Guild Wars 2

I am starting to see these thieves everywhere, so I’m coming to the thief community to ask for some help. I play multiple different classes, and I am having trouble against these types of thieves on almost all of them (except ele for the great condition removal.

Here’s how a my fights usually go with these thieves. They roll in to drop caltrops from dodge (yes I know these are pretty weak compared to the utility version), then they drop the utility caltrops which pretty much perma cripple me while I’m trying to walk out of the caltrops area. Then the thief start spamming death blossom which also evades while spamming it leaping into the caltrops. I can get maybe a few hits on the thief while he is landing the DB in between the time he starts them, and the time he is out of initiative, but these thieves are tanky as hell. I am constantly crippled so just trying to get to the thief while he is DB’ing is frustrating as hell, the whole time I am trying to hit the thief I am eating DB’s, once the thief is out of initiative and done spamming the evade and bleed on DB, they just start dodging around dropping more (completely evading again while waiting for initiative. If I try and fight him outside of the loltrop zone, the thief just swaps to pistol and dagger (I haven’t seen any loltrop thieves using shortbow yet) and repeatedly goes in and out of stealth spamming sneak attack. Then just straight back to DB when its Up. When traited the cd on caltrops is 24 seconds right? How long do they last? What is the uptime on them? I know it is only bleed and cripple that they stack, so there is not many cover conditions, but they can reapply the bleeds so fast by spamming DB and dodging + loltrops that there is not enough condition removal (except ele) in the world to drop those bleeds. I usually run balanced builds on my toons so I have tried “bursting” bursting them down, but as soon as I get pressure on the thief, they swap to pistol and dagger and kite me through the loltrops zone while I’m crippled.

I play a thief occasionally and I don’t want this to come off as a whine thread, I’m genuinely looking for any assistance or any advice on dealing with these tanky evasive thieves. Sometimes it is not always feasible to just get off the node, like in tourneys, (where the trops are). The biggest toon I have a problem with this is on my guardian, I run hammer and sword and shield, and hammer is completely useless against these thieves because the swing time is so slow while I’m crippled that I just have no chance to land a hit, so I run the sword and shield against them, and I have 2/3 utilities to remove conditions.

Again, any advice is welcome, it’s just frustrating.

Thank you.

best i can suggest is time CC for in between there evades, they are actually not that tanky, just have a lot of healing/dodging, they have high armor yes but usually very low hp (i have 13.8k hp and 3k armor when i use my DB build)

There’s a very effective way to fight this kind of thief as long as you have a decent dps ranged weapon to swap to. Exit the caltrops, and proceed to semi- kite the thief (you really only have to move to dodge). Any time he is out of stealth simply shoot at him, as long as you do ~1k dps you’ll be doing more damage than pistol/dagger can without the help of caltrops. This doesn’t even count in for the fact that you can remove conditions whenever you get a bad stack for example if they hit you with sneak attack or death blossom immediately remove the bleed unless you think they will death blossom again right away. Preferably you will dodge all of the C&D dagger attempts while kiting them. It has an extremely obvious animation (even if they use it out of range dodge it because they might teleport to you during the cast, if they do you will not have to worry about the teleport for a good 35 seconds or so) and death blossom on its own will not kill you before you can slowly dps them down. The stealth and baiting you to stand in caltrops is 90% of the build and avoiding both of these will give you a significant advantage in that they will heal dramatically less and be force to use their other ultilities or heal to go stealth in an attempt to make up for the lost bleed stacks.

It’s always feasible to get off the node for a second. Dying and the thief capturing the node is worse than the node going neutral until you get reinforcements or kill the thief. Caltrops isn’t as large as the node so you can always hunker down around the edges which is a lot easier if you don’t stand in the middle of the node, causing the thief to drop caltrops off to a side. Basically, avoiding letting the thief go into stealth by hitting you with C&D and stand outside of the caltrops means you’ll rarely have more than 5 bleeds on you as long as you bring condition removal and know when to use it.

If for some reason you have a 12+ stack of bleeds and haven’t used your condition removal yet, know that the majority of those bleeds are likely about to run out, which means you let them do nearly their full amount of damage instead of cutting them off at the beginning. Remove bleeds that come in stack at the first tick to hugely kill their dps.

Oh and unless they are dagger storming or canceled it for the stability go ahead and just knock them the hell down all day long. Not much they can do about it and this type of thief rarely uses daggerstorm when thieves guild is much better.

Some well timed CCs and burst damage is the best thing to finish them. I have 12.8k hp and 3.2k armour with enough self healing to deal with any steady damage if needed on my condition thief. The best way to kill me is to get me on low health, stun or fear me then burst me down. Interrupting the heal animation can also work.

I will use shadowstep if needed or use shadow refuge if I don’t think i can use my heal in time. You may have to exhaust these to take me down. I also use CnD as a small heal and way to kill time until my other two stealth abilities are off cooldown so be sure to look out for this and avoid it if possible then exploit this period of time where i don’t have any initiative or any stealth or escape abilities to finish me.

