Guild Wars 2

I’m a staff elementalist, with a spec leaning toward damage, but still some decent toughness. My experience is almost all in WvW, only at little sPvP.

When I fight thieves, I can’t get enough hits in to make a difference. Even in a small group, I can’t lay down enough crowd control for my group to pounce on the thief and pummel him. The thief is invisible too much of the time.

Are there things I can do to stop the thief from continually re-stealthing?

What skills should I be using for those few moments when I can get a target?

Staff is horrendous in 1on1’s. The damage is simple to dodge and avoid, the only chance you have of winning is by outlasting.

Don’t play Staff for 1on1’s. Really, it’s nothing short of horrible and will cripple you immensely in Thief fights (which is one of the hardest matchups we have).

How do people handle weapon switching to get the most out of staff and, say S/D? One can’t just quickly click in the inventory, because the dagger will replace the scepter, rather than going into the secondary spot?

Also, how to people who run primarly S/D get swiftness for moving around the map?

I’m not averse to the idea of switching weapons situationally.

Sergo.2867:

How do people handle weapon switching to get the most out of staff and, say S/D? One can’t just quickly click in the inventory, because the dagger will replace the scepter, rather than going into the secondary spot?

It doesn’t replace the scepter, it goes directly into the second spot ^^

Dodge dodge, mistform, lightining flash, lay down every cc you have and run behind nearest ally or in a tower.

If you have to try and fight, keep laying your aoes, on top of yourself while doing above.

Sergo.2867:

How do people handle weapon switching to get the most out of staff and, say S/D? One can’t just quickly click in the inventory, because the dagger will replace the scepter, rather than going into the secondary spot?

Also, how to people who run primarly S/D get swiftness for moving around the map?

I’m not averse to the idea of switching weapons situationally.

Click on Scepter first it will always go into main hand. For moving , get arcane trait that gives you swiftness when switch into air, that + boon dur runes you will get not quite perma swiftness but pretty close to it.

Roll a thief yourself (:

To op, staff eles simply doesn’t have the tools to beat a good thief. I play both ele and thief and staff eles are maybe the easiest to kill. My advise is to dodge then put up static field and kite in and out of it. When static is done drop water chill field and kite around that. Hope your group will klill the thief . The problem is a good thief will take out his pistol and kill you anyway from range.

Sergo.2867:

I’m a staff elementalist, with a spec leaning toward damage, but still some decent toughness. My experience is almost all in WvW, only at little sPvP.

When I fight thieves, I can’t get enough hits in to make a difference. Even in a small group, I can’t lay down enough crowd control for my group to pounce on the thief and pummel him. The thief is invisible too much of the time.

Are there things I can do to stop the thief from continually re-stealthing?

What skills should I be using for those few moments when I can get a target?

Thieves are insane and very challenging to fight as an ele. I have seen Thieves on multiple occasions kill a group of 2-3 people while barely taking any damage. As you say they are invisible a majority of the time and somehow manage to annihilate people flawlessly. As an ele fighting a Thief in WvW it just brings back horrible memories of PvP against Rogues in WoW. same thing in that game. they can stun lock you and invis so much that you cant pull off a single move before your a corpse fertilizing the soil below

just like to point out my S/D bunker ele eats Thieves for breakfast. The tough part is to fight them as staff ele.

As soon as I notice a thief hitting me Ido the following:

1. Arcane shield as soon as I notice damage. (1,500 - 3,500)
2. Arcane blast (2,000 - 5,000)
3. Lay down fire 2 and dodge roll until I can target him (1,500 - 3,500)
4. Get target switch lighting (procs lighting blast and chance for another proc from wep sigil) (first hit will be around 3k mostly always crits with fury 2nd 1,500 - 3,000)
5. If he is squishy he is already dead. If not lay down lighting 5 if he goes invis switch lighting 2 and earth 5 if not single target him.

