Guild Wars 2

I’m a new DH of about 4 months now, and I’m mostly curious about the general sentiment that DH hardcounters all forms of DareDevil builds.
What do I mean by hardcounter? One clear example of hardcounter would be LB/Staff Druid vs Reaper/Necro. No fight there really, druid wins easily. In the words of one of the druid roamers that I know, “I’ve never lost to a reaper/necro on my druid”.

My main question is: Do Dragonhunters truly hardcounter Daredevils at all skill levels? Will it be a case of an even 50-50 match-up between 2 highly skilled players, and not the general sentiment that DH counters DareDevil to the point that it will never be 50-50 even at a very high skill level?

• If you take a highly skilled and experienced DareDevil to fight a highly skilled and experienced DH, does the DH truly hold a class advantage over all forms of DD builds?
• Is the general sentiment of DH hardcountering DareDevil due to the lower skill-level needed to play a DH and at lower skill levels (which makes up a larger majority of the players, DH and DD included), they find it hard to defeat a DH?
• At high skill levels, is it actually 50-50 and the general sentiment of DH hadcountering DareDevil is a myth?

I’m mostly interested in views on solo encounters in WvW of DH vs DD.
Not so much on PvP (since contesting a point becomes important, but is probably not the priority for a DD to contest a point with a DH solo) but would welcome these views too.

In the 4 months of fighting DDs 1 vs 1 in WvW, I generally struggle most against condi D/D DD and P/P DD. I put it down to me not being skilled and experienced enough though and am getting better and better at fighting them. I’ve been defeated twice in a row by a staff DD from JQ’s FEAR guild and I admit I got outplayed. Which led me to wondering, at high skill levels, is it actually 50-50 and the general sentiment of DH hadcountering DD is a myth?

I’m not experienced/skillful enough on my DH to know if this is true or not, but would love to hear from highly skilled DHs and DDs if there really is credibility, even at high skill levels, that DH holds a considerable advantage over all forms of DDs.

I believe Sindreneer put up some videos of him fighting various classes, some were dragon hunter and he beat them.

Personally I haven’t found them to be a complete counter but most of the time they aren’t worth fighting as you have to get through about 30s of either hazardous AoE or blocks/invulnerability before your opening comes up. I generally just keep ranged till they’ve finished F3 twice then they’re easier targets and you can abuse pulmonary impact.

I will however say you can’t compare something like a power D/D Daredevil which is possibly the worst spec they can run vs the best spec a DH can run which would be trap heal and various other traps DH, possibly with lights judgement which would shut it down hard.

apharma.3741:

I believe Sindreneer put up some videos of him fighting various classes, some were dragon hunter and he beat them.

Personally I haven’t found them to be a complete counter but most of the time they aren’t worth fighting as you have to get through about 30s of either hazardous AoE or blocks/invulnerability before your opening comes up. I generally just keep ranged till they’ve finished F3 twice then they’re easier targets and you can abuse pulmonary impact.

I will however say you can’t compare something like a power D/D Daredevil which is possibly the worst spec they can run vs the best spec a DH can run which would be trap heal and various other traps DH, possibly with lights judgement which would shut it down hard.

Thanks for the thoughts! Were those dragonhunters good?

Also I edited my post slightly to change DD to DareDevil in case people misunderstand DD for dagger/dagger.

DH doesn’t have any true hard counter. Closest might be a Revenant. Daredevil can’t really handle the amount of PBAoE damage and sustain that comes out of a DH. You either fight to stalemate, or someone makes a mistake first.

Reverence.6915:

DH doesn’t have any true hard counter. Closest might be a Revenant. Daredevil can’t really handle the amount of PBAoE damage and sustain that comes out of a DH. You either fight to stalemate, or someone makes a mistake first.

Faerie Law!!!!!

Is your guild still active and well?
I’ve been wanting to join Faerie Law forever! If only I could transfer to BG!!!
Are you guys related to the manga Fairy Tail??

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Tired-of-Stealth/page/3#post6361353

That’s a link to the post with the videos, he talks about a few things and offers tips in general further into the thread. I’ll let you decide for yourself.

I’d say the DH has the advantage over the DD. The worst part of it being that even if you shadowstep in or out of a trap, you’ll take damage like you just walked through it (i.e. Test of Faith). Not to mention the pull on DH is nearly impossible to reactively dodge since it is so fast (use it while DDs are using their short block).

