Guild Wars 2

Not many of them yet , but is an endless PvP if i go 1 vs 1 elementarist ( tanky ones)
I use D/D and shortbow and i cannot burst them down , they heal full all the time
i try to poison them or bleed , but they remove conditions fast
backstabs go max 4000, sometimes 5000 and is hard to catch them off guard.
It is P/P better vs elementarists cause you can continue hit them , or S/D for imobilize ?

Sword/pistol is strong against bunker D/D eles because of daze and shortbow can be very good when you are keeping them out of range. Getting eles to blow utilities will make all the difference. TBH, its a hard fight for a thief either way, and if your tricks don’t work it may be best to lure the now confident ele into some of your allies.

Rayya.2591:

Not many of them yet , but is an endless PvP if i go 1 vs 1 elementarist ( tanky ones)
I use D/D and shortbow and i cannot burst them down , they heal full all the time
i try to poison them or bleed , but they remove conditions fast
backstabs go max 4000, sometimes 5000 and is hard to catch them off guard.
It is P/P better vs elementarists cause you can continue hit them , or S/D for imobilize ?

P/P is TERRIBLE!

D/D elementalists are by far the most OP class/build in the game. People don’t realize this just yet because there’s only a few that can play the build to its full potential.

Outside of WvW, you will rarely, if ever, be able to burst someone in 2~3s in sPvP/tPvP unless they’re FULL glass cannon (along with you).

I can win battles with these builds as a P/D tanky condition build but that just means I force them to run. I will never down nor catch a well played one and they won’t down me. They are by far the fastest build in the game. I can’t imagine a burst thief standing a chance at all.

As D/D burst build, I use a trick that works 80% of the time. Shoot them with your bow as if you’re really trying, put some pressure on him, when he beats you enough to warrant using your healing spell/invis do it and shortbow him while in stealth(this would get him snared) He’ll think you’re about to burst him down he’ll should Mistform to be safe. Once Mistform is down… it’s easy peasy. Switch D/D and do your backstab thing. It’s one tactic I like to use with sucess.

Honestly, It’s Mistform that keeps me from obliterating these Ele each time I encounter them.

Eles and Necros are probably the worst enemies for thieves

Malicious.6742:

Eles and Necros are probably the worst enemies for thieves

On the contrary, necros are a total breeze for me. I find Guardians and Mesmers to be my worst enemy.

I find eles the hardest target to down in recent times. From what i can tell (and i dont play ele, i suppose i should but i dont have the time) it is all about their long lasting boons. Swiftness + ride the lightning etc = very mobile, you will not catch one easily if they decide to disengage (ie even if you manage to get them low, they will flee and you will not catch them – then again many complain about this for the thief, so maybe i should keep my mouth shut!). They heal like crazy. Stability and protection long uptimes. I have actually switched my build to 20 points trickery to get the remove 2 boons on steal trait to see how that goes. But if we are supposed to rely on boon removal to win against ele that is pretty poor – must trait trickery or must use s/d for flanking strike?

Being tanky tends to win 1v1 in almost every game, including GW2. It goes for every class. Defense is a personal ability that doesn’t help anyone else, where as offense stacks with everyone around you.

A bunker build is difficult to kill and can eventually wear you down if you keep fighting them, but you could just leave if you’re losing. What is he going to do, beat you to death with his 450 damage Dragon’s Claw spam? What he can’t do is contribute much beyond that. If you need to capture a point, a bunker isn’t going to be of much help. A bunker on a point could hold it for an entire match against 5 bunkers without breaking a sweat.

You need offensive builds to help break his tank and kill him because offense stacks. Two offensive builds who know what they’re doing should be able to kill a bunker fairly quickly, or even one offensive build with a good CC bunker assisting. If one offensive build could blow up a bunker, it would be generally pointless to build defensive in the first place.

PvP in GW2 isn’t about dueling. It’s a team game, play accordingly.

As far as specific strategies against D/D bunker eles, you need to wear him down before you try to burst him. Get him to switch to water and use his 2 heals there and you will have 9-11 seconds to unload on him while he has limited healing from signet of restoration and can only remove conditions by burning cantrips to grant regeneration.

