Jump to content
  • Sign Up

Thieves - How do you beat them? Just how?


Vashuddha.1538

Recommended Posts

I consider myself to be a decent player. I mainly play Guardian and Warrior, and find myself to do quite well against any class, except for thieves. Recently in WvW, and quite often, it's not uncommon to see a group of 3-4 players fighting of ONE Thief, and engagements such as these can last up for at least 20 minuets, if not more, and it usually ends up with players becoming lenient and fed up doing their best to avoid any further confrontation with them. My intention is not commence a heated discussion on whether thieves needs some mechanical adjustments or not, who sucks and who doesn't, but based on my own experience I can't help to think that something needs to change, or perhaps is there a way to counter the thief's ridiculous capabilities?

The thief can instantly, and for an unknown extended period of time render themselves completely invisible, and they seem to be able to do this in intervals that is beyond my comprehension. I am aware that there is a certain time limit for stealthing, but being able to calculate when and where they are going to attack is just incomprehensible. The constant stealth, and instant teleports to an enemy location combined with insane burst damage forces you to pop CDs almost instantly, and they seem to be capable of doing so for what seems to be forever.. It's practically impossible to even calculate where their next position might be, and whenever they decide to attack you're left with a nanosecond to respond and it makes it virtually impossible to counter it. You might get lucky and get a few hits here and there, and perhaps even reach their given location, but it doesn't take long before they stealth again and BOOM - game over. As a warrior the only ability you have to break stealth (if you're not running Spellbreaker build) is "On My Mark", but the advantages are insignificant, and the only real possible solution is to spam a bunch of skills in hopes that you might be able to hit them unknowingly while they're stealthed. This even leaves you in a deeper state of hopelessness due to most of your skills being on CD before the fight has even lasted 10 seconds. Their constant evades and their insane mobility just makes it damn near impossible to keep up with them, and the only way for you to defeat them is if they mess up, or so it seems. Anyone who would argue that thieves are underpowered or broken has never met a thief that knows his or her way around, and it is perfectly understandable that people who play them would try to discredit this, but this is just my experience.

Is it possible that anyone who manages to reach a certain skill level as a thief is capable of reaching a peak of insane "god mode", and that the possible broken mechanics become more apparent? I would assume that if a class is capable of kiting and easily pick apart a group of players in such fashion is a clear indication that the thieves are in a unfair advantage (?) The level of frustration while going up against a thief seems unnecessary and completely ruins the fun in WvW. It just seems to take an insane amount of brain power to handle them. I do wish to stress the fact that this is based on MY personal experience and if you don't agree then that's fine, but I'm certain that I'm not the only one who feels this way. Would love to hear some feedback, and if you're a thief, feel free to share some of your secrets ;)

All the best.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This post looks like an excuse to use all of the usual nerf thief soundbites and you're overselling it. If it's backstab, you know what their position will be and you can auto someone while they're in stealth. If it's Death's Judgement you can counter them before they hit you. Your imaginary thief wasn't doing all of those things in one build constantly, if they could, more people would be playing them in blobs. My suggestion is, do what your imaginary thief was doing by staying calm and working on your build.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@kash.9213 said:This post looks like an excuse to use all of the usual nerf thief soundbites and you're overselling it. If it's backstab, you know what their position will be and you can auto someone while they're in stealth. If it's Death's Judgement you can counter them before they hit you. Your imaginary thief wasn't doing all of those things in one build constantly, if they could, more people would be playing them in blobs. My suggestion is, do what your imaginary thief was doing by staying calm and working on your build.

Being condescending and arrogant is definitely not the way to go in order to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve here. To expect someone who has absolutely no knowledge about the class to foresee whatever a thief plans to do when he's invisible is quite shortsighted and just plain stupid. The only thing predictive here is the autocratic toxic people who just can't seem to express themselves in a civil manner whenever someone brings up an issue that revolves around their class, and no matter how eloquent someones approach is there's always that one guy who just seems to be the Michael Jordan of being complete ***hole. You bring nothing to the table. Utterly distasteful. Goodbye.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I mean, if you think the class has unfair advantage, then play it and see for yourself. I'm not sure how you can throw up judgements against a class when you don't know how exactly it functions. The best way to go about it is to actually try it by yourself to get to know it.The only thing I could agree with here is that stealth needs to be a bit more limited in the form of a hard cap on duration, but there were threads about it already and I already said what I think should be changed.

Pretty sure there was also a thread from a warrior player some time ago about "how to fight teef" on this subforum, so feel free to use search function.

  • Confused 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Vashuddha.1538" said:I consider myself to be a decent player. I mainly play Guardian and Warrior, and find myself to do quite well against any class, except for thieves. Recently in WvW, and quite often, it's not uncommon to see a group of 3-4 players fighting of ONE Thief, and engagements such as these can last up for at least 20 minuets, if not more, and it usually ends up with players becoming lenient and fed up doing their best to avoid any further confrontation with them. My intention is not commence a heated discussion on whether thieves needs some mechanical adjustments or not, who sucks and who doesn't, but based on my own experience I can't help to think that something needs to change, or perhaps is there a way to counter the thief's ridiculous capabilities?

Yeah Im gonna call doubt on that. What you might see is 3-4 players trying to (and failing) to chase down one thief. But if the thief isnt running away, but sticking around and fighting? He will die in less than 10 seconds, guaranteed.

