Guild Wars 2

As an answer to the OP, if you are in WvW there isn’t really any good counters to thieves there. Stealth traps are way too expensive to be used regularly to counter thieves and they can disengage at will from even the most terrible of situations if they are good. You can force them to run, for a short while, but you can’t kill a well played thief in WvW. Just play defensively and continue about your business or force them to retreat. Still, if they are good forcing them to retreat might not be an option either if you lack burst damage.

In sPVP I hear they are fairly well balanced. But I’ll leave the sPVP comments to sPVP players.

Wryscher.1432:

No. In most games I have played when a dr came in it was because 1 person could stun lock you for a size able length of time. Here as the op pointed out it takes a group of people working together. That is sort of the point of the game I believe.

A single hammer/mace/mace warrior can perma stun 1 person for over 10 seconds. Of that 10+ seconds Fear Me, Staggering Blow, Stomp, Earthshaker, and Tremor are all AOE effects. Lets add that up shall we?

Single target stuns capable in a single warrior build:

Backbreaker (2 seconds)
Bull’s Charge (2 Seconds)
Skull Crack (2 seconds)
Pommel Bash (1 second)

AOE Stuns capable in a single warrior build.

Staggering Blow (1-2 seconds)
Earthshaker (2 seconds)
Stomp (2-3 seconds)
Fear Me (3 seconds initially, can be more easily increased than other stuns)
Tremor (2 seconds)

Juggernaut:
Kick (1-2 seconds)
Throw Boulder (2 seconds)
Stomp (2-3 seconds)

So that’s a total of over 20 seconds actually, with quite a few of those CC’s being AOE’s. Warrior is one of the best at it but they are not the only class that can lock someone down for a sizeable length of time.

Paavotar.3971:

Hey hey, don’t you dare to touch my hammer warrior, grrrr.

But seriously. How are we supposed to take down thieves without CC combo, or d/d ele. They cry for CC to take down. Well placed Immobilize will shut eles ability to ride the lightning and slowing down thieves will make it that easier to chase when they pop out of stealth and so on.

But yea, I agree its sometimes frustrating that I can’t enter a tower because it has so many people infront to CC me down. I understand where this shout for help comes, but beware what you wish for.

Edit: making a 5 sec cooldown on CC on a player would mean that Warriors hammer would be useless, 4 out of 6 skills are CC.

1st off a good thief of mesmer isn’t that worried about CC. They have some of the best tools to deal with CC. Thief in particular should not die to CC because they choose when to engage and they possess shadow step/shadow return. BAD thieves die to CC. They can even steal to change positions drastically while stunned.

Also as far as hammer warrior goes, they have 3 hard CC, not 4. Staggering Blow, Back Breaker, Earthshaker. As well You don’t even know my suggested implemenetation for fixing it, how can you say “Warrior’s hammer would be useless!!!”? Still it’s interesting you say that as a CC based hammer warrior with sword/mace offhand can keep someone helpless for over 10 seconds and multiple skills are AOE CC. (I have one btw). Ironically since the AOE CC’s knock or fear people away I would still perform my job of disruption.

I’ll update my OP with the following suggestion since people automatically jump to immunities.

Personally imo it should be an increasing resistance as you are CC’d. Stacks of defiance or something that last for 10 seconds each. 1 stack per second of CC, each stack reduces the duration of the next CC by 5%, max of 10 stacks. This means that a long duration skill such as 3 seconds of fear from “Fear Me” would give 15% reduced hard CC duration. But a spammable small skill like “Head shot” would give only 5% reduced duration since it is 1 second per “Head Shot”.

I like the idea of more patrolling guards. Camps, towers, and keeps should create alot more patrols and they should reach further, possibly even fighting in NPC vs NPC battles in specific areas (maybe make it a random event). I think sentries should also be given cheap upgrades that include guard level and 2 patrols (1 for each direction of the road they are on).

It also adds value to actually upgrading your guards if they sent out 3-5 patrols instead of like 1. Wouldn’t exactly be too crazy to counter either since the patrol sources snowball into each other. by making the patrols de-spawn as you capture them. IE sentries make camps easier to take, camps make towers easier to take, etc.

Small groups could still outmaneuver the guards pretty easily, but larger groups would be more likely to randomly aggro them. Small groups could also use the sentry upgrades to send patrols out that would hit nearby camps/towers if they needed the help.

Azraeel.1238:

Go to whatever forum your main class is, and ask them.

Ironic considering the common thief answer on how to fight a thief is that you need to play a thief to understand them., In fairness though mesmer is another such class that is the exact same in that regard.

Malice is not bad as heals go. The reason it is not favored atm is because of the way thieves build, how heavily they rely on stealth for defense BECAUSE OF THE WAY THEY BUILD, and how freekin insanely good hide in shadows is.

I mean cmon a modest to good direct heal, added regen, removes burning/bleeding/poison, AND stealths you on a 30 second timer? It’s quite literally one of the best heals in the game, if not the best and it works well for every build.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Personally I don’t have a problem with thieves. I like to think of ambush thieves (AKA backstab thieves) as the initiation into higher PVP. At first they seem like they are overpowered and way too strong and can get away from everything, but as you learn more about the game and get better at your class the threat of the ambush thief diminishes.

I thought this way before the haste nerf, too. I currently have 3 toons at 80 and 5 toons that I’ve gone into sPVP with: Engineer, Necromancer, Guardian, Mesmer, and my own Thief. Every single one of them has ways of dealing with a backstab thief. On my engineer, they’ll either get caught in my turrets or they’ll be burst down just as quickly with grenades and bombs or blown back by something else. Necromancer just pops Death Shroud to blow their entire haste and follows up with marks + wells inside of their shadow refuge. My own thief just vanishes into thin air and counter attacks just as well. My guardian just chases them around auto attacking, and my mesmer distortion’s and blocks the assault or teleports away then responds with stealth as well.

The most dangerous thieves are the ones that keep their distance, attacking primarily with the shortbow or the pistol. These are the tricky guys, because they aren’t bellying themselves up by spamming heartseeker, and they can maintain a steady offense while using stealth as a very effective defense. The scary part is that these guys CAN burst down an opponent quickly. They just choose to do it when it’ll win the fight, and not do it as quickly as possible in hopes that they’re attacking a newb. They’re evasive, capable of disengaging using something other than shadow refuge, and have more build diversity.

I find mesmers to be far more dangerous than the thief. They’re just as hard to catch, can just as easily disengage, all the while having twice as many tools at their disposal and also having more reliable burst. Plus, Moa Morph is just plain OP in 1 vs. 1. I won’t be calling for a thief nerf anytime soon.

Problem is the balance and focus of sPVP and the balance of WvW is radically different. Thieves are viewed as generally balanced in sPVP, being mid tierish IIRC. However they are viewed extremely negatively in WvW.

For example in sPVP you won’t have 3 thieves run together and heartseeker spam 1 person at a time and all escape when a group of 30 runs smooth over them. In WvW you do occasionally find this. In sPVP it would be point suicide to run permastealth as people would just cap things while you constantly stealthed. In WvW you can pick off countless people open field this way with little to no risk.

The rules are completely different between the two game modes and thief, and possibly others, need to be separately balanced for each.

Rastaman.9015:

Ralathar.7236:

Rastaman.9015:

Sorry to disappoint you, but thief was made specifically to not get caught. A thief is supposed to take out key targets to win the fight and to do that he can’t get caught. And to balance this if he does get caught his low defenses will show.

So if you are built to not get caught then you getting caught was your own misplaying. therefore you are saying thieves are not intended to get caught and ergo not intended to die?

Because honestly if you don’t get caught your low defenses will never show.

Exactly. Now that is where the hard part of being a thief comes into play. You have to know what not to get caught by from every profession. You have to know every skill in the game and how to counter it. Players that achieve this are the “skilled” players in game.

Having played thief I can tell you it’s really not all that diffcult. Only reason I die around as much on my thieves is I know it’s easier to survive so I do bolder stuff to get more out of my class. This is the case with most thieves as they rush into situations most classes would never put themselves in.

