Guild Wars 2

I currently run a carrion based 30/30/10/0/0 necro build with signet of locust, signet undeath and well of corruption as utilities.

Obviously I am exceptionally squishy and often the top target for anyone who knows what they are doing. I run this build purely so I can crush bunker builds very quickly from ranged positions.

However, I have a serious problem with pure backstab thieves. Am I just dead to this class or am I missing a trick?

They will bas venom me, steal, bs and hs. I will be dead before the venom wears off. If I have DS up then I try to use this to fear the thief off prior to the backstab. However this fear is only 1 second and then I get hit by a 3 second fear and bs/hs again to death.

I get backstabed for about 12k and heartseaker I have seen a single hit for 10k.

Any ideas on how I can play better to avoid this? Or am I just dead due to build wars? Having no stun breakers makes venom a problem basically and I dont see how I can stop it. And when I dont have DS up its insta death. When I do then its just semi insta def as I get feared and killed 2 seconds later instead.

Are you running solo? because if not , saving the necro from theif pressure is a great way to utilize a team.
If your are running solo, make two necros, one a little bit less squishy and good for fights w theives, the other glass wells build or basically what ur using now.

then during the countdown look at your enemy roster and pick betwen both those necros.
But, if your with a team, get them to help you, it doesnt take much pressure to send a burst thief running for the hills.

Also, i would never recommend running with no stun breakers. Every class has to sacrifice some dps for this.

daydream.2938:

Are you running solo? because if not , saving the necro from theif pressure is a great way to utilize a team.
If your are running solo, make two necros, one a little bit less squishy and good for fights w theives, the other glass wells build or basically what ur using now.

then during the countdown look at your enemy roster and pick betwen both those necros.
But, if your with a team, get them to help you, it doesnt take much pressure to send a burst thief running for the hills.

Also, i would never recommend running with no stun breakers. Every class has to sacrifice some dps for this.

Yeh good points. On a team it is easier you are right because I can be protected. I think I will take your advice and make a tankier necro for such situations.

You are running a pure glass build, I suggest not running locust and running Well of Suffering instead since double wells is what that build is all about.

Of course your team should help peel the thief from you. But that goes for any glass build.

The best thing to do is to pop plague right away and blind to run to teammates, but that isn’t always available.

For this particular build, I suggest always running with a some death shroud up (as per any necro obv). As much as you want to pop DS to kill people since you’re running with decent power, you’re going to have to use your DS as your main defensive ability for glass cannon builds.

Death shroud fear as soon as you get hit with burst, the quicker the better. Instantly switch to staff and #5 fear #4 transfer conditions (if you have immob on you) and #3 chill/poison. The thief will want to get back to you and use his stolen fear most likely.

Here you have two options:

1. pop both wells on top of you and dodge twice around in them while healing, damaging with staff #1 (or scepter/dagger if you had staff on when he attacked you, #4 blind, #5 weakness) waiting on DS to pop up again. Again you’ll have to watch his animations for casting the stolen fear and dodge it. It IS possible to kill a thief doing this even if he uses is stealth heal.

2. dodge once in the opposite direction of fear (and save the other dodge if he ports to fear you) and try to run and heal towards your teammates. Locust does help for this but honestly if you’re running such a glass cannon build: it’s for the team fights with double wells and not running one of the wells defeats the purpose of running the build.

As with all 5v5’s your team should be looking for the thief the whole match and knowing where he is enables you to avoid his burst entirely with positioning. Or have him burst on you while being in a horrible position.

Hope this helps.

Tenderly.7019 gives good advice.

Also, do try the Reaper’s Precision trait. I usually run with it with my well build and while it doesn’t fix the issue, it does help. It fills your LF bar a bit after a well burst with fury, which you can save for spikes such as thieves or undodged mesmer shatters.

A well timed Plague Form can save you from/help defeat a thief as well. Remember to use it before/while you take the spike damage and not after, otherwise it won’t serve much purpose since you’ve already lost a lot of health and that will translate into how much you’ll have in plague form.

Also, if you see a thief is about to spike, standing in marks might help. You’ll see the marks trigger which means he’s there, so you can anticipate his attacks a bit better, or even force him to go shortbow.

I probably didn’t say anything new, but I do hope it helped in some way.

Vs a d/d thief, if you are full life and have your cd (and ds up) you kill him when he jump on you.
First about your build take double wells like said above, in trait in curse take Terror(VI) and Weakening shroud(IV).
When he jumps on you, you have to be very fast : you have to look the damage, not the thief since he appears too late if he uses quickness : when you take 5-8k it’s a thief so react.
Death shroud -> tab (he isn’t visible so tab will target him for you), fear and dark path.
When dark path land, go out of deathshroud and dodge out.
At this point you should be at 40% hp, thief is frost and has 8 stack of bleed and is at 80% hp.

