Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone,

Yesterday i said in one of these threads that i will release a tournament play ahead of time, also uncut and with as few edits as possible. I had a few tournaments that i planned to mash up into one single necromancer experience… but… that is for another time.

So here it is… hope you find it both entertaining and motivating…

Guild Wars 2 – Epic conditionmancer paid tournament (TPvP with commentary)

As always feel free to leave any comments here on in the comment section on youtube, also tell me if you guys want to see more of this kind of “PoV” necromancer tournaments, in which i explain the reasons behind each of my decisions as i battle my opponents.

Not bad! Didn’t think it would work in spvp since yhou can’t get the full +100% duration with no food buffs, but seems it sort of does. Did you change any of the traits and gear or are you using your wvw setup?

It really shows off the Terror change to best effect. You were right in that old video you made that necromancers had no useful burst and asked for Fear to be changed. It’s a shame that they chose to do it using a trait though, it means you have to structure your whole build around it and precludes the use of many other useful traits in that slot.

In GW1, their balance policy was “when everyone is using the same build, then it’s too powerful”. I never liked how they nerfed things to the ground rather than toning them down incrementally or making alternative builds stronger, but I agreed with the sentiment. I worry that if people cotton on to how useful it is to have some kind of bursting capability Terror will become the new Ether Prodigy and we’ll see some kind of drastic nerf to it.

I still think Reaper’s Protection has a ridiculously long cooldown though, considering how many CCs you get in pvp. Very useful when it works. Maybe they should split it.

What build are you using?

Okay, so I need to say something. Nemesis, you are always making posts everywhere about builds and such and how to play the Necromancer and in return a lot of players say how great you are.

Well, I have to say that you have a ways to go to improve. I’ve watched a lot of your videos because I like seeing everyone’s point of view on the Necromancer. This recent PvP video you uploaded is the perfect video for me to point out where you need to improve.

• Pay attention to what’s going on around you.
• Pay attention to your cooldowns including the ones you can’t see.
• STOP doing a combo rotation. Use skills when you need them, not on a rotation.
• Don’t get flustered during combat and get angry at your teammates.

This isn’t me bashing you saying how superior I am. This also isn’t me analyzing a video in which people would claim I wouldn’t know what to do in certain situations myself, because I would have known what to do in these certain situations. So this is me giving you some friendly advice so that you can learn and improve in PvP. There were a few parts I was almost yelling at my screen hoping you would do something but you didn’t.

Here are some examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CCjUiXmu1OU#t=317s
You weren’t out of ways to save your teammate. You had a Mark of Fear left on your staff which you didn’t attempt to use on him. Instead, you used every mark on cooldown instead of simply casting the Mark of Fear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CCjUiXmu1OU#t=454s
You had golem’s Charge ability up which you could have tried using to interrupt the stomp instead of wasting 2 wells.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CCjUiXmu1OU#t=566s
This is a pretty simple one – never fight near the edge like that. You didn’t “Anger the guardian to make him waste a cooldown.” You made an amateur mistake. You need to practice not fighting near the edge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CCjUiXmu1OU#t=662s
After you were interrupted all you needed to do was Shroud-Stomp him.

But since you were interrupted and assuming the Guardian then proceeded to interrupt you anyway.

You had 3 options here which would have secured the stomp on the Engineer. I probably would have done all 3 of these things in order because it’s something I’ve become accustomed to doing.

1. Fear the Guardian using Doom.
2. Switch to staff and use Mark of Fear to fear him again. Casting Chillblains would help to keep him away as well.
3. Plague stomp the Engineer.

Then you could have ran away from the Guardian.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CCjUiXmu1OU#t=733s
You should have used golem’s Charge which may have launched the Warrior into the hole because of how far apart they were from each other.

So as you can see, you have some places to improve on. Those were relatively simple mistakes that you need to practice on. Reviving a downed ally is always the most important thing in combat, everything else comes second. (Mostly) Anyway, I enjoy watching your videos so keep them comming.

Here come the Monday morning quarterbacks. It is so easy to sit back with some popcorn and break down every move in the heat of combat and tell someone to learn to play. I do not think the point of his video was to try to prove that he is the king of all necros like some of you think you are.

