Guild Wars 2

So lemme preface this by saying that: I’m someone who goes to dueling rooms a lot. I’m not the best thief in the world. And most of the statements I’m about to make are from the perspective of a CS d/p thief (For those of you who haven’t run a CS build. Relative to the meta SA build I have: ~1.3x more dps, much less initative, much less condi clear/stealth, and generally speaking much less sustain).

So then, I’ve noticed that many folks seem to think thief is, for the lack of a better word, trash when it comes to PvP. Particularly in the aspect that thieves are seemingly incapable of 1v1’ing any other class. I wanted to throw in my thoughts on this topic as someone who practices 1v1’ing a decent amount.

First off though, talking about 1v1’s in general. Personally I think that half the time, irregardless of class, you shouldn’t be going for 1v1’s. A rule of thumb I’ve heard is that if it takes you more than 15-20 seconds to down someone you’re better off going elsewhere (In a 20s fight you recoup half of your lost points by stomping your enemy, and then break even if you hold the point for more than 10s). Realistically this makes sense. If the enemy team has an ele who’s capped and holding far, you don’t want your ele going far to 1v1’ing the enemy ele for the 2-3 minutes minimum those 1v1’s normally take to finish (With no guarantee that your ele ends up the victor). That’s 2-3 minutes where the enemy team would be gaining free points for holding, and 2-3 minutes for another person to come by, +1, and make the once 1v1 a 2v1. But these sorts of events aren’t exclusive to thieves only, they can happen for all classes.

Warrior

In my opinion, the thief actually has a very good advantage in the matchup against warriors. BP -> Whirling Axe can be casted on reaction reaction against Bladetrail/Rush to deal heavy damage for free to the warrior. Endure pain is easily kiteable for its duration. Same goes for rampage unless you get knocked down early without a stunbreak. Shadowstep can stunbreak the first of any stuns/knockdowns a warrior has, and then Shadow Return will render any knockdown/stun the warrior manages to land thereafter for the next 10 seconds useless (Which is a pretty big deal considering most of the warriors knockdown’s/stuns are done consecutively/within a short period of time of each other). Lastly, off-meta rifle or longbow builds are easily countered by Whirling Axe (With longbow requiring axe to be used at a point blank range, and rifle at a medium/far range). Overall I’d say that the warrior-thief matchup averages around 7/3 in favor of the thief. At least for pre-berserker warrior that is. But that is just my rating. Dunno, how would you folks rate the matchup against warriors?

Ranger

Ranger is a class I feel is either 6/4 in favor of the thief or 7/3 in favor of the ranger depending on who gets the first hit. Healing Seed gives condi clear and leap/blast heal finishers that work pretty well against the ranger and off-meta condi rangers. Signet of stone can be easily stalled for it’s duration with either SR or Shadowstep. And the momentum loss from taunt (Assuming you didn’t have a stunbreak for it) is only really gamechanging if the ranger managed to get in the first hit/burst. I also feel like it’s pretty easy to guess/dodge a trap ranger’s traps, but I run Signet of Agility so I’m likely biased here.

Ele

The 1v1 matchup for DD Cele ele’s. DD Marauder ele’s I feel are perfectly capable of being 1v1’d by a thief. Ride the Lightning is highly choreographed and can be easily dodged. Burning speed is easy to outmaneuver if you haven’t been playing super aggressive/in their face. And Ice Shard Stab is good whenever they’ve rotated out of water or into air/fire. Staff/scepter ele’s are also definitely 1v1’able with thieves. For builds other than DD Cele I’d say the matchup is pretty even if not slightly in the thief’s favor.

Guardian

For DPS and Burn guards I’d say the matchup is 8/2 & 7/3 in the guardians favor respectively. These classes certainly deal a large about of burst damage. But they are also very squishy once their defenses are down. The biggest problem with these classes is that you usually have to steal to get momentum to lower their hp to the point where they’ll have to use Renewed Focus. But at the same time you need to save your steal to interrupt Renewed Focus, or else they’ll retain momentum from finishing it. These classes are certainly still killable though since they’re so squishy.

I could go on with engis, necros, and mesmers. I feel like those matchups are similar to the rangers to where getting the first hit/burst is important. But I’d rather not make this wall of text any bigger and save those discussions for another thread/later. Still, I guess at the end of the day I wanted to say that, in my opinion, a lot of these matchups are do-able? I see a lot of thief class weakness complaints but not a lot of matchup specific discussion. Curious what classes ya’ll feel have the worst matchup, and what matchups you feel the thief is strong at.

