Guild Wars 2

Honestly it seems to me like they are. I’m a backstab balanced thief and the amount of effort I need to use to bring down a DD ele usually ends up in vain. Their advantage is that they don’t need a target, ironically the dagger set gives them a on of aoe which negates stealth, and the water attunement lets them heal without their healing skill. One would burst them down after the water is used but at the same time this is when the DD ele is at their most dangerous as well. Twice today I had to disengage because I had to use my utilities way too close to each other, cleverly saving the shadow refuge as a final trump card. Thieves Guild does help for the extra burst but forget about it if they haven’t used water yet :p I’m not even going to go into the boons, how do you guys handle these players? Usually I just avoid combat with them, but today I was forced into a fight, which I could’ve ran from but I wanted to see if I could do something.

I dont know about you, I don’t even run into roaming D/D ele much anymore. These days, I see a lot of thieves, mesmers, and occassionally a warrior or guardian.

D/D ele went out of style after S/D got the buff it needed to be a hard counter to it.

Excalibur.9748:

I dont know about you, I don’t even run into roaming D/D ele much anymore. These days, I see a lot of thieves, mesmers, and occassionally a warrior or guardian.

D/D ele went out of style after S/D got the buff it needed to be a hard counter to it.

S/D works wonders on DD eles, I used it in pvp to test it out, problem is, I don’t always have a sword equipped :p

If you’re about WvW, D/D Eles are easy if you get the jump on em with a backstab + basilisk. You can take out 2/3 of their hp then just HS or w/e to take the rest down.

In sPvP it’s harder, cos burst is toned down. But as yall have said, S/D No.3 works for me

Without S/D it’s not easy 1v1. I always figured that the cost of our amazing ability to disengage was that we can’t stand toe-to-toe with several builds. It honestly doesn’t bother me that some tanks are too tanky for thieves to take down solo. However, maybe I’ve just run into a string of bad ele’s in spvp lately but I’ve taken them down fairly easily with d/p + sb 10/30/0/0/30.

There’s always Jumper’s s/d build if you can’t stand walking away from tanks

Highly skilled D/D eles and bunker D/D eles wont in normal cases die to thieves.

My tactics mostly:
First dodge ride the lightning, then I walk away watching the ele
smash is face in the keyboard, I start dpsing the ele with the shortbow,
shortbow will let you easily evade any extra attacks and cripple him and
he’ll lose health steadily, the ele will be forced into water and heal up.
And the fight will be reset from the eles part, with water attunement on cooldown.
Usually then I do my best to try burst them down during these 10-15 seconds,
Since I use D/P I will be able to keep the ele blinded and land 2 backstabs along
with some auto attacks. And as he’s about to switch to water attunement again,
I put basilisk up and shadowshot and heartseeker the ele if low hp,
and head shot once the stun ends to prevent or interrupt any heals.
followed by another heartseeker or shadow shot since they usually
are keeping you chilled.

Otherwise, my best suggestion is to simply leave them if you aren’t prepared
to fight for a longer fight.

Hype.8032:

Without S/D it’s not easy 1v1. I always figured that the cost of our amazing ability to disengage was that we can’t stand toe-to-toe with several builds. It honestly doesn’t bother me that some tanks are too tanky for thieves to take down solo. However, maybe I’ve just run into a string of bad ele’s in spvp lately but I’ve taken them down fairly easily with d/p + sb 10/30/0/0/30.

There’s always Jumper’s s/d build if you can’t stand walking away from tanks

Like I said, Jumper’s build is stellar for DD eles…in PvP, me personally wouldn’t be caught dead (literally) with that build in WvW since its mostly a skirmisher build.
But you are right, I have used it on ele, guardians even and it works very well.

Works even better on guardian. I haven’t really lost any 1v1 against guardians with S/D ever since the larcenous strike buff. They’re so afraid of it that when they see you do the first flanking strike a lot of guardians will turn the other direction and run.

S/D is basically hard counter to any boon-reliant builds, which is the way it’s meant to be so it’s all good.

Use D/D with S/D offhand just for ele, grd, rng, mes, and engi’s with those boon bunker builds. Just take them down to 50%~ with S/D, remove their protect/regen, then swap to daggers and drop them. If you engage them the whole time leading up to that point with just S/D on, you can generally SURPRISEBUTSECKS them with the D/D damage output from the cnd/mug/bs burst rotation and drop them.