Having played MMO’s for a long time I can also tell you balanced isn’t based on what you can do easily or do with skill. It’s based off of what the class is capable of. If a class could wreck an entire zerg on a build but it was insanely hard to pull of that would still get nerfed for example. Extreme impractical/hyperbole example, but you get the point.

Niim.9260:

The only real issue I have had with CC in GW2 is that I wish stun break skills also broke immobilize. Not a huge deal, but that is the one change I have always thought I would like.

I’ve never been in a situation where I ate enough immobilize to kill me that I would have otherwise survive. Nothing that would have killed me where I would not have already been dead provided I had at least 1 condition removal tool or teleport that is.

I find condition removal is actually extremely plentiful, AOE condition removal might be TOO plentiful with the light fields and warhorn/shout warriors. There is a reason why well necros are generally more preffered, because the damage is power and the meaningful conditions are being applied by a pulsing AOE, one shot conditions normally get quickly removed.

Khayoss.2019:

Ralathar.7236:

Looks like we are in the exact same position AR and BP was.

Sort of, except we are loving it! Thanks for the fun fights FA in our BL this morning. Taking garrison back was good times. We aren’t use to having that kind of army to push through. Mags BL today has been a blast too. That kitten zerg got the drop on us a couple times, and I find that impressive considering you were a larger group than us. You guys move fast and we have to be more on our toes with our area scouts.

I agree, I love it.

Nikked.7365:

With the new matchups, I’ve come across players who are very good at executing this. I seem to be locked down, or locked out of a tower, even after I’ve burnt all my “Get out of Jail Free” cards. (Mesmers come with quite a few.)

I am frustrated when this happens, but I would not support diminishing returns on CC. It takes a lot of skill for a group of people to be effective with this, and skilled gameplay should be rewarded.

Instead, I’m revisiting my build and utilities to see where I can get some extra wiggle room, and avoiding situations where I see it happen most often. My immediate response to locking people out of towers is that I start portalling reinforcements in through the back instead of having them charge the gate that is swarming with enemies.

Single target controls are not near as big of an issue since the CD’s are general long and outside of CC warriors single people cannot stack too much CC on 1 person. Speaking of stuns, pulls, and knockdowns mind you.

However AOE CC effects are another story. Not only are these controlling many people at a time, but the classes that have these abilities are typically very survivable. (Mesmer and Guardian). Furthermore these can be stacked with the lines of warding and ring of warding.

I’m making this thread just to ask a question. Currently you can chain together CC’s on multiple people via skills like binding blades and temporal curtain. With a small amount of coordination you can keep entire groups of players unable to act or play.

Do you think there should be diminishing returns on CC?

I acknowledge that specific skills such as line of warding might need to bypass this to maintain their usefulness and keep their roles.

So IF there was a desire to add diminishing returns here is my idea.:

1 stack of “determination” per second of CC applied to you. 5% reduced duration of CC’s applied per stack of determination. Stacks last 10 seconds. This only applies to hard CC, not cripples, immobilizes, or chills. Thus a 3 second stun gives you 15% reduced duration, a 1 second daze only gives you 5% reduced duration.

You’ll notice that you would have to eat around 5-6 seconds of CC for this to become meaningful. I want this to be a soft system that compliments what we have out, not an OMG CC is meaningless system.

Example:

You eat 3 CC in a row, 2 seconds, 1 second, 3 seconds. You have now been CC’d for approximately 6 seconds and have 6 stacks of defiance. The next CC will be 30% reduced. Combined with a bowl of roasted lotus root this CC duration would be reduced by 70%, but that requires a food choice sacrifice. A loaf of saffron bread would level that out at 50% with additionally reduced condition duration.

The goal here isn’t to invalidate CC, but to give people better counters and not absolutely require stability spam.

Looks like we are in the exact same position AR and BP was.

Thank you Wolfey. It had gotten buried and the search tool failed me. This thread can be removed.

Just getting a little discussion rolling because I didn’t see a thread dedicated to it. It’s quite the fight this time and I plan on fighting to the end even if Ehmry Bay is a little outmatched here. I didn’t play this game to kitten, I played it to FIGHT!!

Try to keep the complaining and ego’s to a minimum if ya would.

Current Point Spread:

randomfightfan.4091:

Ralathar.7236:

randomfightfan.4091:

Not to mention you could have just dropped a smart stealth trap. They’re not expensive and you had 4 people. If a thief trips one of those, it’s insta tears as it usually means they have to hide very far away for the next 30s, or die.

What class do thief have to drop 15 badges and some karma to defeat and how does that make good class balance if you have to buy outside help from your class to counter somenoe?

We use it against thieves. Imagine that, thieves actually fighting thieves. We don’t actually need to use the traps though, they just making beating a thief stupidly easy. Thing is, most of the time, we don’t complain about a class being op, instead we actually learn to play against said class. Some builds you usually won’t beat and others you will almost always beat. We might do a feeler attack and if the enemy is rocking a build that is very good against thieves, I will just not commit to fighting them. Try learning to play against thieves before complain that they’re op b/c you can’t play against thieves. Thieves are actively trying to learn to play against you. Every minute you spend qqing here is a minute where those thieves are siphoning even more tears to fuel their steal.

Pro tip. When playing against a thief, I like to let them open (and avoid the damage best I can) then counter. They stuff will be down and they’ll be very vulnerable. If they don’t go down, then they’ve probably ran away. In that case, my work is done, I have won, I move on. Sorry I don’t qq about every lost loot ba\

Edit. After writting this I realized I was also replying to a few of the massive qqers in this thread but intertwined my response with them into my response to you Ral. Sorry if I offended you when it seems like you were trying to ask a legit question.

It’s all good. I’ve played all classes to a good degree and I find it much harder to counter a decent thief than any other class. A well played mesmer is actually worse, but only in low number situations, a well played thief is definitely worse in high number situations.

Basically the best you can do vs a good thief is drive him away for a short time and keep him from killing people, but it’s very difficult, if even possible, for the vast majority of builds to kill a well played thief. Many times even working in tandem with allies it remains very difficult or impossible. Even with the right builds if the thief is running the right utilities and isn’t sheer glass you won’t kill him if he is good.

This is what brings so much hate down on the thief community. People hate being ganked from stealth and dislike stealth in general. But when a good player can actually evade death to incredible levels while heavily outnumbered it signifies a problem to me.

In another thread I created I mentioned thieves had a get out of jail free button. This is essentially what keeps the traditional CC from being the answer. Because they have the answer to all forms of CC as well as conditions in the form of a combination of shadow step and hide in shadows.

So long as this remains the case, the thief class will draw hate, and rightfully so.

randomfightfan.4091:

Not to mention you could have just dropped a smart stealth trap. They’re not expensive and you had 4 people. If a thief trips one of those, it’s insta tears as it usually means they have to hide very far away for the next 30s, or die.

What class do thief have to drop 15 badges and some karma to defeat and how does that make good class balance if you have to buy outside help from your class to counter somenoe?

Rastaman.9015:

Sorry to disappoint you, but thief was made specifically to not get caught. A thief is supposed to take out key targets to win the fight and to do that he can’t get caught. And to balance this if he does get caught his low defenses will show.

So if you are built to not get caught then you getting caught was your own misplaying. therefore you are saying thieves are not intended to get caught and ergo not intended to die?

Because honestly if you don’t get caught your low defenses will never show.

animalmom.1062:

I noticed this gem

“someone posted DAOC stealth mechanics in another thread but missed some of those points. I think DAOC had it done brilliantly. Never played the game but it sounds great. Thieves already have the highest mobility so stealth should be dealt this way and it wouldn’t completely destroy the class, some skills would need a rework of course.”

The whining about stealth in DAOC was epic. I mean EPIC. Much worse than in GW2.

People whine about stealth but not their own overpowered abilities in MMOs.

Truth.

And it’s because they don’t like it they complain.

Stealth attacks were unstoppable in DAOC vanilla.

Imagine a dude who can wait in stealth FOREVER then when he wants to kill you he does and you die and there is no counter at all and most times he gets off scot free.

GW2 had one button real perma stealth and then Ultra high burst combined with initially unpurgable stun CC.

Perforate Artery, Creeping Death, Stunning Stab = dead. The second was a FOUR SECOND stun.

