Guild Wars 2

The whole point of my build to to catch and hold things since the necro lacks combat mobility. And yes I can hold good d/d ele, although for tank builds can be rather slow to kill.
Compared to ele’s, thieves are much easier to hold, they have no movement abilities that take them far enough away from me fast enough, and the two most common stealths, the heal and refuge are easily countered by doom and well of suffering respectively. To me at least hide in shadows has the most obvious cast animation of any heal, maybe similar to consume conditions, against a few good thieves I’ve cancelled their heal every time they tried it, once or twice I’ve cancelled it 3 times before killing them. With refuge, WoS does 2+k per tick,and covers the whole circle, and I can find where they are around the circle with dagger 1. If they leave the circle early to avoid the damage that’s great, they drop cloak, if they don’t, they’ll most usually be dead.

I’ll try find some better thieves to fight today.

Bull Zooker.1672:

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’m not here to make ennemies either xD
I do think you did a good job in that vid and that the style you play suits you. But normaly you won’t get the chance to see the thief before he hits you.
Now imagine the backstab and hearthseeker at the start of that fight.
Unable to gain lifeforce as you barely can get a hit on him.

I don’t go far from spawn without getting LF. and I normally use my scepter / dagger whilst 1v1’ing but this guy (as you can see) is VERY mobile and hard to hit with my 2 and5 aabilities on that set so stuck with staff.
I have been ‘ganked’ before and turned the fight around to win it. a fair few times actually. but these guys are good players.
check out his warrior videos to understand the skill of the guy im fighting.

Rennoko.5731:

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.

Like I said get used to casting marks for no reason as you are moving in wvw. It helped me many times. Thieves often try to get that backstab first hit on you. If you are moving and keep casting marks, it is very hard for them to do that. You do not want to be down 0-3 in that soccer match right at the start.

Being a necro is never easy. But we adopt.

Assuming equally skilled Thief? You die. Period. If you’re outplaying a Thief, you are better than them; If a Profession has a way to counter the vast majority of abilities you can throw out, but chooses not to counter them, then they are not playing properly. A properly played Thief will, more often than not, beat you.

Assuming you’re better than the Thief? Advice in the thread.

It saddens me that (some of) the few players recognized and revered by the necromancer community refuse to acknowledge some (I’m not saying we have many, but the few we have are crippling for styles of play other than team play) of the inherent weaknesses of the necromancers have. Worse part is, they call me and others that point them out trolls.

Almost all of the necromancers that boasted being able to kill good thieves in this thread have been challenged and killed by thieves (the thieves weren’t in significant danger of dying in any of the fights). I know because I was present in all of them. Some of them attributed this to the thief being a better player than them, but I believe this was not the case. All I want from this is for developers to notice these weaknesses and hopefully bring us up to par with other classes as far as small scale fights are concerned (we are significantly better in larger scale fights like tpvp and wvw zerg fighting).

P.S. By small scale fights I mean fights involving ~5-6 players (e.g. 1vs1,3vs3). Also, I am aware that I am not providing any constructive criticism so I apologize for that. But it will not stop me from voicing my opinion to this very vocal community.

Necromancers are in a strong spot in small fights, but people don’t like to use the builds that are great for those small situations: wells and minions.

Are we inherently weak to burst? Yes, very much so. Are thieves great at burst? Yes. What are thieves weak against? Burst. Are necromancers [generally] good at burst? No. Notice something here? Thieves have what we are weak against, and we don’t [generally] have what they are weak against. Why, I wonder why a necro would ever have trouble with a thief?

The reality is that a stealth thief’s success in a fight boils down to: can I stay alive during the gaps in stealth. If they can successfully stay alive when out of stealth, they will win (or not lose by running). If they cannot manage to avoid enough damage when they are out of stealth, they will fall apart. And that is the main thing that fighting thieves boils down to, killing them when they are out of stealth, and surviving them when they are in it.

Soulgant.7689:

It saddens me that (some of) the few players recognized and revered by the necromancer community refuse to acknowledge some (I’m not saying we have many, but the few we have are crippling for styles of play other than team play) of the inherent weaknesses of the necromancers have. Worse part is, they call me and others that point them out trolls.

