Guild Wars 2

Lack of coherency of design is calling a profession “the attrition profession” and giving the only unique condition to the mesmer. Terror trait is a step in the right direction, but with only 2 sources of fear, it’s hardly worth comparing.

Lorelei.3918:

Most classes have a “power” build and a “condition build”.

Our class is at least gaining notability in one area: WvW. In WvW skilled groups bring necros. Nobody does the AoE better then us. Wells, Marks, DS siphon and countless other AoE’s on all of are other weapons not to mention Epidemic.

But if we’re talking class focus, its condition and boon control. Even our power builds apply conditions and strip boons. Our focus, from a skill focus point of view, is on ‘conversion’.

We turn enemy boons into liabilities. We apply mass conditions to the enemy while removing them en masse from our own team. We steal their life, and add it to our own hp. We turn the tables on the enemy like a see-saw. Do we do the highest damage? No, our bleeds aren’t the strongest, our burst isn’t good and our defense is meh. Yet we win so many battles. That is because we take away the enemies ability to make war.

I am not sure I am making myself clear. But what you are listing are specific skills and abilities. AoE, condition and boon control, etc. They are all skills and abilities, not objective and battleplan.

To clarify, let’s say a new player ask if the thief is a good class. I can easily tell him “If you like stealth, mobility and very high damage, then yes thief is a good class to play.”

Stealth, mobility and very high damage is the objective and battleplan for the thief. It is much easier for a new player to understand these.

Necro lack such objective and battleplan in their class design. Our AoE is great when working with something else. But our AoE by itself aren’t as good as the eles. Condition and boon control is great when working with something else. But they by themselves won’t kill an enemy. And Guardian got better condition removals.

And what else would have made sense for staff? It is a defensive/support weapon, and it has traits in the tree that has defensive/support traits.

Bhawb.7408:

And what else would have made sense for staff? It is a defensive/support weapon, and it has traits in the tree that has defensive/support traits.

For the sake of argument, staff should be a Curses weapon going alongside condition damage. It can also go with Spite for direct damage and condition duration. It can also, more distantly, go with Blood Magic with healing power. So basically for staff any other trait line is better than Death Magic.

Staff does not benefit at all from Death Magic’s toughness and only mildly benefit from boon duration (regen). It doesn’t benefit from or give benefit to minion utility skills at all. Sure Mark of Blood gives regen to minions. But to spec into Staff you cannot spec into Minions, since they are in the same trait line.

I repeat. You physically cannot be a Staff master (2 traits) and be a Minion master (3 traits) at the same time, due purely to how badly the trait system is. This is sad since the Mark of Blood and minions should go hand in hand.

These kind of contradictions is common in necromancers. When designing a build, it often feels like a jigsaw puzzle,trying to fit something together that works for yourself.

Curses has scepter and warhorn, Spite has Axe/Focus. That is not to mention that above all, the staff is a support weapon, not an offensive one.

That said, minions and staff really only “synergize” with mark of blood, which might increase their life span by a little bit if you stack up a lot of healing. Axe is a much more obvious choice for minions, just auto attacking with axe effectively buffs minion’s damage by another 12%, plus Focus (the most common Axe OH choice) gives regen, vulnerability, AND boon strips. Axe Focus is a far better minion choice, and what do you know, the weapon set that buffs minion damage is on the same trait line as the trait that buffs minion damage.

As much as I dislike the conflict of interest between staff & minions, you have to remember that toughness increases the effectiveness of healing applied to yourself, sometimes more than healing power does.

And of course, you can still use staff without the traits that support it, even in a minion build.

Bhawb.7408:

Curses has scepter and warhorn, Spite has Axe/Focus. That is not to mention that above all, the staff is a support weapon, not an offensive one.

That said, minions and staff really only “synergize” with mark of blood, which might increase their life span by a little bit if you stack up a lot of healing. Axe is a much more obvious choice for minions, just auto attacking with axe effectively buffs minion’s damage by another 12%, plus Focus (the most common Axe OH choice) gives regen, vulnerability, AND boon strips. Axe Focus is a far better minion choice, and what do you know, the weapon set that buffs minion damage is on the same trait line as the trait that buffs minion damage.

Axe+focus+minion is indeed one of the possible solutions to the necro jigsaw puzzle. Your “objective” and “battleplan” is to apply vulnerability on a single foe and allow your minions to hit him hard.

