Guild Wars 2

I cannot count the amount of times I have outplayed a thief so terribly that I’m more than 75% HP while he’s below 10% after blowing his entire set on me.

Then, he just proceeds to chain stealth and reappears a couple thousand range away.

How in the world do I catch a thief? Even my pet, which has a 25% passive speed boost from my signet, and an ADDITIONAL 30% passive speed boost from one of my traits, along with swiftness, cannot catch up to a thief.

It’s utterly ridiculous and frustrating to have finally learned how to outplay a thief and then come down to the fact that they’re so impossibly slippery that I cannot kill them.

Edit : You all try to make it sound so easy. First of all, as a glass cannon ranger running a double bow setup, to not get blown up in an instant a thief engages is outplaying him by far. Thieves can heartseeker strike me when I’m 0-25% for over 10k damage with their executioner trait from the back. If you’re running Basilisk Venom, you use up 1/2 of my stun breakers right there, and the only two I have is either my healing mechanism, or my only escape tool (Lightning Reflexes rollback). It takes admittedly a lot of work to not even get demolished by a thief in under 5 seconds if they’re running a stealthy backstab build (which like 50% of thieves seem to be running in roam WvW builds.)

Secondly, as a double bow ranger, I have one daze, and one knockback, both of which require you to lock on a to a target before it can be used. The only other way to interrupt or bother a thief in shadow refuge is my barrage, which has a thirty second cooldown.

If you’re a thief running an assassin stealth backstab, spike DPS build, and you fail to kill a ranger who not only has only one skill on a 45 second cooldown to make distance between us as well as vitality and armor numbers both under 1000, you have been terribly outplayed.

Edit 2 : If anyone is asking ‘how in the world did you out play a thief then with a glass cannon double bow build?’ – it involves timing with a ranger ability called ‘Protect Me’.

If he slipped through your fingers, then you didn’t in fact, outplayed him. Anyway, I’m guessing your problem is against Shadow Refuge users. For a ranger, either you aoe the SR’s circle with traps or melee attacks. You can also use your ‘hound’ pet to fear inside it, making the thief revealed…

Before everyone tells you that “it’s so easy to counter stealth”, let me reassure you that you’re not the only one who faces this. When I’m on my Thief it’s all too easy to run away from just about anything.

With that being said, here are a few ways:
Stun the Thief – The most obvious way is to chain-stun him. Depending on which class you are (I don’t know a lot about Rangers) it may or may not be possible. Thieves don’t have a lot of stun breakers.

Knock the Thief out of Shadow Refuge. Most classes can’t reliably do this but it’s worth a shot.

Avoid the Cloak and Dagger (if he is using D/D), or somehow interrupt the Black Powder Heartseeker combo (D/P). The first one isn’t too bad and the second is downright impossible. In the past 100 hours of WvW on my D/P Thief it’s happened about two times, both against extremely skilled Mesmers.

Stealth doesn’t stop knockdowns. Stealth does clear a condition if traited for it so just immobilizing is not a guaranteed way to lock us down. Even if the Thief is loaded with conditions and stealth-condition-clear has a low chance of removing the immobilize, Infiltrator’s Arrow still works while immobilized .But if you land some sort of knockdown and the Thief disappears just attack the area with everything you have since it will probably hit.

Unless the Thief goes completely glass cannon, the claims of “oh we die in just 3 hits” is nonsense (and even then they’d have to be three pretty hard hits). Don’t go in and wonder why it doesn’t happen, because that claim is extremely far fetched.

In the end it’s still pretty hard to kill a good Thief (in WvW I assume, since that’s what your 2nd paragraph implies), and that’s just how it is until Anet changes stealth’s mechanics.

Edit: If the Thief is really bad, assume they run in a straight line upon stealthing and work from there.

The best way to pin down a thief is not a game-mechanic.

Yes, you can CC them, knock them out, and many other things…

But if you beat a thief to 10% while you are above of 75%, and the thief did everything on you for nothing. Yes, they are going to say “screw you guys, I’m going home”…

Bait the thief to stay in the fight and finish him when he thinks he can beat you.

Thiefs can get very self-confident on their escape and step a bit too far from safety.
Most of the times I lost (loosing meaning died, not running away) with my thief on WvW was because I was tricked to stay longer than I should.

