Guild Wars 2

As someone relatively new to the D/D ele, I am genuinely curious what to do when a thief gets the jump on me and takes me down in less than 2 seconds. Do I just hit shocking aura and hope for the best? Suggestions?

I’ve actually never had that problem as an elementalist, never died instantly or in less than 10 seconds to a thief, maybe i just fought bad ones but idk.

I think the key is to dodge right when you see him coming out of invis, or even before, if you evade that major damage is easy after that, they might start jumping on you with heartseeker, but wont do much dmg, you can just heal that up, and then counter attack, since he has no more innitiative.

Well dunno what gear you wear but I run around in P/V/T and P/T/C gear and never have a problem.

use a soldier amulet, use mist form when he jumps you. Or switch to water attune to remove basilisk poison dodge roll away heal up. Or use lightning flash to teleport away. Or use shocking aura. Or switch to earth for protection boon then stun/ heal up.

The main thing that screws thiefs over really is chill that burst spec cant remove chill which makes it very hard to get behind you reducing his damage by 50%.

How to deal with thieves:
1. Stay in air attunement and use static aura. Press about face, use air 5. Then fire 3, 2, 5, 4. Then earth 3, 2, 4. Then water 3, 2. If he’s not dead, switch to fire. This is what happens in your best scenario imo. Doesn’t always but at least it gets the thief off your back and allows you to heal up in water attunement.
2. Mist form or arcane shield or other cantrips if you have to but I find those 2 work best
3. Dodge (requires good reflexes)
4. Using Frost Aura and dodging away works too as it applies a chill to the thief but you’ll end up taking up decent damage. Static aura works better and you should only use frost aura if static is on CD. I love water 3 against thieves. Low CD too.
5. Yeah. I think that’s it. Sadly. Thieves are a pain though. It’s worse when you’re fighting and they pick you off while you’re unaware or stunned without a cantrip to blow. Thieves suck. Meh. Hate thieves and mesmers.

@Splody
You’ve been playing against bad thieves or you have god-like reflexes and can dodge a thief’s burst with amazing skill. Prob the former. A thief can burst you down in 2 seconds.

Does Chill really make such a huge difference to an initiative based class other then putting their utility and heal on longer cooldowns and slowing their movemnt? That being said I absolutely love water 3, makes my heart sad when I watch Ele videos and the skill seldomly gets used.

MarzAttakz.9608:

Does Chill really make such a huge difference to an initiative based class other then putting their utility and heal on longer cooldowns and slowing their movemnt? That being said I absolutely love water 3, makes my heart sad when I watch Ele videos and the skill seldomly gets used.

Since all dangerous thief damage is melee, the slow on chill is rather important.

For D/D specs (the ones with the wtfbbqburst) the increased cooldown on steal from chill will also hurt them a lot if the fight lasts that long (steal normally has a 45 second cooldown)

MarzAttakz.9608:

Does Chill really make such a huge difference to an initiative based class other then putting their utility and heal on longer cooldowns and slowing their movemnt? That being said I absolutely love water 3, makes my heart sad when I watch Ele videos and the skill seldomly gets used.

I believe chilled does the following: Increase CDs. Slows movement. Decreases the amount of travel distance on dodges and leap attacks. Slows initiative gain (not sure, will have to be verified by a thief)? Overall, a great condition to use on thieves. Especially one with a 15s CD with 3s chill duration and combined with frost aura which chills for 2s.

You are missing toughness. Most of the time you should have enough time for a dodge. If the thief is good and use stun venom then you pop mistform.

When I get attacked by a bursty thief its all agbout quick reaction.. I run a pretty tough condition damage dagger dagger build.. But I just pop mistform… he will have burned a love of initiave and cool down on his burst attack and will have nothing left when mistform ends… most of the time the fight is already over at that point. You just have to survive the first burst

Driz.8230:

As someone relatively new to the D/D ele, I am genuinely curious what to do when a thief gets the jump on me and takes me down in less than 2 seconds. Do I just hit shocking aura and hope for the best? Suggestions?

I have one suggestion, always move, you can have perma-swiftness on, so a Thief coming and backstabbing you shouldn’t be a common sight. If he does manage to jump on you, it’s all about quick reflexes, to pop your “save me” skill before he finishes you off. I have Mist Form on mouse 4 so I can use it in an instant.

maddoctor.2738:

Driz.8230:

As someone relatively new to the D/D ele, I am genuinely curious what to do when a thief gets the jump on me and takes me down in less than 2 seconds. Do I just hit shocking aura and hope for the best? Suggestions?

I have one suggestion, always move, you can have perma-swiftness on, so a Thief coming and backstabbing you shouldn’t be a common sight. If he does manage to jump on you, it’s all about quick reflexes, to pop your “save me” skill before he finishes you off. I have Mist Form on mouse 4 so I can use it in an instant.

I do have swiftness on all of the time. Normally thieves aren’t this much of a problem since if they can do that much damage to me, they are going to die very fast as well. It was completely unexpected this time, however, and I was shocked at how fast I went down as I don’t think I have ever been downed that easily before. There are some good ideas here though; it’s pretty much what I had been doing, but I guess I’ll just have to react faster next time.

reaction time is the make or break for ele if u getting jumped by a thief. with a thief jumping u, it is sometime easier to react to the fact that u just lost 50% hp then actually seeing the thief appear by u on steal.
a simple roll would be enough to buy u enough time to have a proper reaction while negating 1/3 or more of his burst. even RTL randomly toward an open spot works. updraft could also be used but that can be dangerous considering the CD on it.
basically any near instant evading/blocking ability works vs a thiefs burst. hard part is simply reacting.

Oh the irony
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/How-to-kill-D-D-Ele