Guild Wars 2

First I wanna say that I have no intention to be offensive or unproductive, just curious.

I was about to go into CoE exp today, my first non-story dungeon. (I know, don’t look at me like that.) Just before we go in the party asked me to change to my other toon, War or Guard, in particular. Since I’m quite new to the game, I only have one 80 which is my main Necro, and I told them just that, and also pointed out that there were already one Guardian and one Warrior in the party already, and they were like, “Umm…this gonna be quite difficult.”

Long story short, they kicked me.

What I wanna know is, do Necro has some problems when running CoE exp, or any others dungeons? Why did they seemed so turned off to know that I was gonna use Necro? Or is there any way to play support or spec for dungeon only?

I’m quite new here, so if I said something wrong or inappropriate, then tell me.

There’s nothing majorly wrong with Necro’s in dungeons (Heck I use mine as full zerker in melee in a lot of dungeons)

It’s just that people tend to favour using Warriors, Guardians and Mesmers in dungeons because those 3 classes are very strong in PvE (Warriors throwing out huge damage, Guardians being really tough to take down and providing AoE boons and Mesmers bring very nice support skills) and people, like electricity, take the path of least resistance (A.k.a. being lazy and want to just steamroll through content)

Meanwhile, classes such as Necromancer, Thief and to an extent Engineer and Ranger tend to bring less group utility (Not a huge amount of AoE boons, not always as much DPS as a warrior can easily bring and not as tanky as a Guardian) that said, these are just the “Most common” views/builds of these classes, it’s entirely possible to make very strong PvE builds with these classes at to clear all content.

Heck, a while back some people started doing full Necro runs of places (Trying to also speed run as fast as 4x Warrior + Mesmer)

Pretty much what Taril said. Why take a Necro when you can get better damage from a Warrior. Why take a Necro when we offer no group buffs besides 3 seconds (lol )of protection. Necro damage is medium-good, survivability is medium-good, utilitiy is low. We offer condition removal, but then again, other classes can do that too. Also conditions don’t do any damage to objects, and if you have more than one Necro doing conditions, you’re losing damage because of the bleed cap.

Just avoid farming runs or start parties yourself. Look for “any class” or something like this in the comments to lfg on gw2lfg.com
They are rare, since CoF is mostly farming dungeon for lazy and bad players, but it’s still most popular dungeon and every single class runs it.

Problem with CoE is that the main boss you fight many times each patch, in all except path 3 spams total condition removal on himself every 5 seconds, making condition damage lacking. In addition there’s another boss which has a turret spamming him condition removal constantly. As for the power glass cannons, they work wonders there, and in every dungeon.

Oh, that’s good to know, I might as well try glass in there then. Thank you everyone.

Necros just aren’t very good, and the player-base knows it.

Conditions are pretty lousy all-in-all, and DoTs have always been week on trash mobs. If you have a long ramp up to do your damage, and the mob dies in 5 seconds, what good are you?

I love necros that say, my Mark of Blood does X amount of AOE damage, and they never mention how long it takes for them to get that damage. Lets be generous and say 1 mark of blood does 3k damage, and it hits three mobs. If it takes 8 seconds to do that damage, then why would a group not just take an ele instead?

An ele can do twice that in DPS, and if heals are needed, there is no comparison. Condition removal? Don’t make me laugh….

And conditions still don’t work on destroyable/mechanical things. Which is just plain stupid, and shows how useless the devs are in their thinking.

I am reminded of just how stupid the “carts can’t bleed” argument is every time my ele or engineer uses a fire damage skill to destroy a lava eruption, or a living flame type of beasty.

And no matter how hard they try, a power necro is never going to be as good as a banner warrior.

100blades warriors, Mesmers, Banner warriors Great sword guardians, Hammer guardians, Staff ele’s… these are the A-team builds of PVE, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

Erys.1268:

Oh, that’s good to know, I might as well try glass in there then. Thank you everyone.

Glass cannon won’t make you desirable for farming groups, just more squishy.

What likely happened OP, is that the people in your group saw posts like the one Ezeriel just made and took it for the word of Gospel. Don’t be discouraged. I run exclusively Necro as well (my second highest character is my Guardian at level 65) and I’ve done at least one explorable path in every Dungeon without being considered Dead Weight.

Find yourself a good group of people in a Guild (if you’re in Anvil Rock, hit me up with PM and I’ll add you to the one I’m in). Alternatively see about joining the all Necro guild set up by Bas and Bhawb called ‘But of Corpse’ as they’ve done all necro Dungeon runs in the past.

The class can definitely see some wrinkles ironed out, but it’s by no means a hindrance that’ll slow your party down.

That being said, I will agree with what has been said by Ezeriel and others, that the there is an unofficial trinity of Warrior, Guardian, and Mesmer in PvE due to their ability to do Speed Clears of Dungeons. But if you’re like me and actually enjoy killing things besides the mandatory bosses in Dungeons, you should avoid those Speed Clear groups anyways.

Targuil.3741:

Problem with CoE is that the main boss you fight many times each patch, in all except path 3 spams total condition removal on himself every 5 seconds, making condition damage lacking. In addition there’s another boss which has a turret spamming him condition removal constantly. As for the power glass cannons, they work wonders there, and in every dungeon.

I find that boss an odd example, since I feel like necromancers can actually counter it rather well. Wells can damage the boss + two turrets simultaneously, and Life Transfer can hit all the turrets + the boss if you stand in the right spot. Piercing life blast (questionable, admittedly) and staff auto can also hit a turret + the boss. So a power-based necromancer can actually attack at least one turret of their choosing without sacrificing that much damage.

So you can take out the cleansing turret yourself, then use corrupt boon on the boss to give it vulnerability, confusion and poison that lasts about until the turret comes back up anyways. If you manage to get the cleansing turret and say, the protection turret down at the same time, you can drop well of corruption instead.

For me, the most difficult part of CoE in general are the subject alpha fights, and the difficulty there has very little to do with your profession. (It’s about if your team can coordinate enough to stack properly while having someone lure the ice blast, or group dodge at the same time while properly clearing crystals.) I’d wager the kick was at least as much because you were new to the dungeon than because you were a necromancer.

Erys.1268:

First I wanna say that I have no intention to be offensive or unproductive, just curious.

