Guild Wars 2

So can somebody explain to me how the thieves can hit you from stealth with no reveal? How can i possibly have fun in this situations?

people still dont get it? its a trapper condi thief using shadow arts and trapper runes, traps trigger no dmg, just condi ticks. 5 stacks of confusion comes from traited steal. not really anything you can do vs that sort of trash. and its not “fun” its boring as hell.

Traps don’t trigger reveal because the traps are coded as entities, so the damage comes from the trap, not the thief that placed it.

But how could i get so many stacks?
I go from one stack to have: 5 stacks of confusion, 12 stacks of bleeds + 8 stacks of poison.
Traps apply only one stack… How could i get so many?

That is interesting. It doesnt exactly seem legit, but a hacker would probably not use conditions.
The conditions you have at the moment of death:
5 stacks of confusion: bewildering ambush
Cripple and initial knockdown: tripwire
Immobilize: Needle trap
Poison: needle trap, serpents touch, dagger training.
Bleeding: needle trap, caltrop dodge, probably either a sigil or at least one death blossom (at the point where 3 stacks got applied at once), the normal stacks can be explained with you staying in at least one pile of caltrops.
The vulnerability is a proof, you got hit by several traps.
The chill is kinda weird, but it could be a sigil.

Now, it is possible, that you got hit by a hacker, in wich case you should not blame it on the thief class, but I have another suspicion:
Im no expert for wvw, but is it possible, with your specific game settings, that someone who teleported from the high range of a shadow trap, would not be rendered within the first few seconds? That seems like the most logical explanation.
In that case your opponent was not invisible, just not rendered.

Its a kitten shame I cant see the combat log tho.

Edit: rewatching at higher quality 0:12 looks less and less like a dancing dagger. Perhaps your opponent simply never attacked you directly like the others said.

bleeds are easy with caltrops/uncatchable trait. dunno about poision though, not really look at condi stuff

Yeah it looks like a standard trapper thief. Your main mistake was standing still, once you were caught and immobilized you build up to a large number of stacks really quickly, largely on account of what may have been double needle trap. There is a drop needle trap on heal ability.

Key to dealing with this build is a lot of condition clears applied at regular intervals and applying AoE damage. This build is probably fairly tanky but needs to be on top of you. Your options are to use a stealth disabler/skill, just AoE the area around you, and to try and stay mobile around that AoE radius to avoid getting hit.

You also, in that video, hit your heal waaaaay too late and were unlucky to have just used your 3 skill and didn’t use any other skills to get out of immobilize. You were down at like 20% when you hit that. At the rate you were loosing HP you should have triggered it around 50% or so.

Also, not that familiar with druid, but where were your condi clears? It’s like you didn’t have any at all or very few from what I can see.

@ Fat Disgrace — Bleed/Poison from Needle Traps

saerni.2584:

Yeah it looks like a standard trapper thief. Your main mistake was standing still, once you were caught and immobilized you build up to a large number of stacks really quickly, largely on account of what may have been double needle trap. There is a drop needle trap on heal ability.

Key to dealing with this build is a lot of condition clears applied at regular intervals and applying AoE damage. This build is probably fairly tanky but needs to be on top of you. Your options are to use a stealth disabler/skill, just AoE the area around you, and to try and stay mobile around that AoE radius to avoid getting hit.

You also, in that video, hit your heal waaaaay too late and were unlucky to have just used your 3 skill and didn’t use any other skills to get out of immobilize. You were down at like 20% when you hit that. At the rate you were loosing HP you should have triggered it around 50% or so.

Also, not that familiar with druid, but where were your condi clears? It’s like you didn’t have any at all or very few from what I can see.

@ Fat Disgrace — Bleed/Poison from Needle Traps

All my skills cleanse + i had the trait that passes 3 condis to the pet periodically. However the trait is just rubbish as you can see, it takes 10 full seconds to act.
The thing is that the thief could keep DPSing me while in stealth, even did stomped me and didn’t reveal until so much later. It kept killing players all around.

