Guild Wars 2

I was theorycrafting this morning and playing around with the new traits to see how I can play my condi necro from next week and while I understand signets of suffering IS powerful I found an alternative I liked a lot more and that I think can be borderline OP (minus the escapes and the speed because heh, we’re still necros).

Here are the links:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/
http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQE_AKsA1Q~

Basically you gear as a rabid necro for ++ crits for target the weak + on crit proc sigils.

Traits:

Curse
Plague sending – If you stack 3 or more condis on you, send them back in your next attack, nice auto condi transfer to have
Path of corruption – nice to add pressure
Lingering curse – the build relies on very long bleeds as its main source of damage, I know about condi clears etc but if you add the minions + the bleeds + the new chillbrain etc you still get stuff down and long bleeds also counter short duration resistance as they play on time rather than burst.

Death magic
Flesh of the master – good to keep minions around longer, jagged horrors are also great with the next trait
Necromantic corruption – VERY powerful trait. +25% DMG on minions is nothing to sneeze at but the really powerful part is the condi transfer part. This means you get a lot of condi clear but also that minions are the most powerful in condi spec with this trait now as the direct hits are affected by the minion’s attack while conditions are affected by your condi damage.

Another interesting thing is the AOE condi application. Imagine you have 5 minions and you hit a burning field, each minion has 3 secs of burning on them (say 2 by the time they transfer it.)

4/5 minion hit the target in the next second, that’s 4 stacks of burning on the target because they EACH push 1 stack back. Nice little burst.

Death Nova – If your minions die from the condition they also spike direct damage and stack 2-3 stacks of poison which can be quite a bit of damage with the new formulas. Not to mention 20% reuse is baseline now.

blood magic

Blood Bond – With condi spec 4 bleeds is super easy meaning every 26 seconds you a free signet of vampirism to heal you AND your minion + spike extra dots because signet of vampirism is a like leech with a 200+ dmg/hit. Think about when there is 5-6 minions hitting the target plus you auto attacking with the scepter every half second.

vampiric presence

New trait but I hope it works on Minions so they heal themselves constantly while hitting the target, allowing them to handle damaging conditions they transfer (plus it heals you and possibly your allies)

unholy martyr

Not the most powerful trait but nice condi generator for your minions to take and transfer back(plus group support) and life force generator if you need to tank a bit in death shroud. Minions death are your main lf generator so you don’t have much but that helps you stay in DS if you want to.

All of this without mentioning things like minions healing you constantly, mark of evasion for more condi pressure and minion healing, no ally bleeding out around you in downstate and almost 1/3 protection uptime with beyond the veil.

I think that can compete quite well in PVP, especially with little things like sigil of frailty now that vuln affects conditions too.

LMK if I’m wrong

I was thinking of a similar build and would probably run something like this for a home point holder/defender, but having this necro as a mid point teamfighter would probably be stronger, with the blood traits swapped into revive traits (maybe not all 3 of the revive traits, but at least the adept and grandmaster, good outplay possible with that one). Although I was thinking about a power or bunker style amulet more than conds when it comes to the necro damage, but that is mostly a secondary part of the build, the minion gameplay is the main thing. How is the AI of minions though? Any improvements there?

Well in that case the main gameplay is conditions and minions are treated as an extra DOT and condi transfer/lf source/poison source.

The damage between aoe condi transfers, physical minion damage, the siphon damage and the fact that you can easily get 2k+ dps with Bleeds is pretty high given the fact that you’re also constantly being healed from your attacks between perma regen, life siphons and vampire signets being cast every 30 sec.

Nice build. I’ve been looking at something very similar:

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQE_AKkA5Q~

Basically weakening shroud over lingering curse and shrouded removal over flesh of the master. This is just for a more survival based build vs. damage. Since that 100% base on lingering curse would make your bleeds from auto 12 seconds though, I’ll probably end up using it. That is a ton of extra damage. Definitely in PvE I’ll use it often.

If it works like I want it too I’ll be able to keep up permanent weakness and have solid up time on protection and fury as well. I’ll see though. I like this line of thinking.

Just something to test out I suppose, no doubt as you stated signets of suffering is really strong as well. All that free might and boon conversion is hard to pass up.

BTW, it was mentioned in the ready up that the lesser signet of vampirism from the blood bond trait had a shorter cooldown. I believe he said either 15 or 20 seconds. If that benefits from signet of suffering, I really am not sure I can get away from it. Just extremely powerful.

Well, IF they finally fixing the kitten AI, I agree with you. As long as the chances our minions do what they are supposed to are 50% or lower… Nope, not happening. Sadly.

Shiki.7148:

Well, IF they finally fixing the kitten AI, I agree with you. As long as the chances our minions do what they are supposed to are 50% or lower… Nope, not happening. Sadly.

Why does everyone have to exaggerate all the time on these forums. Sure it does happen frequently but the frequency is more 10% of the time, not 50%.

Take it as a horde you don’t fully control like Daenerys and her dragons. Even with the current AI it’s still more than ok and minion dps is acceptable (or else there would be no MM)