Guild Wars 2

So I haven’t done tpvp only spvp(limited), wvw, pve, and dungeons, so I haven’t felt Necromancers to be underpowered but I don’t know much about other classes either. I have definitely noticed a lot of bugs with certain skills/traits and tooltip, etc… but it hasn’t made me feel underpowered yet. Really wish they fix corrupt boon though.

Is there data out there comparing certain classes in terms of hard numbers proving that our lets say condition damage is not the best if we spec that way?

For example, If I pick necromancer and put 30pts in curses and have all condition damage gear where i have lets say around 1350 condition damage. With scepter skill #1, I do this much bleed damage/poison damage compared to lets say engineer(been reading that engineers do more condition damage than necros which I think sucks since I picked necro because I thought I’d do the most DOTs) Do they have a skill that can spam condition damage better than us? Consider both play style and absolute damage numbers with cooldowns, etc?

I’ve been reading a lot of claims but I haven’t seen any real data and play style explained. If there is already a post on this please direct me to the comparison data. First time playing a DOT based “tank” class so I’m not sure how everything worked in GW1.

BTW, I think death shroud should wipe all conditions and make us immune to conditions since we can’t see thekittenconditions in the first place that means it doesn’t exist right?

Thanks!

Yea i play Engineer and Necro. Engineers have a way easier time stacking bleeds,poison, and confusion. All aoe and do decent damage.

What I read that, upon reading, made me stop immediately.

“So I haven’t done tpvp only spvp(limited), wvw, pve, and dungeons, so I haven’t felt Necromancers to be underpowered but I don’t know much about other classes either.”

Please, for the sake of the Necro community, if you’re going to post about our numbers vs (insert profession here), have a working and experiential knowledge of how we stack up in PvP with various builds, and that of other classes.

It’d help you, and the rest of us. Thanks.

Anomaly, that’s why you read the rest of the post. The original poster isn’t providing data, they are asking if there is any data available. In other words, they want to see hard evidence that proves Necromancers are underpowered.

Now granted, there is evidence out there if someone was to search, but still if it was consolidated into a nice, neat presentation, that would be what the OP is looking for. All they stated was that they didn’t -feel- underpowered because they haven’t played any other classes. It kind of helps if you read an entire post before you bash, trash and or blatantly disagree with it.

No class does more damage with their conditions than others outside of traits as the damage conditions do are a set formula across all classes.
Bleeds are 2.5 + 1/2 your level + 5% of your condition damage stacks intensity
Burning is 4.1 + level + 25% of condition damage stacks duration
Poison is level + 10% of condition damage stacks duration
Confusion is 25 + level + 7.5% condition damage per ability stacks intensity

So you can see from that confusion is the highest damaging ability assuming you can stack it and the enemy is attacking. This gives mesmers and engys a good leg up as the only 2 classes that can reliably apply it.
Burning is the biggest scaling and base damage condition but it doesnt stack in intensity only in length. Engies, guardians and eles (i think) are the big ones here.
Poison has the lowest burst damage but the second highest scaling. Rangers, thieves and necros are the big users here.

Then you have bleeds. These are the big thing normally associated with conditions and the tricky one because while everyone does the same damage per bleed the duration and the stack rate are different per class and should be the grounds for comparison.

Rangers can stack bleeds faster on a single target than anyone else with a shortbow but they are short duration with no ways of increasing the duration outside of passive trait line bonuses. Their shortbow auto attack also does a lot more damage than the bleed causing auto attacks of other classes (warrior sword, necro scepter, engie pistol), can be traited to pierce and they also proc bleeds on crit while have a large uptime on fury as well as the ability to get large stacks of might to boost it.

Engineers can bleed with piercing attacks when specced as well as apply many conditions in AoE with kits and have access to many sources of fury (for proccing bleeds and burns on crits) and might through elixirs. Offhand pistol can also place heavy burns, mainhand pistol confuses grenades and bombs can vulnerability. Condition engies are difficult to look at as their is so many different combinations of different conditions they can apply.

Mesmers have fantastic condition builds with liberal amounts of confusion and the fact that all of their condition attacks are not only random conditions but also random boons (chaos armor, chaos storm, winds of chaos) this means they can end up with sizeable might stacks to boost condition damage. They also tend to use the phantasmal duelist who can stack a bleed on crit with a 8 hitting attack that has perma fury.

Unsure on theif/warrior/guardian condition builds other than the heavy focus on burns from the guardians.

Then we have the necros. No access to might and fury outside of traiting for death shroud (which then stops us applying new conditions) however we have the ability to apply the highest amount of AoE bleeds and the longest duration single target bleeds (that can then be spread to other targets via epidemic) but the longest time to get these bleeds up. We also have the most abilities to control enemy conditions in the game. Dagger 4 transfers, plague signet transfers (and would be awesome if it actually took them off allies like its supposed to), staff 4 transfers, consume conditions is one of the lowest cooldown condition removals.

TL:DR all classes do the same damage per condition stack so you have to look at how rapidly stacks are applied, the different types of conditions applied, AoE vs non AoE, the duration of bleeds etc to determine the higher damage.

Personal opinion is that while necros do the highest total condition damage out of other classes with their huge duration bleeds (your able to get scepter auto attack to 12-13s… blood is power can bleed for almost a minute) other classes are more bursty with their conditions with faster stacking short duration bleeds, short duration burns and poisons, and the almighty confusion as well as we have no reliable access to might or fury on our own to increase our condition damage or our bleed on crit application. We also scale the worst with increases to power as our scepter attacks do the least direct damage per hit.

Thanks Lama for the detailed explanation. That helps a lot.

I was going to write out this long drawn out response of points and such for response to the above said post, but its too late for that and in most cases i think people will just want the TL:DR response anyhow.

Basically… everyone can stack bleeds really fast, and if not bleeds they can burst out a bunch of conditions (not everyone, but a lot if they are specced for it). This being said… in sPvP time is the underlying factor. Most fights are burst fights… the only time a condition based necro will shine is when he has lots of uptime to do his thing. Between really long cast times and horrible stacking speed… a theif or ranger can come by and just burst you down way before you can put out that insane bleed damage.

I could just be a crappy sPvP player, but imo I been in the mists all night and from all the specs I have run, the conditions was fun… but only effective when I was left to do my thing. It was really support dependant, but if you are solo… well you can get steam rolled real easy (and not by multiple players). I had a knack for running into these guardian/theif/engineer/ranger guys who would use multiple knock around moves in succession virtually making it near impossible to use scepter or cast something. The thief more in the lines of dissappearing and going in and out of combat a lot. Either way, in the end being able to do serious damage with a bleed is useless if you cant get them on an opponent fast enough, much less be able to apply them in the first place.

Like I said it could just be me, or maybe perhaps people see necro and think “free kill” all focus now… dead.

oh yeah, I almost forgot. To the OP, as for dps in any other regards for our necro class vs others… PvE is faceroll for me… I have solo’d mostly everything on my way up to 80. I been playing since release and I am only at 72, but not in a rush to hit 80. Just been enjoying the ride and anywhere I go stuff dies… WvW is awesome in a group… and well I just had a small rant of some of my sPvP experience. Other specs I do better in for sPvP but trying to spec for damage is a joke. I last longer and do better with a bunker support spec.

…yeah.