Guild Wars 2

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/D-D-Ele-is-a-pain/first#post3988314

:o who would’ve thought this day would come that thieves are bothered by D/D elementalists :o

As a thief stealth player and a d/d elementalist i have to say this is so true
when running the perma prot spec u can barely be harmed, there are too many random aoe attacks going on that hurt the thief alot. I have had so much trouble killing d/d eles on my thief in wvw duels but the other way around, it was easy.

I have a few thief friends that I duel regularly. I can tell you that the easy counter to the perma-protection D/D eles is condi spec.

Pistol bleeds will eventually kill us if the thief knows how to dodge. It’s especially frustrating when they know what to look for to avoid blazing speed Every. Darn. Time. The moment I switch in to fire, they back off and pistol me muttering “Wait for it……. wait for it…..”

Granted, I’m not the best D/D player — but really… a Thief basically presses 4 buttons. It’s not hard for them to counter-play an ele. They just have to not be terrible.

This really isn’t news imo thief has never been a particularly difficult class to fight when your a D/D Ele except maybe P/D power or P/D condi thieves. You have aoe they use stealth to get close, you lay aoe they take damage even in stealth.

The fight is different if your a S/x Ele or D/F.

As a Thief and an D/D/ or D/F Ele, one of the counters that I’ve found is a S/D Thief who just steals all of my boons. I swap to water, steals my regeneration, I swap to earth, steals my protection, etc. It’s very much a battle of attrition, but if they’re 2/0/0/6/6, they can just stand their ground and evade everything.

Condi isn’t hard to counter if you’re D/F and just use Earth attunement #4 to clear all your condi’s. Put some bleeds on them, and they have to do everything they can to drop them. If they’re not using the heal Hide In Shadows, they have hardly any condi removal unless they trait for it.

There’s no reason a D/D Ele should lose to a Thief unless they just strip all of our really important boons.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/D-D-Ele-is-a-pain/first#post3988314

:o who would’ve thought this day would come that thieves are bothered by D/D elementalists :o

Are you trolling, or serious?

D/D Elementalist has always had a good matchup against most Thieves due to the extreme amount of PBAoE the set brings.

You really shouldn’t be so happy though about Thieves’ problems though. They get a lot of crap from everyone, and a lot of it isn’t really justified (barring the time when Pistol Whip and Larcenous Strike were a bit too strong, and in seperate metas as well).

renss.5764:

As a thief stealth player and a d/d elementalist i have to say this is so true
when running the perma prot spec u can barely be harmed, there are too many random aoe attacks going on that hurt the thief alot. I have had so much trouble killing d/d eles on my thief in wvw duels but the other way around, it was easy.

What is this perma prot spec? It sounds delightful.

perma prot ele died with boon duration runes nerf i guess.

I’ve seen more s/d’ers recently/LS spammers.

Best way to counter this is just time your dodges well. The more I fight thieves the better i’ve become at mentally counting when they’re going to come out of stealth. The spamming 1 endlessly looking for them in stealth is more likely to get you backstabbed.

Better to wait, then time a dodge or a burning evade.

Biggest issue I face is shroud. Fought some s/d thief yesterday, had him down to 10 percent 3 times and had him go into shroud 3 times. That ability has a way too short cooldown for what it does.

Anomaly.7612:

renss.5764:

As a thief stealth player and a d/d elementalist i have to say this is so true
when running the perma prot spec u can barely be harmed, there are too many random aoe attacks going on that hurt the thief alot. I have had so much trouble killing d/d eles on my thief in wvw duels but the other way around, it was easy.

What is this perma prot spec? It sounds delightful.

