Guild Wars 2

How do you beat them? It feels like im wasting my time fighting them cuz they just spam flanking strike which evades, and then they blind and immobalize to mess you up more. Its just really dumb when they can evade everything by spamming flanking strike. Anyone else think it needs a nerf or is there a way around it? i play necro btw

Dodge larcenous strike. Flanking strike does no damage — it’s the second part of the chain that hits hard.

If you’re a class with low mobility/cc you’re going to lose to thief, period.

The only way to beat a thief right now is to be an engineer for condition builds, or run another spike build like D/P or mesmer or scepter ele.

You can’t wear thieves down — they can reset too much so you have to kill them in between revealed time periods or you’ll get nowhere.

Good mesmers can beat thieves fairly easily, but as a necro it’s hard to 1v1 a thief. Necro isn’t exactly the 1v1 class. They are more team battle class.

remember, gw2 is a team game.
bring a friend!

I can beat or put up a good fight against backstab theives, necros hav enough cc to beat them. But sword/dagger is just ridiculous cuz i cant land a single hit. I can survive for quite awhile but whats the point if i cant hit them =/ . not to mention they remove conditions like crazy too. So the hits i do get off do no damage. I guess its just a broken matchup, meh…

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

remember, gw2 is a team game.
bring a friend!

yes but id like to be able to hold my own ground. that also benefits the team wen i solo cap points! generally i can i play well against most. but sword/dagger theif, regen bunker rangers , and certain mesmer builds are my undoing. But sword/dagger feels the cheapest of them all cause they mostly spam flanking strike….3, 3, 3 all day long, pro skillz…

I’ve never had trouble dealing with thieves in 1V1 although I don’t play necro much.

What I can tell you is that for a all-in-one skill such as Flanking strike, you have to expect your opponent to spam it and to try to be a length ahead of him.

2nd : CC thieves. Immobilization and any sort of stun/fear is highly effective if you have conditions running on him. Be prepared to interrupt his heal, often means victory (much easier as an engie).

^ yea i do that vs backstab thieves and can win. but sword/dagger it doesnt work nearly as well.. necros are too slow to keep away from theif and theif will remove the cripples and chill i put on him. Not to mention thnx to flanking strike he can even evade my cc or move out of los to make me miss more.

You will not beat a competent thief as a necro if he’s got any traits in shadow arts.

You just won’t. They cannot be CC’d (With S/D you’ve got a stun breaker from infiltrator’s strike, and if that fails you’ve got shadow step — so about 3 stun breaks you can chain). And when you get pressured by conditions you just stealth and wipe it off.

And due to how much damage you can inflict both burst and sustained, no class outside bunker specs can survive the combination of resets+ really high damage.

Just wait till they buff warrior sustained, though. A single 100b with Leg Specialist>stun brings my 2.2k BM bunker ranger below 50% health. A whirlwind will do about 20% of that 50% left, and they can chip away the rest.

Once warriors get to have uptime with the damage they’re capable, thieves will seem a joke to you.

OMNIBUS.2913:

How do you beat them? It feels like im wasting my time fighting them cuz they just spam flanking strike which evades, and then they blind and immobalize to mess you up more. Its just really dumb when they can evade everything by spamming flanking strike. Anyone else think it needs a nerf or is there a way around it? i play necro btw

Go Well based, dare him to step inside your wells.

Fighting an S/D Thief off point as a Necro is suicide, generally you can get by simply by ignoring him. If you’re fighting him on point, put down Wells. He can’t stay in them for too long, so he’ll constantly be teleporting/dodging out of them. That way you can capture the point.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

OMNIBUS.2913:

How do you beat them? It feels like im wasting my time fighting them cuz they just spam flanking strike which evades, and then they blind and immobalize to mess you up more. Its just really dumb when they can evade everything by spamming flanking strike. Anyone else think it needs a nerf or is there a way around it? i play necro btw

Go Well based, dare him to step inside your wells.

Fighting an S/D Thief off point as a Necro is suicide, generally you can get by simply by ignoring him. If you’re fighting him on point, put down Wells. He can’t stay in them for too long, so he’ll constantly be teleporting/dodging out of them. That way you can capture the point.

I thought about that atroll. but theif can just bait wells and then come bak and get u wen all wells r on cooldown. But it would get him off point for 15 seconds at least.

That’s the point Omnibus, you’re not going to kill a good S/D Thief if he doesn’t want you to. You can only play mind games with them, to get them to do what you want them to do. Getting them off point is good.

Its just stalling for some points tho, which in the end the theif will take it bak. =/

Zenith.7301:

You will not beat a competent thief as a necro if he’s got any traits in shadow arts.

You just won’t. They cannot be CC’d (With S/D you’ve got a stun breaker from infiltrator’s strike, and if that fails you’ve got shadow step — so about 3 stun breaks you can chain). And when you get pressured by conditions you just stealth and wipe it off.

