I play a mesmer, roaming solo most of the times. Generally speaking, I can deal with thieves easily; especially when they are solo. However, there is a build that is really a pain to counter. Last night, myself and a guardian found a p/p thief, he kept going invisible all the time and his health kept going up. We just couldn’t catch him and deliver the pain. I am assuming that this thief was wearing +healing gear or something and kept regenerating health while in stealth. He eventually wore us down one by one and eventually killed us. Hats off to him.
I have a thief but I don’t have the time to level him properly, so I was wondering if there is a way to counter this build. And please don’t suggest to run away, I won’t do that.
Thank you in advance!
Thank you!
EDIT: also, if you could point to this build, that would be great. Thanks!
1. Bait them into attacking.
2. Force a dodge-roll.
3. CC-spike ASAP as the dodge animation finishes.
(4a. Your spike downed him, stomp. GG.)
4b. It didn’t down him, but he had to blow a cd to escape.
5. Repeat step 1 through 3 until 4a is achieved.
6. Crack open a cold one and high-five yourself.
I play a mesmer, roaming solo most of the times. Generally speaking, I can deal with thieves easily; especially when they are solo. However, there is a build that is really a pain to counter. Last night, myself and a guardian found a p/p thief, he kept going invisible all the time and his health kept going up. We just couldn’t catch him and deliver the pain. I am assuming that this thief was wearing +healing gear or something and kept regenerating health while in stealth. He eventually wore us down one by one and eventually killed us. Hats off to him.
I have a thief but I don’t have the time to level him properly, so I was wondering if there is a way to counter this build. And please don’t suggest to run away, I won’t do that.
Thank you in advance!
Thank you!
EDIT: also, if you could point to this build, that would be great. Thanks!
P/P thief can’t go in to stealth. It doesn’t have weapon skills for it.
You fought something else.
Wrong. Utilities. Thief has 3 utilities that can provide stealth.
A pistol thief have 3 utilities to use for stealth, but I highly doubt they are on short cooldown enough for him to spam stealth with.
Also, If i ever see a dual pistol thief killing mesmer and guardian in a 2vs1 situation, im gonna be traumatized for the rest of my life. Guardian and mesmer is 2 of the hardest counters against thief ever.
You most likely fought a Pistol/dagger thief, who can go stealth every 4 seconds and use sneak attack, which looks like Unload for people who dont play thief
Edit: There isnt much you can do to counter it, except become a better player.
A pistol thief have 3 utilities to use for stealth, but I highly doubt they are on short cooldown enough for him to spam stealth with.
Also, If i ever see a dual pistol thief killing mesmer and guardian in a 2vs1 situation, im gonna be traumatized for the rest of my life. Guardian and mesmer is 2 of the hardest counters against thief ever.
You most likely fought a Pistol/dagger thief, who can go stealth every 4 seconds and use sneak attack, which looks like Unload for people who dont play thief
Edit: There isnt much you can do to counter it, except become a better player.
True, but I was simply countering the idea that a thief using dual pistols is unable to stealth.
A pistol thief have 3 utilities to use for stealth, but I highly doubt they are on short cooldown enough for him to spam stealth with.
Also, If i ever see a dual pistol thief killing mesmer and guardian in a 2vs1 situation, im gonna be traumatized for the rest of my life. Guardian and mesmer is 2 of the hardest counters against thief ever.
You most likely fought a Pistol/dagger thief, who can go stealth every 4 seconds and use sneak attack, which looks like Unload for people who dont play thief
Edit: There isnt much you can do to counter it, except become a better player.
True, but I was simply countering the idea that a thief using dual pistols is unable to stealth.
Yeah sorry for the misunderstanding, I answered the same person you did
But to the topic, any time a person win you in a 1vs2 situation, its a skill issue, you arent experienced enough, play more, become better… and never lose again…
I think it was the usual pistol/dagger condition thief build you were facing. They do have very high self healing but this relies on stealth, as does a lot of their damage. All you need to do is not let them stealth :P
When they start the cloak and dagger animation, dodge roll, interrupt it etc. This will force them to use their emergency skills, such as shadow refuge, to heal up. After this you should just try to burst them down, making sure to avoid cloak and dagger. Obviously any stuns or CC will help land this damage too. Note that if you have greatsword or focus, you can use illusionary wave or temporal curtain to push/pull players out of shadow refuge. Quickly follow it up by some burst damage while they have the revealed debuff and it’s possible to get a quick kill.
This is more difficult on a mesmer due to your clones though. If he’s running to one of your clones, he’s probably going to use it to stealth. Use your shatter skills to prevent this or keep the amount of clones you have out to a minimum. Another problem can be bad team mates :P If they don’t bother to avoid cloak and dagger then the thief can just use them to heal up. There’s not much you can do here lol.
Honestly, as a mesmer, you should be pretty close to a hardcounter for P/P.
Basically P/P does excellent burst and can interrupt. That is it. They have:
- bugger all damage outside of unload.
- no defenses or mobility if they are unloading.
- no aoe whatsoever.
A pistol thief have 3 utilities to use for stealth, but I highly doubt they are on short cooldown enough for him to spam stealth with.
Also, If i ever see a dual pistol thief killing mesmer and guardian in a 2vs1 situation, im gonna be traumatized for the rest of my life. Guardian and mesmer is 2 of the hardest counters against thief ever.
You most likely fought a Pistol/dagger thief, who can go stealth every 4 seconds and use sneak attack, which looks like Unload for people who dont play thief
Edit: There isnt much you can do to counter it, except become a better player.
