Thief Killer

Hey fellow thief enthusiasts!

I was wondering what other players thought were some of the best classes for killing thieves?In my experience, there is a rule, that a thief will almost never die unless he over commits or gets surprised by an enemy player he didn't see.

So what classes do you think are good at killing thieves? In either PvP or WvW.

I'll start:In WvW:Ranger, Mesmer Ele, ThiefIn PvP:Thief, Ranger

@"Loboling.5293" said:In my experience, there is a rule, that a thief will almost never die unless he over commits or gets surprised by an enemy player he didn't see.

It amazes me how many people still say this in 2019. It's such an overwhelmingly vague generalization that relies on Thieves always having their Shadowstep available for a disengage, or always incorporating stealth and shortbow into their build. Apparently if you use Shadowstep in battle, you've "over committed."

In WvW:You can kill a Thief as a Soulbeast with a simple 2+4 quite often.Play Holosmith or Scrapper, they pretty much hard-counter Thieves due to their insanely tanky kit that allows for damage-oriented gear.Play Herald, their power damage far surpasses all iterations of power Thieves, though you will most likely lose to every condi Thief you encounter.Ele should only kill Thief if it is S/F 1HKO burst lands. It is very easily denied with Steal (SoH Traited), Headshot, Bandit's Defense, DE Range, or Durability Runes. Sword Weaver's damaging attacks are too slow for any moderately experienced Thief to be in danger.

@Loboling.5293 said:

In PvP:Thief, Ranger

I am gonna bring my usual Thief whine to the table and say that absolutely anything is good at killing Thief in PvP, however not all have the tools to chase it down, which is almost never a good idea anyway, so.

@Alatar.7364 said:

@Loboling.5293 said:

In PvP:Thief, Ranger

This ^

@Turk.5460 said:

@"Loboling.5293" said:In my experience, there is a rule, that a thief will almost never die unless he over commits or gets surprised by an enemy player he didn't see.

Basically this.

Most classes can kill a in one hit thief.

A Guardian can basically OHK a full Marauders thief with that move that teleports onto people and brings down the ban hammer. Which is a common armor choice for a few reasons. One... Thieves damage is not very good lately and requires glassy builds to do something, and their survivability compared to everything else is lacking.

Revenants can basically insta gib thieves, and force them to blow all initiative and evades by trying to stay alive with just one attack.

Condi Mirage... as the thief has to play carefully.

The list goes on.

Hell... If the fight drags on for too long, thieves chances goes down significantly since launch until they can back off and regen ini and cool downs. The Ini regen is slow and cost is high that a thief will be luck to use three skills.

@Turk.5460 said:

@"Loboling.5293" said:In my experience, there is a rule, that a thief will almost never die unless he over commits or gets surprised by an enemy player he didn't see.

In my experience, it is anything that can take the initial attack and fight back. It's not really a matter of class, but a matter of build. I run a marauder/berserker Herald with over 20k health and I can still get burst down quickly by a thief. But, if you catch a thief off-guard or meet their gaze, then any class stands a good chance of beating one.

Balance is a problem for them mostly because they will drop a nuke on a pothole to fix it. Then they will look at the statistics and wonder why a class or spec has disappeared from gameplay and "rework" it then someone will find a way to complain about the rework long enough for the process to repeat itself so you get to play whenever one of your classes that you play gets out of the mushroom cloud.

@Safandula.8723 said:s/d thief counters power herald

At moderate to high skill levels the Herald will counter all iterations of Power Thief, including S/D. Inexperienced Heralds will be countered by pretty much any profession running any build.

@Turk.5460 said:

@Safandula.8723 said:s/d thief counters power herald

How do you figure between the boonrip easy spacing ability of s/d and the strength of the stolen skills along with the plethora of dodges.How does herald counter? I’ll agree the matchup certainly becomes more even as skill goes up, but still slightly favors the thief.

@Turk.5460 said:

@Safandula.8723 said:s/d thief counters power herald

@Safandula.8723 said:s/d thief counters power herald

I'm curious if you have any videos that you could link of this? My experience on thief is that I only get killed when I'm caught by surprise, and on my rev, downing a good thief is tricky, but sometimes doable. (Especially if you're +1 onto them)

And I've seen footage of sinreider getting constantly deleted by a rev, but he was playing d/p, which has worse escapes against rev than s/d.

Thanks!

@Weasel.9684 said:

@Turk.5460 said:

@Safandula.8723 said:s/d thief counters power herald

Herald's counter-pressure is constant enough to keep the Thief on the defensive, as it is more deadly than the pressure from the Thief. A S/D Thief can't S2 in and out against an experienced power Herald using PT who is well versed in their energy management. As skill goes up in this matchup, the only semi-reliable damage a S/D thief will be able to land is combo's with Steal. Which is not enough to put the Herald on the defensive, and now the Thief is face to face with the Herald, where it only takes a few good hits from traits and abilities that have minimal tells to put an end to the Thief.

I agree that an inexperienced S/D Thief will counter an inexperienced Power Herald, but an experienced/skilled Herald will absolutely counter an experienced/skilled Thief.

@Loboling.5293 said:

@Turk.5460 said:

@Safandula.8723 said:s/d thief counters power herald

A video of what? Thieves escaping? That's not very difficult isn't necessary...I'm talking about fighting.

A video of herald being effective at downing thieves.

Personally i think s/d thief has the upper hand against Herald. A good thief player will outplay the herald by playing defensively when the rev is at Shiro legend. Keeping distance and evade with shortbow 3 to avoid the blinks from the rev etc. And hard burst when he swappes to Glint. Wait out Facet of Light / Infuse Light and done. This is how i have seen and experienced duels between thief and rev.

@GWMO.4785 said:Personally i think s/d thief has the upper hand against Herald. A good thief player will outplay the herald by playing defensively when the rev is at Shiro legend. Keeping distance and evade with shortbow 3 to avoid the blinks from the rev etc. And hard burst when he swappes to Glint. Wait out Facet of Light / Infuse Light and done. This is how i have seen and experienced duels between thief and rev.

In this scenario it seems like your Herald opponent wasn't very experienced , or is standing still while in Glint. Glint is where a S/D Thief would want to play around Sword 2, not go ham, since the Herald won't have PT available and Elemental Blast alone is quite the counter pressure to a Thief's melee. UA/Surge are enough to avoid a S/D Thief's burst as well. Again, its true that a S/D Thief of any skill level will have the upper hand against a low-skilled Herald. But not at all against one who knows how to play Herald well.

Oh boy, The old Turret Engi builds still gives me nightmare even to this day.I believe that the builds with higher advantage Vs Thieves is definitely Engi and specializations. Assuming the the thief is playing Power.

That said, at 1x1, thief has disadvantages against nearly everything. You can make some cheesy builds to counter specific classes but we don't have a "general" build to fight everything.Just front-load everything. Got the Kill? No? Run away.

The best s/d build to counter a herald rev is if you go daredevil with impact strike and bandit’s defence, if you time ur cc’s right and keep kiting with sword n2, even if the herald uses his energy to port towards you, you can just watch the animation and dodge it, then kite again with ur n2.If the rev uses UA, you can just block it with BD, and just kick him right after the animation is done. So a good daredevil S/D thief will win most of the duels against a good herald rev.

Rifle engineer with utility goggles and lock-on equipped or s/x and staff daredevil as my preference.

Regaueding s/d vs rev. Depends what build. Sometimes I play with out instant redlxes/rfi/dagger storm then the fight becomes in favour for the rev but if I was to run them above then the thief does a have lot of free evade time as well as some pressure with DS.