It is not about when i hit the heal, this attack built 10K/tick condi damage in just one attack, it’s about during all the attack the thief was no visible but around dealing damage. And we know that build can stay invisible as long as they want. And because they can deal damage while in stealth they don’t need to come out. In other words: God Mode.

That is not fun.

Well if anet removes those stupid trapper runes from the game and causes the traps to do damage then we will see this build go away. Until then, you’re kinda stuck

It isn’t fun. It’s also why people have been suggesting to remove trapper runes from the game, as the ranger (and now even DH) does the same thing pretty much.

The poison is really weird, though. It seemed to be in sync with vuln gains from Deadly Trapper, but there’s no way to apply poison that quickly from traps.

DeceiverX.8361:

The poison is really weird, though. It seemed to be in sync with vuln gains from Deadly Trapper, but there’s no way to apply poison that quickly from traps.

I believe I can explain that. Look at how constantly the posion and chill is reapplied. I think, that thief might have been using reaper of kittening grenth.

This is what happened as far as I can tell. And I don’t even think Trapper runes would be necessary. He could have done the same thing with Krait runes, and would have actually done more damage.

On that topic, Stealth CAN be stacked before hand with Black Power+Heartseeker, then prolonged with Shadow Trap, Hidden Thief, and Meld with Shadows. Trapper runes DOES make it easier to maintain, though.

Here’s the run-through. And note that some things (Reaper of Grenth and Caltrops) have multiple pulses. He only activated Reaper of Grenth once, and laid 3 Caltrops…

Shadow Trap
5-Vulnerability (Deadly Trapper)

Reaper of Grenth
Chill
Poison
Weaken (Lotus Poison)

Caltrops (Uncatchable)
Crippled
Bleeding

Reaper of Grenth
Chill
Poison

Needle Trap
Immobilize
3-Bleeding
Poison
5-Vulnerability (Deadly Trapper)

Tripwire
Knockdown
5-Vulnerability (Deadly Trapper)

Reaper of Grenth
Chill
Poison

Steal
5-Confusion (Bewildering Ambush)
2-Posion (Serpent’s Touch)

Needle Trap (Trappers Respite)
Immobilize
3-Bleeding
Poison
5-Vulnerability (Deadly Trapper)

Caltrops (Uncatchable)
Crippled
Bleeding

Caltrops (Uncatchable)
Crippled
Bleeding

Caltrops (Uncatchable)
Crippled
Bleeding

Caltrops (Uncatchable)
Crippled
Bleeding

Reaper of Grenth
Chill
Poison

Caltrops (Uncatchable)
Crippled
Bleeding

It looks like he threw everything he had at you. If it didn’t take you down, he’d be out of luck… left only with weapon skills. He seems to have been completely out of utilities and dodges.

What’s sad is that Elementalists with the old Diamond Skin trait would have still been at 100% health after all of this. I’ve had one stand there and laugh at me when I ran this build once.

anduriell.6280:

saerni.2584:

Yeah it looks like a standard trapper thief. Your main mistake was standing still, once you were caught and immobilized you build up to a large number of stacks really quickly, largely on account of what may have been double needle trap. There is a drop needle trap on heal ability.

Key to dealing with this build is a lot of condition clears applied at regular intervals and applying AoE damage. This build is probably fairly tanky but needs to be on top of you. Your options are to use a stealth disabler/skill, just AoE the area around you, and to try and stay mobile around that AoE radius to avoid getting hit.

You also, in that video, hit your heal waaaaay too late and were unlucky to have just used your 3 skill and didn’t use any other skills to get out of immobilize. You were down at like 20% when you hit that. At the rate you were loosing HP you should have triggered it around 50% or so.

Also, not that familiar with druid, but where were your condi clears? It’s like you didn’t have any at all or very few from what I can see.

@ Fat Disgrace — Bleed/Poison from Needle Traps

All my skills cleanse + i had the trait that passes 3 condis to the pet periodically. However the trait is just rubbish as you can see, it takes 10 full seconds to act.
The thing is that the thief could keep DPSing me while in stealth, even did stomped me and didn’t reveal until so much later. It kept killing players all around.

