Guild Wars 2

I can say it is at least 50% of winning rate against all professions EXCEPT thief on a 1v1 basis. Thief has too many evade/stealth/blind, is there a way to beat them?

Don’t try to facetank a thief with pistol offhand instead make them come to you, overextend themselves and overspend their initiative.
Then you’ll find you have a pretty decent window to be more agressive.
Thief is rather trivial to deal with, given even most warrior builds more oriented towards survivability can put a heck of a dent on their health pool with each hit and how much a thief’s burst has been nerfed since release.

D/P – Save Zerker stance for a critical moment or an opener so you can sit in their blind field, unleash w/e you want.

S/D – Dodge after the roll inwards, time your key abilities for directly after an evade. Sit in their Infiltrator’s Strike return spot (small white circle) when you can.

General – Keep a Dodge ready to avoid the stolen Whirlwind ability. Most thieves have extremely limited damaging conditions so endure pain is very effective (e.g. slot it and trait it if you see 2-3 thieves on opposing team).

Endure Pain + Zerker Stance + Signet of Might + Volly = dead Thief. Works every time (well almost lol)

Try GS/LB 40406 or GS/axe shield 60404. You would probably want the GS in WvW to utilise Warrior mobility. Let the thief use his abilities to catch up to you.
For point fighting in s/tPvP, LB/Hammer 00626 or LB/axe sword or shield 20606 are good choices since there is a larger chance you can hit with slow but powerful LB shots, and one full adrenaline eviscerate or hammer combo could kill the thief if they are not careful.

Ray.3780 is spot on, and if D/P don’t expect the zerker stance, you have a very nice window to burst in. Axe is a great weapon in that it capitalises on such a moment.
For S/D, you can catch them in a big Evicerate right after Flanking Strike. Also, you can hinder their escapability by standing in their white port-back circles.

As a Warrior vs Thief duel goes, you have to be quick. You whiff, you lose options; the thief whiffs, he can reset and try again.

Ralkuth.1456:

As a Warrior vs Thief duel goes, you have to be quick.

This. Timing is everything when fighting them. Even zerker stance, while very helpful against D/P, is easily outplayed by a half decent thief just by stealthing/kiting for 8 seconds.

D/P: Don’t stand in the blind field. Try aiming CC where they aim their heartseeker out of black powder. If you manage to interrupt it, the thief is down 9 initiative and does not stealth.
Also, they often slot both Shadowstep, which is a double stunbreaker (the second one expires after 10 seconds) and infiltrator’s signet, another stunbreaker. Don’t unleash your full combo until you have baited these out.
Finally, accept that a d/p thief never has to die to you. Honestly, a good one will only die to a warrior if he overextends, which is what you will have to try to induce. this is, however, a double-edged sword. If you feel you are in a bad spot, or they have a better opening on you, try to use all your mobility to leave combat and reset your health. This is not easy, as D/P also comes with insane pursuit skills.

S/D: Timing is even more important here. You absolutely have to CC them after an evade. Again, they often have 2-3 stunbreaks, so don’t blow it all on the first time you actually hit them. This fight is that much harder because of not being able to use stability, as the thief will not only remove it, but claim it for himself.
Try not to get hit from the back if he stealths, as that will daze you and the thief can unleash burst.

tl;dr: I feel thief should have the upper hand in an equally skilled match-up. Their dueling mechanics are just awesome.

Veckna.9621:

Don’t try to facetank a thief with pistol offhand instead make them come to you, overextend themselves and overspend their initiative.

This. A thief will fight only as long as they think they can win. Against a good thief, your mentality should be to force him to disengage unless you have backup; you will rarely find an opening to down a thief unless you lure them into spending all their initiative and then devour them, are specifically geared to burst them so completely that you sap their entire HP pool before they have a chance to run, or have someone with you.

That being said, you cannot tank them. be a moving target, and CC as much as you can.

Personally, I use Sword/Sword vs thieves when roaming on a soldier/knight armor build. Bleed and Torment put pressure on thieves, and often forces them to burn their Hide in shadows to cure large stacks. Torment follows them even if they use Hide in shadows.

I’d say just learn to play a thief, and you can beat a thief on war.

The amount of effort it takes a thief to kill a meta warrior is extremely skewed. One mistake and the thief is probably dead.

Amaterasu.6280:

I’d say just learn to play a thief, and you can beat a thief on war.

The amount of effort it takes a thief to kill a meta warrior is extremely skewed. One mistake and the thief is probably dead.

I never had any problems with a thief I find the easiest class to defeat . but I have a hard time with engineers when they are good.