First of all, i would say that the job for a thief isn’t to 1v1. His job in PvP is to help his teamates and change a n v n situation into a n+1 v n situation.
Let me me explain this more: Thief can’t actually duel any other class.
A very skillfull thief can’t duel any other skillfull class because the gap is too big. You’ll counter by saying: “u can dodge, u can get stealthed, u can rupt, u can time” and i’ll agree, but the only way to win against anyone in duel is to make zero mistake while your opponent makes many.
A good Warrior/Mesmer/Inge/Ranger/Guard/Ele will wait until you’ve used all your breakstuns/dodges to burst/CC you and kill you.
A good Necro/Guard burn/Inge condi will wait a good opportunity and put all the condi he can and just kill you.
Of cours, I’m talking about good players, you can easily find trashy people and 100-0 them. but on the competitive stages, thief is the lowest class actually.

I 1v1ed another Thief the other day and it was a lot of fun. We burnt pretty much all our tools, stealthing and teleporting all over the place, and it ended up I just barely squeaked ahead of him.

Quick rundown (more or less in line with what you have here):

Warrior is generally a very winnable match-up, it just takes so long that it’s basically never worth trying to do – however it’s favorable enough that you can hold a bigger capture point (one of the Legacy ones for example) for quite some time against a sole Warrior, which is sometimes worthwhile.

D/D Ele and Soldier Engy are long, uphill slogs through all their cooldowns and defenses. You’re not going to be able to neutralize a point against either and they will probably kill you in the long run. Don’t bother.

Necromancer depends quite a bit on how much life force they have built up coming into the fight – if it’s empty, you should be able to dumpster them, but if it’s full it’ll take forever to whittle them down through it and you’ll probably get chipped out before then. Punch them hard up front, look at the bar when they go into shroud, and if it’s full exit stage left.

Guardians dumpster thieves pretty hard, but fortunately they are slow and you can outrun them to decap points all match. You fight them if you have to stay alive on point for like 3 ticks to win the game or something; otherwise don’t bother, you’re better off making them chase.

Ranger depends a lot on the terrain. On an open map like Legacy they can be a really rough match as they’ll usually get the first shot on you; on close quarters maps with lots of cover like TotSS or Kyhlo you dumpster them pretty hard.

Mesmer duels are dumb and revolve around who can blow the other up from stealth. Flip a coin.

The thief 1v1 is (hopefully) a 50/50 matchup. But yea I do agree that it can be a lot of fun.

Also regarding mesmers. It is largely a toin coss on who hits who first. But I want to add to that by noting how important contesting is in the mesmer matchup. Literally just wildly flailing autos can swing the fight in your favor. Of course guessing where’d they go after they stealthed would be a better alternative. I feel like a simple “where would I go if I just stealthed from there” goes a long way. Esp since as a class with a lot of access to stealth we have experience to make these predictions better (Same goes for thief v. thief).

Agree with the necro analysis too. I think another thing that has to be considered for 1v1’s is that realistically in an actual fight both you and you’re opponent may have some cooldowns down. Sometimes it’s not really a matter of who’s better or not. Sometimes the deciding factor of a fight can be that one of you may have, for one reason or another, just used up one of your utilities in an prior to the fight.

Also, @Ebony. I’m considering a relatively high skill level for all classes here. Like I said I practice in dueling rooms. So I’m not making my observations from a few fights with several mechanical mistakes. But that aside I’m having a hard time following your reasoning here. You say a good {insert class here} will wait and save their burst/CC/condi’s for until after I’ve used up all my stunbreaks/dodges/condi clears. I say sure a good player will be aware of my defensive utilities – just as I am aware of theirs. But, that being said, why would I waste all my defensive utilities when they’re saving all their burst/CC/condi’s?

They’re deadly in one-on-one combat using their agility, acrobatic fighting style, and the ability to steal to overcome their enemies. – GW2pedia.

If this is +1 that everyone is talking about…then fine. Thief should be BETTER in 1v1 than any other class. Period.

Skaven Zverov.2984:

They’re deadly in one-on-one combat using their agility, acrobatic fighting style, and the ability to steal to overcome their enemies. – GW2pedia.

If this is +1 that everyone is talking about…then fine. Thief should be BETTER in 1v1 than any other class. Period.

the +1 everyone’s talking about is only entering a fight if you joining results in a numerical advantage for your team.