This does fail if my arcane shield is on cool down because I can’t see the thief before he downs me. Also depends on what atunement I am in and where his life is at different points in time. Damage amounts above depend on their toughness and all that. Could be more or less.

D/D boonbuild healer ele. I’m supposed to be a combat healer kinda thing but I can hold my own against a thief just by swapping atunements and doing a ton of PBAOE’s since the thieves often go for close-combat make sure you make them not want to get close.
Glyph of storms in earth atunement is an aoe perma blind, stand in that and you should be safe while in earth atunement, water atunement the freeze and healing stuff- arcane wave combo field heal, air atunement the shocking field, not sure what to do in fire atunement except for laying down the hurt.
Attleast that is what I’d do…

Bandit.9620:

As soon as I notice a thief hitting me Ido the following:

1. Arcane shield as soon as I notice damage. (1,500 – 3,500)
2. Arcane blast (2,000 – 5,000)
3. Lay down fire 2 and dodge roll until I can target him (1,500 – 3,500)
4. Get target switch lighting (procs lighting blast and chance for another proc from wep sigil) (first hit will be around 3k mostly always crits with fury 2nd 1,500 – 3,000)
5. If he is squishy he is already dead. If not lay down lighting 5 if he goes invis switch lighting 2 and earth 5 if not single target him.

This does fail if my arcane shield is on cool down because I can’t see the thief before he downs me. Also depends on what atunement I am in and where his life is at different points in time. Damage amounts above depend on their toughness and all that. Could be more or less.

Those are some pretty insane numbers. I’m surprised you didn’t already get one-shotted or die in less than a second before you could put up arcane shield.

The top tier is crit of course. And a lot of these perma invis thieves are all damage and really squishy. Have never been one shotted before, have died to thieves though.

Bandit.9620:

As soon as I notice a thief hitting me Ido the following:

1. Arcane shield as soon as I notice damage. (1,500 – 3,500)
2. Arcane blast (2,000 – 5,000)
3. Lay down fire 2 and dodge roll until I can target him (1,500 – 3,500)
4. Get target switch lighting (procs lighting blast and chance for another proc from wep sigil) (first hit will be around 3k mostly always crits with fury 2nd 1,500 – 3,000)
5. If he is squishy he is already dead. If not lay down lighting 5 if he goes invis switch lighting 2 and earth 5 if not single target him.

This does fail if my arcane shield is on cool down because I can’t see the thief before he downs me. Also depends on what atunement I am in and where his life is at different points in time. Damage amounts above depend on their toughness and all that. Could be more or less.

I hate to say this that has to be some bad thief to die to you. Lets play this from thief point of view

Steal , 3k damage
Back stab (Baslisk venom) 6-9k and you are stuned
Heart seeker another 4-6k
You are pretty much dead or close to dead by now.
Lets day you get shield off and a blast off and dodge rolled away.
Chances are the thief will simply spam heart seeker to keep up with you or take out pistol and unload x 2 . that’s that.

Lets say you are still alive and hit me with a lighting strike proc. I have now taken 2-3k from blast and another 2-3k from strike. I’m not counting lava font. Only the worst player would get hit by that. I pop blinding powder and invis. You lose target I get init and heal in stealth hit you with another heart seeker from sealth that’s 6-10k because 100% crit from sealth and more damage because you are almost dead.

This is no way you can beat a thief no matter what weapon set if you do not CC AND HEAL right away.

You won’t kill anything 1v1 with a staff.

With my d/d bunker build, most thieves make me laugh, literally. They’ll be there, all adorable trying to HS me to death, while I just /laugh emote and out heal their DPS.

The p/p or p/d perma stealth ones are even funnier. Okay, I can only see you for .3 seconds… but you’re not getting me below 85% HP? I usually can’t fight them due to not being able to see them so I almost always just jog away.

I play a staff Elementalist and have always found thieves to be an easy kill?