Thank you Nemesis for proving the naysayers wrong and that condition specs do work in TPvP.

All you need to do is watch the video like normal, as a good player, to notice the aforementioned mistakes. I did not rewind the video to nit-pick his mistakes. I did not pause it every 5 seconds to look for mistakes.

I also didn’t eat any popcorn and I’m not a quarterback.

what build u used on this turney?

Ruufio.1496:

I also didn’t eat any popcorn and I’m a wise kitten /p>

fixed

manveruppd.7601:

Not bad! Didn’t think it would work in spvp since yhou can’t get the full +100% duration with no food buffs, but seems it sort of does. Did you change any of the traits and gear or are you using your wvw setup?

It really shows off the Terror change to best effect. You were right in that old video you made that necromancers had no useful burst and asked for Fear to be changed. It’s a shame that they chose to do it using a trait though, it means you have to structure your whole build around it and precludes the use of many other useful traits in that slot.

In GW1, their balance policy was “when everyone is using the same build, then it’s too powerful”. I never liked how they nerfed things to the ground rather than toning them down incrementally or making alternative builds stronger, but I agreed with the sentiment. I worry that if people cotton on to how useful it is to have some kind of bursting capability Terror will become the new Ether Prodigy and we’ll see some kind of drastic nerf to it.

I still think Reaper’s Protection has a ridiculously long cooldown though, considering how many CCs you get in pvp. Very useful when it works. Maybe they should split it.

Yeah it sort of does, i also have two conditionmancer variations for SPvP. In this video i used the one i use in WvW just for the hell of it. Well the gear is different obviously since you can’t get PvE stats in SPvP… i use the rabbid amulet…

Yeah… maybe it was my old video, maybe AN had this in mind all along, regardless… it finally payed off. There’s one small thing the necromancer is underpowered at… and i honestly have no idea how to fix that without making the necromancer OP.

Also about Reaper’s Protection… yeah… a 1 min CD would do it nicely. AN must not give it a shorter CD so you become un-CC-able in a fight. Sometimes the same player wants to CC you more then once, exactly like you want to do to him… so if he can’t do that… at all… then it’s OP. But sometimes you kill a player after he CCs you, and a new player shows up… and you are kind of… unprepared.

A 60 sec CD should be fine, since we are kind of the only class who doesn’t have a proper stability.

Draegan.1472:

What build are you using?

Guild Wars 2 – Fear… is my weapon [2 x TPvP conditionmancer builds + 1 HOUR of TPvP footage]

This one…

Azlidax.9753:

Here come the Monday morning quarterbacks. It is so easy to sit back with some popcorn and break down every move in the heat of combat and tell someone to learn to play. I do not think the point of his video was to try to prove that he is the king of all necros like some of you think you are.

Thank you Nemesis for proving the naysayers wrong and that condition specs do work in TPvP.

I agree with you, that is exactly what i wanted to prove… We all have seen the dozen of posts saying how necromancers are not viable in SPvP, how conditionmancer for PvP are a joke. They are viable… and not bad actually…

The only thing this build can’t do is kill a good bunker elementalist and of course the ranger’s QQ build… god that build…

I also agree with you that it’s really easy to sit back and observe the mistakes… it’s like watching a movie, or even when you look back at your own decisions… you think “oh man… if only i would have done it like this…”. But you wouldn’t have, since now you know… but when you are there in the moment you don’t know.

Now… even though what i just said is true, doesn’t mean you can’t improve… and Rufio does have some valid points. Don’t think he was trying to troll me, i can spot trolls easily enough, his intentions good so i will address his post with an easy hand.

Ruufio.1496:

Okay, so I need to say something. Nemesis, you are always making posts everywhere about builds and such and how to play the Necromancer and in return a lot of players say how great you are.

Well, I have to say that you have a ways to go to improve. I’ve watched a lot of your videos because I like seeing everyone’s point of view on the Necromancer. This recent PvP video you uploaded is the perfect video for me to point out where you need to improve.

• Pay attention to what’s going on around you.
• Pay attention to your cooldowns including the ones you can’t see.
• STOP doing a combo rotation. Use skills when you need them, not on a rotation.
• Don’t get flustered during combat and get angry at your teammates.

