Guild Wars 2

Any ideas how to beat a thief 1v1 in wvw as an ele? or is it impossible

not sure if serious

Be as fast and bursty as they are. = easy win for you.

Keep thief on the defensive side

Depends on the thief build and what you’re running really.

P/D is the only build that ele might have a problem with but you can run away from those quite easily.

To beat a P/D thief you have to basically avoid his shadow strike and cloak and dagger (shocking aura is a good choice) , if he get’s in stealth there is little you can do to counter his sneak attack (apart from dodging) . The P/d will probably only use those skills when he gets close to you so watch out for that. Condition removal is also crucial when fighting p/d, if you lack it there is no chance and you should just run.

1v1 is easy, the problem is that thieves never roam alone. Just this morning I downed a thief 3 times and every single time I get interrupted and killed when trying to stomp. Thieves also like to jump into 1v1 fights often in the opponents favor. This is why their backstab is so ruthless because they stab you in the back right when you least expect it.

As for how to beat a thief; here’s a tip:
if they use death blossom alot watch your bleedstacks.
if they don’t their burst thief so you should apply weakness on them when you can
if they stealth count 2-3 seconds and then dodge preventing them from stealthing again with no. 5
if they use shadow refuge counter with updraft or churning earth
if they roll around alot apply movement impeding condis.
if they use sword, stay away from it….

few things which are relevant for almost all thief builds, this is from a d/d ele prespective.

make sure to go to earth attunement before they gonna burst you, for the protection.
for example when a d/p thief goes to stealth, you go to earth attunement he will either burst you on protection or he will have to stealth again.

use shocking aura . the aura on water is also useful.

burning speed + lightning flash. while a thief is on your back you obviously cant hit him with burning speed. with lightning flash you can hit him while hes constantly on you.

If you are a d/d ele, you should be dominating the thief…

D/D eles can faceroll thieves all day. You need to utilize your defensive cc capabilities that come from Air and Earth (Shocking Aura is FANTASTIC btw), as well as utilize your fire fields to take control of the playing field. Thieves are actually the easiest class to fight since you can easily outlast their burst.

updraft and shocking aura are your best friends here. save your aoes for shadow refuge, and dont blow dodge when they cnd, spam aoe instead. Trying to get protection up for their burst is iffy at best given that you’ve just wasted cooldowns if they happen to have sword on swap.

Also ignore the swasima guy. you have no good weakness options and deathblossom is lolworthy.

I never have problem with thieves, unless they have some kittened pp/pd condi build. I can beat dd/sd or whatever everyday. You just need to make sure they wast most stuff on you like basilisk venom. If you see them pop it, pop shocking aura asap. Basically you are both stunned then and he has his elite wasted. If hes playing dp be sure to stand outside the blind field he puts down for dps. My best friend is my burningspeed + lightning flash, I can easily put out 10k dmg in one combo. Burning freaks them out most of the time also.

And how do you deal with D/P Thiefs? Shadow Shot: 5 sec Blindness, Heartseeker, HS, HS, Shadow Shot, HS and/or Shadow Shot all day untill you die … Or he can just spam HS, if you want to make some distance with Scepter or Staff … If you remove Blindness from yourself, he can use it again and again and again …No needs for Blinding Powder at all, when Shadow Shot is so much stronger for 1v1 …

It never kills me. Thieves are super predictable and if you play right with your dodges you can outplay them easily. Just burn them once and they panic so bad. I am playing with energy/battle sigil on my daggers, which gives me loads of dodges due to attunement swaps. Also Renewing Stamina (II in Arcana) helps a lot. The more you duel them, the fast you learn how to counter. The more you duel the same thief, the more predictable that person gets. Worked for me in every situation!

It just depends on the thief build. I don’t have a problem with thief’s really once you understand how they play. I do a lot of spvp and I usually use s/f. So this is coming from s/f stand point. They typically have around 14k-16k hp and very squishy, so keep that in mind. And our burst is pretty nice

-If your going against s/d, you will have to time your attacks so he won’t be able to evade. Make sure you have your protection from earth attunement to mitigate the dmg. I usually have Arcane Shield to mitigate some dmg as well, and once it explodes, does a nice bit of dmg. Time your burst and they usually end up dead.

