Guild Wars 2

Also use dodge and shroud form properly.

Yes shroud form will get shredded in 2 attacks, but if you get a fear out of it you can put some distance in. Personally with a power build that means I get a good life transfer and maybe a blast or two, this hurts bad.

With dagger, immobolize and life siphon, the channel works even if they have stealthed. Assuming you can get the immob off before they stealth…

Nothing is a sure win here, just keep applying the pain. You’re right, with a good thief its a very short battle you have to keep throwing them off because the second they get the upper hand you’re dead. So use your dodges and cc liberally, your health/armor isnt going to keep you alive.

Talentless.5708:

dangerdoom.3862:

Talentless.5708:

sigh… focus #5, wall, focus #4, axe #3, ds.

then warhorn #5, darkness well, dagger #1, warhorn #4 then finish.

Saw your video, you fight noobs, if you turn around and cast your slow skill #5 on focus you’ll be lucky to be able to cast your precious wall.

1. w/ trait is 1200 range and used on inc so that the application is done at 1200 – begin out of range. I left out the thief 1v1 because I didnt get to stomp him before a JQ zerg strolled by. I have more thieves try to run from me than kill me. That is not an elitist comment. My “video” was just fights from one night… I am not a forum warrior saving clips over months to make myself look amazing… I have posted ways in which I kill thieves (not all of them are baddies, but most are), and if you dont like it, oh well… keep dying then.

His point was more that people have to run over your wall and any theif that gets the drop on YOU, will probably kill you.
(which btw, is the point of this topic)

But hey, power necro’s think they are good lol. In wvw you’d be at half health(at least) within the first burst, you would have already lost as a power necro.

Some of the thief specs are just impossible to beat as power necro as long as the thief has a clue. Example is condition/dodge spammer. With that build he can dodge about in a well with minimal danger. It won’t even hit him most of the time. But if you get a jump on him… things could easily turn the other way around.
Point is thief is a horrible class to use as example. Ive been hit for 20k… in just 1 measly twack… Doesn’t really mean much considering if you are caught with your pants down even a crappy 100b warrior can pull that off. A good one doesn’t even need to catch you in combat with 0lf and no stamina and no heal.
But I also seen enough thieves that I walked over and didn’t really even pay attention to. It happens.
I’ve also had a pleasure of fighting a thief on my ele… that managed to stay stealthed/not rendered for about 2 minutes. In that entire duration all I say was him closing in so I prepared for opener and didn’t die the other 2 minutes I was assaulted by a guy who did not have a decency to even render once. So go figure. At some point I got fed up and just left because the sheer absurdity of that situation. Not being able to fight back except for few aoes and lucky cleave/cone attacks… yeah anet can take it and shove it.
It all tumbles down to situation. I’ve fought godly rangers that would make pin cushion out of my spvp cond necro… but because I had enough clue to not go on open field, once I knew what I was getting myself into, so what once was hopeless turned completely one sided in my favor. Yeah unlike ranger los isn’t a huge issue for me so I could run about stairs hit him from around from below all the while all he could do is swap pet. I got staff and most of my good abilities are aoes anyway.

Before you start winning against thieves, you have to learn how to survive against thieves.

1) Do not get ambushed: Often times the necro will lose over half of his health, or even dead, before he realize what was going on. This is the #1 reason for most defeats. Once you lose half of your health, it is very hard to recover from. It is like starting a soccer match down 0-3 right from the beginning. No matter what you do after won’t help much.

Pay attention to your surroundings. And as you are running you should randomly cast Mark of Blood under your feet. When a thief sees that you are prepared he will be more hesitant to engage you.

Get back on your zerg as soon as you can. Necros are not good roamers. Rely on your zerg to give you some protection.

2) Plague 2 and run: This is the most basic of all necro skill. You literally just turn on Plague, use skill 2, and run. There is no way the thief can kill you for 20 seconds.