Good sound advice for all PvP matches in any game, and i agree… and i am also trying to do it. You think i am not ?

This isn’t me bashing you saying how superior I am. This also isn’t me analyzing a video in which people would claim I wouldn’t know what to do in certain situations myself, because I would have known what to do in these certain situations. So this is me giving you some friendly advice so that you can learn and improve in PvP. There were a few parts I was almost yelling at my screen hoping you would do something but you didn’t.

I know you are not bashing my post thinking you are superior, it’s the way you’ve formulated your response. But you are missing a point… even though correct in a few cases, when you are in the heat of the battle you don’t take everything into consideration… not yet anyway… you need a few months of practice. I made this build a few weeks ago, didn’t get to practice it much because of… certain circumstances…

While i was editing it i actually saw my flaws. You can learn so much by watching your replays… for any of you who have played Starcraft II competitively… you know that every game you lose must be instantly replayed to learn your mistakes, otherwise you won’t get passed diamond league… so yeah… let’s see now…

Here are some examples:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CCjUiXmu1OU#t=317s
You weren’t out of ways to save your teammate. You had a Mark of Fear left on your staff which you didn’t attempt to use on him. Instead, you used every mark on cooldown instead of simply casting the Mark of Fear.

I actually noticed that… i didn’t time my Fear right, i thought i didn’t have it… and by the time i switched and used 2… i already saw the stomp animation finishing and i go like… awww kitten, missed that one… mind as well continue the combo for more damage, while it’s free… Will get better with practice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CCjUiXmu1OU#t=454s
You had golem’s Charge ability up which you could have tried using to interrupt the stomp instead of wasting 2 wells.

I used the double well to save my guardian friend from going down… i suspected he would get focused instead of me, since he was down once already, he was also low on HP. He did get picked on, but not focused… if they were to focus him though they would do almost no damage… the fact that i placed two wells and he didn’t get focused as the wells were there… just goes to show what i always say… you may find yourself facing a skilled opponent.

Ruufio.1496:

Regardless… he lived long enough for me to secure another kill, and to get him back up again. I was saving my golem for securing another kill. I kind of disagree here, if i were to use my golem there… not sure if i wouldn’t have needed it before the end again…

Hmmm… actually it died before the end, so you were right… but i couldn’t have know that. It’s like… if i knew the thief was invisible there i wouldn’t have gone there… but you don’t, you don’t have spectator mode.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CCjUiXmu1OU#t=566s
This is a pretty simple one – never fight near the edge like that. You didn’t “Anger the guardian to make him waste a cooldown.” You made an amateur mistake. You need to practice not fighting near the edge.

Well… what i thought was: I need to go down and help… where is my team, if i go down now the guardian gets this buff…. i can’t kill the guardian in reasonable time cause he will just heal and run away. So i fight on the ledge until he pushes me, i either kill him… or bring him low enough… i don’t jump so it’s my mistake, i let him decide when he had enough.

I had to be down at the buff regardless… if he wouldn’t have pushed me, i would have jumped

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CCjUiXmu1OU#t=662s
After you were interrupted all you needed to do was Shroud-Stomp him.

I think i would have gotten interrupted again by the guardian… also was low on HP and low on DS

But since you were interrupted and assuming the Guardian then proceeded to interrupt you anyway.

Yeah…

You had 3 options here which would have secured the stomp on the Engineer. I probably would have done all 3 of these things in order because it’s something I’ve become accustomed to doing.

1. Fear the Guardian using Doom.
Guard had Aegis + wanted to keep the Fear for when he goes for the buff again, you saw i went in DS at one point and i aim for him… but 1 second too late… he got the buff

2. Switch to staff and use Mark of Fear to fear him again. Casting Chillblains would help to keep him away as well.

True… although… experience… frustration…

3. Plague stomp the Engineer.

Didn’t play with plague…

Then you could have ran away from the Guardian.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=CCjUiXmu1OU#t=733s
You should have used golem’s Charge which may have launched the Warrior into the hole because of how far apart they were from each other.

I didn’t want to put the warrior into the hole, as you saw on the map there was someone from our team at the gate, i didn’t want to push an enemy into that direction… I wanted to kill an enemy.