Retanaru.2901:

There’s a very effective way to fight this kind of thief as long as you have a decent dps ranged weapon to swap to. Exit the caltrops, and proceed to semi- kite the thief (you really only have to move to dodge). Any time he is out of stealth simply shoot at him, as long as you do ~1k dps you’ll be doing more damage than pistol/dagger can without the help of caltrops. This doesn’t even count in for the fact that you can remove conditions whenever you get a bad stack for example if they hit you with sneak attack or death blossom immediately remove the bleed unless you think they will death blossom again right away. Preferably you will dodge all of the C&D dagger attempts while kiting them. It has an extremely obvious animation (even if they use it out of range dodge it because they might teleport to you during the cast, if they do you will not have to worry about the teleport for a good 35 seconds or so) and death blossom on its own will not kill you before you can slowly dps them down. The stealth and baiting you to stand in caltrops is 90% of the build and avoiding both of these will give you a significant advantage in that they will heal dramatically less and be force to use their other ultilities or heal to go stealth in an attempt to make up for the lost bleed stacks.

It’s always feasible to get off the node for a second. Dying and the thief capturing the node is worse than the node going neutral until you get reinforcements or kill the thief. Caltrops isn’t as large as the node so you can always hunker down around the edges which is a lot easier if you don’t stand in the middle of the node, causing the thief to drop caltrops off to a side. Basically, avoiding letting the thief go into stealth by hitting you with C&D and stand outside of the caltrops means you’ll rarely have more than 5 bleeds on you as long as you bring condition removal and know when to use it.

If for some reason you have a 12+ stack of bleeds and haven’t used your condition removal yet, know that the majority of those bleeds are likely about to run out, which means you let them do nearly their full amount of damage instead of cutting them off at the beginning. Remove bleeds that come in stack at the first tick to hugely kill their dps.

Oh and unless they are dagger storming or canceled it for the stability go ahead and just knock them the hell down all day long. Not much they can do about it and this type of thief rarely uses daggerstorm when thieves guild is much better.

Ok thanks mate I will try some of this, but I don’t have a ranged weapon when I do tourneys so I can’t really use this strat, there has to be a way to beat these guys with melee weapons right? My condition removals are on long cool downs like 45 second cool down and such so I can’t really just pop them frequently while fighting the thief… I can try bursting, but as I’m more of a balanced build my burst is not really that great as I have some survivability as well.

I will definitely try dodging cloak and dagger a bit more reliably, but I can’t necessarily dodge every one of them. Thanks again, it’s just really frustrating to watch somebody spam one button over and over and be able to wreck you, because they are evading at the same time and then dodging when they can’t evade :/

Ill use this info tonight.

Alex.6940:

Some well timed CCs and burst damage is the best thing to finish them. I have 12.8k hp and 3.2k armour with enough self healing to deal with any steady damage if needed on my condition thief. The best way to kill me is to get me on low health, stun or fear me then burst me down. Interrupting the heal animation can also work.

I will use shadowstep if needed or use shadow refuge if I don’t think i can use my heal in time. You may have to exhaust these to take me down. I also use CnD as a small heal and way to kill time until my other two stealth abilities are off cooldown so be sure to look out for this and avoid it if possible then exploit this period of time where i don’t have any initiative or any stealth or escape abilities to finish me.

Cool thanks for the info, this build seems kittening ridiculous to beat solo, but this info will help thanks.

Basicly 3 ways to beat them:

1. Dont let them in melee range or to hit CnD This will cut their damage byt roughtly 70%. You still have to have at least decent ranged way to deal damage.
2. Conditions. Those types of thieves dont realy carry condition removal. they remove conditions in stealth. If you can apply him conditions, and get out of danger zone not letting him stealth from you, he will eat all of condition damage withouth way to migtate it.
3.CC this type of thieves ussualy carry 1 stunbreak(roll for innitiative most of time).
But he also uses it to refill innitiative. If he does that, strike him the second you can. He has no stunbreak for next 48seconds(if he traited it along with calltrops). Hard cc counters him well.

As for you who uses 2 melee weapeon sets, i would advise not to get involved fighting calltrops thief on point. Off point he is easier dodged, you dont need to do any objective in calltrops so he wont be able to kite you around it.

Trying to chase such thief away off point withouth letting it be nulified, is basicly suicide.

dear SIR, please use dodge to get out of caltrops zone, /sarcasm end
can you actually think for a moment how to counter it ???

DanH.5879:

dear SIR, please use dodge to get out of caltrops zone, /sarcasm end
can you actually think for a moment how to counter it ???

If your playstyle of conditions thief conssts only of calltrops im sorry, you arent valid to post here.

DanH.5879:

dear SIR, please use dodge to get out of caltrops zone, /sarcasm end
can you actually think for a moment how to counter it ???