As a thief main, I can let you in on some helpful advice. First thing you need to find out is what build they are running, once you know their build you can counter accordingly.

Ray covered it pretty well but ill say some other things that ive figured out from both fighting as a thief or fighting against one.

D/P: Basic idea is to stay out of their blind fields, most of your attacks should have more range than the radius of the field. If you position yourself just outside blind range you can take them down pretty quickly. If you are running with a main axe, time your eviscerate with either their heartseeker leap or use zerk stance, clear off blind, and 1 shot the most likely glassy thief.

D/D: This set is strong but only when the thief remains close to you. Their stealth relies on cloak and dagger and is easily countered by aoe dmg and stun chains. When you are fighting one in wvw, make sure there are no pve creatures around as the thief can use them to get off their cloak and dagger.

S/D: This is a particularly annoying fight because of the large number of evades a thief can possess (forgot how to spell that word lol). What you will need to do is time your attacks around the thiefs evades to hit them in the small window that they aren’t evading. (use same strategy for shortbow thieves) If you can time a stun in the small window and get a good dmg combo off its pretty much a gg moment. Also, DO NOT stack might by itself as the thief will rip it off and kill you even quicker.

S/P: I do not have a ton of experience with this so im not able to give that much advise here but like D/P watch for blind spam and work them down from there.

P/P: This is really uncommon and requires just a little burst to take down the thief as they have very few evades or escapes with this set.

P/D: bring lots of condi clear abilities and watch for their cloak and dagger, getting a good stun chain and dmg combo on this thief will probably be all you need as long as you can keep their conditions off long enough to kill them.

Hope that was helpful and good luck gaming

yes use destroyer build. Its probably the best warrior counter build to them or any build they are running.

I run axe shield/ longbow strength runes and sometimes trait for might gain on block. Shield Stance during whirling axe for some really nice might stacks, then 2 shot them with a shield bash + evic. I found that when fighting thieves you just have to have to use a little more patience and not rush the fight early on. Try not to waste your adrenaline, don’t burst unless you have them locked down or placing a fire field.

It doesn’t matter what u run, best way is to bait a thief and attack only when u know u can land ur attacks

Thieves don’t necessarily have to come to you, they can sit at range with shortbow and still evade a lot of damage. You’d have to use obstructions to lure them and you definitely want to make them waste initiative. When they come in close, CC and burst.

All this talk of taking your time and baiting them… What is the thief doing in the meanwhile? A decent thief can burst down a 3k armor 22k hp warrior in 2 rotations.

Seriously, most thieves are bads, just /laugh. But when you face a good one, you are at a disadvantage.

Cygnus.6903:

All this talk of taking your time and baiting them… What is the thief doing in the meanwhile? A decent thief can burst down a 3k armor 22k hp warrior in 2 rotations.

Seriously, most thieves are bads, just /laugh. But when you face a good one, you are at a disadvantage.

It’s not a question what the thief is doing in the mean time, it’s what are you doing in the mean time. Thieves have 1 or 2 hard hitting skills and when you know the builds you have a pretty good idea of when they going to use them. Use your dodges and blocks sparingly to mitigate the big stuff and let your armor and health soak up the smaller stuff. There is always spot in their rotation where they are vulnerable to being burst or locked down. All it takes is 1 well placed burst and a couple AAs to take them out.

I do agree that a good thief is much much harder to handle cause they tend to not follow a specific rotation and always keep you guessing.

i prefer to either close in on them with bulls-charge or let my adren build up until i can eviscerate them, followed by shield bash into flurry then final strike.

Julie Yann.5379:

It’s not a question what the thief is doing in the mean time, it’s what are you doing in the mean time. Thieves have 1 or 2 hard hitting skills and when you know the builds you have a pretty good idea of when they going to use them. Use your dodges and blocks sparingly to mitigate the big stuff and let your armor and health soak up the smaller stuff. There is always spot in their rotation where they are vulnerable to being burst or locked down. All it takes is 1 well placed burst and a couple AAs to take them out.

I do agree that a good thief is much much harder to handle cause they tend to not follow a specific rotation and always keep you guessing.

Even if you do manage to start your burst/lockdown rotation, they usually have 2-3 outs for that. And they can reset a fight without letting you heal in less time then it will take you to recharge your burst.

Warrior has a build that is very good against anything. But if you don’t play that build, and the thief is any good, you will lose more then you win.

Eviscerate is actually incredible against thieves. Even more so because it is coupled with a very strong auto-attack. That much pressure is bad for the thief.