Guild Wars 2

Is there any build that deals with these? As dagger powermancer I’m dead on arrival. Half my health goes in a backstab, can’t melee them due to Black Powder, they dodge the marks and then you can’t kite them.

They mess up, and they just shadow refuge and come back again for a second try. Lich form doesn’t work against them because they just dagger storm.

a good move is to fear them before they HS into stealth, so they lose 6 ini for black powder. but u must get the blind off before.

or the ds#2 will seek like any other chanel and teleport to them even in stealth, then u do some dagger#1 and dodge to avoid backstab.

The part of them running away is hard to change. in tpvp consider it a (temporary) win, in w3 take it as a draw and move on (if he was better- u lived to tale, if he was bad – u can stay and bait him again )

Fear as soon as they drop SR.

I run dagger Powermancer also and the only way Ive dealt with them is basically flipping in and out of DS during the time they are stealthed. basically build DS via autos and spectral walk and when they stealth, give it maybe 1 to 2 seconds and flip DS. if you have retaliation specced it helps also. outside that, using Well of Suffering really helps. if you get a root, daze with horn and immediately Well of suffering. the root will give you about 2-3 ticks before they are free. It also helps to run in these wells when you know they will come back to attack.

I will say it helps to have an Axe for extra retaliation, but fear circles help to sit in. Outside that, just watch their movements and predict so you can get some attacks when they stealth.

I’m doing much better as condi rabid spec tbh. At least I don’t lose half my health in one backstab, and I don’t get kited and my staff marks actually do some damage.

Half the time my fear fails anyways so I can’t rely on it.

D/P are really powerful against melee. Even other thieves have major issues with D/P thieves. Only way to really deal with them is with range and conditions. This build lacks the burst other thief builds have, but their survivability is insane for a class with low HP and armor.

The major problem with this build is the Smoke Field Heartseeker combo into stealth. They can still land the heartseeker on you and not get knocked out of stealth. Then they turn around and backstab you. Its utterly broken.

Started practicing and it’s really down to avoiding/delaying the backstabs. As soon as they heartseeker through it you just lay marks and start circle strafing and dodging every few seconds.

Well of Darkness is really key here, because if they heartseek through BP, you lay down that well and they can’t come in and backstab you while you move in it.

This is as a conditionmancer with 1800 toughness. I would say this fight cannot be won by any berserker character if the thief doesn’t mess up, especially if they bring out thieves guild elite.

Power builds simply don’t do well against these thieves because they can deny your burst attempts with stealth target dropping and blind.

Also, even with 1800+ toughness the backstab thief took down nearly half of my health in one backstab and it was just a matter of meleeing me to 10k hp and finish me off with HS spam — heartseeker is pretty stupid damage beyond 50% hp so as a dagger necro you can’t even turn around and retaliate after a backstab because they’ll 2-shot you with 2 heartseekers after mug backstab while you won’t kill them in even 3 autoattack chains with dagger.

As dagger they’ll also switch to bow and just snipe you down until steal is back up.

Having Reaper’s Defense trait up is critical from my tests. If I did not have that trait fearing the thief every time he feared me, I would have lost every single match.

It’s too bad thieves have such immediate extreme burst that makes them hardcounter any class that doesn’t stack toughness. It means if you’re solo queing and don’t want to be farmed by thieves you better spec bunkerish conditions or play another thief/mesmer and outplay them.

Perhaps I can help a bit since, well, I’m a thief, who just so happened to use D/D D/P. To start, as someone said it’s not just you, even we get kitten off by D/P thieves, which is why i carry the set on me. But anyway, don’t feel like you’re seen as bait, I know for a fact that necromancers need to be handled with extreme caution: a big slip up and you’ll find yourself with more conditions than a corrupted DD ele. We try to focus on close range for necromancers since, especially the staff ones, focues on aoe and ranged fighting. A tip for D/P thieves I can give is to place marks only at your location when you have the gut instinct they are ontop of you. If you place them away, they can be dodged or rolled through. If you place the marks at your feet and see it break, do a dodge roll soon after.

