Conditionmancer Zerg V Zerg?
They are only unblockable.
Leaving super organized zergs aside (because they are rare, and the only way to beat one is with another one), condition removal is much less prevalent than everyone likes to say. People in your average zerg might have a lot of AoE condition removal, but they rarely are using it in timed bursts to help allies; they save it until its their skin on the line. Which means Epidemic can still hit like a truck, and I have had it hit hard very often. Corrupt boon is even easier, because all you need to do is target a guardian, and you know for a fact that at some point he is going to throw out a ton of boons, and all you need to do is corrupt them to practically guarantee a down.
People overplay the condition removal. Reality is you can run condition necros just fine in WvW, just realize that you aren’t going to be hitting perfect Epidemics left and right (even hitting 5-10 bleeds every time epidemic is up is increasing your damage quite a bit).
The main features of zvz are aoe cc, aoe damage and lag. GW2 has no diminishing returns or CC immunities other than stability and few escapes. So even though CC are not that long in duration they can be endlessly chained. This is especially a problem for necros defensively because they are also slow. Offensively epidemic is ok for smaller scale but not so much zvz anymore. As pointed out conditions are cleared rapidly. Powermancer is not generally good for zvz except for lich form but gawd do they need to make that guy smaller. So I still feel the best a necro can do for zvz is a marks/terror build that contributes to damage and cc and you might as well go condition then.
I’m with Bhawb. Organized, well played Zergs you may encounter efficient condition removal, but by and large people seem too concerned with killing their target to pay much attention to the conditions they’ve picked up or they blow their removal too early. I often marvel at how long conditions are allowed to tick on multiple opponents.
even hitting 5-10 bleeds every time epidemic is up is increasing your damage quite a bit
When you epidemic 10 stacks then by “quite a bit” you of course mean “more than all your other skills combined”, even more so when you epidemic a corrupted guardian.
The main features of zvz are aoe cc, aoe damage and lag.
There is no lag if you reduce your graphics to “best performance”, even with a slow pc.
So I still feel the best a necro can do for zvz is a marks/terror build that contributes to damage and cc and you might as well go condition then.
Yes to marks/terror. But “might as well”? That combo has conditions written all over it.
So yeah, imo conditions>power in zerg battles.
90% of the time I run with an organized wvw guild, I got condi build and run well of corruption, epidemic then either well of suffering/spectral wall/well of darkness.
It’s not all about damage, even tho I still deal loads if I do it right.
All you wanna do is drop your wells whereever the enemy is stacking, if they’re an unorganized zerg then they will be wiped within seconds anyway, but if it’s a guild then you look for the opportunity to drop your wells on them whenever they’re grouped up and out of position or stacking for heals/might. Well of corruption will already do alot of work and then you land ur staff rotation as well and if you’re lucky you might get a good epidemic also.
What you wanna do is overwhelm your enemies with conditions and obviously run plague in your build (with the chilling darkness trait ), when you pop plague you follow the enemies around keeping 5 targets around you chilled/blinded/poisoned/bleeding. Now you’d want your allies to drop aoe on your spot and down/finish them.
In wvw you always see slackers falling a bit behind, you wanna use scepter 2 and staff 3/5 on them and separate them (along guardian line of warding etc). Necros are extremely effective.
We usually have 3-4 necros popping plagues at the same time, I can only imagine how annoying that can be.
Also staff/wells are amazing for pressuring a certain point like keep walls or holding the stairs at the lords room in towers. Crazy damage, and when your not moving around and kiting or whatever, it’s way easier to land your epidemic, and those numbers are just amazing to see. (same with casting epidmic on enemy golems/keep lords when there’s enemies with them, usually 5 people get downed instantly)
Power is craaaaaaap in wvw, leave that to other professions.
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(edited by Aphix.9846)
It’s not all bad. There are times when you can really melt people, but there are plenty of situations when you will be so bad, that you will think the game is still in alpha.
WvW means PvDoor, or at least PvSiege, and a conditionmancer is truly worthless when comes time to take down an arrowcart.
Keeping dots up is rather frustrating. It doesn’t take any organized group play to shut you down either. A ranger under fire pops his water field heal. A shouts guard always pops shouts. Every ele, worth his salt, does an aoe cleanse just by attuning to water. Thieves just need to stealth. They did nerf engineers, but I guess this next patch might buff them in the cleanse department.
All in all, you won’t be impressing anybody until the second or third time you cast Mark of Blood on someone. By that time, they will be out of cleanses and at your mercy, and by then you probably will want to heap some misery onto anyone you can.
The only way to play the engineer is to exploit it.
Playing the engineer “as intended” is simply not viable.
Playing the engineer “as intended” is simply not viable.