Firstly I have to agree that if the thief escaped than I don’t see any indication that you outplayed him.

Good ways to stop thieves from going into stealth is to stun lock them. As soon as you see a thief getting low its usually a sign that they are gonna want to go into stealth. If you see a shadow refuge it’s best (imo) to just start swinging a melee weap to find their location and just keep hitting them.

As soon as you’re no long getting your melee 3 hit combo just wait a second to see if you get ooc, if so just ignore the thief.

It’s not worth trying to catch a thief, you need to down him before he runs.

1v1? No way if thief do things right and this is how it is intended to be. Because the thief is only intended scout profession in the game. Others simply do not deserve to have escapability close to thieves because they didn’t sacrifice their AOE, long range attacks, damage sustain, invulnerability, etc. Good example that Anet also think so is eles rtl nerf.
Unlike others thieves do not meant to be on the main battle front of WvW, they meant to be on the enemy backyard making destruction there. To be able to do this they are given with great escaping capabilities (enough to escape from zerg and definitely from 1 player).
To pay for this thieves also not very good duelists. On the same skill level thief will more lose (run away) than win. So yeh you should play what your class made to do, if you want scouting – roll a thief.

Sunflowers.1729:

With that being said, here are a few ways:
Stun the Thief – The most obvious way is to chain-stun him. Depending on which class you are (I don’t know a lot about Rangers) it may or may not be possible. Thieves don’t have a lot of stun breakers.

The rest of your post is great, but this bolded part is extremely untrue. Shadowstep, Roll for Initiative and Infiltrator’s Strike are all stunbreaks that also create distance between you and the thief. That first one actually breaks stun on two activations for its 50 second cooldown, and that last one is a weapon skill that costs 3 initiative for the strike, and 2 to go back and escape.

This doesn’t include Haste and Infiltrator’s Signet which both try and drive the thief into an aggressive counter-attack. Or any traits relating to receiving control conditions.

Basically, the thief has access to very good stun breaks for escaping a fight.

Well firstly, as other have said, if the thief got away from you easily, you don’t in fact outplayed him.

It seems that you found a resilient enough build (bunker) able to withstand damage from a typical thief assault. So… What do you expect the thief to do?

“Ok, this ranger is hard as a nail… I barely touch him with my attacks, while he keeps maiming me with theirs…. However, I will stay here to the death, taking repair costs and giving him badges because he deserves to kill me”

Don’t get offence, but you are bit naive.

That said, the best way to pin down a thief are stuns (dazing also works) and knockdows. Cripple and inmobilize are usually pretty irrelevant to thieves, unless you catch them in a severe skill cooldown.

However, your truly best chance to catch a thief is luring him into thinking that they can still win the battle. If the thief throws everything at you at barely dents you 10% of your life, he will lose interest and disengage. And you won’t be able to catch him, since most of his defensive abilities will be ready. But if you manage to take wounds and play like if you were about to die (even if you are not, because you know you can quickly heal or prevent death easily) the thief will stay no matter what to go for the kill. That is how you truly outplay a thief.

As long as he thinks he has chance, he will stay. Keep your life about the same level as him, and he won’t run.

Softspoken.2410:

Shadowstep, Roll for Initiative and Infiltrator’s Strike are all stunbreaks that also create distance between you and the thief. That first one actually breaks stun on two activations for its 50 second cooldown, and that last one is a weapon skill that costs 3 initiative for the strike, and 2 to go back and escape.

This doesn’t include Haste and Infiltrator’s Signet which both try and drive the thief into an aggressive counter-attack. Or any traits relating to receiving control conditions.

Basically, the thief has access to very good stun breaks for escaping a fight.

Thief has some good stun-breakers, true. But hardly anyone uses more than one, as it really demands too much of their valuable utility slots.

Shadowstep is a good one, as you can use twice in a roll, but dont think of it as a double stun-breaker. Your time to use the second one is limited and in lots of situations if you use it it will get you back to a spot you were already trying to get away of.

Infiltrator strike is not a stun breaker. Infiltrator return is. So if you are going to use it as such, better not to open the attack with steal.

