Guild Wars 2

Panhauramix.2784:

Yet the problem still remains, retaliation is only good against fast low hits, not big bad burst one. Those D/P who stack stealth by jumping multiple times in the smoke field (bad stealth mechanic at his best) screw up any “count in your head” you can do, and you’re still stuck in combat while they heal and remove conditions.

I’ve already done Perma-Ret build with full Soldier gear for max survival, and it’s nowhere as good as Guardian or Mesmer’s one, because right now burst in WvW is X times stronger than any defense you can muster so you won’t live that long with Soldier and won’t kill fast because of lack of damage, a loss-loss in my book.

Good thiefs hit you for 6-7k bs, stealth and stack it. Wait for regen/removal, then come back full while you get another 6-7k bs (sometimes a free 3-4k HS through Smoke field because hey, it’s free damage and he got to stay in stealth! Bad stealth mechanic again!) Just with those 2-3 attacks, he now forced a heal or eat up a lot of your lifeforce/health, and he wakitten from retaliation for 350(max)x2-3, that healed easily while in stealth. You can count to 4 all you want, it will be 5-6 instead, and you’ll be hit far more often from stealth than you would like to.

IMHO, you would be better to focus on an all-around build, and accept that good thiefs will stomp you if you’re caught alone. Trying to build a counter that need luck to be successful in the first place is never a good idea.

Excellent post… I try not to make a habit of quoting for the sake of quoting, but this is very insightful, and the conclusion I have reached is the same after mulling around in my irritation for a few days.

I will say one thing though, because I have full soldiers gear as well, and even before the nerf to retaliation I found it to be, at best, a very high HP punching bag. A full soldiers necro has the DPS of a veteran guard under weakness, and just feels horrible. Compared to the alternatives for high tanking potential and retaliation (because that is really all you get), guardians can stack condition removal, boons, reflects, and still keep a few leap/teleport skills.

The only thing that build gets you is the ability to hang with another super low DPS bunker build, like another PVT necro. Or an up level ranger. But I am pretty sure the avoidance vs. soak horse has been beat to death, revived, and then beat to death again.

I think the following build is very viable.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.4|8.1n.h2.d.1n.h15|6.1n.h15|1n.7w.1n.7w.1n.7w.1n.7w.1n.71g.1n.71g|41j.0.31j.0.21j.0.31j.0.21j.0.3u.0|u2ac.0.u257.a2.0|0.0|3r.44.3u.43.4f|e

It has around the same amount of power as my previous current build and I win more often than not against anything that isn’t a good theif.

The toughness is higher in this one as well, which makes up for losing my Rune of the Forge…

Whaddya think? I am going to get a second set of gear going tonight and try it out.

Dagger auto-attack has enough power so you can trade shots with thieves (going dagger for dagger you will actually out-DPS thief). Marks don’t do much damage but they will discourage glass thieves and give away the location of the thief while stealthed. Try to drown the thief in trash conditions before unleashing your immobs or bleed stacks on them, because smart ones will have cond removal on stealth.

Save fear mark for the eventual use of shadow refuge. It doesn’t always work but a lot of the time it will kick the thief out of stealth. Once shadow refuge is blown they will panic and usually lose, except very experienced thieves.

Pay attention to cooldowns, don’t use up whatever burst (for example wells) your necro has until you’re certain that the thief is finally caught without initiative or utility skills to bail him out. Don’t use up stun break for the steal fear necessarily, using DS #3 on the thief should be enough to last out the fear duration without taking damage. Time the few dodge rolls that you have perfectly for burst attacks.

You’ll have to play it approximately twice as good as the thief to kill him, but it can be done with enough experience dealing with thieves.

Guardians have allot of damage mitigation, Aegis being a big one it completely nullifies the opening strike of a rotation or chain combine that with virtues, armor values and toughness, retaliation and regen capabilities of a guardian and after a few strikes most thief’s get the hint this aint going to be a quick fight and so not worth the effort when there are many quick kills to be had elsewhere.

Basically in a nut shell thief’s go for quick kills deny them it and they quickly lose interest and back off easier, said than done for other classes i know. Condition necro’s with high toughness and HP do tend to fair better vs thief but still not very forgiving for making a mistake unlike a thief who can stealth and start again.

TheGreatA.4192:

Dagger auto-attack has enough power so you can trade shots with thieves (going dagger for dagger you will actually out-DPS thief).

I am curious how you came to this determination?

While I will agree that simply looking at the base numbers of the dagger 1 chain between both classes, the necro chain actually looks better, but that hardly makes up for the other damage tools the have available, and huge array of damage increasing traits that we lack.

Perhaps if he didn’t stealth and leverage backstab, or use heartseeker, we could go blow for blow… but I don’t imagine with our higher base health that would be much of a contest. Looking only at available tools in the 5 weapon set skills themselves, the thief DPS is going to far out shine ours.

Not to mention thiefs skill steal fear and use it against you

gl beating sword/pistol theif. they will remove conditions, stun you, daze you and blind you. its the most annoying thing to face along with certain mesmer builds.

Edit: it may hav been sword/dagger actually. Either way it was sooo annoying.

Rennoko.5731:

I am curious how you came to this determination?

While I will agree that simply looking at the base numbers of the dagger 1 chain between both classes, the necro chain actually looks better, but that hardly makes up for the other damage tools the have available, and huge array of damage increasing traits that we lack.

Perhaps if he didn’t stealth and leverage backstab, or use heartseeker, we could go blow for blow… but I don’t imagine with our higher base health that would be much of a contest. Looking only at available tools in the 5 weapon set skills themselves, the thief DPS is going to far out shine ours.

I meant going auto-attack for auto-attack which is what it sometimes comes down to when all other options have been used up.

In such a scenario you can afford to trade shots with the thief because your attack chain can potentially do more dmg + you should be built tankier. Every time the thief attempts to use autoattack, trade shots with him, and you will force him to back off. When they try cloaking, use a channel skill and it will hit them through stealth.

Negate backstab with marks, positioning & well-timed dodges and use interrupts for heartseeker/cloak & dagger. Combat against experienced thieves is multi-faceted of course and you have to accomplish a lot of things before you can beat them.

I’m not saying it’s easy work and that you can win by pressing 1, just in the particular scenario when a thief attempts to use his dagger auto against yours, trade shots. Necros without dagger don’t really have the option in close range melee to get the better of a thief in my opinion.

I know this thief played his cards very badly but still an example:

7:00

I have a more damage heavy build now while still retaining 25k hp & 2700 armor. My last auto-attack chain crits over 2k and well of suffering pulses for 1,5k. It’s not thief damage but no thief can tank that damage either, it’s just a matter of being able to land it. Which of course does take some work against a proper thief build.