Guild Wars 2

All the guides i’ve been looking at are directed at power builds running wells. i get this, the more you hit the more you tag and more wxp and loot you get, however my necro is fully geared already in condition gear and i cant afford to regear it. is there a build out there that focus’s on conditions for wvw?
Would it be worth running a well build anyway?

I run staff and axe + warhorn in wvw traited for spectral skills and terrormancing. Locust swarm marks and life blast tags everything you need and spectral walk lets you keep up while spectral grasp is instant death on anyone it hits. Finally, i like bringing spectral wall for blocking escapes or stopping people from chasing us. Probably not the best build out there but i like it. Its fun to use.

You can still tag many people without wells. I think the problem is more about cleanse and melandru runes. I think condition is still very useful with corrupt boon and of course epedimic.

Run with an Ascii.9726 wvw necro build, it works. His build is in a thread within this forum or simply look under Ascii.9726’s post history for it.

The problem with the conditionmancer in zerg is the huge capacity to a zerg to dispell really quickly all your condition. So yes versus mob you will have a good AoE damage but not versus zerg.
Conditionmancer is perfect for a roaming group, you are strong in small PvP fight and can solo supply camp easily.

Right now Condi in zergs ins’t great as most here pointed out. Cleanses, melandru runes, lemongrass food. Most of the damage is negated so the instant damage from power builds tend to be more useful. Also things like weakness, blind, chill aren’t effected by condition damage so you can still provide condi support while not building for condi damage.

That said, as a “pug” condi can do fine as long as you know how to play your class well enough. I say “pug” because most guilds run a type of comp that call for other things and power builds for the most part fill the role better. I don’t remember the name of the guild but they are on SoS, they seemed to run a very condi heavy Necro group and the first few times we engaged them it hurt a lot. Problem was it was easily countered but the first time we engaged them was disgusting.

Honestly if this is going to be your main toon, I’d work on a power build. You can start with PVT gear from WvW since its the cheapest if you have the badges. Then work in knights, zerker, cavaliers, what ever till you find the right gear for you. Either way if you feel successful in a zerg as condi and don’t die while still being able to fight, go for it. No on can say your wrong if your doing well and being helpful but right now for the most part power builds are the “best” for zerging.

I’m running 0/3/2/0/2 and enjoying it. Tried the Dhuumfire build, but didn’t want to throw 30 points into Spite for just that trait (plus cond duration). Plus I really prefer the two Staff traits. Run spectral wall and epidemic always — WoC or CB depending on the objective.

You might also like 0/2/2/0/3 for Stability, but I like having three traits from Curses (most often for ranged Well, Terror, and Warhorn).

derry.2789:

All the guides i’ve been looking at are directed at power builds running wells. i get this, the more you hit the more you tag and more wxp and loot you get, however my necro is fully geared already in condition gear and i cant afford to regear it. is there a build out there that focus’s on conditions for wvw?
Would it be worth running a well build anyway?

i dont recommend it. thanks to broken foodbuffs, OP runes and cleansing running rampant in WvW, it’s just frustrating. especially since everyone and their mothers are running guardians/warriors cause of their insane anti-condition stuff.

In our Guild we have some Necromancers that run with Condition builds (and i run it on my twink). Your aim is to get as much condition damage as possible since you conditions wont last long.

You have some free trait points but the basic build looks like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7IjMaZ6db8bJApCXH9Y4iDG-j0BBoOCy0Cwk0BKHqIasVTFRjVJjIqWpETIgFrBA-w

From there on you can take what you prefer. I personally went 20 into Soul Reaping for longer Fears and 10 into Spite for Condition remove on kill. (wich leads to 50% condition duration with food and 100% fear duration which is especially nice with the spectral wall)
But you can also got 20 into Death Magic for unblockable marks and 20 into Blood Magic for the healing traits/well cooldown reduction.
30 into Soul Reaping for stability/50% increased crit chance are also a viable option.

Condition necros in zergs become more useful the longer the fight continues. In the first few seconds you wont deal as much damage as a power necro but once they have spent most of their condition remove your damage will outperform the power spec.

One of my guilds necros calculated that you will already outperform a power necro if your bleeds can tick at least 2 times, but i dont have the formulas at hand for that.