Infiltrator signet is a dangerous one to use. If you get the BRush-100b warrior combo it will port you directly to the jaws of the beast…

Smoke bomb is not a stun-break but it works great in those situations also.

signet of the hunt(25%) speed does not stack with the +30% speed trait, nor with swiftness (33%) only one (the highest) speed increase will apply (swiftness) at a time. and the others will be ignored

Unless you are a burst spec you don’t kill a good thief. If you are some tanky, low dps build then there is just no way in hell any decent thief dies to you. Sorry.

To pay for this thieves also not very good duelists. On the same skill level thief will more lose (run away) than win.

This is probably the biggest BS I have seen in these forums in quite a while.

Sunflowers.1729:

Thieves don’t have a lot of stun breakers.

you don’t say

First off lets cut the bullkitten. If the thief is S/D stun locking is not going to happen.

Any other thief build here’s your dilemma. Most good thieves will use Shadowstep Once they play this card there is no way tot catch them. The game is over. The only class that could possibly keep up is another thief or pure melee ranger.

Also there is this misconception that swiftness really help with mobility. Its bullkitten. Fact is mobility like RtL, rush, heartseeker, etc are the really mobility skills. Having swiftness/25% signets up is nice and all but mobility is about the weapon and utility skills.

Also as ranger your pet is free fodder for CnD.

Remember this you are fighting the second or third strongest duelist in the game.

Those who claim that you didn’t outplay the thief if he managed to get away are just full of it. There’s no class that can reliably prevent a thief from escaping if they want. By their logic, every single thief who escapes has “outplayed” their opponent.

It’s sad indeed that people don’t have the conviction to play to the end and take the easy way out. IMHO if you initiate a fight and you get beat, the other person deserves to have the kill: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Stop-Running-and-Die-with-Honor/first#post1913655

Having said that, I try and prevent thieves from escaping by hurting their ego. I open chat and /say “lol” or “run run”. I’ve often found this infuriates the thief enough to come back and die to me. Never underestimate the size of a thief’s ego

Well alright, I’ll agree that Thieves actually have a decent amount of stunbreakers. However, very few Thieves use them so if your aim is to just kill that random Thief in WvW, it’s still a decent strategy.

It does feel a bit silly that I’m basically saying “hope the enemy is a bad player”
—————————————————————-
In any case, I completely disagree with the post about Thieves giving up all other WvW capability, so they can be justified as ‘good scouts’.

First, even if this is the case (which it sort of is, but certainly not to the extent that you make it out to be), it is a problem that should be fixed by buffing the Thief in zerg fights, and nerfing roaming ability.

Second, Thieves aren’t useless for zerg fights. You might be surprised that we can switch to a Shortbow and spam Cluster Bombs and poison fields everywhere. For sure, it’s not as effective as a Staff Elementalist (almost nobody is), but that is hardly little. A Smokescreen is the same as a Guardian’s Wall of Reflection since everybody has learnt that firing projectiles through that is stupid. Spammable poison (poison fields too, which apply poisoning finishers) reduces healing by 33%.
—————————————————————-
Finally, we do not suck 1v1. I don’t even know why anyone thinks this, and I’m not going to bother arguing about it. Let someone more patient explain.

Oh yes, about “If the thief got away from you easily, you didn’t outplay him” (fixed for grammar). That doesn’t mean the Thief player is amazing. It just means the Thief has lots of good escape skills. Tell me, how can the world’s best Necromancer (or insert generically slow moving class like Mesmer or Guardian) catch a decent Thief? It’s just skewed heavily in the Thief’s favor.

Root him.

Chasing down a thief is pretty hard to do. They can run 50% faster in stealth, and spam gap closing skills, so.. yeah….

But the hunter elite with the tangling roots. That kills my thief every time. There may be some thieves that know how to counter it… but it simply destroys me on mine, since I don’t run with a stun breaker.

…and unless you are using a regen build with fern hound, the first major trait in the pet line has 20% faster recharge for shouts, use that and Sic’em for most runners.

TheGuy.3568:

First off lets cut the bullkitten. If the thief is S/D stun locking is not going to happen.

Any other thief build here’s your dilemma. Most good thieves will use Shadowstep Once they play this card there is no way tot catch them. The game is over. The only class that could possibly keep up is another thief or pure melee ranger.