So as you can see, you have some places to improve on. Those were relatively simple mistakes that you need to practice on. Reviving a downed ally is always the most important thing in combat, everything else comes second. (Mostly) Anyway, I enjoy watching your videos so keep them comming.

Yeah… lots of ways to improve, thanks for your contribution…

Now there is one more thing i want to address. The don’t get angry at your team part… You know many people like me for not only my skill but my patience, the fact that i answer everyone (almost) on youtube, my kindness. Well… my team did some stuff…

[b]Not only in the second game we used “different” tactics, because they refuse to listen… i am also with 3 players down at the buff, since none of them (except one) came at buff… even though i’ve told them so many times, each time you see the buff, drop everything and jump down… They never listen, yet i am always in the wrong…[b]

So i have 3 players down with me, that means there are 4 of my allies on the map vs 2 opponents and i hear on mumble “i am down at mine” and i think… “you have got to be kidding me…”

[b]There is a reason my dueling videos are not out yet. Ever since my youtube channel got up from the ground, i’ve noticed a shift in a lot of people’s attitude towards me. Increasingly more hostile, so after all the hate mail i got (not from people on youtube or forums, but from people from my own guild…) and said nothing, for all the times they didn’t listen and we lost, for all the times players that never played a necromancer… argued with me on how to play a necromancer… yeah… i think i was being way too calm in fact.

Does not matter now… they kind of started avoiding me since after that game. I said i am done, since i needed a break. Never played a game again, although i offered to join… -awkward silence-.

Thanks for the video, Nemesis. After watching it I went and played the build myself. It’s really fun and very effective. Keeping a guardian locked down in fear for 4s while they take 6k damage is amazing.

I made some tweaks to the build though and I found it worked a little better (for me, anyway). I went 30/10/10/0/20, and used 6/6 Runes of Nightmare. I lost the fear on being disabled but trade that for the 5% chance to fear on being hit. I also lost 200 condition damage and precision but with 30 in spite, 6/6 Nightmare Runes (they give 20% condition duration, not 10% as stated in the tooltip), and Master of Terror, I have double fear durations. I guess I trade some bleed duration for that as well. I was able to chain into a 6-second fear against some 100b warrior and he got really mad :P haha. The fear ticks still do over 1k even without any stacks on the sigil, and bleed ticks are over 100 as well.

Are those good trades to make or do you think I sacrificed too much for the double fears?

I’ve heard a rumor that condition damage ticks according to a universal game timer, NOT the individual condition timers. Do you know if this is true? If it is true, then it’s possible to get fear damage to tick twice even with less than 200% fear duration. That might be worth removing some points from Spite, even with 80% or 90% extra condition duration the chances of getting a second tick are pretty good.

“[b]There is a reason my dueling videos are not out yet. Ever since my youtube channel got up from the ground, I’ve noticed a shift in a lot of people’s attitude towards me. "

There will always be haters. If you don’t put out videos, they will just find some other thing to aggravate you. There are a lot of people that like your videos though, and we appreciate your content. It’s a lot easier to trash a video than to make and comment one.

Xynn.2748:

“[b]There is a reason my dueling videos are not out yet. Ever since my youtube channel got up from the ground, I’ve noticed a shift in a lot of people’s attitude towards me. "

There will always be haters. If you don’t put out videos, they will just find some other thing to aggravate you. There are a lot of people that like your videos though, and we appreciate your content. It’s a lot easier to trash a video than to make and comment one.

I’m… lacking people to do SPvP at the moment. Went through 5 guilds in the past 5 days, in search for a PvP team. Can’t go in solo, not team… no games, no games… no videos…

Thanks for the post Nemesis! I’ll check this out tonight when I get home.

Lettuce there is definately not a universal timer for conditions. If I do one sceptor attack at any time, the damage will not tick until one second later, no earlier. If there was a universal timer, it could potentially tick immediately or soon after that, which I have never seen (and I have been doing conditions for a long time).

Assuming you timed it perfectly, you could get two damage ticks from any fear that is over 1 second long. This has been proven and tested by myself an others, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with a universal timer. If you wait right before their health bar ticks down with the bleed, then cast fear, you only need +30% or so to get two ticks.