And due to how much damage you can inflict both burst and sustained, no class outside bunker specs can survive the combination of resets+ really high damage.

Just wait till they buff warrior sustained, though. A single 100b with Leg Specialist>stun brings my 2.2k BM bunker ranger below 50% health. A whirlwind will do about 20% of that 50% left, and they can chip away the rest.

Once warriors get to have uptime with the damage they’re capable, thieves will seem a joke to you.

Yea ive pretty much accepted that. but i main necro for pvp and and im so used to them now i dont wana switch classes lol.

You just need to be babysat as a class, unfortunately.

Play a mesmer or thief if you want to be a class that can roam/1v1 efficiently in tournaments.

S/D Thief is still somewhat of a rarity in tPvP so just due to the lack of experience I’ve had facing them I had no idea how to fight them initially. I just started picking up some things very recently that might help you out though:

-I usually just eat the initial Flanking Strike. It doesn’t really hit all that hard. Both the boon steals and the big damage is packed into the follow-up strike, so if you’re going to dodge something dodge this.

-If you snare the Thief with cripple or chill you can very easily kite Flanking Strike since movement debuffs affect the movement speed/distance of it. This is very key, you must hit your snares on the Thief so you can kite them better.

-As a follow-up to the above point, you have to learn when the Thief evades so you can actually hit them with your snares. Some Thieves like to spec deep into Acrobatics which makes things more complicated, but knowing basics like how they can’t Flanking Strike twice in a row, so you have a much better chance of hitting them with something after Flanking Strike than if they haven’t used it at all yet. Plus the timeframe of when Larcenous Strike is up after Flanking Strike isn’t very long, so if they spend all their dodge evading after Flanking Strike then they won’t be able to use Larcenous Strike.

-As with all Sword Thieves they rely a lot on Infiltraitor’s Strike > Shadow Return to get in and out. Shadow Return actually is activated after the swing from Infiltraitor’s Strike, so if you interrupt it he can’t use Shadow Return. My guildmate thinks it’s possible to react and interrupt it with DS fear, but it’s really fast and I wouldn’t recommend it. I think this is good to know however as you can time your fear mark or chill mark to mess them up when they teleport in.

-If you want to put pressure on a Thief another good tip a guildmate gave me was that while you are kiting the Thief run back to his Shadow Return spot (it shows up as a white circle). That way he can’t just use Shadow Return to get away as easily.

S/D Thieves really define “mobility”, the only thing i know when fighting them is “KEEP MOVING” and “STUN HIM WHEN YOU CAN”,

Hey Omnibus,

Not sure what build you are running but I have this one on my necro:

It is one the best I have found for thieves and most other opponents as you can CC them a lot and keep them in fear/knockdown with dots on them. Its still hard to get the timing to start the CC chain as they can remove conditions quite easily.

Have you tried putting the Hydromancy sigil on your weapon? This chills upon weapon swap and is really good for keeping your distance with melee.

Either way you are going to have a tough time as Anet created yet another OP thief build Still, Necros and Warriors are meant to be buffed at the end of this month as per the devs on SOTG:

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/news/1153-gurus-spvp-state-of-the-game-show-with-evan-lesh-jonathan-sharp/

Good luck

I appreciate your guys advice and i hope anet gives necros some tool to deal with s/d theives. Ill dodge the second strike of flanking that is good to know. Like i have said chill and cripple and cc dont help much at all. S/d theives remove conditions like crazy and like zenith has said, they have stunbreaks to deal with cc.

“remember, gw2 is a team game.
bring a friend!”

^
Anet Forget that when they created thieves skills. Thieves dont need to bring anyone.

OP
Thieves are the ones till now that received the biguest buff in the game with larcenous strike.
Being able to steal protection and regeneration, gives them a 33% damage increased against that target and a 33% reduction in the damage they take from all enemys, plus regeneration and with the stealth, teleport, blind, unblockable sistem in their weapons skills they dont have a hard time fighting other classes, but i dont think that they be nerfed anytime soon.
Just wait till they buff your class and see if you can manage better than now.

OMNIBUS.2913:

I can beat or put up a good fight against backstab theives, necros hav enough cc to beat them. But sword/dagger is just ridiculous cuz i cant land a single hit. I can survive for quite awhile but whats the point if i cant hit them =/ . not to mention they remove conditions like crazy too. So the hits i do get off do no damage. I guess its just a broken matchup, meh…

This ^^

They remove conditions on their weapon set. Have perma vigor, other condi removal, perma dodges and evades and the ability to teleport to reset the battle meaning you cant fear chain them when they mess up.

So yeh. Sword thief is unbeatable by a necro 1 on 1. In addition its lame and not fun to fight against.

There is so much of this in the game. Its not fun design unfortunately . Like ranger emphatic bond also completely hoses necros with no skill required as it just triggers automatically. Same with engi trait that conditions dont effect them (wtf??) after certain health. This is so obscene of a trait. Like what next, traits that say “I take no damage from engineers under 25% health”.