This followed by a Dragonfang, which was an 8 second stun if they were still alive (this for infiltrators).

You have no idea about the whining level in DAOC vs GW2.

Please. Stop. With. That.

This in no way describes GW2 stealth.

I hated DAOC stealthers. I played them to learn what they are capable of. I still hated them. I thought they were OP at first (DAOC was my first MMORPG, I was a nub haha), I was wrong. Stealthers in DAOC were well balanced.

Quick Rundown:

Stealth:

DAOC Stealther: Perma Stealth: Used for limited scouting and high spike damage from stealth. Fastest stealth was normal run speed, stealth was broken by even 1 damage, stealth was broken if you attacked someone. You had to train in stealth or it was weak. People not fully invested in stealth could be seen more easily with more people and with closer distances. People fully invested could dance around you in permastealth until you managed to hit them once. You could not restealth while in combat outside of a long cooldown (5 minute) skill called vanish. When out of stealth you were a weaker version of melee DPS classes. Impossible to keep eyes on groups with speed as they left you in the dust easily. There were specific skills and traps to counter stealth and AOE, GTAOE, and cone attacks naturally countered stealth. Other stealthers could see you far more easily as well. Cannot easily disengage outside of killing a target or using the 5 minute cooldown of vanish

Guild Wars 2 Thief: Used for everything. Spam-able stealth that lets you enter and exit it at will. You can heal, use abilities, etc while in stealth. You can stay actively stealthed quite alot without any build investment. You can keep up with zergs and groups on the move and with stealth evade their attempts to remove your eyes on them. Revealed for 3 seconds after attacking is the only limitation. Nobody can see you while you are stealthed and the only ability/skill counters take extremely high investment in either WXP for a limited area of protection arrow cart or single use traps which would be extremely expensive if they were commonly used. Can disengage at will.

Advantage: Guild Wars 2 Thief. Almost no limitations, almost no counters, useful in any situation vs the permanent but highly limited and niche DAOC stealth with tons of counters.

Damage:

DAOC Stealther: High single target damage from stealth. Possible zerker builds focusing on weapon and poison damage, but niche use and not truly competitive in most combat. No appreciable AOE damage to speak of, little to no ranged damage to speak of.

Guild Wars 2 Thief: Can have high single target damage from stealth, high weapon damage, moderate to high ranged damage, and moderate AOE damage all in a single build.

Advantage: Guild Wars 2 Thief: Being able to have high initiation damage from stealth capable of killing squishy builds in a matter of seconds inside one rotation both are even. However Guild Wars 2 thief clearly has a large advantage in every other damage situation. They can reapply stealth for more bursts, they can do significant ranged damage, and they can apply moderate AOE damage. DAOC stealthers had little to no ranged damage and no AOE damage at all.

The Guild Wars 2 thief is a much much much stronger stealth class than the DAOC stealthers ever were. All DAOC stealthers could do is quickly take out the squishiest people. Guild Wars 2 thieves can do that, are far less limited on stealth, have less counters, do more damage by far in all other situations, and have a far higher mobility.

randomfightfan.4091:

Ralathar.7236:

It definitely is an amazing combo if it lands. Thankfully for balance reasons this is easily avoidable and he took so heavy of damage because he was built glass cannon. There are alot of things in this game that utterly destroy classes that do not dodge them, like 100b warrior. Thief is the only class that has a universal counter to every situation without the need for building for it thanks to shadow return and hide in shadows. Those two skills can literally counter anything in the game you can possibly throw at someone, except highs tack of confusion (which still has a good chance of being removed by shadow return.)

Is this a joke? Sure other classes might need to use a stun break from a utility (not sure if other classes have an ability like that) but what do they get that thieves don’t? Pure invulnerability modes on their weapon sets, significantly better cc in all areas, and significantly better offensive, defensive, and supportive utilities (thinking things like ele arcane abilities, omm, fgj, wall of reflection, etc.). Warrior, guard, ranger or engi could just block your entire combo if timed right, mesmer or ele could invulnerable through everything and not take a single condition. Necro could take everything and put 3 of those conditions (maybe more) on you as well as draining life force from all your turrets and you. Of course, this is all without the use of any utilities. Just because a thief countered you a certain way doesn’t mean you couldn’t have been countered any other way. You said it yourself, the combo is easy to avoid. Good on you for beating the thief. Sure, if that bad thief player was on most other classes, he’d be dead. A semi-competent player won’t be in that situation in the first place. They’d have reacted a lot sooner and not waited till 5% hp before they decided to escape.

That’s the problem. When you combine good play with that kind of escapability then you get somone who won’t get into 95% of bad situations and when they odd bad situation arrives they can LOL out of it. As well being high in mobility and possessing stealth than can not only choose when to disengage but when to engage.

All of these factors tilt the battle in your favor in the hands of a skilled player allowing them to fight. Currently this means a good player on a thief shouldn’t die outside of extremely high burst damage, the carriers of which are thieves prime prey.

It’s a problem enough when bad players can escape situations with easy to use and abuse skills. It’s a much bigger problem when an actual good player gets to use those tools on top of the great mobility and damage a thief is capable of.

This might not seem like much of an issue to you sPVP guys, and if it’s balanced there it shouldn’t be touched there. But it needs to be balanced in WvW because it certainly isn’t atm. There are many things a thief can do besides troll players that matters such as taking out siege from inside a keep, provide intel, limit or pevent reinforcements, cap camps, kill dolyaks, do prep work on towers and keep, etc. People not using the class to it’s capabilities and going “lawl I kill noobs” doesn’t mean the class isn’t capable of more that is potentially highly imbalanced.

Anything that builds glass cannon melts on the front lines of zerg fights. The trick for glass cannon melee is skirt the edges killing people or protect your backline until the initial bombs of death have been dropped. After the initial AOE’s are burnt you will survive alot better. You always want to be rolling around the outsides of the fight killing though, you don’t have to be way far out but being in the center of the zergball is only a place for heavies and bunkers unless you outmatch the opponent.

Also, melee in large zerg fights should NOT build glass cannon if they do not have the skills to survive. You build hybrid or tanky and slowly lower your defensive stats/ability as your skill improves. You find that over time you can train yourself to be way more survivable by learning how to play your build right for each situation.

Hyrbid and bunker thieves should have no issues surviving unless they are plain bad though.

randomfightfan.4091:

Azraeel.1238:

Seriously? To be able to do 10k+ BS you need to go full Glass Cannon, and to be able to regenerate while in stealth you need 30 points in Shadow Arts for Shadow’s Rejuvenation (Regenerate health while in stealth). You can’t get both. Now I won’t say learn to play, but at least learn what thieves are capable of and what they aren’t capable of before nagging.

Remember that you’re talking to an average MMO player on a forum. If they hate on something, they will lie, cheat, and steal to “prove” their point. Can thief hit 10k backstab? yes. Can thief regen 500 per second in stealth? yes. Can they do both at the same time? no. Does that matter to the haters? no. Their argument could be against a 30-30-30-30-30 thief and still there’d be a legion of haters come in to support the hate.

I’m not saying anything against the guy you’re responding to personally, just the thief-hate community in general.

This applies equally to thieves complaining about survivability and the NEED for stealth amongst other things. All sides do this nonsense.

RedCobra.7693:

i dont see why everone is having a problem xD shadows refuge is terrible, with my mesmer i just knock back my necro guildie enters refuge and uses fear to get them to run out of it, ranger uses the knockback on the longbow before it stealths him, warrior uses fear me, another thief stealths up and starts spamming backtab around the area (as thiefs only really do this when low health) elem can chance it with air atunement d/d, guardian can use pushback dome and the engineer can use bombs cant he??

Quit whining you make yourself look childish, YOU let him get away, i rarely let thieves get away with doing something as careless as refuging on low health, they have to stay in that small circle for 5 seconds just aoe it or spam auto atk if you dont know how to use your class

Shadow’s Refuge is a completely separate issue. If you pay attention I didn’t even bring it up in the OP. Shadow Refuge can be pretty BS sometimes, but it least it has some form of counter-play and if you are a class with an area knockback or pull that doesn’t need a target you can actually counter it. Granted that’s an extremely limited pool of skills from all classes, but it can be done by those specific types of skills.