Staff has a slight workaround to this since Vault has some evade frames. If you’re still going up in the air as you pass through the trap while Vaulting, you’ll dodge it. When coming down for the actual damage portion, the DD is vulnerable as they’re locking into the animation. You can use this time to attach your F1, True Shot, put a trap down, etc.

If you can, keep the fight moving in and out of your Test of Faith when you can as thieves and DD will generally keep out of it, allowing you to either poke them with your longbow or recover a few seconds worth of cooldowns.

burn DH are so kitten annoying the amount of burn stacks……….. i don’t think any thief can stand that unless u keep moving and dodging i avoid them most of the time

I would think it’s an uphill fight for the DD; typically if the DH struggles then they messed up. Though obviously it’s possible for a better player to win and a good DD can stalemate. Given the large variance in ability, I suppose it’s sometimes really hard to tell whether it’s the player or the class.

Main things are that it’s typically dangerous to fight the DH up close due to traps and hunter’s determination being a threat allowing them to turn your CC against you, with hunter’s fortification being a real annoyance. And there’s of course the god forsaken pull which must be anticipated. In a vacuum none of these things are hard to deal with, but nor will they only give you one thing to work with at a time.

It’s especially pronounced at the skill floor. If both don’t know what they’re doing, it tends to end up extremely ugly for the DD. (I have experience on both sides!) But at least they can’t abuse reveal like some of the uglier cases.

Well a hard counter to a class with a lot of blocks should be a class with a lot of unlockables, right? Like stab is to CC. Consequently counter pressure is present to a class that fights at close range against high damage PBAoE when your only way to mitigate it is your classes mobility or blocks/invulnerability.

I dont think so. A DH has plenty of defense and may be a dangerous foe when skilled, but it if the DH build for damage, he’ll equal the hp of the DD. A good DD will burst through that in a second. If the traps miss, the DH is toast. If they hit… well you know.

Dawdler.8521:

I dont think so. A DH has plenty of defense and may be a dangerous foe when skilled, but it if the DH build for damage, he’ll equal the hp of the DD. A good DD will burst through that in a second. If the traps miss, the DH is toast. If they hit… well you know.

Agreed. The DH has the advantage but it’s not a hard counter. I think the hard counter perception stems from the impatience of new/low skilled thieves. If they can’t insta gib a target they run and look for an easier target.

I play DH in wvw and I’d say I’m either at or very close to the skill ceiling of a power-built DH in terms of 1v1s and roaming.

DH is a pretty strong counter to power-built thieves (especially D/P) and borderline hard-counter. It’s still possible for DD to win and as a power DH, I have been beaten by very skilled DD before (and even recently, within last 1-2 patches). Here are the patterns I’ve noticed from my defeats to DD:

• They are always extremely zerky. They put either very little or nothing into toughness and vitality (perhaps 14-15k hp so they don’t get insta-downed by a wombo-combo with ToF, otherwise full zerk). A skilled, full zerk thief with power/crit food and utils + 25 bloodlust is actually quite the nightmare for me as a DH. I have to be on my toes the entire time and I’d say in a roaming situation (non-duel), my chances of victory are only about 60%.

• They tend to run pulmonary impact: It’s extra damage, plus neither of the other two master-tier traits in DD help nearly as much. One duel I had against a S/P DD long ago (right after HoT dropped) was completely controlled by the thief because of pistol whip + pulmonary impact.

• If they can manage to repeatedly stealth without getting interrupted (shield 5, LB3, or pulled), they can generally outlast my sustain. After my heal, f3/f2, RF, second heal and second round of f3/f2, I’m a sitting duck. If I can’t end the fight before then, I usually lose.

• In a duel/1v1 roaming situation, they tend to run channeled vigor over withdraw, and only engage me out of stealth when at or near full health. A good DD knows full well that a good DH can output 8-12k damage nearly instantly if just a couple key attacks crit.

• In 1v1s I’ve lost more to D/P than to staff. Staff has a bit better sustain on it, but staff 5 spam is pretty easy for even a moderately experienced DH to deal with so there isn’t much damage to be had so long as DH avoids the staff 2 + steal combo. Also, D/P makes it easy for the thief to get off a backstab combo (very high damage) before traps activate.

• Good D/P thieves will lay on a burst, dodge back out, then sit a little bit out of melee range waiting for me to heal or f2. They will successfully interrupt either, multiple times in a row too which usually forces me to blow through my sustain a lot faster, meanwhile they only use a bit of initiative for the interrupts. This forces me to constantly be on the offensive which means they’re controlling the fight at least a little bit.