You have to keep one thing in mind :
You’re out of range, so you kill him by kiting.
Either he switch to shortbow and you win (heal and kill him) or he’ll try to get back in melee range.
He has two tools to do that :
Shadowstep (you can’t prevent that, just dodge and fear him with the reaper’s mark).
Heartseeker. When he is frost, heartseeker travel range is reduce by 66% (50% when cripple). So if you run away from him without cripple and he is cripple or frost, he can’t close gap.
Use your heal to remove cripple or putrid mark or deathly swarm (don’t forget this spell, it return the condition (cripple) to the thief and blind him so the heartseeker will miss and then you can kite).
When he heal himself and goes invis, use mark on him and keep one for you (you drop it on yourself), when the mark disapear it means that the thief is back on you, just dodge out and do frost mark or grasping dead and wait to see him goes visible and crippled.

Other tricks i use :
If you have nothing and feel kitteny, deathshroud when he jump on you, and use the third spell in deathshroud to weakness and cripple him, dodge out and go out of deathshroud and kite him.

If he switch shortbow and you have 2k hp, you can use deathshroud to win the seconds to get out of sight and heal yourself behind an obstacle (you can use marks without being in his sight, abuse this).

Use your wells when you have nothing, you don’t even need them to kill thief.

Use your deathshroud to break the fear if he’s on you and he’ll kill you.

I run 30/20/0/20/0 D/W with Corrupt Boon, Well of Suffering and Well of Corruption and Flesh Golem elite. When there’s a lot of bleed thieves I’ll switch Corrupt Boon for Well of Power. A lot of D/D thieves I’ll use Well of Darkness which helps negate a lot of their opening burst potential. I find thieves to be by biggest problem when I run 30/30/10.

Tactics listed above are sound. I generally try to immediately DS fear when they open with BV > CnD > Steal etc then drop staff #5 on my feet and switch to D/W. When they hit the Fear mark, Dagger #3 immobilize > Well of Suffering > Golem Charge > Well of Corruption > Warhorn #4 daze when he tries to use Fear on you > Warhorn #5 up while Dagger #1 burst to keep him crippled. When he uses Hide in Shadows to heal, DS#4 will hit him in stealth. You won’t see numbers but as long as you can hear the sound of the spell it’s doing damage. Count to 3 and dodge or drop Well of Darkness on yourself to negate his next opening burst. They usually die in the first well bomb.

Problem is if you have no Deathshroud up you’re essentially useless. I have 29k HP and was instantly killed before Basilisk Venom wore out in this screenshot. I had just joined the match and ran to Mansion and then was killed by a thief with Haste up. I spammed dodge the second I was immobilized but died too fast. Kinda sucks, starting a match with no Lifeforce and then dying in the blink of an eye. Would be nice to start matches with at least some designated amount of Lifeforce to prevent annoying situations like the below from occurring. For the record he did Basilisk Venom > Cnd > Steal > Backstab > Heartseeker > Heartseeker all with Haste up. If I had full Lifeforce it wouldn’t have been a problem, but because the match had just started I had 0% (but he still had his Steal, which with 10 points for Mug turned it into a 5k damage instant gap closer that gains a Fear):

Tenderly.7019:

You are running a pure glass build, I suggest not running locust and running Well of Suffering instead since double wells is what that build is all about.

Of course your team should help peel the thief from you. But that goes for any glass build.

The best thing to do is to pop plague right away and blind to run to teammates, but that isn’t always available.

For this particular build, I suggest always running with a some death shroud up (as per any necro obv). As much as you want to pop DS to kill people since you’re running with decent power, you’re going to have to use your DS as your main defensive ability for glass cannon builds.

Death shroud fear as soon as you get hit with burst, the quicker the better. Instantly switch to staff and #5 fear #4 transfer conditions (if you have immob on you) and #3 chill/poison. The thief will want to get back to you and use his stolen fear most likely.

Here you have two options:

1. pop both wells on top of you and dodge twice around in them while healing, damaging with staff #1 (or scepter/dagger if you had staff on when he attacked you, #4 blind, #5 weakness) waiting on DS to pop up again. Again you’ll have to watch his animations for casting the stolen fear and dodge it. It IS possible to kill a thief doing this even if he uses is stealth heal.

2. dodge once in the opposite direction of fear (and save the other dodge if he ports to fear you) and try to run and heal towards your teammates. Locust does help for this but honestly if you’re running such a glass cannon build: it’s for the team fights with double wells and not running one of the wells defeats the purpose of running the build.

As with all 5v5’s your team should be looking for the thief the whole match and knowing where he is enables you to avoid his burst entirely with positioning. Or have him burst on you while being in a horrible position.

Hope this helps.

Yeh I put in well of suffering if I am in a premade but when running solo locust just helps me get around the map. Might switch fully to 2 wells though even when pugging this build.

I use DS and fear as the main counter but even this seems badish. Firstly its not always possible to enter DS either due to the cd of no life force. But even when I do use it the fear just delays death. I should use the fear then the chill effect though. I hadnt been using that on the thieves like I should be. That will help alot.