I was about to go into CoE exp today, my first non-story dungeon. (I know, don’t look at me like that.) Just before we go in the party asked me to change to my other toon, War or Guard, in particular. Since I’m quite new to the game, I only have one 80 which is my main Necro, and I told them just that, and also pointed out that there were already one Guardian and one Warrior in the party already, and they were like, “Umm…this gonna be quite difficult.”

Long story short, they kicked me.

What I wanna know is, do Necro has some problems when running CoE exp, or any others dungeons? Why did they seemed so turned off to know that I was gonna use Necro? Or is there any way to play support or spec for dungeon only?

I’m quite new here, so if I said something wrong or inappropriate, then tell me.

There is a subgroup in my guild that farms CoE p1-3 in about an hour and 45 mins for all 3 paths. We have a necro that comes occasionally and we love her, Necros offer far more utility than the mouth breathing masses would like you to believe. Long story short kitten the idiots and make your own groups or find a guild that isn’t completely kitten Min maxing to save 5 minutes on a dungeon run is idiotic and the people that perpetuate that mindset at the cost of other peoples enjoyment of their game time are immature little kittens.

There’s no race for world firsts in this game and even in games where there WERE people still didn’t min max classes like they do here for whatever pants on head kitten reason.

If you still have issues with groups, come join us on Fort Aspenwood – Select Few, over 300 members and 80 or more logged in at any given time, none of which will bat an eyelid at adding you to their dungeon groups.

Some people have no patience for other classes but I suspect they kicked you because you were new to the game. CoE is a very tricky dungeon to start on and requires quite good knowledge of all the mechanics before you get conistant smooth runs.

As for necro. Yes they dont do as much damage as warriors or bring as much support or utility as mesmer and guardians. But they have a definate use in CoE. For example the golem with the turrets. Boon corruption combined with mesmer and guardian reflects works wonders. Not too mention wells and DS provide a huge aoe burst which hits more targets than a warriors cleave so when you los a group of enemies and pop your aoe’s they are gonna go down just as fast. Also in terms of single target damage (on bosses for example) a necro can keep pretty close damage to a warrior at times. Lich form combined with timewarp is huge damage. Also if your team struggles with large groups of mobs you can take well of darkness for 5 seconds of blind or well of power for 5 seconds of condition removal. Which is actually a pretty useful support to a high dps team depending on how effective your guardian is. I would actually say you dont need a guardian if you have a necro and then you will have more damage.

Just avoid farm groups or elitist groups like the one you were in. Use gw2.lfg.com and avoid any group that says they want to farm, or say you have to be this or that class, or full zerker or ping gear.

The fact is CoF is one of the easiest dungeons, and path 1 is probably one of the easiest paths and anyone, ANYONE, that says you have to have x, y or z in order to finish CoF path 1 (not farm it) does not understand the game and is probably bad.

Farming runs are different, and there is some madness that compells people to run the same dungeon path over and over and over again for a few extra coins. I find I make more money when I do different dungeons and different paths. I probably make more money because I’m actually having fun and doing the runs. After 2 CoFs, I’m pretty much at the end of my line.

I just want to say that necro is probably one of the best professions for CoE. The reason being that lich form trashes Alpha for free.

When you are in lich form and in very close proximity to alpha, his most devastating attacks cannot hit you. The massive numbers of red circles just miss completely 95% of the time. I run a variation of PvP power necro (90% zerker, 30/15/10/0/15), and with might stacking, vuln stacking, and Time Warp, I am pushing 5.5k-6.5k dmg on alpha per hit (pushing 8k dps under time warp), easily out dpsing a warrior when I’m in lich form. The team I run with can drop the first alpha in under 30 seconds (50%), second one around 30 seconds (75%), and melt the 3rd one in about 1.5 minutes (the first 50% takes awhile. The last 50% just melts).

As long everyone is melee stacking, CoE is brain-dead easy. And necro just make it even more so.

TJL

Copenhagen and Ezeriel’s posts are off-base, please don’t let them discourage you. Necros can do really well in dungeons, including CoE. Doing well in dungeons is based more on player skill and a sensible build than which class you are.

CoE is one of my favorite dungeons – I’m currently running a healing build, and when everyone stacks up for the golems or alpha I can mass heal the party with well of blood, or use signet of undeath to res the multiple people who inevitably go down on one of the golem charges. If everyone’s kiting sugject alpha, then signet of the undeath is one of the few ways to successfully res someone. (Not as relevant to the core of the dungeon, but flesh worm also works really well to get through the laser beams.)

Whether you’re a necro or some other class, you’ll run into stupid groups. Sometimes these groups will think that all necros suck in dungeons, sometimes they’ll think the only way to kill Troll in AC is to lure him to Kholer and sit out of combat for 10 minutes. If you are able to find this out before the dungeon run starts, be happy that you avoided such a group.

Yeah… exactly… build for this dungeon build for that one. To hell with that. Next we going to have a build for crafting too. I’m not here to respec when I need to wipe my kitten

HiSaZuL.2843:

Yeah… exactly… build for this dungeon build for that one. To hell with that. Next we going to have a build for crafting too. I’m not here to respec when I need to wipe my kitten

You dont ever need to respec if you go zerker power. Just take different utilities for different fights. Which you do with every class anyway.

Softspoken.2410:

Targuil.3741:

Problem with CoE is that the main boss you fight many times each patch, in all except path 3 spams total condition removal on himself every 5 seconds, making condition damage lacking. In addition there’s another boss which has a turret spamming him condition removal constantly. As for the power glass cannons, they work wonders there, and in every dungeon.

I find that boss an odd example, since I feel like necromancers can actually counter it rather well. Wells can damage the boss + two turrets simultaneously, and Life Transfer can hit all the turrets + the boss if you stand in the right spot. Piercing life blast (questionable, admittedly) and staff auto can also hit a turret + the boss. So a power-based necromancer can actually attack at least one turret of their choosing without sacrificing that much damage.

So you can take out the cleansing turret yourself, then use corrupt boon on the boss to give it vulnerability, confusion and poison that lasts about until the turret comes back up anyways. If you manage to get the cleansing turret and say, the protection turret down at the same time, you can drop well of corruption instead.

For me, the most difficult part of CoE in general are the subject alpha fights, and the difficulty there has very little to do with your profession. (It’s about if your team can coordinate enough to stack properly while having someone lure the ice blast, or group dodge at the same time while properly clearing crystals.) I’d wager the kick was at least as much because you were new to the dungeon than because you were a necromancer.