For perma protection or nearly perma protection simply take 2 points in earth for protection on auras and take elemental attunement. This is using D/D btw and basically make sure that fire skill 4 is followed by earth skill 3 for the leap finisher. (every 15 seconds this is possible, and this is the reason i say nearly as failing this you miss out, this tactic will give you 20+ stacks of might quite easily though combined with other blast finiher etc) use armour of earth to top yourself up :p

Sheppy.9306:

Anomaly.7612:

renss.5764:

As a thief stealth player and a d/d elementalist i have to say this is so true
when running the perma prot spec u can barely be harmed, there are too many random aoe attacks going on that hurt the thief alot. I have had so much trouble killing d/d eles on my thief in wvw duels but the other way around, it was easy.

What is this perma prot spec? It sounds delightful.

For perma protection or nearly perma protection simply take 2 points in earth for protection on auras and take elemental attunement. This is using D/D btw and basically make sure that fire skill 4 is followed by earth skill 3 for the leap finisher. (every 15 seconds this is possible, and this is the reason i say nearly as failing this you miss out, this tactic will give you 20+ stacks of might quite easily though combined with other blast finiher etc) use armour of earth to top yourself up :p

so that’s what, 4 seconds of protection every 15 seconds and you have to have a target and a set cycle to go through. and armor of earth 7 seconds of protection every 60ish seconds. two other auras also on high cooldowns also 4 seconds of protection. So that’s about a 60% up time of protection. Nowhere near permanent. Perma stealth however is quite possible for the thief is it not?

And do elementalists have a 13k damage dealer with no cooldown? I don’t think so.

DD ele goes completely bunker spec, thief goes full berserk and now we are finnaly somewhat of a nuisance for them.

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Sheppy.9306:

Anomaly.7612:

renss.5764:

As a thief stealth player and a d/d elementalist i have to say this is so true
when running the perma prot spec u can barely be harmed, there are too many random aoe attacks going on that hurt the thief alot. I have had so much trouble killing d/d eles on my thief in wvw duels but the other way around, it was easy.

What is this perma prot spec? It sounds delightful.

For perma protection or nearly perma protection simply take 2 points in earth for protection on auras and take elemental attunement. This is using D/D btw and basically make sure that fire skill 4 is followed by earth skill 3 for the leap finisher. (every 15 seconds this is possible, and this is the reason i say nearly as failing this you miss out, this tactic will give you 20+ stacks of might quite easily though combined with other blast finiher etc) use armour of earth to top yourself up :p

so that’s what, 4 seconds of protection every 15 seconds and you have to have a target and a set cycle to go through. and armor of earth 7 seconds of protection every 60ish seconds. two other auras also on high cooldowns also 4 seconds of protection. So that’s about a 60% up time of protection. Nowhere near permanent. Perma stealth however is quite possible for the thief is it not?

And do elementalists have a 13k damage dealer with no cooldown? I don’t think so.

DD ele goes completely bunker spec, thief goes full berserk and now we are finnaly somewhat of a nuisance for them.

Ye i realise what you are saying with the fire aura however i did say nearly perma protection and besides you are forgetting elemental attunement. If you go and test this you will be able to get a 90% up time on protection if protection is the key boon you are going for. ( thats with me taking 6 points in arcana) but also before any other boon duration buffs.

He asked for it and i gave it to him.

Sheppy.9306:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Sheppy.9306:

Anomaly.7612:

renss.5764:

As a thief stealth player and a d/d elementalist i have to say this is so true
when running the perma prot spec u can barely be harmed, there are too many random aoe attacks going on that hurt the thief alot. I have had so much trouble killing d/d eles on my thief in wvw duels but the other way around, it was easy.

What is this perma prot spec? It sounds delightful.

For perma protection or nearly perma protection simply take 2 points in earth for protection on auras and take elemental attunement. This is using D/D btw and basically make sure that fire skill 4 is followed by earth skill 3 for the leap finisher. (every 15 seconds this is possible, and this is the reason i say nearly as failing this you miss out, this tactic will give you 20+ stacks of might quite easily though combined with other blast finiher etc) use armour of earth to top yourself up :p

so that’s what, 4 seconds of protection every 15 seconds and you have to have a target and a set cycle to go through. and armor of earth 7 seconds of protection every 60ish seconds. two other auras also on high cooldowns also 4 seconds of protection. So that’s about a 60% up time of protection. Nowhere near permanent. Perma stealth however is quite possible for the thief is it not?