I don’t think I can speak much to condi thief’s efficacy as I have only encountered a couple and it ended in stalemate both times.

From my experience though: Just taking CoP + smite condi essentially makes me impervious to any amount of damage a condi-thief can output, but I can’t kill them either so it’s a stalemate.

Arcaedus.7290:

I play DH in wvw and I’d say I’m either at or very close to the skill ceiling of a power-built DH in terms of 1v1s and roaming.

DH is a pretty strong counter to power-built thieves (especially D/P) and borderline hard-counter. It’s still possible for DD to win and as a power DH, I have been beaten by very skilled DD before (and even recently, within last 1-2 patches). Here are the patterns I’ve noticed from my defeats to DD:

• They are always extremely zerky. They put either very little or nothing into toughness and vitality (perhaps 14-15k hp so they don’t get insta-downed by a wombo-combo with ToF, otherwise full zerk). A skilled, full zerk thief with power/crit food and utils + 25 bloodlust is actually quite the nightmare for me as a DH. I have to be on my toes the entire time and I’d say in a roaming situation (non-duel), my chances of victory are only about 60%.

• They tend to run pulmonary impact: It’s extra damage, plus neither of the other two master-tier traits in DD help nearly as much. One duel I had against a S/P DD long ago (right after HoT dropped) was completely controlled by the thief because of pistol whip + pulmonary impact.

• If they can manage to repeatedly stealth without getting interrupted (shield 5, LB3, or pulled), they can generally outlast my sustain. After my heal, f3/f2, RF, second heal and second round of f3/f2, I’m a sitting duck. If I can’t end the fight before then, I usually lose.

• In a duel/1v1 roaming situation, they tend to run channeled vigor over withdraw, and only engage me out of stealth when at or near full health. A good DD knows full well that a good DH can output 8-12k damage nearly instantly if just a couple key attacks crit.

• In 1v1s I’ve lost more to D/P than to staff. Staff has a bit better sustain on it, but staff 5 spam is pretty easy for even a moderately experienced DH to deal with so there isn’t much damage to be had so long as DH avoids the staff 2 + steal combo. Also, D/P makes it easy for the thief to get off a backstab combo (very high damage) before traps activate.

• Good D/P thieves will lay on a burst, dodge back out, then sit a little bit out of melee range waiting for me to heal or f2. They will successfully interrupt either, multiple times in a row too which usually forces me to blow through my sustain a lot faster, meanwhile they only use a bit of initiative for the interrupts. This forces me to constantly be on the offensive which means they’re controlling the fight at least a little bit.

I don’t think I can speak much to condi thief’s efficacy as I have only encountered a couple and it ended in stalemate both times.

From my experience though: Just taking CoP + smite condi essentially makes me impervious to any amount of damage a condi-thief can output, but I can’t kill them either so it’s a stalemate.

great post. I enjoyed reading your in-depth views.

In my opinion, in WvW, DH cannot counter an experienced DD. No matter what you do,mobility is a huge issue in this game. And a good DD would disengage-engage to burn the cd’s of DH.

But the problem about my statement is the fact that I am assuming a skill level for the thief/DD. Below a certain experience, I think DH can really hurt DD well.

1v1
Give a Thief enough time and he can kill a DH assuming they’re equal skilled players. If thief avoids ToF, F1 pull and true shot, he has a chance because thereafter he can reign on DH’s parade due to burning off all his cd.

There’s only a couple Thief builds that can potentially kill a DH, but none can consistently beat a DH.. unless they have all the time in the world to reset fights AKA WvW.

SPvP
There’s no reason to ever 1v1 a DH, we’re basically their soft counter unless they come to +1 us.
If it’s,
“easy to kill a DH using >insert build<”
then that DH was bad in every sense of the word.

alain.1659:

In my opinion, in WvW, DH cannot counter an experienced DD. No matter what you do,mobility is a huge issue in this game. And a good DD would disengage-engage to burn the cd’s of DH.

But the problem about my statement is the fact that I am assuming a skill level for the thief/DD. Below a certain experience, I think DH can really hurt DD well.

See that’s what I thought too. If the DD just keeps on disengaging to burn DH’s CDs, it should be an eventual victory. The problem is that if you don’t keep the pressure on hard enough, the DH’s heal and virtues come back giving them a second wind. And if you predictably keep the pressure on (even if it is a good and damaging rotation), a smart DH can take advantage of that and set you up for a burst. It takes an experienced DD who knows DH skills very well (and can read them) to pull out a victory.