If you’re really lucky, he will have Ether Renewal as his heal and then he’s kind of screwed. It only heals about 2000 / sec and has to be channeled the whole 3 1/2 seconds preventing the use of other skills. You could easily blow him up while he’s trying to heal.

If you have any abilities in your spec that rip boons (you could use the sigil also), that will hurt him a lot. Ele depends on protection and regeneration boons to keep them alive. Ripping those off is going to ruin his day.

If you can CC an ele and apply good pressure damage, he’s generally going to burn his mist form or lightning flash to get out of it. Once his escapes are on cooldown an ele is just as vulnerable to the cheese burst combos in the game as anyone else.

Just be thankful he was D/D and not D/F. You don’t want to unload on an ele with projectile reflection.

All good points Caff and I thank you for them.

On the boon removal sigil – 10 sec CD is pretty poor compared to reapplication of boons. But it is another option as you suggest. I’ll give it a go.

On a design level i disagree about 2v1 ought to be required to beat a tank (if that’s what you are saying). Imo every class should be able to solo every other class. That should be the balance game designers are aspiring to (although perhaps this is impossible, i dont know, certainly true balance is not possible outside of something like chess etc). In that scenario it might be the case that tanks tend to lose on average against burst – but that would be made up for by the fact that the tank holds the point for a very long time, contributing to the win in a different way (and in other cases tank would prevail or hold out long enough for help to arrive, etc, achieving their purpose).

With bunker you have to use your shortbow, let them use water attunement / heal, then swap on D/D and use all of your dps, you can kill EVERYONE like this.

Elementalists have so many anti-burst skills that even my glass cannon level 21 elementalist never died to burst in WvW except in one extreme case of loading issues. There is 0 chance of bursting down an actual defensive build.

can be countered with good initiative management and p4 – head shot use.
Even in pure glass cannon build, base ini regen is enough to make them withdraw

I play a d/d ele balance spec (not bunker). Backstap instagib thiefes are the easiest kills, unless they can surprise me in a zerg environment with cooldowns.

I usually don’t use mistform and would never ever pop it just because the thief goes invis. That tactic would only work against rather clueless eles (which most are, sadly). Condition thiefs are really no threat either due to so much condition removal from water/cantrips, however they can be hard to catch/kill due to all the DB spamming and stealth.

My absolute worst nightmare is daze when going against a thief. So my suggestion is to use that to your advantage.

D/D Ele here. Alright, so most of what you guys have been saying is true. However, there’s some things you should know if you’ve never played Ele before:

1. Ele’s defenses are different from those of say, a tanky warrior. That is to say most of what makes us a pain to kill doesn’t come from stats directly, but rather our utilities, buffs, movement skills, control abilities, and big heals.

2. True “Bunker” eles are rarely a threat. The ones that fight back and can hit moderately hard are running the typical 0/10/0/30/30 build. That said, these builds ARE vulnerable to burst damage if we can’t avoid it, I only have 2.1k armor and 17k health on my current build.

3. Your burst combo is more effective the longer you draw out the fight. Eles have long CD’s on all of their skills, even though they have double the amount. Softening them up first and playing a little more defensive than you usually would, THEN bursting is pretty effective. Try to make us blow our Cantrip utilties and water attunement so we can’t get out of the burst or heal up from it.

4. As super said, average backstab thieves are an easy kill for a balanced ele. The concept of root and spank at the very beginning of the fight doesn’t work as well because we typically have 3 cantrips, giving us 3 stunbreaks + easy access to vigor, and tons of condition removal.

5. Daze, Immobilize, Stun, or really any other conditions in large quantities will typically make us blow Cantrips, which is the KEY to winning this fight. Without cantrips we can’t get out of bad situations nearly as easily and continue fighting.

The toughest thieves I’ve ever fought on my Ele have been ones that pace themselves, dodge frequently, and make me cycle through skills and utils just so that I can keep moving. They were running fairly high toughness, had decent defenses and kept me guessing the entire fight.