It is not about when i hit the heal, this attack built 10K/tick condi damage in just one attack, it’s about during all the attack the thief was no visible but around dealing damage. And we know that build can stay invisible as long as they want. And because they can deal damage while in stealth they don’t need to come out. In other words: God Mode.

That is not fun.

And as I said, he basically has to stand on top of you to deal all of his damage. If you either move out of the way or pressure him with laying down AoE’s then you can beat him or fight him off. He isn’t invincible. He doesn’t have stability. He can be forced out of stealth. Counter play is available.

I’ve fought this build before, a few times, the perma stealth is annoying. But you can generally ignore them and move off a slight kittenances are they will have blown most of their traps, and therefore most of their DPS, and won’t be able to follow you without dropping more traps uselessly behind them.

The key thing is that you either chose, or were not able, to cleanse immobilize. If you had you would have taken almost no damage and laughed.

saerni.2584:

If you either move out of the way or pressure him with laying down AoE’s then you can beat him or fight him off.

My worst problems when running this build was when I got immobilized/stunned. The traps take all of my utilities, so I didn’t have any stun-breakers. And if you’re on the receiving end of this build, you may have poor luck by trying to out-condi him.

I once dueled another thief… both of us were trappers. I learned that condi-fights can go on FOREVER because of Shadow’s Embrace. And if he uses Hard to Catch with Withdraw, you can’t even pin him down to cleave while he’s Stealthed.

If a thief prioritizes stealth in some fashion they may be unkillable if they maintain the ability to disengage. That said, they likely won’t be able to kill you. In a pvp or wvw context, waiting for another person to show up may tip the scales in your favor, or they may make a mistake and get killed, or you can disengage and move to another objective.

If you want to win “1v1” vs a thief like this, luring them into a camp in wvw (with NPCs that stun) and then forcing them out of stealth will likely finish them quickly. Stealth disruptor trap is a solid counter as well.

Wouldn’t another possibility for the amount of conditions there be the fact there was more than one trapper thief? Maybe there were 2 or a group of trolls.

Asrat.2645:

DeceiverX.8361:

The poison is really weird, though. It seemed to be in sync with vuln gains from Deadly Trapper, but there’s no way to apply poison that quickly from traps.

I believe I can explain that. Look at how constantly the posion and chill is reapplied. I think, that thief might have been using reaper of kittening grenth.

Completely forgot about that. Yup, that’ll do it.

NuhDah.9812:

Wouldn’t another possibility for the amount of conditions there be the fact there was more than one trapper thief? Maybe there were 2 or a group of trolls.

Anything’s possible, but highly unlikely. Everything in the video points to being done by only one Thief. I believe my post above accounts for every condition application. Some skill pulses did seem to happen simultaneous which is why it can look like a LOT for one Thief to apply.

The victim got immobilized and knocked down in the middle of Caltrops. He tripped every trap. And the Thief was sticking to him like glue for Reaper of Grenth to take full effect. I’m not saying whether it’s a skilled build or not, but that Thief knew how to be very effective with it. It looks like he could have very well hit with 100% accuracy with all of his “attacks.”

If your attacker wasn’t revealed — then how do you know it was a Thief?

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If your attacker wasn’t revealed — then how do you know it was a Thief?

Look at the video… Those were clearly Thief sounds and skills.

As others have pointed out, that was a trapper thief.
Kageseigi.2150 gave a great summary of what probably happened, judging by how you were getting hit. Best option would be to just remove Trapper runes from the game, or atleast remove the part where you get stealthed.
However, it’s an issue with Thief and a Thief in WvW, no less… So no, it won’t ever happen.
Next time you could maybe go into your Celestial form if you’re running that trait (even though you didn’t have it ready to go up for this instance, I see) and probably hit your Heal Skill faster when you notice you’re running into a similar situation.
After that, just kite away (don’t continue to move into a straight line). Trapper thieves only work if you stay close to them, really.