As for gear, you can combine dire and rabid gear. Runes should be undead or scavenger since they provide the best boost to you condition damage. Sigil should be bursting on both staff and scepter and minor corruption on your offhand. Once you reach 25 stacks (remember it stacks while you are in deathshroud/plague if you had your s/d equipped when you changed forms) you can take another sigil (i took earth).

I hope that this can help you.

After long time of running solely Powermancer for Zergs I’ve experimented a bit with going mid-frontline Conditionmancer. I’m actually happy with the results, I feel a lot more Useful and I’m able to sustain myself much more :P I think I prefer it over the Powermancer, even for Zergs…
Here’s the build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMad7Fbub87JEJFXzzA9oXwFQMSxxEMA-jUyAINBZaBAVBi8AnDLiGb1sIasaGMVKRUtDpIa1A-w

Zikory.6871:

Right now Condi in zergs ins’t great as most here pointed out. Cleanses, melandru runes, lemongrass food. Most of the damage is negated so the instant damage from power builds tend to be more useful. Also things like weakness, blind, chill aren’t effected by condition damage so you can still provide condi support while not building for condi damage.

That said, as a “pug” condi can do fine as long as you know how to play your class well enough. I say “pug” because most guilds run a type of comp that call for other things and power builds for the most part fill the role better. I don’t remember the name of the guild but they are on SoS, they seemed to run a very condi heavy Necro group and the first few times we engaged them it hurt a lot. Problem was it was easily countered but the first time we engaged them was disgusting.

Honestly if this is going to be your main toon, I’d work on a power build. You can start with PVT gear from WvW since its the cheapest if you have the badges. Then work in knights, zerker, cavaliers, what ever till you find the right gear for you. Either way if you feel successful in a zerg as condi and don’t die while still being able to fight, go for it. No on can say your wrong if your doing well and being helpful but right now for the most part power builds are the “best” for zerging.

This is wisdom, right here.

The necro is really schizoid — very different builds for different purposes. It’s not like rolling a stun warrior.

Indeed Zikory has the best answer, cleanses everywhere and I am not even denting health. If it’s an unorganized zerg you can still get some kills but in big guilds zergs you can see them cleansing conditions in seconds.

vs. coordinated groups conditions can’t be stacked high enough to get good epidemics
vs. random blobs targets don’t live long enough to get good epidemics

:<

Bawi.9541:

vs. coordinated groups conditions can’t be stacked high enough to get good epidemics
vs. random blobs targets don’t live long enough to get good epidemics

:<

http://www.youtube.com/user/Rennoko?feature=watch

alanis.6094:

Bawi.9541:

vs. coordinated groups conditions can’t be stacked high enough to get good epidemics
vs. random blobs targets don’t live long enough to get good epidemics

:<

http://www.youtube.com/user/Rennoko?feature=watch

Yeah we do a pretty nice setup for GvG that focuses on conditions. I will agree that in general power is better, simply because it requires far less coordination. We call targets on voice chat, try to do our best to rip boons at the same time etc.

Conditions are definately easier to counter than to bomb in a big WvW situation, but they are far from useless. It is also far more fun to do than hammer train everywhere.

Specific GVG that is a pretty good example:

I use a number of different builds, but really anything with ranged wells and greater marks seems fine for me in WvW zerg fights, but condition stats are really only going to be worth it if you have the ability to stack conditions quickly with your group (or just epidemic downed targets constantly). With Chilling darkness, blind well, and corruption well, your can lock down a hammer train better than anyone else (for a few seconds).

Rennoko.5731:

alanis.6094:

Bawi.9541:

vs. coordinated groups conditions can’t be stacked high enough to get good epidemics
vs. random blobs targets don’t live long enough to get good epidemics

:<

http://www.youtube.com/user/Rennoko?feature=watch

Yeah we do a pretty nice setup for GvG that focuses on conditions. I will agree that in general power is better, simply because it requires far less coordination. We call targets on voice chat, try to do our best to rip boons at the same time etc.

Conditions are definately easier to counter than to bomb in a big WvW situation, but they are far from useless. It is also far more fun to do than hammer train everywhere.