-If your going against d/p, they will usually play the hide and attack game. Make sure you have your protection up from earth and be ready to burst them when they appear. I usually stay in earth and use my earth 5 invuln and burst them down. If they 5,2 combo away, I go to water and bait them in but ready to use arcane shield. Once they reappear, burst down.

Hope that helps. Everybody is playing d/d nowadays, I can honestly say that for me its much harder to burst down than with s/f. d/d ele’s have way more sustain and it takes you a second to stack that might. When I play s/f, I don’t rely on the might stacking as much and the burst is solid.

Depends on what kinda thief you’re dealing with..

The shadow arts thief
Pretty common, both in power and condition form. They’re in the lower bracket of dealing direct damage, but the numbers can still go pretty high on ele’s with strength runes (5-10K depending on your squishyness). The danger in these builds is the extreme survival, especially in the D/P variant. There’s no excuse for a D/P to die in a 1v1 if he does play right. Its basically a “failed, try again”-process. The idea is to try and get a good row of backstabs in (3 in a row is usually the end of the (bunker) ele) and if he/she failed retreat into stealth to generate health. You’ll have to try and lure him out of stealth while you know he has no stunbreakers, because really – with stunbreakers up its just impossible to burst them (as a d/d). If you can’t get him to do so and he’s doing a decent job of dodging your fire burst you might aswell just take out the fgs and take off, he’ll find a hole in you to put his dagger through with time. It might be (a bit) lame, but its highly effective. Especially in situations where the thief is outmanned.

Trickery power builds
These are the OMGWTFBBQ power house builds. They’re standard in PvP and the (EU) GvG scene. It are high risk, high reward builds. They are incredibly squishy but the DPS in beyond insane. Both parties can’t really afford mistakes; if you make a mistake he’ll dagger your kitten , but on the other hand its allot easier to burst these guys. Skills like drakes breath are notorious killers for these thiefs since they have little to no condi removal, so they’re excelent methods to get these thiefs within burstable HP ranges.

S/D builds
Can be played with or without trickery. The one without trickery has more dps, but with trickery has better sustain (healing from mug), vigor from bountiful. Don’t throw all burst in at once with these guys at the start, all builds mentioned above are slippery due to the massive use of stealth, S/D doesn’t. It has an abundant amount of dodges and shadow steps.

Fighting a good thief requires you to play 2 games at once; first of all GW2 (you can leave now, captain O) and a mind game. Especially with elementalists since your attunements are on display for everyone (when you attune to fire you’re not about to heal yourself, are you?). And sometimes you might already be dead before you even realized it (thank you, Ice Shard Stab.

Some other do’s/don’t are:

• Preemptively using your stability if you see him pop basilisk venom. The trickery thiefs will just strip it (or actually, steal it), and the shadow arts thiefs will just wait 7 seconds in stealth for it to drop off. (You don’t want to know how much this useless preemptive utility popping occurs)
• Always, always watch your and their boons when fighting S/D thieves. They will try to steal your carefully build might stacks. Protect these with other boons at all times, if he manages to steal them anyway and he still has a high amount of health its time for you to start stalling the fight using your FGS, RTL, CC, etc. Your damage just plunged and theirs went through the ceiling. On the other hand if they’re lowish on HP too you might as well try and burst them anyway, but be unpredictable.
• Don’t backpedal (aka, walk backwards) a simple infiltrator signet takes them to you and they will run forwards faster then you to get behind you for a backstab. Backpedaling is a bad practice in general in my opinion.
• Don’t stand still. If he’s in stealth, keep moving. As random as possible while spamming lightning whip (annoying as kitten, believe me). Moving makes it just that little bit harder to backstab.
• Don’t panic and pop everything because you took an 8K backstab. kitten happens, he hit you – use things like aura’s first – you’ll still have 8-12K health left anyway depending on your total health. If you insta popped everything they’ll just sit back and wait for a few seconds for it all to drop off and then fry your butt knowing you have nothing left.
• Poison is poisonous stuff, if you’re using the signet heal. Get rid of it. Fast. Preferably yesterday then now.
• DON’T STAND IN BLACKPOWDERS. It is beyond my understanding why Anet had to nerf this skill. It should not be necessary. Nerfs should be there for things which are forced upon you, like traits – you can’t change your enemy’s traits. You can change your own positioning, though. You should never take more then 1 blind from these things which is fine because he most likely cast it on top of your kitten . But please.. just LEAVE IT AFTER HE CASTED IT. You can perfectly apply melee damage while he’s standing in it. DO SO. (NB: this message is mostly to our zerging 1 spam warriors/guardians). And you will do more damage by taking the time to walk out of it, believe me.