DH is pretty much in the state of Scrapper and Druid in spvp. Tbh it’s one of those classes in a 1v1 situation assuming both players play near perfectly they just don’t have a glaring weakness or disadvantage. This is also considering ppl are using the current metabuilds because every now and then you have someone go into spvp with some build thats sole purpose is to kill said build.

In WvW DD has advantage due the mobility and stealth, which usually means the ability to reset the fight as many times as they need. It takes time but the DD has an edge.

In sPvP DH hardcounters DD due going stealth, reseting the fight, trying to poke at range and bursting in and out makes nothing to control the point, so the DD bleeds points in the score. It takes so long (and it’s so risky) to fight as DD against a DH for the control of one point (if both are skilled) that simply doesn’t work.

Pretty much – it depends on the game mode.

In WvW, the thief has more ability to fine-tune their build so they can survive a burst without giving up too much damage, and also has more opportunity to use stealth and mobility to their advantage. WvW also has the fact that objectives usually involve fighting NPCs – the mere threat of a nearby enemy thief may be enough to discourage somebody from making a lone attack on a camp, for instance.

In sPvP, when push comes to shove, generally you’re either on a point or not on a point, and a thief generally can’t survive contesting a point with a hostile DH. Best case scenario for the thief in a 1v1 with a DH is to mostly fight from range and wear the DH down until it’s possible to finish them off. Even that, though, usually involves the DH having been able to sit on the point for long enough that in terms of scoring points for the team, the DH has probably still won… and in my experience, most thieves that try usually end up being killed by the DH anyway. The best bet for a thief facing a 1v1 with a DH is usually to go and find an uncontested point or to +1 another fight.

Lalainnia.3598:

DH is pretty much in the state of Scrapper and Druid in spvp.

Oh you mean pre-patch?

Because otherwise I fail to see how traited dazing DH traps with amazing power damage that you can doublepop due to going on cd when placing them is anywhere close to the state of fixed damage scaling scrapper gyros you dont even know where they will pop due to flying all over the place that also got their daze entirerly removed (but not the passive grandmaster trait that increase daze duration) due to “purity of purpose”.

The Daredevil has to disengage/reset multiple times to burn the DH’s cooldowns while the DH needs to make several mistakes in his defense rotation. If both play perfectly the Daredevil will never have a chance and is forced to run away and come back constantly which is by my definition a loss.

A player who burns 100 opportunities (given by his broken class mechanics) before he reaches the point where he can gank his opponent who was just getting tired will never be a winner by definition.

DH hardcounters Daredevil. The Daredevil’s /lol-spams, when you walk into the next keep because you are annoyed after his 10th reset won’t change that fact.

This thief here shows how to kill dragon hunters in pvp duels.

any thoughts on the thief and DH in the video above? were they good? could the DH have done better? or did the thief show he can hold his own against good DHs?

EremiteAngel.9765:

any thoughts on the thief and DH in the video above? were they good? could the DH have done better? or did the thief show he can hold his own against good DHs?

Needs more Unload Spam…..

EremiteAngel.9765:

any thoughts on the thief and DH in the video above? were they good? could the DH have done better? or did the thief show he can hold his own against good DHs?

The thief is easily above average. During the first few fights he got surprised by the JI burst combo, but was able to more easily predict it later on. Had this been an open-field fight, DH would have gone down much faster.

The DH was average and doesn’t look like a very good duelist (or maybe not vs. thief). He has an okay rotation but was really just going through the motions rather than trying to read his opponent. Just seemed to be relying on scepter auto + JI bursts to down the thief which gets predictable after a while.

DH had plenty of opportunities to down the thief whereas the thief had to be very patient and survive through heal/ToF at least twice before he could down him in nearly every fight.

Edit: Finished watching the video. In the last 5 minutes, the DH he fights is an excellent duelist and definitely one of the better ones out there. I’ll say this: DD vs. DH is similar to DH vs. Druid: It’s an uphill battle and you have to really be on your toes with the tells/animations and your own interrupts/sustain to pull through. I don’t think there is much the last DH could have done differently other than stack his burst after seeing 3-4 dodges; he spread his damage out too evenly hoping it would wear the thief down, but that build is much harder to wear down than the typical D/P.