Most people see two ticks fairly frequently with 50%-80%.

Rennoko.5731:

Lettuce there is definately not a universal timer for conditions. If I do one sceptor attack at any time, the damage will not tick until one second later, no earlier. If there was a universal timer, it could potentially tick immediately or soon after that, which I have never seen (and I have been doing conditions for a long time).

Assuming you timed it perfectly, you could get two damage ticks from any fear that is over 1 second long. This has been proven and tested by myself an others, but it really doesn’t have anything to do with a universal timer. If you wait right before their health bar ticks down with the bleed, then cast fear, you only need +30% or so to get two ticks.

Most people see two ticks fairly frequently with 50%-80%.

That’s what I meant, but not what I said :X Thanks very much for the information.

One minor question Nemesis, curious why you chose Nightmare runes. An extra fear is all well and good but the low chance and long cooldown mean you’d need to be extremely lucky to get it when it will be useful! Necromancer runes give 10% more Fear duration (no increase to other conditions, but as you yourself have said they get cleared so frequently that too much duration is pointless) and a tiny little bit more HP as a bonus.

Nemesis.8593:

The only thing this build can’t do is kill a good bunker elementalist and of course the ranger’s QQ build… god that build…

Yeah, eles are pretty much impossible to kill with any condition-based class, so it’s not a problem with your build: they just clear the conditions far too frequently and efficiently, have multiple heals on varied cooldowns, and even have passive heals and condition clears that work even when they’re CC’ed! If they’re already low then a Corrupt Boon can finish them off, but if you’re alone forget about it.

I also agree with you that it’s really easy to sit back and observe the mistakes… it’s like watching a movie, or even when you look back at your own decisions… you think “oh man… if only i would have done it like this…”. But you wouldn’t have, since now you know… but when you are there in the moment you don’t know.

Yeah of course, even the best players make mistakes under pressure. I’ve seen some dumb mistakes made by some very good teams on Observer Mode back in GW1.

Rennoko.5731:

If you wait right before their health bar ticks down with the bleed, then cast fear, you only need +30% or so to get two ticks.

Most people see two ticks fairly frequently with 50%-80%.

Oh, I didn’t realize. You saying that the Terror damage is linked to the timer for bleeding? So it ticks whenever bleeding ticks?
If so doesn’t that imply that each condition is on an internal timer for the entire stack? Or does the game keep track of exactly when each individual bleed on a stack of 12 bleeds is supposed to tick for its damage? If each bleed does tick at different times (and it kinda looks like it does because the numbers seems to be floating up more or less constantly rather than all at once every 1"), then which bleed does the Terror damage sync itself to?

So it works basically like this.

There is a check whenever a damaging condition is applied (burn bleed or poison), for if any of those conditions are already on the target.

If none of those conditions are on the target, it will start a 1 second timer, and that will tick down to zero, then deal damage equal to all the conditions on the target at that exact moment in time. Then the timer resets to 1 and goes back down again.

While this timer is running, any conditions that get added (addition bleeds, or poison/bleed if they were not already on the target), will deal their damage only on that zero timer situation. So if you could applie 10 stacks of bleeding (or fear) RIGHT before the zero second mark (like say at .1 seconds) all of that damage would be dealt at zero seconds.

So what happens with fear, if you get the fear condition on the target right before that timer counts down to zero, and say your fear lasts for 1.5 seconds. After .2 seconds the ALL CONDITIONS damage tick takes place. Then 1 second later it happens agian. Since you fear was present at BOTH ticks, it deals damage both times.

Hope that makes sense. Most people find that 70% is enough to have terror tick twice most times, while I personally still like the added benifit of the extra .2 or .3 seconds of people running away.

I see, that’s pretty interesting! So in theory you could make it tick twice if it lasts ANYTHING over 1" if you timed it right? Though I imagine it would take a lot of practice to time the fear right, and a lot of the time you don’t have much option on when to use it. You’re gonna need to interrupt that stomp, or to stop that thief from bursting you down, etc.
Still, I might go practice putting a few bleeds on the dummies in Mists for a few minutes, just for the hell of it Thanks for the info!