That’ll be the basics. Its quite a read and list, but thiefs are supposed to be the master of 1v1’s and small skirmishes, aren’t they? It takes some time and experience to get used to several flavors of thief.

What is the best Ele weapon vs Thief? Staff, Scepter, Daggers? You all just talk about different kind of Thieves and their builds, but you forgot to give us some feedback on ele weapons and builds as well:) Like it’s obvious that Daggers are the only choice? What about Scepter? What about cleric staff?

there is no way to win all the matches… it depends on the player you have to face. I suggest to take scepter focus, 0,6,0,4,4 (zoose build if i remember ) . I use it quite often in pvp. I don’t win every 1 vs 1 with thief but with focus for protect myself i win many times … i am not easy meat for the thief .. Learn to time focus skills ( for example water 4 is quite strong for crippling them ) or earth stone and when they appear land all your dps . I find it viable .

Sifu.9745:

What is the best Ele weapon vs Thief? Staff, Scepter, Daggers? You all just talk about different kind of Thieves and their builds, but you forgot to give us some feedback on ele weapons and builds as well:) Like it’s obvious that Daggers are the only choice? What about Scepter? What about cleric staff?

You can use other options, but D/D is the easiest. Why? All skills are untargeted so its allot easier to do damage to him in stealth. You are also allot tankier which allows you to make an unbelievable amount of mistakes.

S/D-F is allot harder, since you need a target, you are squishier but you’ll do more damage aswell.

Staff is only good in solo/team Q for 1v1’s imo. You can control a node with your AoE. In WvW, where the thief can go where he wants to and doesn’t have to keep the node contested you might aswell just take the run while leaving CC behind.

Condition , condition, condition.

Avatar Yirachi.7162:

Some other do’s/don’t are:

• Preemptively using your stability if you see him pop basilisk venom. The trickery thiefs will just strip it (or actually, steal it), and the shadow arts thiefs will just wait 7 seconds in stealth for it to drop off. (You don’t want to know how much this useless preemptive utility popping occurs)
• Always, always watch your and their boons when fighting S/D thieves. They will try to steal your carefully build might stacks. Protect these with other boons at all times, if he manages to steal them anyway and he still has a high amount of health its time for you to start stalling the fight using your FGS, RTL, CC, etc. Your damage just plunged and theirs went through the ceiling. On the other hand if they’re lowish on HP too you might as well try and burst them anyway, but be unpredictable.
• Don’t backpedal (aka, walk backwards) a simple infiltrator signet takes them to you and they will run forwards faster then you to get behind you for a backstab. Backpedaling is a bad practice in general in my opinion.
• Don’t stand still. If he’s in stealth, keep moving. As random as possible while spamming lightning whip (annoying as kitten, believe me). Moving makes it just that little bit harder to backstab.
• Don’t panic and pop everything because you took an 8K backstab. kitten happens, he hit you – use things like aura’s first – you’ll still have 8-12K health left anyway depending on your total health. If you insta popped everything they’ll just sit back and wait for a few seconds for it all to drop off and then fry your butt knowing you have nothing left.
• Poison is poisonous stuff, if you’re using the signet heal. Get rid of it. Fast. Preferably yesterday then now.
• DON’T STAND IN BLACKPOWDERS. It is beyond my understanding why Anet had to nerf this skill. It should not be necessary. Nerfs should be there for things which are forced upon you, like traits – you can’t change your enemy’s traits. You can change your own positioning, though. You should never take more then 1 blind from these things which is fine because he most likely cast it on top of your kitten . But please.. just LEAVE IT AFTER HE CASTED IT. You can perfectly apply melee damage while he’s standing in it. DO SO. (NB: this message is mostly to our zerging 1 spam warriors/guardians). And you will do more damage by taking the time to walk out of it, believe me.

