Guild Wars 2

I keep reading that the thief down state is great (and labeled op by opponents). But it seems to suck on my thief.

The teleport #2 is so short of a distance that half the time when the opponent starts the stomp at the original location it still stomps me after I’ve teleported.

The #3 invis is so slow to become available that I’m stomped before it is available.

What am I missing? What am I doing wrong?

Its not the best sure, but its pretty darn good if you ask me.

You can teleport well out of the way, remember you have a few seconds before the stomp hits to re-angle your camera to get a good spot.

3 invis is perfect, it comes off cooldown just after the tele missing the first stomp attempt.

No class can stomp me on the first go, and most of the time it takes 3 attempts to stomp a thief.

In fact, you will find lots of people just bursting a thief down as its far quicker than playing the whack-a-mole.

Engie has a worse one, its very easy to counter the rope grab, they take at best one attempt. There second cooldown is a little too long to be useful if the enemy is focussed on stomping you.

Warrior is not great either, it can be blinded or other methods to avoid it.

Necros is garbage, one fear that can EASILY be avoided and a poison. Like the warrior though, a double stomp is unstopable even if you land your fear.

Ranger is a little better than necro, an AoE stun. But the Pet helping to res is not going to stop someone again focused on the stomp.

Guardian is much the same as the ranger, but much more obvious. Will almost always be avoided with stability or a thief shadowstepping out of the way then back in after the blast.

Mesmer is nearly as good as a thief, perhaps all things considered about the same. They can avoid the first stomp easily like a thief, better in a few ways as they stay stealthed. The clone they can spawn is useless when your being stomped, but pretty nice if your both down and its a rock throwing fight on the floor. Like I said, all things taken into account, they offer about the same.

Ele is a little bit lower than mesmer. It can avoid the first stomp every time, but thats it. The bleeds and cripple really do nothing to help out.

If you port the max distance, your opponent is too far away to stomp you, even if you port your self behind him. If he is too slow (you cripple him) you get the invis. And you can port yourself out of aoe attacks.

Greetings jj

DaliIndica.9041:

Its not the best sure, but its pretty darn good if you ask me.

You can teleport well out of the way, remember you have a few seconds before the stomp hits to re-angle your camera to get a good spot.

3 invis is perfect, it comes off cooldown just after the tele missing the first stomp attempt.

No class can stomp me on the first go, and most of the time it takes 3 attempts to stomp a thief.

In fact, you will find lots of people just bursting a thief down as its far quicker than playing the whack-a-mole.

Engie has a worse one, its very easy to counter the rope grab, they take at best one attempt. There second cooldown is a little too long to be useful if the enemy is focussed on stomping you.

Warrior is not great either, it can be blinded or other methods to avoid it.

Necros is garbage, one fear that can EASILY be avoided and a poison. Like the warrior though, a double stomp is unstopable even if you land your fear.

Ranger is a little better than necro, an AoE stun. But the Pet helping to res is not going to stop someone again focused on the stomp.

Guardian is much the same as the ranger, but much more obvious. Will almost always be avoided with stability or a thief shadowstepping out of the way then back in after the blast.

Mesmer is nearly as good as a thief, perhaps all things considered about the same. They can avoid the first stomp easily like a thief, better in a few ways as they stay stealthed. The clone they can spawn is useless when your being stomped, but pretty nice if your both down and its a rock throwing fight on the floor. Like I said, all things taken into account, they offer about the same.

Ele is a little bit lower than mesmer. It can avoid the first stomp every time, but thats it. The bleeds and cripple really do nothing to help out.

Not quite right mesmer, ele and another thief can all port stomp so thief will be stomped on first attempt. The only class that can 100% avoid a stomp is ele.

vincecontix.1264:

Not quite right mesmer, ele and another thief can all port stomp so thief will be stomped on first attempt. The only class that can 100% avoid a stomp is ele.

But if you time your tele at the right moment, you can avoid the tele ports. If the thief has the shadowstep signet then yeah its lights out. But other than other thieves, I almost never see Mesmers or Eles tele stomping. Its a rare sight, more so for the ele.

DaliIndica.9041:

vincecontix.1264:

Not quite right mesmer, ele and another thief can all port stomp so thief will be stomped on first attempt. The only class that can 100% avoid a stomp is ele.

But if you time your tele at the right moment, you can avoid the tele ports. If the thief has the shadowstep signet then yeah its lights out. But other than other thieves, I almost never see Mesmers or Eles tele stomping. Its a rare sight, more so for the ele.

thief doesn’t need shadowstep signet to teleport stomp. i do it with my steal all the time.

