Guild Wars 2

I recently see a lot of flamethrower condi engis around, and I was wandering if you can give me some tips of how to fight against them.

They have good reflect mechanics, some exploding probes with them, and they don’t go down easily while their condi and medium range aoe with flamethrower is very good. Not sure what build is that but I stumbled upon them before (in WvW I tried to ambush them while they were fighting a tower boss, they defeated me together with the allied boss regardless) and didn’t know how to beat them then and I am yet to figure out a way to beat them now.

I’ve always seen people complaining about the scrapper meta build, but for me this was the worst build to go up against and now it I seem to see lots of this build in sPvP.

If you have tips on this I’ll be happy to try them out.

Me -> Thief: Tr+DA+DD with dash and D/P + SB.

Remember that flamethrower auto is a long channel and is generally spammed when they’re not super pressured. Make sure you have impacting Disruption traited, and distracting daggers equipped. While spamming 1 with flamethrower you can spam distracting daggers and head shot. Every time you interruot them, their flamethrower 1 most likely will auto start again, allowing you to get another interrupt immediately. Flamethrower engies generally aren’t ALL toughness so your PI will hit for 2-3k. Just remember that while flamethrower is equipped they have pulsing atab, so 1 out of 4 or so of your interrupts will be negated.

After their get out of jail free shrink pops, follow them and spam interrupts as soon as it ends, as they will most likely be mashing their heal button while they are shrunk hoping to get it off immediately after it ends.

Turk.5460:

Remember that flamethrower auto is a long channel and is generally spammed when they’re not super pressured. Make sure you have impacting Disruption traited, and distracting daggers equipped. While spamming 1 with flamethrower you can spam distracting daggers and head shot. Every time you interruot them, their flamethrower 1 most likely will auto start again, allowing you to get another interrupt immediately. Flamethrower engies generally aren’t ALL toughness so your PI will hit for 2-3k. Just remember that while flamethrower is equipped they have pulsing atab, so 1 out of 4 or so of your interrupts will be negated.

After their get out of jail free shrink pops, follow them and spam interrupts as soon as it ends, as they will most likely be mashing their heal button while they are shrunk hoping to get it off immediately after it ends.

Good advice. I’ve changed a little while ago escapist’s absolution to impacting disruption just to try and see if it works better since the condi removal of the former was not that good. What I forgot to try was to change impairing daggers to distracting daggers.

I did a bit of feeling after I red your post, but didn’t get into fights against those engis. i used it on some elementalist and necro though. I’m still not sure if I’ll be more comfortable with impairing or distracting daggers. I guess I’ll experiment with it some more and see how it goes. Anyways your advice is good so I’ll keep in mind to get my distracting daggers ready when I go up against engies.

And about your second part, you say engis are not all toughness and that i should be able to get them to shrink, but the problem against this spec I usually don’t get the change to drop their health that low cause they use a vast array of defenses and their health really doesn’t go too much down when I attack, and also i I try to waste their defensive cooldowns and keep the distance the they usually manage to get some condis on me that do more dmg than I can handle and still be comfortable to try bursting when i see an opening. They have good mobility along with what I mentioned above.

S/P paired with PI is fun to play, especially against said engies.
I know that the set is not considered to be skillful and it has many issues especially with the PW aftercast, but man, I’ve been shredding Reapers/DHs/engies with this set lately

It is also quite fun to watch the average Thief player shadowshot-spam you and teleport into your swingity-swingy 80-0 themselves in the process

I had some issues with the dagger’s projectile speed though – but I guess it won’t be tweaked since it’s an already spammable interrupt on a relatively low cd.

glorius.1235:

S/P paired with PI is fun to play, especially against said engies.
I know that the set is not considered to be skillful and it has many issues especially with the PW aftercast, but man, I’ve been shredding Reapers/DHs/engies with this set lately

It is also quite fun to watch the average Thief player shadowshot-spam you and teleport into your swingity-swingy 80-0 themselves in the process

I had some issues with the dagger’s projectile speed though – but I guess it won’t be tweaked since it’s an already spammable interrupt on a relatively low cd.

Not sure what you mean by it not being considered a skillful set, I’d say it’s just as skillful as D/P atm. When I play S/P I rely on bound and pulmonary impact for pressure just like with D/P, using pistol whip in the same openings as backstab. I dislike stealth camping and prefer bound to dash tho, so take what I say with that in mind.

Anyways, yes, pulmonary impact strikes will do a huge amount of damage to anything with a channeled, easily interrupted skill. Pressure until he swaps from flamethrower and loses stab, headshot to proc the protection trait then steal it with bountiful theft as you burst. You’ll have a few seconds before he gets stab or protection up again (assuming condi runes not durability) so make the most of it.

Jugglemonkey.8741:

glorius.1235:

S/P paired with PI is fun to play, especially against said engies.
I know that the set is not considered to be skillful and it has many issues especially with the PW aftercast, but man, I’ve been shredding Reapers/DHs/engies with this set lately

It is also quite fun to watch the average Thief player shadowshot-spam you and teleport into your swingity-swingy 80-0 themselves in the process

I had some issues with the dagger’s projectile speed though – but I guess it won’t be tweaked since it’s an already spammable interrupt on a relatively low cd.