That’ll be the basics. Its quite a read and list, but thiefs are supposed to be the master of 1v1’s and small skirmishes, aren’t they? It takes some time and experience to get used to several flavors of thief.

Both of Yirachi’s posts cover the ele vs thief game very, very well. Great job.

I’d add that soft cc is your best means of forcing good trades. Chill, cripple and immob will allow you to mid-range a thief without taking any damage, even though they likely won’t stick long on a thief.

I’ve never lost to a thief in wvw unless I get ganged up on- and even that takes a little work for the poor thief
If you’re having trouble with thieves, do some pvp on your ele & you’ll learn how to be as quick as them in countering their moves – they’re super easy for us ele’s unless you have no clue how to play your class

I love using d/f – it has saved my life more than d/d has honestly
with dagger/ focus I can take on atleast 2 people & last around a good while or more if I’m alone or until someone arrives; I have sup sigil of endurace & battle, both life savers

I think I have wound up in some bizarro gw2 dimension, somebody please help me return

Well, beating a thief with a D/D build and doing so with a staff (what I play with most of the time when I roam) are two very different propositions. A lot here seem to assume D/D when they answer or are facing pretty bad thieves to face roll them with any weapons…

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Well, beating a thief with a D/D build and doing so with a staff (what I play with most of the time when I roam) are two very different propositions. A lot here seem to assume D/D when they answer or are facing pretty bad thieves to face roll them with any weapons…

A staff ele should never be able to kill a thief since pretty much all of the damage is delayed (note: should never be, there are baddies). Can be a hard time for the thief as well though.

On S/F stay out of fire unless they SR, to Phoenix their kittens if they SR, and use comet/ice gust and earth hurl in between air bursts to blow them up before your invulns wear out.

A good thief will set the tempo of the fight and use patience to bait out arcane shield and earth focus 5, which is the toughest thing to deal with.

I gues i was one of the few who use d/f and i don’t find 2 difficult to beat average thief.
Most thiefs in Sq will ware zerker and try to burst you down , one thing to remember they have no unlimited initiative so they have sequence to attacks ,i find s/d with all the dodges much harder to beat then stealth tipes,simply cause they are not invulnerable in stealth.

Generally u go to air atonement since d/x nr1 skill has cleve and will hit stealth-ed thief,
while scepter auto will follow in to stealth and electric discharge will hit sometimes even when stealth-ed ,signets will also hit stealth-ed thief.
Pets ,stroms and arcane wave halp a lot .

Well keep offensive dont let them press u in to defensive stance…
AS for s/d thiefs its just pure luck if we are equally skilled chances are they will win more then not .
If they are very skilled in presing nr.3 and dodge in beatwean i can just watch them jump around and my hp going down:(

To be honest with you, unless you seriously out gear him or are a much better player….The thief will win 9/10 times….However, 1v1 is kind of a thief’s specialty, so just run.

Its good to see so many D/F elementalists since I’m one too. This morning I did some pvp as a staff ele zerker and was able to beat 1v2’s against thieves while skirmishing. It was early so I wasn’t even playing at my best and obviously neither were they. Won about 60% of the 1v2 fights against them. Then when I got beat bad by them I switched to D/F and completely wrecked them :p