I myself runs a Death Magic + Curses build to maximize the condition damage potential for the staff. I found staff to be the best weapons in wvw zerg vs zerg. My “objective” and “battleplan” is to spread bleeding and poison rapidly to large groups of enemies. My build doesn’t apply much boons, but my rune applies boons which benefits from Boon Duration.

Like I said earlier I used to run a MM build with Spectral Wall to further the lives of my Bone Minions. This build happens to take advantage of the Boon Duration from Death Magic. I actually planned to use Rune of the Centaur to add swiftness to my Bone Minions, so they can get to the enemies faster for Putrid Explosion. I never bought the runes at the end, since the broken minion AI makes it very difficult to “time” properly the healing skill to gain swiftness.

So which plan is better? Neither. It depends on what you are trying to do.

But my point still stand, that death magic’s Toughness and Boon Duration by themselves do not benefit staff. You have to make your own “combo” to make it work. It is a jigsaw puzzle.

And so back to my point of why it is so hard to recommend necro to a new player. It is hard to explain. This got nothing to do with L2P. New players just got to figure out their “objective” and “battleplan” for themselves.

I agree that necromancer has some difficult trait decisions, making good builds is really strange on necros. I don’t believe it lacks coherency though.

I just said that about staff because Death Magic still makes the most sense for where to put staff’s main traits; remember though, that staff has only half of its traits in Death Magic, compared to other weapons which are completely contained within their own tree.

You should check out Nemesis.8593 ‘s power build thread .
If you take the time to watch his videos you’ll see he really knows his stuff, maybe PM him, he might be able to help you out, he clearly has necro working right for him in PvE and PvP.
Hope this helps you out.

Draco Aurum.7520:

You should check out Nemesis.8593 ‘s power build thread .
If you take the time to watch his videos you’ll see he really knows his stuff, maybe PM him, he might be able to help you out, he clearly has necro working right for him in PvE and PvP.
Hope this helps you out.

I’ve never seen Nemesis talk about PVP. Does he even PVP?

Yes, Nemesis has somewhat recently come over to PvP, I think he was in the rank 20s, and he has at least 1 tPvP team/guild that he plays with. I’ve never played against/with him because he is EU, but he certainly knows plenty; just he used to PvE a lot and is much newer to PvP.

I hear you OP. On my guardian, my first attempt at slapping together gear for her (emphasis on slapping) more than exceeded my expectations and I decided to use my laurels and fractal relics that was meant for my necro to further strengthen her build. Everything Just went together and it isn’t exactly the best build since it’s utilizing the sw/torch/gs and not so tanky gear. I’m actually having difficulty picking utilities because the only utility my build really requires is judges intervention and guardian has a wide range of choices.

Comparing the necromancer directly with a guardian isn’t exactly fair but my necromancer is in a very weird state. My life siphoning build completely fell apart because of necromancer’s limited healing options and healing power’s overall ineffectiveness on the blood magic tree. My current well bombing build carries quite a few dead weight traits, it puts an insane amount of skills on cd, and to top it all off, the builds intentions are as transparent as glass. It feels like conditionmancer is the build most necro’s are finding a home in, but I can’t even imagine playing one.

Hell, I’m having a lot of trouble settling on a weapon set too. The Axe/focus + dagger/warhorn and dagger/focus or warhorn + staff builds feel like an insane amount of momentum is lost on the switch. This is definitely a more subjective point, but it adds to my extreme difficulty with this class.

Bhawb.7408:

I agree that necromancer has some difficult trait decisions, making good builds is really strange on necros. I don’t believe it lacks coherency though.

I just said that about staff because Death Magic still makes the most sense for where to put staff’s main traits; remember though, that staff has only half of its traits in Death Magic, compared to other weapons which are completely contained within their own tree.

I don’t think you understood me. Death Magic+Toughness+Boon Duration does not benefit the staff in any way. This is a simple 100% fact. So having the two main staff traits (20% recharge and mark size) in death magic makes no sense by itself.

The 10% damage buff in spite and the 3% LF mark trait are not the main staff traits. They are support traits.

You can make staff work by combining death magic with other traits, like Curses. This doesn’t change the fact that having staff in death magic have no benefits.

I disagree that staff is a support weapon. It is flat out the best weapon, if not the only weapon, in wvw zerg vs zerg situations.

It has the lowest damage of every weapon we have, has regen on a 6 second CD, along with a way to transfer all your allies conditions to enemies, a chill/poison with a field, and a fear. It is in every way a support weapon. Yes you can stack up power or condition damage to force it to be a damage weapon, but scepter outdoes it for condition damage in every way, and even axe outdamages it for power builds. Dagger vs Staff damage isn’t even comparable.

