Guild Wars 2

Hello, my name is Aevis and I’m a lvl80 power necromancer. I have full exotic p/t/v armor, weapons, and trinkets. I have 30k hp, 3k attack, 1938 toughness, and 1938 vitality. I’m trying to get to 2k toughness and vitality soon. Well yesterday I was roaming in wvw like I usually do, when I came across an enemy theif. I decided to attack even if it was an up leveled player. The 1v1 fight lasted for a good 10 mins, till finally the theif was the victor. This kinda hurt my pride losing to a low lvl theif haha, so the question is how does a power Necromancer deal with a pistol/dagger theif? It seemed like every other attack it did they were stealth. I couldn’t really hit the theif but when I did it got to half hp.

I’m not 100% sure on the ideal ways to beat them but things that will help take them out:

Every 3 seconds they will attempt to go into stealth using Cloak and Dagger which is a melee hit which can be dodged and will most likely leave them with little spare initiative to do so again.

Dagger #3 – If used just before they stealth (They’ll steal every ~3 seconds due to Revealed debuff) will lock them into place so they can be hit (They still take damage while stealthed and not be able to move if immobilized)

Dagger #4 – Turn their bleeds (Their damage source) back at them, giving you breathing room and making them take extra damage/blow a cooldown to remove the bleeds.

Death Shroud #2 and Focus #5 – Chill can reduce their movement speed making it easier to predict where they are when stealthed allowing them to be attacked

Dagger #2 and Death Shroud #4 – Channels will continue even if the thief stealths allowing damage to be done and the trail of orbs will show their location.

Consume Conditions – If used shortly after they appear from stealth it will remove their bleeds just after they’ve been applied thus negating a lot of damage.

Well of Power – Can remove some more bleeds from them if you need it.

Well of Darkness – Can make them incapable of stealthing as they won’t be able to hit with Cloak and Dagger

Well of Suffering – If placed within Shadow Refuge, will ensure the thief takes damage (If they leave the area of it they lose the stealth gained from it)

Using a combination of these can allow pressure to be kept up on the P/D thief either resulting in a kill or the thief leaving you alone.

I think that build is sort of a hard counter to power necroes. They have the ridiculous ability to restealth every few seconds from C&D, in addition to whatever stealth abilities they have in their utility slots. Taril’s suggestions are good, but it’s one of those situations where you really have to play well and not make any mistakes in order to not get worn down.

If you’re doing that much damage when you hit, try lich form. In spvp my auto-attack hits for 3-4k against squishy targets. Your average medium-low skill level p/d thief isn’t expecting a necro to suddenly start blasting them that hard. You can kill them or soften them up a lot before switching to your regular bag of tricks.

Just to also mention, in WvWvW and hotjoin, there is no honor, just press F12 and log out, if a theif or mesmer want to bs around, just deny them the badges and satisfaction they dont deserve (this is from someone who has a 80 thief that was leveled from 40 to 70 in WvWvW cherrypicks).

The problem is your building tanky which will make you survive a thiefs initial burst but whats the point in that if you cant finish him off afterwards. I run a full beserker power necro for pve. But ive taken her into wvw and never lost a 1v1. Thiefs have attempted to kill me and failed because of my deathshroud to tank the initial burst. Then i proceed to absolutely melt their hp. Which results in them stealthing and running for their lives. If they try to attack me again my lifeforce is usually back up along with my heal. So i can repeat until they run out of escapes or they decide its not worth it.

My point is necro’s shouldnt need any survivability for almost any build. Their DS is all you need to stay alive in most situations. You should spec for full glass cannon damage. Either wells or hybrid condition damage. Unless your playing a support necro but thats more of a spvp build.

I’m also using full P/V/T with dagger/focus + staff in wvw and know the problem too well. Just today I met a P/D thiefs who, after not managing to kill me, happily ignored me while killing one unaware person after the other around me. I can prevent one stealth stomp if my fear mark is not on cd, but thats about it.

Probably 50% of my dagger/focus attacks miss because they require a target and close range. Immobilize is awesome if it hits, but chances to miss are high with the constant stealthing and out-of-range problems.
The only way to reliable do damage is to use staff marks but even if traited there is so little damage done it’s just sad considering you can hardly stack any more power.

And even when I manage to drop their health to like 25% health they often somehow manage to reappear fully healed or simply run away out if combat and come back.
Pretty frustrating and I usually tend to just skip the fight if it takes longer than a minute now. I think the others are right, with this build you can’t do anything against non-glass-cannon thiefs – without support from others that is.

spoj.9672:

The problem is your building tanky which will make you survive a thiefs initial burst but whats the point in that if you cant finish him off afterwards. I run a full beserker power necro for pve. But ive taken her into wvw and never lost a 1v1. Thiefs have attempted to kill me and failed because of my deathshroud to tank the initial burst. Then i proceed to absolutely melt their hp. Which results in them stealthing and running for their lives. If they try to attack me again my lifeforce is usually back up along with my heal. So i can repeat until they run out of escapes or they decide its not worth it.

My point is necro’s shouldnt need any survivability for almost any build. Their DS is all you need to stay alive in most situations. You should spec for full glass cannon damage. Either wells or hybrid condition damage. Unless your playing a support necro but thats more of a spvp build.

Your advice doesnt apply to all cases, some uber thiefs will remove your lifeforce in about 1-2 hits (mines maxed +30%) from stealth. You’ll need a lot of dodging, plague form and debuffs to keep alive in addition to shroud.

As far as melting them, how do you do that when you cant target them. As someone with 2400power 50crit (70 w/fury)/50damage (could be higher but up there is my point), the aoes will not kill them. Ive also had many thieves try and fail, but there is thief builds that stealth and drops target within a split second of rendering usually.

3 on dagger, pop wells and auto attack generally kills most people. And usually a thief stealths to get away but still gets downed inside the aoe because of chill, cripple or imobalize. Bring a friend with some extra long range cc or cripple and no theif will escape.