Sic'em Soul Beast and thieves

Hoping thieves of various specs will help me out here.

I'm playing Sic'em Soul Beast because it's much more fun than the typical Boon Beast you run into and its a very hard counter on Necros for most maps.My biggest problem right now seems to be thieves, good thieves that know it's their job to keep me busy.

I feel like its a waste of time to fight you all because even with Sic'em you can just port out and evade, having said that I can't let whittle away at me.

I'm a very new player, I've only been around about 2 months, I hear there are spots that thieves can't travel to on most maps.Is there a resource with information about all of those spots?

Also if you have any other counters for thieves that I am unaware of, I would really like to know.

Will you please help me counter your profession?

PS: Thief looks crazy fun to me and I'm going to start practicing S/D tonight!

@Brendan.1309 said:Will you please help me counter your profession?

PS: Thief looks crazy fun to me and I'm going to start practicing S/D tonight!

Understanding the Thief is the best counter.

Play a thief for a while and the counters become apparent. It's a class that functions best when its opponents do not have a full picture of what's happening. If it makes you feel more hopeful, when I play(ed) my ranger, it was solely to kill thieves because once you learn thief the ranger is incredibly good at killing them. Generally speaking it's also just a matter of practice and learned skill over time; when fighting against other people, it needs to be recognized that it's ideal for the player who's more experienced and thus more skillful (assuming everything else equal) to win a fight.

As a newer player, understand you're going to have struggles for this reason, and it's also entirely possible your build has some glaring weaknesses into certain matchups like the thief which as a class as a whole, depends on exploiting said weaknesses to win. I'll be blunt: the power disparity between the strong builds in the "meta" (it really isn't a metagame, there are just strictly superior builds to others) is massive, so it's also entirely likely you were carried by the boring build because it was so strong. As you learn and play the thief (among other classes), you'll uncover the nuances of how it functions and then be able to exploit those or force an issue to fight against them.

So don't get discouraged yet as you strive to improve and try to learn something with every death if you can.

For safe locations and the likes, you're better off just trying to kite them out while learning to play and using your own mobility and tools to beat them upfront. Getting the basics is best-received from the ranger community. I think getting into techniques like non-shadowstep LoS use/abuse too early can cause a player to end up hindering themselves by trying to learn to walk with crutches; it's easier to walk, but it makes you unable to run.

It's only when you start pushing a class to its absolute limits and really can no longer learn anything while still continuously losing that the discouragement is justified. Back to the whole strong/weak build thing. Luckily for you, ranger is generally in a very capable position for a majority of builds, so it shouldn't be much of a problem for you at least for quite a long time, likely solvable with only a few tweaks.

@DeceiverX.8361 thank you very much for sharing that with me.

I should have been a bit more descriptive in my request. I modified the sicem meta to take down necromancers because though I wasn’t ever dying and capping side nodes on boon beast I was still losing because of my team was always getting destroyed. I’ve had great results since and climbed to gold rank so it is effective at least with my current competition. I’ve learned enough about ranger to be fairly good at kiting at this point, partially from watching other rangers and partially because I played a very similar role in WoW once upon a time.

My concern isn’t (primarily) Winning the 1v1 vs a thief, my concern is that thieves take me away from what’s consider my most important role on the team. I want to spend as much time as possible pressuring firebrands, necros, and anyone else that would make an effective target. Thieves just don’t seem like effective targets compared to other professions for my current build, but perhaps there’s a way to catch a thief between all the evades and lock them down long enough that I’m not aware of.

So As I see it, I just want to keep thieves off me in the most effective way possible. If that means being where they can’t reach me, making myself less of a target, or taking them out I don’t care.

I’m also open to meet up in game if you are.

I can practice with you this weekend if you are online in NA. I’m not a soul easy but I’ll let you practice against me :)

I’m on NA, I’m usually on 11-1 est on weekends message me. I’ll look for you too.

Thank you very much @saerni.2584

@Brendan.1309 said:I’m on NA, I’m usually on 11-1 est on weekends message me. I’ll look for you too.

Thank you very much @saerni.2584

11am? I should be online at that time tomorrow for a bit.

@saerni.258411pm-1am, have to finish all my adulting before I get to have fun :/

best way to counter a thief is to punish there dodge time. learn to understand how fast your ranged skill travel at to punish every last second of dodge frame. you make most thief look like a joke. however most good thief cover there escape with blinds can be very tricky to deal with in general.

if you just want general game play tip if you see a thief send your pet on them wait for the dodge at end of it slam your longbow knockback wait a second to see if they shadow step if they are still in range just rapid fire them to death. if they move out of range just move away from the thief do a soft reset wait for them to try get close then just use stealth longbow skill to set up same combo.