3) Mark on yourself and dodge: When you fight a thief, always have a mark under your feet. So when the thief gets into your radius, your marks would let you know and you can evade his attacks.

4) Learn to NOT dodge: Never randomly dodge. Save all your dodge for that opening few hits. When the opening few hits fails, the thief would usually stealth away. If not that auto attack from the thief barely hurts. You can face tank most of it.

5) Defensive snares: Use your snares defensively to help you keep your distance.

6) LF and hp regen: Make sure your build have enough LF and hp regen to allow you to survive.

7) Run to an objective while you fight: Do not go around in a circle with a thief. He loves that. Thief has the highest mobility and stealth, so they will win that circle battle.

Instead as you are fighting, you should continue to run to a safe zone. That means either a friendly zerg or a tower. Do this while doing all the above recommendations should keep you alive against thieves.

After you get the defensive part of it down, then work on the offensive side.

^haha this made my day!

“Get back on your zerg as soon as you can. Necros are not good roamers. Rely on your zerg to give you some protection.”

I would be interested in seeing that danger

It’s actually pretty easy to escape a thief (assuming you have perm swiftness, but this is wvw after all), since thieves’ gap closing is based around burning init with the heart seeker or sb 5. Other then that, thieves don’t have much swiftness, only the movement sig, so dropping marks in your path, dooming or goem charging him as he tries to chase, and he won’t catch up.
If he does decide to waste all his init to chase you, then you turn around and kill him because now he can’t use most of his weapon skills.

Of course I wouldn’t try disengaging once he’s in melee range, thats just asking for hs spam in the back usually.

War Mourner.5168:

It’s actually pretty easy to escape a thief (assuming you have perm swiftness, but this is wvw after all), since thieves’ gap closing is based around burning init with the heart seeker or sb 5. Other then that, thieves don’t have much swiftness, only the movement sig, so dropping marks in your path, dooming or goem charging him as he tries to chase, and he won’t catch up.
If he does decide to waste all his init to chase you, then you turn around and kill him because now he can’t use most of his weapon skills.

Of course I wouldn’t try disengaging once he’s in melee range, thats just asking for hs spam in the back usually.

Well steal has quite a large range which usually will stop your “run away” attempts.

Combine that with fear, yup.
——————

Overrall thiefs are just better in the wvw scenario as roamers. Its practically their class objective.

lucky I have the wonders of running faster then they do, perm cripple, ample cc and stability on DS then.

Just go into water…. thats what I do… the sheer horror people experience once they are in water and have no idea what their skills even do. Most people are utterly unprepared for any kind of in the pool fun.
Chased by a thief jump into water… 1. he got no movement boots in water. 2. I got the most spamable swiftness out there. Spear #2. Anyway… for the most part people are terribly unprepared as soon as water is involved especially thieves. They have some great underwater skills but most people have no idea what does what.
Also if its wvw… AHEM… cliffs are your best friends. Denying entire zerg the “fun” of mashing a silly little me by simply leaping off a cliff while they all stand on top running back and forth kitten … its priceless. And you don’t need anything except for enough lf to activate DS on the landing.

In all seriousness, anyone interested in dueling a good thief on your necromancer send me a PM in game and I’ll set you up. I would love to have a build that could kill good thieves on my necromancer.

So, I am considered a relatively decent thief among my friends. If any of you claiming to be able to beat all thieves in a 1v1 fight please send me a tell so we can set something up. Necro’s are simply at a disadvantage when fighting a thief 1v1.

-Incarnadyne

Archituethis.8274:

So, I am considered a relatively decent thief among my friends. If any of you claiming to be able to beat all thieves in a 1v1 fight please send me a tell so we can set something up. Necro’s are simply at a disadvantage when fighting a thief 1v1.

-Incarnadyne

I will also accept necro challenges.

-Ravoku Ravenstorm

what server are you thieves on?

Bull Zooker.1672:

what server are you thieves on?

