Guild Wars 2

So here I am playing a necro. I’ve been playing sPVP for about 3 weeks or so and I only know how the necro class works. My understanding of other classes is very limited and for now I’m learning from experience when I play.

Here’s my current build that I’m feeling very comfortable with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmWDbkRLevdzXjePBIp45rjUE8yUPKPd2B-ToAgyERpiyFlJKZU2oGes8YjA

Here’s a video of the thief build that I’m talking about. Since I surely know that you will find a lot of mistakes by my part, please remember that I am relatively new to the game and have no proper knowledge of other classes builds. So here’s the video:

http://ru.twitch.tv/iceflame1988/c/2373401

Would appreciate people to point out what I did wrong and tell me how I’m supposed to deal with this.

Also please bare in mind that being a necro I am supposed to be a class that is immensely difficult to disengage from.

of course…sword/dagger thief…signet of energy/ flanking strike spam/ infiltrator strike as spammable stun breaker..GG devs

The S/D weapon set is a particularly irritating one. You were using your skills quite well though.

The #2 sword skill is a teleport an immobilize to a target, where he can teleport back and cleanse a condition, making him a bit resistant to conditions. The initial place from where he teleported should be marked with a small white circle (I may be mistaken) so if you find it, you can pressure him harder, since he won’t be able to escape so easily.

Rumor has it you can lay down marks as they evade around you and it will hit them just as their evade ends as the cast animations are the same…. Not really much you can do… daze them after they hit you once? Then they will just port out then back in… Only hope is to put flesh wurm somewhere out of their port range and hope they don’t follow you?

It’s not the teleportation that is getting you bud.
It’s the stealth. This thief wasn’t exactly a genius he ate marks he didn’t have to. Outside of stealth you would’ve won this encounter. What screwed you over was not getting past the CnD’s. My Necromancer experience is extremly limited (read,5 games). Chaining fear into an immobilize or second fear and following up with Golem rush would help for instance. Eg. DS fear, cancel shroud he pops Shadow return, you fear mark. SR is down drop 3 marks on his kitten .

Though an actual necro player could likely be more useful :P.
General tip is to pop Shadow Return (the teleport that has an icon on his health bar) then follow with CC. If he creates distance you can close distance and that invalidates the positioning advantage of Shadow return. Inf strike can be evaded even after he warps to you there is a delay. Outside of that general CnD defense (same as D/D or P/D) would’ve helped you out more.

When I’m playing S/P thief instead of S/D, I’ll generally interrupt him after he inf strikes me if I didn’t dodge it. Stacking bleed and covering with poison will screw him over as well since Inf strike removes only 1, and he’ll have to dip into utils to strip it otherwise (unless he’s SA built).

@Ensoriki

The thing about CnD, the skill is countered by timing your dodge when they try to use it.

Sadly necromancer have no acces to vigor, and no trait that give endurance. So when we used our 2 dodge, we are pretty much freee CnD target.

Arheundel.6451:

of course…sword/dagger thief…signet of energy/ flanking strike spam/ infiltrator strike as spammable stun breaker..GG devs

GG ignorant. That guy didn’t even use flanking strike, nor was he dodge rolling or using whatever a signet of energy may be. That thief was using 30 in Shadow Arts with S/D and the only signet used was the Signet of Shadows.

Med.6150:

Arheundel.6451:

of course…sword/dagger thief…signet of energy/ flanking strike spam/ infiltrator strike as spammable stun breaker..GG devs

GG ignorant. That guy didn’t even use flanking strike, nor was he dodge rolling or using whatever a signet of energy may be. That thief was using 30 in Shadow Arts with S/D and the only signet used was the Signet of Shadows.

First of all…chill out whoever you may be..I can’t use any names here unfortunately.
Furthermore I did a mistake, I was talking about sigil of superior energy, then the thief was spamming sword 2 like a “PRO”, now back to HoM as you don’t even know your own profession GG

Arheundel.6451:

Med.6150:

Arheundel.6451:

of course…sword/dagger thief…signet of energy/ flanking strike spam/ infiltrator strike as spammable stun breaker..GG devs

GG ignorant. That guy didn’t even use flanking strike, nor was he dodge rolling or using whatever a signet of energy may be. That thief was using 30 in Shadow Arts with S/D and the only signet used was the Signet of Shadows.

