons and utilities go.
Generally they have so many gap closers that slows aren’t that great. Off the bat I’d recommend using lots of traps and just start pouring on the damage so they have to react to you. Stun and dodge when you can, and keep them poisoned so they can’t heal well.

Your Build:
The game is as much about builds as it is about combat. So first thing to do is look at your build, and see where it could use some improvements. What kills you most of the time; is it direct damage or condition damage? Do you do enough damage yourself? Your build is not only your skills, but also your traits, armor, jewelry, gems, signets, and so on. So go to the mists and balance your build.

Combat Patterns:
If you think your build is fine, then the next thing to do is look at patterns of your foes. Are they doing something repetitive? What can you do to prevent that? For instance, if you see a Thief spam Heartseeker at the beginning of every fight, then use skills like Signet of Toughness and “Protect Me”, to get through the initial damage burst. If he focuses on venoms, then go for Signet of Renewal. A lot of Thief makes the mistake of burning all their initiative out in a matter of seconds, but other Thieves are smart enough to conserve their initiative, so learn to read your opponent.

Your Pet:
The next is to look at your pet. Does it compliment your build? Do you need more defensive skills from a defensive pet, or is your defense so good that you can play with two attack pets? If you’re having a lot of problems with Thieves, then using a pet like the Snow Leopard makes a lot of sense, as it has a 7 second chill skill that both slows your opponents damage and movement speed. If your opponent is avoiding damage with stealth, then use pets that add condition damage like the devourers, to keep pressure on the opponent. Again; practice on NPC dummies in the mists.

I use 2 canines

SB/LB

The trick is having lightning reflexes rdy for their HS or PW burst and keep your distance

Thief Shortbow< Any Ranger ranged weapon without taking into account the pet

Its pretty much the old story of the Hunter vs Rogue

Who wins?

Will the Rogue be kited?

Will the hunter prey the Rogue without mercy?

My tips:

-keep your distance the best u can, 2 canine pets help alot with their CC

-have at least a stun breaker and a condition removal

-Dodge to win terrain and dodge his attack skills, any waste of initiative is very bad for the thief

-If his using Pistol/Pistol save ur dodge for the unload

-If he uses Haste, throw a interrup ASAP and get rdy to dodge, after this dangerous 4s the thief will either run for his life or die

Ranger vs Thief
Hunter vs Rogue
Marksman vs Assasin

This problem has been here since ever, trust me there are plenty of thiefs right now asking the same thing about rangers

I build fairly differently than most Rangers with 30 Wilderness Survival, 25 Nature Magic, and 15 Beast Mastery. Then when you add in all of my Knight’s armor and Valkyrie Weapons/Accessories, I’m rather durable with my Greatsword.

I enjoy doing the Eternal Battlegrounds jumping puzzle.
You know how there’s often 1 or 2 Asuran Thieves sitting at the top of the Pit room waiting to kill people? I’m the savior of those people.

Thieves are bursty. If you’re not equally bursty, then you need to be durable. Due to the initiative system, they will out-burst just about any class. Gotta wear them out, whether it’s due to inherit beefiness, evasion skills, or kiting.

The first and foremost thing is to make sure you have defensive utility skills, if you aren’t stacking survivability stats because you need a defensive button to press. Most people use traited signet of stone.

Second you have to identify what type of thief you are playing against. The 3 main types are dagger/******, Sword/Pistol and Pistol/Pistol.

-For Dagger MH, this is going to be usually a backstab build and heartseeker spam. These thieves usually have heavy amount of stealth/re stealth and you need to be aware if how much damage backstab can dish out. It’s important to look for when the thief uses haste, and try to use Signet of stone, or use knockback/evade during this time period to prevent most of the damage. Also make sure you use your heal skill early/preemptively to make HS spam do less damage overall. Also it’s important to stay mobile to make it harder for them to backstab you.

-Sword/pistol theives: This is going to be pistol whip burst, usually combined with hatse+devourer/basilisk venom. This is all about just not getting bursted down. Immobolize is very hard to deal with on ranger because we have kitteny condition removal options. However, if you have stone signet up you can block most of this stuff. If you don’t have stone signet, lightning reflexes can be helpful for breaking the pistol whip stun. If you get immobilized lightning reflexes will not do the backroll portion of the move, however it will still evade attacks for a brief moment. This also works with shortbow “3” skill, you will still be rooted in place but you will get some evade which can really help mitigate the damage if you have nothing else.

Pistol/Pistol: Just watch for unload and take defensive measures when you see it. Simply rolling works, line of sighting and anything else for that matter. This type of thief should be the easiest type to beat as a ranger.

I wish I could tell you how to “beat” a thief, but let’s face it you won’t kill any thief 1v1 if they know what they are doing. Best case scenario is you stuff their onslaught and they switch to shortbow and run away. Not much you can do about it really.

I would also recommend getting 20 points in wilderness survival, for the two minor traits (50% increased endurance regen) and 2 seconds of protection at the end of a dodge. Combine with hide in plain sight this will give you a huge survivability increase in pvp.

Thanks all for the detailed information. I’ve been trying tons of different builds since reading your comments and I have already seen results in 1v1s with thieves. I’m still losing more then I winning but I’m not getting rolled over like I used to.

I’ve been using Longbow/Shortbow mainly. I’ve tried most combinations of weapons but I kinda feels that going ‘toe to toe’ isn’t the best option. I’ve had some success with dual axes and the number five spell but it’s too easily interupted. A few good 2hander crits can be really nice and scare off a thief at times but meh.. Thoughts? I’ve switched out some utilities for ‘Protect me’ and ‘Signet Stone’. Which has been huge for burst!

I’m still pretty unsure about my actual build setup but I’ve tried to go all out defensive with 30 points in Wilderness survival, 25 in Nature magical and 10 in Beast Mastery. I still feel like I don’t fully understand my build or all my options but staying alive and is working out better then trying to burst them down before me.

Thanks again for the tips.

I had the same problem against theives. I found that what I was missing, was dodge rolls. I learned how to evade the first burst, then use signet of stone/protect me for a little immunity, and then continue to dodge and dps.

Timing the dodge rolls was really what changed the issue for me.

I run a similar build as sneakier it seems so what my advice is pretty much the same. I don’t have many issues with thieves as long I escape their first burst. Gotta be fast on that dodge!

Then just keep them slowed and kite. I find muddy terrain, SB3, SB4, and LB4 to be really useful. If they’re good they usually stealth and run, but often ,since many of them build as glass cannons, I’ll burst em down.

What I have noticed a lot of rangers doing, is when a thief uses Dagger Storm the ranger will keep attacking them, sometimes with QZ popped. This will kill you as Dagger Storm not only does decent damage it will reflect all projectiles. You need to learn how to spot this skill.

My personal way of dealing with thieves and I feel that this suits my playstyle quite well but would not a popular or easy way to do so. Judge the stealth, entangle when roots pop up, burning trap, stand in trap but out of melee range, pop QZ then go nato with all SB skills. If they get out of roots, quickly stun them with Para Venom from a spider pet.

This is my goto strategy and has a better success rate than failure rate.

If you want to even stand a chance vs a thief 1v1 you need to start by bringing a ultimate other then roots.

Build strategies vary but for me, running a strong condition based build(shortbow+sword/torch) I have no problems at all with thieves, I’d even go so far as to say they are the easiest class for me to kill outside of elementalists.

Zephyr+shortbow pretty much kills everything as long as you use it judiciously.