Bad, anti fun design is rampant in this game. Not to mention how much AI is a factor in the pvp. It is all passive HUGELY OP traits (like emphatic bond) and just OP AI. Lame game which is why there is no serious gamers playing this game.

I can see how you can complain about Empathetic Bond as a Necromancer, but Shadow Return as condition cleanse? Really? (This is basically a last resort move and definitely not a counter to condition classes)

An S/D thief can remove a total of 3 conditions that way and then he’s dead, as he’s out of initiative.

Med.6150:

I can see how you can complain about Empathetic Bond as a Necromancer, but Shadow Return as condition cleanse? Really? (This is basically a last resort move and definitely not a counter to condition classes)

An S/D thief can remove a total of 3 conditions that way and then he’s dead, as he’s out of initiative.

Many theives also use the slot skill shadow return which removes 3 conditions. Then theres hide in shadows to cure more and roll for initiative(which also removes chill/cripple) to spam more. They can counter conditions easily. Not that necro can even get a high bleed stak on theif. With all the evades ill b luky if i get much bleeds on them. Which will immediatly be removed.

Malidus.8360:

“An S/D thief can remove a total of 3 conditions that way and then he’s dead, as he’s out of initiative.”

Do you guys even read? Somebody was discussing Shadow Return as a means of constantly removing conditions. Shadow’s Embrace has absolutely nothing to do with the S/D weapon set.

You guys are also talking about hypothetical builds that nobody uses in Structured PvP. 30 Shadow Arts with S/D is like buying a mini cooper and trying to make a station wagon out of it.

wait for that balance patch and apply that weakness

Shadow Arts relies on being in stealth for extended periods of time.
That means: no node contestion, no damage soaking for your team, no dps for your team.
A standard 30 SA permastealth thief stays in stealth what? 3/4 of the game? You’re basically making your team 4 1/4 vs 5. Not to mention all those trait points wasted into Shadow Arts in the first place instead of useful dps traits.

tl;dr: Shadow Arts is REALLY bad. The ONLY trait I might consider picking up is 10 points for Infusion. And that’s only IF D/D were still decent for 4ini backstabs. But then you lose Fury on Steal (or ~15% dmg from other traitlines), and lets face it, you NEED that fury.

And wow, I never thought I’d see the day when someone ACTUALLY qq’ing about Tactical Strike.

The fabled 30-30-30-30-30 Thief, ladies and gentlemen.

Med.6150:

Malidus.8360:

“An S/D thief can remove a total of 3 conditions that way and then he’s dead, as he’s out of initiative.”

Do you guys even read? Somebody was discussing Shadow Return as a means of constantly removing conditions. Shadow’s Embrace has absolutely nothing to do with the S/D weapon set.

You guys are also talking about hypothetical builds that nobody uses in Structured PvP. 30 Shadow Arts with S/D is like buying a mini cooper and trying to make a station wagon out of it.

i dont see who was discussing this :S Who brought up 30 in shadow arts?

Jumper.9482:

Shadow Arts relies on being in stealth for extended periods of time.
That means: no node contestion, no damage soaking for your team, no dps for your team.
A standard 30 SA permastealth thief stays in stealth what? 3/4 of the game? You’re basically making your team 4 1/4 vs 5. Not to mention all those trait points wasted into Shadow Arts in the first place instead of useful dps traits.

tl;dr: Shadow Arts is REALLY bad. The ONLY trait I might consider picking up is 10 points for Infusion. And that’s only IF D/D were still decent for 4ini backstabs. But then you lose Fury on Steal (or ~15% dmg from other traitlines), and lets face it, you NEED that fury.

And wow, I never thought I’d see the day when someone ACTUALLY qq’ing about Tactical Strike.

The fabled 30-30-30-30-30 Thief, ladies and gentlemen.

This comes off as completely off topic. This was about sword/dagger theif which dont stealth that often from what i see.

Med.6150:

Malidus.8360:

“An S/D thief can remove a total of 3 conditions that way and then he’s dead, as he’s out of initiative.”

Do you guys even read? Somebody was discussing Shadow Return as a means of constantly removing conditions. Shadow’s Embrace has absolutely nothing to do with the S/D weapon set.

You guys are also talking about hypothetical builds that nobody uses in Structured PvP. 30 Shadow Arts with S/D is like buying a mini cooper and trying to make a station wagon out of it.

You don’t need shadow arts at 30 for condi removal on stealth.

You get condi removal from skill 2, shadowsetp, everytime you use cnd, whenever you use shadow refuge, and on your heal.

Thieves have disgusting amounts of condi removal with just 10 points into Shadow Arts.

And on top of it all they carry 3 stun breaks without needing to spam IS on their sword. One from IS chain, one stunbreak from shadowstep, and a third stunbreak from shadow return.

And there is simply no way to pin you down, given that teleports are broken and get you even out of immobilize.