Hanzo.9624:

I run 30/20/0/20/0 D/W with Corrupt Boon, Well of Suffering and Well of Corruption and Flesh Golem elite. When there’s a lot of bleed thieves I’ll switch Corrupt Boon for Well of Power. A lot of D/D thieves I’ll use Well of Darkness which helps negate a lot of their opening burst potential. I find thieves to be by biggest problem when I run 30/30/10.

Tactics listed above are sound. I generally try to immediately DS fear when they open with BV > CnD > Steal etc then drop staff #5 on my feet and switch to D/W. When they hit the Fear mark, Dagger #3 immobilize > Well of Suffering > Golem Charge > Well of Corruption > Warhorn #4 daze when he tries to use Fear on you > Warhorn #5 up while Dagger #1 burst to keep him crippled. When he uses Hide in Shadows to heal, DS#4 will hit him in stealth. You won’t see numbers but as long as you can hear the sound of the spell it’s doing damage. Count to 3 and dodge or drop Well of Darkness on yourself to negate his next opening burst. They usually die in the first well bomb.

Problem is if you have no Deathshroud up you’re essentially useless. I have 29k HP and was instantly killed before Basilisk Venom wore out in this screenshot. I had just joined the match and ran to Mansion and then was killed by a thief with Haste up. I spammed dodge the second I was immobilized but died too fast. Kinda sucks, starting a match with no Lifeforce and then dying in the blink of an eye. Would be nice to start matches with at least some designated amount of Lifeforce to prevent annoying situations like the below from occurring. For the record he did Basilisk Venom > Cnd > Steal > Backstab > Heartseeker > Heartseeker all with Haste up. If I had full Lifeforce it wouldn’t have been a problem, but because the match had just started I had 0% (but he still had his Steal, which with 10 points for Mug turned it into a 5k damage instant gap closer that gains a Fear):

I would like to see us start with something like 20% DS too after we respawn each time. This is where my problem is though. Without DS up it just seems…..impossible? Although some ideas in this thread are useful. And it will help me negate the build for sure to some extent.

If you have problem with lifeforce two tips :
1) at the start of the game (when it’s rdy time 10 sec left), summon a flesh golem and then switch the skill to deathshroud. You’ll get 10% lifeforce so you can DS.
2) If you rez and have no lifeforce, drop a reaper’s or putrid mark on you when you enter a teamfight, so if the thief open you, he’s fear or the venom is removed by the putrid mark and you can dodge (then frost).

daydream.2938:

Are you running solo? because if not , saving the necro from theif pressure is a great way to utilize a team.
If your are running solo, make two necros, one a little bit less squishy and good for fights w theives, the other glass wells build or basically what ur using now.

then during the countdown look at your enemy roster and pick betwen both those necros.
But, if your with a team, get them to help you, it doesnt take much pressure to send a burst thief running for the hills.

Also, i would never recommend running with no stun breakers. Every class has to sacrifice some dps for this.

I’d like to point out to not rely on this strategy. As was pointed out in a previous thread being able to swap characters like this is not an intended strategy and is on their list of stuff to be fixed (although at anets pace you may have another few months worth)

unless you’ve got life force you’re dead, he can just spam heartseeker after his opener and kill you.

Prolonging the fight is not in your favor, since his heal removes conditions and his burst sequence can happen more often than you heals and defensive buttons can happen.

Run a high HP build — toughness does crap and the stats on toughness amulets don’t give you enough offense to put the thief on the defensive.

If you can’t pressure a thief, you die.

I run staff/axe+dagger against them. Axe aoe cripple+retal is rather sueful, and Rending Claws will put the hurt on them.

Spectral Walk/Armor for stunbreaker, use it quick when either they immob or stun you to get life force and DS their burst. You want to ruin their momentum by disrupting the cheese combo. Once you survive their steal>backstab burst attempts they are dead.

Save plague for Thieves’ Guild. Many thieves are dumb and run the weaker Basilisk Venom, but Thieves Guild is by far the stronger elite.

Only thieves that should be giving you problems as a necro are pistol/pistol or pistol/dagger thieves since they do more ranged damage than a necro and cure conditions well enough while being able to stay out of axe range. Necro damage in general is very poor, especially from range.

solution, use corrupt boon, well of corruption has along recharge and it wont get all the boons.
use plague signet, a) its a stun breaker b) all their conds go to them and with ur cond damage it will hurt more.
i think signet of locust is pretty useless, 25% move speed? no mutch help and neithers the life steal, instead of signet of undeath use grasbing pull if you use it every time it recharges you get 10% life force every 30 sec, whereas the signet will get 9% also the pull chills them.
also agaisnt thiefs use your staff place marks on ground to get invisibles.

@Tenderly: Very nice put .. pretty much agree with it all. I often find the crucial part to be if I dodge that fear.
I can fully understand why one want to run with locust … it is just not in coherence with the build though. I love that build btw.