Guild Wars 2

The Guide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78orUhc5i54

Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBLhZ6kjGo5GsbTwzGgDHsgLYQXtAwCIuK2FHjSftdwNA-TZxHABE8AAYZ/hZPDAdXGAgDBAA

“So many wonderful poisons!”

Wow, it has been a while since I posted a guide on these forums. Goes to show, new builds are hard to come by these days. In any case, I made a new build for the fun of it and had quite a laugh playing it. Ruining Dragonhunter combos and messing up teams by playing with their perception of what they think is “safe”. And how do I do this? Poison cloud! Tons and tons of poison cloud!

Of course the odd Ranger/Shout Ele can ruin your combo but for the most part, just have fun and give out free poisons.

Check out the build and let me know what you think.

These are the changes I would make to your build. (Rabid or Carrion actually)

I’ve always liked the idea of a poisonmancer but its hard to choose putrid defense over flesh of the master. The changes I made I think add better burst damage overall.

TheDevice.2751:

These are the changes I would make to your build. (Rabid or Carrion actually)

I’ve always liked the idea of a poisonmancer but its hard to choose putrid defense over flesh of the master. The changes I made I think add better burst damage overall.

Carrion would definitely work but in PvP, you need a stun breaker, you need condi cleanse, you need cover condis (so your poison isn’t always the first to get stripped) and you need your condis to last longer than a few seconds to put pressure on anyone. In PvE and maybe even WvW you might be able to get away with running bone minions in a Raid party but for PvP, you need that slot for stun break, not to mention the cast time is just ripe for interruption. Not that I wouldn’t use it, I’m just saying I’ve kind of gone through the numbers and this is, so far, the best combination I have found.

I’ll definitely do a build update video if I find a better one though.

It pretty much looks like Corruptionmancer made bad on purpose. It’s a fun-build so who cares, unless you are having fun then that’s all that matters. But if one would actually point out what is wrong in this builds, it would be a loooong list.

Bierzgal.2341:

It pretty much looks like Corruptionmancer made bad on purpose. It’s a fun-build so who cares, unless you are having fun then that’s all that matters. But if one would actually point out what is wrong in this builds, it would be a loooong list.

Go ahead, let’s point out what’s wrong with the build so I can see if they are correct or not.

Huh, the theme costs the build it’s quality. The choices made are borderline terrible at times.

- Wanderers Amulet without Curses line is pretty much garbage. The build does not utilise the precision, which with Curses, turns into condition damage.
- The Rata Sum rune is an atrocious waste of slot. Useless precisios just to fit the poison theme.
- Death Magic is a bad choice and is not worth slotting over Soul Reaping/Curses just so the minions from Rise can go “boom, poison, haha”.
- Taking the signet trait just for one signet is a waste.
- Taking the shout trait for only one shout is a waste (again, just to support the poison theme).
- Sigil of Rage… another wasted slot. And yes the reason you gave in the video is terrible.

And that’s like… half of it. This build is just overall bad, sorry. But as I said, if it’s a theme-build that someone is having for fun then who cares if it’s good or bad untill one is having fun with it.

Bierzgal.2341:

Huh, the theme costs the build it’s quality. The choices made are borderline terrible at times.

What would be your version of the build that would improve it’s quality then? Because what I have done, I have done through testing in practical situations. I am in Diamond at the moment and most of that was whilst I was playing this build. A bit of it was me playing my Rifle Engie (yea, you heard me right, RIFLE ENGIE) so you might think I made this build in a day and I’m trying to cash in on dumb people, but I actually put a lot of thought and time dying over and over again, to make this build.

Bierzgal.2341:

- Wanderers Amulet without Curses line is pretty much garbage. The build does not utilise the precision, which with Curses, turns into condition damage.

Precision isn’t the only stat on the Wanderer’s amulet you know, there’s toughness, condition damage, and the most important one of all, Expertise. Expertise is the main reason why I’m using Wanderer’s. But then you might say, use Viper’s and at that I’ll point you back to the toughness on Wanderer’s. You are EXTREMELY squishy with Viper’s, taking it against the current meta is just asking for it.
That said, if you’re able to rotate and position yourself so that you don’t get curb stomped 9 times out of 10 then you can probably make Viper’s work.