Sorry if that doesn’t help much. I’d be happy to help if you guys would like some 1v1 time in PvP, and we can practice together. PM me on my main if you’re interested, char name: Malach Galthena

Ok , as far as i understood from Elementarists, imobilize or dazzle could be the Key
What about – Reaper of grenth ? – chill +poison for 15 seconds

These are the kinda of discussion we need. Tired of hearing that both side say that class is OP.

brandon.6735:

These are the kinda of discussion we need. Tired of hearing that both side say that class is OP.

It’s interesting isn’t it. All the terrible players that post QQ and think the Thief (or whatever) is OP every day but then there are threads like this:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/guardian/Counters-against-thieves/first#post

When people go to their own profession’s forums and ask for help they get it. All the people responding know counters and they would never see a QQ thread in this forum nor probably respond to one in general or WvW forums just whining about Thief OPness. All those threads do is attract more whiny bad players.

Rock Paper Scissors in action. When one class becomes common and over-used, counters to that naturally arise.

D/D elems are pretty tough for thieves to take down 1v1.

As a fellow D/D elementalist running Aura-share in WvW, i’d say Jericho’s post is the best in this thread and the “solution” to beating us as a thief.

In addition, i’d like to add that Ele’s are awesome against conditions (the 0/10/0/30/30 build usually clears 2 conds on water swap, 1 clear on dodge roll in water, each cantrips gives a clear and regen, our healing skill gives a clear, etc.). If you’re a bleed spec, time them for AFTER we get outta water cause it’ll be awhile until we can get back in. But all-in-all, burst will get us easily when compared to condition builds.

The more you know…

I thank Jericho for his post, he is obviously an experienced ele, but what it seems to suggest to me is that bunker eles are indeed OP: 3 stunbreakers, tons of condition removal, speed/mobility, big healing, control effects… and yet still able to deal reasonable damage… but perhaps it comes back to basic ele class design and the 4 attunements.

Trouble with drawing out a fight against an ele is that a thief only has so much burst, and the ele knows it. A good ele will manage/wait out the shortbow or pistol ranged attrition, negate the burst and then the cycle begins again – either something will come off CD for the next burst – or the fight takes so long that allies arrive (and then it goes the way of superior numbers). But the ele has achieved his purpose of keeping the point and wins by default.

Psi, glad I could help!

To respond to your post however, I’ll just say this: Most of what I was getting across in my original post is in an ideal 1v1 situation, which you are very correct happens rarely, or not for long.

However, you can take comfort in the fact that the Ele’s you guys are describing here are NOT bunker spec’d. That means they are not built for holding points, we are built for skirmishing.

We can’t take that much focused abuse AND stay on a point. Sooner or later, we need to either close the gap to you to do any damage, or flee + heal. Honestly, 50% of our skills are gap closers or involve some sort of large movement that forces us off a point anyways. If we stay on point, we will die to someone who can kite effectively. Use this knowledge to your benefit! You are the one in control of where the ele must go.

Keep in mind that although we are highly mobile, thieves still reign supreme in overall mobility. I would wager most of these ele’s you can draw off a point by pressuring with your bow, lead them around a corner or off the way a bit, stealth and then circle back and neutralize the cap (only takes a few seconds) by using your own mobility skills + teleports, especially if you lead them down a hill or over high terrain. We have a teleport too, but Lightning Flash does not let us port up hills or large cliffs like you can. Even still, that blows a cantrip that we’d rather use for a nasty Churning Earth surprise.

At this point you’ll at least be on even ground since really neither of you are going to be able to cap that point until one of you is dead. If by now you’re saying, “but I don’t want to just cap the point, I want to kill them!” well I say good luck. This requires that you are at least as good as they are, but it is far from a hopeless matchup. It sure beats the odds of trying to burst down an experienced bunker guardian, or use a LDB bleed build vs. a condition necro. THOSE are hopeless situations.

Good luck thiefbros!

Another tip for you: When you see a purple/blue aura around the ele and hear a buzzling sound, wait 5 seconds to attack or attack from a 600 m+ range. Each attack will stun you for one sec and make it quite easy for the ele to nail you.