First of all…chill out whoever you may be..I can’t use any names here unfortunately.
Furthermore I did a mistake, I was talking about sigil of superior energy, then the thief was spamming sword 2 like a “PRO”, now back to HoM as you don’t even know your own profession GG

I am perfectly chill. I called you an ignorant for the simple reason that you were displaying an obvious lack of knowledge on what you commented on.

You explicitely mentioned flanking strike (sword/dagger #3 fyi) spam, yet flanking strike wasn’t used. You mentioned signet of energy, which we now know to mean sigil of superior energy, and, to support my claim of your ignorance, wasn’t used either (the thief was using sigil of air).

Med.6150:

Arheundel.6451:

Med.6150:

Arheundel.6451:

of course…sword/dagger thief…signet of energy/ flanking strike spam/ infiltrator strike as spammable stun breaker..GG devs

GG ignorant. That guy didn’t even use flanking strike, nor was he dodge rolling or using whatever a signet of energy may be. That thief was using 30 in Shadow Arts with S/D and the only signet used was the Signet of Shadows.

First of all…chill out whoever you may be..I can’t use any names here unfortunately.
Furthermore I did a mistake, I was talking about sigil of superior energy, then the thief was spamming sword 2 like a “PRO”, now back to HoM as you don’t even know your own profession GG

I am perfectly chill. I called you an ignorant for the simple reason that you were displaying an obvious lack of knowledge on what you commented on.

You explicitely mentioned flanking strike (sword/dagger #3 fyi) spam, yet flanking strike wasn’t used. You mentioned signet of energy, which we now know to mean sigil of superior energy, and, to support my claim of your ignorance, wasn’t used either (the thief was using sigil of air).

And based on what you make these claims? my claims are based on the common build run by s/d thieves, as the thief doesn’t show the build at all during the video, I can only assume you’re wearing a tin hat and using a crystal ball

There is nothing you can do as a Necro.
I think none human would be capable to do better as you done in that video.

- CC doesn’t work because he will just teleport away, stunbreak and teleport back in.
- Running to its safe spot won’t work either, because in that case you are leaving the point to be capped and he won’t come back anyway.
- Snare doesn’t work because he relies on teleports, which aren’t affected by snares
- Well would not have worked because he could have just teleport away for the duration of the well (5 seconds) then port back in again.
- Marks aren’t an option because they can be easily dodged and negated
- Dodging CnD is pretty much a placebo. It will prevents the thief to stealth for a couple of seconds, but since he’s using initiative only for IS and Shadow Return, he can afford to miss a CnD while you can’t afford to waste a dodge.

That’s the balance of this game.
Either reroll a Thief, or wait and hope for the next patch or just accept those situations.

Iceflame.5024:

So here I am playing a necro. I’ve been playing sPVP for about 3 weeks or so and I only know how the necro class works. My understanding of other classes is very limited and for now I’m learning from experience when I play.

Here’s my current build that I’m feeling very comfortable with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmWDbkRLevdzXjePBIp45rjUE8yUPKPd2B-ToAgyERpiyFlJKZU2oGes8YjA

Here’s a video of the thief build that I’m talking about. Since I surely know that you will find a lot of mistakes by my part, please remember that I am relatively new to the game and have no proper knowledge of other classes builds. So here’s the video:

http://ru.twitch.tv/iceflame1988/c/2373401

Would appreciate people to point out what I did wrong and tell me how I’m supposed to deal with this.

Also please bare in mind that being a necro I am supposed to be a class that is immensely difficult to disengage from.

He was a 10-30-30 thief, which basically hard counters any condi build ( shadow’s embrace remove 2 condi in 3 secs while stealthed, and 1 every 3 secs).

They need high stealth uptime and are overall kinda useless in serious tPvP, altough very annoying to fight against.

With your build i would use rabid amulet ( since carrion gives power you rarely use, since you have no points in spite and no wells) and OH dagger, for more condi power.

With these kind of thieves you need to rely on your fear more than your condi damage.

Use Death shroud only when you’re sure you can pull a fear.

And , moreover, apply pressure to its Shadow return location, so that he needs to close the gap before using it again, and you’ll easily control the fight: as long as its SR point is far, he’s in control of the fight.

