Guild Wars 2

Am I the only one that has an issue with thieves as a warrior? It seems like the bad ones die in 2 seconds, but the goods one laugh at my pathetic attempts to swing my hammer around. When I can see their avatar at all (Stealth+ blind? a blindzone I’m standing in and can’t see?) They keep me either perma immobilized or perma crippled. I’ve tried a few things, but stability and Shake it off don’t help much. I end up curing the poison instead of the blind or something similar. I don’t have problems with any other professions (besides mesmers and I think thats just because I’m stupid).

Any ideas?

With hammer? You need to get lucky and catch them with your first CC, then chain the rest on top of that.

Otherwise, good luck.

You will never ever win against a competent thief.

If all their tricks are up (steal and their ultimate), then you won’t win. Doesn’t matter how good you are or what abilities you have.

The battle will go like this:

Steal (3-4k) → Whirlwind (no damage taken, stability) (3-4k) → dagger storm (7-8k) (or thieves guild + them attacking from range(8k+)

So..even before you’ve been able to attack them once you will have taken about 15k of damage. You could chain shield block and endure pain for 6 seconds of immunity, maybe dropping that to 10k damage but then they can hit haste + pistol whip + immob poison (or heartseeker spam) hitting for 3-4k a hit and then it’s goodbye warrior.

Or they could just kite you with shortbow and caltrop dodges + shadow refuge.

The only way i beat good thieves, i if they’re unloading on someone else first.

Friend you need two things. A shield + “Endure Pain”.
That’s 8 seconds of invulnerability.

A sword works best against a thief. Once he’s finished his chain of attacks, your adrenaline should be pretty high. Use your “burst” to immobilize them and they’re dead. Remember you also have “Savage leap” to close the gap between you and him, and also an 8sec! cripple skill. And let’s not forget “Shield Bash”. With enough practise, they’re easy to kill.

I recommend a rifle for when they start fleeing ( they always do).

Its pretty hard, thief is definitely a bit too strong. Their strength multiplies like crazy when there’s more than 1 of them, more so than say, 2 warriors together for example.

For being a “squishy” class, they have way too many ways to completely nullify damage and/or ez-mode escape.

Orb effects scale too crazy on thiefs aswell!

You will never ever win against a competent thief.

As a thief player I encourage you to keep thinking this way. It makes my fights that much easier.

As a player I encourage you to not assume you’ve lost before the fight even starts. You can NOT win fights against anyone thinking like that.

Do your homework. Check all sorts of different builds. Be open to changing your playstyle.

A good place to start would be the Yojack Build thread here in the warrior forums. Several people have switched to that build and had a lot of success. It won’t magically allow you to roflstomp all thieves, but it’s one proven way to increase your chances.

Another way to go is to play a thief for awhile. Get some serious in-depth knowledge of the class. Once you understand your enemy, it’s that much easier to beat him. I guarantee you that over half the stuff that people spout off about what thieves can do is outright false or just defeatist and filled with misunderstanding and ignorance. Let’s start with this thread:

Whirlwind stolen from warriors making the thief invulnerable: False. We might gain stability(I wasn’t able to test it accurately), but still take damage while spinning. I literally just tested this before posting. Thieves can take damage during whirlwind stolen from warriors. Use this as an opportunity to either dodge or hit back as hard as you can. Glass cannon thieves don’t have many HP.

Daggerstorm only reflects projectiles, not melee. Another opportunity to strike back with powerful melee attacks. Daggerstorm also does not do anywhere near 7-8k unless you somehow manage to get hit by every single dagger that fires, which would require you to run around the thief at around mach 6. Against a single target, daggerstorm barely even does as much damage as an auto-attack unless there’s a combo field, in which case that’s teamwork, not just the thief.

Haste+Pistol Whip+immob poison: Immob venom is 4 seconds. This is what you should be saving your stun breaker for. Also, Pistol Whip’s stun is only 1/2 seconds. You can literally walk out of the AOE of half of it.

Heartseeker Spam: Easily dodged under normal circumstances. Any thief who spams it is NOT someone you need to be overly concerned about. Use a stun-breaker if needed to get out of immob.

Being kited: Warriors have plenty of anti-kite tools. If you can’t figure out how to avoid being kited by any class, then you should probably go back to PVE.

Multiple thieves being stronger than multiple of any other class: Give me a break. Really? Every class has some extremely powerful combos if you take the time to look for them. Hell, even just two axe-warriors spamming are dangerous as hell.