Tarnished Coast

im on FA :-) you on tonight before reset?

Bull Zooker.1672:

im on FA :-) you on tonight before reset?

Yeah we’re on

Bull Zooker.1672:

im on FA :-) you on tonight before reset?

If you wanna get on, we can duel now

im at work for 8 hours will get on a few hours before reset.
definitely up for this will pm you later

Now we’re getting somewhere!! Make sure to record those fights people! I tried and roam alone all night, but i got ran over by guildblobs all night, I did record some stuff but only 1vs3, 1vs1 vs Warrior and 1vs22. I’m on Gandara, Europe.

If anyone in in t3 (NA) I’m around. Doing this outside of wub would sort of defeat the purpose, but it’s a pity there isn’t a duel function.

dueling in this game would ‘complete’ the game for me.

scratches his head I really must wonder what kind of thieves you have on your servers.

Maybe I would be able to kill them if I could see them but I don’t and even after Culling is resolved you will only be able to see Thieves for 2 seconds. If they are good, they will just use the shortbow to jump out of range till they can restealth, good luck fearing that.
Then again, some of you claimed they burst down Thieves…well I guess you have a different kind of Thief. Ours have this little trait that lets them auto stealth as soon they took a certain amount of damage.

Then again you claim you can root them…strange Thieves you have there. Our Thieves use Roll for Initiative if they are rooted.

You really have very strange Thieves on your server :-)

either that or your assuming evrry thief uses the same traits/utilities. I have never used roll for initiative on my thief.

well of suffering ticks for over 2k, the auto attack chain does 8k or so… Killing a bursty thief only takes 2 seconds of dps’ing, other then that it’s a simple matter of chain cc’ing/slowing them; good luck using roll for initiative to avoid 3 sets of cc.

Before your well thicks for the 2nd time you’ll be at 3k health running for your life xD I’m going to scratch my head like SgtMaple said in his wonderfull post and wait till I get some of your footage.

Running away is exactly why you’re dying. If you don’t match a thief’s aggression with the same, you’re giving him a massive advantage and throwing away our own inherent advantages.

Also DS can take any combo in the game, stealth doesn’t.

Edit: here are all the thieves I could find solo today, + some messy ele kill. This is hardly proving something, but you asked, and this is all I have recorded.

First of all thanks for the video. You do quiet a lot of dmg nice to see, never went berserker myself.
I must say the skilllvl of your oponents is realy low compared what I’ve been facing in tier 3 Eu. It’s impossible to get the first hit on a thief here. Impossible to catch up on a d/d ele.

War Mourner.5168:

Running away is exactly why you’re dying. If you don’t match a thief’s aggression with the same, you’re giving him a massive advantage and throwing away our own inherent advantages.

Also DS can take any combo in the game, stealth doesn’t.

Edit: here are all the thieves I could find solo today, + some messy ele kill. This is hardly proving something, but you asked, and this is all I have recorded.

Where do I find bad players like that, I always seem to find people that fight back.

its not that important (though it is nice) to get the first hit while playing necro as you can negate burst damage at the expense of LF. and the only class ive played thats capable of catching d/d eles is certain warrior builds and my thief (occasionally)

I think that a thread on the necro forums where people could post their videos of roaming or pvp would be a good idea. This way people would get ideas on how to adapt their play style etc.

The only issue I can see with this is that people get over critical ^^ and dont offer CONSTRUCTIVE criticism therefore preventing fewer videos to be uploaded through fear of being slated.

Right on Bull Zooker. I might be a bit too critical and a lot of suggested things do work against certain thieves. I stand by my point that when a good thief had the first hit on you, you don’t stand a chance.

It would be a good idea if we did that video thing yes. We all might learn a lot from it. Btw, sadly I didn’t record it but I dueled a warrior yesterday and it took me 3 lich forms to take him down, the fight took about 10 mins or something.