The main problem here is that you’re most likely dealing with a class that is invisible a large portion of the time, and will prob heal every 15 seconds (withdraw). D/P thieves use HS a lot since believe it or not, we lack in power from other builds. So backstabbing and hs are the main ways of dmg, in addition to auto attacking obvi. Save your fear marks, when they go into shadow refuge use it then, fear them out. If you are quick enough, use that dagger #3 move to keep them still and now you have two options, both of which require the staff: place marks at their location since they are immobilized, or place marks at YOUR location because if they have a good amount of health, they wont withdraw but rather steal, D/P #3 to you, or any other shadow step toward you. Placing marks at your location will send them straight into your delicious conditions.

They are by no means an easy opponent but show them who the true master of death is btw, if you use a skill that chills them they will most likely spam heartseeker or use D/P #3 to get right on top of you so be prepared to dodge. And use DS wisely to eat up some damage. Staying inside wells also helps, immobilizing them and then placing a well at their location like the blinding one will give you an upper hand, this will most likely force us to withdraw or use another heal. The ultimate trick here is baiting, don’t spam skills.

EDIT: Any thief loves lich form, it’s quite easy to counter, I recommend plague.

Another evidence that shows us that we are not an attrition class when we are supposed to be. A better DS management (more life force acquisition, more buff sustain in DS etc) and a better vampiric traitline (that should be one of our attrition mechanics, while now it’s just a silly thing ) could help.

I had a few fun battles yesterday with a d/p (haha dp) thief. Lost the ones that ended, some were draws. Also, half the time there was another player on my server helping out. The thief was good. I am a 30/0/10/0/30 full berserker necro.

Things I learned playing this spec:

1. Lich was useless as an elite. Granted I could 2 shot him but he was always able to stealth away. Should have used fleshy for the potential knockdown

2. Once you see the smoke field layed down, dodge. You’ll avoid the heartseeker. Shortly after, dodge again. You’ll dodge the backstab. If your endurance is out, throw down a well of suffering, pop deathshroud and use ds4

3. Take this with a grain of salt because I never won, but using a gc necro, the best bet seems to be getting some damage off from your well(s) while dodging/DS eating the burst, then getting a good crit life blast or a couple lucky dagger auto attacks in

4. Watch out for the fear steal. If I had to do it again, I’d use spectral walk for the stun breaks

5. Always try to drop well of suffering in shadow refuge

6. Well of darkness seemed like a good idea but since I didn’t trait for reduced well cooldown, it wasn’t worth it to take it

7. I should have brought a staff

8. When the thief cannot take you down quickly, if the are a good player they’ll take it as a challenge and it will be much more fun

Again, I never won so I can’t give an easy answer but these were all things I have been thinking about for the next time

I’m pretty convinced you can’t win as a berk necro (or any non-mesmer/thief berserker class for that matter, maybe warrior) against a good thief. Their backstab takes too much away from your health to recover and you can’t tank heartseekers. He can kite your daggers with shortbow, and a power based staff does no damage so he’ll have little pressure on him when he disengages.

You need to be a tanky conditionmancer to have a fighting chance. Backstab and stealth spam is just too kitten against specs without teleports/invulnerabilities and no healing.

What’s more, I ran conditionmancer with well of darkness, well of corruption, and spectral walk, along with plague. Strictly a team build without specialized 1v1 utilities (in a 1v1 golem and blood fiend offer better total health return and damage/control since thief doesn’t do much in conditions).

So you’ll need a build that works in teams and with utilities for a team fight. I know many necros will run signet of undeath, but I won’t do that. Well of Darkness is too valuable for me to drop for the signet.