Mrbig.8019:

He was a 10-30-30 thief, which basically hard counters any condi build ( shadow’s embrace remove 2 condi in 3 secs while stealthed, and 1 every 3 secs).

They need high stealth uptime and are overall kinda useless in serious tPvP, altough very annoying to fight against.

With your build i would use rabid amulet ( since carrion gives power you rarely use, since you have no points in spite and no wells) and OH dagger, for more condi power.

With these kind of thieves you need to rely on your fear more than your condi damage.

Use Death shroud only when you’re sure you can pull a fear.

And , moreover, apply pressure to its Shadow return location, so that he needs to close the gap before using it again, and you’ll easily control the fight: as long as its SR point is far, he’s in control of the fight.

Some points:

1. If he leaves the node to look for the Shadow Return location, he has done what the Thief wants: he left the node unguarded.
2. Condition Damage doesn’t really matters. Each CnD cleanse the thief for 2 conditions and each Shadow Return remove one condition. Probably he was running Shadowstep also.
3. Fear is useless. It is a condition (so it can be cleansed with any stealth skill with the trait) and also a stun, so it can be stunbreaked. I think that build has enough tools to counter fear.
4. I don’t think they are useless in tPvP. Look at the video. It was a typical tPvP situation. Someone holding a node while someone else is trying to cap it. The thief succeded. Now, imagine if that Necro was a Guardian (a more tPvP-like situation). Even worse. FS all the day long. Without counting the amazing mobility this build has.

You dont need vision on your target to use infiltrator’s strike. So you’ll never see him coming/porting back.
Also this build didn’t have so much damage, it’s like a S/D whit shadows arts. He can do even better playing Jumper’s high evasion build. And even kill you easier whit 5 secs of stability from runes of Lyssa

sorrow.2364:

Mrbig.8019:

He was a 10-30-30 thief, which basically hard counters any condi build ( shadow’s embrace remove 2 condi in 3 secs while stealthed, and 1 every 3 secs).

They need high stealth uptime and are overall kinda useless in serious tPvP, altough very annoying to fight against.

With your build i would use rabid amulet ( since carrion gives power you rarely use, since you have no points in spite and no wells) and OH dagger, for more condi power.

With these kind of thieves you need to rely on your fear more than your condi damage.

Use Death shroud only when you’re sure you can pull a fear.

And , moreover, apply pressure to its Shadow return location, so that he needs to close the gap before using it again, and you’ll easily control the fight: as long as its SR point is far, he’s in control of the fight.

Some points:

1. If he leaves the node to look for the Shadow Return location, he has done what the Thief wants: he left the node unguarded.
2. Condition Damage doesn’t really matters. Each CnD cleanse the thief for 2 conditions and each Shadow Return remove one condition. Probably he was running Shadowstep also.
3. Fear is useless. It is a condition (so it can be cleansed with any stealth skill with the trait) and also a stun, so it can be stunbreaked. I think that build has enough tools to counter fear.
4. I don’t think they are useless in tPvP. Look at the video. It was a typical tPvP situation. Someone holding a node while someone else is trying to cap it. The thief succeded. Now, imagine if that Necro was a Guardian (a more tPvP-like situation). Even worse. FS all the day long. Without counting the amazing mobility this build has.

1. he needs to slowly close the gap. The node will be left unguarder for sometime, but he won’t be able to cap it either, unless he wants to be bombarder with AoE condies

2. That’s why he needed fear. After closing the gap with its SR spot, he will be always nearer and nearer, so that in order to avoid damage he should port_port_port every sec. Any distance shorter than 600 range is bad for inf strike.

3. It’s not useless at all. If you do what i said above, the thief will be out of ini in no time, with no place to go ( unless he uses shadow refuge , goes away, us inf strike from 1200+ range )

4. No, it’s not a common tPvP situation.

At home point you’ll find a BM ranger in a common tPvP situation, which a S/D thief in whatsoever build has 0 chance to deafeat.

Op necro build ( with some modification) is the standard terror necro build, which is a support build used in TEAMFIGHTS.