Also there is this misconception that swiftness really help with mobility. Its bullkitten. Fact is mobility like RtL, rush, heartseeker, etc are the really mobility skills. Having swiftness/25% signets up is nice and all but mobility is about the weapon and utility skills.

Also as ranger your pet is free fodder for CnD.

Remember this you are fighting the second or third strongest duelist in the game.

It’s important to note with Infiltrators strike that if you stun or daze the target after the teleport but before the attack portion of the ability, the shadow step portion of the skill doesn’t activate. Not every class has an easy way to do this and it takes good timing, but since S/D needs to go pretty glassy to do effective damage, stunning a thief who just teleported directly to you and no longer has his primary escape mechanism available can end the fight almost instantly.

shield skill 5…..sanctuary….tome of wrath…ring of warding and line of warding can all push a thief out of SR if played right.

if you got him down to 10%……inless ur in a 1 v 1 tournament you have nada to worry about ….(good thing theres no 1 v 1 tournaments)

glad to read somebody actually posting they can beat thieves. :P when played right its so very doable.

kudos. btw if im 1 v 1 i usually bring 1 or 2 signets on my guardian…they really help when timed right.

evilapprentice.6379:

TheGuy.3568:

First off lets cut the bullkitten. If the thief is S/D stun locking is not going to happen.

Any other thief build here’s your dilemma. Most good thieves will use Shadowstep Once they play this card there is no way tot catch them. The game is over. The only class that could possibly keep up is another thief or pure melee ranger.

Also there is this misconception that swiftness really help with mobility. Its bullkitten. Fact is mobility like RtL, rush, heartseeker, etc are the really mobility skills. Having swiftness/25% signets up is nice and all but mobility is about the weapon and utility skills.

Also as ranger your pet is free fodder for CnD.

Remember this you are fighting the second or third strongest duelist in the game.

It’s important to note with Infiltrators strike that if you stun or daze the target after the teleport but before the attack portion of the ability, the shadow step portion of the skill doesn’t activate. Not every class has an easy way to do this and it takes good timing, but since S/D needs to go pretty glassy to do effective damage, stunning a thief who just teleported directly to you and no longer has his primary escape mechanism available can end the fight almost instantly.

sorry i couldnt quite grasp or infer what you are trying to say here. mind giving it another go? im curious.

Travlane.5948:

evilapprentice.6379:

TheGuy.3568:

First off lets cut the bullkitten. If the thief is S/D stun locking is not going to happen.

Any other thief build here’s your dilemma. Most good thieves will use Shadowstep Once they play this card there is no way tot catch them. The game is over. The only class that could possibly keep up is another thief or pure melee ranger.

Also there is this misconception that swiftness really help with mobility. Its bullkitten. Fact is mobility like RtL, rush, heartseeker, etc are the really mobility skills. Having swiftness/25% signets up is nice and all but mobility is about the weapon and utility skills.

Also as ranger your pet is free fodder for CnD.

Remember this you are fighting the second or third strongest duelist in the game.

It’s important to note with Infiltrators strike that if you stun or daze the target after the teleport but before the attack portion of the ability, the shadow step portion of the skill doesn’t activate. Not every class has an easy way to do this and it takes good timing, but since S/D needs to go pretty glassy to do effective damage, stunning a thief who just teleported directly to you and no longer has his primary escape mechanism available can end the fight almost instantly.

sorry i couldnt quite grasp or infer what you are trying to say here. mind giving it another go? im curious.

What he is saying is if you mange to stun during the attack but before it competes the shadowstep wont activate. Even if the attack doesn’t hit the step will occur. You would have to stun in the .5 second before the animation to completes. It would be luck at best to land that stun but it does happen. Then he skipped the part where I said any good thief runs with shadowstep making his point moot.

Also I should point out that S/D is a tanky set at base level. the goal can be to burst but the set works equally well just using the third swing of auto attack to do DPS. Lots of fotm S/D is so cool now players do not know this and just use it with D/P.

