Thieves, how would you counter yourself?
PM MrSilver.5269
Here is what he said, my favorite quote on these forums:
“MrSilver.5269:
I hate to admit it, but I was here QQing for the better part of the last week or so. I then decided to roll a thief just to play around with the mechanics to better understand the class.
I only got to level 31ish so although I’m no expert, I now understand the class much better now, and went back to the drawing board to change my entire engineer spec. I was hesitant to do so because I was concerned as an engineer I would hit like a wet noodle. Yes, my damage did take a slight hit, but not as much as I thought due to a mechanic of one of the engineer’s utility skills that evens the playing field considerably. The funny thing is that the solution was sitting right in front of me, and I just didn’t see it.
In any event, the long of the short of it is that by figuring out how to counter the thief, I stumbled upon a MUCH more durable version of the engineer that I am REALLY enjoying playing.
So, I’m here to formally apologize for my QQ.
SORRY!!!!!”
My personal counter is ~20K health, ~2600 armor, instant AoE blind+ stealth and passive teleport on CC every minute.
(edited by Stiv.1820)
First, best thing you can possibly do is to play a thief for a little while. I’d just stick with sPvP. You’ll learn the way most thieves have to operate.
Also, if you’re trying to counter glass cannon thieves, you’re going to need high defenses and lots of controls. Basically, survive their burst (dodging is best if you’re fast enough), then stun/immobilize and destroy them. They have no armor and 10k health, so they melt in seconds.
For the rest of thieves, bomb kit is your friend. You can lay down bombs and force the thief to eat a ton of damage if they want to hit you with stealth. Also keep moving constantly while they’re in stealth, makes it hard for them to hit you.
I time my dodges very well.
That combined with knowing exactly which moves the enemy Thief just blew into the air and their Initiative costs, i know when to go in – slapping that helpless Thief in the face.
Gimmicky Backstab Thieves (CnD, Steal, Backstab, HS spam) are free kills, since you can avoid the whole rotation with just one dodge roll, leaving you with 100 % health, and the Thief with only 3 initiative left.
So overall my answer on how to counter a Thief would be:
Skillful play and understanding of basic game mechanics.
Done.
/E:
Thats just one counter for a complete glass cannon.
The other million counters would be the countless defesive builds and utilities out there.
(edited by Asum.4960)
Well, as a trap ranger, I place a spike trap at my feet, or use signit of renewal after the steal, and dodge roll backwards. As a final backup, I’ve got a trait that gives me protection for 5 seconds if I take 20% of my health or more in one hit.
You don’t really need high defenses at all to survive these thieves. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of toughness.
I’ll agree with a lot of the other posters have said.
Putting a root or cripple on us really kills our uptime on our target. Especially after our initial burst (if a BS thief) we are left with hardly any options and little to no initiative. This pretty much screams free kill.
Another thing to note, as I’ve noticed others have had issues with Stealth, is that when you see a Thief stealth you’ll need to be on your toes. We can cap out Stealth to 10 seconds, most thieves won’t since it uses quite a bit initiative or a utility skill. So for the most part we’ll be in stealth for a grand total of 3 seconds. That’s your window to start using dodges, traps that immoblize/cripple or dropping short cd AoE’s.
Traps are the best option imo, I’ve had engineers and rangers sit on their traps when they notice I vanished. Most of the time I either eat the trap or toss an AoE of my own to get them out of it.
Lately I’ve been running a very heavy Death Blossom bleed build. I load up DB 3 or 4 times (depends on where I am in initiative procs) during which I’m almost untouchable because of the evading part of the skill. Then I kite or dodge while I wait for initiative and throw out some autoattack and repeat. This works great against multiple targets who get a long lasting stack of bleeds from a thing flying over their heads.
To counter this, kite me, or wait until I’ve done 3 Death Blossoms and cleanse the bleeds. Then blow your cooldowns while I’m waiting for initiative and kill me with your own conditions or a good crit. Cleansing bleeds nullifies me pretty quick, but the mistake people make is cleansing too soon while I still have plenty to apply. Also, don’t stand in the caltrops. I can’t believe how many people just stand in them or keep running through them to get me. The really strong Death Blossom builds run two sets of daggers and can’t do much ranged damage at all.
