Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing a lot of thief recently, and I’m having a blast with D/D. Against melee enemies I generally do alright with my backstabs. Against ranged, I can usually land a CnD, but I’ve been having a hard time chasing them when steal is down because a lot of the time they just run away. Also, a lot of the time when I do get to people, I have difficulty actually landing a back stab and end up doing a front stab for half the damage. Any tips on this?

D/p will help with all of that. Use #2 and #3 as spammable gap closers. They also do quite a bit of dmg, and #3 blinds. Much easier stealth access means you can sneak up on ranged, and allows you to wait for the perfect time to backstab

I also run D/D and understand where you are coming from.

2 solutions – I used to never use BV and never used DV.

I now use both, DV as my third Util (if I’m feeling offensive).

I generally open up with BV/CD/BS I rarely find people who stunbreak fast enough to keep me from landing BS.

If that doesnt get them into HS territory as soon as revaled is close to off I DV/C/D precast/Steal – then B/S again.

This almost always does the trick or you are in one HS territory.

Of course this is cooldown dependent. If these C/D are down you just have to be very patient.

Dagger 4 is good versus runners. I definiely use it if I can’t catch them and of course heartseeker is a leap.

I run traveler runes too – I don’t think I could do it without Travelers or SoS

The 50% speed trait while in stealth is nice if you are having trouble. Can actually get around the people that are back-pedaling with that.

Pff, you can sneak up on ppl w/o stealth, just walk from behind. You would be surprised how many typical wvw suspects dont look around.

A big part of landing backstabs with any dagger spec is getting used to turning your character around 180 quickly so that you can backstab before the enemy gets away.

However, if you’re talking WvW, then I highly suggest getting Runes of the Traveler. They’re expensive, but worth every copper if you plan on roaming WvW.

One of my favorites when running d/d is Scorpion Wire, which both pulls them over to you and knocks them down for a second or two, followed by #3 to get behind them if needed. It doesn’t pull on some heavier and larger enemies in PvE, but it always does the knockdown. Not sure how it does in PvP, tho.