Guild Wars 2

I’ve been doing some theorycrafting for a Raid build and ended up with a rather fun condi necro build that actualy is doing well atm aswell.

http://intothemists.com/guides/6473-raid_necro

Eh. I’ve actually used something similar in Normal PvE and its underwhelming. Condi has really been underwhelming for a while now.. On reaper its great. But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

Lily.1935:

But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

Like damage?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

Like damage?

The damage isnt THAT bad, in a group with warrior you get up to ~8k bleed ticks at times and rarely drop below 6k while also havign your poison and torment. im not saying it is incredible damage but it is far better than most people seem to think.

Ive been getting back into and farming some fractal relics to have ready for hot. Keep in mind i made lv16 to 25 last week.

So i also play this, just asciis ez mode version with parasitic contagion. Also all other poeple were lv25 probably

We have a bit non meta group and they mock our dps.
I go tryhard and do great epis, always share might and keep up vuln for group.
On tricky parts i support them with wells etc.
Everything goes smooth, they even admit necro isnt bad at all.
Aaand then i drop the bomb by saying i can double my bleeds since we doing good and i dont need the healing

#Pve stories of a pvp scrub

Hopefully raid build won’t be written in stone and you will need to adapt it for each encounter.

Blackmoa.3186:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

Like damage?

The damage isnt THAT bad, in a group with warrior you get up to ~8k bleed ticks at times and rarely drop below 6k while also havign your poison and torment. im not saying it is incredible damage but it is far better than most people seem to think.

8k is bad rly bad. Even 9 or 10 k are bad.

High dps classes are doing more then 15k sustain dps. Burst 20k upwards.

Norjena.5172:

Blackmoa.3186:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

Like damage?

The damage isnt THAT bad, in a group with warrior you get up to ~8k bleed ticks at times and rarely drop below 6k while also havign your poison and torment. im not saying it is incredible damage but it is far better than most people seem to think.

8k is bad rly bad. Even 9 or 10 k are bad.

High dps classes are doing more then 15k sustain dps. Burst 20k upwards.

No they are not.

Lily.1935:

Norjena.5172:

Blackmoa.3186:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

Like damage?

The damage isnt THAT bad, in a group with warrior you get up to ~8k bleed ticks at times and rarely drop below 6k while also havign your poison and torment. im not saying it is incredible damage but it is far better than most people seem to think.

8k is bad rly bad. Even 9 or 10 k are bad.

High dps classes are doing more then 15k sustain dps. Burst 20k upwards.

No they are not.

High DPS are doing more like 9-10k sustained. Still better than the 8k bleed ticks, but bleed is still not the only source of damage in a condi Necro’s kit. Granted, Torment is negligable, but poison is a thing.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

Norjena.5172:

Blackmoa.3186:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

Like damage?

The damage isnt THAT bad, in a group with warrior you get up to ~8k bleed ticks at times and rarely drop below 6k while also havign your poison and torment. im not saying it is incredible damage but it is far better than most people seem to think.

8k is bad rly bad. Even 9 or 10 k are bad.

High dps classes are doing more then 15k sustain dps. Burst 20k upwards.

No they are not.

High DPS are doing more like 9-10k sustained. Still better than the 8k bleed ticks, but bleed is still not the only source of damage in a condi Necro’s kit. Granted, Torment is negligable, but poison is a thing.

Conds need that ramp up time too. Often it’s just not worth it, like that one sinister Ranger build that had higher dps than the standard zerker build for Ranger, but the ramp up time makes it worse because you’re doing less dps than the zerker one for half the fights with bosses on top of being useless against trash.

Ele sustained is averaging around 19k dps, necro zerker is around 10k, condi necro is less. This is small hitboxes without icebow. Getting up to 8k bleed ticks isn’t bad, except they aren’t sustained, the max tick you reach on a condi doesn’t necessarily mean your dps is near that number as well.

Aktium.9506:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

Norjena.5172:

Blackmoa.3186:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

But base necromancer I feel so lacking. Like I’m missing something major.

Like damage?

The damage isnt THAT bad, in a group with warrior you get up to ~8k bleed ticks at times and rarely drop below 6k while also havign your poison and torment. im not saying it is incredible damage but it is far better than most people seem to think.

8k is bad rly bad. Even 9 or 10 k are bad.

High dps classes are doing more then 15k sustain dps. Burst 20k upwards.

No they are not.

High DPS are doing more like 9-10k sustained. Still better than the 8k bleed ticks, but bleed is still not the only source of damage in a condi Necro’s kit. Granted, Torment is negligable, but poison is a thing.