That build is weak when alone, alotugh can be hard to fight 1vs1 ( the video lasted for 2 minutes, in tPvP you call for back up and in 2 minutes all your teammates will be able to come to help, even if one is a necro, with no swiftness, and is on the other side of the map).

I’m a rank 43 necro. He could easily have been beaten. I see that you tried to trait to make your terrors scary. With a condi necro a long duration terror sure has nice damage but you don’t have the burst to make those fears really worthwhile. I would only go 20 in soul reaping for mark life force gain. Or not even dip into soul reaping at all.

Your toughness is terrible. You need as much toughness as possible if you’re using carrions. Also warhorn is bad if you’re condi. You don’t have the burst to scare/pressure people while they’re dazed. Dagger offhand has more aoe control. You need to dodge roll towards the thief more to get the mark procs. Corrupt boon/epi are strong however I feel it very situation and can easily be countered. You should pick utilities that are general purpose isntead of just against players that boon stack. Corrupt boon is also easily dodged/missed because its buggy. And getting a good epi off is rare.

You did not have your wurm out at all if you plan on using it. The wurm continuously fires against thieves once they destealth.

Also you want to cc chain to get the condi stacks doing damage.

sorrow.2364:

1. If he leaves the node to look for the Shadow Return location, he has done what the
Thief wants: he left the node unguarded.

yes

sorrow.2364:

2. Condition Damage doesn’t really matters. Each CnD cleanse the thief for 2 conditions and each Shadow Return remove one condition. Probably he was running Shadowstep also.

He was running SS, and a CnD does matter very much, cause it costs 6 out of 12 Initiative !
Necro did not dodge any key skills, also died with 100% endurance.

sorrow.2364:

3. Fear is useless. It is a condition (so it can be cleansed with any stealth skill with the trait) and also a stun, so it can be stunbreaked. I think that build has enough tools to counter fear.

Its not, once you are feared you need to use a stunbreak / condiremoval skill to end it.
This can only be done by either using SS, or Sword#2 if he used it bevor to “load” it.

sorrow.2364:

4. I don’t think they are useless in tPvP. Look at the video. It was a typical tPvP situation. Someone holding a node while someone else is trying to cap it. The thief succeded. Now, imagine if that Necro was a Guardian (a more tPvP-like situation). Even worse. FS all the day long. Without counting the amazing mobility this build has.

The thief did not succeed, as the necro did buy a lot of time (altough could have been more).
Another player of the necro’s team came for support, if necro would have feared while downed, he would not have been stomped and the teammate could have ressed him again !

And once again the thief in the vid did not use FS/LS … do you people even watch the buffs / debuffs in the vid ?

Ah and btw, why didn’t u use a single Utility ?

Didn’t know stealthed enemies cannot decap points. Yeah the endurance part as well as the absence of flesh wurm is a big mistake, heh. Indeed I could feared him when I got downed, guess I lost my spirit at that point lol.
Regarding the chain CC part I tried it kind of but most of the times I landed any CC he either ported away or went into stealth or already was in stealth or ported away. Regarding the build, I actually like it a lot, it’s sort of a heavy CC build that maximizes my on demand terror fears. I do not feel like there is any lack of condi burst though since my terror fears do a lot and I personally do not like off hand dagger. The only worthy thing that was sacrificed is weakening shroud pretty much. I also do not plan on using sigil of earth so there is no reason to go rabid gear. But in the end to each his own.

I can see that I also wasn’t very good at predicting his movement in stealth, had him quite low like 3-4 times. I’ll note the part about watching for his teleport location too.

Plague form would have let you bunker the point until help arrived. The flesh golem is completely useless against teleports since it’s very slow and just ends up running around the entire fight instead of hitting anything. In that fight it was a wasted elite.

Also I saw that you tried to get flesh wurm out but got dazed. If your wurm was up on the ledge, you could have portaled out to confuse the thief a bit and break his rhythm/heal up. Not sure why you did not re-attempt to cast it at a later time.

That being said, there’s not much else you could have done with your build. If your wurm was on the ledge, or if you had a full DS pool you would have had a better chance.

Iceflame.5024:

So here I am playing a necro. I’ve been playing sPVP for about 3 weeks or so and I only know how the necro class works. My understanding of other classes is very limited and for now I’m learning from experience when I play.