The thief can instantly, and for an unknown extended period of time render themselves completely invisible, and they seem to be able to do this in intervals that is beyond my comprehension. I am aware that there is a certain time limit for stealthing, but being able to calculate when and where they are going to attack is just incomprehensible. The constant stealth, and instant teleports to an enemy location combined with insane burst damage forces you to pop CDs almost instantly, and they seem to be capable of doing so for what seems to be forever.. It's practically impossible to even calculate where their next position might be, and whenever they decide to attack you're left with a nanosecond to respond and it makes it virtually impossible to counter it. You might get lucky and get a few hits here and there, and perhaps even reach their given location, but it doesn't take long before they stealth again and BOOM - game over. As a warrior the only ability you have to break stealth (if you're not running Spellbreaker build) is "On My Mark", but the advantages are insignificant, and the only real possible solution is to spam a bunch of skills in hopes that you might be able to hit them unknowingly while they're stealthed. This even leaves you in a deeper state of hopelessness due to most of your skills being on CD before the fight has even lasted 10 seconds. Their constant evades and their insane mobility just makes it kitten near impossible to keep up with them, and the only way for you to defeat them is if they mess up, or so it seems. Anyone who would argue that thieves are underpowered or broken has never met a thief that knows his or her way around, and it is perfectly understandable that people who play them would try to discredit this, but this is just my experience.

You need to split into paragraphs more. Anyway, in-combat stealth is bad, and trivially easy to punish even in 1v1s. Thats why good thieves dont use it, they rely on shadowshot. Lets go over why. First, thief cant instantly become stealthed. The standard build, D/P, requires 1.25 seconds worth of cast time to stealth up, during which its locked in animations. Toss some damage or CC their way, and they explode without a chance to stop it. Thieves burst damage isnt "insane". If I had to use a word to describe it, Id say its "pathetic". No matter what class youre playing, youre bursting harder. If the thief tries to burst you, you never have to pop CDs. You just turn around and force them to swap to shortbow 5 and run, or you kill them if they refuse to.

Oh and ironically, Warrior is the one class that actually outruns thief on flat ground. You will have no trouble catching up to a thief if you play correctly, and you will have even less trouble killing them. Its basically a free matchup for the Warrior, even in their current state. The thief has to hope that he engaged in an area that has some kind of elevation to break warriors speed advantage.

Is it possible that anyone who manages to reach a certain skill level as a thief is capable of reaching a peak of insane "god mode", and that the possible broken mechanics become more apparent? I would assume that if a class is capable of kiting and easily pick apart a group of players in such fashion is a clear indication that the thieves are in a unfair advantage (?) The level of frustration while going up against a thief seems unnecessary and completely ruins the fun in WvW. It just seems to take an insane amount of brain power to handle them. I do wish to stress the fact that this is based on MY personal experience and if you don't agree then that's fine, but I'm certain that I'm not the only one who feels this way. Would love to hear some feedback, and if you're a thief, feel free to share some of your secrets ;)

Nope, its not. There are no "possible broken mechanics". The class isnt capable of doing that. It takes almost no brain power to handle them. The problem is that you clearly dont know what thief can and cant do, and as a result fail to utilise the trivially easy chokepoints to punish the thief. You will almost never kill a good thief, but not for the reasons you describe, but for a much simpler reason. A good thief will run away. Because a good thief knows that a fair 1v1, is a 1v1 he loses.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Vashuddha.1538 said:

@"kash.9213" said:This post looks like an excuse to use all of the usual nerf thief soundbites and you're overselling it. If it's backstab, you know what their position will be and you can auto someone while they're in stealth. If it's Death's Judgement you can counter them before they hit you. Your imaginary thief wasn't doing all of those things in one build constantly, if they could, more people would be playing them in blobs. My suggestion is, do what your imaginary thief was doing by staying calm and working on your build.

Being condescending and arrogant is definitely not the way to go in order to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve here. To expect someone who has absolutely no knowledge about the class to foresee whatever a thief plans to do when he's invisible is quite shortsighted and just plain stupid. The only thing predictive here is the autocratic toxic people who just can't seem to express themselves in a civil manner whenever someone brings up an issue that revolves around their class, and no matter how eloquent someones approach is there's always that one guy who just seems to be the Michael Jordan of being complete ***hole. You bring nothing to the table. Utterly distasteful. Goodbye.

And btw don't act so insulted when you come into the subforum with your "fighting stance ready", because if someone dares disagreeing with you then they're bad (and on top of that never even met a good thief):

@Vashuddha.1538 said:Anyone who would argue that thieves are underpowered or broken has never met a thief that knows his or her way around, and it is perfectly understandable that people who play them would try to discredit this, but this is just my experience.

And it's even more interesting when something like that comes from the mouth of the same person that wrote this:

@Vashuddha.1538 said:I've been playing Guardian for some time now, and I can honestly say that Guardians are considerably underpowered compared to other classes in WvW, especially. It's ridiculous.

This is arguably the most consistently all around strongest class and you're claiming it's underpowered?

  • Confused 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think the first reply could have been less rude and arrogant. Afterall, OP is just narrating his experience and opinions. But then that brings up my question.. OP, why make this thread in the Thief forum since you said you played Guardian and Warrior? Why not ask them instead? Idk, if you come into a thief forum and kinda complained that they are op, well... you will get ganked here, for sure XD

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As a Deadeye roaming in WvW (on NSP):

If I can beat 3 players solo they are either really really playing poorly or under geared. If I can beat 5 v 1 then someone must be afk.