My text only applies to conditionmancer, not power glass which I mainly play and I agree with all of that.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Yeah… exactly… build for this dungeon build for that one. To hell with that. Next we going to have a build for crafting too. I’m not here to respec when I need to wipe my kitten

It’s not fair to argue both that necromancers suck in dungeons compared to other classes and that every necromancer build should be viable in dungeons. Most other classes are quite shoehorned into a single build; necromancers have some of the most viable build variety.

Personally I swap at least one utility almost every fight, and switch weapon sets depending on whether it’s safe to stay in dagger distance, and occasionally swap traits. I also carry a set of more condition damage-oriented gear for the underwater fractal because I strongly prefer a trident underwater. A power build in that fight is doable, just more of a pain.

If you don’t want to play that way you don’t have to. But don’t complain about necros not being viable because a specific build doesn’t work well on specific bosses, no class can say all their builds work well on all bosses.

Taril.8619:

There’s nothing majorly wrong with Necro’s in dungeons (Heck I use mine as full zerker in melee in a lot of dungeons)

It’s just that people tend to favour using Warriors, Guardians and Mesmers in dungeons because those 3 classes are very strong in PvE (Warriors throwing out huge damage, Guardians being really tough to take down and providing AoE boons and Mesmers bring very nice support skills) and people, like electricity, take the path of least resistance (A.k.a. being lazy and want to just steamroll through content)

I agree with this statement. People are just being lazy and are looking for what they believe is the most optimal and efficient class for the run. I’ve been running a Necro since the game started and is still my main today. I run CoF constantly and just avoid these groups that are looking for fast runs. Not to say that we can’t do a fast run either, my guild mate and I have done CoF path 1 in under 15 minutes with my necro all the time. Best thing to do is find a guild that will not find your necro as a crutch, because we’re not. And just avoid those farm groups. Before LFG.com, I rarely got kicked, but if I did I was able to find another group fairly quickly that didn’t care that I played a Necro. Heck, I’ve ran with some group were we we’re all squishy class and had the most fun. Just don’t let those groups discourage you and look for a solid guild that will not care that you main is a necro.

Whenever people question my necro, I just pop my commander tag. I tell them I earned all that money from dungeons and WvW. They usually keep quiet after that.

DelOnasi.6051:

Copenhagen and Ezeriel’s posts are off-base, please don’t let them discourage you. Necros can do really well in dungeons, including CoE. Doing well in dungeons is based more on player skill and a sensible build than which class you are.

CoE is one of my favorite dungeons – I’m currently running a healing build, and when everyone stacks up for the golems or alpha I can mass heal the party with well of blood, or use signet of undeath to res the multiple people who inevitably go down on one of the golem charges. If everyone’s kiting sugject alpha, then signet of the undeath is one of the few ways to successfully res someone. (Not as relevant to the core of the dungeon, but flesh worm also works really well to get through the laser beams.)

Whether you’re a necro or some other class, you’ll run into stupid groups. Sometimes these groups will think that all necros suck in dungeons, sometimes they’ll think the only way to kill Troll in AC is to lure him to Kholer and sit out of combat for 10 minutes. If you are able to find this out before the dungeon run starts, be happy that you avoided such a group.

My post was not meant to discourage. I love my Necro and play it everyday in PvE and PvP. Necro performs well in every dungeon, it’s just that we offer very little in group utility. I don’t understand why we were designed like this in a party/group based game.

Edit: One thing I will add. Necromancers probably have the most viable builds in every aspect of the game. Minions, Condi, Hybrid, Power, Wells, Syphon, Bunker, etc.

Don’t hate on the haters, our AOE Buffing is quite frankly horrible. Well of power would be much more useful in team fights if it had a longer duration or a shorter cooldown. Seeing as how that would de-stabilize PVP, it won’t happen.

Any good player is fine on any class as long as they are not a condition hero fighting structures, in a party with multiple condition classes, fighting a boss that gets bonus damage with a condition hero (who won’t).

Or just take a warrior, who doesn’t have to worry about those limitations, and you can be sure he will be good in your group. That is why people want warriors guardians and mesmers, because they are never bad, while Necro CAN be bad or at best equivalent.

As I have said before, and will say many times over. Until they make condition removal more important, harder for the other classes, and debuffing conditions (like chill and cripple) more important in fights, there is no really compelling reason to take a necro over anything else. We completely lack reflect or block or aegis, either group or self buff, and in very rare cases have stability.

I only have one group in twenty that actually makes a gripe about me being a necro, and maybe 1 in 50 that out-right kicks me without asking, but it does happen, and while very rude, it is not unjustified, based on the above. Good necros are good, but if that good necro put his abilties to one of the better PVE classes that good necro would be an amazing mesmer, or a superb guardian, or a spectacular warrior.

Nothing will change in the short or long term unless they decide to divorce SPVP/WVW and PVE though, because necro is already well thought of in SPVP, and they will not imbalance that part of the game for the sake of better PVE synergy.

You know what hypothetical dungeon would love a necro though? One with a boss that used AOE corruption boon every 10 seconds. Who wants aoe buffs when they are going to get turned into debuffs. But of course, no such boss exists, as it would be too hard for a guardian to shout clear all of those debuffs.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Yeah… exactly… build for this dungeon build for that one. To hell with that. Next we going to have a build for crafting too. I’m not here to respec when I need to wipe my kitten

The game clearly rewards respeccing for fights. Frankly, WoW does the same thing. The problem is that you cannot change your allocation of trait points on the fly, and it is cumbersome to change traits and equip new gear, particularly when in a PUG. I have been toying with the idea of a 20/30/20/0/0 build allowing me to switch between condition-based full MM with s/d and conditionmancer with s/d//staff. The problem is that the only traits in spite that would be of significant use to a conditionmancer would be VI, to a much lesser degree V, and VII. Given one would be shifting in and out of DS for fury, this build would not be too inefficient. Still, it would be nice to be able to swap between trait specs as in WoW.

Copenhagen.7015:

My post was not meant to discourage. I love my Necro and play it everyday in PvE and PvP. Necro performs well in every dungeon, it’s just that we offer very little in group utility. I don’t understand why we were designed like this in a party/group based game.

Edit: One thing I will add. Necromancers probably have the most viable builds in every aspect of the game. Minions, Condi, Hybrid, Power, Wells, Syphon, Bunker, etc.