Almost all of the necromancers that boasted being able to kill good thieves in this thread have been challenged and killed by thieves (the thieves weren’t in significant danger of dying in any of the fights). I know because I was present in all of them. Some of them attributed this to the thief being a better player than them, but I believe this was not the case. All I want from this is for developers to notice these weaknesses and hopefully bring us up to par with other classes as far as small scale fights are concerned (we are significantly better in larger scale fights like tpvp and wvw zerg fighting).

P.S. By small scale fights I mean fights involving ~5-6 players (e.g. 1vs1,3vs3). Also, I am aware that I am not providing any constructive criticism so I apologize for that. But it will not stop me from voicing my opinion to this very vocal community.

This is the case in every game that has a weak class. There is always a small, but vehemently outspoken crowd that says the class is fine and everyone else just needs to L2P. Despite all the math, the reason, and evidence that the class is weaker they still scream there is nothing wrong. Every class has a role to play in this game. A role that they shine at, but the necromancer isn’t potentially good at any of them. Mediocre at best, and the job eventually gets done, yes, but another class would have been better and gotten the job done faster.

All the necros I’ve seen in sPvP either do extremely badly in a pug setting, or do ok in a team setting. In the team setting, I am 100% certain that the necro is being carried. I have watched really good elementalists carry their team. I have seen guardians and engineers bunker up a point so well that it takes the entire opposing team to converge on him just to down him. I’ve seen thieves go on kill streaks that fragments other teams that causes them to get to spread out and unable to back each other up. Rangers are just down right ridiculous at harassment and point defense. Warriors… well, hey, at least they can run into a fight and drop someone who isn’t paying attention. They’re kind of in the same boat as necromancers, however. Some other class would serve the team better.

Yes, necromancers are terrible, that is why one of the best PvP teams in the game (Paradigm) has a necro. Makes complete sense, please go on.

Bhawb.7408:

Yes, necromancers are terrible, that is why one of the best PvP teams in the game (Paradigm) has a necro. Makes complete sense, please go on.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. I guarantee you the other players are holding him up there. Not that this game has teams that mean anything. I mean there isn’t even a ranking system in this game. Its just teams going up against random PUGs most of the time. Of course a group of people in voice chat is going to win a lot vs people who are unorganized and unable to communicate. The Team vs Team play in GW2 is entirely based on the RNG.

I also never said they were terrible. Just mediocre. Please, Bhawb, show less fanboyism. This kind of behavior only serves to prove my point. Anyone who isn’t looking at this class with rose colored glasses will see that this class has its fair share of problems. Especially in the face of mechanics like dodge, teleport, leaps, and other mobility skills.

And the obvious lack of knowledge you have about high level tournaments proves my point.

I have never said the class doesn’t have issues, every single class in the game, including elementalists, have issues.

Bhawb.7408:

And the obvious lack of knowledge you have about high level tournaments proves my point.

I have never said the class doesn’t have issues, every single class in the game, including elementalists, have issues.

What high level tournaments? There is no ranking system in this game. In fact, from what I understand, sPvP bombed so badly as an “eSport” that ANet dropped the whole paid tournaments thing all together. How can you even have this level of play when you’ve still got classes with traits that still don’t even work or skills that fail to execute half the time?

They dropped paid tournaments because there was no point making you pay to do a tournament. It was supposed to differentiate that those were where the “good” players go, and the people still learning did free tournaments. In reality, all it did was introduce an arbitrary token cost that basically anyone who PvPed for more than a few minutes had enough of that they would never run out (I had 30 or something tickets when they stopped it).

And yes, there is a system in place. If you go into tPvP with all level 1s, you aren’t going to go against a team with all level 80s. I usually face people averaging in their mid 20s, with the rare person that is really low leveled, and the rare person that is 50s (usually paired with a low level group). I have only faced a high level team once, which was Team Paradigm way back at launch, when the hardcore PvPers were still in the same level range as the lower people.

As for how you can have this level of play: WoW has had high level of play even through ridiculously broken mechanics, LoL has a huge eSports following, even though only a very small fraction of heroes are actually viable at the top level. You realize that a trait is bugged, and work around it; you have the information that it isn’t working, so use something else.

Bhawb.7408:

They dropped paid tournaments because there was no point making you pay to do a tournament. It was supposed to differentiate that those were where the “good” players go, and the people still learning did free tournaments. In reality, all it did was introduce an arbitrary token cost that basically anyone who PvPed for more than a few minutes had enough of that they would never run out (I had 30 or something tickets when they stopped it).

