27 replies to this topic

[messagetogod]

I had been through hundreds of matches and its always thiefs that we have absolutly no counter for but this specific build of thief is totally unkillable even with 3 players firing everything they got and still get killed by him.

What this thief do is laying caltrops ,dodge(lay caltrops), Death blossom, dodge(lay caltrops),Death blossom,Death blossom,dodge(lay caltrops),stealth once in a while,comes back in full health in about 3 sec with theves guild,repeat on a capture point.

He keeps doing countless dodge and death blossom untill the whole area is full of caltrops like 6 of them and everyone is stacking 15+ bleeds and dying while he is caping the area without any harm.

I places 3 phamtasms and other engineer place turrets around but they all died in bleeds or their attacks flatout misses all the time.

I tried using choas storm and stack choas armor and everything but it didn't stop him at all.
Tried Moa it just misses when he does death blossom or he goes invisible.
Tried Mind wrecking as often as possible, no hit.
Tried Null Field, didn't stop the bleed (stacking really really fast even inside the field) nor him.
Tried auto attacking, hardly hurt him.
Tried invisible, dies bleeding while he coutinues to place caltrops.
Move away from capture point, he captures and stays there while we get hilmilated because 3 or more players can't stop 1 petty thief.

Even with 5 players can't lay a finger on him whith every aoe we have and he manages to kill off a few of us single handedly.

How do you fight this kind of thief?

[Breakin]

What was the name of this thief?

[Playpad]

use distortion as often as any possible. you dont take bleeding damage if you dodge while caltrops are up. you just need to be carefull if he uses his utility caltrops. they are quite harder to deal with imo but still possible though. i'd consider to use mind wrack especially if he's stealthy since he won't use dodging skills while in stealth. try to hit him with confusion if any possible.

null field is unreplacable. keep in mind conditionsthiefs aren't suppose to stun/immobile you that often or not even once. change one of your stun breakers for arcane thievery for example. it might be even considerable not to use moa but time warp and burst him down after getting him stunned.

Edited by Playpad, 03 October 2012 - 07:04 PM.

[messagetogod]

Playpad, on 02 October 2012 - 01:24 PM, said:

use distortion as often as any possible. you dont take bleeding damage if you dodge while caltrops are up. you just need to be carefull if he uses his utility caltrops. they are quite harder to deal with imo but still possible though. use mind wrack no matter if you can see him or not. i'd consider to use mind wrack especially if he's stealthy since he won't use dodging skills while in stealth. try to hit him with confusion if any possible.

null field is unreplacable. keep in mind conditionsthiefs aren't suppose to stun/immobile you that often or not even once. change one of your stun breakers for arcane thievery for example. it might be even considerable not to use moa but time warp and burst him down after getting him stunned.

I'm talking about a thief that could boost his endurance gain with sigils or runes or whatever i donno into a near constant dodging and death blossom spamming invulnerable stacking and probally toughness stacking thief, that is unkillable  even when 5 of my team fire everything they could.

There was 1 fight with the 5 of us, he escaped  because the fight is dragging VERY long and hes unable to cap the point but he was able to down 2 or more people but unable to finish them.The caltrops are everywhere and the henge is really small area and everyone is stacking crazy ammount of bleeds that even a necromancer would die from.

Do you have any idea how damm broken that thief is?

[Gladium]

messagetogod, on 02 October 2012 - 04:59 PM, said:

I'm talking about a thief that could boost his endurance gain with sigils or runes or whatever i donno into a near constant dodging and death blossom spamming invulnerable stacking and probally toughness stacking thief, that is unkillable  even when 5 of my team fire everything they could.

There was 1 fight with the 5 of us, he escaped  because the fight is dragging VERY long and hes unable to cap the point but he was able to down 2 or more people but unable to finish them.The caltrops are everywhere and the henge is really small area and everyone is stacking crazy ammount of bleeds that even a necromancer would die from.

Do you have any idea how damm broken that thief is?

You're aware that the dodge caltrops only affect a tiny area/disappear almost immediately and the utility one has a long casting animation?


I don't do much sPvP so I can't help much with the rest, but you seem to be more afraid of caltrops than you should be.

edit:typo.

Edited by Gladium, 02 October 2012 - 05:06 PM.

[Playpad]

messagetogod, on 02 October 2012 - 04:59 PM, said:

I'm talking about a thief that could boost his endurance gain with sigils or runes or whatever i donno into a near constant dodging and death blossom spamming invulnerable stacking and probally toughness stacking thief, that is unkillable  even when 5 of my team fire everything they could.