If you have endure pain, block, that external black armor I see, or illusions, use them when the thief is getting in steal range. Boom, thief wastes everything, you’re still alive with full or most of your health, and he’s as good as dead. Hell, even reaper of grenth(ALL humans have it, I think) would buy you enough time to break the chain, ect. Also you can strike first. As a backstab thief, the biggest thing that always kills my enemy is their hesitation. We feed on your fear. If you’re guardian, charge, use knockdown, don’t give him time to prepare the chain. It’s simple really. And if you ever get lucky enough to catch a thief off guard, then it’s gonna be a loopsided battle in your favor.
simply planting bomb/trap/field under yourself or even just letting him know you are aware of his presence will keep glass cannons away. Bs thieves will die from just a round of mines.
Mass blind is deadly and any kind of movement impairing effects with at least a minimum of movement will render most thieves unable to reach you while also leaving them wide open for damage.
Edit: also, as an engineer you have access to extensive amounts of swiftness that thief can only outperform with initiative use while also forcing him in the open
(edited by Ichishi.9613)
Through the use of stunbreakers, kiting, knowing when to dodge, and not giving them my back.
Cripple/Chill works wonders. While we have gap closers those typically cost initiative (Heartseeker, Infiltrator Strike) or are on a hefty cooldown. Most thieves will have a way to remove those conditions but will need to burn a 50/60 second cooldown to do it. The only quick remover is Withdraw with a 15 second CD but nearly every thief slots Hide in Shadows as the heal skill simply because the stealth is so much more effective than curing movement conditions.
So, try to cripple us as soon as possible. All our gap closers have a 900 or below range, if you are able to apply it before we can steal to your location you can hamper us greatly.
Also be ready to dodge. The second you see your health drop just dodge. If you are quick enough you will just eat the Mug and the CnD/Backstab will miss leaving the thief with low initiative.
Also to counter the rendering issues plagueing stealth: Learn to look out for the puff of smoke we leave behind when exiting stealth. Even if you can’t see the thief yet, after that puff appears you can target him. Also stealth does in no way shape or form protect against damage/skills/whatever. If we stealth near you strike at the air in the general direction we disappeared at.
Kodash [DE]
My personal counter is ~20K health, ~2600 armor, instant AoE blind+ stealth and passive teleport on CC every minute.
I’m at 21K health and ~2,500 armor.
I can’t speak for other classes but the engineer has traits that allows you to survive the thief’s initial burst and get distance.
I’m not saying that I never die to a thief, but I played for 3+ hours last night in EBG and I did not die to any thief from a steal/C&D/backstab. Matter of fact, I almost never die to a thief anymore from a steal/C&D/backstab, and before my switch ~3/4s of my deaths were to thieves.
I’ve gotten my thief up to level 41 now, and probably won’t level it much further. That said, if I were to finish it I would not spec full glass cannon.
The one skill that I really have my eyes on is hard to catch. I’m not experienced enough with the thief to know if going that deep into acrobatics will completely kitten you.
For those of you with experience, how does an acrobatics build play out?
(edited by MrSilver.5269)
My personal counter is ~20K health, ~2600 armor, instant AoE blind+ stealth and passive teleport on CC every minute.
I’m at 21K health and ~2,500 armor.
I can’t speak for other classes but the engineer has traits that allows you to survive the thief’s initial burst and get distance.
I’m not saying that I never die to a thief, but I played for 3+ hours last night in EBG and I did not die to any thief from a steal/C&D/backstab. Matter of fact, I almost never die to a thief anymore from a steal/C&D/backstab, and before my switch ~3/4s of my deaths were to thieves.
I’ve gotten my thief up to level 41 now, and probably won’t level it much further. That said, if I were to finish it I would not spec full glass cannon.
The one skill that I really have my eyes on is hard catch. I’m not experienced enough with the thief to know if going that deep into acrobatics will completely kitten you.
For those of you with experience, how does an acrobatics build play out?
I run 30 acro and like it. I wouldn’t do it as a melee based thief though. It gives vit too which isn’t a bad thing. It could be dropped due to it’s randomness but it saves me more than it hurts me. Sometimes it puts you in positions that are less than ideal, mostly when chasing someone who hits you with something that activates it. Sometimes you end up closer, sometimes farther away.
I love 20 Acro for Pain Response too but the only amount of Acro I absolutely could not live without is 15 for Feline Grace. It could be our best trait.
The one skill that I really have my eyes on is hard catch. I’m not experienced enough with the thief to know if going that deep into acrobatics will completely kitten you.
For those of you with experience, how does an acrobatics build play out?
I haven’t tried the skill yet but, coming from a WvW perspective, there are just too many movement impairing effects flying around for Hard to Catch to go off in the best moment. Combined with the hefty 60 second CD I’d say it’s not worth it.