Death magic gives toughness and boon duration. Toughness is never a bad thing, and boon duration makes plenty of sense for the weapon with a boon on a 6 second CD. Again, staff is a defensive/support weapon, so is in the defensive/support tree, with defensive/support stats.

Kravick.4906:

Draco Aurum.7520:

You should check out Nemesis.8593 ‘s power build thread .
If you take the time to watch his videos you’ll see he really knows his stuff, maybe PM him, he might be able to help you out, he clearly has necro working right for him in PvE and PvP.
Hope this helps you out.

I’ve never seen Nemesis talk about PVP. Does he even PVP?

Nemesis actually talked about his pvp and pve experiences in the podcast we did with him recently. He has a weekly podcast with several of us. We are trying to work out a time where he gets more time to talk about different avenues.

Bhawb.7408:

It has the lowest damage of every weapon we have, has regen on a 6 second CD, along with a way to transfer all your allies conditions to enemies, a chill/poison with a field, and a fear. It is in every way a support weapon. Yes you can stack up power or condition damage to force it to be a damage weapon, but scepter outdoes it for condition damage in every way, and even axe outdamages it for power builds. Dagger vs Staff damage isn’t even comparable.

Death magic gives toughness and boon duration. Toughness is never a bad thing, and boon duration makes plenty of sense for the weapon with a boon on a 6 second CD. Again, staff is a defensive/support weapon, so is in the defensive/support tree, with defensive/support stats.

Once again you have to look at the objective and battleplan. Yours is single target. Mine is multi-target. Big difference.

For single target damage yes staff is slightly weaker, but not by much. Staff 2 applies 3 stacks of bleeding for 8 seconds every 4.5 seconds, which is pretty strong. Against multiple foes staff 2 is the best AoE skill the necro has. It doesn’t hurt as much as wells but its fast recharge allows it to be reused rapidly. And in wvw zerg vs zerg situations that’s the perfect weapon a necro need.

Toughness and boon duration does not benefit the staff directly. This is true 100% fact. No one can deny this. It doesn’t matter if it is categorized as a support weapon or not. This means you got to trait into something else to make staff work. That’s all I am saying.

station.6421:

Lack of coherency of design is calling a profession “the attrition profession” and giving the only unique condition to the mesmer. Terror trait is a step in the right direction, but with only 2 sources of fear, it’s hardly worth comparing.

Never mind that you really have to push the build to get more than one tick of damage out of terror.

CHIPS.6018:

Bhawb.7408:

It has the lowest damage of every weapon we have, has regen on a 6 second CD, along with a way to transfer all your allies conditions to enemies, a chill/poison with a field, and a fear. It is in every way a support weapon. Yes you can stack up power or condition damage to force it to be a damage weapon, but scepter outdoes it for condition damage in every way, and even axe outdamages it for power builds. Dagger vs Staff damage isn’t even comparable.

Death magic gives toughness and boon duration. Toughness is never a bad thing, and boon duration makes plenty of sense for the weapon with a boon on a 6 second CD. Again, staff is a defensive/support weapon, so is in the defensive/support tree, with defensive/support stats.

Once again you have to look at the objective and battleplan. Yours is single target. Mine is multi-target. Big difference.

For single target damage yes staff is slightly weaker, but not by much. Staff 2 applies 3 stacks of bleeding for 8 seconds every 4.5 seconds, which is pretty strong. Against multiple foes staff 2 is the best AoE skill the necro has. It doesn’t hurt as much as wells but its fast recharge allows it to be reused rapidly. And in wvw zerg vs zerg situations that’s the perfect weapon a necro need.

Toughness and boon duration does not benefit the staff directly. This is true 100% fact. No one can deny this. It doesn’t matter if it is categorized as a support weapon or not. This means you got to trait into something else to make staff work. That’s all I am saying.

Dunno, that regen from #2 is a boon.

digiowl.9620:

CHIPS.6018:

Bhawb.7408:

It has the lowest damage of every weapon we have, has regen on a 6 second CD, along with a way to transfer all your allies conditions to enemies, a chill/poison with a field, and a fear. It is in every way a support weapon. Yes you can stack up power or condition damage to force it to be a damage weapon, but scepter outdoes it for condition damage in every way, and even axe outdamages it for power builds. Dagger vs Staff damage isn’t even comparable.

