How to fight perma-stealth rifle DE

I was roaming last night on my reaper with a DE random, taking camps trying to get fights etc. The random DE I was partied with is suddenly 1-shot to downed by an enemy rifle DE about 750 behind me, I reaper #2 leapt over to him to revive but he was already 1/3rd doubled and used his downed #2 to port just as i started to revive (his mistake).

Enemy DE restealths, opens on me 6-10sec later. I get some axe #2 damage on him but he re-stealths a second later. Stays stealth for ~6sec and re-opens on me, landing only 1-2 shots before restealthing. He then just repeats the process -- land opener from stealth ~1200 away, re-stealth immediately, re-emerge with full HP.

I managed to dodge about half-2/3rds his stealth openers but because of the constant re-stealthing, there was little I could do other than land minor axe damage and cleave in the general area.

This was in area between BL main keep and bay, so wide open space with no opportunities for LOS. I tried to kite to narrow his attack angle down but after 8-10 opener-then-restealth combos i went down. Every time I landed damage it would be fully healed up during stealth window.

Looking for any advice on how to handle that fight differently. Really frustrating, seems OP. Reaper was running GS + axe/warhorn, 50K effective HP. Thanks.

Sorry. I don't think you can as reaper. DE is direct counter to reaper and sourge. The direct counter to DE is melee thief, rev and Holo and to some degree core guardian.

Reason being thief, rev and guard can instantly teleport over and burst the DE down. Rev does aoe immoblize and can cc, evade. Holo has reveal upon aoe dmg and then can triple cc a DE to death.

Talking seriously, DE is a direct counter to necro in a myriad of different ways.

A few strategies to deal with some bad DE would be:

• Kitting and LoS are your best friends. "There is no LoS spot" doesn't help as excuse, or you DON'T walk on open fields as Necro or you started running in the direction of the closest one as soon as you see a DE. You can also try to bring the guy to close quarters, like a spot he absolutely must cross to reach you, like stairs or bridges.
• It's recommended to save Axe 2# for when the thief is about to enter stealth. Since is a channeled skill you can put pressure on it on stealth, if not finish him outright.
• Don't use Reaper shroud for nothing. Nor stay in the open while it is on cooldown.
• Officially speaking, Reaper damage is so high and the Thief Hp so low that 2 good hits are enough for the kill. Instead of wasting skills on air, aiming for 2 good hits is better for Reaper.

But it is a pretty unfair matchup most of the time.

all good advice thanks.

if the rifle thief uses mostly silent scope for stealth, many of them wont dodge during the first 2 seconds of reveal to not waste that endurance without stealth. you can use that for spectral grasp to get him into melee to finish em off. as most deadeyes are rather bad, this should work often.

If he's any decent? You don't, especially nowadays since reaper sustain has been nerfed by like 80% in its roaming options.
Like DE, Reaper is full-on rock-paper-scissors now. It's just on the losing end of this matchup and there's nothing you can do. He's paper, you're rock.

There's almost zero interaction in the matchup for the reaper to take advantage of and basically no way for you to force his hand. The best you can do is guess where he is while he's stealthed and GS5 -> RS4 combo him.

It's lame but this is how GW2's combat is now, especially on the most extreme cases with Reaper and DE. Out-playing someone is literally no longer a thing outside of mirror-matches and even those are pretty faceroll 9/10 times.

@DeceiverX.8361 said:If he's any decent? You don't

Even if he's not decent. Rifle DE is a hard-counter to Reaper. As long as they can avoid Death's Charge and continue to keep range, DE can auto-attack a Reaper to death without even using mark. xD

Its kinda simple. Bring him to melee(ruins Walls terrain etc), and rape him hard. Than feel free to throw him some blueprints.Another way to kill DE as reaper:when u see DE, relog to daredevil asap, and chase the fucker. Than again feel free to share some blueprints with him

@scerevisiae.1972 said:This was in area between BL main keep and bay, so wide open space with no opportunities for LOS. I tried to kite to narrow his attack angle down but after 8-10 opener-then-restealth combos i went down. Every time I landed damage it would be fully healed up during stealth window.

Looking for any advice on how to handle that fight differently. Really frustrating, seems OP. Reaper was running GS + axe/warhorn, 50K effective HP. Thanks.You don't fight him there. You never fight a deadeye in open field. If you equipped focus (spinal shivers) and spectral grasp you can try to land these two skills to finish him. If you miss, don't bother fighting him and escape to keep or bay or jump into the water to destroy him there if he is stupid enough to follow you (ironically necro is one of the most mobile classes underwater with a lot of CC and burst... and access to shroud).

@Turk.5460 said:Even if he's not decent. Rifle DE is a hard-counter to Reaper. As long as they can avoid Death's Charge and continue to keep range, DE can auto-attack a Reaper to death without even using mark. xDCorrect. He needs only two skills to counter a reaper in shroud: rifle4 and rifle autoattack. Then outrange axe and dodge focus5 and finish the reaper. It's trivial.

You can't. There is no counter to a good deadeye thief. If I'm downed as a deadeye it's because I made a huge mistake or I had 2000 ping.

It's a broken spec at the moment.

There is one way.

Run.

Du du du du tsh du du du du du du du tsh du du du.Du du du du tsh du du du du du du du tsh du du du.

Thief counters necro, that's just the way it is.

Line of sight is the only realistic option. If the Deadeye is dumb they'll pursue you and you can eat them. If they're smart they'll wait you out or let you go and it will effectively be a draw.

