Guild Wars 2

Dark pact seems to only work 30% of the time, spectral grasp maybe less :-(
Also, against thieves, I had the trait that allows you to have 3 sec’s retaliation… but the thief never took any damage- and then stomped me easily. (dark pact failed, spectral gasp failed etc…)
seems the Power Necro is a free kill for a thief (and to all those experts who talk about wells etc… the wells cool down is a complete joke, all the thief does ‘many times’ in last week’ is see the danger, walk out stealth then continue to stealth-hit until you are dead…
Using ds fear adds a few seconds to your life :-)

Power Necro isnt in a great place in pvp at the minute. You can work it if you put enough effort in, but your always fighting as an underdog.

I’m hoping bug fixes alone will help massively. As you have already said, dark pact and spectral grasp are prone to failure if there is any sort of terrain at all.

Yeah, i bought all new exotic armour, weapons and jewellery to try out a power build… extremely disappointed with the results.

Axe is the worst weapon in the game.

Stacking Vulnerability is good for dungeon groups, but the lack of DPS is astonishing.

Have you tried the juggermancer approach? I hear good things about it, but personally it was not my thing (I am in love with conditions)

Well, if all works fine (grasp, dark pact, wells) then they melt… sadly 99% of time grasp or dark pact will fail leaving you wide open for the thief to burn down.
-Edit; I tried the Juggomancer but the build still relies on traits with a looong cool down that once blown, you are a free kill.

And why didn’t retaliation work???

I rarely have problems with thieves 1v1, in any build as a necro. It’s more when I’m 1v1 someone else and the thief shows up to BS me or spam HS when I’m out of endurance and everything’s on cool down. Try using Flesh Golem knockdown and THEN using Dark Pact before well bombing and remember how short the range is. They usually will try to shadow step, blinding powder, shadow refuge or hide in shadows at this point so I’ll Life Transfer in DS to hit them in stealth, Fear them when they come out and then try to burst them. I’ve actually been digging D/F + A/W lately. Ghastly Claws into Life Siphon after a CC has netted me some pretty fantastic spike damage and surprisingly I’ve noticed no issues with being kited or not having condition removal outside of Consume Conditions. Unholy Feast + Wells + Reaper’s Touch + Life Transfer is very strong in group fights and Golem, Spinal Shivers, Dark Pact, Dark Path, Locust Swarm, Doom, etc keep 1v1 targets in range for Necrotic Slash spam.

I don’t see how power necro is worse off than any other kind of necro. I generally do pretty well against thieves unless they catch me with lf completely depleted. I run dagger/focus and staff with berzerker amulet.

Traits are either 30/0/10/0/30 or 10/0/10/20/30
You want to build lf as quickly as possible and learn to pop in and out of DS in order to eat enemy bursts. Also DS will hit pretty hard. Keep chilling them with the focus and the staff while you replenish lf. The dagger #2 will continue to hit them after they go stealth unless the channel is interrupted. If you land dark pact, then you can burst them down with the dagger autoattack.

Also, I run lich for my elite. The #1 attack hits for 3-4k on a lightly armored target. It works surprisingly well against a lot of thieves because they aren’t expecting a necro to turn around and burst them back.

Not saying it’s easy, but you should have a pretty good chance against thieves on a necro.

Retaliation probably didn’t work because the Thief was running Signet of Malice. When they heal each time they hit you, it counteracts the Retaliation damage. The good news is that the retaliation was also counteracting their healing.

As for Dark Pact failing, I’ve never had that happen unless they dodge.

Power necros are okay, as long as you can initially close the gap. Once you are on the target, you should be able to stick to them fine. Power necros also do insane amounts of damage (DS auto attacks for 3k, dagger auto for 2k DPS, lich form for 4k crits), and our spike damage is pretty amazing when you jump on a target, immobilize with Dagger 3, then drop WoS, Focus 4, and start wailing on them with Dagger 1.