As said by Jericho, soften the ele up with good short bow kiting in the beginning and stay calm, force the ele to use his cantrips and then go to town with your burst. Also, see if you can throw in some dazes on the gap closing skills such as RTL and burning speed, which will help with the kiting and, more importantly, interrupt the ele damage/control combos.

Psikerlord: Its not just bunker eles having what you are describing. I run a balanced/offensive auromancer d/d build and I also run with 2/3 stunbreakers, have lots of condition removal and decent healing. However, I am in no way considered a bunker. I am very squisy with only around 17k health and 1k toughness. Landing a burst on me will get me down, but I admit, doing so is not easy due to the mobility and cc.

I’m a D/D Ele main, and I am very strong against melee thieves. I have tons of defenses to ruin your day, like shocking aura (stun on hit), frost aura (chill on hit), and mist form → ether renewal (escape all damage and heal to near full).

Not only that, I have plenty of AoE’s to hurt you even when you stealth. I don’t think I have ever lost 1v1 to a thief. Anytime a thief has killed me has been in a group situation where he just burst me down while I had half hp or something.

My advice to thieves would be this…

A D/D Ele is EXTREMELY dependent upon two things to survive. And they are:

A. Mobility

B. Constant skill use

Attack these. Use every immobilize you have, and every daze you have. Yes, the Ele will purge your immobilizes, but if you keep doing them, they will run out of condition purges…best time to immobilize is right after they switch out of water attunement.

Either way, you can going to have a hard fight on your hands. Melee, you will constantly have to deal with the Ele’s auras messing you up. And ranged, you will have a hard time keeping the Ele at bay.

Psikerlord.2569:

I thank Jericho for his post, he is obviously an experienced ele, but what it seems to suggest to me is that bunker eles are indeed OP: 3 stunbreakers, tons of condition removal, speed/mobility, big healing, control effects… and yet still able to deal reasonable damage… but perhaps it comes back to basic ele class design and the 4 attunements.

Trouble with drawing out a fight against an ele is that a thief only has so much burst, and the ele knows it. A good ele will manage/wait out the shortbow or pistol ranged attrition, negate the burst and then the cycle begins again – either something will come off CD for the next burst – or the fight takes so long that allies arrive (and then it goes the way of superior numbers). But the ele has achieved his purpose of keeping the point and wins by default.

You just described how every single bunker works in this game : a) multiple conditions removal b) high defense c) multiple stun breaker

How is this any different from guardians/mesmer/engineers…and thief condition with traps? I see no difference outside a biased opinion

Put down your nooby D/D set and bring S/D . Than laugh on D/D elementalists corpses.

sorrow.2364:

Put down your nooby D/D set and bring S/D . Than laugh on D/D elementalists corpses.

You’re so good!!! Tell us more!

I get laughed at when I pistol whip the D/D Elementalist with Protection/2900 Armor and do 1/4 his life pool as he heals back up and continues attacking, he is even faster then I am, so shadowstep does nothing.

The best way to kill D/D Ele is to kill him before he can do anything, if he gets his boons up you lost, you might as well Alt+F4.

I admit I used to cry nerf to bs thieves, however with my latest build I can make bs thief moot. Condition/regen thieves are a pain. Can only remove so many conditions.

Another good tip is to use haste on an ele, poison will completely ruin a bunker eles day if you can reapply it, most eles defenses and bunkering ability comes from multiple small heals, poison will take a huge chunk out of that. The key to beating a bunker ele like said above is to get him to blow his cantrips (the cool downs are Extremely long) then burst the ele down, burst > multiple small heals, haste is an effective tool in this situation. Else’s can get a good chunk of their healing from dodge rolling in water (I play bunker in tourneys) and immobilize really pisses me off because I can’t use that dodge roll heal. If you can immobilize and haste and hit him hard after the ele leaves water attunements he is in for a bad day.

Arheundel.6451:

Psikerlord.2569:

I thank Jericho for his post, he is obviously an experienced ele, but what it seems to suggest to me is that bunker eles are indeed OP: 3 stunbreakers, tons of condition removal, speed/mobility, big healing, control effects… and yet still able to deal reasonable damage… but perhaps it comes back to basic ele class design and the 4 attunements.

