Guild Wars 2

I saw this Guardian earlier today that took like 3 people to kill, and it took them forever. Could a Thief take this dude out?

i’ve seen thieves take guardians out quite easily.

depends if he was a bunker he would have pretty much ate up the thief burst, guard bunkers are extremely strong normally if i ever just come up against one ill do my combo see how they handle it if they panic i press the attack if they know how to handle a GC ill just leave em alone im no ta fan of a 10min battle

Well I have a thief and a guardian.

As a guardian:
I can withstand burst thieves and then just faceroll them with my greatsword and burning damage.
I’ll have trouble catching them though, if they start fleeing. If i’m not using my meditations/gap closers then there’s no way I can catch them. Guardians are terrible at long range.

As a thief:
Yeah guardians are the hardest for me. I can only beat tanky guardians if I catch them by surprise or if I use my pocket thieves. Venoms some times work but you have to watch out for that greatsword.

@ Mechanix. I hear ya man , the fight gets pretty long and nobody dies. This happens on both classes.

That Guardian was most likely a bunker .He’s tough to kill but he can’t kill anything either.A burst Thief vs a bunker guardian doesn’t stand a chance .But luckily burst isn’t the only build available to Thief.In fact burst build is very bad for dueling .S
o yes thief can kill the guardian , eventualy.Now thief can go bunker too and manage the same things as that guardian.In fact all proffesions can spec to defence and manage the same thing , in their own way.

I’ve met numerous bunker Guardians. It’s tough, but using S/D at least, I can keep them out of commission and strip away at their numerous boons repeatedly until I get good DPS openings. Their damage is so poor that they don’t pose much of a threat (although I am highly specced in Toughness, so that probably helps).

Yes , S/D is very good for these kind of builds.

my p/d thief has never encountered a class including guardian that i felt i could not defeat.

Torres.2890:

Well I have a thief and a guardian.

As a guardian:
I can withstand burst thieves and then just faceroll them with my greatsword and burning damage.
I’ll have trouble catching them though, if they start fleeing. If i’m not using my meditations/gap closers then there’s no way I can catch them. Guardians are terrible at long range.

As a thief:
Yeah guardians are the hardest for me. I can only beat tanky guardians if I catch them by surprise or if I use my pocket thieves. Venoms some times work but you have to watch out for that greatsword.

@ Mechanix. I hear ya man , the fight gets pretty long and nobody dies. This happens on both classes.

must have been about a week ago in encountered a charr guard bunker straight away i started attacking him first thing he does is run, im not lying i must have chased this guy half way over the Borderlands map starting to strip away at his hp and around after 10mins of chasing i finally kill him after laughing the first that came to my mind was why he didn’t just turn around and start attacking me

Mechanix.5719:

Torres.2890:

Well I have a thief and a guardian.

As a guardian:
I can withstand burst thieves and then just faceroll them with my greatsword and burning damage.
I’ll have trouble catching them though, if they start fleeing. If i’m not using my meditations/gap closers then there’s no way I can catch them. Guardians are terrible at long range.

As a thief:
Yeah guardians are the hardest for me. I can only beat tanky guardians if I catch them by surprise or if I use my pocket thieves. Venoms some times work but you have to watch out for that greatsword.

@ Mechanix. I hear ya man , the fight gets pretty long and nobody dies. This happens on both classes.

must have been about a week ago in encountered a charr guard bunker straight away i started attacking him first thing he does is run, im not lying i must have chased this guy half way over the Borderlands map starting to strip away at his hp and around after 10mins of chasing i finally kill him after laughing the first that came to my mind was why he didn’t just turn around and start attacking me

he could never see you. what do you expect him to do?

fivekiller.1432:

my p/d thief has never encountered a class including guardian that i felt i could not defeat.

Condi builds are ment to beat bunkers

Burst beats condi
Condi beats bunker
Bunker beats burst

Mechanix.5719:

fivekiller.1432:

my p/d thief has never encountered a class including guardian that i felt i could not defeat.

Condi builds are ment to beat bunkers

Burst beats condi
Condi beats bunker
Bunker beats burst

Guardians just take a little longer to kill with P/D. They can remove 1 (2 or 3 if traited) condition(s) every 10 seconds.
Signet of Resolve + Purity + Perfect Inscriptions. But this is a bit overkill imo and it messes up builds.

Burst doesn’t beat anything.Sorry but I disagree whit you.Burst is only good for scrubs that don’t know what they are doing.