Thief nullifying damage: Ok, stop. You know that stealth is not immunity, right? Just because he disappears from your screen doesn’t mean you can’t still hit him. AOE is your friend. Learn to anticipate how long stealth lasts and what a thief is likely to be doing while in stealth. Were his HPs low or did he spam a bunch of attacks when he disappeared? Then he’s probably running for cover to regain some health or reset the fight. Were his HP high? He’s probably setting up an attack. Keep your cool and be ready. Practice and understanding how stealth works is key.

Orb effects scaling too well on theives: Lolwut? You’re going have to elaborate on that one. The orb buff is the same for everyone. It doesn’t magically give thieves more stats than everyone else.

Mostly what I see are people getting mad because they got killed by a thief. Guess what? That’s not the class beating you, it’s the player. If you take the time to learn what a class can and can’t do, and change your own play and build accordingly, you’re going to do a LOT better. Instead of blaming the class that beat you, take yourself to their forums and start asking intelligent questions. What did the thief do to kill me? What was my build when I got beat? What can I change to try and counter it?

Or you could just throw your hands up in the air and call thief OP and keep losing.

Yeah nerf all the high dps thief builds If you root a thief with dps build he is dead meat, they run around with 13kish hps and almost no toughness.

I have “studied” the thief class with kitten near every build available… I mean sitting for hours calculating dps, damage, estimating survivability to come up with a build I think is the best bang for you buck as a thief. The thief builds that are high DPS (which most people are “scared” of) are honestly not very effective because they are 1 trick ponies and work in spurts. So in a 1v1 given a not so great player they are godly but once they blow their cooldowns and used up their initiative they are sitting ducks. Kinda like some of the warrior builds out there

That being said, when against those thieves…. Blow both block and immunity then charge them with your stun and kill them. Keep in mind you can hit them just fine when they are in stealth so if you rooted and they stealth, keep swinging. When I run up against the glass cannons that is what I do as a thief vs another thief.

Dodge -> Block -> Endure Pain -> Dodge -> Fear Me

Fear me is a bit scetchy, since it won’t work on a thief in Bladestorm, but works wonders against Thieves Guild.

Wow…so much badness in this thread from thieves…

8 seconds? If you played a warrior you would know endure pain works for 3 seconds, not 5, it;s on a 90 second timer….the same timer as dagger storm.

Even if you have a full adrenaline bar on the sword the dps from a sword won’t kill anyone. The only thing it’s useful for is rooting for other people or switching for a GS burst.

But you can’t have GS as you’re meant to have a rifle equipped?

But really..swords?…..their damage is completely bleed reliant, so the most easily cleared in the game. Thief dodge traited clears cripples.

Oh I did play a thief just to see. It was just too easy. I decided to only use keys 1+2 on daggers and dagger storm. The effort it takes to kill with a thief compared to a warrior was laughable.

Dagger storm gives bleeding/cripple/stability+damage. So you’re saying I should try and melee a spinning thief. Whilst crippled constantly by a refeshing cripple and he’s moving constantly. How exactly can I achieve that? Please..just stop embarrassing yourself.

So i’ve got to have endure pain, stun breakers, anti kite abilities, be using a sword and shield and a rifle, specced in my traits for anti kiting build, yet still have enough damage output to do actual damage and health to survive the initial unavoidable attacks?

Oh…on top of all that i’m meant to have access to aoe damage? With my sword/shield and rifle combo?

I didn’t realise warriors had so many trait point sto spend and could equip 10 weapons to switch between. Also apparently we have infinite dodges.

If as a thief you can’t kite constantly you should go back to pve. Shortbow 5? Unhappy with how a fights going? Shadow refuge, 2 of those and goodbye opponent.

You don’t even understand how stolen whirlwind works yet you seem to think you have skills as a thief.

When someone lists multiple abilities with impossible builds needed to beat a class that person has just proven my point.

I didn’t even mention the 6-10k backstab opener.

Daggerstorm only reflects projectiles, not melee. Another opportunity to strike back with powerful melee attacks. Daggerstorm also does not do anywhere near 7-8k unless you somehow manage to get hit by every single dagger that fires, which would require you to run around the thief at around mach 6. Against a single target, daggerstorm barely even does as much damage as an auto-attack unless there’s a combo field, in which case that’s teamwork, not just the thief.