Just as an FYI, D/D eles might be hard to deal with in WvW, b/c most eles who chose the D/D tank did it precisely because they were tired to thief insta-gibs from out of nowhere. They do have a lot of great defesnive tools between their cantrips, auras, healing, and CC to deal with thief. Your best bet is to whittle him with shortbow and try to get him to run with RtL. Once that is on a 40s cooldown, he can only get away if he pops his elite greatsword.

That being said, you should NEVER be killed by a D/D bunker. They hit you back like a wet noodle.

Excalibur.9748:

Works even better on guardian. I haven’t really lost any 1v1 against guardians with S/D ever since the larcenous strike buff. They’re so afraid of it that when they see you do the first flanking strike a lot of guardians will turn the other direction and run.

S/D is basically hard counter to any boon-reliant builds, which is the way it’s meant to be so it’s all good.

S/D is a hardcounter to anything that doesn’t have aoe condition pressure. Hell, outside engineer it can kill anything, perhaps a good BM ranger or phantasm mesmer giving you a good fight. It doesn’t have a single bad matchup. Because it’s an evade with a 3-4k crit attack that you can spam maybe 6 times with ini regen traits in a row before you run out of initiative, and in the meantime sword auto hits nearly as hard.

I’m running S/D and it’s bound to get a nerf. D/P may do more burst but at least you can pressure or bunker it out. My S/D thief just evades/evades/evades/doge/dodge/dodge while doing stupid damage and stealing boons.

When I see a guardian I get so happy because it’s just free stability and prot and might stacks waiting to happen.

And it’s not like ele or guardian have any viable boons that don’t rely on boons.

The only classes I see that don’t rely on boons on their builds are necro, mesmer, and warrior pretty much.

As someone who mains a D/D ele and plays thief on the side, I just want to say thank you to everyone in this thread for giving constructive feedback instead of crying “ELE OP! MOAR NERFS!” We really need more discussion like this in all class forums. You guys are awesome.

I don’t really have much to offer the OP as the advice given in this thread is great. The D/D set has a lot of different ways to counter backstab so it’s a tough fight for sure. Like others have said, the element of surprise will really help you. Catching the ele off guard will result in at least one of three scenarios: the ele takes the backstab, blows a cantrip/heal right off the bat, or tries to escape. Either way, it gives you more leverage in the fight.

TakeCare.3182:

As someone who mains a D/D ele and plays thief on the side, I just want to say thank you to everyone in this thread for giving constructive feedback instead of crying “ELE OP! MOAR NERFS!” We really need more discussion like this in all class forums. You guys are awesome.

I don’t really have much to offer the OP as the advice given in this thread is great. The D/D set has a lot of different ways to counter backstab so it’s a tough fight for sure. Like others have said, the element of surprise will really help you. Catching the ele off guard will result in at least one of three scenarios: the ele takes the backstab, blows a cantrip/heal right off the bat, or tries to escape. Either way, it gives you more leverage in the fight.

Yeah I figured as much. Doesn’t help when the DD ele I encounter today actually got he jump on me :p I had to pull out because a backstab thief’s utilities are usually for defensive purposes, so when they are blown at the start, you’re gonna have a bad time. I put up a fight though but each hit I dealt was healed right back. I know to burst after water but it was far too risky seeing as how I had no tools in case something went wrong. But thanks for the feedback guys.

D/D roaming ele’s are a thing of the past now. Hardly any good ones out there roaming solo. If you cant beat them with a pure min-max backstab build get the perma stealth build and watch him flee.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Honestly it seems to me like they are. I’m a backstab balanced thief and the amount of effort I need to use to bring down a DD ele usually ends up in vain. Their advantage is that they don’t need a target, ironically the dagger set gives them a on of aoe which negates stealth, and the water attunement lets them heal without their healing skill. One would burst them down after the water is used but at the same time this is when the DD ele is at their most dangerous as well. Twice today I had to disengage because I had to use my utilities way too close to each other, cleverly saving the shadow refuge as a final trump card. Thieves Guild does help for the extra burst but forget about it if they haven’t used water yet :p I’m not even going to go into the boons, how do you guys handle these players? Usually I just avoid combat with them, but today I was forced into a fight, which I could’ve ran from but I wanted to see if I could do something.

D/D elementalist don’t phase me. I have gotten into a lengthy fight against one though.