• joining an XvX fight to give your side the advantage
• joining an XvY fight (where X > Y) to give your side a bigger advantage.

thief should be better in 1v1 than any other class, but right now it’s considered bad to the point where you really shouldn’t 1v1 unless it’s finishing a fleeing enemy. and even then you have to be careful.

Thief’s could be better at 1v1’ing than any other class. But if thief was buffed to the point where it was better at 1v1’ing than any other class then as compensation it’d have to be nerfed in other area’s.

What you folks are discussing is the idea of an archetype. In your mind the “thief” or thieves in general should be a class/profession that excel at 1v1’s or duels (Talking about the idea of a thief both in and out of Guild Wars here). I agree that archetype-wise a thief should be somewhat good at 1v1 fights. But the duelist role/archetype/fantasy fuel is filled by the role of the mesmer. In my eyes mesmer’s are the class that are archetype-wise designed to fill the role of a duelist (They even have a trait line named dueling).

Conceptually/archetype wise I don’t think the thief should be the master of 1v1’s. I think they should be good at assassinating as thieves are commonly related to assassins (In my mind at least. Dunno in Fire Emblem thieves become assassins). I also think they should be good at laying heavy condition’s/poisons. The latter role isn’t really filled in my opinion. But the whole idea of a thief as an assassin is relatively met – at least for me.

Again though, the thief shouldn’t be better in 1v1’s than any other class in my book. If any class had to have that tittle it should be mesmers (Because again, they’re the duelist class with a duelist traitline. Not thieves).

Ebony.7301:

First of all, i would say that the job for a thief isn’t to 1v1. His job in PvP is to help his teamates and change a n v n situation into a n+1 v n situation.
Let me me explain this more: Thief can’t actually duel any other class.
A very skillfull thief can’t duel any other skillfull class because the gap is too big. You’ll counter by saying: “u can dodge, u can get stealthed, u can rupt, u can time” and i’ll agree, but the only way to win against anyone in duel is to make zero mistake while your opponent makes many.
A good Warrior/Mesmer/Inge/Ranger/Guard/Ele will wait until you’ve used all your breakstuns/dodges to burst/CC you and kill you.
A good Necro/Guard burn/Inge condi will wait a good opportunity and put all the condi he can and just kill you.
Of cours, I’m talking about good players, you can easily find trashy people and 100-0 them. but on the competitive stages, thief is the lowest class actually.

In other words Anet screwed up the balancing big time. We already knew that.

Which I find funny since at the very dawn of this game, the thief class was designed to be the 1 v 1 class. Now the game has evolved to where I personally think that isn’t the case. While a player certainly can duel other classes successfully, you have to look at more than what the thief can do to them, but what they can do to the thief. In the case of the warrior, their only trump card are heavy hits, usually. They are very winnable against but the problem is the time investment to fighting one usually turns out to not be even worth it.

I personally think a D/D ele isn’t worth it. As someone else said, it’s an uphill battle. Unwinnable? No, but if they are of equal or greater experience then it’s a fight you will have a very difficult time winning. They can cleanse and burst and you have to eat through a lot of cooldowns to get them to do what they want.

Rangers used to be our prey but they have evolved to be an actual threat nowadays, and one cannot throw caution to the wind now. LB hurts a lot and being knocked back can be detrimental since you’re only then making their LB stronger. Even still I’d say a ranger is definitely a class a thief should try to target. If things go right, that should be a win.

Necromancers, mainly of the condition variety are a tough match up now. They can take a hit, they can take a few hits all while playing defensively they can still get conditions on you, and they have death shroud to stall you and deal even more damage. This in my opinion is a class that you can try to engage and the fights don’t typically last too long despite them being able to eat your burst. The best thing to do is fear them near death for final blows.

Guardians, enough said, very dangerous. Waiting for them to use skills is optimal, if you survive them.

Mesmers is like a 50/50 for me. either I have a very good chance at winning or I lose 100% of my hp in 1/16th of a second. I just use extreme caution when dealing with them. Fighting a mesmer is unique in that it should usually be a quick fight, in both directions.

Engineers I personally don’t deal with. People know how supposedly, I don’t. Too many conditions than I can clear, way too much pressure and they don’t even need to directly target me.

Thief, best get the firs hit in. I find you chances of winning on most sky rocket if you get the first hit in because now they are going on the defense and you can counter act if you play your offense better.

