Guild Wars 2

Hello dungeon crawlers!

I want to go back into pve by rolling an alt (my main being guardian), and I can’t decide between thief and necromancer. I like them both equally, but I have no experience with them outside spvp, so I wonder how they fare into dungeons, and who brings the most between damage and utilities for the group.

If possible, can you also post the builds suited for dungeon, so I can have a look at what would be the gameplay with them.

thanks a lot! : )

As a necro you’d probably be running a standard conditionmancer build and you can basically do two things in the dungeons – either a support who’s taking care of all conditions on your team (you can cure them, send them to your target and you can also corrupt boons on your target) or an epidemic AoE-heavy build (epidemic spreads conditions from your current target to everyone around = a waterfall of numbers on your screen).
Basically, necromancers shine in encounters with lots of enemies, are quite fine with single target but are beyond useless for destroying structures (all you have is 30 seconds of lich form).
Never played thief though, so can’t help you there…

Necro does things that actually help the group. Epidemic alone outclasses thief.

Thief can stealth your party and provide a few burst blast finishers as far as group play is concerned. However a necro can burst off 4 blast finishers in ~1s every 20s so I think that still puts thief to shame, since it doesn’t make his normal attacks garbage until initiative regens.

Have not played a Necro. Thieves are great at team stealth. and great at rezzing players with Shadow Refuge. They can pretty much spam a blast finisher with Cluster Bomb. With Choking Gas + Cluster Bomb they provide AOE Weakness fields. They have a spamable AOE Blind field with Black Powder that works well on anyone that can be blinded.

Thieves revive better than everyone else with SR, HiS or Blinding Powder. He can reach downed allies in no time with Shadowstep, free AoE cripple and bleed on dodge, haste for faster revive… a lot of stuff that a necro can’t do.

Necros either play condition build, that is very strong when your party doesn’t use much conditions, because the stacks go up very fast. Necro running wells is very useful too. A lot of stuff that a thief can’t do.

The conclusion is pretty clear I think.

I’ve been playing necro for a while, right now I’m using 0/30/20/20/0 as a condition/support build.

Traits I use are increased bleeding duration, wells are ground targeted, increased scepter cond duration. I switch these sometime with corruptions recharging faster/blind also chills foes.

Death trait line, Marks radius is increased and they are unblockable.

Blood Line I use leave mark of blood when dodging and well whenever you revive an ally/wells recharge faster.

This build uses staff/scepter-dagger

Utilities are BiP/Signet of Undeth/Epidemic however I switch very often depending on what the enemies do and the support that needs to brought, so I also switch these between all wells, well of darkness and power are pretty good options, same with well of corruption.

Elite usually Plague because of the AOE blind and tankiness it offers it can save your group’s life when you aggro too many mobs. Lich form when you know plague won’t be used like ice boss in fractals or dredge/elemental boss.

Runes I use superior of undeath because of toughness/cond damage, Sigil on staff I use sup sigil of curroption, scepter 60% bleed chance on crit, dagger (gain might when switching to weapon). Gear I use rabid gear.

I would take a necro any day over thief in a harder dungeon, havent played a thief lvl80 myself yet but got one.
Plague with blind is really something when fighting a big hard mob, fear is really nice to interrupt some bosses more dangerous skills and on bosses you kite a lot I prefer the conditional damage necros give over the spike dmg thief do.
Well its my opinion so far between the 2

Thief:

• Does at least double the damage of a Necromancer, both AoE and single target
• Spammable AoE weakness
• Spammable blast finisher
• Spammable AoE blind if needed
• Stealth ressing
• Harder to play properly because of inherent low HP.

Necromancer:

• Can fear bosses to interrupt them
• Epidemic is good if you have a lot of conditions in your party
• Corrupt Boon is useful a lot of the time
• Can build towards good support (although not as good as Guardian).
• Easy to play properly with high HP and death shroud.

Depends on what you need exactly.

^ Don’t quite agree with all of that. At any moment in a fight, thieves either offer great support or do great damage, but never both at the same time, because of how initiative works. Half of good thief play IMHO is in recognizing which combo fields are in play and then deciding whether it’s better to dps or to support.

Meanwhile, necros pretty much do everything all at once generally well. Necro will output good AoE damage while removing conditions, stripping boons, giving regeneration, and deliver good CC through cripple/chill/weakness. Terror from DS is insanely good for interrupting bosses (a great necro will prevent many one-shot party wipes in pugs) and fear, while it often splits up mobs making them harder to AoE, is still a strong emergency CC against trash.

Rathore.9348:

Necro will output good AoE damage while removing conditions, stripping boons, giving regeneration, and deliver good CC through cripple/chill/weakness.

What’s your definition of good?

A Thief can do 7-8k damage to 5 targets every 2 seconds indefinitely while blast finishing every time + 6k damage in autoattacks between clusters, and still have enough initiative to keep up AoE weakness. Necro doesn’t come anywhere close to that.

I have an 80 Necro and a Thief, and as far as damage is concerned, it really is incomparable. Necro utility is good, but you are doing damage 90% of the time, so damage means quite a bit.

thanks a lot for all the answers, I think I’m starting to gravitate around the thief, but keep posting your experiences cause they all matter : )

what would be a good thief build for dungeons? While i had a lot of experience with the conditions gameplay of the necro (in spvp, that is) I don’t think you can approach dungeons with a backstab build, right? : p

I don’t have thief nor nec. Base on my exp, nec buffs the team better than thief especially in difficult dungeons. They have better survivalibity, better aoe and controlling skill. Thief has some other skill works for some specific situation. But if lemme choose one from these two as my team member, I would prefer necro who can serve almost all situation.