There was 1 fight with the 5 of us, he escaped  because the fight is dragging VERY long and hes unable to cap the point but he was able to down 2 or more people but unable to finish them.The caltrops are everywhere and the henge is really small area and everyone is stacking crazy ammount of bleeds that even a necromancer would die from.

Do you have any idea how damm broken that thief is?

i gave you hints how to improve your odds winning again such thiefs and you tell me once again he is dodging and dropping caltrops. if you dont want to consider improving your gameplay, continue holding on "thiefs are unbeatable and OP and such" and deal with it.

Edited by Playpad, 02 October 2012 - 05:31 PM.

[Drekor]

That's a bacon winged unicorn built thief... why would you want to kill such a majestic creature?

[The Josip]

messagetogod, on 02 October 2012 - 04:59 PM, said:

There was 1 fight with the 5 of us, he escaped  because the fight is dragging VERY long

Mmm 5 of you, 1 thief, and very long fight? That thief must've been extremely good to survive a fight longer than 20sec, and all 5 of you must've been extremely bad.

I don't play sPvP but in WvW thieves die extremely fast to me, and I only lose to a thief when he uses stupidly overpowered stuff and jumps on me from behind (while im moving) and kills me in literary 2 seconds before I even see what happens (stuff like Steal + Cloak and Dagger + Backstab = over 20k dmg to Rare armored). If I have one second of proper reaction time, he dies.

[Louis8k8]

Drekor, on 02 October 2012 - 05:58 PM, said:

That's a bacon winged unicorn built thief... why would you want to kill such a majestic creature?

Yeah, why would anyone want to kill us ^__^". (I'm sure anyone that fought against one would want us dead)

Okay so unicorn thief is kind of a HARD-counter class that completely shuts down a lot of classes/builds out there.

For 1v1 as a mesmer, there is currently no viable build that even soft-counters a unicorn thief. Your closest bet is staff/scepter+pistol and go all the way into confusion build. Continuously combo and keep up chaos armor, and use Time Warp. MOA is a waste of an elite vs unicorn as they either dodge it or simply tank the way out of your damage and go back to being invincinble.

Both Confusion and Chaos armor will hit us even though we are spamming dodges, blossom dodges, roll for initiative, whirling axe and shadow step. Unicorn thieves have 3 stun breakers. The roll for initiative being the worst as it almost always rolls us way too far. Death Blossom has a very short range despite being a leap.

If applicable, stay near the edge of a cliff. Death Blossom is not HS. We don't leap to our targets, we leap in the direction of our target. There's a lot of nightmarish places for us to fight (the boardwalk on capicorn, clock tower on khylo...) where we keep rolling/flying off the edge and then becoming vulnerable to damage.

If you really wanna spec to fight unicorn thieves, get condition removal, ignore burst and ignore stun breakers. We don't use stuns, we don't use stealth. The only time we stealth is cloak and dagger to finish off a downed enemy. I personally don't recommend that as you would just be weaker against everything else you'd find in PvP.

===========
Generally speaking, avoid 1v1 with a unicorn thief (Of course you'd have to encounter and fight before you recognize what it is) unless you're a condition-well-hybrid necromancer, a turret-flame engineer or a defensive elementalist. These are weird counters but they are full of fast attacking aoes that will damage us in the few milliseconds that we are vulnerable to damage between skills.

We get shut down hard in team fights against any team that knows what they're doing. Any chain of stun/immobilize/dazes will shut us down. Of course this gives the unicorn's team a slight advantage as one single player just forced everyone to use all their important skills just to kill it. 1v1 is the only thing I'm confident in with this thief build. Any serious and decent team and kill a unicorn thief when they focus on it (with conditions, not burst)

=====
BONUS:
If you want to kill the unicorn thief on YOUR TEAM. Use time warp. I lost so many times because somebody sped up my death blossom (aka reduced invulnerability) and got me killed.

And fyi unicorns have around 3k armor. 1v1 as a direct burst is gonna fail hard. Burst is only a threat in team fights when we run out of stun breakers.

=====
Unicorn thief become underwhelming once you screw up a button or fat-finger something. Balancing between rolls, swaps, utils and blossom has to be almost machine-like to keep up constant invulnerability. Player's can't keep playing -perfectly- so mistakes are quite common and openings will come up as well.