Just because you have so much more mobility and seemingly infinite stealth, doesn’t mean that you can consider yourself un-outplayable due to the nature of your class’ slippery mechanics which seem wholly unfair and unrewarding to play against as a player.

wow…..maybe im just off today but im not absorbing much of anything said on this post 0_o.

dude I think u got something wrong here… we are THIEVES not guardians (tanks) or rangers (range dps) we are suppose to be slippery and squishy.

manechi.8061:

dude I think u got something wrong here… we are THIEVES not guardians (tanks) or rangers (range dps) we are suppose to be slippery and squishy.

Not slippery enough to run away from anything and everything whenever you feel like it. If you screw up, I feel like you should be punished for going in when you shouldn’t have, or misjudging the strength of your opponent. Instead, you can do as you please, and it’s extremely frustrating.

cant do as we plz.. pft… signet of rage warrior can actually kill a thief faster than a thief can kill a SoR warrior. imagine if thief had a 5 sec immob could u imagine? warrior does :P guardian has a 6 sec one too (combine immob + kd signet)….if the guardian is specced for offense they can really do some harm.

this is for the bad players —-————-

PRO TIP: The is always a gap on stun breaks and shadowsteps etc. your job while in a battle with a thief (bc 1 v 1 is everythign in this game apparently) is to know which he used and when. 50 secs on shadowstep 45 on steal. once these 2 are used…99% of the time you know the best he can do is invis for a while…..as long as all his steps are on cooldown now is i your chance to stun and to knock down and perhaps immobilize if not playing a d/p…… remember to find the gap. :P people waste their skills so quick they end up wasting them.

TheGuy.3568:

Travlane.5948:

evilapprentice.6379:

TheGuy.3568:

First off lets cut the bullkitten. If the thief is S/D stun locking is not going to happen.

Any other thief build here’s your dilemma. Most good thieves will use Shadowstep Once they play this card there is no way tot catch them. The game is over. The only class that could possibly keep up is another thief or pure melee ranger.

Also there is this misconception that swiftness really help with mobility. Its bullkitten. Fact is mobility like RtL, rush, heartseeker, etc are the really mobility skills. Having swiftness/25% signets up is nice and all but mobility is about the weapon and utility skills.

Also as ranger your pet is free fodder for CnD.

Remember this you are fighting the second or third strongest duelist in the game.

It’s important to note with Infiltrators strike that if you stun or daze the target after the teleport but before the attack portion of the ability, the shadow step portion of the skill doesn’t activate. Not every class has an easy way to do this and it takes good timing, but since S/D needs to go pretty glassy to do effective damage, stunning a thief who just teleported directly to you and no longer has his primary escape mechanism available can end the fight almost instantly.

sorry i couldnt quite grasp or infer what you are trying to say here. mind giving it another go? im curious.

What he is saying is if you mange to stun during the attack but before it competes the shadowstep wont activate. Even if the attack doesn’t hit the step will occur. You would have to stun in the .5 second before the animation to completes. It would be luck at best to land that stun but it does happen. Then he skipped the part where I said any good thief runs with shadowstep making his point moot.

Also I should point out that S/D is a tanky set at base level. the goal can be to burst but the set works equally well just using the third swing of auto attack to do DPS. Lots of fotm S/D is so cool now players do not know this and just use it with D/P.

I’m perfectly aware how ‘tanky’ S/D can be. It’s still a losing proposition to attempt any sort of coordinated PvP with say, a soldiers jewel and/or points in SA over a X/30/0/30/X build – you’re still a thief, your primary defense mechanisms are stealth (not so much in this build, but in general), and being slippery/evading (what this build is designed for). Exchanging high power/crit/crit damage for toughness based survivability is a losing proposition – if you don’t kill your target fast enough, there’s a pretty good chance you might as well not bother.

Essentially, you should be relying entirely on your dodginess to keep you in the fight while you quickly (for S/D anyway) drop and stomp an opponent – extending the fight by lowering your DPS and increasing your damage mitigation just increases the likelihood you’ll make a mistake that gives your opponent the advantage.

Shadow step works once -If you can get a thief to use Shadow step to escape a situation he put himself in, you’ve just gained a huge advantage – IS→SS is great for staying up in a fight, but generally much less effective for escaping (which is what you would typically use the Shadow Step utility for)

Lyndis.2584:

manechi.8061:

dude I think u got something wrong here… we are THIEVES not guardians (tanks) or rangers (range dps) we are suppose to be slippery and squishy.