15 Points in Vit for the amazing Feline Grace or 20 for Quick Recovery on the other hand are almost mandatory imo.
In the more controlled sPvP environment Hard to catch might be worthwhile, dunno.
Kodash [DE]
Thanks for the responses… that pretty much just answered my question about whether I’d finish my thief.
Using blindness is probably the best solution, at least for me. If we can’t get our Cloak and Dagger in, it messes up the rhythm and we’ll either have to waste a utility skill, heal, or be vulnerable/run for a few seconds. Immobilize screws me pretty badly sometimes too as there are hardly any skills to remove this effect. Also, it helps to be a Mesmer.
Wiffing CnD absolutely sucks and is probably the best counter to any Thief with an offhand dagger as long as you can survive their burst.
@Thorp
Sometime I even enjoy fighting Mesmers. Their Illusions are such great targets to land CnD on because they don’t evade, move, etc.
I played the bursty build for a few days a couple of weeks back, and frankly, it’s just annoying to play as because you can be destroyed so easily. You have to play extremely carefully to not die constantly, and if your burst doesn’t work on someone, then that’s it. Run away or die.
Survivable builds are more fun and can have still reasonable damage and burst capability. They also don’t get mopped by double dagger power/precision burst.
The one skill that I really have my eyes on is hard to catch. I’m not experienced enough with the thief to know if going that deep into acrobatics will completely kitten you.
For those of you with experience, how does an acrobatics build play out?
Well, Acrobatics to 15 is something any Thief worth his salt would want. Power of Inertia (10) and Feline Grace (15) are amazing and allow you to dodge all over the place while becoming more and more powerful while you do so.
Personally, I also take it to 20 for Fleet of Foot. Being able to remove cripple with a simple dodge (which you recover some of just by using it) has saved my kitten more times than I can count :-)
[CO] Cryptic Omen
By whining to AreaNet how badly they need to be nerfed. And it really works obviously.
as an engineer i beat thieves 95% of the time.. because engineers have a massive advantage. dont get scared by stealth.. u can pretyt much completely kitten a thief with concussion bomb. enough said. confusion is a thieves worst enemy and well most condition builds.. my engineer runs bomb kit,elixir gun,the retaliation fury elixir forget name, and condition build with pistol pistol, just stack those bleeds and other conditions, then when they stealth switch to those aoes, and dont stand still. just cos u cant see them doesnt mean you cant hit them.
also try playing thief for a couple of days (as well as all other classes) ignorance breeds hate afterall, once you know how to deal with other classes it dont seem so unbalanced..
If you want to know your enemy, you have to be your enemy. Want to know the best way to counter a thief? Just play one.
Most thieves avoid me like the plague because I have high survivability as long as I’m hitting something and can bust down 14k hp in a second or 2.
It’s going to depend heavily on what class you are playing, and precisely what the thief in question is doing.
I primarily play thief. I always adjust how I approach a given fight against another thief on the fly, but here are the basics.
First, you really need to have good situational awareness. You never want to be running around with tunnel vision. Most of my cheap and easy kills are on stragglers who aren’t paying attention and as such won’t respond quickly to being jumped. You need to be swinging your camera around constantly scouting for threats, no matter what you’re doing; if you’re not hunting, you’re being hunted.
Once there’s going to be a fight, I assume they’re going to try a LOLcombo, and I focus on making it miss. This means watching animations for a long range C&D telegraphing the jump (which is then easily countered with a dodge roll), and being ready to twitch an escape if I mis-judge it (I run Roll for Initiative any time I’m roaming, or Shadow Step in a team environment, either of which will break stuns and waste any combo they might have). Basically, you know what their obvious move is going to be, so break it with the obvious counter before moving on.
After their combo is down I’ll usually play chicken for a bit. LDB is great for the bleed and the evade while attacking; dancing daggers are great for trading your initiative for their endurance. Auto-attacks are valuable for keeping your own endurance up. I want them to trade important resources, like their endurance and hide in shadows, for throw-away threats like a few LDB stacks or a dancing dagger.
Once they’ve blown some defenses and I feel I have an opening I’ll combo back to finish. This could take a while if they’re blinking all over the place, or it could be pretty much instantly if they’re baddies that burn all their initiative spamming heartseeker or hit daggerstorm while I’m still fully loaded.
In short, focus on spotting and breaking the combo (which, seriously, is not difficult), then make good trades once you’re engaged to burn resources, focus on winning the attrition war, then unleashing your burst once their defenses are exhausted and you have an opening. The details will vary but the general theme should be the same for every class.