Guild Wars 2

Firstly, credits goes to the SoS commander grave of hearts whose post here in the necro forums made me think hard about this bomber concept.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/LONG-LIVE-PLAGUELANDS/first#post6591252

I think many necros, especially vanilla necros (not so much reapers because they got some stability) felt short-changed by the lost of plague form. Plague was a crucial get out of trouble or get into the enemy zerg skill for many vanilla necros. Now that it has been replaced by plaguelands, is it still viable in WvW? How do we maximize this elite?

Some ideas were shared on the necro forums. For example, using it to hold choke points on stairways or gateways or emergency portals or lord rings.

Then the SoS commander above mentioned bombers. While his idea seems to gravitate more towards open field bombing attacks, which may require a lot more coordination to make the enemy stay in the plagueland, like immobilize, aoe stuns etc., it got me thinking.

What other thing in WvW is static? SIEGE WEAPONS (except for um…golems)

Problem is if the enemy had sufficient numbers and mind to aoe bomb your walls, they would deny defenders like yourself the luxury of attacking their sieges from the walls. The chances of you dying if you continued to stand on the wall is high. And how much continued pressure can you put on the sieges in such cases?
Imagine 5 or more Trailblazer or Viper condi Reapers using the spectral walk to jump down into the enemy siege and casting their elite Plaguelands before using spectral walk to get back out into safety again. They would essentially leave a pulsing no-entry area and deny enemy access to their siege and destroy the siege too. Add a mesmer invis veil to allow the reapers to jump down undetected would be even better.

Spectral walk can be activated to return you to the original spot even if you are stunned. The crucial point is not getting stunned while casting the plaguelands elite. Here the mesmer can help because invis veil will make it harder and slower for enemies to react until its too late. Also, if you are using plaguelands elite for pulsing condi, you would probably want to go reaper instead of vanilla necro because reaper has that bit more condi potential. And reaper has that stability thing. Muahahaha.

I assume though that plagueland is a stackable aoe so 5 reapers casting on same spot will make condis stack 5 times per tick. 10 reapers will make it tick 10 times. So if you gather more reapers, the aoe siege denial will be even deadlier.

Casting many epidemics with your reapers on the siege might even kill neighbouring siege and enemies.
Imagine 10 reapers plagueland final pulse plus 10 epidemics O_O

Don’t underestimate the damage of the New plagueland. It is far superior to our current wells. Just taking the first condi pulse bleed alone, one reaper would stack 9 bleeds at the end of the elite. 10 reapers = 90 bleed stacks. Add 10 epidemic to it and neighbouring sieges get 900 bleed stacks. And all these bleeds tick over time. And then there is chill stacking which increases bleed stacks even more due to reaper trait.

Anyone thinks this idea is feasible? Try it and let us know! Bringing the anti-siege condi Reaper to a new level.

Use mass invis from the mesmer and increase to 9 necros, use mesmer to portal out and share distortion if you bring a 2nd mesmer instead of 9th necro. Necros can then also cast corrosive poison cloud and take another utility for more condition fields.

Mesmer can also null field the area to remove boons like resistance while giving resistance to the necro’s.

I want to do this, but it would require me to make my necro condi. I’m not sure I can live with that…

Sviel.7493:

I want to do this, but it would require me to make my necro condi. I’m not sure I can live with that…

^

oh cmon don’t make it even worse. looking for mesmer just to use some skill which is elite and it sux balls in wvw or any no static mode!
it huge impact to a necro cos plague was best elite to use in wvw imho.

yeh sure.. will spectral walk get you inside the keep\tower?

Usually siege is close to the wall anyway… So you can condi bomb from the walls and no need to use that weird elite. People and their theorycrafting…

A reasonably geared necro, power or condi, can faceroll a camp in < 15 seconds with this new elite. Just gather the NPC’s within range and put down staff marks and then the elite, then mop up whatever is left if needed. Unlike players, NPC’s don’t move out of range.

anduriell.6280:

yeh sure.. will spectral walk get you inside the keep\tower?

Usually siege is close to the wall anyway… So you can condi bomb from the walls and no need to use that weird elite. People and their theorycrafting…

Problem is if the enemy had sufficient numbers and mind to aoe bomb your walls, they would deny defenders like yourself the luxury of attacking their sieges from the walls. The chances of you dying if you continued to stand on the wall is high. And how much continued pressure can you put on the sieges in such cases?

I assume though that plagueland is a stackable aoe so 5 reapers casting on same spot will make condis stack 5 times per tick. 10 reapers will make it tick 10 times. So if you gather more reapers, the aoe siege denial will be even deadlier.

Casting many epidemics with your reapers on the siege might even kill neighbouring siege and enemies towards the end of the plagueland pulses when the condi had stacked crazily. The more reapers you have the crazier it gets I suppose.

