Guild Wars 2

Hello thieves. Ranger here to ask some questions on refuge since I’m having loads of issues countering it and I’ve come to the conclusion that I should just suck it up since I’ve met my maker.

Background: I play on a sort of whacky hybrid ranger that uses gs sw+d which I have had great success with against most match ups till I ran into this thief. He was your typical p/d condi unloading thief and while it took me a while to get accustomed to his unloading (he beat me probably 3 times before I got used to fighting p/d thief again, too much pewpew ranger…), I reached part two of the fight in which he would enter refuge. He would then enter refuge 2-3 times during the fight until I made a mistake in which I would die.

So also having a necro in which my best answer to refuge is to drop every mark I own on it + ds 5+4, I’m assuming all I can do is wildly swing my GS in hopes that he goes down. Getting past him holding my pet hostage for stealth was hard enough and I am now stumped. I probably answered my own question in the intro but is there any recommendations short of using lb channels, sic em, or the fear from the wolf?

Use maul right in the middle of that refuge, the cleave radius is huge. I stuck a hydromancy sigil on mine, swap for the proc and maul is usually enough to finish off a thief that has gone into refuge.

But yeah, I don’t hold back on a condi thief, if they are going to go full cheese I have no problem swapping a utility to sic ’em.

I really should NOT anwser this, but I feel generous and I pity you for how pathetic you are asking me how to kill my favorite doll, uhmm I mean virtual action figurine, so here is the trick:

Stealth does not mitigate damage, you know this from your bearbow adventures, so what you do is you walk into the refuge run around and manually spam 1, if you hit a stealthed player the chain on sword 1 will progress (look at your UI) this way you can track your enemy, since your enemy will not want to break stealth you will get free damage in this way much more if you do it right than he regains health, if you find him this way you also can get a imobilize trap on him and keep spamming sword 1 on him.

Be conservative with your weapon cds and mind if he resets you also reset, generally do not cleanse to early and keep regen up as much as possible. Most likely this will end in a stalemate, you should not die to p/d condi or hybrids 1v1, if needed just open distamce and wait for your cds to come back.

In essemce: sword auto attcks hit like a truck to win get as many in as possible especially if he goes into stealth.

There you go free enlightenment for everyone, even rangers, I can overcome my bias just for you.

@ Puck:

I don’t have a thief and I don’t have the mentality to play them effectively so this is pretty nice advice, although my mauls only hit for about 4-5.5kish (mostly 5kish) against glassier targets. I currently use SotW but maybe I could afford to take it off for sic em’ and pray that my traited pet cd’s will let me swap in time before they melt. I use rune of the defender so losing the passive regen won’t be a massive killer.

Thieves tend to sit in the center of refuge? I’ve never played a class which has to actually hit a thief directly when they enter refuge so this is new grounds for me. I’ve seen montages where thieves tend to stick to the edges but I guess this is against aoe heavy opponents targeting the middle.

@ Bazzooong:

Shouldn’t you want help? there are plenty of thieves out there and you are simply one person. Also even as a ranger myself, my quest is to cull the bearbow rangers like the rest of the non bearbow population and I am quite effective at it (not an achievement). Isn’t sword a horrible choice simply because of the root? I can imagine if you land one hit, without a target the second attack in the chain will send you flying out of his refuge. Your second point is very solid and it’s how I was able to get him to start relying on refuge in the first place.

I don’t have too much problems against normal thieves (s/d, d/p, and d/d) because they have to come in close to get their kill giving me the opportunity to do some work once refuge is on CD. Today was the first time I fought against refuge on a build p/d thieves can afford to kite till refuge is back so there is some learning to be had.

Edit: Poor wording on my part. I meant my ability to fight thieves like this got worse because of how much pewpew ranger I’ve been fighting.

I’m looking for any more answers into the mentality of thieves.

They don’t have to be in the center for maul to hit, the cleave radius is almost the same as the radius of shadow refuge, odds are you will hit. Since most thieves tend to use shadow refuge when there health is low maul and maybe 1 or 2 auto attacks will usually down them.

I never keep sic ’em on my bar. If I see a thief coming I check to see if he is running condi food, if he is I equip it before engaging. Most condi thieves are terrible players, if they get the jump on you it is pretty easy to get out of combat and swap a utility.