AOE and randomly swinging melee weapons however is not a viable counter against a decent thief.

Wryscher.1432:

Ralathar.7236:

Wryscher.1432:

Ralathar.7236:

To sum up yes, I’m stalking him.

Thieves never really bothered me much. Sure they kill me, all the time actually,, but not really ever when I’m doing anything. Maybe strolling across a field, running down a road or just goofing around. I can’t remember the last time I was I any sort of important battle with more then 3 people and was like oh wow that stealth thief on their side is an unstoppable beast!

And really from my experience with stealth classes people have problems with them because they don’t think like them. They are just busy running down the middle of roads and assuming if you can no longer see it, it must not be there.

Thieves don’t appear to be a big force in large fight because most thieves suck and the good ones don’t really give you much to see. In battles more than 3 people the thief just blends in more and more with their incredible battle mobility unless doing extremely basic, and thus less effective, tactics.

Kind of proves my point right here. Thieves don’t appear to be in big fights. It is almost like if people can’t see them they choose to pretend they aren’t there. Tends to get them killed a bunch.

And really I wasn’t saying thieves aren’t in big battles. I normally run a staff ele when I’m not thieving the day away, standing at the back I am always looking for thieves. the ever popular heartseeker is one of the most obvious animations in the game, as is the thief shortbow shot, unload seems to be making a comeback, saw 2 today wtf?? What I was saying is that in those big fights the thief normally isn’t I huge threat, killing one person at a time and then hiding for awhile before killing another just isn’t that big a deal in large fights when there are classes downing 3-4 people at a time.

And before anyone wants to chime in with,we’ll that is just Zerg v Zerg it doesn’t matter, this is wvw after all, it is Zerg v Zerg.

Now what I will agree is way annoying is organized groups with a thief or 2 a Mesmer or 2 and an d/d ele. They make me want to kick a kitten.

When will people realize that more damage only helps so much? It’s all about where you place the damage you have. This is why there are threads in the ele forums complaining about AOE damage, because they don’t know how to properly leverage their damage in group fights.

AOE damage without people dying just ends up in rallies, single target contributors help make sure that people damage by area damage get downed and more importantly die. Because nothing is worse and more detrimental than downing 10 people and having them all rally, basically invalidating all damage down to them while downed.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Another thing to keep in mind is that the game is not balanced for 1v1 combat. This is largely a team game, and the primary 5v5 capture-the-point format (domination or whatever it’s called) is probably the environment in which balance considerations are made.

In this regard, it’s possible that there never will be a good way for you to counter that particular thieve’s mechanism of escape, but that is simply the reality that we will have to live with.

If they start balancing the game for every 1v1 scenario like the one described, I think it would likely end up imbalancing things in the standard sPvP format, in addition to WvW team/zerg fights. In fact, the situation you described would be considered a victory for your team in the standard sPvP format if you were fighting over a point.

So yeah, I hate to be a guy saying “just deal with it”, but that’s what I’ve come to accept for now.

I guess one thing you could’ve done in this situation in lay down a WvW anti-stealth trap in the middle of your turrets and have him trigger it when he comes in to attack you. XD

Situation wouldn’t really change in a group situation unless people happened to be really close to him after the teleport so they could finish him off. Even then they would only have a brief 1 second window.

Thieves are known to troll groups of people all the time, even in non-permastealth builds.

Rastaman.9015:

Reading the posts as follows it all comes down to how much knowledge the thief has. And imo thats the same for every class so to all the complainers, I humbly say just really l2p. Not only your own class but all others as well for the best results. Each profession can do amazing things just have to know how.

I play all classes and study all classes. The top 3 survivable classes in WvW are Thief, Mesmer, and Elementalist. Because in WvW without the point capture limitations of sPVP mobility plays a much larger role in survivability. Of those 3 classes in sPVP mesmer is top tier and elementalist/thief is at least mid tier. In any sort of PVP conflict those classes are plainly not lacking.

But in WvW specifically Thief and Mesmer are more survivable than all other classes due to the usefulness of stealth mechanics when used by a smart player who is not forced into a set area.

Also….

Side Note: Warriors have the most mobility if done right even a thief cant catch one.

This is only true out of combat in open field. In combat thief is much more mobile and far less vulnerable to CC. Not only does thief have better options for condition management but the bulk of thief maneuverability teleports, which is not affected by chilled, cripples, lack of swiftness, or immobilize.

Thief is far far more maneuverable more consistently when in combat. Warrior can cover a greater distance when unharrassed out of combat. Also, with initiative regen and the option for higher initiative recovery the cooldown on thief mobility moves is far lower.

Excalibur.9748:

It’s a valid strategy to bum rush into the opposing character and cause him to waste all his cooldowns and then shadow return out. In the case of an engineer, I’d wait until turrets expire and then burst you down.

Your fault for wasting all your cooldowns. And it’s your loss. Suck it!

Considering blowing all my cooldowns in that situation wasn’t enough I don’t think the end result would have been any better. Or do you have some mythical situation in which I could have outplayed the thief which wasn’t burst damage and didn’t involve the same result of running away?

Still, my build and cooldowns are all completely moot for the point at hand. The point had nothing to do with any of that and everything to do with what the thief could effectively escape with NO build investment and only 1 utility skill invested. Basically, the answer is the thief can escape anything without having to build for it.

Stardrift.7360:

Bacon Please.8407:

Engineers and thieves are two entirely different classes. It is like comparing candy to steak. Both can be tasty and have their appealing characteristics and neither are better then the other. I’ve seen an engineer face tank a well coordinated team of players and down two of the 5 before escaping. I Can’t say I’ve seen a thief operate that well other then a few assorted videos here on the forums and ever there it looked like the people that were being killed had no idea what they were doing.

This went waaaaay over his head. That`s why thieves are so bitter – even when someone such as yourself politely relay valuable info to players operating powerhouses they still remain ignorant and entitled. Ok so my 2 cents for the OP are:
1) a perma CC engie is unkillable by a thief unless he`s got mad skills and works the environment. Burning, immobilization, blind and more than 1 stun is ridiculous and i sincerely hope it gets nerfed, along with the ranger and his lol-downed state that enables him to heal right back up like a baus (not sure of the build, didn`t tinker too much on a ranger)
2) never EVER come to a profession`s forum with this amount of audacity – to literally prove how much better is your profession than other AND complain that the underdog had the nerve to not go down, despite the odds, making you waste your precious self entitled easy gratifying time is pure insulting.
3) a thief can`t beat you, congrats, but as sure as heck he won`t stick around for you to get easy badges

None of these points actually applies to my build at all. What I did was the absolute limit of my capabilities. Had the thief dodged the 1st super easily dodged stun it would have been a fight instead of me destroying the thief but being unable to finish it due to the get out of jail free card. Bad play is bad play though. That’s even considering that fighting me at close range was a terrible idea with all my turrets right there.

Kitten, played right that thief could have walked all over me. But even as a bad player they get an easy escape from the most terrible of situations.

Wonderer.1790:

Sorry but bunker thieves are useless. Where as Ele’s and Guardians get an ample supply of boons, thieves get none. A thief, which has already bad stats, no boons, medium armor, and requires a good amount of prec, crit damage, and power to do auto attack damage simply cannot compete. And if you mention evades, well every evade used is less time in your enemies face being a threat. Going bunker makes thieves into a more useless Warrior. It doesn’t effectively use stealth which is basically a class mechanic and lacks damage unlike other classes. Thief damage with a bunker build is horrid and here’s why. Thief damage comes from back-stabs coming OUT of stealth. Going bunker and using less stealth only reduces thief damage even more. Other classes simply will heal up faster than damage dealt while thieves are brought down almost as quickly.

Basically the survival builds for thief SHOULD rely on stealth because our traits and class make stealth out to be useful and more powerful. You’ve completely missed the point of the class.

Please inform me on how Bunker thieves are actually useful in any facet of this game in comparison to other bunker builds from other classes. I’d really like to know.