I can tell you this: most DE engagement starts off when they think you are someone out of place, easy kill, unprepared. The way a DE will first gauge the encounter is how far away you are from another ally/tower/npc/etc, what cover they can take if things go sour, the safe distance between you and the DE, and many other factors. Normally, I see what can only be described as goblin DE's - these are the type that are hungry for kills and are super greedy. These also happen to be perma stealthing types for the most part. All you have to do is look vulnerable to bait them out. 90%...no almost 99% of them will use DJ instead of a malicious backstab. Why? Because most of them don't have the balls to pull it off and so resort to something more mechanically easier for them without having to swap weapons if things don't go as planned. I like to purposely look like I am not paying attention to attract them. It is also a mind game to mess with them. If you just hit them even once, many of them tend to back off giving you time to recover. Just save your big burst, and only hit them with small cd hits, but you want to use interrupts or aoes if possible. As it stands, atm I am even able to beat them using a core necro build that I've been messing with recently and I have a bad ping compared to most people. The majority of de's you are seeing are really predictable. I can say that for every 10-15 de's you see, only 1 is probably worth their salt.

As many others have stated, when you're on a melee class with no reveal, little to no mobility, okay-ish sustain, and little quick burst, there's not much you can do against a DE. My best advice is too make use of LoS and terrain and save your burst skills for when you reach the DE.

I was on a Weaver and DE is often one of my worst enemies. I rolled a Rev and now DE's are my meals - Phase Traversal, legend swap to proc Hydromancy sigil, and any of the 4 sword skills are enough to down a DE, or if he stealths I have several AOE skills that have downed DE's in stealth multiple times, like Elemental Blast or sword 4. One of the best feelings ever.

Just gonna parrot everyone else.

If the Deadeye is average, you'll still be in a bad match-up. He can just slowly whittle you down without much fear of retaliation. He can cripple, root, outrange and outrun you, so you won't catch him unless he fucks up.

If he's any good, just give up, because then he might actually MB you to death instead.

It sucks, but that's the way it is for Necros. They are served on silver-platters to Deadeye's at the moment, and that's just how the game has become.

Even if you love GW2, I wouldn't play it for the PvP dueling. It just doesn't do the game any favors at the moment. Stick to groups.

Open field is a big no no for Necro in general because it's a class that suffers against kiting, so luring a greedy Deadeye into somewhere more enclosed that can prevent terrain abuse through ports is always a good option. That's actually really the only option.

De's are a solo roam spec for a reason,Nec is anything but that.Nec has its purpose in blob fights where De is usually not even wanted because the comms want Aoe blasts and no single target hits that can easily be blocked,reflected,ignored in whatever way.Basically a Nec is free food to Any type of kiting,not restricted to DE only.A soulbeast/ranger will eat you aswell and so would a rifle warr for E.g.

@Caedmon.6798 said:De's are a solo roam spec for a reason,Nec is anything but that.Nec has its purpose in blob fights where De is usually not even wanted because the comms want Aoe blasts and no single target hits that can easily be blocked,reflected,ignored in whatever way.Basically a Nec is free food to Any type of kiting,not restricted to DE only.A soulbeast/ranger will eat you aswell and so would a rifle warr for E.g.

If you were good, it sadly used to not be the case with Reaper.Unfortunately they just made it super one-dimensional and very easy to counterplay since the removal of VP and SoS, and you can't build as durable as you once could with the hits to the crit chance on DP.

@idolin.2831 said:As many others have stated, when you're on a melee class with no reveal, little to no mobility, okay-ish sustain, and little quick burst, there's not much you can do against a DE.

Reveal does nothing to a DE. They have two reveal clears because Anet is dumb.

@EvilSardine.9635 said:

@idolin.2831 said:As many others have stated, when you're on a melee class with no reveal, little to no mobility, okay-ish sustain, and little quick burst, there's not much you can do against a DE.

wich has a cast time and can be interrupted wich easily can kill the deadeye.for example rangers could be very deadly, yet often after the reveal they will use rapidfire instead of waiting with that till after interrupting shadowmeld. they can just use auto attacks wich also will kill them if few hit and then interrupt shadowmeld with PBS followed by a rapidfire. if the thief doesnt have shadowstep ready to get away in that situation he is dead.if you dont have high dmg + fast CC you wont kill the deadeye regardless of shadow meld because he will just kite for that duration and if you have access to that its up to you to use it correctly, them having shadow meld means they will try to use it giving you an opportunity. else they would just run rightaway and you wouldnt be able to profit from it in most cases.

@MUDse.7623 said:

@EvilSardine.9635 said:

@idolin.2831 said:As many others have stated, when you're on a melee class with no reveal, little to no mobility, okay-ish sustain, and little quick burst, there's not much you can do against a DE.

Woutch....interrupting can easily kill the deadeye ....just lol...thanks for this one.I was told that looking at them in the eyes 2 second can also easily kill them ROTFL

@Kicast.1459 said:

@MUDse.7623 said:

@EvilSardine.9635 said:

@idolin.2831 said:As many others have stated, when you're on a melee class with no reveal, little to no mobility, okay-ish sustain, and little quick burst, there's not much you can do against a DE.

if it doesnt, then your reveal also wouldnt kill them if they didnt remove it, in wich case it would be pointless to even complain about their ability to remove it.

and yes i probably shouldnt have said that the interrupt is killing the deadeye but that it can provide a good opportunity to kill one, that it can be deciding move in that 'fight'. i have never been good with wording.

@MUDse.7623 said:

wich has a cast time and can be interrupted wich easily can kill the deadeye.

ROFL

Condition build Daredevil kills DE stealth rifle. "Perma-stealth" is a myth. I just killed one last night. They are easy to track and slow as heck.

Once you got a good stack of poison, bleed, and torment on them, they panic.