And do elementalists have a 13k damage dealer with no cooldown? I don’t think so.

DD ele goes completely bunker spec, thief goes full berserk and now we are finnaly somewhat of a nuisance for them.

Ye i realise what you are saying with the fire aura however i did say nearly perma protection and besides you are forgetting elemental attunement. If you go and test this you will be able to get a 90% up time on protection if protection is the key boon you are going for. ( thats with me taking 6 points in arcana) but also before any other boon duration buffs.

He asked for it and i gave it to him.

Hey I went and tried to get permanent protection in the heart of the mists with a new build I’m working on. Got it to work quite easily actually then when I went to the mists to try it out I got killed by thieves 8 times in a row and I didn’t even phase them…

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Sheppy.9306:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Sheppy.9306:

Anomaly.7612:

renss.5764:

As a thief stealth player and a d/d elementalist i have to say this is so true
when running the perma prot spec u can barely be harmed, there are too many random aoe attacks going on that hurt the thief alot. I have had so much trouble killing d/d eles on my thief in wvw duels but the other way around, it was easy.

What is this perma prot spec? It sounds delightful.

For perma protection or nearly perma protection simply take 2 points in earth for protection on auras and take elemental attunement. This is using D/D btw and basically make sure that fire skill 4 is followed by earth skill 3 for the leap finisher. (every 15 seconds this is possible, and this is the reason i say nearly as failing this you miss out, this tactic will give you 20+ stacks of might quite easily though combined with other blast finiher etc) use armour of earth to top yourself up :p

so that’s what, 4 seconds of protection every 15 seconds and you have to have a target and a set cycle to go through. and armor of earth 7 seconds of protection every 60ish seconds. two other auras also on high cooldowns also 4 seconds of protection. So that’s about a 60% up time of protection. Nowhere near permanent. Perma stealth however is quite possible for the thief is it not?

And do elementalists have a 13k damage dealer with no cooldown? I don’t think so.

DD ele goes completely bunker spec, thief goes full berserk and now we are finnaly somewhat of a nuisance for them.

Ye i realise what you are saying with the fire aura however i did say nearly perma protection and besides you are forgetting elemental attunement. If you go and test this you will be able to get a 90% up time on protection if protection is the key boon you are going for. ( thats with me taking 6 points in arcana) but also before any other boon duration buffs.

He asked for it and i gave it to him.

Hey I went and tried to get permanent protection in the heart of the mists with a new build I’m working on. Got it to work quite easily actually then when I went to the mists to try it out I got killed by thieves 8 times in a row and I didn’t even phase them…

Were you getting bleeds and burning on them? If they get some condis on them, they’ll fall over. Turn it into a battle of attrition.

Anomaly.7612:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Sheppy.9306:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Sheppy.9306:

Anomaly.7612:

renss.5764:

As a thief stealth player and a d/d elementalist i have to say this is so true
when running the perma prot spec u can barely be harmed, there are too many random aoe attacks going on that hurt the thief alot. I have had so much trouble killing d/d eles on my thief in wvw duels but the other way around, it was easy.

What is this perma prot spec? It sounds delightful.

For perma protection or nearly perma protection simply take 2 points in earth for protection on auras and take elemental attunement. This is using D/D btw and basically make sure that fire skill 4 is followed by earth skill 3 for the leap finisher. (every 15 seconds this is possible, and this is the reason i say nearly as failing this you miss out, this tactic will give you 20+ stacks of might quite easily though combined with other blast finiher etc) use armour of earth to top yourself up :p

so that’s what, 4 seconds of protection every 15 seconds and you have to have a target and a set cycle to go through. and armor of earth 7 seconds of protection every 60ish seconds. two other auras also on high cooldowns also 4 seconds of protection. So that’s about a 60% up time of protection. Nowhere near permanent. Perma stealth however is quite possible for the thief is it not?