War Mourner.5168:

Running away is exactly why you’re dying. If you don’t match a thief’s aggression with the same, you’re giving him a massive advantage and throwing away our own inherent advantages.

Also DS can take any combo in the game, stealth doesn’t.

Edit: here are all the thieves I could find solo today, + some messy ele kill. This is hardly proving something, but you asked, and this is all I have recorded.

Which build you running in the video?

War Mourner.5168:

Running away is exactly why you’re dying. If you don’t match a thief’s aggression with the same, you’re giving him a massive advantage and throwing away our own inherent advantages.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer
Also DS can take any combo in the game, stealth doesn’t.

Edit: here are all the thieves I could find solo today, + some messy ele kill. This is hardly proving something, but you asked, and this is all I have recorded.

A player must first learn how to survive against a thief before learning to kill a thief.

Hah more wvw vids. I would have one shotted all of them on my warrior.

Hello

A couple of us thieves challenged Mr Bull Zooker to a duel today. We both won, here’s a video of my fight

Nyspar.6103:

Hello

A couple of us thieves challenged Mr Bull Zooker to a duel today. We both won, here’s a video of my fight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Up6aoKLlw

that is just good Thief play which not many thieves are able to pull off.

Brando.1374:

that is just good Thief play which not many thieves are able to pull off.

All professions have good and bad players. I can boast that I can beat any bad mesmer, or bad warrior, but that means nothing.

ill be back on in an hour or two if your still on. switched a couple traits. look forward to it

also if you thieves dont mind id like to try out 3 different builds? 1 zerk. 1 healing and my other condi build you’ve already faced. if you dont mind id appreciate the practice

Not at all, although Targ won’t be on to record again until later.

ill be on until about 3 or 4am. I didn’t realise you were filming :-) will watch it later, hopefully didn’t embarrass myself :-P

I don’t think im a necro god by the way, i posted earlier to explain/prove that necro can kill burst classes. im yet to kill the thieves I fought earlier but have killed ALOT of thieves previously, good and bad.

Very skillful thieves with smart builds that don’t run full berzker gear are nearly impossible to kill… And it always irks me that the negatives on the forums are just as bad as the positives…. statements like a necro should NEVER lose to a thief are just as stupid as those that say we never have a chance.

If you don’t think thieves are a problem, it is because you have routinely ran into too many bad ones… and there are a LOT of bad thieves out there. As has been said many many times, the best thieves you will at best repel, and hopefully find cover before they can come back.

There is no honor among them (yuk yuk) and they have no problem breaking combat, healing up, and coming back. Smart thieves don’t get caught without blinding powder or SR down, in a burst combo from a necro. That is if you run a power build.

Can you beat a great thief? Maybe…. but at the very best our chances are 50/50 in a one on one fight in WvW. If they are honorable enough not to reset the fight, it is entirely possible to burst them down with a good fear combo and conditions, but only if you have managed to extend the fight long enough to get them to burn both blinding powder and SR. If they are specced hard for condition removal, your odds get even worse.

And all this assumes you actually knew the fight was coming, and saw them stroll into 1200 range. More often than not they show up unexpectedly, which changes the entire dynamic of the fight. Having your entire DS bar destroyed in 2 seconds is no fun, and eating 13-14k damage in RABID gear (which is very easy for a properly geared NON berzerker thief to do in 1.5-2 seconds) is also not enjoyable.

Its a troll to say the fight is anything other than an uphill battle in WvW. This is why they are getting nerfed hard next patch. Unfortunately that nerf (presumably will) hit only one of the three places it needed to, and it hit it way harder than it needed to.

Brando.1374:

Nyspar.6103:

Hello

A couple of us thieves challenged Mr Bull Zooker to a duel today. We both won, here’s a video of my fight

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Up6aoKLlw

that is just good Thief play which not many thieves are able to pull off.