Specific GVG that is a pretty good example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5keIYn0mGX8

I use a number of different builds, but really anything with ranged wells and greater marks seems fine for me in WvW zerg fights, but condition stats are really only going to be worth it if you have the ability to stack conditions quickly with your group (or just epidemic downed targets constantly). With Chilling darkness, blind well, and corruption well, your can lock down a hammer train better than anyone else (for a few seconds).

What is the third trait you take in the Blood line there?

Additionally, I always wondered about Spectral Wall as I have found great success in it for the ‘puggish’ groups in normal WvW. Obviously stability is an issue, but in watching several videos I certainly wouldn’t say that stability uptime is more than 40% or so (at least on your primary target), and with the way your opponents group/train, a well placed SWall on them w/o much stability might really scatter some?. I haven’t seen you use it much (at all?), so I imagine your experiences with it aren’t all that positive?

For pug zergs this works out quite well (see the builds by asura or rennoko). For guilds and gvg’s there are a couple of reasons power is usually picked over condition:

- It’s reliable damage. Epidemic is amazing but notoriously unreliable. People cleanse, dodge and go down.

- It provides immediate damage to a kill zone. The european scene is more defensive than the american one. The melee trains are a lot bigger and there are only few guilds that run big periphery pressure teams. Usually you have two guardians tome the first push and kill zone. Between good guilds people don’t go down in the first minute of the fight.

- It requires a party commited to conditions. Without it there just won’t be enough pressure. This means that you already steered your guild in a certain direction and either it works out or you won’t have enough burst damage to scratch the enemy melee train.

- It’s harder to play. In order to get reliably 20-30 players for a raid you will have people that are less individually skilled. Condition necro requires experience and overview of the battle to be played effectively.

There are some niches for condition necros, e.g. pressuring eles and mesmers against guilds, finishing downed clusters against zergs with staff eles. It’s fun to play, but can get extremely frustrating and overall you’ll be more useful with power builds.

Edit: @Alanis: Most guild melees have 80% or more stability uptime during a fight. At least i’ve always planned parties as close to 100% as possible. There is no effective way to remove stability in an aoe.
Also, static field and lines are a lot better to control the battlefield.

alanis.6094:

What is the third trait you take in the Blood line there?

Additionally, I always wondered about Spectral Wall as I have found great success in it for the ‘puggish’ groups in normal WvW. Obviously stability is an issue, but in watching several videos I certainly wouldn’t say that stability uptime is more than 40% or so (at least on your primary target), and with the way your opponents group/train, a well placed SWall on them w/o much stability might really scatter some?. I haven’t seen you use it much (at all?), so I imagine your experiences with it aren’t all that positive?

I have tried several things for the third trait. MOB and well cooldowns are a pretty good idea for the first two as you noted, and I have tried both transfusion (not so good), and deathly invigoration (seems to work better overall). Siphoning wells is so-so in my opinion, as the health you get back hardly helps to mitigate when you need to mitigate.

The reason I don’t like spectral wall is that it is a hit and miss skill. It can help to break up their group if you land it at the right time, but knowing when to throw it down and when to hold it is always a tricky thing. It may be completely wasted.

However wells on the other hand, are always good, especially on ressing players. They ALWAYS have boons to strip, and blind and chill are ALWAYS good, no matter what is going on.

Epidemic is really the only skill that can flub completely, but that is helped by its high potential. I have a very hard time getting it to work well in a GvG because of the nature of that combat style. Lots of warbanners, mist form, aoe condition clears, vigor, blinks. The more coordinated the group, the less likely you can get a good epidemic off.

Monkeymonger.9235:

For pug zergs this works out quite well (see the builds by asura or rennoko). For guilds and gvg’s there are a couple of reasons power is usually picked over condition:

- It’s reliable damage. Epidemic is amazing but notoriously unreliable. People cleanse, dodge and go down.

- It provides immediate damage to a kill zone. The european scene is more defensive than the american one. The melee trains are a lot bigger and there are only few guilds that run big periphery pressure teams. Usually you have two guardians tome the first push and kill zone. Between good guilds people don’t go down in the first minute of the fight.