As for escaping fights, mesmer can reset fights just as easily and have more stunbreakers to do so. Its also much easier to 1vX and 1v1 on a mesmer if you’re capable. And as for scouting and dolyak control. Yes a pair of thieves are good at taking them, but they are just as easily protected by other classes from thieves, people just don’t like to follow dolyaks around. If this is the biggest complaint for thieves in wvw roaming I don’t see a problem.

I personally don’t think perma fury, vigor, and might with bursts of higher might, regen, and other boons while boon stripping, poisoning, dazing, blinding, applying movement crippling abilities, stealth spiking, and etc is all that useless.

Maybe if you are viewing bunker through the eyes of damage, perhaps yes. If you are looking at bunker through the eyes of being able to decoy/soak damage, provide support, area stealth via only weapon-skills, and deal a decent amount of damage while at it however, thieves do well.

Some people just don’t appreciate anything that isn’t damage damage damage.

randomfightfan.4091:

Ralathar.7236:

Others in that terrible 5% hp, conditioned, locked down situation.
Warrior: In a situation like that the warrior is dead, no question about it.
Guardian: The Guardian in that example is going to be dead without significant build investment.
Mesmer: Really dead lol. Self condition removal not a strong point of Mesmer.
Grenade Engie: All that would be left is a greasy spot.

Believe it or not I am pretty versed in most classes. However, ele is my main.

In the 5%hp situation yea most classes would be dead, no argument. My argument was that most classes would have ways to completely avoid a situation like that. All these classes have really good ways to just walk away before the brunt of the damage kicks in. Warrior would block or endure pain or ww out (movement skills break immobilize would save his ass). Guardian would be a guardian, invuln/block/stability/condition clear out, hit /laugh, then would wait till you detonated the turrets or wait till they weren’t overcharged, then come in and win. And with mesmer and grenade engi, I hope they’d have been smart enough to not walk themselves into a situation like that.

Now 1 thing you’re very much so underestimating about the ele. After it flashes away, it’d swap to water (healing and clearing a condition), press 5 (healing and curing a condition), dodge roll (healing and curing a condition), then maybe use an escape if need be and heal if it still needs to. I’m just very happy they can’t mist form and heal anymore. That was disgusting.

Well the problem isn’t that the thief beat my build. Countless classes can do that. The problem is that the thief beat a situation that should be death, with two abilities that require very little skill to use. Guardian and elementalist would still have quite a fight to kill me, win or lose. Regardless of balance concerns I can respect them fighting themselves out of a corner, that demonstrates skilled play. Hitting 1 button before combat and 2 to run away however does not.

The reason I say elementalist would die is that lightning flash is 900 range, is well within range of the turrets and likely in my range, and the cleansing is over a short period of time not a burst cleansing. The continuing damage while they attempted to recover would almost certainly kill them. In that particular situation they are almost FORCED to use their main heal as the water 5 then heal would take vital time they do not have as they continued to be pelted by rockets and bleeding turret shots + whatever conditions on them and what I’m doing.

The fact that I am an engineer isn’t really important in the question asked. The question asked was how to counter their ability to shadow return > Hide in Shadows, because without a counter it can be used to save them from the most terrible of situations regardless of how they are built.

The specific situation listed is just an example situation that happened to me, and is one of the worst case scenarios you can be in as a class.[/quote]

How to counter them? Teleport/shadowstep/blink/riflejump to where they shadow returned and directly throw in massive AOE. Oh right, you might not have any of these skills, but who cares, we need a counter regardless what class and build you are, right? -_-. Have you even been listening to what people were saying for the past tons of posts in your whining threads? To Counter thieves you need a build that has burst damage, little CC, and mobile. If they decide to run away, even if you were fighting a Necro, without having mobility, you won’t catch them.[/quote]

If you think blinking after a thief to attempt to AOE them is a counter then you have zero understanding of a thief. If you think the counter to thief is to present them with the squishiest target possible and make it a battle of who spikes who first you also have zero understanding of thief.

bobross.5034:

Ralathar.7236:

I wanna emphasize something in the post I forgot to say. In this post he mentions the average thief has 12k hp, which is only around 100 vitality above the base hp. Essentially full glass cannon unless the thief is running alot of toughness.

Any of the other classes mentioned as examples of people who could counter what I did would have been horribly slaughtered by that situation if they were glass cannon. The possible exception is a heal/toughness bunker guardian who is also running contemplation of purity. Even then it would be a to the wire race between them dying to incoming damage and them getting the heal off because they would still be right within range of more incoming damage no matter what class they were facing.

The key here is that to survive a situation such as that you have to stun break, remove your conditions, and heal within a very short period of time. Both Shadow Return and Contemplation of purity accomplish the stun break and condition removal instantly, advantage being that shadow return teleports you out of incoming damage while contemplation leaves you in it with an aegis and regen as your hope/prayer to survive long enough to pop your heal.

Ok Ralather, we get it, your combo was so amazing that no class could beat it, and since a class managed to survive it, it must be overpowered. You win, ok? We all concede that thieves are overpowered because you didn’t win one time. But now you’ve got this victory to lord over us thieves…and while I use my social evasion skills to run away from this thread and never return. Please feel free to gloat in your victory, or just marvel at the irony of it.

It definitely is an amazing combo if it lands. Thankfully for balance reasons this is easily avoidable and he took so heavy of damage because he was built glass cannon. There are alot of things in this game that utterly destroy classes that do not dodge them, like 100b warrior. Thief is the only class that has a universal counter to every situation without the need for building for it thanks to shadow return and hide in shadows. Those two skills can literally counter anything in the game you can possibly throw at someone, except highs tack of confusion (which still has a good chance of being removed by shadow return.)

bhagwad.4281:

The point the OP is making is that the thief can afford to go full glass cannon and still escape from the worst possible situation. No punishment. And that’s the problem.

Bottom line: A thief only dies if their ego doesn’t permit them to run away.

This is precisely it. A thief built full glass cannon is squishy, but used well is actually more survivable than any other glass cannon. 95% of GC thief deaths are from greedy players or players who won’t put the 1 escape they need on the bar because it might lower their damage 5%.

Psikerlord.2569:

tread way tl;dr

But I just laughed when i read the OP. You utterly crushed that thief – like you say he couldnt do anything the whole time, you had him stunlocked, and then right at the end, as he was about to die, he escaped.

GW2 SPvP is capture the point. You kept the point. You won. Eventually maybe that thief comes back and catches you. So you;ve now kept the point for what, 40secs? Guess what you win again.

Try using that logic in the other game mode that actually has more people, WvW.

Wryscher.1432:

Ralathar.7236:

To sum up yes, I’m stalking him.

Thieves never really bothered me much. Sure they kill me, all the time actually,, but not really ever when I’m doing anything. Maybe strolling across a field, running down a road or just goofing around. I can’t remember the last time I was I any sort of important battle with more then 3 people and was like oh wow that stealth thief on their side is an unstoppable beast!

And really from my experience with stealth classes people have problems with them because they don’t think like them. They are just busy running down the middle of roads and assuming if you can no longer see it, it must not be there.

1st of all there is a forum tool under a posters name that lets you peruse their prior posts. Upon getting an inkling something was up I confirmed the continuity I remembered via this tool. If you dig far enough back you’ll even find a thread where I suggest thieves get the traps line buffed as they are not competitive.

Keeping people from getting to the big fights is a big advantage. Being able to be highly mobile and down people in a fight with smart target selection allows you to place your force in a very effective manner if you play right.

Thieves don’t appear to be a big force in large fight because most thieves suck and the good ones don’t really give you much to see. In battles more than 3 people the thief just blends in more and more with their incredible battle mobility unless doing extremely basic, and thus less effective, tactics.

BobbyT.7192:

Holy kitten man, got something to prove? The guy is stating is stating own opinion, why such kitten all over that? Yeah you stating your own opinion, but get over your self and stop with this venomous attitude.

I’ve lurked more than I’ve posted and I’ve seen him meander in and out of threads. He is mis-representing his position and has posted conflictory statements. But the title and theme of this thread is intended to give him credence and credibility he no longer has.

It’s really quite simple, he’s protecting his new pet class the way he protected his old. Though in honesty warrior actually needs the support, thief does not. His exact reason for rolling thieves, by his own words, is that thieves and mesmers outclass everything else in WvW and sPVP.