And do elementalists have a 13k damage dealer with no cooldown? I don’t think so.

DD ele goes completely bunker spec, thief goes full berserk and now we are finnaly somewhat of a nuisance for them.

Ye i realise what you are saying with the fire aura however i did say nearly perma protection and besides you are forgetting elemental attunement. If you go and test this you will be able to get a 90% up time on protection if protection is the key boon you are going for. ( thats with me taking 6 points in arcana) but also before any other boon duration buffs.

He asked for it and i gave it to him.

Hey I went and tried to get permanent protection in the heart of the mists with a new build I’m working on. Got it to work quite easily actually then when I went to the mists to try it out I got killed by thieves 8 times in a row and I didn’t even phase them…

Were you getting bleeds and burning on them? If they get some condis on them, they’ll fall over. Turn it into a battle of attrition.

I did but I lost because even with the 33% damage reduction and the 3400 armor and the trait that prevented crits they were still able to burst me down to downed state in 3 seconds.

We were indeed thieves counter.
Devs didn t like it and nerfed our mobility.

At the same time they gave direct counterskill to thieves just to be sure.
It was already clear some nerfs were aimed at removing ele as the thief counter at that time.

D/D with a reasonable RTL would still have a chance.
But try for a second imagine what the current mechanics do against a stealth+evade profession…

Dunno guys.Thief is still the class i lose mostly in duels (but i enjoy the most killing)
Very “skilled” thiefs are a tough nut to crack.Specialy builds that get to run around OS.I mean,how many gap closers do we have if RTL doesn’t hit.
Thief duels take me some time if they play condi or they are carefull and run around.Its very infuriating.Also fought a thief that just dodged everything.Literaly everything,couldn’t land kitten and when i did he just healed back up.
We are not exactly hard-counter.I would say they got more choices to fight us,while ele can only fight back with D/D or D/F.

Their evade is broken btw.

We have magnetic leap, that is impossible to hit against a thief.

Anomaly.7612:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Sheppy.9306:

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

Sheppy.9306:

Anomaly.7612:

renss.5764:

As a thief stealth player and a d/d elementalist i have to say this is so true
when running the perma prot spec u can barely be harmed, there are too many random aoe attacks going on that hurt the thief alot. I have had so much trouble killing d/d eles on my thief in wvw duels but the other way around, it was easy.

What is this perma prot spec? It sounds delightful.

For perma protection or nearly perma protection simply take 2 points in earth for protection on auras and take elemental attunement. This is using D/D btw and basically make sure that fire skill 4 is followed by earth skill 3 for the leap finisher. (every 15 seconds this is possible, and this is the reason i say nearly as failing this you miss out, this tactic will give you 20+ stacks of might quite easily though combined with other blast finiher etc) use armour of earth to top yourself up :p

so that’s what, 4 seconds of protection every 15 seconds and you have to have a target and a set cycle to go through. and armor of earth 7 seconds of protection every 60ish seconds. two other auras also on high cooldowns also 4 seconds of protection. So that’s about a 60% up time of protection. Nowhere near permanent. Perma stealth however is quite possible for the thief is it not?

And do elementalists have a 13k damage dealer with no cooldown? I don’t think so.

DD ele goes completely bunker spec, thief goes full berserk and now we are finnaly somewhat of a nuisance for them.

Ye i realise what you are saying with the fire aura however i did say nearly perma protection and besides you are forgetting elemental attunement. If you go and test this you will be able to get a 90% up time on protection if protection is the key boon you are going for. ( thats with me taking 6 points in arcana) but also before any other boon duration buffs.

He asked for it and i gave it to him.