Bierzgal.2341:

- The Rata Sum rune is an atrocious waste of slot. Useless precisios just to fit the poison theme.

Lol, you keep sounding like you think I didn’t put any thought into this.

I was using Rune of Thorns initially, but then I thought, “isn’t there a rune set that gives me another poison cloud” and then I found it and used it and saw the situations where it shined. In general, having multiple sources that allow you to do what you want to do, makes it harder for people to counter you. By simply having Rune of Rata Sum, I increase my uptime/chance of poison cloud and point control (if I’m standing on a point when it procs) and reduce the effectiveness of classes with good cleansing.

Bierzgal.2341:

- Death Magic is a bad choice and is not worth slotting over Soul Reaping/Curses just so the minions from Rise can go “boom, poison, haha”.

Tell us why Soul Reaping and/or Curses would be better compared to Death Magic. Because I’ve tried Soul Reaping, and I’ve tried Curses, there’s nothing in there that benefits what I’m trying to do in a significant enough way that would make me choose it over Death Magic. So if you would, tell me your opinion on why Soul Reaping or Curses would be better.

Bierzgal.2341:

- Taking the signet trait just for one signet is a waste.

What else should I put there then if I have a signet then? I think it is better to enhance what you have for the situations where they may be useful than to operate with the notion that you have to have ALL THE SIGNETS in order to use the signet trait. I don’t believe in that.

Bierzgal.2341:

- Taking the shout trait for only one shout is a waste (again, just to support the poison theme).

I wasn’t using the shout trait initially. But then I noticed it’s usefulness for increasing the uptime on my minions because they (1) keeping me alive because the minions take 33% of the damage dealt to me and they take my conditions from me (Death Magic trait btw) and (2) they can explode more often.

Bierzgal.2341:

- Sigil of Rage… another wasted slot. And yes the reason you gave in the video is terrible.

You know, I also did say you can swap it for anything you’d like right? That choice is just my personal choice. I mention the benefits of having it but it’s still a choice you can change if you play the build. I just advice trying Sigil of Rage first before you shove it to one side. There have been several situations where I used my cooldowns, having nothing left and the target cleanses everything only for my Sigil of Rage procs and I go into a blitz, applying 9 stacks of bleed, 2 stacks of poison, cripple and slap 5 torment on there, in the span of those 3 seconds. And because the target has used their cooldowns to cleanse, I just won the fight by virtue of that sigil alone.

Bierzgal.2341:

And that’s like… half of it. This build is just overall bad, sorry. But as I said, if it’s a theme-build that someone is having for fun then who cares if it’s good or bad untill one is having fun with it.

You think it’s bad but it’s not as bad as you think. It has it’s flaws, yes, but they aren’t the things that you mention. In fact, I’ve already mentioned it’s flaws in the video.
Check the Pros and Cons section if you haven’t already.

Aaaaand that’s pretty much why I did not really want to elaborate before. You must understand that if anyone that has atleast a decent idea of how Necromancer works in sPvP mechanic/build-wise it would be very obvious why the build is subpar. For me also, the grass is green and the sky is blue. I don’t really feel like discussing the obvious. It’s nice that you want to uphold this conversation but I don’t feel the need to continue. I stated the obvious, if you really did not understand the points I made then you will not understand any further ones too. When it comes to class builds there are users and there are, in addition, builders. Not everyone needs to be the latter. Hell, you want me to explain why Curses would be better with the Wanderer Amulet? Like… really, you want me to explain the absolute only and sole reason why a Necro would ever slot this amulet in sPvP? That itself literally proves in my eyes that further conversation is pointless.

It’s nice that you made your own build and having fun with it. Belive it or not, this fact hold actual value. It won’t change that the build is mediocre at best tho. It’s just how things are. Necro is not in the greatest spot in sPvP right now even with meta builds. Diamond or not (let’s assume for a second that’s something hard to achieve in this game) I’m pretty sure you did not carry the team with that build.