And yes, there is a system in place. If you go into tPvP with all level 1s, you aren’t going to go against a team with all level 80s. I usually face people averaging in their mid 20s, with the rare person that is really low leveled, and the rare person that is 50s (usually paired with a low level group). I have only faced a high level team once, which was Team Paradigm way back at launch, when the hardcore PvPers were still in the same level range as the lower people.

As for how you can have this level of play: WoW has had high level of play even through ridiculously broken mechanics, LoL has a huge eSports following, even though only a very small fraction of heroes are actually viable at the top level. You realize that a trait is bugged, and work around it; you have the information that it isn’t working, so use something else.

Then there is something majorly broken about this system because I see teams of people with > level 60 rank ALL the time and I’m only 16. Furthermore, the rank is only an indicator of how long you’ve been playing. Its an exp bar for sPvP. Nothing more. I would not call this a “system”. Further examples of how ridiculously broken this game is.

As far as working around broken abilities, now you’re just talking non-sense. Pro athlete teams would never put up with such shenanigans from their equipment or the stadiums they play in. Take those glasses off man. Its clouding your judgement.

Are you in hotjoins, pugging tournaments, or doing pre-mades? Because in hotjoins I’ll face level 40+ every game, but it is much more rare when I do 2 team tPvP.

Actually, pro athletes have to deal with crappy equipment and situations, even up into the Olympics. A few years back when Phelps was destroying in swimming, a competitor blamed the loss solely on the fact that Phelps had better equipment. And how many times does a team have to play in sub-par conditions, or does a player have to work with an injury that makes his performance worse? Does he complain that his finger hurts and then everyone pats him on the back and the opposing team all claps while he walks into the goal? No, unfair situations are created in professional sports all the time (steriods, cheating, difference in money/sponserships), and you either get with the program, work around it, or get out. Also, eSports and sports like Soccer, Football, Baseball, and the various other things that people can make upwards of $1 million per year are on completely different levels. And eSports players have to put up with unbalance all the time; the biggest eSport right now is LoL, and no one in their right mind would say that every champion in LoL is balanced and competitive at the top level.

Do I agree the game needs work? Of course. Does that mean we all need sit on the forums QQing until momma ANet makes it so everything is all better? No.

My original response was actually bigger then entire blasted page… My rambling is pretty amazing at times. Anyway…
Soulgant you have an opinion… personally I’ll take a person with an opinion that tries to defend and explain his point of view over a herd of mindless cheering sheep any day. But don’t mistaken lack of words for something its not. Just because some people choose not to debate on specific topics doesn’t mean they agree/disagree.
I don’t care 1 measly bit about melee… I don’t… I hated melee for as long as I played video games. So no I’m not going to go into debates about should dagger have cleave or not or anything else in that area. I picked a spellcaster to… well.. cast spells…. Does it mean I think anet did a good job and it works perfectly well?…. No. Not even if I got payed to say that. I simply don’t care about that 1 aspect. Some people are just not interested in pvp… frankly I think core pvp mechanics combined with combat system in itself are terrible. Add in the joke of a scoring system that feels like its a decade old doesn’t help much either. So while I do pvp simply because I can’t see myself playing MMO w/o pvp… my care on subject fades.
At the same time there are people who aren’t really interested in PvE… or not interested in grinding.
Or not really all that interesed in playing asian idea of rng when you are penalized more for the longer you work on something. And yes I’m talking about diminishing returns on every bloody thing you do in this game.
Some opt to care about specific things and not get into discussions about topics that are not appealing to them.
Anyway…. before I end up with another wall-o-text ill end it here

Bhawb.7408:

Do I agree the game needs work? Of course. Does that mean we all need sit on the forums QQing until momma ANet makes it so everything is all better? No.

Saying that “Everything is fine” is doing a disservice to everyone that knows better and to people who are coming to these forums. I don’t know how many times you’ve said that minion AI is fine and works great yet 3 posts later in the same thread you’ll finally admit that its not working 100%. Then you’ll make some cop-out excuse for why its our fault the AI isn’t working because, “We just don’t know how to wiggle the ka-jigger right.” and other equally non-sense crap. If all ANet sees is people saying the class is A-OK they’re never going to put any effort into fixing it.

