Guild Wars 2

I’m a Sword/Dagger thief, and I’ve been doing some practice in tPVP to adapt to the nerfs and now I’m doing pretty well with it. That is until I ran into 3 matches with D/D Elementalists in a row. I can’t seem to do anything against them. I jump in, immobilize, then stealth and daze, but then I’m cc’d (they create distance and I can’t daze again) and AoE’d to death really quickly. The same tactics that work against other classes just don’t seem to work here. Any ideas?

I’m also having similar problems against certain Necros, but I’m not sure what set ups they are (lots of AoE kills me).

This is not a whine thread, but an attempt to gain some understanding.

Well, the only counter to AoE is to get out of AoEs.
Most of Ele and Necros AoE are point blank, so switch to your secondary weapon set, kite them and kill them from range if you see that you can’t handle the damage.

tac.2167:

I jump in, immobilize, then stealth and daze, but then I’m cc’d (they create distance and I can’t daze again)

This is what Infiltrator’s Strike is for. You close with it, you tap it again if you get locked down, and then you tap it a third time to close again. Make sure you aren’t burning all of your initiative on your initial attack so you can leverage IF to dictate range.

S/D is seeing some issues since the nerf. I had rolled it about a week prior to patch, and was really enjoying it, getting into the swing of it. It was solid when well played, fun, and challenging. With the patch, it’s Meh at best. I generally use Shbow and poison to whittle my target down (and force them to use a 33% less effective heal), then switch to sword for the kill.

Honestly, I switched back to S/P and so far am loving it. If you ignore PW (not running haste) the same way you ignore flanking stike 95% of the time, you have plenty of init for your other tools. Head shot spam isn’t exactly an effective use of your Init, but targets panic when they’re low and have a heal and 2 skills interrupted in a row. If you can work a stealth utility into your bar (or are using HiS), you’ve still got access to tactical strike when you absolutely need it.

Necro Here, If they are using staff and dagger its most likely a well build. If thats the case the only thing you really can do is create some distance for a few seconds until they disapate. IF they are weilding scepter dagger/staff, try to bait their marks and have a small bit of condition removal somewhere. Be sure to switch between your melee and ranged options when appropriate to avoid damage to yourself.

Necros in general are a hard fight for thiefs, particularly if the Necro is front loaded with a lot of life force.

In general if a good thief sees me at a point, they generally just find somewhere else to be useful or initiate try and get me to waste as much LF as possibe and disengage until their CDs are ready and come back for another fight.

“Cloaked in Shadow” to fill the gap dazelock

“Thrill of the Crime”
“Furious Retaliation”
resist weakness

Basically it all depends on the necromancer, not a thief.

Marduh.4603:

“Cloaked in Shadow” to fill the gap dazelock

“Thrill of the Crime”
“Furious Retaliation”
resist weakness

Basically it all depends on the necromancer, not a thief.

I dunno how things work on the thief side honestly, but Im just saying the things that have worked against me. If I’m frontloaded with LF, I rarely lose to a thief. The good thiefs I fought knew how to avoid marks and change weapons, and knew when to run away.

Good stuff, I’ll try to put it in practice.

Switching to SB has definitely helped my survivability against these builds, but the fight takes a while. I should try switching from short to long range throughout the fight.