Heartseeker Spam: Easily dodged under normal circumstances. Any thief who spams it is NOT someone you need to be overly concerned about. Use a stun-breaker if needed to get out of immob.

Being kited: Warriors have plenty of anti-kite tools. If you can’t figure out how to avoid being kited by any class, then you should probably go back to PVE.

Multiple thieves being stronger than multiple of any other class: Give me a break. Really? Every class has some extremely powerful combos if you take the time to look for them. Hell, even just two axe-warriors spamming are dangerous as hell.

Thief nullifying damage: Ok, stop. You know that stealth is not immunity, right? Just because he disappears from your screen doesn’t mean you can’t still hit him. AOE is your friend. Learn to anticipate how long stealth lasts and what a thief is likely to be doing while in stealth. Were his HPs low or did he spam a bunch of attacks when he disappeared? Then he’s probably running for cover to regain some health or reset the fight. Were his HP high? He’s probably setting up an attack. Keep your cool and be ready. Practice and understanding how stealth works is key.

Orb effects scaling too well on theives: Lolwut? You’re going have to elaborate on that one. The orb buff is the same for everyone. It doesn’t magically give thieves more stats than everyone else.

Mostly what I see are people getting mad because they got killed by a thief. Guess what? That’s not the class beating you, it’s the player. If you take the time to learn what a class can and can’t do, and change your own play and build accordingly, you’re going to do a LOT better. Instead of blaming the class that beat you, take yourself to their forums and start asking intelligent questions. What did the thief do to kill me? What was my build when I got beat? What can I change to try and counter it?

Or you could just throw your hands up in the air and call thief OP and keep losing.

I have tried most builds out there in exception of Yojacks horn build, which seems good.

Let me start whirlwind stolen from warriors does a lot of dmg, but is an overall balanced skill.

Daggerstorm however is not. It’s not that they get in on you and gib you straight off. They are just a whirling balanced stance ball of dmg, and you as a warrior will either have to GTFO or block/dodge as much of this as possible and still take some dmg, without you being able to knockback, stun or do anything else to stop him from what he is doing.

All warrior abilites (no exception) can be stunned, knocked back w/e unless you use a second slot for a short balanced duration (which i highly suggest you don’t)
When it ends they can proceed to open the fight as they see fit dagger/dagger, sword/pistol and still have all their endurance ready.

Which means you will have a crippled warrior with no endurance, shield block on CD who might have lost 10ish % of his health, before he can retaliate.
Which leaves you at a serious disadvantage.

Going on.

(Never had any trouble with pistol whip thiefs tbh)

Dagger/Dagger however. Start flipping around invising for ages at a time popping out and hitting you for rediculous dmg or bleeding the hell out of you.

Then against the odds you pull through and execute everything flawlessly and get the beat on him, he pulls out his short bow (you having used rush/bladetrail/whirling spin – or whatever you have at your disposable to knock him out or avoid dmg) and teleports multipletimes and /waves at you.

In regards to orb scaling too well with thiefs. They can effectively run glasscannon bc they have ways to avoid or mitigate dmg – which most other classes do not have!

150% assasins signet + backstab + 15% dmg + 150 free stats – Are you kidding me?
Noone else scales like this!

Am i completely in the wrong here?

Really? Charge them with my stun?

My shield stun? Or bulls rush. You know thieves carry stun breakers as well yes? How many good thieves do you know sit inside a stun.

Let’s see : shadowstep breaks stun, quickness breaks stun, roll for initiative breaks stun, infiltrators signet breaks stun.

You’re really telling me out of those 4 you won’t have any equipped? I can see two i’d have all the time.

So apparently what thieves are doing during the whirlwind is dodging constantly. Due to their traited endurance gain they can dodge 4-5 times in a row so giving them complete invulnerability during the initial whirlwind….

So that would explain why all i see are evade signs whenever I try and counter.

So yes, if a thief chooses not to dodge during the whirlwind you can hit him……or he can just keep dodging non stop.

All this theory crafting is nice, but there is really no way to counter an 8k steal, 8k cloak and dagger, 9k backstab which all happens in a very short amount of time. Not to mention trick-shot consistently hitting for 2.5k and 6-7k cluster bombs. Thieves are pretty ridiculous right now in WvW and they will be nerfed.