It also doesn’t help matters by only inviting people who share your opinions to your podcast episodes. It gives a vibe that all I’m listening too is a bunch of yes men. It also gives a false impression of the class.

Kravick.4906:

Bhawb.7408:

Yes, necromancers are terrible, that is why one of the best PvP teams in the game (Paradigm) has a necro. Makes complete sense, please go on.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. I guarantee you the other players are holding him up there. Not that this game has teams that mean anything. I mean there isn’t even a ranking system in this game. Its just teams going up against random PUGs most of the time. Of course a group of people in voice chat is going to win a lot vs people who are unorganized and unable to communicate. The Team vs Team play in GW2 is entirely based on the RNG.

I also never said they were terrible. Just mediocre. Please, Bhawb, show less fanboyism. This kind of behavior only serves to prove my point. Anyone who isn’t looking at this class with rose colored glasses will see that this class has its fair share of problems. Especially in the face of mechanics like dodge, teleport, leaps, and other mobility skills.

I don’t agree with necro being “carried”.

Think of the following situation. In a 20 vs 20 zerg fight, there are 2 necros on one side. Before the two zergs crush into each other, the necros casted Well of Corruption to covert enemy boons into conditions. And once the fight engaged, the 2 necros turns on Plague and blinded a bunch of foes. The side with 2 necros won.

So was the necros carried? Yes and no.

Yes if you are only looking at the damage. Neither Well of Corruption or Plague does much damage.

No if you are looking at what they did to the team. The enemies were not able to fight nearly as well because of the two necros.

I wont’ comment on spvp as that’ aren’t my strong suit.

Inviting people who agree? Who has disagreed with Bas and myself (the two hosts of the podcast) more than CHIPS? We invite anyone that we feel will be able to do a constructive podcast on necromancers, even if they disagree with us. In fact, many of the people we have had on disagree with us (one of the threads about it had a lengthy discussion about how we shouldn’t be so arrogant as to question someone more knowledgeable). The point of the podcast is to have a positive discussion with reasonable people about the class. We have had people talk a lot about what they don’t like about particular builds, skills, traits, or mechanics in general. At the end of the day though, we admit that no one has enough knowledge of the class as a whole to speak definitively about most things (we pretty much all agree that some signets are complete trash though).

I say that things are far better than many people want to make them out to be. There is a difference between something being workable and being perfect. But the reality is that a lot of complaints in this forum boil down to someone had a bad experience and wants to complain about it, so instead of assuming it is their fault (and most of the time it is) people instantly assume it is someone else’s fault, this path eventually leads to it being ANet’s fault. If you have any knowledge of human nature, you will realize the vast majority of people will never accept they are at fault, and will always blame the most convenient target; these forums are a perfect example of that.

CHIPS.6018:

Kravick.4906:

Bhawb.7408:

Yes, necromancers are terrible, that is why one of the best PvP teams in the game (Paradigm) has a necro. Makes complete sense, please go on.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. I guarantee you the other players are holding him up there. Not that this game has teams that mean anything. I mean there isn’t even a ranking system in this game. Its just teams going up against random PUGs most of the time. Of course a group of people in voice chat is going to win a lot vs people who are unorganized and unable to communicate. The Team vs Team play in GW2 is entirely based on the RNG.

I also never said they were terrible. Just mediocre. Please, Bhawb, show less fanboyism. This kind of behavior only serves to prove my point. Anyone who isn’t looking at this class with rose colored glasses will see that this class has its fair share of problems. Especially in the face of mechanics like dodge, teleport, leaps, and other mobility skills.

I don’t agree with necro being “carried”.

Think of the following situation. In a 20 vs 20 zerg fight, there are 2 necros on one side. Before the two zergs crush into each other, the necros casted Well of Corruption to covert enemy boons into conditions. And once the fight engaged, the 2 necros turns on Plague and blinded a bunch of foes. The side with 2 necros won.

So was the necros carried? Yes and no.

Yes if you are only looking at the damage. Neither Well of Corruption or Plague does much damage.

No if you are looking at what they did to the team. The enemies were not able to fight nearly as well because of the two necros.

I wont’ comment on spvp as that’ aren’t my strong suit.

2 mesmers use null field.

Point entirely invalid.

If a thief doesn’t want to die, he won’t die.