Aphix.9846 pretty much mentions most of the hybridisation you should be looking at when things don’t work as intended, maybe the enemy isn’t the glass-spec kitten dps crowd and has got their act together enough to keep you ineffective.
We’ve all got our preferred problem solvers for ‘most cases’ but be prepared to work outside them once in a while.
Sometimes you get away easy with just a BIP, staff 2 through 5 volley and epidemic, then get to watch a bunch of cretins run around screaming and eventually ‘lol! bags!’… then there are some encounters where you’re best to leverage off combo-fields, wells and keep them locked down with things like chill, blindness and vulnerabilities so your group can rip them up.
Heck, I even re-write on the fly my utility load-out and some specs just running alone or in a havoc group as its totally different to what I roll with open field, which is also, different again to what I use in a keep defence/offence situation.
Pinot Noir (Necromancer) Pinot Blanc (Warrior)
KnT Blackgate
KnT Blackgate
They are only unblockable.
Leaving super organized zergs aside (because they are rare, and the only way to beat one is with another one), condition removal is much less prevalent than everyone likes to say. People in your average zerg might have a lot of AoE condition removal, but they rarely are using it in timed bursts to help allies; they save it until its their skin on the line. Which means Epidemic can still hit like a truck, and I have had it hit hard very often. Corrupt boon is even easier, because all you need to do is target a guardian, and you know for a fact that at some point he is going to throw out a ton of boons, and all you need to do is corrupt them to practically guarantee a down.
People overplay the condition removal. Reality is you can run condition necros just fine in WvW, just realize that you aren’t going to be hitting perfect Epidemics left and right (even hitting 5-10 bleeds every time epidemic is up is increasing your damage quite a bit).
Precisely!
As a DoT Necromancer, I LIVE for the Epidemic on zergs. And when I see an enemy Guardian hit “Save Yourselves!”, my pants get tight.
Necros play a quintessential role in any tactical zerg vs. zerg situation – especially condition-mancers (marks, wells, plague-form). If you’re going to do larger battles, I highly recommend giving wells a try (targetted ones, at that) and have a staff ready.
Necros should not be underestimated in these sorts of battles. My prediction is a lot more will be showing up after the confusion nerf.
Havok Legion [HL]
Fort Aspenwood
Fort Aspenwood
If nothing else, Conditionmancer is a ton of fun. Nuking an entire zerg while they stack is juicy.
Hey, um, which way to the outhouse?
As staff conditions, be careful with those wells. One of your greatest strengths is not being noticed as you drop mark of blood over and over.
Start dropping wells, and people are going to scatter.
The only way to play the engineer is to exploit it.
Playing the engineer “as intended” is simply not viable.
Playing the engineer “as intended” is simply not viable.
Yep, my wvw build is this now and I’ve even been using it in spvp.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7djMaV7Jbib07JApHPfN0RFCm6h5pfOA
If nothing else, Conditionmancer is a ton of fun. Nuking an entire zerg while they stack is juicy.
Whenever you see someone take a header from your DoTs, and people start to rez him, nail him with an Epidemic…it’s hilarious to watch people scatter because their own downed teammate “infected” them.
Conditionmancers are absolutely effective in zergs. Time an epidemic right (especially if you have some confusion specced friends) and you can turn the tide of a close zerg fight by making a lot of enemy players run for cover. OR if you can find the enemy commander and blast them with a corrupt boon and watch them drop.
The only thing you need to watch is picking the right targets to start loading up with conditions. Don’t pick a Guardian, Ele, or another Necromancer. Mesmers and warriors are great targets, as are any pets or minions.
You can also give a lot of support too, if played well. Putrid and Reaper’s Mark can do a lot of good, and Plague form if amazing for reducing enemy damage.
Oh yeah, like Roe said, find the nearest Ranger, then find his pet, and stack that thing to the sky with conditions and start jamming your Epidemic button.
I’m glad there is a good conversation going on about this.
I do run with an organized Zerg in tier 1 (so almost all combat is organized very well), and currently I run staff with well of corruption and suffering to tag the enemy Zerg. I never thought to stack up a pet and epidemic, that’s great! Do enemy pets ever catch any of the boons the group puts off? Would it be worth to tag one with a corrupt boon before epidemic?
Also, we run very organized plague rotation with chill, and that is actually the main role of necros in our guild. The rest is kinda up to us, I just get nervous that blood is power, corrupt, and epidemic isn’t nearly ad effective as it may seem being that I couldn’t possibly cycle through all the enemies it affected and see if they had been cleansed.
Two additional thoughts though.
A. People probably burn their condition cleanse early on with a heal during the initial push.
B. One stack of bleed might not be scary enough to want a cleanse. Where as maybe it is more effective to epidemic with one stack of blood is power rather than a bunch of conditions which would almost instantly trigger a cleanse.