I think I interpreted your original post as more troll-y than you intended. While we don’t have the most utility in the game, we can offer more than 3 seconds of protection with spectral wall, but few necros actually use it. We also can provide perma-regeneration and have lots of access to blinds. I agree that we could use some more group utility, but I think that’s partially the result of reflection being the current meta “one true utility”, which is bad for lots of reasons.

Rennoko.5731:

Don’t hate on the haters, our AOE Buffing is quite frankly horrible. Well of power would be much more useful in team fights if it had a longer duration or a shorter cooldown. Seeing as how that would de-stabilize PVP, it won’t happen.
…

I also have concerns about several aspects of necromancers, and posts highlighting those constructively are great! But if we want ANet to take any of this community’s discussion seriously, we have to provide accurate feedback (like yours), not endless wars of “necros are useless” / “necros are perfect”.

You’re right that the current meta is very reflect/block/dodge heavy, and this makes our lack of reflection and vigor problematic. I agree that either some gameplay should be reworked to make reflect less important and other utilities more useful, or less ideally all classes should have some access to reflection and vigor.

Targuil.3741:

My text only applies to conditionmancer, not power glass which I mainly play and I agree with all of that.

Ah, my mistake. I just have too many fond memories of playing with that golem’s boons.

Rennoko.5731:

Don’t hate on the haters, our AOE Buffing is quite frankly horrible. Well of power would be much more useful in team fights if it had a longer duration or a shorter cooldown. Seeing as how that would de-stabilize PVP, it won’t happen.

Any good player is fine on any class as long as they are not a condition hero fighting structures, in a party with multiple condition classes, fighting a boss that gets bonus damage with a condition hero (who won’t).

Or just take a warrior, who doesn’t have to worry about those limitations, and you can be sure he will be good in your group. That is why people want warriors guardians and mesmers, because they are never bad, while Necro CAN be bad or at best equivalent.

As I have said before, and will say many times over. Until they make condition removal more important, harder for the other classes, and debuffing conditions (like chill and cripple) more important in fights, there is no really compelling reason to take a necro over anything else. We completely lack reflect or block or aegis, either group or self buff, and in very rare cases have stability.

I only have one group in twenty that actually makes a gripe about me being a necro, and maybe 1 in 50 that out-right kicks me without asking, but it does happen, and while very rude, it is not unjustified, based on the above. Good necros are good, but if that good necro put his abilties to one of the better PVE classes that good necro would be an amazing mesmer, or a superb guardian, or a spectacular warrior.

Nothing will change in the short or long term unless they decide to divorce SPVP/WVW and PVE though, because necro is already well thought of in SPVP, and they will not imbalance that part of the game for the sake of better PVE synergy.

You know what hypothetical dungeon would love a necro though? One with a boss that used AOE corruption boon every 10 seconds. Who wants aoe buffs when they are going to get turned into debuffs. But of course, no such boss exists, as it would be too hard for a guardian to shout clear all of those debuffs.

It’s a good thing there’s hardcore pve progression in this game where things like group makeup are strictly locked in and one MUST bring incredibly specific class and trait combinations in order to succeed. Also a good thing that doing so is rewarded by the game mechanics with better loot and higher tiers of gear.

Oh wait.

I’ve been doing hardcore progression in MMOs since the dawn of time, and not once did I have half of the die hard mentality you mouth breathers do about the “requirements” to succeed. And yet somehow I was the proud recipient of multiple server/region firsts and two world firsts.

The only area of this game where a logical argument could be made for having a strict group composition would be Fractals, and only then above 20. Anything else can and has been beaten by five Longbow Rangers with little to no difficulty. Now if you feel the need to min/max your AC explorable groups, my derision aside, feel free. But quit pushing your opinion, because that is literally all it is, on people outside your meticulously organized cadre of like minded individuals.

To quote an adage I’m sure quite a few of you have heard before, bring the player, not the class.

And I had server first starting from vanilla wow till I quit. My opinion yours. gtfo please.

/sarcasm

HiSaZuL.2843:

And I had server first starting from vanilla wow till I quit. My opinion yours. gtfo please.

/sarcasm

Not sure what your post means or even what your intent was. Much like your first post, as a matter of fact.

The game mechanics heavily favor simple no-brainer classes (warriors and guardians mostly) for PvE because the fights are also simple and direct. Burst damage and outright damage mitigation usually work better than more subtle mechanics like conditions.

I’ll compare necros to guards here to give you an example: necros can spread conditions, remove boons and cc very well. Guardians can buff allies, cleanse conditions, heal and tank well (necros can tank as well, but guardians are generally better at it). The classes are polar opposites and seem balanced on paper. However, dungeons are skewed against necros because of the boss mechanics. Many bosses are immune to cc, have unremovable boons or cleanse very well, countering a lot of what a necro is good at. On the other hand, i’ve never seen any of them use powerful boon removal or anything that hinders a guardian’s mechanics.

This is why you get elitism in PvE, because of stupid and biased dungeon design. In WvW or PvP it’s a very different story and the playing field is much more leveled. Despite this unbalance, you can do any dungeon in the game with every class. If you see any elitists on the map just tell them to kitten off and to go back to WoW.

I think the only problem was you bumped into a farming squad who all prefer the lame Hundred Blades 166% critical damage builds for farming.

IMO Necros bring alot to instances (the best being perma-weakness).

Sannhet.8745:

Rennoko.5731:

Don’t hate on the haters, our AOE Buffing is quite frankly horrible. Well of power would be much more useful in team fights if it had a longer duration or a shorter cooldown. Seeing as how that would de-stabilize PVP, it won’t happen.

Any good player is fine on any class as long as they are not a condition hero fighting structures, in a party with multiple condition classes, fighting a boss that gets bonus damage with a condition hero (who won’t).

Or just take a warrior, who doesn’t have to worry about those limitations, and you can be sure he will be good in your group. That is why people want warriors guardians and mesmers, because they are never bad, while Necro CAN be bad or at best equivalent.

As I have said before, and will say many times over. Until they make condition removal more important, harder for the other classes, and debuffing conditions (like chill and cripple) more important in fights, there is no really compelling reason to take a necro over anything else. We completely lack reflect or block or aegis, either group or self buff, and in very rare cases have stability.