But to try and be helpful:

What exactly are you running and what kind of thieves are you having trouble with? I’m willing to help constructively if you give a little more information.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Vashuddha.1538 said:

@kash.9213 said:This post looks like an excuse to use all of the usual nerf thief soundbites and you're overselling it. If it's backstab, you know what their position will be and you can auto someone while they're in stealth. If it's Death's Judgement you can counter them before they hit you. Your imaginary thief wasn't doing all of those things in one build constantly, if they could, more people would be playing them in blobs. My suggestion is, do what your imaginary thief was doing by staying calm and working on your build.

Being condescending and arrogant is definitely not the way to go in order to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve here. To expect someone who has absolutely no knowledge about the class to foresee whatever a thief plans to do when he's invisible is quite shortsighted and just plain stupid. The only thing predictive here is the autocratic toxic people who just can't seem to express themselves in a civil manner whenever someone brings up an issue that revolves around their class, and no matter how eloquent someones approach is there's always that one guy who just seems to be the Michael Jordan of being complete ***hole. You bring nothing to the table. Utterly distasteful. Goodbye.

You try too hard. Thief forum is always helpful but you were trolling to begin with and weren't looking for actual feedback, don't pretend to take it personally. You could just ask questions about the class and get answers. Format though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i cant really answer your question because it to vague .

how can warrior beat thief ? by removing blind on thief engage an counter punish hit when try to attack. warrior just flat out has more HP then thief it can brawl it in HP trades. (how does thief want to fight a warrior what a thief will do is set a warrior to 50% disengage wait out endure pain reengage )

how does guardian beat thief ? all they have to do upkeep 3 stack of burn on thief. so as long you just casting in between dodges thief has no chance. (thief has to overcome aegis to hit a guardian is very hard if you put up 1 aegis after first attack of thief it very hard for a thief to do anything)

if we talking about complaining about stealth you can use arc type skill that have "fix animation cast" to track a thief that is entering in stealth to give you location of where they are for first second of stealth. means only have to know where going for next 2 seconds before come out. most likely thief will enter stealth threw black powder if they do you can just stand on it if you have condition clear an thief just die because casting black powder not getting attest 3 stack of stealth off it too costly for a thief.

hopefully some of this can help you improve your match up an win :).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is the simple truth of WvW combat:

If you cant get an enemy below 50% hp, you're getting outplayed.

Meaning, you should always win when outnumbering the enemy. Classes are irrelevant. Do you always win? No. Yes builds matter, but skill also matters alot more than people give credit for, just because they dont want to admit an enemy is better than them - funny enough thieves are especially egregious in this aspect because they always seem to represent a vast majority of rage whispers, nor will they ever admit they are pretty damn good at playing it if they do kill you since the enemy always sucks if they cant catch a purpose built teleport thief 3v1. Because of course.

I dont play thief - I cant play thief very good. But in WvW you meet quite alot of them.

Regarding fighting them, my tactic is just to use condi. That's how you keep them in combat, that's how you keep them pressured while being able to sustain their combat mechanics. Many use cleanse on evade and it's critical to identify this when fighting one. Sometimes it's literally harder to fight a thief 3v1 compared to 1v1 due to this. You'll want to dump your condi and then not hit them (which isnt easy to coordinate with randoms). It's a gamble whether they have more cleanses up at that time, but that is often very effective. The more glassy they go and the more alert you are, the more effective the tactic become. There are also very obvious tells on how the thief fight because they will mostly just repeat the same attack patterns. Once you learn when to expect a teleport into melee range, it becomes that much easier to sustain them. Personally I find the good staff stompers by far some of the hardest enemies to fight 1 on 1, due to their insane amount of evades and the long effect of that evade (you think you're hitting them but they are still evading), while they do a ton of damage each stomp (seen 9k on 3.3k armor in a solo situation... that's after the power nerf). But fortunetly there arent that many of them.

Of course if they dont want to fight you, they can always escape. No one can catch a good thief except a better thief and even that is questionable, if you chase then gratz, you're baiting yourself. As I've said before and saying it again: Thieves deserve neither mercy nor pity.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Sobx.1758 said:

@"kash.9213" said:This post looks like an excuse to use all of the usual nerf thief soundbites and you're overselling it. If it's backstab, you know what their position will be and you can auto someone while they're in stealth. If it's Death's Judgement you can counter them before they hit you. Your imaginary thief wasn't doing all of those things in one build constantly, if they could, more people would be playing them in blobs. My suggestion is, do what your imaginary thief was doing by staying calm and working on your build.

Being condescending and arrogant is definitely not the way to go in order to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve here. To expect someone who has absolutely no knowledge about the class to foresee whatever a thief plans to do when he's invisible is quite shortsighted and just plain stupid. The only thing predictive here is the autocratic toxic people who just can't seem to express themselves in a civil manner whenever someone brings up an issue that revolves around their class, and no matter how eloquent someones approach is there's always that one guy who just seems to be the Michael Jordan of being complete ***hole. You bring nothing to the table. Utterly distasteful. Goodbye.

And btw don't act so insulted when you come into the subforum with your "fighting stance ready", because if someone dares disagreeing with you then they're bad (and on top of that never even met a good thief):

There is absolutely nothing about my initial post that shows any sign of "having my fighting stance ready", and neither did I say that someone is bad for disagreeing with me. I was simply making a statement in regards to other posts that I've read where people say that Thieves are underpowered, which is not true. So where in my statement did i belittle someone or brand someone as "bad" for disagreeing with me?This is exactly the point I'm trying to make here. Some people just have this patronizing attitude by default and take things way out of context. Their ego is so fragile that they feel the need to demean someone for expressing themselves. It's really not that hard to keep things civil. I may be right, and I may be wrong, but regardless it doesn't take 2 cents to be polite and perhaps share some of your knowledge in a constructive manner. That's basically what the forums are for.