Conds need that ramp up time too. Often it’s just not worth it, like that one sinister Ranger build that had higher dps than the standard zerker build for Ranger, but the ramp up time makes it worse because you’re doing less dps than the zerker one for half the fights with bosses on top of being useless against trash.

That is the general issue with the necromancer’s condi build. Its ramp time is extremely slow and doesn’t often get above the damage of power. Although it could with full buffing a guardian and a venom share thief the issue seems to be on average the necromancer stacks about 10-16 bleeds in an encounter which is just pitiful. In a boss fight it can go up to 30ish stacks by yourself with food max duration, vuln and party buffs but with all that being added why not just use power which benefits the same way and has no ramp time? The reaper on the other hand actually has a rather short ramp time thanks to a few of its traits and skills. I played reaper hybrid in the beta, full sinisters, and it was extremely potent. The major issue I still had with it is you didn’t have allot of diversity in rune sets you really wanted to take. Either Krait or Balth in the beta for PvE. And Orrian runes probably. But Runes of Grenth or something like that really weren’t desirable.

SlyDevil.3952:

Ele sustained is averaging around 19k dps, necro zerker is around 10k, condi necro is less. This is small hitboxes without icebow. Getting up to 8k bleed ticks isn’t bad, except they aren’t sustained, the max tick you reach on a condi doesn’t necessarily mean your dps is near that number as well.

Cough cough bull kitten cough

Edit: unless you’re talking about that little casual pve mode where there is no such thing as sustained dps because the boss dies in 15 seconds.

Burst dps =/= sustained dps, ele brings better burst and sustained than a zerker necro, and both are better than condi necro, let alone hybrid where you sacrifice stats from both forms of damage to try and find a middle point that together ends up weaker than specializing in pure damage

The biggest problem with necro condition builds is ramp up time. Power builds ramp up to their max dps almost instantly, and can burst significantly higher in short time spans. This is invaluable in most boss fights that have burst phases and defense phases.

Unfortunately it seems that Anet wants to strengthen this meta by making raid bosses the same way. A burst phase followed by a run away phase where you can’t hurt the boss. This gives the advantage to power builds right off the bat. Then there is the problem that most bosses have a “hard” shift in phases instead of a “soft” shift. instead of bosses just driving you away from them, most of them enter a new state that either makes them invuln or purges conditions. Both of these have the same effect of drastically lowering a condition builds dps. If conditions are purged, all your damage is just lost. even if you had 50 stacks of bleed on the target for 2 minutes, as soon as the boss hits a “hard” phase change it instantly drops all 50 stacks and takes no damage.

So not only do condition specs have a long ramp up time they also get their dps reduced by phase transitions. Top it all off with the fact that condition builds can’t even reach the same sustained dps as most power builds and they are all around just worse.

There are many possible solutions:

1. Reduce ramp up times. Give condition specs a ramping trait of some sort. I.E if target has less than 10 stacks of bleed, you next crit causes 5 stacks of bleed for 10s.
2. Remove “hard” phase changes. A boss shouldn’t purge your conditions when it changes phases, just let bosses have the condition fall off naturally and finish taking the damage already applied to them.
3. Increase condition dps to be 20-30% higher than power builds DPS and leave the long ramp up times and hard phase changes. This would let us do the same amount of damage and give us an advantage in longer fights, but still limits us in condition cleansing and short burst fights (this is how every other MMO in existence does it)

As it stands currently however, condition builds bring nothing unique to the fight except lower damage.

Zalavaaris.5329:

SlyDevil.3952:

Ele sustained is averaging around 19k dps, necro zerker is around 10k, condi necro is less. This is small hitboxes without icebow. Getting up to 8k bleed ticks isn’t bad, except they aren’t sustained, the max tick you reach on a condi doesn’t necessarily mean your dps is near that number as well.

Cough cough bull kitten cough

Edit: unless you’re talking about that little casual pve mode where there is no such thing as sustained dps because the boss dies in 15 seconds.

Lava font + fireball.

spoj.9672:

Zalavaaris.5329:

SlyDevil.3952:

Ele sustained is averaging around 19k dps, necro zerker is around 10k, condi necro is less. This is small hitboxes without icebow. Getting up to 8k bleed ticks isn’t bad, except they aren’t sustained, the max tick you reach on a condi doesn’t necessarily mean your dps is near that number as well.

Cough cough bull kitten cough

Edit: unless you’re talking about that little casual pve mode where there is no such thing as sustained dps because the boss dies in 15 seconds.

Lava font + fireball.

