Guild Wars 2

Before we begin: No, this isn’t a whining post, or a nerf post, or anything of the sort…The purpose of this thread is to share how you all handle thieves in a PvP/WvW situation. I’ve been looking through the thief forums and nearly every other thread is some form of “nerf thieves because they can stealth and backstab me” or “nerf thieves because I can fight them and they’ll just stealth and I can’t kill them”

So I’m wondering just how many people actually know how to fight thieves and just how many people just sit there spamming their auto attack and give up when a thief goes into stealth.

As for myself, I have no actual PvP/WvW experience yet, as I’ve yet to hit 80 and gear out my thief, but I feel what I have seen is relevant. Thieves can be attacked while they’re in stealth, and they can be crowd controlled while in stealth. D/D thieves are predictable because every time they go into stealth, you know they’re going to position themselves behind you to do a backstab, which means the best way to counter them is to….Drumroll…TURN AROUND. Or use your knockbacks, or just dodge their CnD in the first place.

I know this thread isn’t going to make any difference within the “nerf thief!” community, because they will ignore everything that goes against their own belief that the thief is OP, but maybe it can open some insights for others who are honestly looking for ways to put up a fight.

once you played a thief, you understand all its flaws
you learn when to dodge, when to throw blinds and where to blindly spam ur aoe skills
once you play a thief you realize how helpless a thief is inside shadow refuge and how easy it is to make him regret throwing it (just spam inside in a pattern that you think hell be moving , he has 2 choices, either soak the damage and wait for the refuge to finish, or exit early and get stealth debuff)
simple as that! and as for heartseeker its one of the easiest skills to dodge and manipulate by the enemy

I relish Thieves on my Warrior in WvW. Depending on the approach, I have an idea of what kind of Thief they are going to be (attempt an initial burst or sustained condi). I’m prepared for both kinds.

A ton of ways to block or otherwise stop the initial burst and proceed to shut them down, and my build reduces the punishment from conditions by a large amount. Since I’m also specced highly defensively along with all the active defensive skills, D/P hybrids that try and balance damage and sustainability are a waste of time. They tickle. Like ants.

Don’t get me started on the ones that try and spam HS. That is just hilarious. By the time 25% of my HP or so has been taken, they’re out of juice.

heartseeker spam is really easy to deal with, when spamming HS thiefs are helpless.. especially against warrior who can stun lock them to death

Against a d/p thief? I find the nearest mob and spam cloack and dagger. “Hey look, I can perma stealth too!”
If he persists, then we farm mobs together!

Master of Timespace.2548:

Against a d/p thief? I find the nearest mob and spam cloack and dagger. “Hey look, I can perma stealth too!”
If he persists, then we farm mobs together!

Dragging D/P thieves into groups of mobs is almost as fun as doing it to mesmers. It handicaps them in a bad way and makes them much easier to deal with.

I think the best way to deal with thieves is to cut their 2 main weapons: Mobility and stealth.
If I run into a well organized group in WvW, they always CC me to death in a few seconds if I don’t manage to escape.

For the stealth, there are 2 important things to know. The first is that thieves still take damage from stealth, so they are very vulnerable to AoE damage if you know where they are. The second thing to know is that most stealth skills are very noticeable so when a thief stealths, you will always know it, either with the black field for the bp+hs combo, or the huge house for SE, or the hit for C&D… if you are aware of us, you can easily know when we are stealthed and where, and if you know that, we are dead.

Some classes have it easier to kill thieves. As warrior I let him blow all his cooldowns on me while avoiding them and blocking/stunning thief, after hes out I attack but rarely get a kill because thief will just run away when he knows he will die… supprise supprise.

As engineer it is so much easier. I am rifle engie, very tanky and using bombs, net turret and toolbox. She is level 52 atm but I have killed max level abyss/white clowns in WvWvW quite a lot. Only because I have 2 nets (gun + utility) I have 3rd net from turret and 4th net from supply box. Kite him around like never before, let him blow his cooldowns into smokebombs and whatnot. Drop supply on his shadow refuge and its gg. Also funny trick I have noticed is that when thief finally gets on you, take toolkit, slap him and apply 5 confusion and guy will kill himself attacking my gear shield. xD

I was supprised how easy is to kill thieves on my engi compared to warrior but I guess its the immobilize/knockback from rifle and confusion that really shines.