Guild Wars 2

I’ve recently been playing a Thief in my WvW havoc team. The night before this post I wandered out on my own to complete a few achievements for the WvW meta – particularly the ruins. There I encountered a warrior using sword+sword/longbow.

The warrior was exceptionally "skilled, " in the sense they understood my build very well. They spammed their autoattack while turning rapidly to prevent me from getting a Backstab. Additionally, they understood when to blind me with Longbow 4 and when to evade, which was quite frequent.

I encountered them twice. The first threw me for a loop as I was unable to land a majority of my Cloak and Daggers and their condition damage was quickly eating away at my health – while they remained above 90%, easily. On my second encounter, I managed to get them to 50% on a few occasions, but the fight was still in their favor for the duration of the encounter. In general, it was a good fight and I commend the warrior for understanding how to counter me, but looking to improve my game to avoid further defeats from this particular build.

Here is the build I was using at the time (standard 30/30/10 D/D):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoYVlUmiO3eS+E95Ey2jdqCJKuHOVS1UdFiKA-jEDBYfAofQ4fgkFgUBBK5RZN7RQsMsIas6aYKXJS7So2auIa1CBMaMA-w

I suspected the Warrior used this build:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxBU1sgjtBc

Any advice and feedback on how to approach a Warrior build like this is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Would be easier to watch a vid of you fighting, but some general things that I can think of…

- Never be in melee range when his longbow fire field is down, switch to range and kite. Unless he’s at 10% health and you think you can finish the fight, it’s not worth taking the damage. If possible fight in open spaces that deny him the chance to area control.

- Stolen skill from warrior is so strong against longbow as it reflects and does direct damage, so you can use it at melee range for burst or while kiting to nullify his range pressure and force him to either stop attacking or switch to melee set.

- Taking 10 in DA would give you access to poison on steal which is really strong against healing signet, this may be worth swapping in and taking out your 10 in Acro. If you’re using steal when it’s off cooldown you can get 33% uptime on poison without even needing to use shortbow, plus extra burst damage/2k heal from mug.

- Using inf of shadow instead of cloaked in shadow would let you chain cloak and dagger more. Don’t be afraid to do this, even if you can’t CnD on the warr, try and keep some kind of mobs/critters nearby for a back up source of stealth. You have condi removal, might stacking and healing in stealth, the longer you spend in stealth the better your burst will be, and the higher your health uptime will be. Sometimes chaining 2-3 CnDs and being patient is better than going for the backstab straight away.

- Learn to animation cancel your Cloak and Dagger attack by putting away your weapon (you can keybind it). This is super key for d/d builds as you get kittened if you miss 2 CnDs in a row and are left with no initiative. CnD has a 1ish second animation so if you see your blinded or the warr is dodging or blocking with sword, save the initiative. Longbow has a very fast ranged blind that is hard to see coming, and you don’t want to waste a CnD when you’re blinded.

- Don’t think of shadow step as just a movement utility, if you get hit by pin down or flurry and you’re at 50% health, just use it for the condi removal. Removing condis quickly stops the warr gaining the health advantage over you.

- Don’t spam heartseeker.

its really hard to take them
i also dual 1 warrior which told me i didnt do enough dmg with 3500 base attack and 50% base crit dmg
so the longer the fight they have the upper hands with condition
i manage once to take him down but i had 150hp
and some fights took 2-5 min so we both got bored
as mention above i like to steal and w8 for him to go for LB and use it
also i like to stay with sb till he below 50% health and when he goes s/s i wait for him to block and go d/d for BS and AA for poison and dmg

again i think the odds are against you

My Warrior runs S+S & LB Hybrid. There is no way to stop it, period. It’s impossible.

I stole the build off a Warrior that was constantly wrecking everyone in spvp before and impossible for anyone to 1v1 and extremely difficult to even 6v1. Works even better in WvW with access to better runes and gear.

If he’s using Banners with his build you have to try to pull’em away from it. ;s Or wait and see if Warrior nerfs fix it. :P

Thieves are actually the easiest class to kill for me with that build… You should probably just avoid them.

my warrior runs LB/GS in sPvP as banner regen bunker and 1v1 is almost impossible to dent my regen even if you’re a thief. S/D actually has better chance of overcoming the regen becuz it’s constant damage it’s harder for D/D…

anyways, good luck, cuz it’s uphill battle since SS/LB has even more defense than LB/GS.

Excalibur.9748:

my warrior runs LB/GS in sPvP as banner regen bunker and 1v1 is almost impossible to dent my regen even if you’re a thief. S/D actually has better chance of overcoming the regen becuz it’s constant damage it’s harder for D/D…

anyways, good luck, cuz it’s uphill battle since SS/LB has even more defense than LB/GS.

S/D has crappy cond removal vs dual swords though and gets diced to ribbons. :< The damage isn’t strong enough either to burst down fast enough w/o dying. Since Warrior Regeneration isn’t actually a boon you can’t steal it either. -.-

…….any other condi build of any other class kill thieves better then this…except the classes that dont have condi build.

warrior is perhaps the easier class to kill for thieves. necro engi ranger.

dont know if you saw that mining thief, he took the warriors hp to half in seconds(warrior regen so op) and warrior have no active heal. he lost because he got kitten punched when mining..

It’ll take a long while but eventually warrior will be nerfed down hard enough to be level with everyone else. They all seem to be running some form of the healing signet godmode build. Can’t dent their health 1v1… but it’s fair right anet?

Poison him non-stop until he asks for mama !

One more tip: Use Dagger Storm as your elite skill against warriors using riffle or longbow.

Try to use this skill when he swaps to longbow in combat. Don´t stay in meele range because the first skill he´ll use is #2(Don´t know the skill name).

You will have some seconds to breath and reengage on him.

Many warriors don´t realize Dagger Storm reflects projectiles. At least 1 shot you will reflect to him =)

Not had a problem with this yet, maybe because I don’t encounter very many as 90 percent of warriors are hammer in WvW.

The ones I do face…, just don’t rush.

I’m d/d, but I run d/p second set mainly for pistol 3 and black powder.

When fighting after the first steal + c+d, i’ll test the waters for a backstab. If the guy is pretty good at avoiding it, i’ll just circle him, and wait for the next c+d, throw in some autos for poison, and then dance some more. Use basilisk venom as it;s cooldown is low and guarantees you a backstab at some point.

If he does switch to LB, then use the stolen. Or just evade into him for a c+d. and avoid LB 3 and the F1. I’ll sometimes throw in d/p 3 to get the ranged blind and some autos, then switch back.

It’s never a quick battle, but just rely on keeping him blinded, poisoned and never use heartseeker (unless he’s on 5 percent health and running).

Many people have been saying that a S/S warrior is impossible, it IS NOT! They have one kill move, which is when they throw their sword and stack torment on you. I find that these warriors are simply more difficult because they have condition and thief has no condition removal. The trick is to start with steal, and have shadow step in your utility skills. If you have shadowstep, you can easily break stuns and pop out if combat for a quick heal.

Thank you to everyone who responded to this thread! Every post has contributed and helped my understanding of this particular Warrior build and how to engage them next time.

Again, thank you!

I’ve had success a few times baiting and kiting for a little bit while acting generally useless and harmless. When their kitten reaches critical mass I’ve surprised them with Baski + Steal + CnD → Backstab → Spin to win → Heartseekers if they’re low. That would be with a pretty standard d/d mug build. They are a pain in the kitten though.