Edited by Louis8k8, 02 October 2012 - 10:06 PM.

[Kutsus]

The caltrops utility is much more dangerous than dodge caltrops. The dodge version only lasts ~2s and applies a very short duration bleed. The utility sits around for quite a while and stacks up some decent damage if you stand in it.

I'd like to point out to you that you can still get your point across without exaggerating.

Edited by Kutsus, 03 October 2012 - 12:10 AM.

[Juggernautp]

messagetogod, on 02 October 2012 - 06:19 AM, said:

Even with 5 players can't lay a finger on him whith every aoe we have and he manages to kill off a few of us single handedly.

How do you fight this kind of thief?

I find it hard to believe a single theif gave 5 members a hard time, I have NEVER seen any class or build give 5 people a hard time in taking it down.

[messagetogod]

Louis8k8, on 02 October 2012 - 09:57 PM, said:

Yeah, why would anyone want to kill us ^__^". (I'm sure anyone that fought against one would want us dead)

Okay so unicorn thief is kind of a HARD-counter class that completely shuts down a lot of classes/builds out there.

For 1v1 as a mesmer, there is currently no viable build that even soft-counters a unicorn thief. Your closest bet is staff/scepter+pistol and go all the way into confusion build. Continuously combo and keep up chaos armor, and use Time Warp. MOA is a waste of an elite vs unicorn as they either dodge it or simply tank the way out of your damage and go back to being invincinble.

Both Confusion and Chaos armor will hit us even though we are spamming dodges, blossom dodges, roll for initiative, whirling axe and shadow step. Unicorn thieves have 3 stun breakers. The roll for initiative being the worst as it almost always rolls us way too far. Death Blossom has a very short range despite being a leap.

If applicable, stay near the edge of a cliff. Death Blossom is not HS. We don't leap to our targets, we leap in the direction of our target. There's a lot of nightmarish places for us to fight (the boardwalk on capicorn, clock tower on khylo...) where we keep rolling/flying off the edge and then becoming vulnerable to damage.

If you really wanna spec to fight unicorn thieves, get condition removal, ignore burst and ignore stun breakers. We don't use stuns, we don't use stealth. The only time we stealth is cloak and dagger to finish off a downed enemy. I personally don't recommend that as you would just be weaker against everything else you'd find in PvP.

===========
Generally speaking, avoid 1v1 with a unicorn thief (Of course you'd have to encounter and fight before you recognize what it is) unless you're a condition-well-hybrid necromancer, a turret-flame engineer or a defensive elementalist. These are weird counters but they are full of fast attacking aoes that will damage us in the few milliseconds that we are vulnerable to damage between skills.

We get shut down hard in team fights against any team that knows what they're doing. Any chain of stun/immobilize/dazes will shut us down. Of course this gives the unicorn's team a slight advantage as one single player just forced everyone to use all their important skills just to kill it. 1v1 is the only thing I'm confident in with this thief build. Any serious and decent team and kill a unicorn thief when they focus on it (with conditions, not burst)

=====
BONUS:
If you want to kill the unicorn thief on YOUR TEAM. Use time warp. I lost so many times because somebody sped up my death blossom (aka reduced invulnerability) and got me killed.

And fyi unicorns have around 3k armor. 1v1 as a direct burst is gonna fail hard. Burst is only a threat in team fights when we run out of stun breakers.

=====
Unicorn thief become underwhelming once you screw up a button or fat-finger something. Balancing between rolls, swaps, utils and blossom has to be almost machine-like to keep up constant invulnerability. Player's can't keep playing -perfectly- so mistakes are quite common and openings will come up as well.

Lousis8k8 said is true, so this trolling unicorn build is confirmed to be invincible against almost everything when played perfectly?

Although not 100% perfect on this thief i encounter, but he has reached a near perfection in excercution.

Well i just seen a few similar builds before, just another one spams cloak and dagger and remained invisible forever but the latest one with death blossom spam is even more potent as no attck can hit him and he still gets to capture the point.

Edited by messagetogod, 03 October 2012 - 04:23 AM.

[zlipus]

unicorn thief i like it!

I've fought these kind of thieves before and i'd say its about 60-40 in their favor. I run a high power shatter build and its as simple as this, if my 3 clone F1 lands, they lose. If my 3 clone F2 lands, they lose. Its getting them to land is the problem. Running with greatsword and timing #5 to peg them as they land will GREATLY sway the fight in your favor, you suddenly have tons of breathing room and a few seconds to plan out.