Hey I went and tried to get permanent protection in the heart of the mists with a new build I’m working on. Got it to work quite easily actually then when I went to the mists to try it out I got killed by thieves 8 times in a row and I didn’t even phase them…

Were you getting bleeds and burning on them? If they get some condis on them, they’ll fall over. Turn it into a battle of attrition.

Haha i never once mentioned this was effective against thieves. Personally i always find with this game to match dps with dps. the only class that can tank a thief is a guardian due to the blocks. We have none so we must let our dps scare them away. I run this build in tournaments and am currently fluctuating at around the 350 rank mark in team leaderboards.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k33;2B2-V0y47N-Z0;9;59-TT;10;328A17ASs0;3H7W3H7W30n

You may wonder why so far in both water and arcana but i find that gives me the best all-round counter play to most classes. With this build i can honestly say i have never lost a 1 vs 1 with any thief currently. However i do play thief second and have spent 25% of my game time on a thief where 50% is on an elementalist therefore i may have some advantage. also with this build it means i can 1 vs 1 any minion master or spirit ranger easily (not fast as they are a dedicated bunker) but i will win the point if they don’t cry for help elite or no elite for both parties i will tend to win. (hence the 6 points in water and arcana)

I also placed a post in the thief forums describing the best build to counter eles and how to go about it. Maybe take a look at it, it is aimed at thiefs however i do cover a few useful tricks that an elementalist can do to give yourself an edge.

Also in the build swap the elite depending on the map (kyhlo go fire gs for treb control) and sigil of doom is up to you. If they have 2 or more warriors i say its a must. otherwise sigil of air is fine.

mist form i use due to my party tends to lack in safe stomps (we have currently been going 2 thiefs, 1 ele, 1 mesmer and a guardian so you can see where i am coming from) otherwise arcane shield or any other arcane skill will help greatly against a thief or indeed any class.

last point when taking a thief do not underestimate drakes breath. especially if they are a S/D evade build. Use drakes breath when they are evading and at least half of it will hit. Burning kills them eventually even if you don’t hit your most powerful attacks.

The shroud is super annoying. At the point a thief goes into shroud i consider it a win. After all, if I summon a FGS and zip away for 20 seconds to get all my health back, that would be me running away?

So deciding to go invis and not engage for 20 secs is much the same thing.

Shadow refuge- aoe invis, heals you up, then gives you another 12 secs invis on top of that with a 1/4 sec cast time. on a 60 sec timer.

It’s just such a good ability, when compared to literally any other ability for any class, what it does for what the cooldown is, is just ridiculous. It’s better than alot of elite skills even. Basilisk venom should have been a reg utility poison on a 60 sec timer, and shroud should have been a 90 second elite.

@phaeris, Here is a tip about SR. When a thief uses SR, and you know that they will be within a small circle for a period of time… what do you think you should do with your AoE skills? I hardly use SR around elementalists for this very reason. If I’m close to being down, the last thing I want to do is contain myself to a small area. This may also surprise you but SR heals for about 3-5k. Every ele that I have dueled was always on top of my shadow refuge making its less efficient than it is.

Don’t just stand there and /shrug once they go into SR. It’s VERY predictable

The fact DD ele lacks untargeted pull/push, and thief can still dodge and heals, makes SR uncounterable unless the thief is bad .-.

Once you have stealth stacks for 12 seconds. doesn t matters how many HP you have left….you can go wherever you want.

LordByron.8369:

The fact DD ele lacks untargeted pull/push, and thief can still dodge and heals, makes SR uncounterable unless the thief is bad .-.

Once you have stealth stacks for 12 seconds. doesn t matters how many HP you have left….you can go wherever you want.

The best thing to do when they go in SR is lightning whip spam it which is good threatening dps and your shocking aura should be getting ready to come up. For when he engages again.

being able to do that means being almost full dps (something i am actually) but in that case it still depends on thief evasion.

I can even go fire 3-4-5, earth 4 etc….but its still doesn t depend from the attacker.

