Guild Wars 2

Hi all.

Fairly new Ele (hit 80 yesterday). Love playing support! Love the dagger/focus (PvP, WvW) build and the dagger/warhorn for healing fractals or other stuff and kittening around.

In sPvP, I’m starting to get the hang of it: chilling with teammates, keeping them alive. In WvW too: I was fighting over a camp in a 2v1 and they couldn’t kill me, though it was taking everything I had to stay alive. But I’m just learning, for now. Dying once a game.

But I’m having trouble against thieves or DH guardians. Any suggestions you guys have? It’s the ridiculous burst/intrerrupts they have. Or is that our weakness?

Things I tried:
-timing/spotting burst with Earth Overload or Obsidian flesh
-switching to water but not Overloading right away to bait an interrupt (though thieves still shut it down)
-putting distance between us, with lightning flash, when I need to heal

i don´t know your build. Thief depends on it heavily.
With focus i beat dragon hunters quite easy, but you need some punch to actually kill.
This is a training issue. Fight dragon hunters and use swirling winds and especially magnetic wave at the right time. With tempest you might have another reflect.
For traps doge, obsidian flesh if you want to assault him or even earth overload works well.
Thiefs are hard to beat. They disengage more or less at will. Against a thief you need to hit him very hard at once to actually kill him. My first month i lost most fights. The thief attacked, disengaged, attacked, disengage, attack … kill … Now the don´t kill me anymore but good ones just escape. So don´t be sad if you get low thief kills.
What helps against most thiefs is a bit of armor and earth atunement. I regulaly beat them using stone heart, but in earth you can´t kill him if he cleanses the bleeding (like cleanse on dodge). So agaisnt a thief you need burst (condi works too) to actually kill him or he will reset as he pleases. Flash freeze is a good spell if the thief cloaks. I keep it for that moment to eiher slow him and in addition to get a clue where he is.

Things I tried:
-timing/spotting burst with Earth Overload or Obsidian flesh
Against DH this works well to mitigate his damage. For thiefs it only buys you a few seconds. The earth overload can catch him with luck.
-switching to water but not Overloading right away to bait an interrupt (though thieves still shut it down)
Water is quite weak in this fights. For me all feels to slow. Sometimes the interrupt from comet is nice but the only reason i go for water OL is when there is no other option left or heal the team. For me water often feels like consuming to much time. In duels or unter high preassure in general its more of a finish me call.
-putting distance between us, with lightning flash, when I need to heal
This doesn´t work well aginst good players wit gap closers and thief + DH usually have that. You can´t kite this classes well. Kiting DH is for avoiding traps but otherwise not helpful.

But i play a more offensive hybrid. I attack them as much as possible. I use fire/air/earth most of the time and water only very short inbetween to fetch a regen or interrupt. This means wait for ele goes water OL fails against me ^^. I mitigate damage while constantly trying to hit and don´t put on permaregen.