Guild Wars 2

Simple question. How do you counter GOOD condi thieves? Because I can’t do anything against them. No “shocking aura” or “just outsustain them” answers please. I am not playing sustainy builds.

Stun them between their “dagger button 3” spammage

you also need good internet connection :P

Zilvereen.2091:

Stun them between their “dagger button 3” spammage

you also need good internet connection :P

No way I can stun them at that point. I don’t have any stuns/daze with no cast time. Any other way?

Tomiyou.3790:

Zilvereen.2091:

Stun them between their “dagger button 3” spammage

you also need good internet connection :P

No way I can stun them at that point. I don’t have any stuns/daze with no cast time. Any other way?

You don’t need to have no-cast time skills. You just time your skills to hit them during the animation of the skill, but when the evade part is over.

For example: Death blossom. Evades for 1/2 a second. My Bandit’s Defense kick is 1/2 second cast time. So I just kittenoon as I see him use death blossom, because I know it will hit him as soon as the evade portion is over.

You can also feel out when they’re going to evade and stun them accordingly. It’s actually pretty easy.

You can also hit them at the end of their basic dodge, but it takes a bit of practice to do, but is very rewarding. You basically hit your CC button right when the dodge is about to end. Latency will allow you to hit them right at the very end of the dodge.

D/D Condi is just a gimmick. Once you figure it out, not hard to beat. It’s actually a hindrance to their own team.

alchemyst.2165:

Tomiyou.3790:

Zilvereen.2091:

Stun them between their “dagger button 3” spammage

you also need good internet connection :P

No way I can stun them at that point. I don’t have any stuns/daze with no cast time. Any other way?

You don’t need to have no-cast time skills. You just time your skills to hit them during the animation of the skill, but when the evade part is over.

For example: Death blossom. Evades for 1/2 a second. My Bandit’s Defense kick is 1/2 second cast time. So I just kittenoon as I see him use death blossom, because I know it will hit him as soon as the evade portion is over.

You can also feel out when they’re going to evade and stun them accordingly. It’s actually pretty easy.

You can also hit them at the end of their basic dodge, but it takes a bit of practice to do, but is very rewarding. You basically hit your CC button right when the dodge is about to end. Latency will allow you to hit them right at the very end of the dodge.

D/D Condi is just a gimmick. Once you figure it out, not hard to beat. It’s actually a hindrance to their own team.

The evade is only 1/4 on Death Blossom, the animation is 1/2 total

Not really. Even if you manage to CC, he can just use any of 3 stunbreaks. I don’t see how and good thief can lose. Even if the opponent has mad CC, AOE and/or burst, a good thief will just stunbreak and SF away.

2 ways to beat them is ultra burst or you con tick them up an not attack.

the acrocondi thief has his best chances in 1v1 onpoint. especially if hes the opener.
your chances are doubled if u fight him in an open area as he only has full potential in close range and keeps himself alive by evading. more: there is no stealth.

as meta necro, war and mesmer the key is to strike only if u need to or u are sure it hits (immob, cc). every evade by thief means cleans, heal, vigor and swift. also pain response triggers if u hit them. so basiclly, YOU are the one removing thiefs conditions.
then theres shadowstep but if u make the condithief use this in 1v1 it means u have good chances.

For meta Rev, Thief, scrapper and druid it is madatory to rupt channeled vigor and watch for the imp.daggers/steal/dodge burst as this means 7 conditions in 1 sec with more then 15k dmg through poison only. if u manage to block/dodge the burst the thief needs to act more offensive by using the dd autochain more often. this means less dodges for him and more rupts/bursts for u. to better your chances watch bandits defense 12sec cooldown. place your bursts in between and dont give them access to the reflexive strike (chain). dont think the strike wont hit because hes not in range. i like to use reflexive strike midsteal to set up my impairing daggers or an autochain.
with some practise u can rupt death blossoms pre- or aftercast. if u manage to keep rupting db the thief has no chance at all.