Thiefs have no ability to stay in the fight long, the things that really hit you are based on initiative. You need to first survive the initiative burn then it’s your turn, if you can’t make it through that initiative spike there is no point to fighting a thief and you are pretty much going down if you try to fight through his spike. They also close faster than you (all the different shadowsteps) so unless you get the jump on him the thief will control when the engagement starts. Shield, endure pain etc help you live through the initiative burn, after which a good thief will stealth the moment he can. you must unload and stun as quickly as you can or he’ll get away. I’ve had the most sucess with Sword and Shield, but a well played thief runs away and recharges initiative.

phaeris.7604:

So apparently what thieves are doing during the whirlwind is dodging constantly. Due to their traited endurance gain they can dodge 4-5 times in a row so giving them complete invulnerability during the initial whirlwind….

So that would explain why all i see are evade signs whenever I try and counter.

So yes, if a thief chooses not to dodge during the whirlwind you can hit him……or he can just keep dodging non stop.

See, you’ve already learned something! Dodging is not invulnerability, although they are similar in nature. The thief is not just outright immune to damage during the spin, they have to expend resources and they have to hit their dodge key to do it.

Also, the most a thief can do is dodge 3 times back to back without stopping to use something that also restores endurance, which probably ends either daggerstorm or whirlwind. The trait returns about a third of the endurance used to dodge.

All this theory crafting is nice, but there is really no way to counter an 8k steal, 8k cloak and dagger, 9k backstab which all happens in a very short amount of time. Not to mention trick-shot consistently hitting for 2.5k and 6-7k cluster bombs.

Show me a video or even an unedited screenshot of steal doing 8k. The Jinzu backstab build can put out some amazing numbers against classes that are also glass cannons. It can be frustrating to be blown up that fast, but “A very short amount of time.” is not the same as instantaneous. You can stun break out if you’re on the ball with your reaction time.

Yes, all out offense is very powerful for the Thief class. It’s using it’s strengths to the maximum. That is NOT the same as an “I win” button. You either adapt your own style to survive and fight, or you’ll just keep getting beaten. So stop complaining about other classes and start actually looking at the hard numbers and strategies of what your class can do. Don’t just give up and say “OP NERF! QQ!!!111!11!!”

That’s what guys like Yojack have done. How do you explain the difference between what you guys are saying about all thieves having an easy win against warriors, and guys like him saying they haven’t run into much trouble with thieves? One of you is trying different things and innovating and getting better, the other is giving up and calling for nerfs when they lose.

Furthermore, speccing to get vigor on steal and endurance return on dodge requires 15 in acrobatics and 20 in trickery. This doesn’t leave anywhere near enough points for a true burst, backstab build that can blow you up in seconds. Which means that unless you’re also a glass cannon build, if you’re smart you’ll be able to avoid or mitigate enough damage to counter attack or neutralize the thief combo.

Edit: Tested the endurance build, btw. After steal, even with vigor, you can dodge three times back to back before having to wait for around 3 seconds for enough endurance to dodge again. After that 4th dodge, you’d have to wait another 3 seconds.

So….another misunderstanding of what thieves are supposedly capable of cleared up, hopefully.

Ok so, I was gone a few days before i rechecked this. I read most of your posts, but the general consensus seems to be the obvious: Against something that hits hard and fast ,strap on a shield. I was playing my engineer the other day, and a sword and board warrior kitten near killed me. Quickly. At the time, I was using my “tankier” build and a specced flamethrower (200 toughness), so I’ll check that out. I played the thief a little bit, but never got past level 11 and I usually wait till 20 for sPvP so I havn’t been able to test thieves in PvP at all.

Now ,i wasn’t being UTTERLY destroyed by thieves. I got them to about half or lower, and I only hit them 3 or 4 times (auto attacks). I just wish the hammer wasn’t so easy to dodge. its got a bit of a windup time, and it pretty much broadcasts it to anyone paying attention.

What is the ability thieves have that allows them to imob me for 5+ seconds with only about 2-4 seconds before another imob?

I have 3.5k armor and I go down in seconds agaist glass canon thiefs, there’s not much I can do, they pop their skill that summons 2 buddies making it hard to locate them, then in seconds I get killed. Steal does 5.5k damage, cloack and dagger does 5.5k damage and heartseeker does 5.5k damage.

I am full exotic toughness gear warrior with 25points in defence tree, I should not go down like a cloth glass, this is not balanced. I hope arenanet is going to do something with the rip your face off increcible bursts that thiefs have. I can cope with such face ripping burst if they didn’t have insivibility, vanish and other tricks that make it impossible to kill them before they unload their all burst on you.

