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How to fight the dreaded thief in 2021?


Affinity.7253

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WvW, SPvP, doesn't matter. We all know thief is incredibly broken. Some people deny it because they are... delusional? Or more likely fearful of heavy handed nerfs, some of which are absolutely warranted. Any class that can dump 100% of their stats into zerkers and not see a significant change in their survivability is strong. A class that can pull that can pull that off every time? That is broken.

Now I know there are some total ***wipes that brigade this place, responding to all threads mentioning how dominant and oppressively thief are with 'you're bad' 'get gud' etc. Some of these people need to be straight up banned after looking into previous posts and seeing certain actors bullying like this for years...

Anyway - how on this green earth do you beat thief as an ele? I just got into WvW seriously for the first time and given my pervious experience in SPvP, I can for the most part see when I make a mistake. I am by no means good, but I am good enough to realize when I made a mistake - when I should have been in another attunement, when I should have approached differently, when I whiffed my attacks into a dodge roll I should have known was coming, when I swapped uselessly putting necessary attunements on CD. I can generally form a game plan (executing it is entirely another matter) for how I CAN beat someone. But not for thieves. never for thieves. I have no plausible concept of how to beat a thief other than 2 things: they don't stunbreak fast enough and I can fresh air burst them down in a single stun (because every one of those arrogant overpowered little bastards is running no survivability stats), or I reflect their super skillful deadeye invis2death combo, and they are dumb enough to keep attacking into my little 3-4 second reflect, instead of just... waiting for a second, returning to invis, then killing me safely knowing my reflect was burnt. And if I have another... well they can just invis again. Or instantly be 2.1k units away. Either way, safe from any repercussion.

Either way, the ability for me to win is entirely in their hands. I want to know how to beat them without relying on them not playing well. Does anyone... ANYONE have a build or stratagem that can actually kill thiefs? Not just bunkering until they just walk away, but actually kill them? Because every time I encounter one, they open, I defend. The instant I stop playing defensively and start attacking back (after 1-3 seconds) they are just gone. Usually invisible. Rinse, repeat until I am dead. Lock them down? Most run 3 stunbreaks (shadowstep is 2 in 1). Burst them down? Elementalist's highest burst is either targeted (doesn't work on invisibility) or ground targeted with a delay (doesn't work on the fastest most dodgy class in the game).

But what about condi's right? Well, you better have a ton of applications of burning, because you will need to keep reapplying them. Elementalist doesn't apply that many covering condi's over its burns/bleeds. It's just really good at stacking those 2. And WHADDYAKNOW the ever-present invis condi removal from thief IGNORES most covering condis as well, only targeting the damaging condis.

And of course, the grand daddy of em all, you cannot kite them. They are faster then you - no matter what. Some classes are straight up stronger than ele in a head to head fight right now. But, with proper kiting you can turn some disadvantaged situations around. Doesn't work on thief. And the age old tip of 'breaking pathfinding to counter steal' is a cute idea, but they do not need steal to do massive damage to you and get away, especially if they have a gun.

So if anyone has ANY advice, I will take it. I am at wits end, because it seems like 33% of the damn population I encounter when not in a blob right now are thieves, DESPITE the ridiculous current overturning of rangers. I am so tired of fighting this easy to pickup and easy to play class. Without badmouthing the high end thieves out there, it is INCREDIBLY easy to wreck unprepared/prepared people on deadeye, and its moderately easy to wreck prepared people on daredevil. I would know, because after rolling around on my own thief (who I NEVER pvp on), I was astonished how shallow the entry difficulty was. Just... restealth. Burst and restealth. Over and over again.

I have been trying for a few weeks, and I cannot solve this problem. Any advice? Builds? Playstyles? Mindsets? I will take literally anything at all at this point.

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it is INCREDIBLY easy to wreck unprepared/prepared people on deadeye, and its moderately easy to wreck prepared people on daredevil.

Yeah I'm sorry but you very clearly have no idea what you're writing. D/P DrD is the hard fight and DE is often downright weak into ele due to your reflect/crit immune access and sustain beyond the initial combo. Thief is straight-up carried by Daredevil more than anything else. I literally have 1v2'ed Deadeyes on my reaper of all things, which has enough projectile denial to deal with rifle for the most part. It's only fairly menacing when terrain is heavily abused and is played quite well.

Half the time it consists of camping earth/earth shield and laughing at the fact that they can't deal meaningful damage since almost all if it comes from easily-blocked crits with tons of negation. You'll just grind them down or can walk away from the fight if they continue to try and kill you.