Trouble with drawing out a fight against an ele is that a thief only has so much burst, and the ele knows it. A good ele will manage/wait out the shortbow or pistol ranged attrition, negate the burst and then the cycle begins again – either something will come off CD for the next burst – or the fight takes so long that allies arrive (and then it goes the way of superior numbers). But the ele has achieved his purpose of keeping the point and wins by default.

You just described how every single bunker works in this game : a) multiple conditions removal b) high defense c) multiple stun breaker

How is this any different from guardians/mesmer/engineers…and thief condition with traps? I see no difference outside a biased opinion

I can only call it as i see it. In my experience the ele is harder to kill than guard bunker, does more damage, and has vastly better mobility. But perhaps i just need more practice learning their powers etc, wait till they come out of water attunement, and so on. I’m sure i can get better. But my feeling is still that ele has it particularly good in the current iteration… I’ll be interested to see what happens next patch (no doubt thief nerfs, aaaaaahhhhh). I play shortbow main with sword/pistol finisher, generally.

You can’t win against a good D/D-ele as thief sadly. It’s probably the strongest 1v1 specc in the game right now.

Teabaker.9524:

You can’t win against a good D/D-ele as thief sadly. It’s probably the strongest 1v1 specc in the game right now.

Yep, might as well rename them Elementawrists, because fighting them is basicly like killing yourself, you hurt yourself when you damage them while they heal themselves whilst you damage them and then attack you and outrun you.

You can’t get away from the Elementawrist.

Ill tell you a few things. First ele is far from easy to play its get natural but kitten compared to what other classes have to do to pull off a combo we are placed in a game of keyboard piano. So no I feel 0 guilt that for that much effort we get a kitten ton of mobility. Don’t forget we have no stealth and we have cds so skills aren’t always available we are forced to juggle vs switch to shortbow 5 5 5 stealth. That being said unless the ele is full bunker. Stopping mobility is key.

For burst D/D thieves I could care less. I’ll break it to yah easy 1 v1 (vs a good ele) you wont win. For anyone running anything with staying power shortbow and kite for D/D Ele. For staff and S/D just stay of of the major fire dps since the aoes are slow you can dodge/walk out of them.

The key thing to remember is to shoot for a tie. A good D/D ele in spvp will not go down. Removing buffs wont do kitten. Half of us carry cantrips in the right side bar including a port. Your only chance is immobilize for a win. Seriously your only chance is immobilize. Thieves listen not stun venom etc immobilize.

Don’t take my word for it here’s a link https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/How-do-you-counter-D-D-elementalist/first#post867930

Creslin.1758:

I’m a D/D Ele main, and I am very strong against melee thieves. I have tons of defenses to ruin your day, like shocking aura (stun on hit), frost aura (chill on hit), and mist form -> ether renewal (escape all damage and heal to

How you full with Ether renewall?

the first and foremost rule: You need a sword in the main hand!
Whether you use pistol or dagger offhand is a matter of preference, actually.
Pistol is more straightforward, immobilize and daze all the way, while dagger is more about ripping boons.
It’s not like you can outright win. The question will be, who is the first to hit a dead end with no daze/dodge/heal left to get out. A game of chess, so to say.
It will most likely end Remis tho.

Went into spvp random on my P/D thief and I ended up in match with 4 ele all seemed to be D/D. I didn’t lose to any of them but I didn’t win either. Despite knowing the class well and taking little dps. The funny thing is you can always get an ele to run. Range will trump D/D ele if you know what your doing. If all you want to do is get them to move/run than that should be simple enough.

You can kite them quite easily with a short bow and shadow step can be used to create a gap twice if they get too close. Otherwise just try to interrupt their heal.

As a condition thief you just have to wear them down. Place a few bleeds on them but save some initiative for when they use their condition removal then stack as many as you can. If you evade properly you can usually heal through most of their damage. I’m usually not worried about them killing my thief, but i know it will take a lot of work to kill them.

Teabaker.9524:

You can’t win against a good D/D-ele as thief sadly. It’s probably the strongest 1v1 specc in the game right now.