All he needs to do is get you to blow your ver long cd stun breakers, and reset the fight and come back at you once your stun breaker is gone.

Hell, a sword/dagger stunlock thief in wvw is a nightmare. He can pretty much spam daze and you’ll need to try to deny him your back so he can’t, but many thieves have increased movement speed in stealth to help with that.

The problem with attrition thieves is that they can reset fights at will.

Zenith.7301:

If a thief doesn’t want to die, he won’t die.

All he needs to do is get you to blow your ver long cd stun breakers, and reset the fight and come back at you once your stun breaker is gone.

Hell, a sword/dagger stunlock thief in wvw is a nightmare. He can pretty much spam daze and you’ll need to try to deny him your back so he can’t, but many thieves have increased movement speed in stealth to help with that.

The problem with attrition thieves is that they can reset fights at will.

What necro actually carries stun breakers though/?? The cooldowns are way too long for any reliable use.
————————-
WvW, and i’ll repeat myself for the 100th time : Classes are not going to be balanced.

The crit damage and burst capabilities are simply too high at this moment in the game.
————————

CHIPS.6018:

I wont’ comment on spvp as that’ aren’t my strong suit.

I was talking about necros on sPvP teams. In WvW necros are good to have in zerg fights if only because of plague form.

I’ve only dealt with thieves in sPVP, but I can usually beat them with a dagger necro. The biggest thing to use against a dagger thief is the utility Well of Darkness. It’s a great utility overall, so I highly recommend it. Unless the thief is using haste, it completely disables the thief’s offense. After that, a dagger necro will win the auto attack war against a dagger thief because, kitten for tat, the necro’s dagger has higher base power in its auto attack, and also the necro has 80% higher base health than the thief.

From there, there are a couple more things that can be to down a thief. Bone Minions are quite powerful without any trait investment, and make for good burst damage. They don’t have to really chase the thief down if the thief is trying to backstab you, because the thief is automatically in range. If you want to really double up, Well of Suffering can be used alongside of the bone minions for higher burst damage, but if you have to choose between one or the other Bone Minion is far superior.

Something else I would recommend is having flesh golem out while just randomly wandering. This is because you can switch from a summoned flesh golem into another elite without that second elite being in cool down, so this lets the flesh golem be around whenever you need it, and it doesn’t cost anything when you don’t need it.

I mention the flesh golem because, while the necro will win the auto attack war, the necro has to make the thief stay in place to do so and those skills are notably lacking on a necro. The flesh golem’s charge can knock down the thief while doing quite a bit of damage, and then afterward will attack the thief for more damage than the dagger does. Other options for disabling a thief include traiting into Chilling Darkness, which makes Well of Darkness and plague form much more powerful. Your tactics will also change depending on the off-hand, but for taking out a thief I would recommend a warhorn. The locust swarm cripples and does damage while granting swiftness and life force, making it very hard for any class to “get away” from the necro while under the locust swarm. The warhorn also has a cone daze of decent length, which is important for controlling a thief because they can’t stealth themselves while dazed, and this lets you use chills and the immobilize freely against the thief. Remember: in auto attacks they will go down twice as fast as the necro, so use that to your advantage.

As for Death Shroud, I’ve found it more effective to trait for abilities that activate upon entering it, due to the circumstances in which you enter it. Two of the better ones are Spiteful Spirit and Weakening Shroud. Spiteful spirit grants retaliation, which makes rapid attacks hurt the thief right back. IMO Weakening Shroud is far superior, since it casts Enfeebling Blood PBAoE, causing 10 seconds of weakness and two 10-second bleeds. This is both defensive and offensive in one shot, reducing damage taken and dealing it right back.

Depending on your equipment and traits, Shadow Refuge can be either a blessing or a curse. The thief will not exit Shadow Refuge until the skill runs out, so it is effectively locked in that area for 4 seconds. If you have a staff with the greater marks trait… have fun with it. You can either run the thief out immediately, ending stealth, or you can just lay down some hurt in the process then defend yourself with reaper’s mark. If you have the scepter/dagger setup, Enfeebling Blood and Grasping Dead both take up nearly the whole area of the refuge, so use both to cripple and weaken the thief while bleeding him. It is also worth noting that thieves don’t have any real way to cure weakness reliably.

And well… that’s pretty much all the advice I can give while fighting dagger thieves.