Unless you're playing zerk staff, there are ample ways to burst them down pretty easily and sustain through most of their damage on an offtank roaming build on S/F Weaver.

You have to either learn their patterns and just counterburst accordingly, and/or know when to get ready to deny their damage by sustaining correctly and whittling them down.Like superspeed engineer or soulbeast, they can run away and reset if they really want, but that's not exactly them "winning" either. Is it easy for them to reset? Yes. Is it good design? No. But the class is hardly an unstoppable killing machine.

Maybe you should post your build and preferred style of play and let people help you fix it.

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Probably you would need to find some super tanky condi build that spreads aids just by being near you 24/7, otherwise, nah, near impossible unless as you've said they're utterly bad.You could try running like Sw/F celestial Weaver, but even then you need tryhard to even beat so-so teefs because of their mobility/stealth...Fresh Air is simply worthless against any teef since you need a target to even land AA on them also, since it practically need to be paper among papers to even deal decent dmg most of the time you won't even burst them properly thanks to desyncs and clunkiness of the class.There was some pepe condi tempest build dagger/focus with signets, I think this would work on these pests to some degree.The spam of evades, stealth, blind isn't helping either on top of stupid descyncs and bugs.Honestly I don't even bother with fighting against them in WvW, balance is so bad that's not even "fun" to play this game at all.

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@"DeceiverX.8361" said:

it is INCREDIBLY easy to wreck unprepared/prepared people on deadeye, and its moderately easy to wreck prepared people on daredevil.

Yeah I'm sorry but you very clearly have no idea what you're writing. D/P DrD is the hard fight and DE is often downright weak into ele due to your reflect/crit immune access and sustain beyond the initial combo. Thief is straight-up carried by Daredevil more than anything else. I literally have 1v2'ed Deadeyes on my reaper of all things, which has enough projectile denial to deal with rifle for the most part. It's only fairly menacing when terrain is heavily abused and is played quite well.

Half the time it consists of camping earth/earth shield and laughing at the fact that they can't deal meaningful damage since almost all if it comes from easily-blocked crits with tons of negation. You'll just grind them down or can walk away from the fight if they continue to try and kill you.

Unless you're playing zerk staff, there are ample ways to burst them down pretty easily and sustain through most of their damage on an offtank roaming build on S/F Weaver.

You have to either learn their patterns and just counterburst accordingly, and/or know when to get ready to deny their damage by sustaining correctly and whittling them down.Like superspeed engineer or soulbeast, they can run away and reset if they really want, but that's not exactly them "winning" either. Is it easy for them to reset? Yes. Is it good design? No. But the class is hardly an unstoppable killing machine.

Maybe you should post your build and preferred style of play and let people help you fix it.

Okay, so deadeye isn't a problem as long as you...run earth trait line and camp earth to completely deny criticals while also taking focus offhand and shield conjure for projectile hate? Oh, but they could still be "fairly menacing" if they don't suck and you aren't really trying to kill them so much as walk away from the fight alive. Are you sure that isn't broken? It sure sounds like you're saying it's broken!

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@AliamRationem.5172 said:

@"DeceiverX.8361" said:

it is INCREDIBLY easy to wreck unprepared/prepared people on deadeye, and its moderately easy to wreck prepared people on daredevil.

Yeah I'm sorry but you very clearly have no idea what you're writing. D/P DrD is the hard fight and DE is often downright weak into ele due to your reflect/crit immune access and sustain beyond the initial combo. Thief is straight-up carried by Daredevil more than anything else. I literally have 1v2'ed Deadeyes on my reaper of all things, which has enough projectile denial to deal with rifle for the most part. It's only fairly menacing when terrain is heavily abused and is played quite well.

Half the time it consists of camping earth/earth shield and laughing at the fact that they can't deal meaningful damage since almost all if it comes from easily-blocked crits with tons of negation. You'll just grind them down or can walk away from the fight if they continue to try and kill you.

Unless you're playing zerk staff, there are ample ways to burst them down pretty easily and sustain through most of their damage on an offtank roaming build on S/F Weaver.

You have to either learn their patterns and just counterburst accordingly, and/or know when to get ready to deny their damage by sustaining correctly and whittling them down.Like superspeed engineer or soulbeast, they can run away and reset if they really want, but that's not exactly them "winning" either. Is it easy for them to reset? Yes. Is it good design? No. But the class is hardly an unstoppable killing machine.