Here’s my current build that I’m feeling very comfortable with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmWDbkRLevdzXjePBIp45rjUE8yUPKPd2B-ToAgyERpiyFlJKZU2oGes8YjA

Here’s a video of the thief build that I’m talking about. Since I surely know that you will find a lot of mistakes by my part, please remember that I am relatively new to the game and have no proper knowledge of other classes builds. So here’s the video:

http://ru.twitch.tv/iceflame1988/c/2373401

Would appreciate people to point out what I did wrong and tell me how I’m supposed to deal with this.

Also please bare in mind that being a necro I am supposed to be a class that is immensely difficult to disengage from.

I’d like to say that your build is a bit awkward. Despite that, you use it quite well.

I use Thief from time to time, and I actually use that build often. You will not beat it as a condition Necro. It has far too many condition cures. It’s an attrition build, and you will only be able to defeat it by playing it’s own game with it. The only Necromancers to ever beat one of my S/D builds are Wellmancers with alot of bursting power.

But I wouldn’t advise changing your build simply to kill a single Thief. If you want practice against Thieves ingame, I can help you. However, as I said, you will not beat a competent S/D Thief with a ConditionNecro.

There are a couple of times an S/D will not feel comfortable around a condi necro, but not if he’s running a Shadow arts build (which isn’t standard and hasn’t been since last year) since that excels at duels and has more sustainability than normal.

Arheundel.6451:

And based on what you make these claims? my claims are based on the common build run by s/d thieves, as the thief doesn’t show the build at all during the video, I can only assume you’re wearing a tin hat and using a crystal ball

It’s very easy to spot, if you know animations and effects. I know it’s a novel concept for somebody who likes to post more than he plays.

It’s also very easy to see that the thief blinds the necromancer every time he C&Ds. He has also regenerated a lot of health every time he comes out of stealth (30 in Shadow Arts with 2 initiative on stealth, blind on stealth and HP reg in stealth and no he was not using shadow’s embrace as I was reading earlier but instead cloaked in shadow, which is apparent at the very start where he enters stealth with a poison and a couple bleeds and when he comes out several seconds later, he still has them on). He also procs lightning strike repeatedly during the fight.

He then proceeds to root with Infil Strike and C&D off the immobilized target just to daze with tactical strike and auto attack till he has to retreat.

Problem is you can chain CnD forever, doing damage and stealthing, if the guy doesn’t have enough healing he will die eventually, by CnD chain. Koroshi did a video doing this in wvwvw to an enemy commander, using a similar build kinda fun/sad to watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QtQ1sotHo

dovrak.4376:

Problem is you can chain CnD forever, doing damage and stealthing, if the guy doesn’t have enough healing he will die eventually, by CnD chain. Koroshi did a video doing this in wvwvw to an enemy commander, using a similar build kinda fun/sad to watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QtQ1sotHo

That commander just stood there and did nothing, all power to the thief if anyone allows them to do that.

BobbyT.7192:

dovrak.4376:

Problem is you can chain CnD forever, doing damage and stealthing, if the guy doesn’t have enough healing he will die eventually, by CnD chain. Koroshi did a video doing this in wvwvw to an enemy commander, using a similar build kinda fun/sad to watch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0QtQ1sotHo

That commander just stood there and did nothing, all power to the thief if anyone allows them to do that.

And why would you did? Heal yourself? Aoe around like headless chicken? He still will chain cnd after your heals and laugh at you. I believe that 75% of that zerg just quited the game after that situation, just doesn’t seem right Anet allowing any class to chain a damage/cloak skill.
It’s like if in WoW rogues were allowed to ambush/stealth in 1 skill, and dots on rogue wouldn’t break stealth, just lol.

He could have done anything really, and yes aoe does happen to work, and for a commander, he was pretty squishy to begin with.

BobbyT.7192:

He could have done anything really, and yes aoe does happen to work,

No, it does not. Any Thief worth his salt will avoid any AoE fields. Unless you have a team of 7 Power Necromancers all using Deathshroud 4 simultaneously nearby the Thief, you won’t kill him.