There are videos of 5-10 people in WWW mashing on a SR and still unable to kill a thief.

LordByron.8369:

The fact DD ele lacks untargeted pull/push, and thief can still dodge and heals, makes SR uncounterable unless the thief is bad .-.

Updraft can knock thieves out of sr. The radius on updraft is smaller than sr, so it might miss even if the thief doesn’t dodge. However, updraft is instant cast so no thief regardless of skill can react to it; they have to guess.

LordByron.8369:

being able to do that means being almost full dps (something i am actually) but in that case it still depends on thief evasion.

I can even go fire 3-4-5, earth 4 etc….but its still doesn t depend from the attacker.

There are videos of 5-10 people in WWW mashing on a SR and still unable to kill a thief.

That is true it’s getting healing from SR also+Shadow rejuvenation+ some thieves are running shadow protector for regen. If you take those traits your hps is pretty crazy on a thief.

@panicbutton.

I played as a d/d thief for 8 months or so, I did ok. In that time, if I used SR i’d never really get hit more than once whilst inside. It’s remarkably easy to avoid things. Even zergs rolling over where they think you were, just stand on the very edge, or look where the guy is going and don’t be in that spot. Even if I was hit and down low either my heal would be up, or i’d have enough stealth time to walk away from the fight. Decent thieves do not die in SR.

I’ve become much better at fighting thieves on my ele. I’ve consistantly beaten/forced into refuge(never to be seen again) thieves I would lose to before. I think it’s mainly due to the fact that instead of just spamming abilities in the hope I would hit something that might be there i’m now saving abilities and timing dodge rolls well. If a thief catches you with your atunements down (so to speak) it can be game over.

Tei…updraft is 180 radius, so basically melee range.

and on a 40 sec timer. Unless you’re completely certain where the thief is you are wasting a potent ability for the chance of knocking him out his stealth. Better to use it when you’re sure to benefit from it.

phaeris.7604:

Tei…updraft is 180 radius, so basically melee range.

and on a 40 sec timer. Unless you’re completely certain where the thief is you are wasting a potent ability for the chance of knocking him out his stealth. Better to use it when you’re sure to benefit from it.

Sr is really only slightly bigger than 180; Sr is 240. Besides, I already said the radius difference makes it not entirely reliable.

It isn’t a waste because updraft is your only option for countering it. If you don’t try to use updraft, you’re just letting the enemy get away or reset the fight. The only other uses for updraft against a thief 1v1 are defense, interrupting a heal or a somewhat random cc when he’s low to prevent him from even trying to save himself. Earthquake is a viable interrupt. Eles have no shortage of defensive options on d/d and traits, which most d/d eles will spec into. Letting 100% of thieves get full benefit from sr isn’t worth holding onto a skill I don’t necessarily need for anything else.

Shadow Refuge is not complex skill. It grants the thief lots of stealth, and some health(I also want to mention that no one takes shadow rejuvenation over other traits in SA). If at any point the thief leaves that circle during shadow refuge, or is pushed out, they lose all of their stealth immediately. Hammer Warriors and p/s Engineers are notorious for SA denial. Other classes can negate the healing effect by using a skill that cleaves.

Most of the people I have dueled aggressively cleave(lightening whip) at me while I’m under SA, like anyone should do. It applies pressure and negates the healing effects which is most likely why the thief is using SA to begin with. Cleaving or using AoE does not mean you will magically kill the thief while hes in SA, it will however deplete an ability to regain health, and make them cycle through their utilities faster(which is good news for you once they use up all their cooldowns).

Those videos where you see a thief surviving 5+ people smashing at his shadow refuge — did the thief recover after all of that and magically start stomping more players? Or did that thief run away like a little kitten because they took too much damage while they were in stealth

Wanted to also note that if you do a quick calculation on the radius of SA, and the radius of a skill like updraft, you’ll see that you have a 56% chance of landing the updraft.