Death magic gives toughness and boon duration. Toughness is never a bad thing, and boon duration makes plenty of sense for the weapon with a boon on a 6 second CD. Again, staff is a defensive/support weapon, so is in the defensive/support tree, with defensive/support stats.

Once again you have to look at the objective and battleplan. Yours is single target. Mine is multi-target. Big difference.

For single target damage yes staff is slightly weaker, but not by much. Staff 2 applies 3 stacks of bleeding for 8 seconds every 4.5 seconds, which is pretty strong. Against multiple foes staff 2 is the best AoE skill the necro has. It doesn’t hurt as much as wells but its fast recharge allows it to be reused rapidly. And in wvw zerg vs zerg situations that’s the perfect weapon a necro need.

Toughness and boon duration does not benefit the staff directly. This is true 100% fact. No one can deny this. It doesn’t matter if it is categorized as a support weapon or not. This means you got to trait into something else to make staff work. That’s all I am saying.

Dunno, that regen from #2 is a boon.

It works even better with healing power.

CHIPS.6018:

It works even better with healing power.

20% Boon Duration gives an additional second of regen. At base & level 80, that’s 130 more healing. 200 healing power gives 200 * 0.125 healing per second, so that’s 25 healing * 5 seconds for 125 additional healing.

So if you take the 1% boon duration : 10 healing power ratio you see in the trait lines, they scale nearly identically.

Granted, healing power is much easier to stack because it’s available as a stat on every gear slot, as compared to boon duration which is effectively traits and runes only, but then you’re not really having to choose between boon duration and healing power.

I think I’ve forgotten what this thread is supposed to be about by now, would someone care to remind me?

I would like to point out that if you look at the three classes people consider the best for wvw all have one thing in common. They get precision an crit damage from the same line. Meaning if they want to build for straight damage It’s less points they need to spread out.

Samhayn.2385:

I would like to point out that if you look at the three classes people consider the best for wvw all have one thing in common. They get precision an crit damage from the same line. Meaning if they want to build for straight damage It’s less points they need to spread out.

Except not a single good elementalist spends many points down that line. In fact it’s probably the worst tree in terms of traits they have. 30 Arcana or D/D 30 Water are the two most common builds with the other points spread out between Earth and Fire. You may put 10 or 20 in the Air line, but it’s one of the worst traits.

Same goes with Thieves their prec/crit tree is for pistols, and considered a 2nd tier tree that rarely is used. Deadly Arts or the stealth trees are more common.

Samhayn.2385:

Same goes with Thieves their prec/crit tree is for pistols, and considered a 2nd tier tree that rarely is used. Deadly Arts or the stealth trees are more common.

You have this backwards. Its the Deadly Arts tree thats 2nd tier and not commonly used, because its the venom tree. Venoms are meh. The Critical Strikes tree contains pistol traits, yes, but also contains Critical Haste, Side Strike, Hidden Killer (extremely popular in WvW), and Executioner. The highest people go into Deadly Arts is 25 and only a certain glass cannon build go that route.

Currently the most popular WvW build is either 10/30/30/0/0 or 0/30/30/10/0 made popular by Yashi when he showed people videos of him soloing entire groups of people. Something I’ve also been able to accomplish on my thief. Necromancers are not really capable of doing that.

Softspoken.2410:

CHIPS.6018:

It works even better with healing power.

20% Boon Duration gives an additional second of regen. At base & level 80, that’s 130 more healing. 200 healing power gives 200 * 0.125 healing per second, so that’s 25 healing * 5 seconds for 125 additional healing.

So if you take the 1% boon duration : 10 healing power ratio you see in the trait lines, they scale nearly identically.

Granted, healing power is much easier to stack because it’s available as a stat on every gear slot, as compared to boon duration which is effectively traits and runes only, but then you’re not really having to choose between boon duration and healing power.

I think I’ve forgotten what this thread is supposed to be about by now, would someone care to remind me?

The thread is about how “weird” the necro skill tree is. We do go off topic a lot. ^^

I totally agree with you guys that something is wrong about traits and certain skills of necromancers.

But I don’t expect at all a rework of it now. It seems like devs don’t want to make some risky movement about balancing the game so… better not hope for a rework and live with it as well as you can.

CHIPS.6018:

The thread is about how “weird” the necro skill tree is. We do go off topic a lot. ^^

Haha, I thought this topic was about how awesome the warrior tree was compared to the Necro which made me laugh because I have an 80 warrior and that tree is a joke. Traits in odd locations, Abilities you would never use. Strong abilities early in the tree, and really weak stuff later on.