In the end though, all of these classes have the tools that can seriously counter act your abilities so I don’t think we are the 1v1 specialist we used to be.

Midi.8359:

Thief’s could be better at 1v1’ing than any other class. But if thief was buffed to the point where it was better at 1v1’ing than any other class then as compensation it’d have to be nerfed in other area’s.

What you folks are discussing is the idea of an archetype. In your mind the “thief” or thieves in general should be a class/profession that excel at 1v1’s or duels (Talking about the idea of a thief both in and out of Guild Wars here). I agree that archetype-wise a thief should be somewhat good at 1v1 fights. But the duelist role/archetype/fantasy fuel is filled by the role of the mesmer. In my eyes mesmer’s are the class that are archetype-wise designed to fill the role of a duelist (They even have a trait line named dueling).

Conceptually/archetype wise I don’t think the thief should be the master of 1v1’s. I think they should be good at assassinating as thieves are commonly related to assassins (In my mind at least. Dunno in Fire Emblem thieves become assassins). I also think they should be good at laying heavy condition’s/poisons. The latter role isn’t really filled in my opinion. But the whole idea of a thief as an assassin is relatively met – at least for me.

Again though, the thief shouldn’t be better in 1v1’s than any other class in my book. If any class had to have that tittle it should be mesmers (Because again, they’re the duelist class with a duelist traitline. Not thieves).

Mesmers would be better off not existing and having their skills spread out to other classes, like necros getting illusions, elementalists getting ports, guardians getting chaos storm, and thieves should get manipulations.

Plus 1 isn’t even a real role anyone can join in his buddy’s fight. Why not just go with two warriors, a guardian, elementalist, and either an engineer or mesmer?

It’s not that weird tough.

In 10 or more years I play MMos, Assassin type classes are rarely or never strong enough to 1×1 people except when there is a big skill gap. (in favor of the Assassin, ofc).

On other way around, our role is to quicky take down any target on half-health. Which we excel at. Hence the reason we have a +1 role.

2 bruisers + one assassin can take down targets way faster than 3 bruisers. Simply because those can’t deal enough spike damage to surprise the opponent.

On Gw2 Thief may not have the biggest burst. But it’s true we can burst any class as long we have acess to stealth and reveal is down. (which is every 4 seconds).
Even mesmers have a 10+ seconds cooldown on their skills.

That’s the diference.

(PS: I am talking about the standard sPvP D/P build. You can always make a bruiser thief if you change your stats, but that’s not meta)

Let me say this: Pre june 23th patch wvw thief was pretty much on par with any class and any build. I really could kill about anyone (as long as I wasn’t lagging which is kind of rare nowadays.)
In pvp I couldn’t because my CnD was lacking some damage. I don’t really play pvp anymore, so I can’t tell what changed with the patch.
I said back then that things were off and they probably were but not as bad as they’re now – I win most fights because my opponent made a mistake. If I make one I’m insta dead.

Edit: Since this sounds as if thief had been as OP as a lot of people liked to claim: I had to be on my toes with all classes/builds – they had an equal chance of beating me, especially since I’m a no utility thief.

Yea I definitely think thief is a high skillcap/floor class. Making mistakes. Missing Steal, double casting BP (Only happens really due to lag/input buffering with CC’s), or missing c&d are usually fatal for a thief. D/P and S/D are more forgiving as far as weaponsets go.

Also in agreement with the whole idea of assassins normally being weak/somewhat subpar. Kinda hard to balance a class designed around killing key targets quickly. On the other hand though there’s the idea that a thief should have more options than just an assassin build-wise. Which I think might not be being fulfilled to the maximum potential (Also think that might not be true for most classes though).

Also, I agree with Red’s comments about most classes and particularly so on the guardian. Guardian I think is a class that should only really be fought 1v1 if you have reason to believe they might have a few cooldowns down. Like if they just came from a fight or if you just caught them after one. Engi is also a matchup I personally have trouble with. I still think it’s possible to win a fight against them if you can manage to get off an initial burst. But otherwise it’s becomes increasingly in their favor as the fight progresses (The lack of initiative on the CS build I run might be the reason I feel this way though). Their heal on the other hand is actually pretty bad if you manage to dodge the knockdown (Animation is pretty long before the turret deploys). Also like I said earlier I think the role of the thief has drifted away from duels aswell. Not quite sure when I’d pin the shift for the class on though.