Thief was certainly 30 in SA. First trait is 20% reduction in Deception Skill CD. That knocks the cooldown to 32s for BP, 48s for SR, and the regular 30 for HiS. With enough endurance for dodge rolls, you could just as well stealth continuously, especially if the P/P thief took his time to not use Sneak Attack until the very end of his stealth.
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It’ll be P/D and it is the hard counter to anything with pets. I’ve had mesmers and necros in particular who are used to killing pretty anything upset about dieing this way, but it is a rock to your scissors and unless you want to try it without clones and stuff you’re going to lose.
yep pretty much p/d build is used to troll pet using classes,
they dont care about conditions or your damage because they can heal up and regain initiative in an almost unlimited manner because of 30 Points in SA,
P/D can be countered but be very cautious,
tip: dont fight p/d in a field full of npc and critters,
you can kill them if you are alone most of the time (by alone means no critters and npc and allies)
plan your timing for condition removals, because if you blow them all up every time you see bleed in your status bar you will lose, because p/d doesnot care if you clean them, they can reapply it indefinitely,
melandru + lemongrass helps
yep pretty much p/d build is used to troll pet using classes,
they dont care about conditions or your damage because they can heal up and regain initiative in an almost unlimited manner because of 30 Points in SA,
P/D can be countered but be very cautious,
tip: dont fight p/d in a field full of npc and critters,
you can kill them if you are alone most of the time (by alone means no critters and npc and allies)
plan your timing for condition removals, because if you blow them all up every time you see bleed in your status bar you will lose, because p/d doesnot care if you clean them, they can reapply it indefinitely,
melandru + lemongrass helps
From my experience, P/D can’t do much against full phantasm builds tho. As soon, as their facemelt value reaches some nasty level of 4-5k crits per attack, having 2 duelists out can pretty much ruin the day for the thief.
But agreed, any build using loads of non-gc minions will be pretty much screwed.
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Not all builds are based on putting phantasms out and letting them do the work for me. I consider this to be a lame way to play the game and the reason why I never slot GS. My type of game is going in an out of melee range, like the shattercat build or seven mesmer’s. And, it’s quite easy to find the mesmer really.
You guys are probably right, they were probably p/d and not p/p thieves, I think I saw the unload animation and got confused. It’s quite the troll build, I must admit. I’ve met such a thief around maybe 3 times so I haven’t had alot of exposure to them. However, losing to them did have an impact! One time, I remember 6 people chasing a thief that kept going in and out of invisibility constantly. I do lack training against them, and I don’t assume that I can necessarily kill them with my skill level or build but now I’ll be more prepared!
Could someone post a build that is representative of this playstyle?
Basically, as others said, you just need to keep your distance to deny him a chance to c&d you. That’s where most of the sustain and damage in this build comes from.
Shatter your clones as soon as you summon them, Phantasms as soon as they finish their first attack. They can c&d on them to get stealth also.
As a P/D, I’ll chime in. If there are clones or critters about, I’m going to C&D off those because I know I’m not going to get dodged. If it takes me forever to wear you down, I’ll take forever. As long as I can get myself back into stealth I’m good to go.
Personally, if I run into a Phastasm and it tears me up, I’m going to start getting out of the area without really even looking to reset the fight.
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Hello thieves
[…] Last night, myself and a guardian found a p/p thief, he kept going invisible all the time and his health kept going up. […]
Hello. First I suggest you look at a gw2 website. P/P does not have a stealth skill, nor does it have a leap finisher to combo into stealth using a smoke field.
Second, All of the thief stealth abilities add 3 seconds base stealth. The lowest stealth cd we can get while traited is about 35 seconds (either blinding powder or steal via hidden thief).
Third. When I read p/p thief was perma-stealthing, You encountered a loss of credibility casualty. You seem polite so I won’t torch this post, but please l2p. There’s a p/p thief bot in the mists that has “un-nerfed” thief skills. Train on that after looking up the thief skills & utilities. The next time you roll into wvw (if this issue is from wvw), make sure to wear exotic lv 80 gear and have some food.
You should do fine as long as you don’t let him go melee (if it’s in his weapon swap) and dodge his unloads.
Again, thank you all for you valueable information! I think I will try the build Wyldkat suggested.
@Ekemeister indeed, I want to l2p, no time to learn the thief class, hence the thread. I never said he was perma-stealthed, it was him going in and out of stealth very quickly, probably explained by the critters around us. I have also acknowledged that probably he was not a p/p thief. Why do so many thieves get so defensive? Thieves are not OP imo, I won’t be crying “OMG NERF THIEVES QQ” anytime soon At least I think I didn’t in this post.
P/D thieves love mesmers… so many targets to c&d off of then sneak attack the intended target. Mesmers also are lacking when it comes to condition removal.
The BIG weakness of a P/D thief… is they only stack bleeds and have no other condition damage without using poison utilities (which are horrid) or traiting into steal causes poison (long cooldown). If you’re on a class that can consistently wipe even a single condition… the damage is laughable (this was brought up in the last state of the game and the dev’s seemed to agree that this is an issue). TBH… I’m surprised the guardian wasn’t able to easily negate the bleeds.
When fighting a P/D thief, you need to be careful about your clones. They are easy CnD targets which give him stealth. I suggest shattering the clones as he does the CnD animation to waste his ini. Dodge if he’s trying to CnD you. That would deny him most of his stealth, then it’s just a matter of putting on confusion…
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