BobbyT.7192:

He could have done anything really, and yes aoe does happen to work,

Not sure if serious. If a thief runs into aoe, is because he wants, it’s quite easier to dodge red circles in general. Is even easier vs necros, since you can dodge and ’’trigger’’ wells whitout being dmged. Problematics aoes are stuns/fears/cc (shadow return says hi), and conditions (shadow arts tree).
Yeah a thief can troll you forever.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

BobbyT.7192:

He could have done anything really, and yes aoe does happen to work,

No, it does not. Any Thief worth his salt will avoid any AoE fields. Unless you have a team of 7 Power Necromancers all using Deathshroud 4 simultaneously nearby the Thief, you won’t kill him.

You right, with a brainless zerg that thief will have field day, too bad with a group that know what they are doing will not let that happen,

BobbyT.7192:

BobbyT.7192:

He could have done anything really, and yes aoe does happen to work,

Not sure if serious. If a thief runs into aoe, is because he wants, it’s quite easier to dodge red circles in general. Is even easier vs necros, since you can dodge and ’’trigger’’ wells whitout being dmged. Problematics aoes are stuns/fears/cc (shadow return says hi), and conditions (shadow arts tree).
Yeah a thief can troll you forever.

Troll? yes, kill? only the stupid.

Anyways this is spvp, why we talking about WvW?

I usually cast a fear mark/DS 3 right after their dodge animation. If you can catch them, you can kill them. I’ve also found out that using Soul Marks helps a lot when fighting them so you can use your DS more reliably.

Shadow Arts has a broken trait that instead of removing a condition every 3 seconds you are in stealth, it also removes a condition upon entering stealth.

With the amount of times a thief can spam stealth, plus shadow step condi removal, plus shadow refuge, the shadow arts thief is pretty much immune to any condition spec that isn’t an engineer.

As a necro just accept that any thief specced into Shadow Arts will farm you like they farm every other non-bunker build in 1v1 that isn’t a mesmer or other thief. Run accompanied by someone else, either another thief/mesmer or a good bunker guardian/ele who can keep you alive.

Shadow art thieves just can reset a fight at will and still get to maintain surprising damage for their high 1v1 sustain.

It’s ridiculous how easy it is to spam stealth. I counted 11 times that Thief stealths in that 1 minute video.

The way they did stealth was one of the worst design decisions Anet made. Not just because its hard to balance, but because without detections skills, there is no counter play or skill based preemption to it. It’s just all reacting to the thief dictating the fight. Very uninteresting and unfun mechanic to fight against.

If you are aren’t going to have detection for stealth, it should act as no more than an opener or maybe one extra stealth to escape a fight, but not constant spamming in and out a whole fight.

Conquest as the only game mode kind of hides some of these flaws, because to compete for points the thief must be contest a very small area. But everywhere else in the game the flaws show. And if they ever introduce more modes of sPVP, which they should as conquest is dull and repetitive, it will stand out as an issue even more.

If thieves were actually weak to conditions or actually spiky aoe existed for most classes as they broadcast being a weakness of the class, stealth wouldn’t be so bad.

But with all the beta complaints about condition removal, they went with the nuclear option and gave thieves some of the best condition removal in the game, and outside a warrior or mesmer or engineer no other class actually has enough aoe to threaten a thief approaching them while in stealth.

This whole “just use aoe skills” is a joke. Most aoe skills in the game outside shatter and some long cd ele skills or grenades are actually not strong enough to overwhelm a thief’s shadow arts reset and backstab spam.

If they actually nerfed that shadow arts trait to only remove conditions EVERY 3 seconds after you entered stealth instead of everytime you trigger stealth, then it wouldn’t be so bad.

And cloak and dagger should never have been able to trigger from pets or minions. A ranger or necro or mesmer can’t tell their ai to dodge the cnd. It’s ridiculous.

The thief class in this game is a joke. But if Anet wanted to frustrate their player base (except for thieves ofc), they sure as hell succeeded. There’s nothing fun fighting something like what was shown in the OP’s video.

The class needs a complete redesign in every aspect.

no Idea why necs would use carrion amu…… You don’t need health nor Power, on the rabid you can at least use the toughness.

Also, get double energy runes and dodge larc-strike.

And if u go 30 in soul reaping, get the stabi.

Failing to avoid CnD killed you basically. Overall S/D thief is a pretty hard fight for a terrornecro, especially on a point like henge that has a lot of obstacle and Z-axis. Best bet is to hold out for a bit and get someone to help you.