- It requires a party commited to conditions. Without it there just won’t be enough pressure. This means that you already steered your guild in a certain direction and either it works out or you won’t have enough burst damage to scratch the enemy melee train.

- It’s harder to play. In order to get reliably 20-30 players for a raid you will have people that are less individually skilled. Condition necro requires experience and overview of the battle to be played effectively.

There are some niches for condition necros, e.g. pressuring eles and mesmers against guilds, finishing downed clusters against zergs with staff eles. It’s fun to play, but can get extremely frustrating and overall you’ll be more useful with power builds.

Very well said.

The standard hammer train is far easier to pull off and more effective. It isn’t unbeatable, but if you place two completely identical skilled groups and had them face off – One hammer, one condition focused, the condition group would have to work a lot harder, and get a lot “luckier” on epidemic spreads.

There is a reason in pretty much every GvG I have done, the opponent is primarily a hammer train and power focused. It works really well, and is much less in danger of corner/edge thief harrassment.

alanis.6094:

Bawi.9541:

vs. coordinated groups conditions can’t be stacked high enough to get good epidemics
vs. random blobs targets don’t live long enough to get good epidemics

:<

http://www.youtube.com/user/Rennoko?feature=watch

Considering the title of the thread, thanks for proving my point I guess.
OT: Love Rennoko’s vids :P

Monkeymonger.9235:

- It provides immediate damage to a kill zone. The european scene is more defensive than the american one. The melee trains are a lot bigger and there are only few guilds that run big periphery pressure teams. Usually you have two guardians tome the first push and kill zone. Between good guilds people don’t go down in the first minute of the fight.

I didn’t know there was a difference in playstyle. I’ve never played NA, so everything I write is from a EU tier 1 point of view. ‘Roaming groups’ are consistently made up of 20+ ppl, it’s kittening ridiculous :/ (Yes, twenty people. To roflstomp supply depots. Not getting the tag for the NPCs is not rare. Oftentimes it’s just the whole map-blob going for camps on their way to bigger forts.)
It’s no fun to look for small group fights (1-5), especially as a necro. I usually go for the bloodlust ruins, and if there’s nothing going on I log off instantly…

Bawi.9541:

alanis.6094:

Bawi.9541:

vs. coordinated groups conditions can’t be stacked high enough to get good epidemics
vs. random blobs targets don’t live long enough to get good epidemics

:<

http://www.youtube.com/user/Rennoko?feature=watch

Considering the title of the thread, thanks for proving my point I guess.
OT: Love Rennoko’s vids :P

Monkeymonger.9235:

- It provides immediate damage to a kill zone. The european scene is more defensive than the american one. The melee trains are a lot bigger and there are only few guilds that run big periphery pressure teams. Usually you have two guardians tome the first push and kill zone. Between good guilds people don’t go down in the first minute of the fight.

I didn’t know there was a difference in playstyle. I’ve never played NA, so everything I write is from a EU tier 1 point of view. ‘Roaming groups’ are consistently made up of 20+ ppl, it’s kittening ridiculous :/ (Yes, twenty people. To roflstomp supply depots. Not getting the tag for the NPCs is not rare. Oftentimes it’s just the whole map-blob going for camps on their way to bigger forts.)
It’s no fun to look for small group fights (1-5), especially as a necro. I usually go for the bloodlust ruins, and if there’s nothing going on I log off instantly…

US side, were in Gold league, though were the little brother, but I don’t see any difference for us. There are smaller groups of people, but generally not anywhere near objectives. They tend to hang around ruins and such, same as you guys.

The higher tiers of people just blob more…. its a fact unfortunately, and it makes smaller groups stuff (1-3) less interesting, unless you can easily handle a group of 8-10. Also the odds of adds from a more populated server are very high, so fighting away from objectives is the best way to play if you want good fights, and don’t care for PPT.

Yeah, maybe I just have to learn where the real small scale skirmishers tend to gather and fight. I’m rather new to the game and from what I’ve seen so far tier1 is a major turn-off.

I’m on one of the servers that is expected to finish #1 gold league. Which basically means prime-time wvw queues, people nightcapping like that was fun (‘We’ have 24/7 coverage with time slots alloted to commanders pretty much around the clock), blobs the size of a small server
From what I can tell coverage is all that matters when it comes to points, so points are pointless to me anyway – except for the perks lol :<

(OT: Keep up the good work, your vids are really fun to watch!)