Not true. P/D Thief still > D/D ele. All of their major burst is predictable and can be evaded. At least you can make them run and sometimes get the kill with Thieves guild and a lucky scorp wire.

nice discussion,

until now i just still wonder how to beat D/D ele…

maybe I will try about jericho said… thanks jeri…

Kurow.6973:

sorrow.2364:

Put down your nooby D/D set and bring S/D . Than laugh on D/D elementalists corpses.

You’re so good!!! Tell us more!

You don’t need to be a genius to realize that to kill a D/D elementalist you need boon removals and CC and that S/D is the only set who has them both.

If you’re burst spec D/D, don’t open with your normal cheesy Steal+CnD+BS combo. Wear them down to about 60-75% of their health then do it. What so kittening hard????

Open with your short bow, they will RTL to you follow by an Updrift (dodge this). Keep shooting him but watch out for shocking aura…watch for his attunement swapping. If Earth, dodge the KD (he will probably try to Immo first then KD if there is some distance between you two. If Fire, dodge the burning speed and watch out for ROF. Water attunement is next for some healing/chill/etc/cleanse. This is the key moment. At this time, you probably did a decent amount of damage with your short bow if you’re glass cannon (should hit for 1K+ crit for about 4-5 hits the ele would have about 12K health left). Use your chessy combo to down them.

There you go, a ele D/D’s combo is as predictable as a 100B warrior.

Jericho.4521:

D/D Ele here. Alright, so most of what you guys have been saying is true. However, there’s some things you should know if you’ve never played Ele before:

1. Ele’s defenses are different from those of say, a tanky warrior. That is to say most of what makes us a pain to kill doesn’t come from stats directly, but rather our utilities, buffs, movement skills, control abilities, and big heals.

2. True “Bunker” eles are rarely a threat. The ones that fight back and can hit moderately hard are running the typical 0/10/0/30/30 build. That said, these builds ARE vulnerable to burst damage if we can’t avoid it, I only have 2.1k armor and 17k health on my current build.

3. Your burst combo is more effective the longer you draw out the fight. Eles have long CD’s on all of their skills, even though they have double the amount. Softening them up first and playing a little more defensive than you usually would, THEN bursting is pretty effective. Try to make us blow our Cantrip utilties and water attunement so we can’t get out of the burst or heal up from it.

4. As super said, average backstab thieves are an easy kill for a balanced ele. The concept of root and spank at the very beginning of the fight doesn’t work as well because we typically have 3 cantrips, giving us 3 stunbreaks + easy access to vigor, and tons of condition removal.

5. Daze, Immobilize, Stun, or really any other conditions in large quantities will typically make us blow Cantrips, which is the KEY to winning this fight. Without cantrips we can’t get out of bad situations nearly as easily and continue fighting.

The toughest thieves I’ve ever fought on my Ele have been ones that pace themselves, dodge frequently, and make me cycle through skills and utils just so that I can keep moving. They were running fairly high toughness, had decent defenses and kept me guessing the entire fight.

Sorry if that doesn’t help much. I’d be happy to help if you guys would like some 1v1 time in PvP, and we can practice together. PM me on my main if you’re interested, char name: Malach Galthena

Elementalists get stronger the longer the fight goes, if they gear properly, a thief has no chance unless they kill the elementalist 15 seconds within the start of the fight.

And .. wow.. really P/D thief? a good Elementalist will make you completely useless, curing conditions every time they use a spell, gaining 300 health every second, healing for full, curing conditions every 10 seconds, curing conditions when they move.

A good ele will just eat you alive.

They are much much faster then you are, and they don’t need to waste there utilitys on signets.

A good ele will KNOW your going to use CnD, put up shocking aura as you use it and stun you, and then knock you back as your stealthed.

The best way to kill a good Ele: …… Burst Mug+CnD+Backstab combo! If they get more then 3 boons up then run away, you’ve lost.

Daecollo.9578:

They are much much faster then you are, and they don’t need to waste there utilitys on signets.

A good ele will KNOW your going to use CnD, put up shocking aura as you use it and stun you, and then knock you back as your stealthed.

