Guild Wars 2

Hi guys, first of all, I am not a super pro pvp player. I play a S/D thief now. I love thief, the pace, the game play, the reflex required for fast decision. But till date, I have not been able to hold my own in pvp, so I would like to seek tips and advice from fellow thieves out there. I have problems mainly fighting mesmers, rangers and d/p thief. Let me be abit more specific with my problem,
Mesmers
When I use sword 2 to immo, maybe I get 2 AA off, I get swarmed by illusions while the mesmer stealthed. Then I follow up with steal, the mesmer will disappear again and then do a insta gib shatter on me.

Rangers
I get knocked back, then I tried to dodge a few times from the rapid fire, I got close, the ranger immune to dmg, by the time he takes dmg I am almost dead and his pet can finish me off.

D/p thief
1 v 1 been hell for me. You cant hit anything you cannot see. Normally upon engagement, d/p stealth, steal and backstab, I withdraw and he hs me. I use SR and he kills me with AA.

I am running 20066 and although I die alot, I dont want to give up and want to get good on this class. Its so bad to the point a mesmer called me noob. I know alot of good thieves are out there, may I trouble you guys for some tips and advice pls?

Ps: I been reading whatever advice is in this forum and try to apply, but maybe I could not see what i did wrong. I tried d/p but I didnt like it.
Thanks in advance.

I’m by far not the best thief around, I’m relatively new with one, too. But I’m going to give some basic tips that worked for me.

NEVER miss your steal.
First, try not to waste your steal on a surprise ambush unless (maybe) your objective is low on hp.
Place your Infiltrator’s Strike out of sight from your opponent, in a safe spot so you can break LoS. Abuse that.

Mesmers:
Shatter? Bait their shatters in and out, in and out, save a quick stun breaker for a daze+shatter combo, you can even CnD if they plan on doing a surprise stealth shatter. If you can’t do anything about avoiding that shatter (which I doubt) just tank it with Plasma’s protection+regen. I’ve also heard that abusing shortbow’s evade spam makes them rage hard.
Condi mesmers? Pressure them without hesitation, they wont ever kill you, you only have to dodge scepter’s IC. ’Careful with that confusion though.

Rangers:
The greatest power Ranger counter is LoS, and you can abuse that more than anyone. Rangers hate melee, even with their melee weapons, pressure them hard from melee. ‘Careful with their pointblank shot, although it’s more dogeable now, if hit by that, save steal or inf signet as it’s going to be followed by a Hunter’s Shot or Rapid Fire most likely.
You shouldn’t ever get hit by their Greatsword’s attacks, all of them are incredibly telegraphed, just time your dodges and don’t random dodge around.

D/P thief:
It’s a very hit or miss match up. Although, they follow a very simple attack pattern, they gain stealth by comboing pistol 5 into dagger 2. And then go for the backstab. That’s very initiative intensive and they don’t have a gap closer when in stealth trying to backstab you. You can be way more unpredictable than that. With a properly placed Infiltrator’s strike, you can dealy their stealth enough to make them waste their BS as stealth runs out or with a clutch well timed dodge, or even force them a Shadowshot, which does less damage than BS and wastes ini, you always have dodge spam, too.
Also, you can interrupt that very combo with a steal daze. This screws with their flow leaving them vulnerable. A well timed shortbow immobilize can be effective too, just predict their combo with a stolen stealth and proceed to immob.

The key of a successful S/D thief is the smart use of sword 2.

Thx for the great advice! Mesmer greatsword AA hits hard so if I avoided the shatter, can the auto attk be avoided? Many times I dodged but I get AA + illu berseker down. Also, infiltrator return actually has a cast time and can be interrupted, is there a way to use it more effectively?

Thanks

Well, to be honest, I don’t know how can you be having troubles with mesmers specially, thieves are kind of a counter to them. The stolen Plasma is elite quality. Their GS’s AA does crappy damage on melee unless they are abusing the stow weapon glitch and the illu zerker is easily avoided and never lasts long enough for a second attack on a shatter mesmer. They just can’t handle someone instaporting to them their whole encounter and your sword’s AA pressure, so they are always popping their shatters soon enough. Setting up a shatter combo on such a slippery thief is incredibly hard for them.
If you’re getting dazed just dodge away, shadow step, infi signet… If it happens to be a rupt mesmer with immob traits, just save your stun breaker+withdraw for that. Really, you have all the tools you need to handle even the best mesmers around.