@Vashuddha.1538 said:Anyone who would argue that thieves are underpowered or broken has never met a thief that knows his or her way around, and it is perfectly understandable that people who play them would try to discredit this, but this is just my experience.

And it's even more interesting when something like that comes from the mouth of the same person that wrote this:

@Vashuddha.1538 said:I've been playing Guardian for some time now, and I can honestly say that Guardians are considerably underpowered compared to other classes in WvW, especially. It's ridiculous.

This is arguably the most consistently all around strongest class and you're claiming it's underpowered?

Another example of taking things way out of context. You literally went to my profile and went to an unrelated post that was made over a year ago, and quoted me on that? Seems like a desperate attempt to gather any piece of ammunition in order to win what, exactly? I'm not even going to try to go in to any depths about this one. This is just awkward.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Dawdler.8521 said:Here is the simple truth of WvW combat:

If you cant get an enemy below 50% hp, you're getting outplayed.

Meaning, you should always win when outnumbering the enemy. Classes are irrelevant. Do you always win? No. Yes builds matter, but skill also matters alot more than people give credit for, just because they dont want to admit an enemy is better than them - funny enough thieves are especially egregious in this aspect because they always seem to represent a vast majority of rage whispers, nor will they ever admit they are pretty kitten good at playing it if they do kill you since the enemy always sucks if they cant catch a purpose built teleport thief 3v1. Because of course.

I dont play thief - I cant play thief very good. But in WvW you meet quite alot of them.

Regarding fighting them, my tactic is just to use condi. That's how you keep them in combat, that's how you keep them pressured while being able to sustain their combat mechanics. Many use cleanse on evade and it's critical to identify this when fighting one. Sometimes it's literally harder to fight a thief 3v1 compared to 1v1 due to this. You'll want to dump your condi and then not hit them (which isnt easy to coordinate with randoms). It's a gamble whether they have more cleanses up at that time, but that is often very effective. The more glassy they go and the more alert you are, the more effective the tactic become. There are also very obvious tells on how the thief fight because they will mostly just repeat the same attack patterns. Once you learn when to expect a teleport into melee range, it becomes that much easier to sustain them. Personally I find the good staff stompers by far some of the hardest enemies to fight 1 on 1, due to their insane amount of evades and the long effect of that evade (you think you're hitting them but they are still evading), while they do a ton of damage each stomp (seen 9k on 3.3k armor in a solo situation... that's after the power nerf). But fortunetly there arent that many of them.

Of course if they dont want to fight you, they can always escape. No one can catch a good thief except a better thief and even that is questionable, if you chase then gratz, you're baiting yourself. As I've said before and saying it again: Thieves deserve neither mercy nor pity.

Thank you so much. I will go deeper in to this and read what you said more thouroughly when I get back home from work. ☺️

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Taobella.6597" said:i cant really answer your question because it to vague .

how can warrior beat thief ? by removing blind on thief engage an counter punish hit when try to attack. warrior just flat out has more HP then thief it can brawl it in HP trades. (how does thief want to fight a warrior what a thief will do is set a warrior to 50% disengage wait out endure pain reengage )

how does guardian beat thief ? all they have to do upkeep 3 stack of burn on thief. so as long you just casting in between dodges thief has no chance. (thief has to overcome aegis to hit a guardian is very hard if you put up 1 aegis after first attack of thief it very hard for a thief to do anything)

if we talking about complaining about stealth you can use arc type skill that have "fix animation cast" to track a thief that is entering in stealth to give you location of where they are for first second of stealth. means only have to know where going for next 2 seconds before come out. most likely thief will enter stealth threw black powder if they do you can just stand on it if you have condition clear an thief just die because casting black powder not getting attest 3 stack of stealth off it too costly for a thief.

hopefully some of this can help you improve your match up an win :).

Good tips, mate. Thank you☺️

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@saerni.2584 said:As a Deadeye roaming in WvW (on NSP):

If I can beat 3 players solo they are either really really playing poorly or under geared. If I can beat 5 v 1 then someone must be afk.

But to try and be helpful:

What exactly are you running and what kind of thieves are you having trouble with? I’m willing to help constructively if you give a little more information.

You might be on to something here. I do feel like I have a tendency to panic whenever i engage with thieves. I mainly go core warrior, spellbreak er and berserker. When fighting thieves I find my shild changing my build quite often. Berserker is really good for catching them off guard and delivers insane burst damage. Allthough, there are a couple of players in my Wvw who are just absolutely ridiculous. I mean, it's almost absurd how powerful they are. Getting them to 20% hp is the closest I have ever been to defeat them. It usually takes at least 3 players to get them down, because they are exceptionally good at jumping in and out, evading attack, stealth, and deliver a high amount of damage in seconds. I guess my main problem is understanding what their next move is, and being able to avoid some of their attacks such as Backstab.

Thank you for replying ☺️

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@kash.9213 said:

@kash.9213 said:This post looks like an excuse to use all of the usual nerf thief soundbites and you're overselling it. If it's backstab, you know what their position will be and you can auto someone while they're in stealth. If it's Death's Judgement you can counter them before they hit you. Your imaginary thief wasn't doing all of those things in one build constantly, if they could, more people would be playing them in blobs. My suggestion is, do what your imaginary thief was doing by staying calm and working on your build.