Dying in your shadow refuge, the coolest way to not die.

(This is all from a wvw perspective, pvp might be different due to point contesting)

The thing is, in the context of a 1v1 or 1vX it’s almost completely irrelevant whether or not you avoid the first stomp, you’re dead anyway.
When talking about teamfights tho, things become quite different. I would argue ranger has the best downstate as it pretty much forces the enemy to pursue the stomp or he’ll selfrevive really quickly. The fact that he has an AoE daze available to stop multiple stomps make it quite valuable as well, as it can take several enemies out of the fight for a few seconds.
Guardian is probably next, as the AoE push allows them to mess up quite a few people while the symbol also allows for quicker revives.
Ele is pretty good, being able to move quite far towards his team lets him get to safety and force the enemy to chace him, and unlike every other stomp denial, it’s almost completely impossible to counteract(immobilize is the only thing that works). Their earth abillity, while irrelevant to stomp prevention, does some heavy damage and immob, which is nice in a team fight(maybe even allowing a rally)
Thief is about average imo, the movement is not quite as far as an ele and the stealth is pretty good, but all it does is buy them some time without putting too much pressure on the opponent.

Necro, Warrior, Mesmer and Engi aren’t amazing, they’re weak at preventing stomps and weak at allowing your team to rez you easily. Mesmer doesn’t move far enough and it’s random.

Johje Holan.4607:

I keep reading that the thief down state is great (and labeled op by opponents). But it seems to suck on my thief.

The teleport #2 is so short of a distance that half the time when the opponent starts the stomp at the original location it still stomps me after I’ve teleported.

The #3 invis is so slow to become available that I’m stomped before it is available.

What am I missing? What am I doing wrong?

It’s the best downed state for surviving. As many people in this thread pointed out, on an average stomper you get a shadowstep to evade him quite easily for the first time, and if he’s crippled(#1 cripples), chances are you can also interrupt a second stomp with stealth. And no, steal, Infiltrator Signet and all other teleport-stomps are not 100% reliable. It’s more of a gamble who presses first if thief decides to press it at a last possible second.
Now the damage also isn’t half bad really, at least compared to some other’s downed states. It’s not better than a standing person of course, but ha-ha it’s not supposed to be.

I have about a 90% success rate stomping other thieves on the first try. A lot of times I can even manually aim shadow step in time if they port where I expect it. I have to say though, my all time favorite stomps are when I juke ele’s to use mistform right as I start the stomp and porting right at the end matches with their mistform ending and they die instantly

The thief’s downstate is mostly just annoying for the opponents. If used correctly, you might even negate 3 stomping attempts.
The problem is that, once you’re downed, you’re done. Other classes, specifically Warrior and Ranger, have a lot stronger downed states that can turn the tide of the battle.

It sounds to me like you’re not using skill #2 correctly, otherwise you could easily get out of stomping range.

Mesmers and Eles have the best downed states imo.

I’d rate them like this based on how easy they are to counter, how much time they win you, and if they have any great AoE utility or if they deal good damage.

1. Mesmers invis and a clone to confuse inexperienced players, Phantasmal Rogue hits like a truck.

2. Elementalists can just vapor form and gtfo, and this is the only downed skill that potentially is impossible to counter, the rest of the ele downed skills are quite meh though.

3. Thief teleport can be countered by thieves, guardians, mesmers and elementalists. But as Axel said, if done right and with some luck and confusion, you may deny 3 stomps. The stealth attack when downed hits really hard, and can be thrown 2 times if you are far enough away from your opponent. #1 bonces between targets.

4. Rangers, I really hate stomping rangers, with some of their builds their pet may totally kitten you while you try to stomp them. Annoying AoE daze, stealth prevents it unless some friendly player is nearby. Once the pet heal becomes available the ranger will outheal all your damage, which makes downed battles against rangers unwinnable and they will also outheal your damage even if you’re not downed.

5. Guardians, a short-cast AoE knockback, totally annoying. And a heal with some neat dmg around you. And #1 is quite lame.

6. Necros, lifedrain which can sustain their downed health while dealing dmg, a fear and a poison field.

7. Engineers, throw junk may randomly stack you with ridiculously long chill durations, knockdown, AoE knockback, in some situation they may be able to deny 2 stomps.
Engineers are even annoying in skyhammer while downed.

8. Warriors, knockdown and vengeance. Vengeance can be both useless and useful. I wish it had higher chance to revive you completely in PvP untraited.