(edited by EvenFlow.5180)
90% of the time I run with an organized wvw guild, I got condi build and run well of corruption, epidemic then either well of suffering/spectral wall/well of darkness.
It’s not all about damage, even tho I still deal loads if I do it right.
All you wanna do is drop your wells whereever the enemy is stacking, if they’re an unorganized zerg then they will be wiped within seconds anyway, but if it’s a guild then you look for the opportunity to drop your wells on them whenever they’re grouped up and out of position or stacking for heals/might. Well of corruption will already do alot of work and then you land ur staff rotation as well and if you’re lucky you might get a good epidemic also.
What you wanna do is overwhelm your enemies with conditions and obviously run plague in your build (with the chilling darkness trait ), when you pop plague you follow the enemies around keeping 5 targets around you chilled/blinded/poisoned/bleeding. Now you’d want your allies to drop aoe on your spot and down/finish them.
In wvw you always see slackers falling a bit behind, you wanna use scepter 2 and staff 3/5 on them and separate them (along guardian line of warding etc). Necros are extremely effective.
We usually have 3-4 necros popping plagues at the same time, I can only imagine how annoying that can be.Also staff/wells are amazing for pressuring a certain point like keep walls or holding the stairs at the lords room in towers. Crazy damage, and when your not moving around and kiting or whatever, it’s way easier to land your epidemic, and those numbers are just amazing to see. (same with casting epidmic on enemy golems/keep lords when there’s enemies with them, usually 5 people get downed instantly)
Power is craaaaaaap in wvw, leave that to other professions.
Pretty much exactly this would be my response as well.
All add to it bay saying that while your enemies can remove conditions most can not not do so over and over in rapid succession. So once they are hit with 1-2 conditions types from you, or from someone else on your team, they may try and remove conditions, at which point its open game. Bottom line, you can drop more conditions more quickly than they can remove them.
Power is crap for the most part, but I still run Dagger/Dagger as my secondary for the times when I do need focused damage. I trait for the permanent 25% speed boost which is really important in WvW and if I can hit my targets with conditions (especially wells) then my daggers are actually fairly effective. Mostly they are used on NPCs and not players, but every so often I find myself using the #2, 3, 4, 5 skills since they are range, and then swapping back over to staff.
Penny Royalty – Level 80 Guardian
Raingarde – Level 80 Necromancer
Raingarde – Level 80 Necromancer
Conditionmancer is very effective in large skirmish style situations, where you kind of a surging line of battle going back and forth, and a tentative no man’s land in the middle with people afraid to push. You can really force the line back with conditions, and spreading them.
But more organized stacking and bombing zerg fights, conditions often don’t have time to even do anything. One side crashes into another, people are blowing up instant direct damage AoE’s and one side is often decimated and downed largely in 5-8 seconds. At that point, I think wells become far more important than conditions, but conditionmancers can make use of them too.
I’m glad there is a good conversation going on about this.
I do run with an organized Zerg in tier 1 (so almost all combat is organized very well), and currently I run staff with well of corruption and suffering to tag the enemy Zerg. I never thought to stack up a pet and epidemic, that’s great! Do enemy pets ever catch any of the boons the group puts off? Would it be worth to tag one with a corrupt boon before epidemic?
Also, we run very organized plague rotation with chill, and that is actually the main role of necros in our guild. The rest is kinda up to us, I just get nervous that blood is power, corrupt, and epidemic isn’t nearly ad effective as it may seem being that I couldn’t possibly cycle through all the enemies it affected and see if they had been cleansed.
Two additional thoughts though.
A. People probably burn their condition cleanse early on with a heal during the initial push.
B. One stack of bleed might not be scary enough to want a cleanse. Where as maybe it is more effective to epidemic with one stack of blood is power rather than a bunch of conditions which would almost instantly trigger a cleanse.
If at all possible, form parties with other people in your guild who are condition builds, or at the very least one other person. If you target classes with not much condition cleansing, you can easily overload it and Epidemic off. If you want to get really fancy, pair with someone that can burst conditions onto a target, and have them call out every time they are going to burst. With decent timing, your Epidemic will go off pretty quickly and the person won’t have had enough time to really react.
That is the exact same build I use, and it is spectacular! I always feel like I had an impact on every battle I was in.
I also use a build very similar, although I switch out hemophilia for weakening shroud.
Sabetha Sylvanshade, Sylvari Necromancer
Beatrice The Bloody, Norn Engineer
Gate of Madness
Beatrice The Bloody, Norn Engineer
Gate of Madness
If you take terror you can have some fun fear spiking people out. A lot of people neglect bringing heavy condition removal in WvW and in long zerg fights you can wear them down and force their heal skill to be on constant cooldown. You are never going to 100 to 0 burst someone with a condition build, but you can force their zerg to retreat by keeping them at low hp.