Being condescending and arrogant is definitely not the way to go in order to achieve whatever you're trying to achieve here. To expect someone who has absolutely no knowledge about the class to foresee whatever a thief plans to do when he's invisible is quite shortsighted and just plain stupid. The only thing predictive here is the autocratic toxic people who just can't seem to express themselves in a civil manner whenever someone brings up an issue that revolves around their class, and no matter how eloquent someones approach is there's always that one guy who just seems to be the Michael Jordan of being complete ***hole. You bring nothing to the table. Utterly distasteful. Goodbye.

You try too hard. Thief forum is always helpful but you were trolling to begin with and weren't looking for actual feedback, don't pretend to take it personally. You could just ask questions about the class and get answers. Format though.

What on earth are you babbling about?

There are plenty of others who seemed to be perfectly capable of providing good constructive feedback. You on the other hand have not.

Just leave it man. If you have nothing valuable to bring here then don't spend your time arguing about it. I'm sorry my post was such a horrible experience for you, but just let it go because you're starting to come off as quite a goofball

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Sobx.1758" said:I mean, if you think the class has unfair advantage, then play it and see for yourself. I'm not sure how you can throw up judgements against a class when you don't know how exactly it functions. The best way to go about it is to actually try it by yourself to get to know it.The only thing I could agree with here is that stealth needs to be a bit more limited in the form of a hard cap on duration, but there were threads about it already and I already said what I think should be changed.

Pretty sure there was also a thread from a warrior player some time ago about "how to fight teef" on this subforum, so feel free to use search function.

I'm not really throwing up any judgements, I'm just expressing myself. I'm entitled to my own opinion, and if someone can prove me wrong then I will be happy to listen to what you have to say, but do it in a constructive way, because discrediting me and branding me like some kind of lier won't work. My lack of knowledge of the class was made very clear, and I honestly don't need to be patronized and insulted because of it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@UNOwen.7132 said:

@"Vashuddha.1538" said:I consider myself to be a decent player. I mainly play Guardian and Warrior, and find myself to do quite well against any class, except for thieves. Recently in WvW, and quite often, it's not uncommon to see a group of 3-4 players fighting of ONE Thief, and engagements such as these can last up for at least 20 minuets, if not more, and it usually ends up with players becoming lenient and fed up doing their best to avoid any further confrontation with them. My intention is not commence a heated discussion on whether thieves needs some mechanical adjustments or not, who sucks and who doesn't, but based on my own experience I can't help to think that something needs to change, or perhaps is there a way to counter the thief's ridiculous capabilities?

Yeah Im gonna call doubt on that. What you might see is 3-4 players trying to (and failing) to chase down one thief. But if the thief isnt running away, but sticking around and fighting? He will die in less than 10 seconds, guaranteed.

You can doubt it if you want to, but this is actually true. No, the thief does not stay there and brawl, that's kind of self-explanatory. There are a couple of Thieves that are perfectly capable of kiting and handling more than 1 player at once.

The thief can instantly, and for an unknown extended period of time render themselves completely invisible, and they seem to be able to do this in intervals that is beyond my comprehension. I am aware that there is a certain time limit for stealthing, but being able to calculate when and where they are going to attack is just incomprehensible. The constant stealth, and instant teleports to an enemy location combined with insane burst damage forces you to pop CDs almost instantly, and they seem to be capable of doing so for what seems to be forever.. It's practically impossible to even calculate where their next position might be, and whenever they decide to attack you're left with a nanosecond to respond and it makes it virtually impossible to counter it. You might get lucky and get a few hits here and there, and perhaps even reach their given location, but it doesn't take long before they stealth again and BOOM - game over. As a warrior the only ability you have to break stealth (if you're not running Spellbreaker build) is "On My Mark", but the advantages are insignificant, and the only real possible solution is to spam a bunch of skills in hopes that you might be able to hit them unknowingly while they're stealthed. This even leaves you in a deeper state of hopelessness due to most of your skills being on CD before the fight has even lasted 10 seconds. Their constant evades and their insane mobility just makes it kitten near impossible to keep up with them, and the only way for you to defeat them is if they mess up, or so it seems. Anyone who would argue that thieves are underpowered or broken has never met a thief that knows his or her way around, and it is perfectly understandable that people who play them would try to discredit this, but this is just my experience.

You need to split into paragraphs more. Anyway, in-combat stealth is bad, and trivially easy to punish even in 1v1s. Thats why good thieves dont use it, they rely on shadowshot. Lets go over why. First, thief
cant
instantly become stealthed. The standard build, D/P, requires 1.25 seconds worth of cast time to stealth up, during which its locked in animations. Toss some damage or CC their way, and they explode without a chance to stop it. Thieves burst damage isnt "insane". If I had to use a word to describe it, Id say its "pathetic". No matter what class youre playing, youre bursting harder. If the thief tries to burst you, you never have to pop CDs. You just turn around and force them to swap to shortbow 5 and run, or you kill them if they refuse to.

Partially agree with some of your points here, and will try to think about a better way to utilize my CDs.

Burat damage is not pathetic. Agree to disagree here.

Oh and ironically, Warrior is the one class that actually outruns thief on flat ground. You will have no trouble catching up to a thief if you play correctly, and you will have even less trouble killing them. Its basically a free matchup for the Warrior, even in their current state. The thief has to hope that he engaged in an area that has some kind of elevation to break warriors speed advantage.

Also not true.