Elementalist have the same issue they have quite a few 30 point horrible talents which is why so many of them go 30 arcana or 30 water because those are amazing talents.

Bas.7406:

CHIPS.6018:

The thread is about how “weird” the necro skill tree is. We do go off topic a lot. ^^

Haha, I thought this topic was about how awesome the warrior tree was compared to the Necro which made me laugh because I have an 80 warrior and that tree is a joke. Traits in odd locations, Abilities you would never use. Strong abilities early in the tree, and really weak stuff later on.

Elementalist have the same issue they have quite a few 30 point horrible talents which is why so many of them go 30 arcana or 30 water because those are amazing talents.

Yeah, it was about how “weird” the Necromancer trait tree is, and was never to say it had no synergy just a relatively low amount of flexibility in that category. I like harmony and balanced design and aesthetics, I personally don’t “get” that with the Necromancer profession in GW2.

Bas.7406:

CHIPS.6018:

The thread is about how “weird” the necro skill tree is. We do go off topic a lot. ^^

Haha, I thought this topic was about how awesome the warrior tree was compared to the Necro which made me laugh because I have an 80 warrior and that tree is a joke. Traits in odd locations, Abilities you would never use. Strong abilities early in the tree, and really weak stuff later on.

Elementalist have the same issue they have quite a few 30 point horrible talents which is why so many of them go 30 arcana or 30 water because those are amazing talents.

Well the only ones that we have worth the actual 30 slot are Death nova (lets you minion bomb thus making a impact on playstyle) and Close to Death (obligatory 20% damage increase when enemy is low/if has x or y on him), maybe Foot in the Grave if we are going from no stability perspective too. For warriors, Defy Pain, Physical Training, Vigorous Shouts and Inspiring Battle Standards in Tactics making a actual 2 builds pre tree choice, Quick Bursts and Adrenaline Reserves in Tactics (more fire combo fields/aoe stuns or keeping damage from adrenaline traits while still getting the greatsword fury). As for eles you are right, but thats mostly because how inefficient the traits become when you swap around a lot or specific to weaker builds (written in stone and presistant flames).

One Spite, both Curse, both Death Magic, both Blood Magic, and both Soul Reaping 30 traits are worth it. The spite axe training isn’t worth it because it just isn’t enough of a damage upgrade IMO, but I would imagine if you are using axe as your main weapon in a power build, it might be worth it.

Still, 9/10 good traits are definitely a lot better than most other classes have it.

Bhawb.7408:

One Spite, both Curse, both Death Magic, both Blood Magic, and both Soul Reaping 30 traits are worth it. The spite axe training isn’t worth it because it just isn’t enough of a damage upgrade IMO, but I would imagine if you are using axe as your main weapon in a power build, it might be worth it.

Still, 9/10 good traits are definitely a lot better than most other classes have it.

Curses could at best count as master traits, with master of corruption and terror being close to good grandmaster ones despite not being there.
10% chance on boon strip is… utterly useless, hello well of corruption and corrupt boon.
In Blood the Transfusion trait is what id say a good grandmaster one for its power and how it changes the use of Life Transfer, fetrid consumption is just medicore since it pulls conditions on intervals and most of the time the minions will die if they pull 5 bleeds or something like that… making Vampiric Master pointless since minions dont live for long enough to do what you specced them to do.
Foot in the Grave isnt worth it as a grandmaster till they return shade effect into it and near to Death is there for the DS hopping setups, but its equivalents are either adept or master traits for other classes. Now compare those to how Engie grandmaster traits change setups or Warriors affect build effciency. Not saying that they are bad, but they stay on around the same worth, no matter if adept or grandmaster.

anet could rearrange and merge some traits for the bloody heck of makeing some builds easier.
One good example would be merging targeted rituals with ritual mastery.
If i am using a sigil of water i dont have exactly an issue with the 20 points in curses,but since i am not that is 20 points nearly wasted to enhance wells i am using to support others.
I could use the extra 10 points in death but i cant because targeted rituals is a master trait.
Also i think our spec options are kinda laughable,targeted wells bigger marks and siphon and thats it.
We dont have defining traits and that takes a lot out of our utility,which was already crippled with the removal of hexes.
Just look at the engineer traits and utility,they can do everything around but not that good.
That was the gw1 necro thing,but in gw2 the necro has nothing on variety/utility.