Empiren.6401:

Zenith.7301:

If a thief doesn’t want to die, he won’t die.

All he needs to do is get you to blow your ver long cd stun breakers, and reset the fight and come back at you once your stun breaker is gone.

Hell, a sword/dagger stunlock thief in wvw is a nightmare. He can pretty much spam daze and you’ll need to try to deny him your back so he can’t, but many thieves have increased movement speed in stealth to help with that.

The problem with attrition thieves is that they can reset fights at will.

What necro actually carries stun breakers though/?? The cooldowns are way too long for any reliable use.
————————-
WvW, and i’ll repeat myself for the 100th time : Classes are not going to be balanced.

The crit damage and burst capabilities are simply too high at this moment in the game.
————————

The necro that doesn’t want to die to a competent opponent? Wasting your death shroud on a basilisk venom when you could break it and dodge is such a foolish decision.

Also, golem charge won’t affect any properly traited thief. Most wvw thieves carry the traits that when they’re cc’d they shadow step away and when hitting low health apply blinding powder, in addition to the stunbreak utility they bring.

The best tool against thieves is a root, but Dark Pact has such an obvious cast time most thieves will dodge it.

Zenith.7301:

Empiren.6401:

Zenith.7301:

If a thief doesn’t want to die, he won’t die.

All he needs to do is get you to blow your ver long cd stun breakers, and reset the fight and come back at you once your stun breaker is gone.

Hell, a sword/dagger stunlock thief in wvw is a nightmare. He can pretty much spam daze and you’ll need to try to deny him your back so he can’t, but many thieves have increased movement speed in stealth to help with that.

The problem with attrition thieves is that they can reset fights at will.

What necro actually carries stun breakers though/?? The cooldowns are way too long for any reliable use.
————————-
WvW, and i’ll repeat myself for the 100th time : Classes are not going to be balanced.

The crit damage and burst capabilities are simply too high at this moment in the game.
————————

The necro that doesn’t want to die to a competent opponent? Wasting your death shroud on a basilisk venom when you could break it and dodge is such a foolish decision.

Also, golem charge won’t affect any properly traited thief. Most wvw thieves carry the traits that when they’re cc’d they shadow step away and when hitting low health apply blinding powder, in addition to the stunbreak utility they bring.

The best tool against thieves is a root, but Dark Pact has such an obvious cast time most thieves will dodge it.

Well… I wouldn’t go as far as saying most… the facerolling/catering classes have huge appeal to people who can’t even read tooltips…
I’ve had amusing necros thinking that rooting another necro in a well is going to actually accomplish something, well as long as I bother to pay any attention(which seems to happend less and less often since I’m simply tired of this moldy lame excuse for pvp)… any teleportish ability while doesn’t remove the root also doesn’t get affected by it. Even if you rooted someone doesn’t mean they can’t “move”. I find it comical that while rangers elite is abysmally abusive. A simple DS>2 pretty much nullifies any usefulness of that elite right then and there. In short even managing to root someone doesn’t mean you won anything.

And a bit off-topic I still fail to see how people even see this as some kind of competition? Balance? What?…. only semblance of balance can be achieved if both parties are under identical circumstances with identical option etc etc. As soon as 1 person has a difference of any kind any talk of balance is comical. You want balance? Go play checkers. The only deciding factor there is human related. Mmos aren’t about balance its about having fun and not being restricted to what someone in a monkey suit thinks is the right way to spec. Gw2 fails horribly at both. You lose fun factor with the fact that half necromancers mechanics are broken. You lose your freedom when you realize you are stuck with no options or so few you may as well not have options, depending on what your doing… conditions/mm in dungeons is masochism and not helpful(doable… in some instances but still not helpful considering options even from other necro specs). And same goes for all whooping general 3 specs with power spec at least having some semblance of variation such as more ds centric or well centric or spectral… some of which are utterly worthless in specific situations. Why in gods green earth would anyone run spectral in pve O_O.
Original question was about advice now this entire discussion to me seems ridiculous and absurd once I stop to think on actual topic thats been discussed in past 2 pages. Why in gods name people compare two different things? Thats like comparing apple and orange… WHICH IS BETTER OMIGAWD. Sounds absurd? Well all I did is replaced necro and thief with apple and orange.