Is it possible that anyone who manages to reach a certain skill level as a thief is capable of reaching a peak of insane "god mode", and that the possible broken mechanics become more apparent? I would assume that if a class is capable of kiting and easily pick apart a group of players in such fashion is a clear indication that the thieves are in a unfair advantage (?) The level of frustration while going up against a thief seems unnecessary and completely ruins the fun in WvW. It just seems to take an insane amount of brain power to handle them. I do wish to stress the fact that this is based on MY personal experience and if you don't agree then that's fine, but I'm certain that I'm not the only one who feels this way. Would love to hear some feedback, and if you're a thief, feel free to share some of your secrets ;)

Nope, its not. There are no "possible broken mechanics". The class
isnt
capable of doing that. It takes almost no brain power to handle them. The problem is that you clearly dont know what thief can and cant do, and as a result fail to utilise the trivially easy chokepoints to punish the thief. You will almost never kill a good thief, but not for the reasons you describe, but for a much simpler reason. A good thief will run away. Because a good thief knows that a fair 1v1, is a 1v1 he loses.

It most certainly does take some sort of quick thinking in order to defeat them, so I don't fullt agree with you here.

I agree that I have to find a better way to utilize my skills. Don't know about "easy check points", kind of depends on the person who's playing the thief.

Take this video for example. It kind of illustrates the point I am trying to make:

Here is another thread where people seem to share the same frustration as me when dealing with thieves. Yet, whenever someone enters a thief thread, people marginalize and discredit everything as if everyone is just making up these bogus stories. Based on some of the replies here, it seems that some are trying really hard to smear anything related to thieves and their mechanics as just pure fabrications.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/91285/how-to-beat-a-daredevil-as-a-warrior

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Vashuddha.1538" said:Take this video for example. It kind of illustrates the point I am trying to make:

Considering the guild tag and the fact he's on EU, that it is presumably the guild I'm thinking it's going to be and a guild we're all familiar with. And they literally play all thief gank parties all day and if they're not busy ganking, they're probably standing at the dueling spot. Let's just say they like to "abuse" the class and they're some of the best at it.

And even if he's not, well there's always going to be good and bad players everywhere. Really good thieves can be almost impossible to counter. If I where to try to describe it, I would say that fighting good players in general is like fighting to a beating drum - just one skipped beat and the tune becomes all wrong and hard to recover.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Vashuddha.1538 said:

@Vashuddha.1538 said:I consider myself to be a decent player. I mainly play Guardian and Warrior, and find myself to do quite well against any class, except for thieves. Recently in WvW, and quite often, it's not uncommon to see a group of 3-4 players fighting of ONE Thief, and engagements such as these can last up for at least 20 minuets, if not more, and it usually ends up with players becoming lenient and fed up doing their best to avoid any further confrontation with them. My intention is not commence a heated discussion on whether thieves needs some mechanical adjustments or not, who sucks and who doesn't, but based on my own experience I can't help to think that something needs to change, or perhaps is there a way to counter the thief's ridiculous capabilities?

Yeah Im gonna call doubt on that. What you might see is 3-4 players trying to (and failing) to chase down one thief. But if the thief isnt running away, but sticking around and fighting? He will die in less than 10 seconds, guaranteed.

You can doubt it if you want to, but this is actually true. No, the thief does not stay there and brawl, that's kind of self-explanatory. There are a couple of Thieves that are perfectly capable of kiting and handling more than 1 player at once.

Theyre not "kiting" (Thief has no real ranged pressure). Theyre running away. Apparently unsuccessfully.

The thief can instantly, and for an unknown extended period of time render themselves completely invisible, and they seem to be able to do this in intervals that is beyond my comprehension. I am aware that there is a certain time limit for stealthing, but being able to calculate when and where they are going to attack is just incomprehensible. The constant stealth, and instant teleports to an enemy location combined with insane burst damage forces you to pop CDs almost instantly, and they seem to be capable of doing so for what seems to be forever.. It's practically impossible to even calculate where their next position might be, and whenever they decide to attack you're left with a nanosecond to respond and it makes it virtually impossible to counter it. You might get lucky and get a few hits here and there, and perhaps even reach their given location, but it doesn't take long before they stealth again and BOOM - game over. As a warrior the only ability you have to break stealth (if you're not running Spellbreaker build) is "On My Mark", but the advantages are insignificant, and the only real possible solution is to spam a bunch of skills in hopes that you might be able to hit them unknowingly while they're stealthed. This even leaves you in a deeper state of hopelessness due to most of your skills being on CD before the fight has even lasted 10 seconds. Their constant evades and their insane mobility just makes it kitten near impossible to keep up with them, and the only way for you to defeat them is if they mess up, or so it seems. Anyone who would argue that thieves are underpowered or broken has never met a thief that knows his or her way around, and it is perfectly understandable that people who play them would try to discredit this, but this is just my experience.

You need to split into paragraphs more. Anyway, in-combat stealth is bad, and trivially easy to punish even in 1v1s. Thats why good thieves dont use it, they rely on shadowshot. Lets go over why. First, thief
cant
instantly become stealthed. The standard build, D/P, requires 1.25 seconds worth of cast time to stealth up, during which its locked in animations. Toss some damage or CC their way, and they explode without a chance to stop it. Thieves burst damage isnt "insane". If I had to use a word to describe it, Id say its "pathetic". No matter what class youre playing, youre bursting harder. If the thief tries to burst you, you never have to pop CDs. You just turn around and force them to swap to shortbow 5 and run, or you kill them if they refuse to.

Partially agree with some of your points here, and will try to think about a better way to utilize my CDs.

Burat damage is not pathetic. Agree to disagree here.

