Guild Wars 2

I have trouble dealing with this 2 variant of this class in PVP
First the guard always caught me off guard with their judge intervention + smite condition combo nuke half of my HP bar since they are basically hard to dodge due to instant-cast. If I don’t get some distant rightaway .They will be using their GS pull+spin combo and I’m down.Are there anyway to get over this combo without much health loss ?

For ham-bow I only have trouble when they rush with berserker stance (condtion immunity) at which point kiting away is only an option.

Hambow war: still trying to learn how to beat those guys. The bow doesn’t give me trouble, but the lockdown hammer does. Use your steal skill (axe whirl) on the bow and dodge around. Hammer, I just go defensive until they take the bow out again. :P

For guardians, you have to anticipate their combos. The minute they are next to you, MOVE. Dodge or shadowstep out of the way. Guardians can pull off bursts very quickly, but afterwards you have a little bit of breathing room. Stunbreak/blind out of their GS pull, and stay away from their aoe. Just like your opponents don’t want to fight in your blinding powder, you don’t want to fight on the guardian’s symbols. I use s/d and d/p against guardians. Wittle away their hp and stun them when they try to heal.

What build and weaponset are you running?

I think sd is the way to go for both of these classes, as a 1/2 sec evade is a lot better defense against multi hit attacks rather than a blind or 2 and doesn’t fall apart vs things like zerker stance

Hambow: be very, very patient, but keep pressure or theyll keep regening to full. Either way, this will be a long fight. Try not to use steal while they have zerker stance up, as youll lose out on your poison application which really lengthens the time needed to kill them. Dance in and out with infiltrator return, dodge all the CCs from hammer. They each have a fairly obvious animation so its not to hard. When they swap to bow IMMEDIATELY steal. Most warrs will always start with combustive shot upon swapping, and stealing right away will interrupt it. Use whirling axe to avoid projectiles and deal dmg. Even better if you can combo it with basi venom. Be cautios of using SR at low HP, as earthshaker, combustive shot, and arcing arrow will be sure to kill you while stealthed.

Medi Guards: these pretty much hard counter thief, so just know youre not gonna win a lot of these fights. But generally ill start in shortbow and try to wear them down a bit and blow some CDs with cluster bomb and autos. Right before i engage in melee ill drop a poison field so theyre medis won’t heal for as much. Save steal for the WW combo and then try manmoding them down. Try and use the stolen skill right before they heal, as you can then easily burst them down. This can be really hard to time however. You can use infil strike to guarentee a hit with it. If you mess up the timing however and they get the heal off, or its blocked/blinded the retreat with infil return and swap back to shortbow to wear them down again. DO NOT refuge at low health or at least do it away from the guardian, as they have have a ton of PBAoE and you will guarenteed go down.

For both fights, patience and poison are required. Both are some of the harder matchups for thief, so just know that if you won, you really outplayed them and if you lost its not a huge deal. Obviously try and get better, but these are very difficult matchups for a thief

LONGA.1652:

I have trouble dealing with this 2 variant of this class in PVP
First the guard always caught me off guard with their judge intervention + smite condition combo nuke half of my HP bar since they are basically hard to dodge due to instant-cast. If I don’t get some distant rightaway .They will be using their GS pull+spin combo and I’m down.Are there anyway to get over this combo without much health loss ?

You just need to learn the pattern of their attacks. It’s your best chance on dodging the GS pull. But your main issue is he put you on the defensive right off the bat, which in that scenario, you’ve out-thief by a guardian. That shouldn’t happen, you should always deal the first hit and keep them in defensive. One they turn the table, you’re done with.

For ham-bow I only have trouble when they rush with berserker stance (condtion immunity) at which point kiting away is only an option.

I hate those guys. I’ll just run away and find another target.

Shortbow is your best friend against hammer warrior. Poison fields and lots of kiting will eventually kill them. Aside from this, there’s not much out there to really counter hammer/CC lock war in general.

Against an Hambow warrior use their steal when they start using the shortbow or dagger/storm and if you’re d/d it’s easy to kill them. Just be ready to dodge when they switch to hammer and blind them.

mao.9832:

Against an Hambow warrior use their steal when they start using the shortbow or dagger/storm and if you’re d/d it’s easy to kill them. Just be ready to dodge when they switch to hammer and blind them.

If a Hambow loses to a DD Thief… He’s doing it wrong.

mao.9832:

Against an Hambow warrior use their steal when they start using the shortbow or dagger/storm and if you’re d/d it’s easy to kill them. Just be ready to dodge when they switch to hammer and blind them.

D/D? Really? that I want to see.

mao.9832:

Against an Hambow warrior use their steal when they start using the shortbow or dagger/storm and if you’re d/d it’s easy to kill them. Just be ready to dodge when they switch to hammer and blind them.

most of the time after he shoot his huge aoe bow. he ll run in to it.
If you use DS you ll soaking with his aoe dmg. while doing kittenty dmg from DS to him.
Use DS on war is like… pls kill me now.

D/D… hope you misstype.