Bawi.9541:

Yeah, maybe I just have to learn where the real small scale skirmishers tend to gather and fight. I’m rather new to the game and from what I’ve seen so far tier1 is a major turn-off.

I’m on one of the servers that is expected to finish #1 gold league. Which basically means prime-time wvw queues, people nightcapping like that was fun (‘We’ have 24/7 coverage with time slots alloted to commanders pretty much around the clock), blobs the size of a small server
From what I can tell coverage is all that matters when it comes to points, so points are pointless to me anyway – except for the perks lol :<

(OT: Keep up the good work, your vids are really fun to watch!)

Thanks, I do what I can. Been working kitten trying new builds unsuccessfully so my lack of creativity puts me back in a standard condition build. Makes for good videos, but feels dirty to play. Against servers like JQ, if I don’t bring the strongest build, I find I don’t do well when I fight every-single-fight outnumbered while roaming.

Europe is different because there is only one primetime that is incredibly stacked (with the exception of the bottom ~3-5 servers there are queues everywhere). It has been like this for a very long time.
Guilds rely on pvt cc trains because it’s by far the most effective way to play outnumbered large scale. Fighting a spread out pug style just doesn’t work against server blobs. VII is the only top guild that actually plays this way.
From what i’ve seen there are few na guilds that play cc train as extreme or well as for example Votf.

Solo-/small scale roaming with a necro is still possible against every server, but can get very frustrating. It requires you to play more defensively and pull more than on an engi/mesmer/thief. Maybe play around with flesh wurm a bit.

A few weeks ago my guild small group (about 6 of us plus a few other PUG) ran into a Sea of Sorrows guild group of 10 that were doing a full condition wipe every 2 to 3 seconds.

Some of the t1 commanders that have shared in interviews or live streaming, or have hosted “classes” some nights have begun taking the perspective that enemy condition-appliers improve their own zerg. They are doing coordinated group condition-conversion.

My necro is my main, in that it has the most hours of all my characters. But I’ve stopped bothering with conditions anywhere except spvp. They are a ineffective mechanic in wvw, and much of world pve for that matter.

30 20 0 0 20, make sure to take terror, dhuumfire, and extended fear duration. Use death shroud into plague to single man turn the tide of the battle. Very fun build and i can usually make it in and out of the enemy zerg

Thor Rising.7850:

30 20 0 0 20, make sure to take terror, dhuumfire, and extended fear duration. Use death shroud into plague to single man turn the tide of the battle. Very fun build and i can usually make it in and out of the enemy zerg

I guess enemy zergs don’t use cripple and roots or strip stability wherever it is that you play. :P

I’m not saying i go in completely solo, and its hard as kitten to be killed in plague, just start running out in the last few seconds of plague and pop shroud. If they wasted cooldowns on you, you’re doing your job right.

Condimancer in wvw is near to its death because of condi-cleanse buffs to other classes. You will see that your conditions get cleansed in 1-2 secs in enemy zerg. Dhuumfire is nothing because it hits only 1 enemy, if they make it aoe then it’s ok. But if you try to play power(ofc pvt for wvw) you will do extremely low damage because of low base direct-damage of staff marks. An axe or dagger main hand is a bad choice in wvw because they don’t have aoe at all. (except retaliation of axe, but its limited to 5ticks only and they have to hit you) We need power-based new ranged aoe weapons first before switching to power necro in wvw. I think I’ll roll a celestial ele while waiting them to add power based aoe weapons -.-

Thor Rising.7850:

I’m not saying i go in completely solo, and its hard as kitten to be killed in plague, just start running out in the last few seconds of plague and pop shroud. If they wasted cooldowns on you, you’re doing your job right.

Sorry, I wasn’t trying to be a jerk. I think our definition of zerg might be different. I feel comfortable tanking up to around 8-10 players for a good amount of time by chaining death shroud/plague/death shroud. Any more than that from a coordinated group is a non-go since they will strip your stability and also chain snare and chain root you. You typically won’t make it out of that alive.

Also, I’m talking about being in an outnumbered situation here.