If you’re not asking advice on how to beat zerker guards, engineers or how cele elementalists can tank you forever, that implies you can handle them just fine? :P

For engis, eles and warriors normally I will try to 2 v 1 them coz I know 1 v 1 s futile. It is just that mesmers, thiefs and rangers are the ones i need to pick out first for the team.

I think you need to have some priority straight.

If I am about to jump into a fight, let it be WvW or PvP (it’s the same), the following must die absolutely, in that order.

- Thief
-Mesmer
- Ranger
-Necro
- Engineers
- Warrior
- Guardian

This does not mean, guardian is the least dangerous of all the classes, but one thing is for sure : letting the thief live is more threatning to your survival than letting any other classes live.

We are our worst ennemies.

Khenzy.9348:

Well, to be honest, I don’t know how can you be having troubles with mesmers specially, thieves are kind of a counter to them. The stolen Plasma is elite quality. Their GS’s AA does crappy damage on melee unless they are abusing the stow weapon glitch and the illu zerker is easily avoided and never lasts long enough for a second attack on a shatter mesmer. They just can’t handle someone instaporting to them their whole encounter and your sword’s AA pressure, so they are always popping their shatters soon enough. Setting up a shatter combo on such a slippery thief is incredibly hard for them.
If you’re getting dazed just dodge away, shadow step, infi signet… If it happens to be a rupt mesmer with immob traits, just save your stun breaker+withdraw for that. Really, you have all the tools you need to handle even the best mesmers around.

If you’re not asking advice on how to beat zerker guards, engineers or how cele elementalists can tank you forever, that implies you can handle them just fine? :P

Thieves are a counter to mesmers but we can still die to them. Mesmers in pvp are zerkers just like us, when a thief makes a mistake, he can be bursted from 100% to 25% HP in one combo so it’s not that surprising that some thieves have problems with mesmers.

OP, everything needs practice and it helps to go over what you did that led to your death and find the mistakes. Try changing how you fight a particular class, always consider the situation – sometimes it’s a waste of time to fight someone (even if it’s a class you should kill first) and be unpredictable.

To add to advice mentioned above:

Mesmers – don’t forget S/D has access to stealth with CnD, althought not as good as in WvW (due to lower CnD dmg in pvp), it still deals dmg to the mesmer and gives you stealth (you don’t always fight on point so even pvp stealth can be good). If you use bow, you can SB 3 heavy dmg attacks and when mesmer goes into stealth, target one of the illusions and autoattack it, the attack bounces even to stealthed targets.

Rangers – the attack you should really really watch out for and dodge is the knockback. When you get knockbacked, you HAVE TO break it to avoid RF but if you dodge/evade knockback, you can do same with RF without wasting your stun breaks – keep those if you screw up, not for the very first knocback that comes your way. Use LoS as much as you can and when he pops his invulnerability, just wait it out – either CnD or sword 2 away.

D/P thief – you can hit what you can’t see, it’s harder but possible. If he goes into stealth near you, then he’ll most likely go for backstab – you know when and where he’ll be to backstab you. Autoattack and then dodge/evade/CnD 2-3s later (but don’t waste all your resources on evading non stop). To interrupt his stealth combo, I either use steal or CnD when he is near me and autoattack him from behind when he is standing in the black power, about to leap. Same effect, slightly longer daze and I save my steal. When the thief keeps leaping from BP towards me, I sometimes use CnD as he is leaping (in HS range) and I get stealth off him.

From what you wrote, you use SR, it’s very useful to learn to dodge/cancel withdraw with weapon swap inside your SR.

Go here:

http://www.twitch.tv/sizer2654

Watch every past broadcast, then try to do it like that….

Thank you guys for all the superb advice!! Will definitely bear all the tips in mind while practice, practice and practice. Really grateful.

