Guild Wars 2

So in spvp it seems like thieves are shut down hard by DH. I also have troubles with tempest, scrapper, and druid. My question is what do we counter? I don’t mean a fair fight, what are the fights we shouldn’t lose unless we are heavily out skilled?

oh i can of right now is to finish off the low hp targets. for 1v1s, you’re gonna need to outplay them be flawless with no mistakes. pretty hard if you ask me.

In sPvP:

The thief only counters uncontested points and low-health and/or unskilled players.

In terms of class matchups, though, they do not counter or have an advantage against anything.

In WvW: They can do decently if you vastly out-play your opponent and really make sure your build is optimized. Still no direct counters favoring them in terms of class matchups, though.

Only two things I have found work against DH and only if played very well. The first is P/P which allows you to range pressure them without engaging their traps. If they run JI and preload the trap before teleport, you are probably screwed with this approach. The second and it is also pretty dicey is to Vault into their trap and immediately (as in before you land) start slamming the dodge key. You should be able to do this three times without getting hit by their trap. If they are a solid player, that probably won’t finish them.

Scrapper, Druid… you have to hope they suck because their sustain is mightier than your damage output.

Tempest… this is probably the easiest if you are patient. They tend to spam skills so evade early and let them burn themselves out. After about 30s you will have a 10s window to hammer them. If you don’t do enough damage they will cycle again. If you wound them enough they are playing your game and victory is just chipping away at them.

Basically if you screw up, you are baked against any of these classes.

We don’t counter anything anymore. We’re trash. I can call a match before it begins if there is a thief on one side and not the other. We can nuke other thieves…if we get the first hit in. Otherwise we can take out people that are afk… and even then that’s only some classes.

Other Thieves.

We counter the possibility of having fun playing the game.

Galandil.9641:

We counter the possibility of having fun playing the game.

lol, best answer ever :P

Well we hard counter noobs (aka other thief players ) and really bad rotation (aka uncontested points)

Tarkan.5609:

Well we hard counter …
(aka uncontested points)

uh uh uh

we don’t hard counter uncontested points anymore.

I login with my thief to craft stuff.

Only.

Galandil.9641:

We counter the possibility of having fun playing the game.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Tarkan.5609:

Well we hard counter …
(aka uncontested points)

uh uh uh

we don’t hard counter uncontested points anymore.

Hmm I still win the fight against an empty point. Usually at least.

you guys QQ while caed winning 1v2 against top NA chronomancers in pro league with staff

lighter.2708:

you guys QQ while caed winning 1v2 against top NA chronomancers in pro league with staff

How has he fared against DH, Scrappers or Druids? Chronos aren’t nearly as powerful as power-mesmers in skirmish IMO. Course one Chrono and Trap DH will likely obliterate most thieves.

I think the only reason Caed and Toker did so well that tourny was because they were ignored… they’re both really good players though

Jesse.4631:

I think the only reason Caed and Toker did so well that tourny was because they were ignored…

Jesus that would be amazing.

Not knocking them ,they’re obviously good. But being successful as a thief because people don’t consider you a threat would probably be the most incredible phenomenon to ever grace this class.

Thieves can create lots of blind. That counters mostly melee attacks, as it’s much harder to use them against ranged enemies that keep running away. I can’t remember the last time I really had trouble against a warrior who wasn’t using a build with ranged weapons or had heavy condition use. You just steal the axe from them, place a smoke field, and pump them full of blind.

They can also interrupt pretty much on demand as long as their initiative last, but the more they focus on that the less they can do damage. But since there’s very few ‘key skills’ you would really want to interrupt, and interrupting won’t put the skill on a full recharge as it should, there’s not much point on interrupting. They’ll just use the skill right away in 5 seconds, just a bit more with traits that increase cooldown of interrupted skills.

Ideally, a thief would rush behind enemy lines, take out a key enemy with a damage spike, and rush back to their group to recover for the next spike. But we don’t have many Team Deathmatch maps where that’s actually useful, as there people tend to stick together more and cover each other.

In conquest and stronghold there’s much less ‘lines’ and more ‘running around in circles non-stop’, as people go in smaller groups or even solo more often. You can still move in, do damage, and move out. But if you move out of a capture point, you lose it. And you can’t ‘move out’ when what you want is to defend or defeat a lord. You want to stick around as much as possible.

I would like to see more Team Dathmatch maps. We could use more modes like King of the Hill and Capture the flag too.

Straegen.2938:

Only two things I have found work against DH and only if played very well. The first is P/P which allows you to range pressure them without engaging their traps. If they run JI and preload the trap before teleport, you are probably screwed with this approach. The second and it is also pretty dicey is to Vault into their trap and immediately (as in before you land) start slamming the dodge key. You should be able to do this three times without getting hit by their trap. If they are a solid player, that probably won’t finish them.

Scrapper, Druid… you have to hope they suck because their sustain is mightier than your damage output.

Tempest… this is probably the easiest if you are patient. They tend to spam skills so evade early and let them burn themselves out. After about 30s you will have a 10s window to hammer them. If you don’t do enough damage they will cycle again. If you wound them enough they are playing your game and victory is just chipping away at them.

Basically if you screw up, you are baked against any of these classes.

I have found d/d DB thief also works against DH. In particular if you have healing in build . The DB evade helps you to evade some of that damage off the trap as damage inflicted and the incoming heals help make up for health lost. Timing has to be very very good. DH tends to be lacking in condition cleanse and you have to keep the pressure on by pouring it on.

From a power perspective it is p/p. I have not found vault works all that well.

Scrapper is also weaker to conditions but they have so many other outs I just do not find it worthwhile to fight them. You will rarely come out on top. I have been toying wth my own scrapper build and can inflict significant damage with the same and in wvw actually stand in range of an enemy ballista firing at me and just shrug off the damage.

Shatter mesmers/chronomancers, still.
Most other marauder builds including power druid and warrior.
Reapers in smaller fights.
Anything except tempest and scrapper that is less than 50% health and out of position.

Can stale mate a point vs a bunker mesmer or support druid. Can do for a little while to delay cap vs scrapper for allies to arrive.

Counter pressures anything.

Mesmers can still be a pain but are no where near as bad as the scrapper. Vault is rather nice here in taking down the clones/phantasms quickly. P/P at range does not fare so well as it only single target. Again I find in my own DD power build that Staff/p/p has about the best synergy of combos I have tried. The issue is of course cooldown on weapon swap can oftimes put you in a weaker position.

I really think this speaks to the need to have a Thief trait as was suggeted by Maugetarr that lowers swaps to 5 seconds or takes it away entirely. We are already limited by INI unlike other classes and this can give us some needed utility.