Mechanix.5719:

fivekiller.1432:

my p/d thief has never encountered a class including guardian that i felt i could not defeat.

Condi builds are ment to beat bunkers

Burst beats condi
Condi beats bunker
Bunker beats burst

Sometimes.

Usually though the p/d thief beats all of them. its the one thing of mine i reliably beat burst thieves on. and i love finding a glassy mesmer.. they can’t even begin to wipe conditions.

A bunker Guardian is immovable by any single player.

If the Guardian is glassy, then sure, a Thief could take it out like it kills any other profession.

Yeah for sure, they can take 3 people to kill, but I run a P/D thief and can just keep alive for a long time.

When they are downed they are one of the easiest classes to finish off because if you blind them their push back bubble shield 3000 doesn’t interrupt your finisher.

Condition builds with a pretty heavy survivability bias have been best for me against the tough buggers like guardians and necros. Some of these guys in PvP takes a hellishly long time to down.

Tank guardian? Easy…start with shortbow and let him use his heal, so take him at 70% hp and switch to d/d and finish him.

The burst guardian is my damnation (i mean skillfull burst guardian)

I’ve killed some and barely made a dent in others. Depends on what build and player you are fighting. I got an exotic drop on one of the guardians I killed – anet’s way of saying “well done”.

Kerishan.8460:

Tank guardian? Easy…start with shortbow and let him use his heal, so take him at 70% hp and switch to d/d and finish him.

The burst guardian is my damnation (i mean skillfull burst guardian)

No guardian will use his major heal at 70% hp
to take tank down to 70% hp with short bow you will need 2 minutes, unless he is afk
As guardian I use an Sword / shield + scepter /focus – that means i will blink to you every 10 seconds + 1 blind and imobilize you every 15 seconds, If you use Short bow vs me , you will lack stealth so i will control the battle .
What hurt me as an guardian is thief guide +burst.
however an guardian cannot hold an burst thief + another class for more then 10- 20 seconds, he cannot focus the thief cause of stealth, so the thief will be able to do backstabs at his free will

There are guardian builds that wreak thieves. I’ve beaten it with a specific build, but quite frankly its not a very viable WvW build.

I find it funny people scream nerf thieves when there are professions out there that put any thief build to shame.

Depends how both are built, really. As a condition thief, I’ve never had trouble with any type of guardian, but I could see how a glassy burst thief would be pretty much unable to kill a bunker guard.

On my Guardian, more of a balanced build, I’ve never died to a Thief. However I haven’t played that Guardian in WvW for a long time, and the only thieves I’ve actually encountered on that Guardian were backstab Thieves, which are laughable on any class using a balanced build.

I’m amused that people seem to think a bunker guardian cannot kill, i’ve killed plenty of pistol whip thieves and hundred blade warriors with retaliation and burn.

Alice.8694:

I’m amused that people seem to think a bunker guardian cannot kill, i’ve killed plenty of pistol whip thieves and hundred blade warriors with retaliation and burn.

Well yeah, you just described two glassy burst setups – of course you’re going to win with a bunker.

Bunker Guardians are easy to kill actually. The hardest to kill are bunker Elementalist, but they can’t kill me, so……

You shouldn’t be dying as a Thief often, if at all ever.

I’m not a bunker build guardian. And thieves don’t eat me up. They’re hard to catch, but I can smash em up more easily than they can solo kill me since I can trap/immobilize. But usually I am being taken down by 2+ players when I do encounter thieves.

I have a bunker guardian, with my food buff running i have 2018 tough, 3229 armour, 19545 hp’s, burst builds generally just go look for easier prey, lets face it if a thief wants out of a fight he will get it.

But P/D thieves i feel like there is not much i can do, especially with the render bug im getting hit with unloads and the thief hasnt even rendered on my screen, not to mention i play from Australia so a ping of 250-400 so by the time hes rendered hes about to go back into stealth.

Im rolling myself up a P/D thief, they just seem amazing for solo play.

in tpvp you can kill a bunker guard but it will be a very long fight and you wil get jumped by some one else while doing it. It is best to take them down with a team as a last target.

Equal skill level 1v1?…

Yes if they are glassy, no if they are even semi-tanky.

Don’t expect to get away from a good guard easily either. I have no problems stopping thieves from stealthing and getting away on mine.

If they are using a GS… they’ll have retaliation and binding blade will still hit and pull if you are stealthed. (Tbh this guard weapon is the least of your worries)

If they are using a hammer they’ll have protection, short cd leap/aoe, root, knockback, and ring of warding.