I love this video, and everyone how plays conditions should watch it very closely. Towards the start of this fight he lands three (3) fear in a row. Fear 1 gets broken with sword 2, the fear 2 gets broken with blinding powder, fear 3 (the big one from reapers prot) gets broken with shadowstep. Utilities and abilities that basically every sword/p and D/D thief are running.

I would point out that while he was not running optimal utilities for that duel (golem would have been better, and worm port). He really didn’t do anything wrong, and kept his back away whenever he could. He used his fears when he could, and ate the damage when he had to. You can nitpick dodges, and the 10 seconds of time he lost not getting his second DS fear off early enough, but the bottom line is that this thief was never in any danger.

Yes the thief was traited to duel a necro, but its a pretty common wvw build, and he did not abuse any of the stealthing. It should also be pretty funny to note he didn’t even waste his time moving out of the well.

I callenge those of you that think all thieves are a cake walk to duel a thief at or above that level and record the video.

Rennoko.5731:

Yes the thief was traited to duel a necro, but its a pretty common wvw build, and he did not abuse any of the stealthing.

Thanks for pointing that out. A lot of people say thieves are gonna be nerfed hardcore because of the stealth-nerf, but frankly if you’re a good thief you don’t need to chain-stealth for perma-stealth. As my video shows, I stealthed like 3 times only, the rest was just sword mobility.

Rennoko.5731:

It should also be pretty funny to note he didn’t even waste his time moving out of the well.

As for this, I just started playing thief. My main class was a Warrior for 5 months, so I am still in the warrior-mentality where I don’t give 2 fks about conditions and just try to tank it all. Obviously this needs to change

Yeah best class vs worst with the expected result. Anet’s biggest mistake – 1v1 does matter. Bull you need a golem. You could have flattened him when he made some mistakes near the beginning and maybe had a sliver of a chance. BTW, best build for me against thief and d/d ele is my chillmancer when I ran that. It helps a lot to slow the attrition in and out dance. Thanks for posting guys.

This was the point in WoW where they introduced Resilience. Big numbers are so important, that even with max toughness, you can’t absorb a burst class. When burst can beat a “tank” in 2-3 steps (that are normally hard to react to in the current WvW setup), you would need something more than toughness/vit to survive, or choose the path of less (boring) resistance, dps first in first out and pray you’re the winner.

Resilience (less crit chance and less crit damage for attackers) at that time was the answer, let see what Anet will do to try and bring balance to both side.

yea I used my golem in the fights to follow that video, but had no success in killing him. I have beaten good thieves that arnt expecting to fight a necro and dont trait heavily for conditions etc, but that build is very powerful vs conditions .necro. very good thief. full respect to the player. but dangerdoom I didnt die in a second, had a fun fight and (I think) we left as friends

I have an 80 thief and have been trying every build in spvp against burst on my necro but necros are just too weak against burst.

Panhauramix said it well.

Being a giant brick of hitpoints/LS with a few fears and a slow golem who is out of range for a kd most times just isn’t cutting it against all the boon stacking, stealth and burst out there. I watched Bull’s video and I thought it was well played for a necro too.

I have had the most success (which is still marginal) against good thieves and other gc bursters being full defensive 0/0/5/30/30 with a power play style dagger/focus/staff/wells. Staff and wells do nothing unless you can pin someone in them and the dagger helps keep pressure on when the thief is visible matching him dagger for dagger usually….except they can still LDB then and you can only do a weak siphon but eh.

The real problems I had in that build were actually p/d thieves and shatter mes.

Having played a thief extensively I don’t see culling or the stealth nerf mattering too much ultimately. Thieves are also getting mobility boosts and a new mechanism for extra damage against boons I heard.

I’d like to actually try a full attrition build with full defensive and some appreciable condition damage but we have a power/duration line and then a crit damage line in DS to screw it all up. Then there is what you give up in full condition as a ranger root pins you for a full minute because you can’t damage structures…