Plus, I never said that ths build is unplayable. It’s just far worse in comparson to those that are actually good at the moment.

Over and out.

Bierzgal.2341:

Aaaaand that’s pretty much why I did not really want to elaborate before. You must understand that if anyone that has atleast a decent idea of how Necromancer works in sPvP mechanic/build-wise it would be very obvious why the build is subpar. For me also, the grass is green and the sky is blue. I don’t really feel like discussing the obvious. It’s nice that you want to uphold this conversation but I don’t feel the need to continue. I stated the obvious, if you really did not understand the points I made then you will not understand any further ones too. When it comes to class builds there are users and there are, in addition, builders. Not everyone needs to be the latter. Hell, you want me to explain why Curses would be better with the Wanderer Amulet? Like… really, you want me to explain the absolute only and sole reason why a Necro would ever slot this amulet in sPvP? That itself literally proves in my eyes that further conversation is pointless.

It’s nice that you made your own build and having fun with it. Belive it or not, this fact hold actual value. It won’t change that the build is mediocre at best tho. It’s just how things are. Necro is not in the greatest spot in sPvP right now even with meta builds. Diamond or not (let’s assume for a second that’s something hard to achieve in this game) I’m pretty sure you did not carry the team with that build.

Plus, I never said that ths build is unplayable. It’s just far worse in comparson to those that are actually good at the moment.

Over and out.

It’s sad that you would not want to explain why curses would be better than Death Magic because it is not just me that would benefit from you explaining it but everyone else who decides to come and read why this build is any good. And I cannot make this build better if you’re not willing to play devil’s advocate to try and prove your points.
I personally know for a fact how good Curses is. I’ve used it in other builds where in I also use Wanderer’s amulet (you can check out my other recent video on the necro to see this), I’ve used it even when people said “curses sucks”, and the build I use it in, I think is better than this one but, this Poison build is this Poison build and that build is THAT build.

I tend to be very fair with myself when it comes to how good a build is. I know for a fact that this build isn’t good in all 1v1s, I have other builds that can do that, I know for a fact that this build can’t fight off point, I have shown other builds that can do that also. This build isn’t trying to be the best build ever, it’s just trying to be A BUILD that’s pretty good at what it does. And I can assure you that it is pretty good at what it does.

And yea, this build has the potential to carry if played well. You may think not, but I actually know it can.

i use to play with this concept long ago and its nice especially the CPC utility
death magic line offer you only 10% dmg reduction mainly combine with another 10% if chill. but other trait are subpar as you got no minions out side of elite and 1 utility which you cant command to explode on the right moment . so they can be juke around like disengage and they follow the enemy who teleport to you till they come.

you dont have much condi cleanse only with 1 signet and healing skill which is easy to cc
thus i would drop spite and take curses for another condi cleanse and more bleed stacks or soul for more defense with protection and life force abilities

also you marks are now blockable so no 1v1 for you pretty much

watch you video and you hardly did that much poison stacking versus other necro builds so why to focus only on 1 condition where necro got almost all of them to stack around …..

Really a pity that it seems not possible to have a constructive discussion about builds these days. People coming and saying “Ey your build sucks kitten but because i am such a smart boy i am not telling you why”. I can´t take them seriously and the OP should also not to, smells like trolling.

messiah.1908:

i use to play with this concept long ago and its nice especially the CPC utility
death magic line offer you only 10% dmg reduction mainly combine with another 10% if chill. but other trait are subpar as you got no minions out side of elite and 1 utility which you cant command to explode on the right moment . so they can be juke around like disengage and they follow the enemy who teleport to you till they come.

you dont have much condi cleanse only with 1 signet and healing skill which is easy to cc
thus i would drop spite and take curses for another condi cleanse and more bleed stacks or soul for more defense with protection and life force abilities

also you marks are now blockable so no 1v1 for you pretty much

watch you video and you hardly did that much poison stacking versus other necro builds so why to focus only on 1 condition where necro got almost all of them to stack around …..

I understand all that, but, it’s funny cos I just deleted a video that shows me fighting a 2v2 against a necro and because of the way I timed my skills, I was able to win that 2v2 which could have become a 2v3. The necro even condi bursted me once and my 10 minions took ALL my conditions.