Maybe you should post your build and preferred style of play and let people help you fix it.

Okay, so deadeye isn't a problem as long as you...run earth trait line and camp earth to completely deny criticals while also taking focus offhand and shield conjure for projectile hate? Oh, but they could still be "fairly menacing" if they don't suck and you aren't really trying to kill them so much as walk away from the fight alive. Are you sure that isn't broken? It sure sounds like you're saying it's broken!

Yeah I was taking issue with that statement too. DE is an extremely hard match up against Weaver since it insanely out ranges our tiny little Sword range and can keep its distance without any much trouble (not to mention the stealth spam of which we have no way to deal with, not that it matters since they can remove reveal). I mean sure, DE can be a joke if you literally build your entire build around surviving, but if your definition of winning is "I didn't lose" then you're not winning you're just wasting everyones time lol.

On the topic of OP, I hate to say it but thieves are tough man. The best thieves out there won't die because they know when to pull back and known when to commit. Its really hard but you'll have to learn the flow of how thieves work and use it to your advantage. Try and save your burst for when they have wasted their shadow step, don't just throw out your CC skills randomly, remember to use the terrain to LoS and force them to blink around to attack you. You said you're running Fresh Air, well FA is a great spec for ganking or dueling, but if you're going face to face with another glass class, it really comes down to who can land their full burst first. It's a hard match up because Thief can just peace out.

Consider swapping to Sword Weaver for a bit. Sword has much more defense built in plus its PBAoE punish thieves that get right in your face. Don't be afraid to run a bit more mixed stats too, I find celestial the easiest for dealing with thieves. The extra condi damage helps keeps them in check as they pull off and try to kite around, making them softer for when they re-engaged. If you're running purely power, swap out FA for Lightening Rod, Weakness is no joke and will cut the thieves burst in half. You have so many CC abilities on Weaver that you can proc LR pretty often. There are some really awesome LR Scepter Weavers out there too.

Otherwise it takes time man. You said yourself you're new to WvW. Thieves really benefit from fighting newer or unprepared players because they are built to be single target assassins. It will take time. And sometimes you just can't win. WvW is different than sPvP, it is unbalanced by design and admitting that is kinda hard to do. Carry Target Painter traps on you to Mark annoying thieves. It won't always save you but it should scare them enough to the point where you can retreat.

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@Affinity.7253 said:Either way, the ability for me to win is entirely in their hands. I want to know how to beat them without relying on them not playing well. Does anyone... ANYONE have a build or stratagem that can actually kill thiefs?

Sorry, but that about sums it up. Thief controls when you are allowed to hit them. It's not something that has any business existing in competitive mode, but it's how the class is designed. The best you can do is force a stalemate and either walk away or hope for them to get a little too greedy out of frustration. That's all the control you really have in that matchup.

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the 2 best advice you can have are:in WvW do not expect balance, thieves tactics of running the shit out of the fight is just the way they compensate their uselesness in zerg fight, you can win no prob in 1v1 against thief actually, since ele are masters of 1v1, but you seem to deny it so i won't even botherin Spvp thiefs are not even meta, just play a thief and learn how they work.Also what's your sPvp rank? thief prey on unaware player and noobs, so that may be the case

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What build do you use?

I have been running a mix of things in a vain attempt to survive thief fights. FA sc/f weaver, lightning rod staff tempest (with earth), celestial/trailblazers staff earth/fire tempest, celestial sword/d. The only thing I have not been using much in WvW is d/d.

I have only seen limited success w/ FA sc/f. Even when going with celestial staff or sword on tempest or weaver respectively I cannot win against thieves, just make the fights go longer. Even if I get them down to 20-30%, which happens often, one dodge roll and they aren't going to come back out until they are at 80+% health.

EDIT: The main reason I have only seen success with FA so far is that it can do some limited counter burst damage while defending, and it has amazing active mitigation with obsidian and swirling winds. Good thieves just get me to use my limited amount of mitigation with their infinite amount of burst (since all they need to burst is initiative and stealth), then reset and bursting after it is spent.

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If you want to cheese the fight, a really easy way to beat thief, and especially DE, is to run the pet glyph. Then just run in circles around some obstacle and watch as your pets slowly kill the thief. Then burst them once their health gets low. Granted, you probably still won't be able to kill any decent thief, since they'll still be able to run away from you pretty easily. But you won't lose.