Although bad-bad play on thief’s part, it took him 1.5 minutes to kill you and you didn’t even have any DS to protect yourself. You did good since you didn’t lose the point in that timeframe.

One mistake I’ve noticed in your play is your use of Reapers Mark.

The common rota for S/D-Thiefs is going in with flanking strike, then larc-strike, then Sword1 spams with some dodges. Often, they go in with Flanking, dodge and spam S1 a bit, then they come back with S2 immobilize for a guaranteed Larc-Strike Hit.

It’s extremely important not to put down your Reapers Mark too early, because the Thief will just evade it, you have to put it down in between Flanking Strike and Larc-Strike, the best possible time is probably before the third hit of the Sword1 when they S1-pressure you, before they larc-strike you, in that way, they will loose the biggest hit on their Sword (the third one in the combo) and they might loose the larc-strike, because they can’t hit you until it reverts back to the flanking strike.

Same goes for the Fear in Death-Shroud.

The Thief in the Vod did nowhere near max-dps btw. so against Thiefs maxxing their DPS (with the right combo and without that much stealth and disengages) you’ll be dead within seconds if you don’t run the toughness-Amu.

Also, on the toughness-Amu, you have enough sustain to apply conditions to the Thief, which will make him have to play more defensive by using a lot of Ini on clearing off Condis, which will not only make him waste Ini on non-aggressive skills, but also make him port in and out a lot, which takes away TONS of DPS from the build.

Also, safe your Corrupt Boon for the Lyssa-proc on Basi-Venom, it’ll totally destroy the Thief.

the initiative on sword skill 2 shadow return should be WAY higher, it is just a spammable, almost free, stunbreaker ^^ i did a post about this, they seem not to give a dammn crap

Response to the video:

The video starts out with you blindly casting marks but unfortunately missing. Shortly after a thief appears behind you and you run away from him. He gets lots of hits on your exposed back and gets a lot of damage in.

You use your elite to knock him down buying you time to stabilize. You then fear the full hp thief as he stands back up.

Normal fighting ensues and you both get relatively low. You’re casting marks at your feet and turning in circles/dodging.

Theif invis’s and retreats. Same thing happens again. You guys fight for a tad thief invis’s and retreats.

Thief reappears catches a good backstab and ends the fight quickly. Then does an invis stomp.

What could you have done better? 1 Save the staff 3 mark at the start till on point where it will guaranteed hit. 2 Concentrate on dodging more at the start and keeping your front to the enemy. 3 Drop AOE marks and scepter 2 at your feet as often as possible + pop into DS and use 4. 4 Drop your flesh wurm during a lull/when he goes invisible to heal. 5 When the theif gets low then use fears + knockdowns to chain cc him for the win. If you don’t have cc’s available you won’t be able to force the thief to remain in a losing fight since he can just go invisible again.

In short you took a ton of damage at the start which put you in a bad position. It sucks but blowing an opening to a fight can lead to a sizable disadvantage. Add to the fact that you had 3 useless utilities when he probably didn’t + you are more AOE damage/team support build where he is a 1v1 gank type build. Bad play at the start + buildwars got you.

Godofallu.2935 thank you for your advice but it isn’t that thief build made in a way that practically makes chain CCing him nearly impossible? That is theoretically speaking if the thief was performing better.

You did fine, Thieves are almost unbeatable when played right and you are a CondiNecro. You cant condition them OR chase them OR burst them out. You have no real chance at winning unless they are horrible. Just hope that when Necros finally get buffed by ANet they do a good enough job to make you viable in a 1v1 and not need a babysitter like they currently do.

Jony.6815:

the initiative on sword skill 2 shadow return should be WAY higher, it is just a spammable, almost free, stunbreaker ^^ i did a post about this, they seem not to give a dammn crap

I’d have to disagree here, for multiple reasons (and I don’t main Thief btw):

- Thief Condi-Remove is almost exclusively linked to stealth, if you don’t run stealth, you basically have the Sword 2 to get the Damaging Condiss off of you and maybe a utility, not much else.
- If the Thief wouldn’t have the Sword 2, almost any Thief would be forced to use Hide in Shadows, because it’s the only heal-skill that gets rid of the damaging Condis.
- If a Thief has to use Sword 2 because of too many condis, it actually drops his DPS by a huge amount, so he may get rid of the condis, but his DPS suffers – fair trade IMHO.