Vornollo.5182:

Trapper thieves only work if you stay close to them, really.

Yeah, but don’t be surprised if he still catches you sometimes. Pre-casting a trap then Stealing/Shadow Pursuit will put the trap right on top of you. If you don’t escape the first trap quickly, it can domino on you.

Needle Trap → Caltrops → Needle Trap → Caltrops → Tripwire

That’s 6 second of Immobilize and 3 seconds of Knockdown… 9 seconds all in one spot full of pulsing Caltrops. Not to mention the damage from the traps and Steal.

Immobilize cures and stun-breakers are your saving grace.

Vornollo.5182:

Sir Vincent III.1286:

If your attacker wasn’t revealed — then how do you know it was a Thief?

Look at the video… Those were clearly Thief sounds and skills.

As others have pointed out, that was a trapper thief.
Kageseigi.2150 gave a great summary of what probably happened, judging by how you were getting hit. Best option would be to just remove Trapper runes from the game, or atleast remove the part where you get stealthed.
However, it’s an issue with Thief and a Thief in WvW, no less… So no, it won’t ever happen.
Next time you could maybe go into your Celestial form if you’re running that trait (even though you didn’t have it ready to go up for this instance, I see) and probably hit your Heal Skill faster when you notice you’re running into a similar situation.
After that, just kite away (don’t continue to move into a straight line). Trapper thieves only work if you stay close to them, really.

He was ambushed and when a Thief gets to ambush you, your chance of recovering is very slim. Even with Celetial, he would still go down.

None of the skills/traits used by the Thief in that video have direct damage values so reveal is never applied. It’s why Anet put the direct damage on Choking Gas as it was quite abusive.

The problem is, if Anet put diect damage values on some of the traps they would simply never be used as the risk of being revealed prematurely as a Thief can be devastating. But unfortunately this means that you get horrible builds like the one the OP came up against. Just have to live with it and bet on rarely ever seeing it because it’s super boring to play – the guy in the video will probably never play it again.

The best counter to it is simply cleansing and moving away. If you want to kill it, get a Chrono to drop a double Gravity Well on the area of the traps and then nuke the wells. A static field immediately around you will also disrupt the Thief. I generally find they have no stun breakers so you can CC chain them to death.

Simonoly.4352:

The best counter to it is simply cleansing and moving away.

You weren’t prepared to counter a rare thief build.

Please do not rely on a trait that pulls condi’s from you once every 10 seconds. Consider using healing spring or a traited troll unguent. Have a brown bear for a pet swap. That thief’s rotation is very tricky, and would be ruined by one good clutch condi clear.

You can’t complain if you don’t come prepared.

Hahn.6874:

Simonoly.4352:

The best counter to it is simply cleansing and moving away.

You weren’t prepared to counter a rare thief build.

Please do not rely on a trait that pulls condi’s from you once every 10 seconds. Consider using healing spring or a traited troll unguent. Have a brown bear for a pet swap. That thief’s rotation is very tricky, and would be ruined by one good clutch condi clear.

You can’t complain if you don’t come prepared.

Absolutely this. I’d go an extra step and say if you aren’t prepared for this build you won’t survive any condi build on any class. If you have no stun/immob break or condi clear, you have no business complaining about a condi build killing you.

I hate that, too. And they thieves numbers are increasing per day. You cant see him and killing 3 sc. Need remove trappper rune again or adding mini damage to thieves traps and triggerin reveal.

Yes, add more reveal to thief on what’s probably the least used set of utilities because someone made some really gimmicky thing work. Great plan.

I think someone like being ghost or killing from ghost. This build is like a hack. And you must see people in wvw or edge of mist. Is it fair?

I dont say I approve of that thieves, but there is counterplay. As long as you can do something against it, its fair.
There are condition removals, resistance, movement skills (yes, you can just walk away)
and of course reveal skills.
Last but not least uncatchable tells you their position, so you can just spam aoe cc on them.
Usually if you die it should be due to suprise. Like the OP’s video. You dont expect to be attacked and cant react fast enough.
And that is kinda your own fault and also the intention of a trapper build.