I HIGHLY advise running with decoy/blink. Ideally you want to decoy, then dodge roll a clone because it won't break the stealth and it makes it appear as you have left stealth. And blink will pretty much hard counter basilisk poison if you can land it in a good spot (remember if you have LoS its fair game).

For the most part i've won these fights because they have to run a build that is so squishy and we have skills that can systematically land on them its just a matter of who plays it out better and how much interference there is. Again, this is from the perspective of a shatter powered build, i doubt a tanky/condition mesmer could survive long enough to counter their conditions unless they spec'd heavily into condition removals.

[Winterfell]

I think you ment this on, very annoying!

Btw, was testing in this tournament to be a treb protector!

[messagetogod]

zlipus, on 03 October 2012 - 06:38 AM, said:

unicorn thief i like it!

I've fought these kind of thieves before and i'd say its about 60-40 in their favor. I run a high power shatter build and its as simple as this, if my 3 clone F1 lands, they lose. If my 3 clone F2 lands, they lose. Its getting them to land is the problem. Running with greatsword and timing #5 to peg them as they land will GREATLY sway the fight in your favor, you suddenly have tons of breathing room and a few seconds to plan out.

I HIGHLY advise running with decoy/blink. Ideally you want to decoy, then dodge roll a clone because it won't break the stealth and it makes it appear as you have left stealth. And blink will pretty much hard counter basilisk poison if you can land it in a good spot (remember if you have LoS its fair game).

For the most part i've won these fights because they have to run a build that is so squishy and we have skills that can systematically land on them its just a matter of who plays it out better and how much interference there is. Again, this is from the perspective of a shatter powered build, i doubt a tanky/condition mesmer could survive long enough to counter their conditions unless they spec'd heavily into condition removals.

I think the one you fought isn't exactly the same build as the one i met.
The person i encounter may have great amount of toughness or even vitality as 5 person firing everything at him bearly got him below half his hp.

Winterfell, on 03 October 2012 - 04:18 PM, said:

I think you ment this on, very annoying!

Btw, was testing in this tournament to be a treb protector!

Totally not immortal and not the kind playstyle i was talking.
He would not be attacking the treb because he has a great disadvantage on destroying it as bleed does not affect it.

[Louis8k8]

As I've already said. Unicorns have 3k armor. They are traited to heal constantly making them seem like they have a lot of vitality (13k hp, very low). You could set sigils for toughness AND vitality but healing and condition damage is usually way more important.

Unicorns are weak to condition (toughness does nothing and low hp), if they have high vitality, they either can't heal or deal very weak dps.

Shatter is not a good skill vs these thieves. It's as likely of missing like most other skills that are ineffective. But if you are (gonna happen regardless of mesmer build), use F2 or F3. Daze probably helps the most. But confusion is one of the best ways to damage these kind of thieves if you can get the condition to land.

[Alzun]

Read Lowell's Guide in the Thief PvP section.  It talks all about the Thief and lists several builds (including this "unkillable" thief).  You don't even have to read all of it, though it would improve your understanding of the Thief profession.

I'm not sure how 5 of you couldn't kill one (1!) Thief.  I don't care how good he was, there is no way that was happening, unless he was hacking.

As Louis said, they don't have much health or armor.  Conditions eat them alive.  Don't attack them when they're doing the leap spin attack (called Death Blossom).  They evade while doing, but there is about a halfsecond pause between one DB and the other.

[lay]

This build is so much fun to run, and I have messed with 5 players at a time, and lived a good long while too - would down a lot, but be unable to finish them as the sescond a unicorn thief stops moving, its dead. They also melt to any form of aoe, conditions, and stuns/immobs. Mostly conditions and aoe will get them though. Also - you can of course just walk away, aoe from a distance, and then take your point back after he retreats...

[Sunshine_N_Rainbows]

Quote

For 1v1 as a mesmer, there is currently no viable build that even soft-counters a unicorn thief. Your closest bet is staff/scepter+pistol and go all the way into confusion build.

I'd assume this would work pretty well. Spec for confusion make them kill themselves or go inactive. Shame confusion build isn't more useful in general.

[fafnr]

Drekor, on 02 October 2012 - 05:58 PM, said:

That's a bacon winged unicorn built thief... why would you want to kill such a majestic creature?

lol

[Cebbar]

If one build is this powerful it will receive a nerf.  Anyone remember "Incomming!" Paragons?