Scepter – roots & short cd aoe attack

1h sword – teleports

1h mace – heals & blocks with a strong counter-attack after

Shield – protection, knocks back (and out of shadow refuge) and heals

Focus blinds, regens, blocks

So… guards have access to heals/roots/knockbacks/protection/regen/retal without even getting into the virtues/utilities/traits… which makes it far harder still for a thief when you factor those in…

Lots and lots of stuff that can ruin a theif’s day very quickly.

Jericho.4521:

Depends how both are built, really. As a condition thief, I’ve never had trouble with any type of guardian, but I could see how a glassy burst thief would be pretty much unable to kill a bunker guard.

This is only somewhat true… most guards know they are most vulnerable to condition damage and take some utilities/food (if in WvW)/misc other stuff to help deal with that.

I find it pretty easy to mitigate condition dmg vs. a thief on mine with smite condition alone… as I’m usually not dealing with a ton of different conditions from a condition thief (unlike something like a necro… it’s mostly just stacking of bleed damage).

As a theif 1v1… guards are not your prey. Do not mess with guards solo. Go find a nice hunter or something instead…

With a broad topic it’s hard to say. Its pretty much come downs to builds and players. Coming from being both GC D/D and condition P/D I don’t have problem with Guardians.. maybe because I have a Guardian too. With GC you want to get their virtue (shield/block) off with SB then burst them. You can tell after the BS if they are GC or not. Even if they are “Tank build” they will heal after your burst simply SB them and dodge their attacks. With P/D vs a “Tank build” I’m like an annoying mosquito constantly stacking them with bleeds and venom. Either they run or die from their long CD. Hardest profession for me to beat are those kitten condition Necros.

I’m playing d/p with sb in offset. Bunkers are pretty much a joke I’ve found a few that it takes more than a minute to kill. Stopping the heals will help a great deal. Daze does wonders, and you don’t need to be a pure burst or pure conditions build to beat bunkers quickly(less than a minute).

i never lost to a guardian in 1v1 WvW match up. if you fight a guardian with S/D you just 7 second daze them they flop over like nothing xD

P/D thiefs can beat anything if played correctly. Very hard for a guardian to catch a thief. I roll with refuge, stealth on steal, and hide in shadows heal. That combined with almost infinity dodges due to traits and cloak and dagger for even more stealth it doesn’t matter how tanky or how good the guardian is at clearing condis, we reapply them easily.

easy as kitten man> http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=XpF2EH3_T1w

As a S/D lifesteal/control tank build on my thief, there is no single build of any class that I simply don’t stand a chance to beat. Yes I do occasionally lose these fights, but usually it’s due to my own mistiming of Tactical Strike use or some other mistake.

I play a semi-tanky but mainly power/swiftness focussed Guardian. I used to die a lot to thieves, but now after learning most their tricks i will very often win, and seldom lose to them now (i love shadow refuge, as soon as i see that house your mine) A couple weeks back 2 highly skilled/co-ordinated thieves took me and 3 people of siege, i immediately raged OP until i thought that any pair of highly skilled/co-ordinated anything is going to wreak havoc (and deserves too)

I seriously hope culling gets fixed, fighting thieves can actually be pretty fun when culling is not an issue

War Dad KISS Guardian

Thieves can certainly defeat guardians. The problem is that most burst builds are predictable and prevalent, and so a guardian knows when to pop Virtue of Courage or hit v, or when to teleport away to a rabbit or something.

I used to lose to thieves a lot until I learned how they work. Now the only builds I lose to fairly consistently are attrition builds, as they’re harder to predict. That also might just be a l2p issue on my part.

I’ve only had trouble with one or two guardians(god knows what build they were using), for the most part. I run P/D, 20K HP, 30 into toughness, ect. I stack conditions and stayed ranged. Definitely do not go melee range versus a bunker guardian.

In WvW = Easy. Don’t be kitten Thieves- keep them at range, keep kiting.
Control, Kite, Counter, Collect Badges.

In sPvP = You’d better be some kind of epic with a Thief to take down a Bunker before his roamer arrives to wreck your day.

50/50
Block steal or not.

Try http://www.gw2build.com/builds/stealth-damage-condition-remove-spamm-stealth-builds-9379.html
It can take down a gurdian and if used right, it can take on just about anything

I can take out just about any guardian with my thief in WvW. There are 1-3 that have totally destroyed me in a fair 1v1 though.