Guild Wars 2

I need help.

This comes from a WvW perspective and I wish that was taken into account.

My question is, how can I reliably fight a P/D thief?

I play a Necromancer and this is the only profession + build that I have given up on ever engaging, I’ve been defeated by it too many times to try anymore.

From my perspective this is what happens –
The thief seems to spend most of the fight in stealth.
The thief does not deal burst damage, most of it comes from bleeding.
Even if I hit him with staff marks, traited to greater marks so the AoE is considerable, the thief always emerges from stealth greatly healed and usually with boons.
I have tried to both engage in melee and maintain distance against this build, neither had any success.
Any conditions I apply seem to be removed while he was stealthed.
Fights can go for over 2 minutes, I usually blow through my DeathShroud and 2 – 3 Consume Conditions.
After any battle my log will show the thief using only 3 damaging skills: Vital Shot, Sneak attack and Cloak and Dagger.

I’d appreciate any answer on how to deal with stealth, by which I mean how can keep some damage output against him stealthed, any tells I should look out for and if I actually DO have any hope of defeating this build as a Necromancer.

Thank you for any help provided.

Try and cripple him if he starts walking towards you, he needs to hit you with cloak and dagger to stealth if you kite away from him while throwing marks down , dodge roll if he comes in mele range and his head ducks down. that means he is about to use cloak and dagger, they can only use it twice before being out of initiative.

If he stealths using a healing ability or something throw that fear mark on your feet and use the others where he is. If you wait eventually he will have to come to you for a restealth but the fear will cancel that.

He probably has the trait remove a condition every 3 seconds when in stealth.

Its also likely that he has 0 or 1 stun breaker so maybe flesh golem could be a good option. Also pets sometimes get in the way of the pistol attack because it doesn’t pierce or bounce to different targets.

Golem elite.
Fear mark only on shadow refuge.

You can also block or blind him when he comes near , if his attack misses it still uses initiative.

Can’t a necro transfer conditions back to the originator?

The thief is traited for healing in stealth. Prevent him from stealthing and he won’t be able to heal himself. He’ll probably run Blinding powder and Shadow refuge
BP: Can’t be stopped, lasts only 3 seconds and takes 40 seconds to recharge. Probably the last skill he will use when in trouble

Shadow Refuge: Has a casting time so you can block it (he wields a scythe while casting). Also you can fear him when it’s used, so he runs out of the area and gets unstealthed

Then there is cloak and dagger / Hide in shadows
Cloak and dagger will be his primary skill for stealthing, it needs a very close melee range to hit. Like previous posts have said, it’s a pretty easy skill to detect. Dodge it, cripple him, blind him. Just don’t let it hit you and he’ll have to resort to the skills described above.

Hide in shadows is his healing skill, it has a 30s CD. Great healing, 3s stealth and regeneration. If you still have your own healing skill when he uses this skill, you’ll have a pretty decent chance to survive. Interrupting this skill will also be a good idea.

Now about the conditions he put on you. As a necro I thought conditions were easily negated? At least that’s what I’ve heard, never rly took time to understand the necro. His dmg output comes from bleeding, which originates from “Vital shot” and sneak attack. If you can stop him from stealthing he won’t be able to use sneak attack which is his strongest tool for killing ppl.

Now the problem arise when you are not alone and not coordinated. A good P/D thief uses the multiple enemies to be able to keep using c&d. Alone he has only 1 target to get his stealth from. A coordinated group solves this problem though.

If besides you thief has other targets to use CnD on, and they are not willing to respond adequately, you should try to get out of range and force 1-on-1. At this point necro has just about everything to stop him from going to stealth

I’ve already tried charge (with MK runes so that includes Birds)-> Dagger immobilize -> WH daze and well bombing him, seems like the passive stealth on low HP kicks in and they manage to survive, putting everything I have into a 40+ seconds cd.

Necros can’t block, but blindness might be an option… since I don’t offhand dagger well of darkness would be the only option. It has a longish casting time and only lasts 5 seconds but I might try that next time. Plague Form is out as well since I can be kited for the whole duration.

From what I’ve understood I need to make them miss the Cloak and Dagger? So I can’t use mark of fear since that wouldn’t even let him use the attack to waste it?

As for shadow refuge, I’ve never seen a P/D thief actually use it.

Most condition transfers have conditional activations and there are only 3 options: off-hand dagger, which is a slow projectile and requires a hit to transfer, Putrid Mark which requires the enemy to step on it to trigger and Signet of Plague which is too situational to be worth a utility slot with it’s 60 second cd.

Besides, I don’t get hit with many conditions at once for those to make much of a difference, it’s more of a constant uninterrupted bleed that ends up wearing me down and killing me.

Edit- Ok I’m getting a clearer picture about what’s going on in those fights now.
kitten seems like I can’t have my golem or any minions out then. They can just be targeted for CnD every time if it works like that.