I’ve been playing around with a bursty bleed build focused on maintaining constant bleed stacks when pressured. It seems like the hardest part about fighting d/p thieves is being able to continue attacking while defending and not being stuck just defending when the thief starts pressuring you hardcore. I kite as much as possible, try to dodge or DS when I expect backstab. It’s pretty easy predicting thieves movements with greater marks. I use golem all the time for every build because the cripple and knockdown are just too good. I can get a fairly consistent 15-18 stacks of bleeding going in a little bit longer than the knockdown lasts for and that puts a lot of pressure on them. Epidemic on 15 sec cool down eats the 3 min thieves guild. Plus using all aoe bleeds you can epidemic off one of the thieves guild thieves to double up conditions on the player. Do NOT save epidemic for that clutch moment. The cool down is short and using it even when the target has just poison, cripple and 5 stacks of bleeding nets you way more damage than not using it. Just DS#2 into epidemic gives you 3 stacks of bleeding and chill aoe. Not bad.

I always use flesh worm too. There’s a LOT of places where you can teleport up levels to advantageous positions. Throw it down anywhere you’re hanging around. Don’t worry about wasting it or you’ll never use it. Let it sit there and do its thing. It’ll be constantly tracking and applying poison with a decent—albeit slow—attack. It gives you 10% life force with an aoe poison on teleport. My main strategy against everyone in this build is to stack bleeds as fast as I can, chain fears plus golem knockdown when they go to heal/cleanse for more damage uptime, and use flesh worm port when they setup their burst. Generally that will put me someplace they can’t access quickly and will allow me to keep applying consistent bleed damage. When they make it up to me I’ll try and keep them feared off and crippled before running away to kite and then if needed repositioning flesh worm. Have had really no problems vs any class as a necro except when i play glass cannon builds.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|b.1b.h16.8.1b.h5|6.1b.h1j|1b.714.1b.714.1b.712.1b.712.1b.7i.1b.7i|2w.0.3w.0.2w.0.3w.0.2w.0.3w.0|0.u264.a2.a3.k3a|30.d|3r.3w.3x.44.4f|e
gotta fear em out of the refuge but more than likely if you do they will heartseeker spam across the map to get away. I can see how they would be hard as melee though

Hanzo.9624:

I’ve been playing around with a bursty bleed build focused on maintaining constant bleed stacks when pressured. It seems like the hardest part about fighting d/p thieves is being able to continue attacking while defending and not being stuck just defending when the thief starts pressuring you hardcore. I kite as much as possible, try to dodge or DS when I expect backstab. It’s pretty easy predicting thieves movements with greater marks. I use golem all the time for every build because the cripple and knockdown are just too good. I can get a fairly consistent 15-18 stacks of bleeding going in a little bit longer than the knockdown lasts for and that puts a lot of pressure on them. Epidemic on 15 sec cool down eats the 3 min thieves guild. Plus using all aoe bleeds you can epidemic off one of the thieves guild thieves to double up conditions on the player. Do NOT save epidemic for that clutch moment. The cool down is short and using it even when the target has just poison, cripple and 5 stacks of bleeding nets you way more damage than not using it. Just DS#2 into epidemic gives you 3 stacks of bleeding and chill aoe. Not bad.

I always use flesh worm too. There’s a LOT of places where you can teleport up levels to advantageous positions. Throw it down anywhere you’re hanging around. Don’t worry about wasting it or you’ll never use it. Let it sit there and do its thing. It’ll be constantly tracking and applying poison with a decent—albeit slow—attack. It gives you 10% life force with an aoe poison on teleport. My main strategy against everyone in this build is to stack bleeds as fast as I can, chain fears plus golem knockdown when they go to heal/cleanse for more damage uptime, and use flesh worm port when they setup their burst. Generally that will put me someplace they can’t access quickly and will allow me to keep applying consistent bleed damage. When they make it up to me I’ll try and keep them feared off and crippled before running away to kite and then if needed repositioning flesh worm. Have had really no problems vs any class as a necro except when i play glass cannon builds.

It’s the case for every glass cannon except mesmer because thieves can use their burst (backstab) much more often than other classes can use defensive cooldowns, and their stealth spam allows them to control burst attempts.

This is why tanky condition builds do so well, because you can live through one backstab sequence and they can’t kite your damage. Even 4-5 bleed stacks on a rabid amulet will eat up about 1/3 of the thief’s health by itself. If you get it to tick as 7-9 for more than a few seconds and land a terror fear the thief pretty much loses all his momentum and needs to run away or die.