Doesn’t matter what they have, nobody is sustaining 19k in a real fight (more than a few seconds). That’s delusional.

Zalavaaris.5329:

spoj.9672:

Zalavaaris.5329:

SlyDevil.3952:

Ele sustained is averaging around 19k dps, necro zerker is around 10k, condi necro is less. This is small hitboxes without icebow. Getting up to 8k bleed ticks isn’t bad, except they aren’t sustained, the max tick you reach on a condi doesn’t necessarily mean your dps is near that number as well.

Cough cough bull kitten cough

Edit: unless you’re talking about that little casual pve mode where there is no such thing as sustained dps because the boss dies in 15 seconds.

Lava font + fireball.

Doesn’t matter what they have, nobody is sustaining 19k in a real fight (more than a few seconds). That’s delusional.

19k seems a little high. In a good group with a PS warrior my ele can pretty easily keep ~14k dps. Though to be fair it is more like 11k dps +3k from IB rotation. But either way the average is still 14k.

19k is against low armour (quoting numbers is rather meaningless unless you define the parameters and compare). Which isnt all that common. So in actual gameplay you will see less. But comparatively speaking hes not wrong. There is a huge gap between ele sustained dps and most other classes.

…how are we getting these numbers?

Adding coefficients, multiplying in all the relevant multipliers and stats, dividing by armour. And spoj that’s on 2600 armour, which is very common, only fractal bosses and lupi/abom are really going above that.

This also assumes a small hitbox, and no icebow. 3 skills on a fully buffed ele produces 19k, and the rotation length is 20secs to match meteor shower. This does assume perfect might/vuln, then again, organized groups are very good at creating favourable circumstances.

And the thing to remember, an ele’s sustained dps and a necro’s are both going to drop by relatively similar amounts from the missing vuln/power. Perhaps ele’s slightly more since might makes up more of their total power than a necro who has a signet, or slightly less since they have a precision signet.

SlyDevil.3952:

Adding coefficients, multiplying in all the relevant multipliers and stats, dividing by armour. And spoj that’s on 2600 armour, which is very common, only fractal bosses and lupi/abom are really going above that.

This also assumes a small hitbox, and no icebow. 3 skills on a fully buffed ele produces 19k, and the rotation length is 20secs to match meteor shower. This does assume perfect might/vuln, then again, organized groups are very good at creating favourable circumstances.

And the thing to remember, an ele’s sustained dps and a necro’s are both going to drop by relatively similar amounts from the missing vuln/power. Perhaps ele’s slightly more since might makes up more of their total power than a necro who has a signet, or slightly less since they have a precision signet.

If you’re accounting for meteor shower than your DPS rotation is 30 seconds not 20 seconds. If its under 30 seconds its burst not DPS. now if you are accounting for fire grab being your highest DPS skill at the time your rotation is 45 seconds. Already we have a major issue in your calculations as you have to be able to repeat your chain. My DPS could be 30k over 2 seconds. But on that 3rd second it could drop to 5k. My DPS wouldn’t be 30k it would be 11k in that example. For reaper, the reaper can spam gravedigger dealing 20-25k per strike. but their DPS isn’t 20k. The cast time is 1.25 seconds and the DPS the reaper has is lower when the foe is above 50% health both because of close to death and because gravedigger doesn’t have instant recharge unless they’re below 50%. So we need to account for the damage through the entire fight since the rotation changes once the foe hits 50% and take into account both rotations. Since you say your DPS over 20 seconds is this and it can’t be repeated in the next 20 seconds its not DPS is burst.

Ehm, you need to check your meta build. MS cd is 20secs, you could call it a 21 sec rotation if you wanted to add that you lava font before the meteor shower. Sustained damage doesn’t have this mysterious 30second threshold, it just means it’s a repeatable rotation for all skills included. A burst ele rotation can include lightning storm, dragon’s tooth, lava font, pheonix/burning speed, meteor shower, ice storm, frost fan, deep freeze for tempest defense, eruption, ice spike, fiery whirl, fire storm, fireballs. The sustained rotation is just lava font, fireballs, MS.

Burst is dps, they aren’t 2 separate entities, you just have a shorter interval over which you’re calculating the damage.

Edit: Forgot to include attunement swapping in the burst possibilities, extra 20% multiplier during ice spike, ice storm and parts of lightning storm/MS/lava font depending on which element you start your rotation in.