I may be stretching here, but I think that when people talk about balance, it’s more about what we get with the same money. (Cooldown wise, trait wise, power scaling etc)

They (Anet) seems to think that life generation is so OP, that they need to put it on high cooldown stapled with another boon/effect. Protection for 6 sec doesn’t support the 90 sec cooldown, the 15 points Soul Reaping trait is the same thing and yet get 60 sec cooldown (which I still find too long for a protection boon).

On my engi, with a 10 point major trait (Protection injection) I can get 3 sec of protection every 5 sec when dazed stun etc. What do I get with a 20 point on my necro? 2 sec fear every 90 sec. We all know engineer are far from the top classes, yet they can get this very easily to have perma protection (which really helps and is fitting for an attrition style). My Guardian can have protection and regen for 4/6 sec with a 35 sec cooldown (28 traited) and gives it to everyone around. Most classes I play have increased damage/stats and a cooldown reduction combined in the same trait, on a Adept/Master tier instead of Grand master. And the list of differences could go on. (Just think what cool traits we could have if Staff cooldown and Greater mark were combined, Well cooldown + longer effect etc)

The same orange is not valued equal across all classes, for reasons that sometimes makes sense, but in our case, I think it doesn’t. Lifeforce generation is not the Plus Value they want it to be, and I hope some day we’ll get our fair share of it.

In a fast paced game, short duration effect with short cooldown is normally always better. The ratio could be the same (50% uptime on swiftness for example) but if I only have access to it every 60 second instead of 30, I can’t make a good use of it. It’s less tactical choice for the user.

A big patch is coming, the game is still in his infancy state, I still love my necro over my others 80, and I really hope some new changes are coming for us. But right now, I know that when I choose him in WvW over my mesmer/guardian/thief/engi, I shoot myself twice in the foot and get less for my money.

One day my minions , one day!

On thief vs necro, it’s more an issue about our output vs their output (and condition vs power across all classes). And also the point where 1 point in attack >1 point in defense. If you value attack more, the class which scales better with it will normally be on top of the food chain. Now give me some Resilience

Resilience is not an answer… its a bandaid. What you basically said its a broken mechanic to start with. Instead of putting bandaids it should be fixed at its core. Why is there mitigation when I can never mitigate damage on the same scale as damage increase? It makes no sense past the “wanting to keep fights short”.
And you yourself said its not about how a is compared to b. Its the fact that in a fast paced game where fights are not meant to last long we have most abilities with 1min+ cd… which goes completely against the very idea of fast paced. So again its not about some balance idea its a simple matter of being bottlenecked. Aslo the fact that we are defined by utilities and not weapons… while most other classes use utilities as…well… utilities they enhance and supplement weapon. Ours define it entirely.
Resilience killed wow in more ways then it ever helped. Back when blizzard was still blizzard they even admited that arenas had no place in wow. Wow was never ment to be an e-sport it was a mistake they regreted because it simply did not fit in… and after they put in it was too late and they had to quickly adjust everything to fit it instead of the other way around. It promoted laziness on top of everything else. Dying 3 times a week to get gear on par with someone who spent 4+ hours every day to raid is a insulting to the person who worked to get his gear.
Honestly if resilience made its ugly way in back in vanilla I would have quit right there and then… I wouldn’t take having the work I put in strolling in full t3 and having barely 4 hours to sleep every weekday just simply flushed down the toilet. Keep it either casual vending machine like gw2 is right now… or keep the gear that requires work superior to anything else.

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

Resilience didn’t kill WoW, wth are you talking about. Now this patch people will have a 65% baseline damage reduction in PvP. The problem with WoW has always been the competition between healing and burst. If healers are able to reset bars constantly, then whichever team has more healers tends to have the upper hand. If it’s too weak, people just stack on burst. It’s a very tenuous balance, but far better than the current gw2 pvp where you just tunnel aoe into a point and do a finisher race for who can stomp before the other.

“Resilience didn’t kill WoW, wth are you talking about. Now this patch people will have a 65% baseline damage reduction in PvP. "

Wait..what?

Patch 5.3, read the notes.

I find thieves to be quite easy as a Necro in WvW. My Elite slot is always set to Plague and when I am faced with a Thief I hit it and auto-attack #2 skill – Plague of Darkness, which blinds. I just stay as close to them as possible while they run around slashing frantically and missing. After that its marks and Death Shroud, or if they are still hanging around visible, I spite them.