Not slippery enough to run away from anything and everything whenever you feel like it. If you screw up, I feel like you should be punished for going in when you shouldn’t have, or misjudging the strength of your opponent. Instead, you can do as you please, and it’s extremely frustrating.

The thief is punished – s/he spent a bunch of time and CD’s contributing nothing. Winning != Stomping. If I make a bad call, run in, fight for 20 seconds, and end up running away, you’ve won. People need to understand that.

Most people hated Bunker Ele’s because they would RTL away, “and you wouldn’t get the stomp”. That wasn’t the reason they were so frustrating however – the fact they’d be back in 10-15 seconds, mostly or fully healed, with a wealth of CD’s still up due to their attunement mechanic was the actual reason they were so hard to deal with.

When I pointed out those stun breaks before, I didn’t mean to imply a thief would be running all of them. What I want to imply is that if they’re running any of the first three (Infiltrator’s Strike → Shadow Return, Shadowstep → Shadow Return, Roll for Initiative) once they hit the stun breaker they’re already half-way out of the fight, and anything from blinding powder to infiltrator’s arrow will take them the rest of the way there.

I’m honestly of the opinion that a thief should be able to run from most anything, and should be exceptionally good at it. I’m also of the opinion they already are, so mission accomplished, I guess.

Pro tip – Rangers can be nearly as slipery as Thieves minus Stealth.

Thieves are supposed to be good at escaping, whats the issue?

Softspoken.2410:

Sunflowers.1729:

With that being said, here are a few ways:
Stun the Thief – The most obvious way is to chain-stun him. Depending on which class you are (I don’t know a lot about Rangers) it may or may not be possible. Thieves don’t have a lot of stun breakers.

The rest of your post is great, but this bolded part is extremely untrue. Shadowstep, Roll for Initiative and Infiltrator’s Strike are all stunbreaks that also create distance between you and the thief. That first one actually breaks stun on two activations for its 50 second cooldown, and that last one is a weapon skill that costs 3 initiative for the strike, and 2 to go back and escape.

This doesn’t include Haste and Infiltrator’s Signet which both try and drive the thief into an aggressive counter-attack. Or any traits relating to receiving control conditions.

Basically, the thief has access to very good stun breaks for escaping a fight.

Thieves must have SoS/Shadowstep on there utility bars to be effective, they do not get easy access to swiftness. If you count the 50% Movement when stealthed well don’t, we have to actually catch up and hit our targets in melee to stealth.

Daecollo.9578:

Softspoken.2410:

Sunflowers.1729:

With that being said, here are a few ways:
Stun the Thief – The most obvious way is to chain-stun him. Depending on which class you are (I don’t know a lot about Rangers) it may or may not be possible. Thieves don’t have a lot of stun breakers.

The rest of your post is great, but this bolded part is extremely untrue. Shadowstep, Roll for Initiative and Infiltrator’s Strike are all stunbreaks that also create distance between you and the thief. That first one actually breaks stun on two activations for its 50 second cooldown, and that last one is a weapon skill that costs 3 initiative for the strike, and 2 to go back and escape.

This doesn’t include Haste and Infiltrator’s Signet which both try and drive the thief into an aggressive counter-attack. Or any traits relating to receiving control conditions.

Basically, the thief has access to very good stun breaks for escaping a fight.

Thieves must have SoS/Shadowstep on there utility bars to be effective, they do not get easy access to swiftness. If you count the 50% Movement when stealthed well don’t, we have to actually catch up and hit our targets in melee to stealth.

It’s 33%, although very seldom it seems to “Bug” and work at 50%. By that I mean once every 3-4 months of play.

evilapprentice.6379:

The thief is punished – s/he spent a bunch of time and CD’s contributing nothing. Winning != Stomping. If I make a bad call, run in, fight for 20 seconds, and end up running away, you’ve won. People need to understand that.

This argument in a world vs. world context makes no sense whatsoever.

Basically what you’re saying is that if a thief wins, I have broken armor and must return to spawn and run back to my objective.

If I win, the thief survives and runs 2000+ range away to get out of sight and continues about his business.

“Balanced!”

Lyndis.2584:

I cannot count the amount of times I have outplayed a thief so terribly that I’m more than 75% HP while he’s below 10% after blowing his entire set on me.

