Class help (Necromancer, Thief)

[Crimson.3572]

Hi, I'm a relatively new player and I just got my first chracter to lvl 80. I chose necromacer as my class, because  I generally like support or condition DMG playstyles.  However, with the recent patch notes I'm not so sure anymore. Scourge got a huge nerf and reaper doesn't really fit my playstyle. (I don't like greatswords).   

I thought about trying out a thief-character. Could somebody recommend me some fun beginner-friendly builds for a thief? (I currently only have the first and second expansion) 

Or should I try another class instead? (Note: I play with three friends and we want to play four different classes. This means I currently don't want to play elementalist, ranger or warrior)

[Frost.3896]

First up: basically any class now has some form of heal support or offensive boon support builds available. Since you are saying that you only have the first 2 expansions, which limits your build choices somewhat, i could recommend guardian (firebrand) as this has a very strong heal support build and general strong group support tools.

Aside from that, your thief options right now with only 2 expansions are limited to pure damage builds (both condi and power), as the only offensive support option is condition alacrity specter, which is locked behind the EoD expansion. This will be alleviated with the next balance patch where power quickness Deadeye will become a thing.

And as a final note, i think necro will also still be fine after the patch. Reaper still does very respectable damage and scourge will get alacrity so you now have both a quickness and an alacrity offensive support build as a necro main. The quickness one is on Harbinger though, which is locked behind EoD.

[Endaris.1452]

For toying around, Dagger/Dagger Daredevil is a lot of fun in PvE as you can dodge to the moon and back.

Trickery and Deadly Arts are mostly damage trait lines for condi that allow you to inflict a ton of bleeding, poison and torment, just by spamming D/D 3 and dodge. A very outdated variant of that on core was my favorite open world PvE build when I started a long time.

Something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PaABgipjlNwQYUsMGJOuW1NPA-zRJYmxfZkZF0RC46AA-e

Replace viper with rampager/carrion/sinister gear until viper itself becomes accessible/affordable.

While you don't have daredevil, you can replace the DD traitline with acrobatics for more and better vigor and therefore more dodges:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PaABgipjlNwQYUsMGJOuStraA-zRJYmxfZkZF0RC46AA-e

That being said, necromancer is mostly getting nerfed in competitive modes and in its role as a revive bot. While it's true that scourge will lose damage, that's not a very huge difference if you don't play endgame instanced pve content such as fractal CMs and raids/strikes with CM. Note that you can almost certainly also play reaper without a greatsword and use scepter/staff/dagger for your mainhand weapons. It might not be optimal but you hardly need to play optimal in this game to be effective.

[SlayerXX.7138]

8 hours ago, Crimson.3572 said:

I thought about trying out a thief-character. Could somebody recommend me some fun beginner-friendly builds for a thief?

Dagger Dagger thief(leveling) Dagger 5 for stealth -> move behind target-> backstab for insane damage. If target is somehow still alive autoattack till the reveal debuff is gone-> repeat. A little bit one note but quite fun. Traits are in order how you would level them. Shadow arts with leeching venoms gives a lot of sustain. Utilities are quite flexible. It is a power build Endaris already posted condition version of Dagger/Dagger. Dagger thief at 80. A little different traits, for example Hidden killer becomes much weaker when you start getting a lot of crit chance.

 

[ZeroTheRuler.7415]

On 6/19/2023 at 2:27 AM, Crimson.3572 said:

Hi, I'm a relatively new player and I just got my first chracter to lvl 80. I chose necromacer as my class, because  I generally like support or condition DMG playstyles.  However, with the recent patch notes I'm not so sure anymore. Scourge got a huge nerf and reaper doesn't really fit my playstyle. (I don't like greatswords).   

I thought about trying out a thief-character. Could somebody recommend me some fun beginner-friendly builds for a thief? (I currently only have the first and second expansion) 

Or should I try another class instead? (Note: I play with three friends and we want to play four different classes. This means I currently don't want to play elementalist, ranger or warrior)

Which game mode are you planning on playing? A lot of PvP, PvE or WvW?

Snowcrows has a great general PvE guide on thief in general here: Introduction to Thief

• For PvE: I would have to say gearing a power thief is pretty easy as berserker is pretty easy to get. You did mention that you like condi styles more though.
• If you chose power I would recommend staff daredevil (overall it is very fun to play). If you have a firm grasp of mechanics power deadeye can be quite fun, but if you mark the wrong target or find single target hard then daredevil might be better.
• If you chose condi, you could try specter, but it has a slower ramp up. Condi thief generally is dagger/dagger. A guide on that can be found here (snowcrows) or here (hardstuck). I could recommend specter, because it has a shroud, but I am not certain how that will look like after the June 27th patch. It's quite possible you might like the alac specter build because of your necromancer roots.