This is a very old video now, back when HS thieves were popular and un-nerfed. It contains sPvP and tPvP and I come up against quite a few thieves, some 2v1, some 1v1 and some 2v2. It’s not an amazing video and it was shot back in October like I said, but it shows the basic premise of fighting thieves.

I actually find them easier to fight now since they’re not gap closing with the HS spam. The key is dodging their attacks and keep AoE up on and around yourself. Again, this isn’t amazing gameplay from me or them but you get the basic mechanics.

8:25 in and you’ll see a thief and I 1v1 it out with them dodging all my AoE’s and using the terraine very well. I actually enjoyed the challenge of fighting that thief, I wonder if they still play

Ps. I still run the same build now!

I watched most of the vid. First , GREAT PLAYING. Some of the best placement of AE I have seen ever. I didn’t see many you vs thief other than the draw at the end though.

Usually the way it goes is, I eat maybe 7-10k damage right off the bat from CnD + Steal combo. Sometimes I’m stunned from BV. In either case, pop Mist Form immediately before they get the backstab off. If you eat the backstab you are in big trouble, if you do not, you are in good shape. I run 18-20k hp in WvW, but a glass cannon thief opener can get me to 2k or less if they manage to land the backstab, and it’s tough to recover from that kind of deficit.

So you just got mist form, which means you also got regen and vigor (you do run 30 water right?) Start running while in mist form, swap to water for the heal + regen (you do have points in arcane right?), use #6 heal while in mist form if still low. Once mist form ends (still running), drop water #4 right on top of you, drop an Ice Spike just a bit in front of you, and dodge for the Evasive Arcana water heal (you do run 30 arcane don’t you?).

Still running, drop water 3 and run thru it, swap to earth. Now you have protection.

At this point, you have to make a decision as to whether or not you want to stay and fight the thief, disengage, kite back to friends, etc. You are in earth attunement, so if you choose to stay and fight the way it usually goes is drop your cripple and eruption on top of you, and then earth #5 to root them near it. If you manage to land the root, immediately swap to fire and Fire #2 on top of them while they are still stuck there, Fire #4 away from them, Fire #3. Static Field around them (or around you if they are closing) + Air 2, etc etc.

Now it can go either way, and a lot of thieves will just turn and run or stealth away because they are used to easily picking people off.

It reads like a cookbook recipe but it really isn’t, and depending on what attunement you are starting in and which attunements are on cooldown, you have to improvise. But the basic pattern is always the same: 1) interrupt the burst combo, 2) create distance while healing, 3) kite + kill. Mist Form with water traits is the best anti-burst by far, and for that reason I keep it in reserve for situations just like this.

If at any point they pop Thieves Guild, that’s a good time to swap to earth real quick and hit earth 3, the ranged thief mob will damage itself and the melee thief will pull itself to you and knock itself down instead of pulling and knocking you down.

As far as ways to prevent them from restealthing, you simply don’t have the tools as staff to do much about this. You can drop a lava font inside their shadow refuge, you can fire dot them before they stealth (but their heal will remove it), you can try to root them, or blind them with Air 2 before they CnD, but really, staff is not very well equipped for this. D/D is quite good at dealing with stealth, staff, not so much. A lot of thieves don’t slot stun breakers because they run Assassin’s Signet, Shadow Refuge, and then usually Blinding Powder, so a well-timed Static Field when they are low can give your group the opportunity to dogpile them.

Other than that, it comes down to dodging cloak and dagger so they waste their initiative and don’t get stealthed. Even then, they have plenty of other ways to stealth, including cloak and dagger on things that won’t dodge, like mobs or even structures lol.

If they are pistol/dagger (which is nearly every thief that is shooting at you, pistol/pistol is rare at least as a primary weapon set), cleanse their bleed stacks over and over, and when they stealth, count to 2 and a half, and then dodge twice, or better yet, pop earth 3 if it’s up and then laugh. You’ll never kill a non-AFK p/d thief as staff, but they shouldn’t be able to kill you either, because they lack burst.