This isnt a matter of opinion. Thieves burst damage is in the realm of around 7k-9k for the full combo on a glass target. Thats pathetic. Typical burst on a glass target exceeds 13k and can go all the way up to 20k.

Oh and ironically, Warrior is the one class that actually outruns thief on flat ground. You will have no trouble catching up to a thief if you play correctly, and you will have even less trouble killing them. Its basically a free matchup for the Warrior, even in their current state. The thief has to hope that he engaged in an area that has some kind of elevation to break warriors speed advantage.

Also not true.

Is it possible that anyone who manages to reach a certain skill level as a thief is capable of reaching a peak of insane "god mode", and that the possible broken mechanics become more apparent? I would assume that if a class is capable of kiting and easily pick apart a group of players in such fashion is a clear indication that the thieves are in a unfair advantage (?) The level of frustration while going up against a thief seems unnecessary and completely ruins the fun in WvW. It just seems to take an insane amount of brain power to handle them. I do wish to stress the fact that this is based on MY personal experience and if you don't agree then that's fine, but I'm certain that I'm not the only one who feels this way. Would love to hear some feedback, and if you're a thief, feel free to share some of your secrets ;)

Nope, its not. There are no "possible broken mechanics". The class
isnt
capable of doing that. It takes almost no brain power to handle them. The problem is that you clearly dont know what thief can and cant do, and as a result fail to utilise the trivially easy chokepoints to punish the thief. You will almost never kill a good thief, but not for the reasons you describe, but for a much simpler reason. A good thief will run away. Because a good thief knows that a fair 1v1, is a 1v1 he loses.

It most certainly does take some sort of quick thinking in order to defeat them, so I don't fullt agree with you here.

I agree that I have to find a better way to utilize my skills. Don't know about "easy check points", kind of depends on the person who's playing the thief.

Take this video for example. It kind of illustrates the point I am trying to make:

Nah, thief always has easy chokepoints. As for the video, that Warrior plays the matchup very poorly, and he doesnt seem to be built correctly (no Bull Rush, and uses Healing Signet when its been rather nerfed into oblivion). Against S/D the chokepoints are Sword 2. Push the thief towards his port spot, and dont let him pull you away from it, and he suddenly struggles to put distance between himself and you. At that point theyre easy fodder. He also failed to utilise Full Counter basically at all.

Here is another thread where people seem to share the same frustration as me when dealing with thieves. Yet, whenever someone enters a thief thread, people marginalize and discredit everything as if everyone is just making up these bogus stories. Based on some of the replies here, it seems that some are trying really hard to smear anything related to thieves and their mechanics as just pure fabrications.

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/91285/how-to-beat-a-daredevil-as-a-warrior

Lots of people are unfamiliar with how theif works, and as a result incapable of punishing the easy chokepoints. Their frustration is a result of their own lack of knowledge, rather than any mechanics. The "thief can keep stealthing" nonsense should be a dead giveaway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Theyre not "kiting" (Thief has no real ranged pressure). Theyre running away. Apparently unsuccessfully."

This can easily be debunked. Saying that thieves have no real ranged pressure is false. Very poor statement.

"This isnt a matter of opinion. Thieves burst damage is in the realm of around 7k-9k for the full combo on a glass target. Thats pathetic. Typical burst on a glass target exceeds 13k and can go all the way up to 20k. "

A thief can easily break stealth burst, pop a few CD's, gain stability, etc, and then run away or port back to whatever destination they came from. This is factual. I see this frequently and to say that a thieves burst damage is only high at glass target is a lie.

Nah, thief always has easy chokepoints. As for the video, that Warrior plays the matchup very poorly, and he doesnt seem to be built correctly (no Bull Rush, and uses Healing Signet when its been rather nerfed into oblivion). Against S/D the chokepoints are Sword 2. Push the thief towards his port spot, and dont let him pull you away from it, and he suddenly struggles to put distance between himself and you. At that point theyre easy fodder. He also failed to utilise Full Counter basically at all.

You're basically implying that in order for someone to successfully defeat a Thief a warrior needs to utlize specific abilities in order to fight off a thief efficiently, that might be true, but it's very limiting and Thieves would be the only class I know of that requires a specific build in order to handle.That alone is a red flag. Bull's charge is good, but it doesn't necessarily secure your victory in any significant way. It's easy to counter and it's very predictive.A warrior will struggle to close his distance to a thief no matter what ability you use, even if you use GW (Rush) and Bull's Charge - abilities that anyone can see coming from a mile away. It doesn't take much for a thief to be able to avoid those, and once it's evaded the warrior is left with 0 options. A thief has plenty of skills up its sleeve to keep distance, port back, burst, and then fend off while the warrior is still waiting for CDs to finish in order to make another attempt to close his distance. These sort of fights as demonstrated in the video are quite common, but regardless of what your arguments are pro thieves have a habit of just smearing it off with poor analyzations in order to strengthen their own narrative of what is actually going on. This video is a prime example of what I'm trying to say

Here is another thread where people seem to share the same frustration as me when dealing with thieves. Yet, whenever someone enters a thief thread, people marginalize and discredit everything as if everyone is just making up these bogus stories. Based on some of the replies here, it seems that some are trying really hard to smear anything related to thieves and their mechanics as just pure fabrications.

Lots of people are unfamiliar with how theif works, and as a result incapable of punishing the easy chokepoints. Their frustration is a result of their own lack of knowledge, rather than any mechanics. The "thief can keep stealthing" nonsense should be a dead giveaway.

