Over and over and over I’m being beating by thieves no matter what my approach is, when I block, when I dodge after they stealth etc. I’d love to apply stun from bull rush or shield bash but they seem to break it immediately, regen most of thier HP back while i’m stuck with poison and torment which shake it off preffers not to clear over other conditions i can live which in turn makes my dolyak signet and other heals useless while getting bummed to death by ranged and bleed etc etc etc.
It’s driving me god kitten nuts and the only way I can counter them is by hoping I’m within range of a tower or keep I can run to or just waypoint/run before the fight even starts.
I can beat most classes 50% of the time but thieves ALWAYS kill me no matter what in the hell I do. I am aware of the counter moves you should such as counting for 3/4 seconds after they stealth and using shield stance/endure pain but they just wait until it’s gone and then face roll me.
please someone for the love of god help me with this, it’s making me want to quit the game. I just don’t understand the thinking behind the classes design when it seems it’s sole purpose is to completely suck the fun out of the game in every way concievable.
You’ll get it eventually, so don’t worry – your will to improve is significant enough to get you there. By the way, have you tried training with a thief in PvP, and getting some insight from her/him, on both your build and game play? Surely you have thieves in your guild, or maybe your guild mates know of some?
Also, what exact build are you running? There are some warrior builds that work well against thieves (and lots who do not), although without practice they may not look very effective at first. Have you tried running a condition build already? You’d be very tanky, would be spamming Combustive Shot all the time, getting good chances.
The ones I’ve used which worked best against thieves are:
an axe/shield+rifle build, in direct damage. The shield block is traited with “Mighty Defenses” to accumulate might (I use it when the thief steals and uses Whirling Axe), the Shield Bash can be used to land a successful evisceration (which usually removes about half of the thief life when it hits), spamming the axe AA regularly hits here and there, and the rifle is great because its channeled attacks keep the thief in check, provided you trigger them before the thief gets stealthed,
A condition / confusion build, with both Distracting Strikes and the Runes of Perplexity. When you manage to interrupt the opponent, you get between 9 and 12 stacks of confusion, so about 2k damage per skill use – most players don’t pay attention to confusion, so this worked wonderfully against thieves.
By the sounds of it you’re stuggling with P/D condi thieves, who are universally very hard to counter and annoying to fight.
The only real advice for those types of thieves is, if they are using vemons (which is likely) they will not have much access to stealth besides CnD. Dodge that above all else and you will really start to screw with their rotation. As a warrior is quite do-able.. I main ranger and mesmer and its pretty much impossible to do there since they CnD off pets and illusions.. but for you, make it happen
Cufufalating – Ranger / Part-Time Mesmer
Gunnar’s Hold
Spiked armor. One of the most under used/talked about traits. It annihilates thieve’s/mesmers that play burst builds.
Retaliation by itself (up 50% of the time – after you are crit’d) is not going to win it for you. You need to also apply damage/pressure through other means. Most thieves run Dire and only Dire and they have a relatively very low crit chance because of it. Thus, you maybe get it to proc and maybe not.
P/D thieves typically ‘juke’ you by running up to melee range and then Shadow Striking between to add Torment/distance between reveal times. They also have perma-stealth with any object (like a wall) and Cloak and Dagger. Not to mention that they have high uptime in stealth for severe health gain plus healing skill (sorry, Healing Signet/Adrenaline Health warriors) and condition removal well above any other class.
IMO, P/D thief is the most OP’d class in WvW right now for a reason. There isn’t a single class (even other thieves) that doesn’t have at least some difficulty with it.
Note, I rather enjoy mine but it is either 90% too easy or 90% overrun by an angry mob.
TL;DR Talking about a balance discussion with P/D thief is pointless, nothing compares to it right now
At 25% health you will gain endure pain. The thief will see that you are at 25% health so he will get all exited and will try to burst you down but he will not kill you because you are immune to damage. When your endure pain finishes use the second endure pain that you have you will be immune for 10 seconds total. He will try to bring you down with all dps he has but he will fail. During these 10 seconds of immunity use:
Shield bashing
Eviscerate
100 blades
use all you have to bring him down.
Also use your Barserker stance to get 10 sec of condition immunity (blind immunity)
You just need 1 eviscerate and thief will go down!
A dire p/d thief is the scissors to our paper if you are power based. Unless you are also condition based, better run. On the flip side of it, a dire thief will rarely pull off a win against a elementalist running diamond skin.
You can not beat any decent PD thief with any kind of Warrior build. If they know what to dodge and don’t blow their dodges, you will not do anything to them.
PD thief is the same as PU mesmer, with the difference that it requires SLIGHTLY more skill to be played.
Signed
Thief main (dagger pistol)
Powerpuff Girls [PPG]
Trixxi Is Cute – Purple Fhaz: your daily roamer
PD thief is the same as PU mesmer, with the difference that it requires SLIGHTLY more skill to be played.
I used to have problems with PU mesmers until I played one. There is a severe weakness to the PU Mesmer build (typically mobility or damage output depending on Runes) and the phantasms (not clones) need to stay up for you to win. As the opponent, if you kill the phantasms (melee cleave or LB AoE works best), Crippling Dissipation (causes Cripple condition is a non-issue with Dogged March), Debilitating Dissipation only really hurts a 3rd of the time, and Confusing Combatants is bugged and doesn’t actually apply confusion from phantasms. So any PU mesmer is basically screwed if you take down there main damage source, phantasms, and you avoid the once every 8-10 second Blurred Frenzy burst.
The only worry is the few Mesmers that can mimic their clones well as that buys them a few more seconds between rotations but in combat mobility will trump that everytime.
The P/D thief has absolutely none of those issues though. It doesn’t have to worry about sacrificing damage or mobility for high stealth uptime/high health regen/high condition removal. Honestly, it’s easier to play than Mesmer too (as long as you don’t muck up/get interrupted with Cloak and Dagger and know what a shield reflect ability looks like, all is good).
PD thief is the same as PU mesmer, with the difference that it requires SLIGHTLY more skill to be played.
I used to have problems with PU mesmers until I played one. There is a severe weakness to the PU Mesmer build (typically mobility or damage output depending on Runes) and the phantasms (not clones) need to stay up for you to win. As the opponent, if you kill the phantasms (melee cleave or LB AoE works best), Crippling Dissipation (causes Cripple condition is a non-issue with Dogged March), Debilitating Dissipation only really hurts a 3rd of the time, and Confusing Combatants is bugged and doesn’t actually apply confusion from phantasms. So any PU mesmer is basically screwed if you take down there main damage source, phantasms, and you avoid the once every 8-10 second Blurred Frenzy burst.
The only worry is the few Mesmers that can mimic their clones well as that buys them a few more seconds between rotations but in combat mobility will trump that everytime.
The P/D thief has absolutely none of those issues though. It doesn’t have to worry about sacrificing damage or mobility for high stealth uptime/high health regen/high condition removal. Honestly, it’s easier to play than Mesmer too (as long as you don’t muck up/get interrupted with Cloak and Dagger and know what a shield reflect ability looks like, all is good).
You are right about PU mesmers, but even then you won’t be able to kill them.
I play mesmer too, and last time I lost to a warrior was… Never? And I’m not talking about PU, il never run that crap.
Powerpuff Girls [PPG]
Trixxi Is Cute – Purple Fhaz: your daily roamer