Puck.9612:

They don’t have to be in the center for maul to hit, the cleave radius is almost the same as the radius of shadow refuge, odds are you will hit. Since most thieves tend to use shadow refuge when there health is low maul and maybe 1 or 2 auto attacks will usually down them.

I never keep sic ’em on my bar. If I see a thief coming I check to see if he is running condi food, if he is I equip it before engaging. Most condi thieves are terrible players, if they get the jump on you it is pretty easy to get out of combat and swap a utility.

I’ve never felt that way about maul, but I will attempt this next time. Also how do you feel about heal as one over troll ungent against condi thieves? I find troll ungent is heavily hampered by their poison uptime (and everyone slotting sigils of doom), but their are windows where I don’t have poison on me which I feel I would benefit from another burst heal (the other being the 6 proc on defender). I’ve only just recently picked up my ranger again so I never noticed the buff to heal as one.

Edit: Nvm on the HaO buff, I’m mistaken. Also maybe even healing spring is a solid option with a couple leap finishers since I’m traited gs and s.

Not much you can really do about fighting this spec as anything, really. Too tanky, too much condition spam, too much gap-opening, combined with a ton of innate sustain.

The refuge may have been that player’s saving grace, but Sic Em is honestly the only reliable way I’ve found to shut P/D down enough such that it will shut down their SA line and make their damage and sustain almost non-existent.

Bursting them down is just not possible if they’re half-decent. Dire gear and the SA line give so much durability that nothing in the game will spike one – even my thief build is incapable of taking out most condi dire thief builds.

DeceiverX.8361:

Not much you can really do about fighting this spec as anything, really. Too tanky, too much condition spam, too much gap-opening, combined with a ton of innate sustain.

The refuge may have been that player’s saving grace, but Sic Em is honestly the only reliable way I’ve found to shut P/D down enough such that it will shut down their SA line and make their damage and sustain almost non-existent.

Bursting them down is just not possible if they’re half-decent. Dire gear and the SA line give so much durability that nothing in the game will spike one – even my thief build is incapable of taking out most condi dire thief builds.

I knew they were somewhat difficult to handle but it was never an issue since I used to play my plague signet necro almost exclusively. Now that I’m messing around with other characters, p/d thieves just happened to be the first spec I ran into that casually mopped the floor with my ranger.

I would like to have as many answers as possible for p/d thief without sacrificing too much of my abilities against other classes. From the sounds of it, it’ll take a good maul in refuge and sic em’ for any real work to be done.

Just use wolf fear when he refuges

The wolf fear can be very unreliable, as often times SE will cleanse it before the thief leaves the radius of SR. Any P/D thief not using SE is simply building poorly or is doing it to troll with how overpowered the rest of the kit is (I’m looking at you, shadow strike).

I didn’t think about the fear being cleansed either. I’ve seen some rangers use that as a solution so I just threw it out there.

A good thief will escape one he put down his refuge. He’ll blast a SB2 in it for the blind if you’re not in range, and dodge whatever comes his way.

But you’re in luck: most thieves in WvW are terrible! I assumed you were speaking about WvW, because in PvP you wouldn’t duel a condi thief. Usually they put their refuge ate the very last moment. Here are some things you can try:

- Do damage: Maul is a good candidate for that, since it hit hard and in a big zone. It’s easy to dodge though.

- Wolf’s fear. I know you said “aside from”, but it’s still your best bet.

- If all else fails, when dueling a thief, have your inventory open in a corner of your screen, and drop a nasty stealth trap under your feet when the thief’s health drops to 60%. Cheesy, but sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.

Monoman.2068:

I didn’t think about the fear being cleansed either. I’ve seen some rangers use that as a solution so I just threw it out there.

The fear being cleansed is actually quite unlikely as long as you don’t cripple him first. He cleanses a condi every 3 seconds and it probably only takes 2 seconds to walk the diameter of SR. If your wolf is in bad position when he SRd don’t bother and just look to do damage to him.

The real advice here, is that you just shouldn’t fight this class if you cannot kill him in under 1 minute. There no good reason you should be able to counter SR. Its a 60 second cooldown and when the thief fails to SR he gets revealed and is at a massive disadvantage.

You guys are two bunker slow builds brawling it out and when you make a mistake after 2-3 refuges you die. This is how every condi bunker fight goes.