SlyDevil.3952:

Ehm, you need to check your meta build. MS cd is 20secs, you could call it a 21 sec rotation if you wanted to add that you lava font before the meteor shower. Sustained damage doesn’t have this mysterious 30second threshold, it just means it’s a repeatable rotation for all skills included. A burst ele rotation can include lightning storm, dragon’s tooth, lava font, pheonix/burning speed, meteor shower, ice storm, frost fan, deep freeze for tempest defense, eruption, ice spike, fiery whirl, fire storm, fireballs. The sustained rotation is just lava font, fireballs, MS.

Burst is dps, they aren’t 2 separate entities, you just have a shorter interval over which you’re calculating the damage.

Edit: Forgot to include attunement swapping in the burst possibilities, extra 20% multiplier during ice spike, ice storm and parts of lightning storm/MS/lava font depending on which element you start your rotation in.

Wow, the wiki is very wrong.. Oh well no biggy. Also meta battle doesn’t account for everything. It doesn’t even seem to have appropriate builds for people in PvE outside of prebuffing teams. Which is designed around burst.

And let me clarify. When I’m talking about DPS I’m talking about Sustaind DPS, not Burst DPS. Just to clear up the confusion. I know its my fault, I should have been more clear.

Lily.1935:

SlyDevil.3952:

Ehm, you need to check your meta build. MS cd is 20secs, you could call it a 21 sec rotation if you wanted to add that you lava font before the meteor shower. Sustained damage doesn’t have this mysterious 30second threshold, it just means it’s a repeatable rotation for all skills included. A burst ele rotation can include lightning storm, dragon’s tooth, lava font, pheonix/burning speed, meteor shower, ice storm, frost fan, deep freeze for tempest defense, eruption, ice spike, fiery whirl, fire storm, fireballs. The sustained rotation is just lava font, fireballs, MS.

Burst is dps, they aren’t 2 separate entities, you just have a shorter interval over which you’re calculating the damage.

Edit: Forgot to include attunement swapping in the burst possibilities, extra 20% multiplier during ice spike, ice storm and parts of lightning storm/MS/lava font depending on which element you start your rotation in.

Wow, the wiki is very wrong.. Oh well no biggy. Also meta battle doesn’t account for everything. It doesn’t even seem to have appropriate builds for people in PvE outside of prebuffing teams. Which is designed around burst.

And let me clarify. When I’m talking about DPS I’m talking about Sustaind DPS, not Burst DPS. Just to clear up the confusion. I know its my fault, I should have been more clear.

I think you might be forgetting that the Ele build traits for shorter fire attunement cooldowns which, being a 33% reduction, means that Meteor Shower is on a 20 second cooldown.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Lily.1935:

SlyDevil.3952:

Ehm, you need to check your meta build. MS cd is 20secs, you could call it a 21 sec rotation if you wanted to add that you lava font before the meteor shower. Sustained damage doesn’t have this mysterious 30second threshold, it just means it’s a repeatable rotation for all skills included. A burst ele rotation can include lightning storm, dragon’s tooth, lava font, pheonix/burning speed, meteor shower, ice storm, frost fan, deep freeze for tempest defense, eruption, ice spike, fiery whirl, fire storm, fireballs. The sustained rotation is just lava font, fireballs, MS.

Burst is dps, they aren’t 2 separate entities, you just have a shorter interval over which you’re calculating the damage.

Edit: Forgot to include attunement swapping in the burst possibilities, extra 20% multiplier during ice spike, ice storm and parts of lightning storm/MS/lava font depending on which element you start your rotation in.

Wow, the wiki is very wrong.. Oh well no biggy. Also meta battle doesn’t account for everything. It doesn’t even seem to have appropriate builds for people in PvE outside of prebuffing teams. Which is designed around burst.

And let me clarify. When I’m talking about DPS I’m talking about Sustaind DPS, not Burst DPS. Just to clear up the confusion. I know its my fault, I should have been more clear.

I think you might be forgetting that the Ele build traits for shorter fire attunement cooldowns which, being a 33% reduction, means that Meteor Shower is on a 20 second cooldown.

Maybe. I don’t remember all the ele’s traits.

Sustained dps is 20 seconds? Rofl no wonder my raiding friends didn’t want to come play this game, that’s embarassing. I wonder what burst dps is, 2 seconds? Lol

Zalavaaris.5329:

Sustained dps is 20 seconds? Rofl no wonder my raiding friends didn’t want to come play this game, that’s embarassing. I wonder what burst dps is, 2 seconds? Lol

It is measured at 20s because that is the longest CD. You could measure it over any amount of time you want, but it will always come down to what your longest CD is on a standard rotation.