And I’m not just stacking one condition. This build can stack and does stack other conditions. Understand that this build is basically just a basic condi necro with poison stacking raised to the power of 10. If you play it like it only stacks 1 condition then you’ll definitely lose, but if you play it like any other condi build, with the ability to burst down targets with large stacks of poison (I’ve actually gone over 25 stacks of poison on someone once and I was like… “I thought that wasn’t possible!”), then you would almost always win. I even specifically use Spite so that a player can generate more cover conditions.

You are wrong about condi removals. You actually have 5 condi removals, Staff #4, Plague Signet, Shrouded Removal (Death magic Adept), Necromantic Corruption (death magic Master trait) when you have minions and Consume conditions. All the necro heal skills can be easily interrupted, if I based my choice on whether or not a necro heal can be easily interrupted, I’d be strangled for choice. Just go look at the necro heal cast times and tell me if any of them cast faster than an interrupt.

And yes, not having unblockable marks can be a problem in 1v1s, that’s why I try to stick to 1v1s I can win. And tend to favour teams fights more than anything else.

I was trying to play recently and I kept getting lag. So as of right now, i can’t record because of lag. I would have put out a video by now explaining the good things the build can do.

mordran.4750:

Really a pity that it seems not possible to have a constructive discussion about builds these days. People coming and saying “Ey your build sucks kitten but because i am such a smart boy i am not telling you why”. I can´t take them seriously and the OP should also not to, smells like trolling.

Thanks, all you can do is try to encourage people to discuss what they think is right so you can look for things you may not have thought of. But if people want to be smug then, that’s their cup of tea. I don’t really care, I’m just here to help and increase knowledge.

If I may, I would suggest you drop Spite and go for Curses. I understand the reasons you go with Spite (namely cover condis, signet trait and some damage) but you can get those from Curses as well.

With Curses you have a free condi transfer which is by all means is still useful; you may not be in your staff, you may be in Shroud, you may not want to blow your single stun break etc. (Plague Sending). You may have more corruption for more cover condis and pressure (Path of Corruption), or better access to your heal and poison cloud as well which results in more poison and weakness uptime (Master of Corruption). On Grandmaster line, you may have even more weakness uptime (Weakening Shroud) or longer duration for your poison (Lingering Curses), both of them enhance what you want to do as a poisonmancer. You also get some hefty condition damage, bleed duration, precision and bleed on crit to go with that and your amulet. Since you don’t have Soul Reaping, you wouldn’t be staying in Shroud for too long anyway, which means Furious Demise has a big effect on your Shroud rotations. Lastly, you may use Sigil of Fraility and even Suffer instead of Plague Signet if you miss the cover condis you get from Spite (namely Vulnurability and single target Chill from Chill of Death).

As for elite skill, I would still go with Chilled to the Bone. Lich Form has too much of a cooldown, and although it can be a pretty good condi bomb with 4th skill, you dont get to use it very often. Chilled to the Bone has a much shorter cooldown, and shorter still with your trait. It is true that it has a long cast time, but your setup as it is allow for some combos to alleviate some of the problems: namely Sigil of Rage and Flesh Wurm. In the tips and tricks section of your video you already showed a combo with Wurm, you could do the same with channeling shout first and teleporting. Worst case scenerio is you become interrupted in which to do so they usually have to be in range which is what you want, or they just dodge out which is also not that bad as they already have Weakness they cant easily get rid off – so they won’t be dodging again any time soon.

As a final note, I would suggest a different rune for the same reason I suggested a different elite. The sixth bonus has a too large of a cooldown, and aside from condi duration precision doesn’t really help you a lot. There are a lot of runes you can choose, but I would say that the new Nightmare runes might be interesting with Chilled to the Bone. Moreover, Rune of Thorns is also a good choice as you tried, Grenth can be good for some extra chill. Even Afflicted can be interesting as you yourself can just go in as a suicide bomber. All of those have condition duration and condition damage you can use – and 6th effects that are much shorter on cooldown and controllable.