If you want to increase your chances of landing one, trick the thief: pretend to cleave one side of the SA circle, and the quickly move to the other and use your skill.

I like your build, and it’s pretty common, but so is mine.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-k33;2B2-V0y4wM-Z0;9;69TT;42;028A57ASs0;3H7W3H7W35J
It’s a variant of it that I really enjoy as I really like Windborn dagger instead of vigor, even though I could be more defensive with vigor, I REALLY feel so much slower without windborn, and it makes running to points, or kiting when I’m dying and forced into water really difficult without it. To make up for the loss in vigor I put more those 2 points in Earth for the shield, and go zerkers because I just can’t kill anyone fast enough with Celestials. I like Celestials when I want to support people more, but if I want to actually kill anyone, I need zerkers, especially with those two points in Earth.

I also don’t have to worry as much about might stacking with a zerkers as the damage is baked in, but I still stack might with combos and get might naturally with strength runes. I do miss getting might from cantrips when I put points into fire, though.

LordByron.8369:

We were indeed thieves counter.
Devs didn t like it and nerfed our mobility.

At the same time they gave direct counterskill to thieves just to be sure.
It was already clear some nerfs were aimed at removing ele as the thief counter at that time.

D/D with a reasonable RTL would still have a chance.
But try for a second imagine what the current mechanics do against a stealth+evade profession…

immobilize…

I’m trying to perfect an anti-thief build at the moment.
Anybody have any cool suggestions as in traits or skills that you find very effective against thieves?

Swimsasa Stoon.8936:

LordByron.8369:

We were indeed thieves counter.
Devs didn t like it and nerfed our mobility.

At the same time they gave direct counterskill to thieves just to be sure.
It was already clear some nerfs were aimed at removing ele as the thief counter at that time.

D/D with a reasonable RTL would still have a chance.
But try for a second imagine what the current mechanics do against a stealth+evade profession…

immobilize…

The fact that thief mechanics (evade and stealth) are the perfect counter against ele immobilize, and the fact that thief cures conditions in stealth, doesn t help much…..

P.S. antithief build (for WWW at least) is DPS with few vit and thoughness (but mostly berserker).
You need to hit first and hit fast, and also arcane shield helps a lot.
If you keep the thief low on health, arcane shield will be a great deterrent.

Your guys’ hatred for Thieves is a bit overblown.

Neko.9021:

Your guys’ hatred for Thieves is a bit overblown.

I don’t particularly hate thieves, but which class likes to pick off eles as much as they do?

My hate for thieves comes directly since when their inability to stand balanced fight had them crying 24h 7/7 on ele forum until ele was nerfed into oblivion.

Now any decent thief is immortal in WWW (and the fact we can kill so many tells a lot on the skill floor of the profession).

So yes i m a little bitter on the subject (expecially after reading a dev mentioning thief and ele nerfs in the same interview).

A stealth class that cannot be seen and used to crit for 10k on 2.8k armor is a cheat class with no particular skill.Most infuriating thing is watching couples of berserker thiefs jumping out of nowhere ganking you and then dancing on you.

I know what i am saying is a general nothing but i never liked stealth classes in any MMO.They are mostly griefing classes and not so balanced.In GW2 i would say they are leaning towards the balance line but there are mechanics that are broken still.

@panic – The only way to knock a thief out of SR is if you port in as soon as he casts it and hit updraft. So you have to 1) Have updraft up, 2) not have air atunement on a cooldown longer than a few seconds 3) Have SR cast pretty close to you 4) If it isn’t close have teleport up as well. If it were so easy to knock thieves out of SR it wouldn’t be on every single thieves bar.

Oh, as for anti-thief builds I play as 0,0,2,6,6 with a slightly more offensive template and I run arcane shield, lightning flash and armour of earth.

Arcane shield – a must for fighting thieves.
Lighting flash for so many manouveres.
armour of earth….it’s ok, good for a stun break, I tied running sigil of storms, and using the earth blind field. It’s quite good, but just takes so long to cast.