Then, he just proceeds to chain stealth and reappears a couple thousand range away.

How in the world do I catch a thief? Even my pet, which has a 25% passive speed boost from my signet, and an ADDITIONAL 30% passive speed boost from one of my traits, along with swiftness, cannot catch up to a thief.

It’s utterly ridiculous and frustrating to have finally learned how to outplay a thief and then come down to the fact that they’re so impossibly slippery that I cannot kill them.

Edit : You all try to make it sound so easy. First of all, as a glass cannon ranger running a double bow setup, to not get blown up in an instant a thief engages is outplaying him by far. Thieves can heartseeker strike me when I’m 0-25% for over 10k damage with their executioner trait from the back. If you’re running Basilisk Venom, you use up 1/2 of my stun breakers right there, and the only two I have is either my healing mechanism, or my only escape tool (Lightning Reflexes rollback). It takes admittedly a lot of work to not even get demolished by a thief in under 5 seconds if they’re running a stealthy backstab build (which like 50% of thieves seem to be running in roam WvW builds.)

Secondly, as a double bow ranger, I have one daze, and one knockback, both of which require you to lock on a to a target before it can be used. The only other way to interrupt or bother a thief in shadow refuge is my barrage, which has a thirty second cooldown.

If you’re a thief running an assassin stealth backstab, spike DPS build, and you fail to kill a ranger who not only has only one skill on a 45 second cooldown to make distance between us as well as vitality and armor numbers both under 1000, you have been terribly outplayed.

Edit 2 : If anyone is asking ‘how in the world did you out play a thief then with a glass cannon double bow build?’ – it involves timing with a ranger ability called ‘Protect Me’.

i am sorry but if you blow your pet knockdown /fear before thief use shadow refuge , then you didnot outplayed the thief
you got leaps on melle weapons same as thief does.
thief got leap on dagger
ranger got leap on sword /greatsword
thief lack mobility with pistol / dagger – pistol / pistol
if you use invulnerability, get thief to under 50% health, and he get the opportunity to retreat you are the one outplayed.

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

evilapprentice.6379:

The thief is punished – s/he spent a bunch of time and CD’s contributing nothing. Winning != Stomping. If I make a bad call, run in, fight for 20 seconds, and end up running away, you’ve won. People need to understand that.

This argument in a world vs. world context makes no sense whatsoever.

Basically what you’re saying is that if a thief wins, I have broken armor and must return to spawn and run back to my objective.

If I win, the thief survives and runs 2000+ range away to get out of sight and continues about his business.

“Balanced!”

No. If you win the Thief is dead.

A good thief will never die to any other class even another thief. They will keep resseting the fight and blow your cooldowns and eventually kill you if yiu stick around.

You know we can also complain how weak we are so u can get our hp low in secs and that we cant kill u and we end up running away always….. but that’s not the point right? (theres a reason why u end up with 75% hp while the thief 10% hp)

Please don’t forget to complain about Dual Daggers eles and 100 blades from warriors.

Aneirin Cadwall.9126:

evilapprentice.6379:

The thief is punished – s/he spent a bunch of time and CD’s contributing nothing. Winning != Stomping. If I make a bad call, run in, fight for 20 seconds, and end up running away, you’ve won. People need to understand that.

This argument in a world vs. world context makes no sense whatsoever.

Basically what you’re saying is that if a thief wins, I have broken armor and must return to spawn and run back to my objective.

If I win, the thief survives and runs 2000+ range away to get out of sight and continues about his business.

“Balanced!”

so a thief does that a few times a fight right? would anyone play thief if they couldnt do that? and by “that” i mean avoid dying 9 out of 10 fights? pfft i think not sir. :P

i do get the frustration but there is much frustration on our side to. we can do much in zerg battles (unless blast finishing before it starts)….even throwing in SB its super slow and yes it “can” hit hard but not if u get hit first playing defensively. most non thieves dont understand both sides.

all thieves play other classs
not all other classes play thieves

this means the perception will always be slightly skewed on average.

Well that’s how thief is designed, if he has to run you won the battle. Don’t bother chasing just cap the point or do something else if in WvW. Most likely he’ll come back and try again, possibly make a mistake then you can /dance on his corpse to feel manly.

