Guild Wars 2

I mainly play 2/0/0/6/6 S/D. I can’t seem to beat either of these two builds EVER in a duel. Is there any way of dealing with these at all?

You run away.

As a thief, you should spend most of your time running away, and making fights uneven.

That’s the only thing you’re good at.

Guardians are very strong at the moment. The best method would be kiting with your bow. Same with the Ele. Kite them around and steal the important boons.

But to be honest, run away in pvp, and avoid dueling them in WvW. The fight is not a fair one by any means. (Unless you’re P/D, in which case it’s still slanted in their favor but only somewhat.)

Play D/P and win.

Tonikor.5637:

Play D/P and win.

My understanding is that D/P is still weak against heavy condition pressure. What is it about D/P that makes it more winnable in your view?

D/P is good because of the blinds, but will still be weak vs heavy Condi and high dps. Medi guards still eat us D/P thieves for breakfast. Use dat shortbow!

Tonikor.5637:

Play D/P and win.

You troll.

I beat a medi guard once by using S/D. It was NOT an easy fight.

For D/D celestial eles, I’m still trying to figure that out. It just turns into a stand-off until one side messes up. Or gets help.

Both medi guards and D/D eles counter zerk thieves. Either you spec for full SA, or you avoid the fight altogether.

Against medi guard: Use S/D when he’s in S/F and use SB when he’s in GS. Basically, don’t play his game, since scepter will outdps your SB and GS will outdps your S/D. There are no tells on smite conditions or judge’s intervention, though some guards like to precast whirling wrath before porting. I use more CnD + auto than FS + LS because stealth will hide your positioning briefly, and the daze allows you to get some good autos in. The entire fight will revolve around picking at him until you’re able to land the stolen ability. When you land that, you need to burst hard and GTFO when the daze subsides.

Against D/D ele: Abuse sword 2, since they have to be in melee, and you need to clear burning. It’s slightly more manageable than medi guard, IMO, because you can kite them much more effectively. You have enough evades to avoid most of the bigger attacks like burning speed/fire grab. I prefer to use FS + LS over CnD + auto because of the boon strip. Similarly, the fight will revolve around landing the stolen ability. Wait till he swaps out of water, hit the chill, then go for the burst.

You don’t want to fight them when they have their greatsword out, it’s huge AoE damage, instead when they have their GS out, you kit with SB and apply poison, most of the time they will have gs skill heal trait.

then when they are with sword or scepter and focus, go in and damage, focus block can be broken before it explodes.

and after one rotate, guardians have 10 second weapon swap and weapon skill CD, you see them chasing you auto attacking it’s not because they are doing w/e, they are just aaing because thats all they can do. so you gotta bait med guard to use it’s CDs when first engage

and about DD, basically, don’t get him start his rotation, when hes in fire, you burst him down, before he can place fire field and swap to earth for protection, basically if you can mess up his rotation hes easy kill, but that only applies to zerker, if its cele, don’t bother, or just perma kit and land perfect ice spike and hope he make mistake

btw, i wouldn’t recommand DP against med guard, med guard hard counters DP then anything else like SD, med inside blinding power hurts..a lot.

While it certainly requires some work I have found I have had greatest success against these two using p/p rather then shortbow along with the s/d set. Preserve your evades and dodges and withdraw and RFI a must. Against the guardian a high uptime on swiftness is also a great help.

P/P just dumps out more raw damage quickly then s/b and you can get a lot of it in before range is closed .The daze on the p/p set is also very helpful in fighting either class so as to interrupt an action. I try and get that first unload off while the ele at extreme range and evade back right away to avoid his initial attack.

I prefer not to stealth much against these two as it gives them breathing space to get skills off cooldown or for the ele ready that next rotation. You can not afford to miss your steals.

Of course a lot depends on the skill level of the enemy (and whether that ele a cele d/d). I find with the Mediguard on any build it easier to disengage and get out of there if I am not getting anywhere.

I am sure everyone has different preferences.

You should only be 1v1ing classes that you know you can burst hard and fast. In my experience this includes berserker staff ele’s, shatter mesmers, and other thieves.

Anything else you should either turn around and run away or look to make it into an “unfair” fight (1v2, 2v3, etc).’

The reasoning behind this is even though you could eventually outplay most classes, the time you spent 1v1ing could be better spent doing something else (back capping, imbalancing the team fight mid or close, completing other map objectives)

As someone fairly experienced playing med guard, I’ll throw in my 2 cents:

P/D thieves are what med guards have a lot of trouble with. I ran into a couple P/D perplexity rune thieves last month in WvW on my guard. After 2 duels with the first, and 3 or 4 duels with the second, I could NOT even get close to beating either of them in 1v1 (I tried all the typical weapon comboes, and trait variants for med guard). After using all my cleanses, these guys still managed to stick on many stacks of confusion/bleed and poison on to me, and were still at nearly full hp themselves. 3k armor, 20k+ hp, and stealth….Maybe I’m doin it wrong, but I’m pretty sure med guard doesn’t counter these guys in WvW. Don’t quote me on that for spvp though lol.

As for zerker thieves, I have been beaten before by a good zerker thief. The key is to wait until the guard is at about half hp, then throw on the dazes and burst em down. Even then, if it’s a well managed guard, they can still come back from it. On the bright side, you can very easily escape a med guard. At most, we’ll have 3 gap closers, and +25% movement speed from travellers rune (which not all med guards run anyways). Hope this helps!