Pregnantman.8259:

If I may, I would suggest you drop Spite and go for Curses. I understand the reasons you go with Spite (namely cover condis, signet trait and some damage) but you can get those from Curses as well.

With Curses you have a free condi transfer which is by all means is still useful; you may not be in your staff, you may be in Shroud, you may not want to blow your single stun break etc. (Plague Sending). You may have more corruption for more cover condis and pressure (Path of Corruption), or better access to your heal and poison cloud as well which results in more poison and weakness uptime (Master of Corruption). On Grandmaster line, you may have even more weakness uptime (Weakening Shroud) or longer duration for your poison (Lingering Curses), both of them enhance what you want to do as a poisonmancer. You also get some hefty condition damage, bleed duration, precision and bleed on crit to go with that and your amulet. Since you don’t have Soul Reaping, you wouldn’t be staying in Shroud for too long anyway, which means Furious Demise has a big effect on your Shroud rotations. Lastly, you may use Sigil of Fraility and even Suffer instead of Plague Signet if you miss the cover condis you get from Spite (namely Vulnurability and single target Chill from Chill of Death).

I will give your suggestions a try. I actually didn’t consider trying Chilled to the Bone at all because I couldn’t find any benefit to it but now I think there is, so I’ll give it a try. Alongside, giving Viper’s a try even though I said it’s a crazy man’s choice. I realized, I am a crazy man so…. VIPER’S WOOP!

So after some testing here are my results:
- Viper’s is, as predicted, very powerful but extremely squish.
- Curses is good for the extra transfer and the lower cooldown on heal and poison cloud but cover condis are still quite needed, so I’d still pick Spite.
- Chilled to the bone is nice for the stab but outside of that, I’m not dropping bodies! I want to drop bodies dargnabbit!!!

Resolution: I may pick curses for certain scenarios. Like when there are lots of Dragonhunters on the other team because of the short cooldown of Corrosive. And Viper’s will be good if you have a healer in your team, and you can maintain, near 50% damage reduction (through, Rise, Putrid Defence, Weakness and Cold Shoulder) but it is nearly impossible to predict when you will get bursted down so, it’s very hard to use but fun nonetheless.

Also, full gameplay with commentary will be posted soon so you can see my suckage and my triumphs.

I finally got the gameplay of this build with commentary done after all these weeks.

Check it out here if you’re interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbvinzTt3Vc

and forgive the screen aspect ratio. I recorded this when I was testing out some new recording tools.

I was sceptical at first, but after I watched your video I felt an itch I wanted to satisfy.
So I took your build and went into WvW, where I mostly solo roam.

And it’s fun.

Not only that, thanks to the burst application of poison I can solo cap camps easier than I used to with the generic Scepter build (even though Dhuumfire Reaper + Epidemic is still king of that). I’m still working out some kinks for a more personalized build and I still have to try the build in zergs even though I don’t think it can beat the Epidemic build.

CastIron.7364:

I was sceptical at first, but after I watched your video I felt an itch I wanted to satisfy.
So I took your build and went into WvW, where I mostly solo roam.

And it’s fun.

Not only that, thanks to the burst application of poison I can solo cap camps easier than I used to with the generic Scepter build (even though Dhuumfire Reaper + Epidemic is still king of that). I’m still working out some kinks for a more personalized build and I still have to try the build in zergs even though I don’t think it can beat the Epidemic build.

Awesome! You could try slapping epidemic on your bar, replacing the bone minions or the stun break maybe?

CastIron.7364:

I was sceptical at first, but after I watched your video I felt an itch I wanted to satisfy.
So I took your build and went into WvW, where I mostly solo roam.

And it’s fun.

Not only that, thanks to the burst application of poison I can solo cap camps easier than I used to with the generic Scepter build (even though Dhuumfire Reaper + Epidemic is still king of that). I’m still working out some kinks for a more personalized build and I still have to try the build in zergs even though I don’t think it can beat the Epidemic build.

What armor & weapon stats do you use then?

I’m also a WvW fanatic and I’m looking for a decent roaming build (mine are outdated , pre-HoT even).