Quite frankly he was right in his assertion. He is also right in his new assertion that it takes skill to reach those levels of power. Skill he self-admittedly does not have playing a thief or countering them. Currently he is at the level of “decent” and he can counter “decent”

Rather than seek to correct some of the few things that imbalance those two classes so the other 6 can be competitive however, he “joined the bandwagon” and is no campaigning to keep them from being nerfed for his own benefit.

I don’t have any problem against him personally, but that whole line of thought and situation quite frankly stinks. When you “join the bandwagon” on the OP classes you just become part of the problem.

Perhaps the saddest thing about it is that a few select things are keeping thieves from having more viable lines and keeping some of the mesmer lines from being smoothed out as easily. But then, some of this may happen with the “major trait overhaul patch” happening at the end of this month. We shall see. I know I for one will laugh if thief or mesmer get nerfed in specific ways.

It’s even buried in the mountain of words here lol.

Bacon Please.8407:

5: Playing a thief really changes your outlook on how they operate. When everyone says Play one to Learn one, They really mean it. When I got to 80 on my thief and spent a hundred or so hours in WvW with it, I was able to get back to my warrior and I could SEE WITH MY OWN EYES exactly what the thief was going to do before they could.

You too can counter thieves and all you need to do is spend 100 hours playing thief first!!!

It was so predictable “Okay he is using D/D and just used Cloak and dagger, probably going for a backstab in 3,2,1… EVADE” What do you know, He missed and i stun locked him with a hammer.

Oh wait, no, you can counter the BAD thieves who are predictable. Because good thieves are not predictable folks. Predictability is the sign of someone relying on a gimmick, gimmick users are not good players. Example 100b warrior vs a good warrior who happens to use the great sword.

I honestly feel silly for ever complaining about thieves. They are an annoyance at best for experiences players and really only kill people learning to get around WvW. So if you keep getting killed by thieves play one at level 80 for a few hours in WvW and see how hard it really is.

Ironically he can only counter predictable thieves after playing thief for over 100 hours, but calls anyone that cannot counter them “people learning to get around in WvW.”

So after months of complaining I rolled a thief and now after getting decent at it I can say the following…

Oh and he says all of this after spending over 100 hours playing thief and only considering himself “getting decent at it”. So is basing his judgements of how easy it is to counter thief off of him self-admittedly not even being good at it himself after over 100 hours of play on it.

Let this be a lesson to people, be careful what you say. There are people out there that know for example that you no longer main warrior and have not mained warrior for over a month….this based on your own words.

Oh and the best for last:

Bacon Please.8407:

Ralathar.7236:

Perfect example of how jacked facing a thief is right now. I’m fighting a thief as a turret engie (Ya I know, but it’s fun :P). Hit him a few times and place my turrets as he enters for the kill. Pop my turret abilities and he gets perma-blinded, has like 10 seconds of burning, has 6+ stacks of bleed, Rocket Turret lands the first knockdown, I time the supply crate for the second stun, rocket turret knocks down a third time. All knockdowns in a row without him being able to act after eating the first one.

At this point the thief still has all the burning, bleeding, and now poison on him, is at 5% hp, and is stunned on his back while immobilized. Shadow Return, Hide in Shadows, runs away at half health with no conditions on him already out of combat.
.
.
.
So lets add this up, shadow return removes 3 conditions, teleports you back to where you started from up to 1,200 away, and breaks stun instantly. Hide in Shadows removes all damaging conditions, so any conditions that hurt would be gone and the thief is far away stealthed and running away.

I really don’t know what more I could have done. I condition stacked, immobilized, stunned, and generally wrecked his face but he gets a get out of jail free card. I mean ya I wrecked his face because he was blatantly terrible (rocket turret knockdown is MASSIVELY telegraphed), but he still doesn’t even have to die for being terrible.

He used his skills wisely just as you did. Congrats, he ran away. you won.

Because making a thief run away in open field is winning apparently. But them winning is me dying. Seems legit.

Some nice quotes that bring into question the objectivity and honesty of the OP.

Bacon Please.8407:

bladie.5084:

WereDragon.6083:

i’m a P/D thief and I can’t kill D/P thieves.

Nobody can kill a D/P thief.

I am D/P and I have been killed. Therefore your statement is flawed

D/P thief, the weapon combo most in danger of drawing nerfs with extremely high amounts of stealth and the ability to actually heartseeker through black powder and gain stealth even if they hit someone.

Bacon Please.8407:

Engineers and thieves are two entirely different classes. It is like comparing candy to steak. Both can be tasty and have their appealing characteristics and neither are better then the other. I’ve seen an engineer face tank a well coordinated team of players and down two of the 5 before escaping. I Can’t say I’ve seen a thief operate that well other then a few assorted videos here on the forums and ever there it looked like the people that were being killed had no idea what they were doing.

Says that he has seen engineers "face tank a team of well coordinated players and down two of the 5 before escaping. Because an bunker engineer is going to down 2 players out of a well coordinated team of 5…..

Bacon Please.8407:

I Can’t say I’ve seen a thief operate that well other then a few assorted videos here on the forums and ever there it looked like the people that were being killed had no idea what they were doing.

Because you totally look like you know what you are doing when spamming AOE on possible locations of a player you have no way to see or know is there or even still present.

Bacon Please.8407:

The best way to beat a thief is to play a thief. This is coming from a warrior main and let me tell you, it really works.

The irony of this post….

Bacon Please.8407:

I used to main warrior up until a few weeks ago. Hundreds of hour, hundreds of gold spent on multiple sets of gear, runes, weapons, sigils. Just rolled a thief and a mesmer. They both outclass my warrior on everything. Will proabably never touch my warrior again until they either revamp it. Thief and Mesmer is where it is at for pvp and wvw.

join the bandwagon

When he said this one earlier. He now mains a D/P thief as you can see from two of these quotes and is eager to defend his new mains after being unable to match them as warrior and considering no other class on par with them except a well played mesmer.

Atherakhia.4086:

Ralathar.7236:

People that say thieves are useless in the current meta of WvW out themselves as terrible WvW players. Thieves are likely the single most influential class in WvW because thieves and thieves alone can shut down supply in a map with little to no risk.

Maybe 12 thieves is enough to completely control supply in an entire map. You pair up into teams of 2-3 and each take a camp. A good thief can easily solo a camp but 2 makes it a lot faster with more room for error and better chances for escape if things go south.

You then go out of the camp and keep an eye on it from a good position, kill groups attempting to retake comprised of up to 4-6 members. Maybe even upgrade camps. If more than you can handle you let them take and kill any yaks leaving and retake.

Without supply the enemy cannot attack effectively. Without supply all towers and keeps will fall eventually. 100 supply pillaged occasionally from camps is not enough and quick thinking thieves can zero supply right before enemies arrive with an upgrade, then LOL away.

No other class can pull this off near as well as thief. Not even close. But this style of player is generally boring so most people just end up killing randoms is high reward little risk situations all day long.

That’s not true at all. Rangers and Mesmers have absolutely no trouble taking camps single handedly. They also aren’t useless in any aspect of WvW or sPvP as they make excellent roamers and zergers.

Scouting also isn’t something the thief class excells in alone as Rangers are just as quick running around the map thanks to the insanely short cooldown on swoop. They also escape exceptionally well when attacked. And they have a real bunker spec.

Thieves have better in combat mobility, are better able to handle CC, have stealth, have better single target spike damage, and are more escapeable. The ranger is also highly vulnerable to being zerged down while the thief is not.

Ranger is a good and capable class, but when it comes to roaming and supply control thief is safer and more effective. Having a pair just maximizes their ability to kill dolyaks and camps quickly, minimizing the chance of them being ambushed during the only time they are the least bit vulnerable.

There is no need to be super bunker if you don’t take damage and don’t get caught. Likewise needing to run to survive is also interfering with your job and a non-thief will get chased quite a long way by your average players even if you escape. A thief can set up an quick and easy stealth “give em the slip” moment.

Though honestly thieves DO have bunker builds. They just don’t use them because stealth is so good atm in WvW they literally have no need for them.