Anyhow, thiefs are currently my hardest 1v1 fights.  I get annoyed by this Shadow Refuge --> Summon Thief Zerg method of fighting also, but not really met this unicorn thief.  My initial reactions would be that it's not worth building to be able to take down such a Thief as this "unicorn" as you'll be sub-par for other situations in WvW, though giving their conditions back to them might be the best idea.  I have a friend who plays a condition spamming thief - he said Necros can be horrible because of their propensity to send his own bleeds back to him.  Seems to me, from what you say, that they just keep dodging from you and laying down little patches of spiky hate.  Aren't you better off just running in the opposite direction and leaving them with their caltrops to grow old and lonely together?

Yea I'd feel like a wimp too, but if this build is just made to troll this much... why bother with them.

[Winterfell]

Mine guildie plays one now ^^ Tried some duels yesterday, without nullfield and archane thievery is hard. But with it, its pretty easy, pistol stun him when you do thievery, or else he will just evade it while spamming.

Wanna do your burst as shatter, divirsion first so he cant evade. than sword n3 soo hes immobilize etc etc ^^

[slowdive99]

spec for confusion + disenchanter phantasm,
problem solved.

[Ninja Battle Lion]

Tried running Torch? It's not half bad, really, and straight up owns melee classes.

[Heartlust]

You have a lot of invisible available from your utilies AND elites (most people disregard it but it's very useful with a low cd when everything else has been blown). Get a pistol and GS phantasm with earth sigils attached to them in addition to the trait giving illusions fury and bleed on crits. Let them do most of the work while you are standing in the back with your GS or being invis. If he tries to get close and stuns you, just blink away, GS wave or use sword disortion. It isn't too hard, most of it comes down to not getting struck when you don't know he's there, and in that case just blow your invis illusion util immediately.

[fafnr]

This thread is SOOOO needed.  Theives need to have Steal toned down a bit,  its ridiculous a traited steal thief can kill me before id even think about hitting him with moa,  im just backstabbed/steal'd to death and if I dodge?  Here comes the heartseeker an theyre on me again.   Its total bs.

Theif in spvp tonite was hitting me for almost 8k with steal almost every time he got it off.  Literally killed me in 4 seconds every single time and I didnt have time to do squat and blurred frenzy should last 5 seconds if thieves can keep that retarded ability lol.

My toughness is around 1400 and Im soooo sick of theives that im about to try 1200 power an precision an try to get 2300 toughness just to last more than 5 seconds for the novelty.  Not even sure that would help.

All the tips in this thread Ive tried most an still get wiped by geared thieves with that mug spec. If anyone has any other tips please god share them!

[RandolfRa]

Quote

All the tips in this thread Ive tried most an still get wiped by geared thieves with that mug spec. If anyone has any other tips please god share them!

Try to attack the thief as soon as it's possible, don't wait for him to get close. If you use GS, cast iberserker immeditately when he is at range.
If he gets close and stealths, wait a few seconds / move to some direction, then decoy, and move to the direction he came from* or any less expected direction. When in stealth, you can dodge to create a clone or two if you have that trait. You should now be behind / away from the thief and have some clones up.
This seems to give edge at least against the "ganker" type, high damage thiefs in wvw.

*Somehow they always expect you to move away from them.

Edited by RandolfRa, 19 October 2012 - 02:52 PM.

[fafnr]

RandolfRa, on 19 October 2012 - 02:48 PM, said:

Try to attack the thief as soon as it's possible, don't wait for him to get close. If you use GS, cast iberserker immeditately when he is at range.
If he gets close and stealths, wait a few seconds / move to some direction, then decoy, and move to the direction he came from* or any less expected direction. When in stealth, you can dodge to create a clone or two if you have that trait. You should now be behind / away from the thief and have some clones up.
This seems to give edge at least against the "ganker" type, high damage thiefs in wvw.

*Somehow they always expect you to move away from them.

Normally Randolph I run with Sword/Focus or Sword/Pistol  an staff to swap to.  Last night I was using Sword/Sword and Scepter/Pistol  didnt quite have the hang of it but it woudlnt have mattered really,  getting evaporated in 4-5 seconds is a fun killer.

Oh PS,  does anyones Decoy just not stealth you  a lot of the time?  Ill hit it,  it creates a clone but no stealth.  Something that bugs me but never remembered to bring it up til now.

Edited by fafnr, 20 October 2012 - 04:21 AM.