Lol. Thanks mate you got me there, in all the tourneys I have done and all the thieves I have fought, HOW THE HELL HAVE I FORGOTTEN TO JUST DODGE!? In fact I didn’t even know there was a dodge button! /sarcasm end.

Thank you everyone else for the valid replies ill work on my game with these thieves, it is much appreciated, and thanks to the scrub Dan H for making me laugh.

He has a valid point about dodging. Just dodge out of the Caltrops and then kite. That is how you beat a condition thief.

Archonis.7249:

He has a valid point about dodging. Just dodge out of the Caltrops and then kite. That is how you beat a condition thief.

I can’t always dodge out of the caltrops. You can’t leave point sometimes in tourneys where the game is close, and if I dodge out of caltrops that’s one dodge used to just avoid a static Aoe, that’s doesn’t even count trying to dodge the thieves attacks. I have to save my dodges for dodging attacks that are needed, not necessarily dodging just to move, as I don’t get Feline Grace with my class ^^ it doesn’t matter if I get out of the caltrops that’s not even half of the fight, it’s putting enough damage on a constantly evading (spamming DB, then dodges) thief to down him while I’m taking serious bleed damage. If I dodge out of caltrops, then how am I going to continuously dodge cloak and dagger like suggested here, or dodge Treb while fighting if I need to. It’s not just as simple as dodge out of his caltrops otherwise I would not have posted here. Fighting the thief and actually having a chance to down him while constantly evading and stealthing is the problem, that is why I came to the thief forums to ask for help instead of just crying to the SPVP forums stating nerf this. I want to improve my gameplay so I’m seeking information.

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Archonis.7249:

He has a valid point about dodging. Just dodge out of the Caltrops and then kite. That is how you beat a condition thief.

I can’t always dodge out of the caltrops. You can’t leave point sometimes in tourneys where the game is close, and if I dodge out of caltrops that’s one dodge used to just avoid a static Aoe, that’s doesn’t even count trying to dodge the thieves attacks. I have to save my dodges for dodging attacks that are needed, not necessarily dodging just to move, as I don’t get Feline Grace with my class ^^ it doesn’t matter if I get out of the caltrops that’s not even half of the fight, it’s putting enough damage on a constantly evading (spamming DB, then dodges) thief to down him while I’m taking serious bleed damage. If I dodge out of caltrops, then how am I going to continuously dodge cloak and dagger like suggested here, or dodge Treb while fighting if I need to. It’s not just as simple as dodge out of his caltrops otherwise I would not have posted here. Fighting the thief and actually having a chance to down him while constantly evading and stealthing is the problem, that is why I came to the thief forums to ask for help instead of just crying to the SPVP forums stating nerf this. I want to improve my gameplay so I’m seeking information.

Thief is best at neglecting that point.. only eles and guardians speced for condition removals can stand in point and survive. If you dont have ranged weapeon and arent at least 1 of those 2 classes…. you wont win fight on point vs calltrops thief. Get off point and shoot him.(its smart to take ranged weapeon at least in 1 weapeon pair you know…

BlueprintLFE.2358:

I will definitely try dodging cloak and dagger a bit more reliably, but I can’t necessarily dodge every one of them.

I think, when they’re not shadow-stepping, running towards and through them when they’re running to you to make it connect should be effective at making them miss C&D.

BlueprintLFE.2358:

Archonis.7249:

He has a valid point about dodging. Just dodge out of the Caltrops and then kite. That is how you beat a condition thief.

I can’t always dodge out of the caltrops. You can’t leave point sometimes in tourneys where the game is close, and if I dodge out of caltrops that’s one dodge used to just avoid a static Aoe, that’s doesn’t even count trying to dodge the thieves attacks. I have to save my dodges for dodging attacks that are needed, not necessarily dodging just to move, as I don’t get Feline Grace with my class ^^ it doesn’t matter if I get out of the caltrops that’s not even half of the fight, it’s putting enough damage on a constantly evading (spamming DB, then dodges) thief to down him while I’m taking serious bleed damage. If I dodge out of caltrops, then how am I going to continuously dodge cloak and dagger like suggested here, or dodge Treb while fighting if I need to. It’s not just as simple as dodge out of his caltrops otherwise I would not have posted here. Fighting the thief and actually having a chance to down him while constantly evading and stealthing is the problem, that is why I came to the thief forums to ask for help instead of just crying to the SPVP forums stating nerf this. I want to improve my gameplay so I’m seeking information.

I gave you the information. Dodge out of the caltrops and then kite him.

I understand that it will take you off of the point, but if you aren’t built to be a bunker and have a decent amount of condition removal. It is better to get off the point and live and damage him with ranged attacks until backup arrives, than die and give the team 5 more points and assure that the theif holds the point giving them more points.

I am glad you are in here asking how to beat us and trying to take advice instead of crying “NERF!”, but what is the point if you don’t want to listen or dismiss what I and others have said?

I would also make this thread in your profession forums, as that would probably be where you would get the better answer to your question.