I only have one group in twenty that actually makes a gripe about me being a necro, and maybe 1 in 50 that out-right kicks me without asking, but it does happen, and while very rude, it is not unjustified, based on the above. Good necros are good, but if that good necro put his abilties to one of the better PVE classes that good necro would be an amazing mesmer, or a superb guardian, or a spectacular warrior.

Nothing will change in the short or long term unless they decide to divorce SPVP/WVW and PVE though, because necro is already well thought of in SPVP, and they will not imbalance that part of the game for the sake of better PVE synergy.

You know what hypothetical dungeon would love a necro though? One with a boss that used AOE corruption boon every 10 seconds. Who wants aoe buffs when they are going to get turned into debuffs. But of course, no such boss exists, as it would be too hard for a guardian to shout clear all of those debuffs.

It’s a good thing there’s hardcore pve progression in this game where things like group makeup are strictly locked in and one MUST bring incredibly specific class and trait combinations in order to succeed. Also a good thing that doing so is rewarded by the game mechanics with better loot and higher tiers of gear.

Oh wait.

I’ve been doing hardcore progression in MMOs since the dawn of time, and not once did I have half of the die hard mentality you mouth breathers do about the “requirements” to succeed. And yet somehow I was the proud recipient of multiple server/region firsts and two world firsts.

The only area of this game where a logical argument could be made for having a strict group composition would be Fractals, and only then above 20. Anything else can and has been beaten by five Longbow Rangers with little to no difficulty. Now if you feel the need to min/max your AC explorable groups, my derision aside, feel free. But quit pushing your opinion, because that is literally all it is, on people outside your meticulously organized cadre of like minded individuals.

To quote an adage I’m sure quite a few of you have heard before, bring the player, not the class.

Would you like any more pointing out on how you failed to say anything meaningful besides waving some imaginary badge of “accomplishment” in a video game… Your past “exploits” have nothing to do gw2 in any way, shape or form.
Keep your name calling to yourself and let people play how they want to play.

I really wish people would stop defending what is considered to be one of the two worst classes in the game.

Being dishonest about it is not doing you, the game, or the new players any good.

Yeah sure, you did a dungeon, with a guild or pug blah blah blah… does that suddenly make the class good for dungeons? No, it doesn’t.

Here we have a Mesmer that turned a 7 minute CoF run into a 10 minute run, and got kick from his group for the effort.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Talk-about-elitism

I’m happy with anything less than 15 minutes, but I’m not farming for a legendary weapon. You start adding engineers and necros to your group, and you could be there all day.

Someone new to the game, looking for badges, might be happy with that, but most of us have been-there-done-that, and have better things to do.

A: Anyone wanna do TA?

B: Sure I’ll go

A: Great! my necro needs tokens for the armor

B: Oh wait, my sister is coming over with her kid, I better not do a dungeon right now

A: Oh, alright, anyone else wanna go?

Make your main a necro and you’ll get used to seeing that.

Ezeriel.9574:

I really wish people would stop defending what is considered to be one of the two worst classes in the game.

Being dishonest about it is not doing you, the game, or the new players any good.

Yeah sure, you did a dungeon, with a guild or pug blah blah blah… does that suddenly make the class good for dungeons? No, it doesn’t.

Here we have a Mesmer that turned a 7 minute CoF run into a 10 minute run, and got kick from his group for the effort.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Talk-about-elitism

I’m happy with anything less than 15 minutes, but I’m not farming for a legendary weapon. You start adding engineers and necros to your group, and you could be there all day.

Someone new to the game, looking for badges, might be happy with that, but most of us have been-there-done-that, and have better things to do.

A: Anyone wanna do TA?

B: Sure I’ll go

A: Great! my necro needs tokens for the armor

B: Oh wait, my sister is coming over with her kid, I better not do a dungeon right now

A: Oh, alright, anyone else wanna go?

Make your main a necro and you’ll get used to seeing that.

Much of this stems from the fact that Necros are generally designed to make fights longer than they otherwise would be. We make things do less damage, move slower, extend their cooldowns, miss more, heal less, and absorb damage with DS or Minions. None of that makes a dungeon go faster. It makes a dungeon safer, but if your party is already an expert at a particular dungeon it doesn’t do anyone any good.

Now, if you’re pugging with people of marginal skill then a necro is a great addition because it keeps everyone alive longer.

In PvP or WvW it’s a slightly different story, but that’s outside the topic of this thread.

In response to Sannhet, I am not trying to force my opinion on anyone. I state things that are facts about the class, and limitations that do exist if you decide to play conditions or hybrid (which I do). AOE almost 100% uptime weakness is nice, but do any fights currently require that? No. AOE near 100% uptime chill/cripple are very nice, but are their any fights that require it? No. I would argue in most cases an engineer with spammable immobilize or a guardian with LOW trumps that in 90% of the cases that come up in dungeons.

I am well aware this isn’t WoW, and after spending 4-5 hours a night raiding in a rigid 40 man team, where one person disconnecting meant 39 people would die, I would not go back to that if I had the choice.

Taking the argument that all PVE is easy, so why should we care that our PVE is sub-par to other classes is just short-sighted. You have no idea what and how they are going to introduce the ascended armor, and it may require some ridiculous dungeon grind where SPEED and DPS are >>>> utility. If that is what is required to farm up the Ascended gear, you think necros are going to be “fine”?

Improve our group buffing, our DPS potential by adjusting how the bleed cap works, our access to block/reflect/portal are all ways to make the necro more desirable in a group.

And for the record, I have a mesmer that groups much better than my necro, but I still play my necro more because I like it. In the case of fractals, that is a dis-service to my team, seeing as how the mesmer would just be a better choice. For a game that proclaims “play your own way”, it should do a better job of finding ways to make all the classes (rangers/engineers/necros) wanted and welcome in groups from a class design perspective.

Unique debuffs/buffs that classes could bring would go a long way to starting that move. How about a debuff on the target that causes it to apply 1-3 random boons to target when it attacks? How about a group buff that causes 5 stacks of weakness/vulnerability in an AOE around you when you take damage? How about an additional debuff that stacks up to 25, and then deals damage in an AOE around the target and grants stability or protection to your party for 5 seconds?

My hope is that eventually we will reach a point where the class feels innovative, and fun to play, while being gladly accepted into groups because everyone knows that the team support provided by a necro is going to in-line with the better grouping classes.