There's really not much to "know" unless you play Thief yourself. The mechanics are pretty much obvious. If you're talking about knowledge in regards to CDs, spells, and rotations, then obviously people who haven't played Thief wouldn't know what's going on. Thief can keep stealthing, to say that is false is absolutely absurd and does not contain a single grain of truth to it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Vashuddha.1538" said:"Theyre not "kiting" (Thief has no real ranged pressure). Theyre running away. Apparently unsuccessfully."

This can easily be debunked. Saying that thieves have no real ranged pressure is false. Very poor statement.

Nope, its true. Thieves best ranged weapon option is Shortbow. Shortbow is not good at range however. Autoattacks do very little damage, and Cluster Bomb is too slow to realistically hit anyone past, iunno, 400 range, ish.

"This isnt a matter of opinion. Thieves burst damage is in the realm of around 7k-9k for the full combo on a glass target. Thats pathetic. Typical burst on a glass target exceeds 13k and can go all the way up to 20k. "

A thief can easily break stealth burst, pop a few CD's, gain stability, etc, and then run away or port back to whatever destination they came from. This is factual. I see this frequently and to say that a thieves burst damage is only high at glass target is a lie.

And here you make it clear that you dont know thief. Thief has no way of gaining stability outside of fighting Mesmer. Well I suppose Blinding powder does, but its for 1 second, and its on a stunbreak you use on a stunbreak and shouldnt use proactively. Anyway, what the theif does after the burst doesnt make an impact on how hard the burst hits. The burst hits only hard on a glass target, and even then its hilariously outclassed.

Nah, thief always has easy chokepoints. As for the video, that Warrior plays the matchup
very
poorly, and he doesnt seem to be built correctly (no Bull Rush, and uses Healing Signet when its been rather nerfed into oblivion). Against S/D the chokepoints are Sword 2. Push the thief towards his port spot, and dont let him pull you away from it, and he suddenly struggles to put distance between himself and you. At that point theyre easy fodder. He also failed to utilise Full Counter basically at all.

You're basically implying that in order for someone to successfully defeat a Thief a warrior needs to utlize specific abilities in order to fight off a thief efficiently, that might be true, but it's very limiting and Thieves would be the only class I know of that requires a specific build in order to handle.That alone is a red flag. Bull's charge is good, but it doesn't necessarily secure your victory in any significant way. It's easy to counter and it's very predictive.

No, you dont need a specific build. But you do need a good build. Mind you, his reliance on healing signet and his lack of Bull Rush would screw him over in every matchup. He would have the same problems fighting a Soulbeast for example.

A warrior will struggle to close his distance to a thief no matter what ability you use, even if you use GW (Rush) and Bull's Charge - abilities that anyone can see coming from a mile away. It doesn't take much for a thief to be able to avoid those, and once it's evaded the warrior is left with 0 options. A thief has plenty of skills up its sleeve to keep distance, port back, burst, and then fend off while the warrior is still waiting for CDs to finish in order to make another attempt to close his distance. These sort of fights as demonstrated in the video are quite common, but regardless of what your arguments are pro thieves have a habit of just smearing it off with poor analyzations in order to strengthen their own narrative of what is actually going on. This video is a prime example of what I'm trying to say

A Warrior will not struggle to close the distance to a thief no matter what. I have said it before, but Warrior is the only class that actually outruns a thief. Granted, only on flat ground, but elevation doesnt really help the thief fight, just run away. Though you shouldnt use Bull Charge for closing the gap but to punish him for pressing the wrong buttons (Though I should say, Bulls Charge and Rush are less telegraphed than you seem to imply. Their hitboxes extend far from the warrior, and that takes a lot of time getting used to). And no, the thief actually has real difficulty putting some distance between him and his target if he is pushed to his portspot as a sword thief, or in general as a dagger thief.

The only thing the video is a prime example of is how a bad build and a lack of thief knowledge can make an easy matchup lost. Lets go over his mistakes. First, complete lack of healing. This just makes any fight hard for him. If you pay close attention, even while the thief isnt hitting him, he only regains 1% of his health every 3 seconds. But then we have 2 big mistakes. First, he barely uses his Full Counter, and never correctly. Which means he loses a lot of damage through magebane tether, as well as valuable CC. And third, he keeps moving away from the thieves portspots. This is the worst thing you can do. This allowed the thief to teleport back and forth for free. If he had pushed the thief towards them, the thief would be screwed.

Here is another thread where people seem to share the same frustration as me when dealing with thieves. Yet, whenever someone enters a thief thread, people marginalize and discredit everything as if everyone is just making up these bogus stories. Based on some of the replies here, it seems that some are trying really hard to smear anything related to thieves and their mechanics as just pure fabrications.

Lots of people are unfamiliar with how theif works, and as a result incapable of punishing the easy chokepoints. Their frustration is a result of their own lack of knowledge, rather than any mechanics. The "thief can keep stealthing" nonsense should be a dead giveaway.

There's really not much to "know" unless you play Thief yourself. The mechanics are pretty much obvious. If you're talking about knowledge in regards to CDs, spells, and rotations, then obviously people who haven't played Thief wouldn't know what's going on. Thief can keep stealthing, to say that is false is absolutely absurd and does not contain a single grain of truth to it.

You would think they are obvious, but evidently they are not. Not knowing how to handle Sword 2 port spots, and not knowing that thief cant keep stealthing without making himself so open to punishment you might as well be using the PvP equivalent of /gg. There is a reason good thieves avoid stealthing up unless they have already disengaged, and at that point its arguably redundant anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...