CHANGE your build 6/0/0/1/6 mug improv and panic strike…/ vigorous recov/ thrill of the crime …bountiful theft.. …sleight of hand/ rune of the orge.. fire and air sig.. shadowstep ..blinding powder… sigil of agil.. crucial for condi remov… and opener should be something like infil strike… steal… cloak and dagger…. while in stealth weapon swap bow … after you root..poison field and cluster bomb for area weakness… then repeat first rotation infil strike ….cloak and dagger… with baslisk this time and depending on there health or rotation of healing etc.. use your steal.. to interupt or run out of range and use it for gap closer… s/d is all about line of site.. always open behind and object and as soon as a condi lands try to remove asap with return on infil or sigil of agil… try to save dancing dagger for evades.. of attacks or if they have rings on the ground use dancing dagger for gap closer..hope this helps

LeetSauce.7210:

CHANGE your build 6/0/0/3/6 mug improv

Typo? One point too much? Would love the build.

i play memser and thief in tpvp and wvw

i can say as thief memser gives me hard time and as mesmer thief gives me hard time

as mesmer a s/d thief should win as he can go in and out evading and dodging almost everything while taking bite after bite of my health (sure he cant stand on point)
as thief i try to abuse stealth for the right moment to burst or daze and abusing #2 in and out and SR when needed and most of the time SB to kill illusions

On S/D, steal is EVERYTHING. When you have a chance, just hover over steal- the effects nearly go off the screen. Make sure to not throw random dodges- you have a lot of them with S/D 20066 but they run out eventually. Mesmers shouldn’t really be too big of a problem for you, just pay attention. Mesmer only has a few invulns, so you should stealth after bursting to bait a sword #2 or signet pop. Once their invuln runs out, you burst, and rinse repeat until they are dead. Ranger sucks to fight per usual, I like to stay as close as possible to them and CnD every time they try to rapid fire. Usually rangers will use the longbow knockback followed by their #2 rapid fire, so if you use infiltrator’s signet or a stunbreak the second you get knocked you should be able to dodge most of the burst. As far as thief goes, you are lucky that D/P is predictable. Wait for them to stealth, then dodge when you anticipate the burst. With 20066 you have more than enough dodges to kite a D/P thief. Make sure you land your steals, and CnD as much as possible. (Like you said, you can’t hit what you can’t see) If you are feeling esports and have enough health, stand in the thief’s blinding powder when he stealths and if he goes for more than one heartseeker through it, theres a good chance he will hit you and be revealed. People on here can give rotation advice for eons but the only good way to learn a class and playstyle is practice. Play the way you would naturally play, and get to know the class you are playing and the quirks that come with it.

Best of luck,
Ably

Thx so much. I’ve been practicing and improved a little. Latest gripe I have is skyhammer map where rangers knocked you off the cliff. No way to get stability.

Hype.8032:

Go here:

http://www.twitch.tv/sizer2654

Watch every past broadcast, then try to do it like that….

^This is the best advice you’ve been given, quite honestly.

Mesmer is very easy. Just after they stealth, wait a bit like 1s then cnd on a clone. Their stealths are all 3s except elite which is 5s but they won’t burn it at start usually. So you can use this to stay in stealth longer than them. Then it’s a matter of being in their face constantly by gap closing with sword2 and other teleports.
Ranger signet is annoying but it’s a huge cd wasted. Just wait it out. Abuse los. If you get behind them or just in melee their longbow goes to thrash dps-wise. Keep in mind rapid fire tracks through stealth. Use cnd on their pet as the ranger itself might dodge/avoid it.
D/p thief is problematic though. They deal way more damage than you.

Try reading this if you get bored also.

http://intothemists.com/guides/250-sd_the_flanking_acrobat

The build is obsolete now so stick with 2/0/0/6/6 strength (or pack) air/fire + sbow. However, he explains some of the mechanics that are very important to being successful with s/d. Your first auto attack is so fast that you can dodge in the middle of it to remove the aftercast vulnerability. Personally, until you get really good I’d suggest that you infiltrators strike into every fight. If you start getting into trouble dodge away from your opponent then use the return. That should cut down on your deaths a lot.

GL