@Brendan.1309 said:@saerni.258411pm-1am, have to finish all my adulting before I get to have fun :/

:( that’s probably too late for me. I’m lucky to have weekends off for myself so I mainly game in the morning and early afternoon.

@Brendan.1309 said:

What is this doing in a thief forum xD if you are ranger go ask rangers. Why would we as thieves advice you on how to defeat us xD Daayumn xDthis really made me giggle

@saerni.2584 said:

I’m on NA, I’m usually on 11-1 est on weekends message me. I’ll look for you too.

Thank you very much @saerni.2584

Saerni darn it why are you helping him figure out how to defeat a thief. We dont need another annoying ranger that is able to kill us. If they are not a thieves dont help them you are putting other ppl into dissadvantage. If he learns to play ranger which is pretty annoying on its own even if played by noob then he will become even more annoying in game. Not to mention thieves atm really dont need other ppl to know how to play their class.

@Jack Redline.5379 said:

@saerni.2584 said:

I’m on NA, I’m usually on 11-1 est on weekends message me. I’ll look for you too.

Thank you very much @saerni.2584

I don’t worry about other people knowing how to play their class because it’s also true people who don’t understand thief will come to the forums and say “thief OP please nerf.”

@saerni.2584 said:

I don’t worry about other people knowing how to play their class because it’s also true people who don’t understand thief will come to the forums and say “thief OP please nerf.”

but we dont need to deal with those people since everyone knows theif is not opleting new players understand class that can counter them is very unstrategic and i dont recomend it if you want you can do it but you can harm some other players with itboon beast is not hard to master and if you will help that dude with mastering it you just make it easier for him and that is not what helps thievesAND first of all why would you as a theif help himlet him go ask rangers i am sure they have their methods of dealing with uslet rangers help rangers and thieves help thievesdont help the enemy

@"Brendan.1309" said:I'm a very new player, I've only been around about 2 months, I hear there are spots that thieves can't travel to on most maps.Is there a resource with information about all of those spots?

Wooden Potatos made a full series of Markers for Spvp maps about stuff like this.

You can ignore the markers itself and watch the videos, he makes a full roundup of all Spvp maps with strategy, kitting spots and no ports spots.

The concept on WvW is the same, if you learn to recognize a no-port spot on Spvp you might as well make it work for WvW. Takes some practice and some testing but you can always create a thief yourself (once you accumulate enough Tomes to boost one straight to 80) and test yourself with a shortbow that has spammable port on skill 5.

Here is the first video of the series, fell free to watch the others as well.

Kitting is, in itself, an extremally important defensive strategy for this game PvP. You may want to learn stuff like this as soon as possible as the higher skill level you get, the more difference it does.

Played S/D Thief last night and made my teammates in unranked very sad, much harder to get into than Necro or Ranger for sure.Having said that I learned a lot, I know there are players like Sindrener and even watching some games of that Thief "white shorts" that show just how powerful it is to master.

If you know of any good resources for learning thief that would help out a lot, because I'm going to try daredevil and deadeye soon too

@"DeceiverX.8361" It seems to me that Thieves cant Shadow Step anywhere that you can't walk to, is this what you meant by "non-shadowstep LoS" or do you mean something else?

@Jack Redline.5379 As stated above I am not playing Boon Beast, and doubt I will be until the competition I'm facing in conquest gets harder, if you read above beating thieves 1v1 really isn't my focus at all. Also, if I'm curious enough to come on to the thief forums and make an alt thief, at this point how long are you really going to slow me down?

@Brendan.1309 said:

its not about slowing you downits about not teaching you how to do ityou want to know?Do it the way everyone else does = try and fail, try again and so onand asking in thief forum about how to defeat thieves with ranger is not only stupid it is down right disrespectful for class and ppl who are working hard to hone their skills so they are able to defeat other classes which are atm overpowered AFin words of a famous game studioGit Gud

@Jack Redline.5379 said:

@Brendan.1309 said:

Please do not shoot people down because they want to become better.

@Jack Redline.5379 said:

@"saerni.2584" said:

I don’t worry about other people knowing how to play their class because it’s also true people who don’t understand thief will come to the forums and say “thief OP please nerf.”

It is "...very unstrategic..." from your subjective point of view.Objective fact is, that we as players of Guild Wars 2 , are one community and as so we should always act in ways that allow all of us to enjoy the very same game we all play.

Doing this little "we are Thieves and they are Rangers, so we should not help" is borderline very dangerous for the community and thus the game as a whole.

Thank you to those that have helped me in this forum and in game. I feel like I’ve already leveled up as a ranger and I’m excited about playing my thief more often as well. It’s very fun and the easily the most difficult to master that I’ve seen so far.