Pay close attention to your own conditions and care my advice now. Besides the single conditons effect (slow, immob, cripple,..) every condition the thief applys serves another purpose: so u dont remove poison but remove the others. poison is the main dmg source and i apply all the other conditons so u dont remove it. Heres an example:
If i do a simple imp.daggers/steal/dodge combo, then opposing thiefs shadowstep, mesmers cleanse or necros passive proc will cleanse some conditions, but most likely not poison. care ur timing so u clean especially this one.

sorry to say this man, but a “good” condition thief will destroy most ele/tempests. Especially if they know when to use head shot, if it is landed often, it is gg for the ele.

Xtinct.7031:

sorry to say this man, but a “good” condition thief will destroy most ele/tempests. Especially if they know when to use head shot, if it is landed often, it is gg for the ele.

Condi thieves don’t run D/P in spvp

Know your match ups. If you own the point and can sustain, fight for the point. If you don’t and cannot win the match up concede the point and 5 v 4 on the map and force that thief into team fights.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

alchemyst.2165:

Tomiyou.3790:

Zilvereen.2091:

Stun them between their “dagger button 3” spammage

you also need good internet connection :P

No way I can stun them at that point. I don’t have any stuns/daze with no cast time. Any other way?

You don’t need to have no-cast time skills. You just time your skills to hit them during the animation of the skill, but when the evade part is over.

For example: Death blossom. Evades for 1/2 a second. My Bandit’s Defense kick is 1/2 second cast time. So I just kittenoon as I see him use death blossom, because I know it will hit him as soon as the evade portion is over.

You can also feel out when they’re going to evade and stun them accordingly. It’s actually pretty easy.

You can also hit them at the end of their basic dodge, but it takes a bit of practice to do, but is very rewarding. You basically hit your CC button right when the dodge is about to end. Latency will allow you to hit them right at the very end of the dodge.

D/D Condi is just a gimmick. Once you figure it out, not hard to beat. It’s actually a hindrance to their own team.

The evade is only 1/4 on Death Blossom, the animation is 1/2 total

The evade got buffed to 1/2 second. The 1/2 second time refers to the “channel” of the ability. It has an after cast as well, making it ~3/4 seconds.

Xtinct.7031:

sorry to say this man, but a “good” condition thief will destroy most ele/tempests. Especially if they know when to use head shot, if it is landed often, it is gg for the ele.

hahah real champs talking here

Zilvereen.2091:

Stun them between their “dagger button 3” spammage

you also need good internet connection :P

Death blossom Thieves should be running “Hard To catch” which automatically breaks a stun every 30 seconds. Then they should have 2 stun breaks, at least one of them is it’s self an evade. So saying stunning them between death blossums sounds good on paper…its harder then you realize. Actually the best way i have found to shut them down is from playing the build myself. Aside from steel they don’t really have an effective way to close the gap, so if they evade away from you and you have ranged you can whittle them down. Obviously on point in PVP this is not the best course, and so far i usually find my team wins when i stand on far and just draw multiple people there to kill me. I inevitably die, but i can pull two players away from the other two points giving my team the edge.

Tomiyou.3790:

Simple question. How do you counter GOOD condi thieves? Because I can’t do anything against them. No “shocking aura” or “just outsustain them” answers please. I am not playing sustainy builds.

First, never say “I can’t”. Second:

Kite. They need you to stay near them to stack condis. Think of the dodges as a pulsing ground targeted AoE and get out of it.

or

If a teammate has a sustainy build, let them fight the thief. Condis thieves don’t deal enough damage and die to random AoE hits between dodges to be any help in team fights. They need to fight 1v1 to be useful and they’re countered by all the meta builds that are best suited for 1v1, like druid, scrapper, and mesmer.

Honestly, kiting at a distance and auto-attacking is one of the best ways to kill a condi spam thief.