But yes in the current metagame, bosses live from 2-25 seconds before dying. The problem is there is a very high skill ceiling in this game. Low skill groups still fail many of these dungeons, average skill groups take 3-4 minutes to kill a boss, and high skill groups can kill the same boss in 11 seconds or so. Many people are hoping that raids are different.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Zalavaaris.5329:

Sustained dps is 20 seconds? Rofl no wonder my raiding friends didn’t want to come play this game, that’s embarassing. I wonder what burst dps is, 2 seconds? Lol

It is measured at 20s because that is the longest CD. You could measure it over any amount of time you want, but it will always come down to what your longest CD is on a standard rotation.

But yes in the current metagame, bosses live from 2-25 seconds before dying. The problem is there is a very high skill ceiling in this game. Low skill groups still fail many of these dungeons, average skill groups take 3-4 minutes to kill a boss, and high skill groups can kill the same boss in 11 seconds or so. Many people are hoping that raids are different.

I wouldn’t call a group capable of killing the boss in 11-25 seconds high skilled. At that point its just memorizing the rotation. Something a chimpanzee could easily do. Heck you could probably teach a parrot to kill a boss in that time if you really wanted to.

I don’t mean to be rude. However a truly skilled player could adjust to a situation on the fly. Something that such a short burst doesn’t allow. I’d say a group that takes 3-4 minutes to kill the boss but succeeds without anyone going down is far more skilled than the 20 second group.

Plenty of people read the rotations on meta battle and can memorize them, the people killing bosses in 11-14secs in dungeons are the ones able to perform those rotations consistently regardless of the circumstances. It is a much higher skill ceiling than you imagine it to be. There’s a reason pug groups with meta builds can’t phase the 2nd archdiviner in ~12 seconds, and it’s not just the lack of communication.

Screw this godforsaken meta so many of you subscribe to, “berserkers or gtfo.” Unless you are trying to break a GW2 world record, the 15 seconds longer a fight may take because you took gear other than zerk (God forbid, right?) is not important. Believe it or not it is possible that there are builds that exist that are viable other than the ones on sites like metabattle. I’m currently running a valkyrie set with some berserkers trinkets mixed in and it’s a hell of a lot of fun, and it hits like a tank. Add blood magic in and all the life siphoning in combination with high health makes me feel like an actual necromancer. Transfusion could be fun when that raid boss AOE nearly wipes your teammates. Necro is already fun at 80, I’m extremely excited for reaper. Oh I’m sorry everyone, is this the wrong thread? I was looking for the thread about necromancer raid builds

SlyDevil.3952:

Plenty of people read the rotations on meta battle and can memorize them, the people killing bosses in 11-14secs in dungeons are the ones able to perform those rotations consistently regardless of the circumstances. It is a much higher skill ceiling than you imagine it to be. There’s a reason pug groups with meta builds can’t phase the 2nd archdiviner in ~12 seconds, and it’s not just the lack of communication.

I can type really well. I memorized were all the buttons are. I can do It without looking at it at all. Its a skill I have but not a very impressive skill at all. A chimpanzee can do the exact same thing. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that a chimpanzee would be better at the rotation than the top players of GW2 if it was trained. I’d put money on that.

Best guesstimate, d/w(or focus) + gs, spite, blood magic, reaper, pick up the relevant multipliers/party buffs and personal buffs, valk gear with wurm runes, pop offhand life force skill, swap to GS, burst skills then go into reaper and use burst skills, AA for a couple secs until you can drop out, hit with grave digger, go back to dagger until you get locust swarm/reaper’s touch back.

And yet it’s still rather subpar, as in 6-7k less than ele subpar, sitting around thief dps with less blinds and only the VA & boon corruption allowing it to fill a slightly different niche. And really only VA, since chrono has excellent damage and easy boon strips.

Can we give a raid build? Yes. Will it be worth running over other classes? Welcome back to the never ending discussion at hand.

Lily.1935:

I can make type really well. I memorized were all the buttons are. I can do It without looking at it at all. Its a skill I have but not a very impressive skill at all. A chimpanzee can do the exact same thing. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that a chimpanzee would be better at the rotation than the top players of GW2 if it was trained. I’d put money on that.

Excellent, staff ele rotation is 2, 5, 111,2, 111, etc.. Please go do some dungeons and fractals in low man or 5 man situations and stay to that rotation perfectly, you can even go lightning storm, lava font, MS, ice spike, ice storm, ice spike, eruption, lava font if you’d like extra mid fight burst. Tell me how good you are at pushing 3-9 buttons, definitely far less than the 26 letters, 10 numbers and other keys on your keyboard. Should take you you less than a 10th of the time to learn and master, right?