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Hi! I'm playing thief main, core, Daredevil and deadeye.I'll try to be as helpful as possible.

First, we'll clarify some contextual elements. Then we'll look at types of thieves builds you're likely to encounter. And along side, suggestions and ideas.So first off, how to beat thief as a question is of course too short to be helpful. =) I know you know. It’s rather: how to beat/deal with X or Y build.They cannot do it all, each build have inherent weaknesses, so you must assess which builds you fight. There are many builds and each of them is as different as, let’s say, the difference between a Staff core ele, and a sword/focus weaver.

Here two examples:Example #1) A D/D condi thief (a bit a meme build) daredevil usually have little to no access to stealth and will look like they dodge endlessly. However, aside from 1-2 skills that you really got to dodge or cleanse, their condition ramp up time is super slow. (4x slower/lower than fire weaver for example in terms of DPS). That sort of thief/daredevil abuses death blossom, but they’re not actually invulnerable the whole time. Right before they land, you can hit, and he won’t be able to avoid/dodge.It’s a meme build, very annoying, and the constant dodging makes the fight messy, and confusing. But Lotus Training only throws 1 stack of 2 second bleed, and 1 torment and 1 cripple, for again 2 seconds max. Lots of numbers and hits… but all tiny, you can more or less ignore that and aim to hit him when he is about to finish his death blossom animation.

Example #2) A rifle build with Deadeye AND Shadow Art (both with a focus on stealth) usually use either Deadly Art or Critical Strike trait line for optimizing damage outputs. They’re not great dodgers, and are extremely squishy. Indeed, to build around those “infamous” “one-shot'' strategies (which is mark, rifle 2, rifle 2, stealth, death judgement), they need to be using stats with very little vitality or toughness. They sit at anywhere between 11-17k HP.Also, they don’t have Trickery line (therefore a small initiative pool), and therefore after a burst… they can’t do much for a few moments, use AoE on the area he used to be OR use channel ability. Channel skills will follow him through stealth.They don’t land many hits, but each hit can deal significant damage. Reflects do wonder (Tempest Aftersheet, Earth-staff3, Earth-Focus 4, Earth-warhorn 4), so do blinds. You can punish him to 50% HP if you reflect Death Judgment.

Understanding thieves builds and their sequences of attack (combos or rotations) is very important. Aside from one example below where I'll go in detail, I'll keep it light as a start... and I’ll use generalizations, which are imperfect by definition to account for the diversity of situations, but hopefully it helps to see clear through that.

IfMelee thief (D/D, D/P, S/D, S/P, staff) As soon as he gets in range for a hit (after a port sword2, dagger/pistol3, steal/swipe, dagger2)You could: pop an aura (ideally shocking, but other will be helpful too), then go for an AoE skill centered around your character.

IfMelee thief (D/D, D/P, S/D, S/P, staff) As a weaver: Make it messier than the thief!So one good way, typically, is to rotate around your elements as soon as you can and alternating between your evade/daze skills, and your AoE.One evade, followed by an AoE, followed by a utility. Rinse, repeat.

Your sword 2 (all except fire), are good: 2 evades (earth, and water) and daze (air), they do damage while being defensive as you know, and any melee thief will find that extremely annoying especially if you walk around too in “unpredictable ways”, as they’ll need to be spending their utility port, steals, AND their initiatives to keep up.A really good combo can be:Earth-Fire: sword3, focus 5, sword/focus3, -> waterWater-Earth: sword2, sword/focus3, focus 4 -> airAir-Water: sword2 (daze), sword/focus3From there, if you have the upper hand: fire, for sword2 and 3, then Earth (which brings you to the top again of the loop). If you don’t have the upper hand, you can still go for fire, but then make you you dodge, and wait to be back to Earth-Fire to re-engage.OR if you’re still not there, earth, for and evade on sword2, focus5 for the long daze.

Arcane shield is a good stun break and defensive utility too against a melee thief, and of course don’t forget Twist of Fate as a weaver, but if you use Twist… MOVE while using it, don’t stand still.If he goes stealth, you have 3 options:

  • Use any AoE available on the potential location OR centered around yourself.
  • Keep doing your rotation as if he was there
  • Do an AoE and autoattack in random pattern

You can out sustain a thief this way (barrier, heal, and evades) and disturb his own rotations.It will require way more effort from your part, but many thieves will just be completely lost in such a situation.Also, keep in mind that you want to avoid any skills longer than 3/4sec as D/P thief will try to daze to mess up your own combos, and long activation skills offer too many chances for the thief to dodge.Don’t expect to land everything, but some of your skills are very potent, and given thief generally low HP, you don’t actually need to land many hits to make him retreat, or even blow him up completely.He'll easily clear off bleed/burn as you have little cover-condi as you mentionned, BUT keep in mind that thief have 4 (main) ways to clean conditions and not all of them are reliable or that when using them, there are drawbacks. Also, you can re-apply burn and bleed faster than his condi cleanse capacities unless you face a daredevil that uses multiple ways to cleanses condi, and even then, there is a trick!