Ruggan.4102:

Ralathar.7236:

Perfect example of how jacked facing a thief is right now. I’m fighting a thief as a turret engie (Ya I know, but it’s fun :P). Hit him a few times and place my turrets as he enters for the kill. Pop my turret abilities and he gets perma-blinded, has like 10 seconds of burning, has 6+ stacks of bleed, Rocket Turret lands the first knockdown, I time the supply crate for the second stun, rocket turret knocks down a third time. All knockdowns in a row without him being able to act after eating the first one.

At this point the thief still has all the burning, bleeding, and now poison on him, is at 5% hp, and is stunned on his back while immobilized. Shadow Return, Hide in Shadows, runs away at half health with no conditions on him already out of combat.
.
.
.
So lets add this up, shadow return removes 3 conditions, teleports you back to where you started from up to 1,200 away, and breaks stun instantly. Hide in Shadows removes all damaging conditions, so any conditions that hurt would be gone and the thief is far away stealthed and running away.

I really don’t know what more I could have done. I condition stacked, immobilized, stunned, and generally wrecked his face but he gets a get out of jail free card. I mean ya I wrecked his face because he was blatantly terrible (rocket turret knockdown is MASSIVELY telegraphed), but he still doesn’t even have to die for being terrible.

So, the thief was down to 5% health in your scenario. Given an average of about 12k full health for a thief… He was down to 600 health before shadow-stepping away and going stealth. So, lets see… you didn’t think to do anything to counter his shadow step or apply damage while he was starting it? You didn’t switch to a ranged weapon set and blast him… assuming you are 80 and using exotic weapons… for a lot more than the 600 health he had remaining? No, instead, again according to your scenario, you stood by a stationary assault and let mobility rule you. The same outcome would have happened against a Mesmer, elementalist, ranger, guardian, warrior, necromancer, or other engineer who used your tactics against you… they would use their mobility and you would stand there looking dumbfounded. But yea, its all because the thief is impossible to fight… I don’t think so.

I wanna emphasize something in the post I forgot to say. In this post he mentions the average thief has 12k hp, which is only around 100 vitality above the base hp. Essentially full glass cannon unless the thief is running alot of toughness.

Any of the other classes mentioned as examples of people who could counter what I did would have been horribly slaughtered by that situation if they were glass cannon. The possible exception is a heal/toughness bunker guardian who is also running contemplation of purity. Even then it would be a to the wire race between them dying to incoming damage and them getting the heal off because they would still be right within range of more incoming damage no matter what class they were facing.

The key here is that to survive a situation such as that you have to stun break, remove your conditions, and heal within a very short period of time. Both Shadow Return and Contemplation of purity accomplish the stun break and condition removal instantly, advantage being that shadow return teleports you out of incoming damage while contemplation leaves you in it with an aegis and regen as your hope/prayer to survive long enough to pop your heal.

Azraeel.1238:

Actually, an engineer coming to a thief sub-forum to ask for an advice on how to counter thieves is a bit wrong. I mean I know I can’t help him because I have barely any idea what engineers got, and what builds to go with. Everyone directly knew that turrets are not mobile, thieves are mobile, so don’t use those. However, that is just stating the obvious. The only thing I can say go burst damage with lots of cripple and immobilize. The moment the thief strikes, you have 4 seconds to either get him to blow off his cooldowns or down him. If you fail to do so, then you can’t beat him/her. You are just not built for this precise fight.

The fact that I am an engineer isn’t really important in the question asked. The question asked was how to counter their ability to shadow return > Hide in Shadows, because without a counter it can be used to save them from the most terrible of situations regardless of how they are built.

The specific situation listed is just an example situation that happened to me, and is one of the worst case scenarios you can be in as a class.

People that say thieves are useless in the current meta of WvW out themselves as terrible WvW players. Thieves are likely the single most influential class in WvW because thieves and thieves alone can shut down supply in a map with little to no risk.

Maybe 12 thieves is enough to completely control supply in an entire map. You pair up into teams of 2-3 and each take a camp. A good thief can easily solo a camp but 2 makes it a lot faster with more room for error and better chances for escape if things go south.

You then go out of the camp and keep an eye on it from a good position, kill groups attempting to retake comprised of up to 4-6 members. Maybe even upgrade camps. If more than you can handle you let them take and kill any yaks leaving and retake.

Without supply the enemy cannot attack effectively. Without supply all towers and keeps will fall eventually. 100 supply pillaged occasionally from camps is not enough and quick thinking thieves can zero supply right before enemies arrive with an upgrade, then LOL away.

No other class can pull this off near as well as thief. Not even close. But this style of player is generally boring so most people just end up killing randoms is high reward little risk situations all day long.

bobross.5034:

I was playing as d/p this morning with two guild mates, and we were trying to do some simple stuff like run supply. This other d/p thief kept following us like glue and attacking as we ran, looking for an opening. I brought him down to 25% or so several times, but we couldn’t get a hold of him. By the end, we got to our destination, but each of us had been downed at least once (though not killed). At hills, a bunch of people joined in the chase and we found the thief and got him.

See this indicates to me a problem. 1 person was able to survive indefinitely vs 3 and was even able to down each of them, but were unable to seal the deal because of quick duo rez. In the end it took “a bunch of people joining” to kill him.

I would also bet willing to be he only died because he misplayed badly. He had the mobility and stealth to easily give you all the slip and there are tons of mobs and critters everywhere but the south gate approach or right at the north gate. Either way that far in he would have been horribly overextended.

This whole experience was fun…much more fun than just running supplies, being paranoid about a thief behind us made for interesting gameplay. And I’m sure it was fun for the thief too. I was occasionally frustrated, but I’m glad I got to go up against a well-played and determined thief.

It was fun the first time, the second time, the third time. It’s happened so many times now however that is is just annoying and frustrating knowing that there is nothing you can do about it. This is a frequent occurrence and while you think you “win” by living, your allies are not so lucky as they die to Mr. Can’t be Killed.

I also recently helped defend garrison, as the other server was trebbing the inner walls from afar, while the entire zerg rushed in. They left 3-4 people behind manning the trebs. I went in with some fellow thieves to take them out. The other thieves died, but I stuck around and kept dropping thieves guild and cluster bombs on the trebs, then stealthing and running away. Meanwhile, a guardian and necro kept ccing me. They even downed me in a shadow refuge, and I managed to port and heal to full just as the guardian was running toward me. I didnt single handedly take out the two trebs and their 4 defenders, but I did bring one down to 10%, while my server zerg whiped up their zerg and then came and took out the trebs. I like to think that my harrassing slowed down the treb shots a bit, and I certainly had fun.

So 3-4 people had issues killing you and you nearly solo’d a treb (which would take forever with just 1 person doing hit and run). This is balanced? Not only that but they down you in Shadow Refuge, good job on their part, bad job on yours. You teleport away and heal up with them having no ability to know where you are at all.

I’ve dealt with this before. You have to cover a MASSIVE areas with AOE constantly to make sure the thief takes at least 1 damage tick every so often till the 10 second stealth fades, otherwise they rez. It’s possibly but very much not practical and impossible to know if you hit anything outside of melee chanis.

I also think that in some way, the guardian and necro who were ccing me had a lot more fun than they would have without me there. then they would have just been sitting there watching someone else fire a treb.

Yeah, I’m sure they were ecstatic that they could stop a lone thief from nearly killing one of their trebs for 10 minutes straight and even when miraculously downing him the thief rezs up and survives. Plainly that would make them happy.

so my point is that thieves in wvw create interesting and fun counterplay, even if you can’t reliably kill them…they are balanced enough so that they punish stupidity or arrogance, without really being able to single handedly turn the tide of a battle.

They create tons of frustration for players, not fun. That is imminently apparent both from the forums and in game. The only thing close to as annoying/frustrating as thief is a good mesmer (which is rare) or tower hugging ele’s you can’t kill because they can just LOLmistform in.

I also think that we (or at least I) die plenty, same as other classes…though it may just be because I’m a noob.

If you are a good player with 2 friends and couldn’t stop a thief that says something is wrong. If you are a noob and can nearly solo a treb with 4 guarding players that chain CC you, but you never die…that says something is wrong as well.