The best way to kill a good Ele: …… Burst Mug+CnD+Backstab combo! If they get more then 3 boons up then run away, you’ve lost.

Shocking Aura is on a 25s cooldown.
CnD needs 5.32s to take all the initiative used back when traited in Shadow Arts, 7.98s when untraited.
In both cases, you are capable of landing 2 CnD at least each Shocking Aura. This assuming obviously that you use CnD right after the initiative the last CnD took has regenerated and than the Ele will cast Shocking Aura right after the cooldown is over, pretty fringe case of course.

So, when running S/D you are capable of going into stealth (so CC enemy ele) one time each 8s at maximum, while have still room to cast Flanking Strike to strip ele’s protection, regeneration, vigor and all the kitten he has up.
You are also capable of spamming enough bleed stack to outperform the ele’s condition removals when running P/D, but anyway S/D will be way more effective.

Of course, if you try to Mug+CnD+Backstab hoping to burst effectively down everything that moves, you are going to fail hard.
That combo isn’t the answer to everything.

Flanking..Strike.. to get rid of his boons.. .. LOL….

…

LOL….

…

No…

You would barely hurt him, and you would run out of initiative, his attunements to reapply all those buffs activate every 10 seconds, it takes 10 seconds to get 6 initative back, he would have all 4 buffs up again by the time ONE of your flanking strikes is back up, and WHILE hes doing all that hes killing you.

You need to fight good ele.

Flanking Strike also does horrible damage, so each one takes about 10% of his health, and grats, he has no boons, Oh he just used his attunements to get them all back and you have 0 initiative now, he reset the fight with full and your out of luck, oh yeah your almost dead too.

Mug+CnD+Backstab = Kill him before he has protection up/all those boons up = the best way.

Dodge, immobilize, dodge immobilize, irritate with a few extra conditions, dodge immobilize

Daecollo.9578:

Jericho.4521:

D/D Ele here. Alright, so most of what you guys have been saying is true. However, there’s some things you should know if you’ve never played Ele before:

1. Ele’s defenses are different from those of say, a tanky warrior. That is to say most of what makes us a pain to kill doesn’t come from stats directly, but rather our utilities, buffs, movement skills, control abilities, and big heals.

2. True “Bunker” eles are rarely a threat. The ones that fight back and can hit moderately hard are running the typical 0/10/0/30/30 build. That said, these builds ARE vulnerable to burst damage if we can’t avoid it, I only have 2.1k armor and 17k health on my current build.

3. Your burst combo is more effective the longer you draw out the fight. Eles have long CD’s on all of their skills, even though they have double the amount. Softening them up first and playing a little more defensive than you usually would, THEN bursting is pretty effective. Try to make us blow our Cantrip utilties and water attunement so we can’t get out of the burst or heal up from it.

4. As super said, average backstab thieves are an easy kill for a balanced ele. The concept of root and spank at the very beginning of the fight doesn’t work as well because we typically have 3 cantrips, giving us 3 stunbreaks + easy access to vigor, and tons of condition removal.

5. Daze, Immobilize, Stun, or really any other conditions in large quantities will typically make us blow Cantrips, which is the KEY to winning this fight. Without cantrips we can’t get out of bad situations nearly as easily and continue fighting.

The toughest thieves I’ve ever fought on my Ele have been ones that pace themselves, dodge frequently, and make me cycle through skills and utils just so that I can keep moving. They were running fairly high toughness, had decent defenses and kept me guessing the entire fight.

Sorry if that doesn’t help much. I’d be happy to help if you guys would like some 1v1 time in PvP, and we can practice together. PM me on my main if you’re interested, char name: Malach Galthena

Elementalists get stronger the longer the fight goes, if they gear properly, a thief has no chance unless they kill the elementalist 15 seconds within the start of the fight.

And .. wow.. really P/D thief? a good Elementalist will make you completely useless, curing conditions every time they use a spell, gaining 300 health every second, healing for full, curing conditions every 10 seconds, curing conditions when they move.

A good ele will just eat you alive.

They are much much faster then you are, and they don’t need to waste there utilitys on signets.