Asrat.2645:

I dont say I approve of that thieves, but there is counterplay. As long as you can do something against it, its fair.
There are condition removals, resistance, movement skills (yes, you can just walk away)
and of course reveal skills.
Last but not least uncatchable tells you their position, so you can just spam aoe cc on them.
Usually if you die it should be due to suprise. Like the OP’s video. You dont expect to be attacked and cant react fast enough.
And that is kinda your own fault and also the intention of a trapper build.

I have 8 + 4 condition removing skills. Mantras and shattering remove. I’m mesmer and shattering as fast as. But i cant see them and never show themselves and attack again.

how can you fight an enemy if you cant see him?

What’s your class and build? I wonder why defense that build. This is not op or something, it’s like a hack.

And trolls loves it and increasing numbers.

Didn’t watch the video but I know the OP was a druid. ‘Sic ’em’ would have revealed the thief who likely burned everything he had trying to get it to work. There were ways counter it, and, from what everyone is saying, the OP was caught off guard and didn’t react properly. That’s on them.

I dont play wvw. I use paladin staff for sPvP, so: no stealth at all.
I defend that build because it can be countered.
Mesmer huh? Yeah I can imagine that is annoying. Low health pool, a lot of skills requiring target.
And I remember fighting mesmers with d/d acro, that was pretty mean too. They had no chance.
But what if you just blink out?
They have relativley few movement skills for a thief. Until theyve caught up to you, they are hopefully out of stealth. And their traps lay wasted on the ground.

Asrat.2645:

I dont play wvw. I use paladin staff for sPvP, so: no stealth at all.
I defend that build because it can be countered.
Mesmer huh? Yeah I can imagine that is annoying. Low health pool, a lot of skills requiring target.
And I remember fighting mesmers with d/d acro, that was pretty mean too. They had no chance.
But what if you just blink out?
They have relativley few movement skills for a thief. Until theyve caught up to you, they are hopefully out of stealth. And their traps lay wasted on the ground.

You are recommending to me escape? Okay blink out and they will come back. Again blink?

Problem is not damage, there is no target for attacking and this is not annoying for just mesmers. I saw all classes when dying, and they are good at their classes.

And you must play wvw or edge of mist for understand us and that.

How you can defence it without playing wvw or eom? You give us just theory when i’m talking about facts.

and can i ask something, how you can know attacking 1, 2 or 3 or more thieves? Yea you dont. And im talking a thief of that kind, and he is waiting a nerf, too. Because people is starting to boring.

Please do some wvw and eom, and we talk again then.

I hate nerfs but game has a nature.

serenade.9685:

You are recommending to me escape? Okay blink out and they will come back. Again blink?
————————————
How you can defence it without playing wvw or eom? You give us just theory when i’m talking about facts.

Have you played a Ghost Trapper build before? It relies solely on Stealth to not die and conditions to kill. If you have enough condition removal, you can sit there and laugh at the Thief. Believe me, I’ve had Elementalists with the old Diamond Skin trait do just that.

I forget the name, but there was a power trapper build, and it was very nasty also. It simply did it’s killing with normal attacks.

So I would suggest to play as the build so you know its limitations. As I’ve said before, in the video, the Thief threw absolutely everything at the target. EVERYTHING was on cooldown. He didn’t even have a dodge left.

And there is nothing wrong with running away from a lopsided fight. Thief players understand this the most as this is what they are told they are “supposed” to do against just about everybody. I’ve had random professions chase me all the way around maps before. The Thief isn’t THAT fast… especially after combat.

serenade.9685:

how you can know attacking 1, 2 or 3 or more thieves? Yea you dont.

You’ll know it’s only one Thief if you aren’t dead yet. If there are more than one Thief and you’re still alive, you don’t really need to worry about them anyway. Actually, that question reminds me of fighting multiple Mesmers that are identical and have the same name except for one character. Talk about annoying… wow!