When it comes to WvW. Don’t listen to the thiefs. They’re ultimately telling you L2P, but the fact is a good thief can’t be beat unless they mess up. But here’s the thing: a good thief always has more than one way out of trouble. So when they mess up once, they got another way to escape.

Every class has a bunch of bad players and there are certainly a bunch of bad thieves out there. But a good thief… you won’t win. To beat a good thief it’s pure effing luck.

Was watching a a stream last week of a good player and someone asked “Why aren’t you playing you thief?” Their answer was “There’s no challenge on my thief. No risk of dying unless I do something stupid. I wanted to play something more challenging for a change.”

BrimstoneAshe.5043:

“There’s no challenge on my thief. No risk of dying unless I do something stupid. I wanted to play something more challenging for a change.”

This is why I don’t play my Thief any more.

Ezeriel.9574:

But the hunter elite with the tangling roots. That kills my thief every time. There may be some thieves that know how to counter it… but it simply destroys me on mine, since I don’t run with a stun breaker.

Infiltrator’s Arrow

Edit: You wanna know how to not die as a WvW Thief? It’s pretty easy:
-Plan ahead. If you are going to run out steath don’t stand next to the enemy, instead disengage. If you go “oh no I ran out of stealth what now” you aren’t a very good Thief and deserve to run all the way back from the waypoint.
-People will always try to CC you the moment you pop out of stealth. Wait 1 second (for player reaction/aiming) then dodge.
-Don’t be stupid and try to 1v3+. Unless you are an amazing player this is a really dumb thing to do. “Oh no I died 1v3 we have no escapes” is not a valid reason for why Thieves suck.
-Change directions when entering stealth
-Stealth is not invincibility but you can dodge roll and avoid area attacks (don’t walk into Necro marks, that’s silly).

Alright, it’s not actually very easy, but once you do all of these things, you will be a good Thief! Then you will realize that we never die, and go “why am I playing a game with no risk”, then quit your Thief.

Instead of telling you how to stop us, i will tell you what i do, and you can think of a way to stop it.

At 20% health, if i am not going to win the fight, i use shadow step, switch to my bow and if i have any ini left teleport again. If you are good enough to stop this, catch up with this, i can re-use the shadowstep to get back to where i started, so be ready to look behind you if i seem to magically disappear.

Then very last up, i can use shadow refuge, by the time you get to it, i would of recovered enough health to survive your attacks, and have enough ini left to infiltrators arrow away.

So to stop it, you need to predict the movement, and if i stealth without blinding powder (visual effect), shadow refuge, hitting you, jumping through smoke, i havn’t stealthed, but teleported, normally behind you. Its a common mistake i see, people attacking when i teleport thinking its stealth.

Good luck, and remember thieves have to deal with this as well as you.

By your description you are already the best player in the world. Why do you seek help?

bhagwad.4281:

Those who claim that you didn’t outplay the thief if he managed to get away are just full of it. There’s no class that can reliably prevent a thief from escaping if they want. By their logic, every single thief who escapes has “outplayed” their opponent.

It’s sad indeed that people don’t have the conviction to play to the end and take the easy way out. IMHO if you initiate a fight and you get beat, the other person deserves to have the kill: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Stop-Running-and-Die-with-Honor/first#post1913655

Having said that, I try and prevent thieves from escaping by hurting their ego. I open chat and /say “lol” or “run run”. I’ve often found this infuriates the thief enough to come back and die to me. Never underestimate the size of a thief’s ego

Many thiefs out there are just trolls (myself included). Their goal is to kitten off the enemy. If they achieve that by running away, they have won their little, petty game. Oh, those moments when you see incoming party invite from the enemy. Just priceless. :P

hamsteak.1368:

Sunflowers.1729:

Thieves don’t have a lot of stun breakers.

you don’t say

lol

lLobo.7960:

Shadowstep is a good one, as you can use twice in a roll, but dont think of it as a double stun-breaker. Your time to use the second one is limited and in lots of situations if you use it it will get you back to a spot you were already trying to get away of.

I cannot tell you how many times I’ve shadowstepped away and then continued to run forward, only to be chased by my opponent, then shadow returned somewhere behind him. And they keep chasing as if I stealthed or something.

Juking. <3