Guild Wars 2

Im sure this has been answred on the forum before but i could not fond a recent thread and wanted to avoid necroing a thread. In pvp and more so in wvw, how does one ay elementalist against a glassy thief. The problems i face are: the thief stealthing when low and opening up again when you have used your dodges, the thief dealing more damage than i can handle then finishing me off with heartseekers while i heal in water, and not being able to land rtl, burning speed and other non targeted abilities because the thief is in stealth. He reopens after hes stealted and i have 3 seconds to hit them before he nrestealths. I can either get in two lightning whips or a ride the lightning before hes gone again.
Ive tried running tankier setups but he chews faster through me than i can to him.
Thanks :)

I don’t know what you mean by untargeted abilities can’t hit a thief. If you’re not dodging you should be hitting a thief whenever they’re approaching to attempt a backstab. If backstabs are landing, don’t use keyboard turning and increase your mouse rotation sensitivity.

Basically the easiest way is to hit them with one of the many available CCs after shadowstep is burned (Earth 3, earth 4, air 3 or air 5). Then follow with burning + fire 5 or just fire 3 or any type of big damage.

After they’re at half health they have to go into defensive mode which means popping big cooldowns or doing no damage. After they pop big cooldowns they’re dead next time they get low.

As long as you’re reasonably good at anticipation and dodges you can stay ahead because thief is extremely squishy and has far lower healing than ele.

That’s assuming a not glass D/D ele.

Or you can go full zerk S/D with Arcane Shield for cheese mode.

Timing.

Don’t just keep dodging, make sure you get an evasive arcana from every dodge. Learn how to dance and position yourself, learn how to root him with earth 3 when he appears. Make him waste initiative. Dont just spam your 1 key and search around, you’ll just get backstabbed. Have arcane shield.

The only thieves I now have issues with are p/d condition/perplexity spammers. But then again who doesn’t with that trash spec.

D/D Ele should have a pretty good matchup against a glassy Thief. If you just spam AoEs and keep up fire fields (kite around your own fire fields) it should make it pretty hard for the Thief to do much to you.

If there is one advice i should give you:
Try thief just a little. Once i got mine lv 80, in one day training/testing with it, i was able to understand rotation and timing of the class.
Before that i the match up ele vs thief was pretty easy, now i’m just rolling on them cause i just react way better to the situation.

Yeah, the key to beating another class is to learn them.

I normally burst them down. If stealthed = aoe, and most of the time I predict his movement, use my Blazing Flash and theyre dead :>