Rennoko.5731:

In response to Sannhet, I am not trying to force my opinion on anyone. I state things that are facts about the class, and limitations that do exist if you decide to play conditions or hybrid (which I do). AOE almost 100% uptime weakness is nice, but do any fights currently require that? No. AOE near 100% uptime chill/cripple are very nice, but are their any fights that require it? No. I would argue in most cases an engineer with spammable immobilize or a guardian with LOW trumps that in 90% of the cases that come up in dungeons.

I am well aware this isn’t WoW, and after spending 4-5 hours a night raiding in a rigid 40 man team, where one person disconnecting meant 39 people would die, I would not go back to that if I had the choice.

Taking the argument that all PVE is easy, so why should we care that our PVE is sub-par to other classes is just short-sighted. You have no idea what and how they are going to introduce the ascended armor, and it may require some ridiculous dungeon grind where SPEED and DPS are >>>> utility. If that is what is required to farm up the Ascended gear, you think necros are going to be “fine”?

Improve our group buffing, our DPS potential by adjusting how the bleed cap works, our access to block/reflect/portal are all ways to make the necro more desirable in a group.

And for the record, I have a mesmer that groups much better than my necro, but I still play my necro more because I like it. In the case of fractals, that is a dis-service to my team, seeing as how the mesmer would just be a better choice. For a game that proclaims “play your own way”, it should do a better job of finding ways to make all the classes (rangers/engineers/necros) wanted and welcome in groups from a class design perspective.

Unique debuffs/buffs that classes could bring would go a long way to starting that move. How about a debuff on the target that causes it to apply 1-3 random boons to target when it attacks? How about a group buff that causes 5 stacks of weakness/vulnerability in an AOE around you when you take damage? How about an additional debuff that stacks up to 25, and then deals damage in an AOE around the target and grants stability or protection to your party for 5 seconds?

My hope is that eventually we will reach a point where the class feels innovative, and fun to play, while being gladly accepted into groups because everyone knows that the team support provided by a necro is going to in-line with the better grouping classes.

I actually would like to apologize, though just to you. It was a late night and some of the previous posters colored the tone of your post to something that upon a second reading was not at all intended. I fully support what you’re saying about utility and the need for parity between the classes. However, as far as your point about “what if”: as with everything else in life, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.

IF and when ANet makes content that REQUIRES a specific group makeup to the detriment of some of the less played classes, they will have failed in their mission statement and I would hope that were that their intent they would get Necros and Rangers in line with some of the other classes. If not prior to said content, rapidly after implementation.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Would you like any more pointing out on how you failed to say anything meaningful besides waving some imaginary badge of “accomplishment” in a video game… Your past “exploits” have nothing to do gw2 in any way, shape or form.
Keep your name calling to yourself and let people play how they want to play.

Now for you.

No further “pointing” as far as your beliefs regarding my intent is necessary, but you can point out that you don’t understand the difference between banner waving and using anecdotes to make a point. Though really you don’t need to, as it’s glaringly obvious. But for the cheap seats, the reason I brought it up was not to brag (anyone with half a brain could do exactly what my guild did, and I’m fairly sure a large amount of people in my guild were operating with less than that), but rather to point out that in a game that actually had meaningful (read: reward scaling) PvE progression people accomplished quite a bit without having the mentality it seems a large amount of GW2 players have.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Would you like any more pointing out on how you failed to say anything meaningful besides waving some imaginary badge of “accomplishment” in a video game… Your past “exploits” have nothing to do gw2 in any way, shape or form.
Keep your name calling to yourself and let people play how they want to play.

He’s pointing out the crassness of some of the ‘must have X, Y, Z’ views on display in this thread and elsewhere and demonstrating that perhaps his views have some validity based on experience elsewhere.

You, on the other hand …

In every other part of life, you need to demonstrate expertise in a subject before anyone will take you seriously, it lends credence to your argument.

Bhawb.7408:

In every other part of life, you need to demonstrate expertise in a subject before anyone will take you seriously, it lends credence to your argument.

Is this wise words from Bhawb’s corner? I have always been more of a fan of perception trumping reality. It isn’t so much what you know, but how much people believe you know.

Rennoko.5731:

Bhawb.7408:

In every other part of life, you need to demonstrate expertise in a subject before anyone will take you seriously, it lends credence to your argument.

Is this wise words from Bhawb’s corner? I have always been more of a fan of perception trumping reality. It isn’t so much what you know, but how much people believe you know.

That is true only so long as actually having correct information is unimportant.

Rennoko.5731:

Bhawb.7408:

In every other part of life, you need to demonstrate expertise in a subject before anyone will take you seriously, it lends credence to your argument.

Is this wise words from Bhawb’s corner? I have always been more of a fan of perception trumping reality. It isn’t so much what you know, but how much people believe you know.

Which is what happens on forums. You don’t need to use reality or facts to convince people, you just need to convince them. Which is where there are arguments based purely off speculation and semantics, and the person who wins the debate is merely the one who is best at arguing.

Another game I played called the forums PnP (politics and propaganda), because everyone knew the forums had little to do with factual statements and more with how good you were at manipulating public opinion. You see this all the time here (its why a lot of skilled players never come here), public opinion trumps facts or empirical evidence in nearly every argument unless it happens to be an area you can prove via video (like the soloing video, which many people thought was impossible).

@Pincushion, few people are honestly here for factual evidence, mostly they are here to get their point across.

Ezeriel.9574:

Necros just aren’t very good, and the player-base knows it.

Conditions are pretty lousy all-in-all, and DoTs have always been week on trash mobs. If you have a long ramp up to do your damage, and the mob dies in 5 seconds, what good are you?

I love necros that say, my Mark of Blood does X amount of AOE damage, and they never mention how long it takes for them to get that damage. Lets be generous and say 1 mark of blood does 3k damage, and it hits three mobs. If it takes 8 seconds to do that damage, then why would a group not just take an ele instead?

An ele can do twice that in DPS, and if heals are needed, there is no comparison. Condition removal? Don’t make me laugh….

And conditions still don’t work on destroyable/mechanical things. Which is just plain stupid, and shows how useless the devs are in their thinking.

I am reminded of just how stupid the “carts can’t bleed” argument is every time my ele or engineer uses a fire damage skill to destroy a lava eruption, or a living flame type of beasty.

And no matter how hard they try, a power necro is never going to be as good as a banner warrior.