Imagine 10 reapers plagueland final pulse plus 10 epidemics O_O

thats interesting. i like it.
way to turn a frown upside down.

Also to add, Don’t underestimate the damage of the New plagueland. It is far superior to our current wells. Just taking the first condi pulse bleed alone, one reaper would stack 9 bleeds at the end of the elite. 10 reapers = 90 bleed stacks. Add 10 epidemic to it and neighbouring sieges get 900 bleed stacks. And all these bleeds tick over time. And then there is chill stacking which increases bleed stacks even more due to reaper trait.

Actually, if we add epidemic to the anti siege strategy, it should be called the plaguelands virus outbreak.

Imagine infecting a siege with stacks of plaguelands. Then epidemic to transfer the stacks to nearby sieges and enemies.

It becomes a virus outbreak worthy of the elite name plaguelands!

I find that I’m playing condi necro/reaper seriously for the first time in ages. People might disagree with me, I am discovering some excellent variations on builds and enjoying the heck out of playtesting.

Your ideas on this are intriguing OP. Having tested Plaguelands this week, I can say that just by myself and utilizing Plaguelands combined with Corrosive Poison cloud it is incredibly useful. Also situational. Groups are going to have to be mobile to avoid this. Understand that with the increased range on Epi and that crazy radius, this can be spread a lot farther than people realize. Reset night is a great time to try this out. lol

Kinda 2 variants in my mind
One with sigils of hydromancy and geomancy and gs,you drop down and drop nightfall cpc plaguelands and flash ds,and then sw back.
Other is with sigil of aoe torment and sigil of aoe poison (long day,dont ask to remember all sigil names) in which you can skip the ds flash and just drop cpc and plaguelands and sw back.
With the 2nd variant the aoe sigils should trigger a few times due to plaguelands dmg component.
The first variant is pretty much a raincoat bandit,the ds flashing also triggers the ds traits for entering it adding even more conditions on top of hydromancy and geomancy sigils procs.
The bigger question that remains is if a single party of reapers can drop enough condi dmg to effectively destroy the siege or if it will need a 2nd drop.

so…has anyone tried this at reset? how did it go?

I saw an enemy necro do it to one of our guild catas earlier. He did it alone and stacked around 20+ bleeds and took out around 40% of our guild cata’s HP.
Not sure if he dropped other wells/fields but one necro taking out 40% HP of a siege is pretty strong…

No.

I’ve been condi bombing siege since tuesday with this. It does a lot of damage but enemy CC means a lot of the time the necro is unable to cast it before being overwhelmed by zerg.

Coordinating lots of necros to do it would be another thing. Someone wants to deprive the zerg of their damage dealers?

Speaking of zerg, I notice that this ability is very situational;

• My main gripe is that it’s utter garbage against enemy thieves
• Enemy zergs don’t walk through it
• If I put my toon in harm’s way to drop it, either I get CC’d in such a way that I can’t cast it or the enemy commander runs his zerg through me

Conclusion: Plaguelands is a neat idea on paper, but it’s too impractical. Having said this, the rest of the options are extremely crap underwhelming, too, so I guess I’ll leave it there until I decide that I want my shout back.

Svarty.8019:

No.

I’ve been condi bombing siege since tuesday with this. It does a lot of damage but enemy CC means a lot of the time the necro is unable to cast it before being overwhelmed by zerg.

Coordinating lots of necros to do it would be another thing. Someone wants to deprive the zerg of their damage dealers?

Speaking of zerg, I notice that this ability is very situational;

• My main gripe is that it’s utter garbage against enemy thieves
• Enemy zergs don’t walk through it
• If I put my toon in harm’s way to drop it, either I get CC’d in such a way that I can’t cast it or the enemy commander runs his zerg through me

Conclusion: Plaguelands is a neat idea on paper, but it’s too impractical. Having said this, the rest of the options are extremely crap underwhelming, too, so I guess I’ll leave it there until I decide that I want my shout back.

I have to mostly agree with this – it requires a bit of setup and the odds are mostly against you but when you manage to somehow get it off it’s pretty awesome. That said cast time will most likely get you killed, enemies worth their salt will move out of it anyway, and you will be lucky to get out alive. Against a thief you will probably fail to use it the majority of the time, so best use something else. It works mostly against newbies so it should be called PlagueTheNewbiesLands XD. I tend to drop it only when I am not in focus and I can use teammates as shields so I can drop it on low health or downs and epi them.

The only use plaguelands has is to put it down on npc. end of story.

shagwell.1349:

The only use plaguelands has is to put it down on npc. end of story.

Not really, it’s decent for siege bombing the siege when enemy has abandoned it and entered your objective. Yes, I know what that sounds like and I do not apologise