Guild Wars 2

I debated between putting this in another class’s forum or here, but I think I’ll get better insight here. I’ll start this off honestly: I don’t play a Thief and only know what I know about them from fighting them every twenty-odd seconds in WvW. That’s why I am posing this question to you guys, the Thief players of the forums.

I’d like to think I’m a pretty good player. I kill lots of people, I know what’s what, and so on and so forth. I’d like to avoid the answers being things like “play better” and such. Whether I am good or not is not the topic of the discussion, and I’d really like to focus on generalized strategies.

I’ve been encountering these Thieves that appear to be using sword/dagger (correct me if I’m wrong) and they chain dazes together repeatedly while attacking in between for massive dps. I don’t know the names of the skills, only what they look like when used (they swing their bladed weapons rapidly). Regardless of what class I use and how many stunbreaks I have, the daze seems to be applied with such frequency that I get totally locked down and destroyed without even having a chance to fight back / dodge / etc. Of course, the Thieves that do this to me approach me stealthed, so I never even see it coming until it’s too late.

Now I’m curious. As Thief players, what do you guys do to beat this, or what do others do to you to beat this? Stunbreaks don’t seem to be effective as the daze is reapplied rapidly, so I am looking for solutions. Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide into this matter.

The daze comes from them being able to re-stealth effectively and also hit you from behind. You need to block/immune/dodge the Cloak and Dagger animation that will come after a couple auto attacks. If you are stuck in the chain try to walk backwards and dodge it will force them to miss or apply blind instead of daze.

The key is identifying C&D’s animation and not letting it hit. It will still eat their initiative.

as an thief i use blind. this will stop the combo
as another class , some knockback /knockdown /blind/fear
thief got no stability buff, only on daggerstorm, so any CC work on them , preferably use something with low cast time.
as an bunker guardian : activate retailation and /dance

chain daze and rapid swinging more than likely means sword/pistol. the initial attack from stealth can be hard to avoid, but the pistol whip that does a short stun followed by a flurry is highly telegraphed. the first attack that does the stun has a decent cast time, and once they start swinging they are rooted, try to dodge the initial attack then start wailing on them while they cant move. the pistol has a ranged daze, but eats a lot of initiative if you spam it. dazes also work equally well against them, as both parts of pistol whip have either a cast bar/channel that can be interrupted if you dodge the initial stun. Also, they will burn through their initiative eventualy, and then you can press the advantage, assuming you can avoid/negate one or two of their attacks, though the auto attack hits quite hard.

more in depth counters would be easier to provide if I knew your main class, but stunbreaks followed by knockdown/blowout/daze/stuns all work quite well if they do start up pistol whip on you, as it takes a little bit to self interrupt and launch it again.

Since you asked, I typically play a Warrior. Thanks for the feedback so far, it looks to be good stuff and I look forward to trying them out tonight.

as an warrior activate E P and beat the … out of them)
as an thief i only engage in a fight vs warriors when i am borred, is the class that can eat me alive in 3 seconds , at my first mistake

Rising Dusk.2408:

Since you asked, I typically play a Warrior. Thanks for the feedback so far, it looks to be good stuff and I look forward to trying them out tonight.

anything to help a fellow player.

as a warrior, you are in one of the worse positions to counter a thief 1v1, but hammer or any disruption utilities cause havoc to most rogue builds, like Rayya said, stability is only on dagger storm for us, so you knock us down with, for instance, the hammer burst even after we stealth, then use AA or non targeted AoE and we will die rather quickly if we arent a condition damage build. a lot of rogues don’t expect a strong counter offensive, and trying to run will almost always result in death.

Use Knockback skills, and use stun type skills. Stunning them allows thier stealth to fall off, and knocking them back allows you to get time to either run or fight. With my guard i use a Sceptor and AoE all around be, use shield skill #5 and i use sceptor skill #3. If they come back for more, i switch to hammer, knock them back again (they are usually done by now but.. sometimes) and use hammer skill #5 to stun and dmg them. While doing all this they will be on fire, and that usually scares them off, lol

CC or condition damage. Thief lacks both, or has to use an ability with more than one purpose in order to utilize it. The more common thief builds (backstab builds) only use one break stun. Hell, it’s probably more rare to find a thief with more than one break stun than it is to find one without a break stun. The one thing never to do when fighting a thief, unless you’re an elementalist or in rare cases a warrior: run away. Seriously, I can’t say how many people I’ve killed who could have killed me simply because their immediate instinct tells them to run away from a thief. If you can survive a burst thief’s initial burst, it’s likely that you can kill them. This is the trade-off for initiative: you either burst, or save it for more sustained DPS.

Or the alternative route: just deal with it for another day. Thief’s gonna get nerfed, and the more popular build used now will probably be shelved for the next best thing.

Is it possible you can provide a little more information?

From your post it seems as if you’re talking about the sword pistol whip combo, but the DPS on that isn’t nearly as high as the frequency of players using it is low. However, backstab build also fits the high DPS and chain part.

Like others have said, that definitely sounds like Sword/Pistol, and the damage on that is not terribly high. If he was wrecking you with that, he must have had one hell of a glass-cannon build. Considering then that he’s a Thief with spectacularly low health at base and moderate armor, full glass-cannon stats, and no reliable access to stealth, you should be able to rip through him like tissue paper if you actually hit him.
The problem is that Pistol Whip has that stun at the start, and provides evasion throughout the entirety of the combo.
So all you really need to do is avoid that initial hit, and rip into him between combos. You could kite him with a bow or rifle, or you could chain-stun him with a hammer, or you could use pretty much anything else and just use skills like Kick or Bull Rush to stun him while you tear him apart. One solid combo on him should have him nearly dead after a single knockdown, I would imagine.

…Wait, ARE you playing a Warrior? Someone else made it sound that way, but you didn’t even mention your class in your post.

The hardest 1v1 I’ve had was with an extremely mobile ranger. I only ever got 1 daze and the rest of the time he moved so much all I could do was blind him.

ive been using this build for about a month (s/d daze build)

the trick to beat a thief using this build is to make them miss their c+d… its very easy to miss and if they do, they waste 6 ini and cant restealth and hence you dont get dazed.

once your stun wears off, you need to blind/stun/dodge etc to ensure he cant restealth using cloke and dagger. if you stand there and attack normally, he will very quickly stealth again and daze you again.

it must be annoying versing a player who is constantly stealthed while you are constantly dazed