There’s always something you can do to avoid an opener, dodge twice.

Stealth is a very short duration ability. All the bads need to realize, when the Thief goes stealth, he’s still suceptible to snare/root and kiting, and you heros all for some reason, want to run IN the direction of the Thief, and die besides AWAY and kite the stealth, they pop out with no damage done.

If you time it right, even if they are glass cannon spec, steal misses when you dodge and they are out of stealth.

There is absolutely no way people are “dying with no way to counter” Thieves, absolutely no way, simply due to Thief design, no perma stealth, no stuns longer than .5 second.

Seriously learn to play.

Oke sooo here goes.

I have fought against my friend, a thief (full exotic armor/weapons), does about 9~12k backstabs and bursts people down in about 2/3 hits when im with him in WvW.
I switched server, we went to the backside of a camp. And we fought eachother. His damage was crazy. It was strong. … But I won every single time.

Im a 0/0/30/30/10 GS/Rifle Warrior, 25k hp ish, power/vit/tough armor, power/pres/tough jewels. Shout orientated. Throw Bola’s works pretty good. You just gotta time your dodges and your 3 skill. It negates enough damage. Always keep spamming your autoattack when they are invisible. They still take TONS of damage because they have low hp.

I even got caught off guard by some thiefs when I was walking around in WvW. I was looking at the map and had autorun on. (yes im lazy so what?) But.. The thief bursted me down to half hp in no time(from 25k hp to about 12~13k). So when I shut down my map I already lost most of my HP. I just dodged and decided that he is a puny thief and started autoattacking. Healed myself with shouts, my own heal. Thief had blown all his cd’s and suddenly was screwed.

The most annoying part of thiefs for me is… Their stealth… They eventually realise that they cant kill a power/vit/tough warrior and decide to run in stealth. I usually chase the wrong way, but with 3/5/4 + bull rush/bola can get me near them in no time to finish them off.

Because lets be honest….. to take down thiefs with 10~12k hp… regular autoattacks are enough for us warriors. If it doesnt work… my only guess is that you are undergeared compared to the thief.

The biggest problem is the escapes really. The big front loaded burst i can understand; they are essentially the assassin class.

The problem is once they burn all their initiative (and alot of your hp at the same time), they can easily kite you around and escape you, then jump back on you while your still weakened and finish you off. The class’s only weakness which is being somewhat squishy is totally negated by its mobility and escape skills.

The trait skill that snares on cripple effects is amazing for situations like that. Your sword can immobilize them twice if hit on its way out and back and a rifle has a cripple so thats another immobilize. A longbow has a cripple so thats another immobilize.

That is basically my go to when they start running. Throw sword, if that misses get closed > use 3/5 to get close > switch to rifle > use 2 > pew pew a bit > throw bolas > switch to sword > 3 into range > 100b …. not like this combo works 100% of the time… But it gives an idea on how you can use your skills to stay in range and keep doing damage.

I never had problems beating thiefs…then again now that I am rolling a thief alt I have no problems rolling over warriors. Then again I find hammer to be too slow to deal with any class that can maneuver around. Same problem as with maces, if the class can move around you pretty much going to be playing a game of cat and mouse but the mouse is shooting crap at you.

phaeris.7604:

You will never ever win against a competent thief.

If all their tricks are up (steal and their ultimate), then you won’t win. Doesn’t matter how good you are or what abilities you have.

The battle will go like this:

Steal (3-4k) -> Whirlwind (no damage taken, stability) (3-4k) -> dagger storm (7-8k) (or thieves guild + them attacking from range(8k+)

So..even before you’ve been able to attack them once you will have taken about 15k of damage. You could chain shield block and endure pain for 6 seconds of immunity, maybe dropping that to 10k damage but then they can hit haste + pistol whip + immob poison (or heartseeker spam) hitting for 3-4k a hit and then it’s goodbye warrior.

Or they could just kite you with shortbow and caltrop dodges + shadow refuge.

The only way i beat good thieves, i if they’re unloading on someone else first.

I usually let them try to pull off all their puny little tricks while I block and dodge them all. Just stay away when they whirl and remember to block that initial spam.
When they are done unloading everything and I’m at 100% health, I shield bash them and pound them with my hammer.
The good thing about MMOs is that people have absolutely no creativity. They watch a video on how to spec and play and therefore they all play the same way.