I’d say I’m pretty good at fighting both d/d eles and medi guards on s/d acro. I’ve noticed the only time I lose is when I miss key skills such as mace crack from the guardian. If you land your steal everytime, anticipate the burst and land the mace crack you’ll beat every medi guard. Now ele can be difficult depending on what amulet and jazz but overall the best way to beat them is to kite and burst when they aren’t in fire, back away when in earth and try not to eat the shocking aura. The actual way to win is to force them into water and apply the ice chill you get from steal after they’ve already cleansed with water. Chill is aids to eles, and mace crack is aids to guardian… Use your steal abilities to your best abilities and you’ll win way more fights against them.

D/D eles are easy – immobilize them and use headshot alot.

The only way to get good at this is to actually play d/d ele and learn the rotation of spells they follow. (lightning/fire/earth/water)

in order for them to land their spells their is alot of movement and casting involved… Shortbow auto combined with invis is an immob – use ur imob, steal up and deal heavy dps

they will quickly switch to water to try and recoup life, spam headshot in between autos to cancel casts or heals and eventually even when they do heal the health they gain is not enough for them to reset.

Gaurdians – Yeah i just run

Edit: what guy above said as well – dont get close in fire and steal up during lightning or water

dps guard: don’t bother, he will kill you unless he is afk
dd ele: don’t bother, even if you manage to outplay him it will just take too long; you are probably more useful somewhere else

You need 10 in shadow arts for condi removal on stealth. Also need to swap to sb at some point to bide time until heals come back up and them to blow CDs.

In a duel? As in where the only purpose is to fight 1v1 and win? Against a good D/D ele it’s a matter of whoever messes up first, but your mobility with infil return should allow you to reset the fight if you need to. Against an offguard you just have to get the first engage, anticipate and dodge their condi cleanse, land every steal, and ideally your mace skull cracks. Keep count on their teleport meditation too; you’ll want withdraw, a infiltrator’s return, or steal ready. Steal isn’t reliable for it though because they’ll often blind when they teleport. To land steals, be very wary of their blinds. Try to use it to interrupt a hammer/gs skill. If you miss a steal - especially right at the start of the fight - reset by kiting or using refuge.

I’ve never really had trouble with Guardians/Ele either as D/P or S/D. S/D can be unblockable and rips boons non stop. D/P has silly burst and both classes are fairly squishy.

NinjaSonic.1392:

I’ve never really had trouble with Guardians/Ele either as D/P or S/D. S/D can be unblockable and rips boons non stop. D/P has silly burst and both classes are fairly squishy.

D/D celestial ele’s are the total opposite from squishy, thats why they are in the meta. Even if you get one to 20% hp he can instantly heal to full again and again and again…

Kurow.3076:

You run away.

As a thief, you should spend most of your time running away, and making fights uneven.

That’s the only thing you’re good at.

This. Atleast if they are good players.

D/D Ele are easy if:

1- You can burst then down between water rotations
2- You can keep the poisoned

If not, you might as well move somewhere else.

S/D thief is a counter to D/D ele.

I’ve played D/D cel ele for over a thousand games. A good S/D thief would usually beat me or at least give me a hard fight. And now as I’m playing the S/D thief I beat the crap out of every D/D ele. It really comes down to knowing the mechanics of an elementalist, then they are very predictable because their cooldowns on attunements force them into a rotation which whill always be the same. Basically, all you have to do is

- avoid lighting aura
- dodge his fire attument
- stay on top of him if he attunes to water (auto attack and gap closers if he chills you is enough)
- burst him down after he cycled through his healing

Don’t forget that you can steal his might stacks.

cursE.1794:

S/D thief is a counter to D/D ele.

I’ve played D/D cel ele for over a thousand games. A good S/D thief would usually beat me or at least give me a hard fight. And now as I’m playing the S/D thief I beat the crap out of every D/D ele. It really comes down to knowing the mechanics of an elementalist, then they are very predictable because their cooldowns on attunements force them into a rotation which whill always be the same. Basically, all you have to do is

- avoid lighting aura
- dodge his fire attument
- stay on top of him if he attunes to water (auto attack and gap closers if he chills you is enough)
- burst him down after he cycled through his healing

Don’t forget that you can steal his might stacks.

It’s hardly a hard-counter. You can pressure them somewhat with S/D, but if the ele is good it’s generally not worth it. You can’t make any mistakes as a S/D if you want a chance at a kill, that can be very taxing against a good player. Also S/D is soft-countered by conditions and AoE spam.

Like someone else mentioned, you are better off finding uneven fights or using your utility more effectively. Unless ofcourse you are trying to pressure a point, then you could always try and go for a kill. I’d keep my SF to reset the fight if necessary though.

From playing a medi guard, the biggest downfall of that build is no sustain. You use skills to stay alive, not hp or armor. Most run about 2600 ac at best and 12k hp(in WvW) and a little higher in sPvP. They have long cool downs on their blocks and at most 2 protections to reduce damage. Not to mention they are telegraphed as all out.

With that said, once on cool down, the normal meta medi guard is a sitting duck waiting to be blown up.

So keep hard pressure and put their skills on CD and then blow them up. Patience will win against the standard meta medi build.

This fact forced me to rethink the medi guard build and change it up pretty drastically.

And well Im not big on sharing builds (that causes nerfs), but my health is drastically improved, I have better CC’s and likely more consistent sustained damage with slightly less burst capability (though its still a pretty significant burst that after I soften people up it will eat them).

Most thieves that lost to me when I ran meta were the ones who thought they would just come in a thief me right off the bat. The smart ones just kite close, wait my skills out, and then burst me down.