100blades warriors, Mesmers, Banner warriors Great sword guardians, Hammer guardians, Staff ele’s… these are the A-team builds of PVE, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

You’re so wrong in this post it’s funny. A proper power/crit necro does incredible AoE damage if they are using wells. My well of suffering + well of Corruption can do 4k damage per second to a group of targets (eles aren’t going to pull that much damage with any of their AoE attacks). My staff auto-attack crits for 2k (hitting multiple targets via piercing), Chillbains crits for over 2k, Putrid Mark crits for 4.5-5k. Hell even my mark of blood initial damage crits for over 1k and that’s supposed to be for applying bleeds not direct damage. Life Transfer from Deathshroud will channel for 8-10k+.

As for pure single target damage, the final attack in my dagger chain crits for 5k+ (and dagger hits very fast). I want to see an ele pull the numbers that I can and actually survive an encounter.

People like you tend to focus too much on condition necros. Condition specs are pretty much bad all around for every class not just necros. Necros don’t bring as much group support but they certainly bring the damage.

I enjoy sharpening my persuasion skills on the forums personally. Gaming in general has actually had a very powerful effect on my real work life/experiences because of the ability to persuade that comes from years of leading/arguing/convincing on forums and in game.

And even that solo video as an example, that was hardly the end all to that discussion. When it was posted in the general forums, it was largely hailed as an abuse of the game mechanics of Lupicus, and how he fails to do what he is suppose to do because of HOW you are fighting him in melee range. Even with proof, you can’t win over some people. Very much a game of politics in that sense.

kidbs.8920:

Ezeriel.9574:

Necros just aren’t very good, and the player-base knows it.

Conditions are pretty lousy all-in-all, and DoTs have always been week on trash mobs. If you have a long ramp up to do your damage, and the mob dies in 5 seconds, what good are you?

I love necros that say, my Mark of Blood does X amount of AOE damage, and they never mention how long it takes for them to get that damage. Lets be generous and say 1 mark of blood does 3k damage, and it hits three mobs. If it takes 8 seconds to do that damage, then why would a group not just take an ele instead?

An ele can do twice that in DPS, and if heals are needed, there is no comparison. Condition removal? Don’t make me laugh….

And conditions still don’t work on destroyable/mechanical things. Which is just plain stupid, and shows how useless the devs are in their thinking.

I am reminded of just how stupid the “carts can’t bleed” argument is every time my ele or engineer uses a fire damage skill to destroy a lava eruption, or a living flame type of beasty.

And no matter how hard they try, a power necro is never going to be as good as a banner warrior.

100blades warriors, Mesmers, Banner warriors Great sword guardians, Hammer guardians, Staff ele’s… these are the A-team builds of PVE, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

You’re so wrong in this post it’s funny. A proper power/crit necro does incredible AoE damage if they are using wells. My well of suffering + well of Corruption can do 4k damage per second to a group of targets (eles aren’t going to pull that much damage with any of their AoE attacks). My staff auto-attack crits for 2k (hitting multiple targets via piercing), Chillbains crits for over 2k, Putrid Mark crits for 4.5-5k. Hell even my mark of blood initial damage crits for over 1k and that’s supposed to be for applying bleeds not direct damage. Life Transfer from Deathshroud will channel for 8-10k+.

As for pure single target damage, the final attack in my dagger chain crits for 5k+ (and dagger hits very fast). I want to see an ele pull the numbers that I can and actually survive an encounter.

People like you tend to focus too much on condition necros. Condition specs are pretty much bad all around for every class not just necros. Necros don’t bring as much group support but they certainly bring the damage.

These numbers seem quite a bit inflated. I am by no means an expert on power builds, but I do have a full set of zerker gear that I have tested with, and my stuff never hit this hard, without lots of buffs and debuffs on the target and all my stacks. 10k life-transfer is not the norm, even with zerker gear.

kidbs.8920 And with the very low cooldown(wells) short channel time(DS4) it fits perfect since mobs only come in waves every 30-40sec+

Only thing i agree on is dagger auto is fast, which seems odd compared to pretty much everything else we got guess anet can fix it by making each dagger attack 3/4 sec to fit the necro theme better.

Life transfer 8-10k ? rightt not all mobs got negative toughness.

Rennoko.5731:

kidbs.8920:

Ezeriel.9574:

Necros just aren’t very good, and the player-base knows it.

Conditions are pretty lousy all-in-all, and DoTs have always been week on trash mobs. If you have a long ramp up to do your damage, and the mob dies in 5 seconds, what good are you?

I love necros that say, my Mark of Blood does X amount of AOE damage, and they never mention how long it takes for them to get that damage. Lets be generous and say 1 mark of blood does 3k damage, and it hits three mobs. If it takes 8 seconds to do that damage, then why would a group not just take an ele instead?

An ele can do twice that in DPS, and if heals are needed, there is no comparison. Condition removal? Don’t make me laugh….

And conditions still don’t work on destroyable/mechanical things. Which is just plain stupid, and shows how useless the devs are in their thinking.

I am reminded of just how stupid the “carts can’t bleed” argument is every time my ele or engineer uses a fire damage skill to destroy a lava eruption, or a living flame type of beasty.

And no matter how hard they try, a power necro is never going to be as good as a banner warrior.

100blades warriors, Mesmers, Banner warriors Great sword guardians, Hammer guardians, Staff ele’s… these are the A-team builds of PVE, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

You’re so wrong in this post it’s funny. A proper power/crit necro does incredible AoE damage if they are using wells. My well of suffering + well of Corruption can do 4k damage per second to a group of targets (eles aren’t going to pull that much damage with any of their AoE attacks). My staff auto-attack crits for 2k (hitting multiple targets via piercing), Chillbains crits for over 2k, Putrid Mark crits for 4.5-5k. Hell even my mark of blood initial damage crits for over 1k and that’s supposed to be for applying bleeds not direct damage. Life Transfer from Deathshroud will channel for 8-10k+.

As for pure single target damage, the final attack in my dagger chain crits for 5k+ (and dagger hits very fast). I want to see an ele pull the numbers that I can and actually survive an encounter.

People like you tend to focus too much on condition necros. Condition specs are pretty much bad all around for every class not just necros. Necros don’t bring as much group support but they certainly bring the damage.

These numbers seem quite a bit inflated. I am by no means an expert on power builds, but I do have a full set of zerker gear that I have tested with, and my stuff never hit this hard, without lots of buffs and debuffs on the target and all my stacks. 10k life-transfer is not the norm, even with zerker gear.