  • On evades (daredevil), it's silly, but if you hit less frequently, the thief will struggle more. Basically, you put on some burns, then you move away for 2 secondes, he'll eat 2 secondes of burn, and for such low HP 2-4 sec can be quite significant. This is no joke. People always fnd that suggestion silly, but you can really take the control of the rythme of the fight this way unless you play against the most skilled thieves obviously.
  • On stealth -> he'll need to be out of stealth to deal his damage, so altho he will clean it quickly once he stealth, if you keep reapplying, while avoiding his most dangerous attacks, you'll gain the upper hand after 15-30 secondes of fight.
  • Trickery, using withdraw (heal) or Roll for Initiatives (stun break).. will force him to spend precious defensive skills
  • Utilities such as signet of agility (30 sec CD) and shadow steps (50 sec CD), 3 condis each.

If facing condi thief P/DIdentify whether it's a daredevil (600 range swipe) or a core thief (1200 range steal), because both can be very slippery, but in different manners.P/D thief will port-in to you to use P/D3 Shadow strike, then blast 2X Repeater. And they’ll try to repeat that by stealing to you to port in, or using Shadow Step if they think they have the upper hand.So now, to specific tips/hints...

1) The second he ports-in:1.a) Dodge + daze. Using a blind can also work here. (If you are fast enough you avoid the shadowstrike if he is on core thief),OR1.b) Daze, do auto-attack and keep your other disabling ability after he used his break stuns such as Roll of Initiatives (50 sec CD) or his Shadowstep (also 50 sec CD). If you successfully disable him, you can try to burst, but Roll or Shadowstep are likely to have you miss your burst, so I would really advice for something that blinds and will mess up his rotation.(If you missed your dodge (1.a) or missed your daze (1.b) and he is already gone, to to step 2))(If he plays with Shadow Art, for bonus dmg on stealth and venom applications, and such, he's likely to steal, try a sneak attack with all the bonuses (venom trait, plus the leeching, plus maybe an actual venom skill) before doing Shadow strike, leaving you more room for a successful counter using reflect, or blinds, or else).

2.a) The second he ports-out using Shadow strike you can either port to him using a leap/port of your own, as the thief will be stuck out of "shadow strike" for a short moment, and will force him to disengage.OR2.b) The second he ports-out using Shadow strike, you run opposite direction and dodge, as aside from steal and shadowstep (especially if daredevil), there isn't many ways for him to get back "to" you and complete his full rotation for optimal damages.OR2.c) The second he ports-out using Shadow strike, you hit reflect. Why? He’s most dangerous skill is the flip skill on Shadow Strike (repeater) and it does not last forever.

3) Try to dodge or block Repeater and use range, because other ranged options for the thief are actually not that great, you can overpower the boy quite easily. If he uses stealth, go for AoE. And swap attunement for projectile negation or reflection to be ready for his next burst. P/D are quite predictable, they only really have one main way to deal damage, which is getting in range, using P/D3, repeater 2X, and rinse and repeat.

4) Sigil of cleansing to remove cover condi on attunement swap, or running either fire auras with cleanses, water with cleanses on regen, or utilities. To survive the condi burst, let cover-condi wear off before you go for your cleanse

5) Don't be fooled by the torment application. It's only 2k damage IF you move, 1k if you don't. The bleeding (or poison to a lesser extent) is threatening both because of the large volume of damage, AND in the case of poison because it weakens your heals, of course and as you know.

Try to find a thief sparring partner to test out rotation (I'm playing on NA by the way), you can ping me. Or, find the build that you struggle the most against, make a thief and bring it to PvP lobby and use each skills multiple times on dummys and foes in the training ground, you'll see how certain skills can be interupted, countered and circumvent much more easily.Fighting a thief a always trickier because of his inate interactions.

Also, Vallun did a great video on "how to fight thief" (

) it's quite decent actually. =)
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