What you did wrong is quite simple: Necromancer is currently not great at point defending.

Your build is a defensive variation of the Fear build, it is good in theory, but against S/D thieves the fear duration and high life force will not be enough to sustain. He will simply wear you down.
Then again, it took him a very long time! Enough time for a teammate to arrive, which is basically all you can ask from a Necromancer close point defender.

What I am saying is neither of these builds are particularily good at what they were used for in this video.
Necromancer with corrupt boon / flesh golem / fears is great at teamfighting against bunker Guardians or Elementalists.
The thief spent too much time in stealth and has no way to knock you off the point for a decapture it. It would be much wiser for him to use his boon steal on an enemy bunker in a teamfight as well, imo.

I wouldn’t mind someone posting a serious duel between a necro and a good thief using this type of build, or even better, Jumper X’s build.

I found a condi/bunker build that I enjoy that actually involves BF and FG but against this build I can do nothing. I can beat almost any other profession (with the exception of Engi’s with that 25% hp condition immunity) fairly well now with this build. But that thief build I can’t even dent. WIth 3k armor and 20k hp I’m still being hit for near 2k WITHOUT the thief having might stacks and no way to reliably land any meaningful stacks of conditions.

The thief in the video wasn’t nearly as good as the ones I’ve seen using Jumpers build either. I just get rolled without standing a chance and I rarely ever see them die.

If someone could record a duel or three, it would be amazing.

Stof.9584:

What you did wrong is quite simple: Necromancer is currently not great at point defending.

That is actually incorrect, Necromancer can be just as good as a Guardian at point defense.

Stof.9584:

Your build is a defensive variation of the Fear build, it is good in theory, but against S/D thieves the fear duration and high life force will not be enough to sustain. He will simply wear you down.

That is quite true.

Stof.9584:

Then again, it took him a very long time! Enough time for a teammate to arrive, which is basically all you can ask from a Necromancer close point defender.

Not true. Again, Necromancer can bunker quite effectively.

Stof.9584:

What I am saying is neither of these builds are particularily good at what they were used for in this video.

Once again, I disagree on the Necro.

Stof.9584:

Necromancer with corrupt boon / flesh golem / fears is great at teamfighting against bunker Guardians or Elementalists.

Says whom? They can simply reapply the boons.

Stof.9584:

The thief spent too much time in stealth and has no way to knock you off the point for a decapture it. It would be much wiser for him to use his boon steal on an enemy bunker in a teamfight as well, imo.

Actually has has plenty of ways to do that. An evasion based Thief could have very well captured it and held it for a very long time.

Sorry to necro this but I dunno if making a new thread on similar topic is better.

So I have a thief guildie I keep losing to. After some research I came to this thread.

My aoe just doesn’t land on him. He keeps evading marks. He port and hit me. When I try to do anything, he simply teleports or stealth away. I tried well of darkness but he just run and wait. Same with wall.

Is it still true that a condition necro cant beat that kind of thief? Or did they make any change since June that a necro can have a little chance?

was it an s/d thief? d/p thief?

ahuba.6430:

was it an s/d thief? d/p thief?

I believe he is S/D.

Afya.5842:

Sorry to necro this but I dunno if making a new thread on similar topic is better.

So I have a thief guildie I keep losing to. After some research I came to this thread.

My aoe just doesn’t land on him. He keeps evading marks. He port and hit me. When I try to do anything, he simply teleports or stealth away. I tried well of darkness but he just run and wait. Same with wall.

Is it still true that a condition necro cant beat that kind of thief? Or did they make any change since June that a necro can have a little chance?

Could you link your build? I run a power/DS build that can handle thieves pretty well, but I do notice that when I play condi or terror builds, I have a harder time against s/d thieves. If you go 15 points in Soul Reaping to get Last Grasp and have spectral armor for one of your utility slots, you can survive a little longer. Plague can buy you some time if you already burned through your heal, but without seeing your build (I assume you’re playing condi or terror) it’s hard to offer advice.