Thank you for the tips.Now I know that going stealth near those 2 arn’t a good way to fight.The whirling axe is really nice counter.

hambow is really easy to beat with thief (s/d + sb :: 2/0/0/6/6)

shortbow:

- longbow counter (sb counters longbow near perfectly)

• stay out of their fire aoe; keep your distance in general
• keep a constant poison uptime with poison fields inside their fire aoe; most warriors will stay inside their aoe fields so doing this shouldn’t be hard
• keep up offensive pressure with autoattacks and cluterbombs (using sparingly)
• avoid what you can with evades and shortbow #3
• move in with s/d for heavy damage once they’ve exhausted their rotation

- hammer counter (usually better to fight hammer with s/d)

• again keep your distance and kite
• keep poison uptime as high as you can, use clusterbombs on poison fields to inflict weakness and deal heavier damage
• keep eyes open for broadcasts; you wont be screwed if you get hit by a stun since you should have one or two stunbreaks, but it’s a good idea to avoid that even being an issue. hammer stun broadcasts are very noticeable and should be easy to evade should you get in melee range somehow.
• avoid using steal much if at all; try to reserve steal for when you swap to s/d for a burst

sword/dagger:

- longbow counter

• use shortbow if you can. shortbow is so much better than s/d at countering longbow it’s ill-advised to use otherwise.
• if you can’t switch to sb due to cooldown, just keep your distance and avoid damage; use infiltrator’s strike to pop in and do some damage inbetween longbow cooldowns and then pop out.

- hammer counter

• keep watch for stuns obviously.
• keep pressure with autoattacks and some occasional flanking strike/larcenous strikes
• watch for signet of rage. when a hambow pops it, steal/larcenous strike burst them to rip their boons; ripping that might (of which they’ll probably have additional stacks from runes/sigils/longbow) and fury are priority, as once you rip those hambow loses a ridiculous amount of offensive strength.
• once you do that go on the heavy offensive, just keep in mind that the hambow is still a considerable threat; don’t drop your guard.

and that’s pretty much it. using this as a general strategy against hambows will result in you embarrassing most hambows and put you on more equal footing with the few competent ones.

First of all you should stop thinking that the s/d kitten meta is the only thing viable for thief.
2. If you guys don’t know how to face a warrior with d/d because you never used it in your entire life it’s not the skillset/build being weak.
3. Answering to the guy up there saying you take all the damage while using daggerstorm: learn to press esc and use daggestorm only when needed. I use it mainly for stability.
4. I have faced a lot of hambow warriors and let me say they are all the same kitten. I fear more a build with gs/ axe+shield than an hambow warrior.

mao.9832:

3. Answering to the guy up there saying you take all the damage while using daggerstorm: learn to press esc and use daggestorm only when needed. I use it mainly for stability.

so.. dont wanna talk about your d/d blind? XD

It doesnt help if you being STABLE while take dmg from every ham with your face.

If you equip this Elite skill in to tpvp just because hambo.
especially you going to use it 2sec then press Esc to cancel and dodge….

Why dont you just dodge ham in the first place?
Why bother press Elite if you going to cancel when ham land?
Why you want to be stable if you going to dodge ham manually anyway?

you got me.

How i counter hambows with my d/p spec.
Open with Basi venom, infiltrator signet stealth backstab combo . Try to do it from an unnoticed position so you are sure to land the full combo.
Most warriors will then start with the lonbow. Steal to interrupt the fire field put down your blind field and start whirling axing, shooting out blindign projectiles. (I run a panic strike builds so by then ill have him immobilized while bursting out some serious deeps) He will likely then pop zerker stance (if not just continue):
What now
—> Is het still in bow? just continue, you will reflect projectiles.
—> Did he swap to hammer —> break the skill and dodge away. I then mostly keep kiting till zerker stance wears off and he has blwon his cc’s (swap to shortbow to continue pressure). Follow up with another stealth-backstab combo and then autoattack him down, be ready for doging the next pin down.

This is the ideal situation of course. Use utilities (shadowstep—>direclty into SR) when in problem.

If he is somewhat good this figth will take a while. If you need to fight him to decap far. You will be more of assist in the team fight going on at mid for instance, so don’t waste time.

d/p – spamm blind with #3 and AA when they go hammer
SB – to kite when they use LB. dont try to do heavy dmg with your sb rather evades and AA
s/d – had hard time versus hammer even with few evades they can stun me eventually
d/d – its harder than d/p but doable which need more patient and kite around with bs and aa and cnd to blind aoe go sb and immobilize and kite again

against meditation guardian use just sb to kite around till he’s below 30% ho and go d/x to burst down

both build are harder since the thief got dmg reduction while not getting defense buffs

Warrior- Dodge CC, kite with SB, blind, and use stolen F1 for when they pull out LB.

Med guards- Assuming equal skill he should destroy you. I don’t know how to beat these guys either. My only bits of advice are boonstip retaliation, and always pop aegis with SB or melee auto before stealing. But in reality if thieves are scissors dps/med guards are rocks. Steep uphill battle

The D/D guy was right in a way. Death blossom makes hambows easy.

Faeyd.5094:

The D/D guy was right in a way. Death blossom makes hambows easy.

More like slicing ham sandwich…I think he was confused.

mao.9832:

First of all you should stop thinking that the s/d kitten meta is the only thing viable for thief.
2. If you guys don’t know how to face a warrior with d/d because you never used it in your entire life it’s not the skillset/build being weak.
3. Answering to the guy up there saying you take all the damage while using daggerstorm: learn to press esc and use daggestorm only when needed. I use it mainly for stability.
4. I have faced a lot of hambow warriors and let me say they are all the same kitten. I fear more a build with gs/ axe+shield than an hambow warrior.

1. daggerstorm is bad
2. d/d sadly is also bad