These numbers are in no way inflated. You need to have the right build to go along with your gear and use the right food buffs. I also said 8-10k not 10k every time.

Power necros bring top-notch damage.

wiazabi.2549:

kidbs.8920 And with the very low cooldown(wells) short channel time(DS4) it fits perfect since mobs only come in waves every 30-40sec+

Only thing i agree on is dagger auto is fast, which seems odd compared to pretty much everything else we got guess anet can fix it by making each dagger attack 3/4 sec to fit the necro theme better.

Life transfer 8-10k ? rightt not all mobs got negative toughness.

Good thing my staff autos crit for 2k and also hit multiple mobs, along with my marks already hitting for decent amounts. The downtime between my Life Transfer and Wells is usually pretty close to when we hit another large AoE pack. If it’s just 2 or 3 mobs I’ll often just dagger them down quickly anyway.

What are you guys specing and wearing that 8-10k Life transfers seem so huge? No wonder people think necros suck if these numbers really seem so surprising to so many of you. I’m glad that there are at least people like Nemesis out there that understand what we’re capable of and has shown it in numerous videos.

I find it amusing how people disregard a conditionmancer at doing well in dungeons aside from those objects and the few bosses you encounter that remove conditions. I usually do fine. I mean heck I have a full zerker mesmer and I actually enjoy playing my conditonmancer more in all aspects of the game.

I Mean sure there is the bleed cap limit and other issues but when I’m running a dungeon and manage to keep 20+ bleeds which is easy to do for the most part it’s quite the nice damage especially if you’re killing trash and drop a epidemic. I also just like the fact I can transition pretty easily to do WvW also and I hardly ever get beat in a 1v1 situation aside from a cheesy builds like a d/d ele =p and I still bring something good to team fights with my marks and AoE.

I’ve been running rabid so it’s something I’ve grown to like alot and it’s funny how many people say how bad necromancer’s are where I feel we’re pretty good, not great at anything in particular but we’re good.. I guess we won’t be getting nerfed anytime soon.

kidbs.8920:

Good thing my staff autos crit for 2k and also hit multiple mobs, along with my marks already hitting for decent amounts. The downtime between my Life Transfer and Wells is usually pretty close to when we hit another large AoE pack. If it’s just 2 or 3 mobs I’ll often just dagger them down quickly anyway.

What are you guys specing and wearing that 8-10k Life transfers seem so huge? No wonder people think necros suck if these numbers really seem so surprising to so many of you. I’m glad that there are at least people like Nemesis out there that understand what we’re capable of and has shown it in numerous videos.

I was not questioning the staff hits. I see staff hits around 2k below 50% in a zerker build. I was also not questioning life blast, which I have seen above 5k. Many of the mark skills can hit the numbers you suggested below 50% as well with stacks up.

But 10k on life transfer is not a normal damage level, unless you are targetting glass cannons or up-levels in WvW. On just a run of the mill mob in Orr, after about 20 mins, I was able to get one life transfer up around 8.2k in a 30/15/0/0/25 build. I am aware you could get more damage from a 25 in curses build with lots of debuffs, but were I am referencing someone playing on their own terms without pre-stacking debuffs. Keep in mind, that 8.2k was with 10 stacks of might, and the mob with 12 stacks of vulnerability, below 50%. Gear is full zerker/asended/ruby orbs.

Show me 10k from LT on a mob (not a player), without 25 vuln, 25 might and I will gladly retract my statement. Overstating damage potentional on the forums is a big pet-peeve of mine, and if you had said 6-8k I would have left it alone. Throwing out random numbers you may have seen over the course of stomping level 5 people in WvW is not the same as how it works the rest of the time.

Also show me where Nem gets that kind of damage in one of his videos against a mob with LT?

Rennoko.5731:

kidbs.8920:

Good thing my staff autos crit for 2k and also hit multiple mobs, along with my marks already hitting for decent amounts. The downtime between my Life Transfer and Wells is usually pretty close to when we hit another large AoE pack. If it’s just 2 or 3 mobs I’ll often just dagger them down quickly anyway.

What are you guys specing and wearing that 8-10k Life transfers seem so huge? No wonder people think necros suck if these numbers really seem so surprising to so many of you. I’m glad that there are at least people like Nemesis out there that understand what we’re capable of and has shown it in numerous videos.

I was not questioning the staff hits. I see staff hits around 2k below 50% in a zerker build. I was also not questioning life blast, which I have seen above 5k. Many of the mark skills can hit the numbers you suggested below 50% as well with stacks up.

But 10k on life transfer is not a normal damage level, unless you are targetting glass cannons or up-levels in WvW. On just a run of the mill mob in Orr, after about 20 mins, I was able to get one life transfer up around 8.2k in a 30/15/0/0/25 build. I am aware you could get more damage from a 25 in curses build with lots of debuffs, but were I am referencing someone playing on their own terms without pre-stacking debuffs. Keep in mind, that 8.2k was with 10 stacks of might, and the mob with 12 stacks of vulnerability, below 50%. Gear is full zerker/asended/ruby orbs.

Show me 10k from LT on a mob (not a player), without 25 vuln, 25 might and I will gladly retract my statement. Overstating damage potentional on the forums is a big pet-peeve of mine, and if you had said 6-8k I would have left it alone. Throwing out random numbers you may have seen over the course of stomping level 5 people in WvW is not the same as how it works the rest of the time.

Also show me where Nem gets that kind of damage in one of his videos against a mob with LT?

Again, for the last time I said 8-10k. I didn’t not say 10k every single time, and admittedly that is more of a rare outlier. The 8k+ range is the norm. I also run Sigil of Bloodlust on my staff so I generally always have 25 stacks of that up which gives me a constant 250 extra power. I am also talking about numbers which I generally see in my daily fractal runs, not spvp or WvW.

Usually any stacks of vulnerability in my daily group all get applied by me with my Well of Suffering and Lifeblasts (from trait), so I don’t have a heavy vulnerability or might stacking dungeon group. It is generally best to pop LT while Well of Suffering is up so that you can enjoy the damage boost and huge nuking potential of mobs.

Just as an aside, you do generally realize that when you see these huge Warrior 100b numbers it is when they have 25 stacks of might/vuln plus other buffs all stacked. You won’t see them running in completely unbuffed pulling insane numbers.