Azraeel.1238:

@Ralathar.7236: now you are just nagging about open fair fights. Even if you find a counter for shadowstep, they can use any other breakstun, dodge, stealth, and make a run for it. This is what thief is all about, take that away, and you have a squishy warrior.

Not true at all. While technically a warrior has more damage it is also far more avoidable and warriors have less ways to deal with CC. A glass cannon thief is much more survivable in a realistic sense than a glass cannon warrior when played well. GC warrior can be shut down by several methods. GC thief is shut down only by big spike damage, which leaves the other person very vulnerable as thieves are made to choose when they fight and to be the ones to get the first hits.

It’s just as the following quote says:

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

As a Wellmancer, I 2v1 Thieves quite easily.

But that’s in PvP, when they are forced to stand next to me on a point inside my Wells of doom.

In WvW, all I can say is Nope. You’re not going to do a kitten ed thing against them. WvW is their world, and you cannot kill a good one unless he decides to die. You simply cannot.

That is how it is when facing a good one. This is based off of 1,500+ hours of WvW and even the devs advise you to “move along, you’re not going to kill him”. But I don’t think that any class should be “unkillable” even when played well. Every other class including mesmer can be killed with proper counterplay.

Arganthium.5638:

Ralathar.7236:

Arganthium.5638:

Is this in WvW or PvP? Because my answer to your question will vary greatly based on where this occurred.

Either way, I probably will have some degree of good news for you.

WvW unfortunately. In sPVP scaring him off would indeed be the win that some here claim it was. Same story if I was capturing something and this enabled the cap in WvW. However in other situations of WvW this is most assuredly not a win as such a thief will most likely shortly be killing one of my allies not lucky enough to be able to pull off such a feat.

Yeah, it’s way better in PvP to have an enemy run off like that than in WvW. however, that doesn’t entirely mean it’s unable to be countered.

The best thing to do would be to try and grab a daze or stun on the guy early on and have him burn his teleports and stun breakers. Immobilize, cripple, and chill, for example, are all extremely painful for thieves because we really need that mobility. Typically, for cripple and chill, we don’t use any particularly long-cooldown skills (i.e . Roll For Init or Shadowstep), as those are easily applied conditions. However, immobilize is different in that it can be insanely powerful when used correctly, forcing thieves to get out of a position fast. A lot of the time, that means Shadowstepping away. Also, general CC does all of these things as well.

Here’s an example of a turret build (that I just BS’d :P) that does these things, for example:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fcAQFAUlIqyVntSZF17IxoCMO0jED6FD6xezrfB-TkAg0CnIQShkDJDSSksINuA
(and yeah, it’s PvP, but w/e)

The Rifle provides both immobilizes and knockdown. Net Turret provides more immobilize, as well as 3s immobilize from your belt, and a possible stun too. Thumper turret provides cripple and knockdown. Rocket turret gives you burst (will get to that in a second) and knockdown. Supply Crate gives you a possible stun, but is really good in general for 1v1’ing. Knee Shot gives you cripple with your (many) immobilizes. Hair Trigger gives you more immobilizes and CC more often, and Rifle Mod is just generally good for helping your burst and overall DPS. Inventions… Well, I’m sure you can figure out that. the ability to target-deploy turrets is also nice because it gives you a bit more control over them and where they go, which is very good against thieves. Zerker/ogre runes for burst and DPS, Ice Sigil because chill is extremely good against thieves as well.

Now, the idea behind heavy DPS and burst is one of two things. With high DPS, a thief has to choose between two things when engaging in battle with you: fight or flight. Fleeing will obviously still be an option against you, then, but it’s certainly better than being committed to a fight and having the thief escape when you’re about to win. However, if the thief commits to the fight, then they’ll have to burn up a lot of resources in order to get at you while avoiding being mauled by your DPS. That means more initiative usage, which means less mobility later on, and it also means a higher likelihood of that thief using up their CDs on stuff like heals and Shadowstep in order to get out of your bursting whenever you CC/cripple/chill the thief.

By the time they start getting low, you can just start pulling out the reserves of what resources you have left to destroy the thief. At this point, you’re going to want to burst them so hard that, with their lack of initiative and all of their CD’s, it’s going to be difficult for them to back out of fighting (and even mores when you have so much cripple, chill, and immobilize on them), in which case you’re probably going to down the thief.

Just be careful for Withdraw, it heals all of those condis at once. Still, immobilize and chill in this build last too short to be worth healing off, but last long enough to give some benefits to using them.

Hope that helps.

While this is all valid and stuff, in my experience a thief just bails if he gets into trouble. If they have to burn shadow step>return they normally don’t return for you until around 50 seconds later or if they are a vengeful kitten they just hover near you and wait for a good opportunity to leech offa the situation.

I’ve had some shadow me for over 5 minutes before after being driven off just to get that kill on me whenever I have to fight something else. Likewise I’ve had some of them try again, and again, and again, and again just to run away every time before eventually things turn out their way.

This sort of behavior is exactly why this kind of escape needs a counter. Because otherwise the thief can just roll the dice till it favors him since the result of it not is just a draw. This is particularly bad with the perma-stealth builds, which also do not have any good counters, especially since a heartseeker can actually hit you and STILL stealth them.

Arganthium.5638:

Is this in WvW or PvP? Because my answer to your question will vary greatly based on where this occurred.

Either way, I probably will have some degree of good news for you.

WvW unfortunately. In sPVP scaring him off would indeed be the win that some here claim it was. Same story if I was capturing something and this enabled the cap in WvW. However in other situations of WvW this is most assuredly not a win as such a thief will most likely shortly be killing one of my allies not lucky enough to be able to pull off such a feat.

bobross.5034:

What the OP described is a thief who had a skill that helped him to handle a specialized build, not by handily defeating it, but by running away. The OP also listed all of the classes that he easily pwns with his build, and seemed to concede that necros have a right to win or challenge him, but thieves don’t. The problem here as I see it is that the OP used a very specialized tactic, that is in itself overpowered, except for the fact that it has a limited range (which balances it). The thief, seeing that he would not be victorious against this approach, decided to use a general utility skill to get away.

Did you even read, 1 on 1 vs good players turret is not competitive. The only thing I did say was ways that other classes could attempt to escape in so dire of a situation and their lack of success. The fact that I am a turret engineer is in fact moot for that.

Shadow Return is not a specialized skill, it is a skill useful for movement, attack, and defense. It is a stun break. It is condition removal. An example of a specialized skill is Scorpion Wire or Elixir C. It’s also not useful vs only my select situation, it’s useful for any bad situation, catching/initiating, mobility, and condition removal.

Of course, getting a guardian down to 5% health is a very different story…a guardian at 5% health has likely used all his heals and utilities and is practically ready to die, unless an important skill comes off of cooldown. A good thief at 5%-10% health, on the other hand, is experiencing a somewhat common situation where an escape is urgently required, but that assuming it is effective, the thief will survive.

This tends to happen during chained CCs, when skills like shadow-step are particularly useful…is it fair that thieves can do this? Well it’s just as fair as guardians being able to tank through it, while still having a dps. It still leaves thieves with an important defensive option sitting useless on a long cool-down, and therefore being forced to decide whether to re-engage without an escape from CC, or to let both sides reset.

.

I take it you’ve never played a glass cannon guardian or a properly built bunker thief. No I don’t mean perma-stealth thief. That is different.

The reason thieves are so squishy is because people build them squishy. One of my thieves is actually a mix of clerics and shamans. Not only am I fairly evasive and have a good amount of survivability, but I have hide in shadows (best heal in the game IMO) and I heal 110 hp per initiative used (Assasin’s Reward). Oh and I can dodge forever with feline grace and perma vigor. Oh, and bountiful theft means I usually grab all sorts of useful boons.

I run shadow refuge and blinding powder with this build as well, both for survivability and giving my allies regen in addition to the fury, might, swiftness, vigor, and stolen boons I am providing them.

So yeah, thieves are not all that squishy. People just play em squishy.

Wonderer.1790:

You can’t counter it. Its the nature of the class.

This is why when the class ultimately baits more nerfs I will laugh, while you explain that to the devs. Because you think having an uncounterable escape is ok.