Graendall.4765:

A stealth class that cannot be seen and used to crit for 10k on 2.8k armor is a cheat class with no particular skill.Most infuriating thing is watching couples of berserker thiefs jumping out of nowhere ganking you and then dancing on you.

You have to much value in armor back stab is unexpected damage so that is where vit is more important. If it was 10k on your 2.8k armor it would probably be 10.3k on a 2.7k armor target and 9.8k on a 29k armor target I just threw those out there but it’s probably not far off. Where your 2.8k shines against a 2.7k armor is the amount of hits it takes before you die especially lots of smaller hits.

I agree. I run with 2400 armour. With wvw buffs I sit at 20k hps. I’m finding this much more effective than when I had lower vitality and 3k armour. Alot of class abilities kick in when you’re under a certain percentage of health, so a bigger vitality pool lowers the chance of that occuring, especially if you add in condition damage as it isn’t affected by toughness.

Dahir.4158:

Neko.9021:

Your guys’ hatred for Thieves is a bit overblown.

I don’t particularly hate thieves, but which class likes to pick off eles as much as they do?

I just hate the initiative system, allowing them to use the same skill multiple times. It’s as if Thief meta revolves around finding a weapon set with one skill that is great at griefing in some fashion. Take S/D perma evade for example. They just roll around, steal boons and regeneration, all the while everything I throw at them is evaded. Thanks to initiative, none of their attacks go on CD so as long as they have the initiative, they can just keep evading, and if they run out of initiative, they can just go invis and wait til they have it all back.

It just seems like an abusive system where as every other profession has a CD on their attacks. Take Ele for example. We can’t keep fire grabbing once our opponent hits 50% to just burn them down. I’m lucky if fire grab even hits. It seems to magically miss a lot.

I think the initiative system would be good if all professions had some kind of secondary resource to manage instead of everything being CD based. Having everything on a CD is kind of shallow gameplay. I understand why utilities have CD’s, but our weapon skills shouldn’t. For a profession that relies on combos, it’s hard to keep up a D/D rotation when I can cycle through attunements and try to combo, but RTL, Updraft and Earthquake have far too long of a CD as well as fire #4 and Fire Grab.

TLDR; I’m curious to see what this game could be like if weapon skills didn’t have CD’s, and we had a secondary resource to manage, as well as weapon swapping not having a CD, but the benefits we get from weapon swapping/attunement dancing, having internal CD’s. I.e. Receive a boon based on your attunement once every 7 seconds per attunement.

Yeah you’d be lucky if you hit Fire Grab at all but what grinds my gears is how I’m super close to the enemy and Magnetic Grasp misses… How… What… Why… just f#ck it -.-

Dahir.4158:

Yeah you’d be lucky if you hit Fire Grab at all but what grinds my gears is how I’m super close to the enemy and Magnetic Grasp misses… How… What… Why… just f#ck it -.-

I’ve never played a game where the abilities miss as much as some of the GW2 abilities. Ele has quite a few that are like that, but other classes do as well. They really need to recode pathing, projectiles, speed of them, and the qualifications required for them to hit. If that proves to be too difficult, then it’d be nice to have the CD cut in half if it magically misses, much like when you’re about to cast an ability but dodge roll to cancel it.

I use D/F with cantrips and glyph of elemental power (air-weakness). Give thief lots of weakness, use lightning aura and PBAOE spamming to scare ’m off and then chase ’m when he decides to run.

renss.5764:

As a thief stealth player and a d/d elementalist i have to say this is so true
when running the perma prot spec u can barely be harmed, there are too many random aoe attacks going on that hurt the thief alot. I have had so much trouble killing d/d eles on my thief in wvw duels but the other way around, it was easy.

Would you prefer the ele nerf hammered again, virtually making all your hard work count for nothing in the end?