@"Alatar.7364" said:

Doing this little "we are Thieves and they are Rangers, so we should not help" is borderline very dangerous for the community and thus the game as a whole.

ITS A GAMEin game one wins and other one loosesthat is how game worksthe dude is specially focused on figuring out how to beat thievesWhy would a thief help someone figure out how to beat a thief??? That is downright stupid!irl fine be nice to each other sureon a same team in pvp or wvw sure be nice to each otherif he is in other team he either beats you or no you wont be helping him defeat you if you fight for point or tower or whateverand that is why you need him to do mistakes that is why you dont teach him how to defeat you or you are ruining the game for yourself and for other ppl that are going to face him as a thief.this is not about community this is about game he is asking for game combat related advices not how to craft ascended gear.there is difference in aspects of game you are helping ppl withand as far as combat goes you do not help other classes to beat yoursit is logical and i dont understand weather you ppl simply want to oppose me or you really think it is a good ideain both cases i am having serious concern for you ppl

@Jack Redline.5379 said:

@"Alatar.7364" said:

Doing this little

"we are Thieves and they are Rangers, so we should not help"

is borderline very dangerous for the community and thus the game as a whole.

I could literally just copy paste my post here.

@"Brendan.1309" said:Played S/D Thief last night and made my teammates in unranked very sad, much harder to get into than Necro or Ranger for sure.Having said that I learned a lot, I know there are players like Sindrener and even watching some games of that Thief "white shorts" that show just how powerful it is to master.

It definitely does have a high barrier to entry, but it has definitive weaknesses and forces you to learn a lot about the thief and your opponents, which is why I recommend people play it. With practice will come an understanding of its nuances. There are few pieces of advice like "do this to beat it" for the thief, but it's really a measure of knowing the class and its limitations and nuances to force scenarios where it has no outplay potential.

If you know of any good resources for learning thief that would help out a lot, because I'm going to try daredevil and deadeye soon too

I can't speak for S/D, sadly. Most of the guides and resources out there are for D/P since it was the dominant build by a very wide margin for a stretch of several years, and most of the prominent thieves have quit the game since before they've made substantial changes to S/D and Acrobatics. D/D hasn't been good since it was "nerfed" at launch with the introduction of Revealed as a mechanic (which was totally justified), so there are very few resources even made by the thieves like me who were masochists and played it. Really, it comes from practice - and a lot of it. From the ranger POV, you don't really need to learn every nuance, though; just enough to understand how it works to create plays to beat it (forcing/tracking initiative, punish frames at the edges of the dodges, operating between steal cooldowns, etc.).

@"DeceiverX.8361" It seems to me that Thieves cant Shadow Step anywhere that you can't walk to, is this what you meant by "non-shadowstep LoS" or do you mean something else?

Not quite. There are some areas of terrain which can be reached by normal means which cannot be shadowstepped to. I'm not really an sPvP guy (my time was spent in WvW) and usually don't have a problem just beating thieves outright (being a thief main and knowing the class) so I've never really bothered to learn them, so I don't know of any on the specific maps, but obviously with something like a glassy longbow ranger these kinds of areas can provide huge advantages since you can apply ranged pressure without the thief being able to teleport in. These are generally pretty uncommon and are honestly more of a bug than anything (many have been fixed), but these kinds of things are often utilized.

@Jack Redline.5379 said:

@"Alatar.7364" said:

Doing this little

"we are Thieves and they are Rangers, so we should not help"

is borderline very dangerous for the community and thus the game as a whole.

Yeah, it's a game. Meant for fun. Not a justification to be a d***.I'd rather good players who care to learn do well than the idiots who insist their class is too weak demand for more buffs instead.

OP is the former, so good on him.And the same is said for any ranger who takes the time to learn anything instead of spamming longbow 2 and getting upset when someone doesn't die.

If people actually played the game well instead of relying on OP builds we'd probably see fewer OP builds.The thief is balanced around how good its players are because it has such a high ceiling. If you can't accept that, play faceroll holo.

@Jack Redline.5379 said:

@"Alatar.7364" said:

Doing this little

"we are Thieves and they are Rangers, so we should not help"

is borderline very dangerous for the community and thus the game as a whole.

If you only fight players who don't know how to fight your class, you will never be able to push your own limits.Besides, knowledge goes both ways, since the more they learn about us the more we learn about them.

It's a win-win, because it ultimately leads to interesting fights.

@Jack Redline.5379 one day, we're going to end up on the same team and I'm going to kill a thief just before they get you.

@DeceiverX.8361 D/P was 10x easier, I'll probably start there since I am so pitiful with the profession at the moment.