Deathrubber.3861:

Xtinct.7031:

sorry to say this man, but a “good” condition thief will destroy most ele/tempests. Especially if they know when to use head shot, if it is landed often, it is gg for the ele.

hahah real champs talking here

To be fair there are variations of condi-thief that do use off hand pistol. My variation uses p/p and sb. SB is the main weapon and p/p is for utility.

Pyriall.1683:

Deathrubber.3861:

Xtinct.7031:

sorry to say this man, but a “good” condition thief will destroy most ele/tempests. Especially if they know when to use head shot, if it is landed often, it is gg for the ele.

hahah real champs talking here

To be fair there are variations of condi-thief that do use off hand pistol. My variation uses p/p and sb. SB is the main weapon and p/p is for utility.

Yeah like me when I come against those that think they can stunt lock me from doing anything in D/D or P/P. The skill stun breaks and even having the trait stunt break that happens every 30 secs automatically, works wonders.

My only issue is rangers when running my hybrid condi thief in WvW. I don’t think I’d rely on stealth theif builds for PvP, but usually people make the mistake of moving trying to kill me in fights, when that happens torment can be nice with confusion hitting them too.

Just it all depends on who and their skill level in fighting any form condi class, especially condi thieves.

Warriors and engies are the hardest
kills

emkelly.2371:

Warriors and engies are the hardest
kills

assumed that the condithief and his opponents are skilled players, warriors and engis are definetly not the most difficult. try do take down skilled druids like frostball with this, its the hardest but doable. then theres engis and mesmer, both just take some time to tick down their hp. warriors and necros are pretty easy with some good dodges and condition management. revenant and thiefs have no real chance onpoint.
so warrior is very easy unlike auramancer or duid.

To OP:

It depends on the variant of the condition thief. This goes to both the weapon-set and the build they are using, so I’ll focus just on the weapon set and ignore specific trait builds for now.

D/D condition build generally requires that the player be close/on top of their target. Thus ranged classes and those that can maintain range are ideal. Note that, given the thief teleport skills, the thief will likely have some options for closing the distance—which is why both the ability to maintain range as well as do damage at range are important.

D/P condition build uses both default dagger attacks, as well as interrupts and steal to apply conditions. This is a more rare build to encounter, but the key is that all it’s primary attacks are all out of stealth. Blocks, at the right time, and also getting off some knockdowns/stuns/ranged damage will frustrate this kind of build. More often this build is a hybrid build that is both power and condi damage. As such, to achieve high degrees of either damage type it will need to hit often. As with D/P generally, listening for the sound of Shadowshot is helpful for avoiding the teleport-strike attack.

P/D is reliant on good positioning, so disrupting that is probably your best choice. P/D needs it’s sneak attack in order to do the most damage, so either positioning to avoid CnD and/or using anti stealth abilities will cut down on the DPS that can be done to you. P/D excels at kiting, but does worse with chasing, so remember that pistols only have 900 range.

All that said: GW2 is a game where you can expect to die to thieves, just as you might to other classes.

On the “who is an easy kill, hard kill subject,” I’d rather do a “fun to fight list.”

Top three favorite fights have been against (1) druid, (2) thief (pre-HoT), (3) scrapper (pre-nerf).

Against this druid, positioning was on point, dodges were on point, mobility was insane. There was no progress after fight for several minutes and both of us nearly winning the fight. It was the elegance of fighting both playing skill and theory crafting. You could tell they knew every ability of their class perfectly.

Against this thief, this was a long time ago but it was brilliant back and force, jumping around, teleporting, it was one of those rare fights where both parties could have the thrill of executing their attacks only to jump away like a fleeting shadow and have their opponent do the same.

Against this scrapper, it was absurd sustain. Almost to the point of being broken (and it was nerfed) but I loved the challenge of fighting it. His attacks didn’t hurt enough to kill, but he was tanking three or four at once and still dealing respectable damage. It was beautiful theory crafting and excellent execution.