Not sure what you mean by it not being considered a skillful set, I’d say it’s just as skillful as D/P atm. When I play S/P I rely on bound and pulmonary impact for pressure just like with D/P, using pistol whip in the same openings as backstab. I dislike stealth camping and prefer bound to dash tho, so take what I say with that in mind.

Anyways, yes, pulmonary impact strikes will do a huge amount of damage to anything with a channeled, easily interrupted skill. Pressure until he swaps from flamethrower and loses stab, headshot to proc the protection trait then steal it with bountiful theft as you burst. You’ll have a few seconds before he gets stab or protection up again (assuming condi runes not durability) so make the most of it.

Can you tell me what utility and elite abilities you use besides distracting daggers? (I guess shadow refugee is out of the question since that’s the “stealth camping” you dislike – I usually use the DD skills → block, fist furry and impact strike)

NuhDah.9812:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

glorius.1235:

S/P paired with PI is fun to play, especially against said engies.
I know that the set is not considered to be skillful and it has many issues especially with the PW aftercast, but man, I’ve been shredding Reapers/DHs/engies with this set lately

It is also quite fun to watch the average Thief player shadowshot-spam you and teleport into your swingity-swingy 80-0 themselves in the process

I had some issues with the dagger’s projectile speed though – but I guess it won’t be tweaked since it’s an already spammable interrupt on a relatively low cd.

Not sure what you mean by it not being considered a skillful set, I’d say it’s just as skillful as D/P atm. When I play S/P I rely on bound and pulmonary impact for pressure just like with D/P, using pistol whip in the same openings as backstab. I dislike stealth camping and prefer bound to dash tho, so take what I say with that in mind.

Anyways, yes, pulmonary impact strikes will do a huge amount of damage to anything with a channeled, easily interrupted skill. Pressure until he swaps from flamethrower and loses stab, headshot to proc the protection trait then steal it with bountiful theft as you burst. You’ll have a few seconds before he gets stab or protection up again (assuming condi runes not durability) so make the most of it.

Can you tell me what utility and elite abilities you use besides distracting daggers? (I guess shadow refugee is out of the question since that’s the “stealth camping” you dislike – I usually use the DD skills -> block, fist furry and impact strike)

I’m not the best thief in the world, but i use the same weapon set and build as you (i think). for the healing skill, sometimes i will swap between withdraw and channeled vigor, and will change between havoc mastery and brawler’s tenacity depending on my mood lol. i tend to stick with withdraw because of that extra dodge and stun break. then my utility skills would be shadowstep, blinding powder, signet of agility or infiltrator’s signet since that helps me land my backstabs and the elite would be basilisk venom.

NuhDah.9812:

Jugglemonkey.8741:

glorius.1235:

S/P paired with PI is fun to play, especially against said engies.
I know that the set is not considered to be skillful and it has many issues especially with the PW aftercast, but man, I’ve been shredding Reapers/DHs/engies with this set lately

It is also quite fun to watch the average Thief player shadowshot-spam you and teleport into your swingity-swingy 80-0 themselves in the process

I had some issues with the dagger’s projectile speed though – but I guess it won’t be tweaked since it’s an already spammable interrupt on a relatively low cd.

Not sure what you mean by it not being considered a skillful set, I’d say it’s just as skillful as D/P atm. When I play S/P I rely on bound and pulmonary impact for pressure just like with D/P, using pistol whip in the same openings as backstab. I dislike stealth camping and prefer bound to dash tho, so take what I say with that in mind.

Anyways, yes, pulmonary impact strikes will do a huge amount of damage to anything with a channeled, easily interrupted skill. Pressure until he swaps from flamethrower and loses stab, headshot to proc the protection trait then steal it with bountiful theft as you burst. You’ll have a few seconds before he gets stab or protection up again (assuming condi runes not durability) so make the most of it.

Can you tell me what utility and elite abilities you use besides distracting daggers? (I guess shadow refugee is out of the question since that’s the “stealth camping” you dislike – I usually use the DD skills -> block, fist furry and impact strike)

Sure because I prefer bound, I like to run acro/Trickery/daredevil with withdraw, signet of agility, shadowstep and roll for initiative. Withdraw, acro (all bottom traits) and roll for ini are there because without dash you can be immobilised too easily without them. Distracting daggers I find isn’t needed, you already have interrupts on pistol whip for melee, headshot for range and on steal for when you’re setting up a burst. Shadow Refuge is a liability because you can’t dodge in it with bound without getting revealed if an enemy chases you in. You can actually have a surprising stealth uptime with bound, run blinding powder instead of roll for ini if you want more stealth. 3 dodges plus a blinding powder in a black powder will give you the same stealth as a Refuge, and endurance is easy to get back for thief.

I run air and draining sigils on both S/P and D/P. Draining in particular is amazing for interrupt builds, 1k health steal with no internal cooldown. Placing black powder, dodging then stealing mid dodge can hit for 10k if you’re lucky (air plus draining plus bound plus pulmonary impact proc) and it leaves you in stealth ready for a backstab or a pistol whip.

I hope that helps a bit

Forum bug, sorry for the spam.