A good ele will KNOW your going to use CnD, put up shocking aura as you use it and stun you, and then knock you back as your stealthed.

The best way to kill a good Ele: …… Burst Mug+CnD+Backstab combo! If they get more then 3 boons up then run away, you’ve lost.

D/D ele needs to be in my face more than I need to be in his. Getting C&D off isn’t that hard. They have a lot of condition removals and healing. That’s why it’s a hard fight. We put them on really fast and over time the P/D Thief (at least stealth/acro build) will win or they run unless they are a complete bunker build in which case it’s a total stalemate.

Daecollo.9578:

Flanking..Strike.. to get rid of his boons.. .. LOL….

…

LOL….

…

No…

You would barely hurt him, and you would run out of initiative, his attunements to reapply all those buffs activate every 10 seconds, it takes 10 seconds to get 6 initative back, he would have all 4 buffs up again by the time ONE of your flanking strikes is back up, and WHILE hes doing all that hes killing you.

You need to fight good ele.

Flanking Strike also does horrible damage, so each one takes about 10% of his health, and grats, he has no boons, Oh he just used his attunements to get them all back and you have 0 initiative now, he reset the fight with full and your out of luck, oh yeah your almost dead too.

Mug+CnD+Backstab = Kill him before he has protection up/all those boons up = the best way.

Or, probably, those eles need to fight a good thief.

Reading your post, I see that you want to spam your Flanking Strike till your enemy is dead but, usually, that’s not what you are supposed to do to kill a good player.
Flanking Strike is on 4 initiative, all you have to do is to time Flanking Strike to strip crucial boons like Protection, Fury, Might when high stacked and Vigor (in the preference order as they are listed).
Stripping Protections boost your damage by 50%, stripping Vigor halves the Ele’s capability of dodging and stripping Might and Fury almost kill the damage output of enemy Ele.
In most cases, keeping Protection and Fury down while occasionally stripping high might stacks is more than enough to heavily weaken the Ele.
If you also succed to daze your enemy when he’s on low health, than you’ve won.

Of course you can bash the ele with your backstab combo, but if you’ll fail it’s not the Ele who is too strong (bunkers are made just to counter those meta thieves), it’s just you who refuse to adapt to a meta shift.

sorrow.2364:

Daecollo.9578:

Flanking..Strike.. to get rid of his boons.. .. LOL….

…

LOL….

…

No…

You would barely hurt him, and you would run out of initiative, his attunements to reapply all those buffs activate every 10 seconds, it takes 10 seconds to get 6 initative back, he would have all 4 buffs up again by the time ONE of your flanking strikes is back up, and WHILE hes doing all that hes killing you.

You need to fight good ele.

Flanking Strike also does horrible damage, so each one takes about 10% of his health, and grats, he has no boons, Oh he just used his attunements to get them all back and you have 0 initiative now, he reset the fight with full and your out of luck, oh yeah your almost dead too.

Mug+CnD+Backstab = Kill him before he has protection up/all those boons up = the best way.

Or, probably, those eles need to fight a good thief.

Reading your post, I see that you want to spam your Flanking Strike till your enemy is dead but, usually, that’s not what you are supposed to do to kill a good player.
Flanking Strike is on 4 initiative, all you have to do is to time Flanking Strike to strip crucial boons like Protection, Fury, Might when high stacked and Vigor (in the preference order as they are listed).
Stripping Protections boost your damage by 50%, stripping Vigor halves the Ele’s capability of dodging and stripping Might and Fury almost kill the damage output of enemy Ele.
In most cases, keeping Protection and Fury down while occasionally stripping high might stacks is more than enough to heavily weaken the Ele.
If you also succed to daze your enemy when he’s on low health, than you’ve won.

Of course you can bash the ele with your backstab combo, but if you’ll fail it’s not the Ele who is too strong (bunkers are made just to counter those meta thieves), it’s just you who refuse to adapt to a meta shift.

Flanking Strike strips a random boon, you could strip 1 stack of might…
Your the one who suggested flanking strike, I find the attack to be useless compared to cloak and dagger.