Guild Wars 2

Many people are trying to find ways not to run necromancer in raids and actively looking for reasons why the necromancer is the worst possible profession to use. I’ve seen countless posts about it from “Necros have no damage”, “necros have no support”, “reaper is pointless”. But these people are not considering the unique abilities that the necromancer offers that will actually out preform in a raid.

Damage:
In terms of damage the necromancer can easily fill ever single on of the required role of this without a problem. Once you understand their condition damage rotation its incredibly high and very sustainable. Their power type damage is also extremely high probably the strongest at range making them very effective at mobile DPS. Which the necromancer’s mobile DPS is one of the reasons that they’re known for it in WvW. Raids do actually force the group to keep moving which means that stationary moves like 100b blades gain increased chance to get someone killed rather than to help them. Its also notable that the bosses will move out of aoe meaning that the necromancer’s ability to provide solid damage at range becomes even more valuable.

Does this mean that necromancer is the only profession that can provide damage? Of course not. Engineers also have very solid ranged DPS. The difference between them is how they pump it out. Its something that people should consider for a raid encounter. The death perception necromancer with its life blast is solid enough damage at range and you can bring transfusion on the bar without actually sacrificing anything major for it.

The condition damage that the reaper provides out preforms the core necromancer and can also be used in combination with control as well as boon stripping to fill that role without issue. Dark path comes to mind since one of the bosses requires you to remove a special boon before it can be damaged. This gives the necromancer the unique versatility to actually move between bosses in one of the phases being capable of punishing both at once. The chill is extremely important on a reaper build. The damage output of it is slightly higher than a stack of burning above 50% and is a bit over 2 stacks of burning at below 50%. The advantage is that it both severely weakens the break bar as well as providing this bonus damage on something you’re going to be doing anyway. The versatility of their condition spec that allows them to stack 2-5k ticks from each of their condition stacks all at once means that if bosses that are both weak to condition damage but have reduced damage to some forms of condition damage such as burning or poison this go wide strategy means that the necromancer will flat out out preform many other professions which includes the engineer. However that’s just speculation on my part.

Control:

I’ve already mentioned chill and boon stripping. Two powerful abilities that the necromancer can provide both at the same time without sacrificing much if anything on their build. But they can also provide so much more on the control end of things. The corruption necromancer/reaper build provides projectile destruction, extremely high weakness up time, boon stripping, condition spreading and lock out abilities such as executioner’s scythe and fear spams.

Corrosive poison cloud deserves its own medal for being one of the best skills in this kit. As we continue to move through raids multi functional skills such as cpc will be invaluable to a group. The fact that the condimancer can take this skill into a fight without actually sacrificing damage will have a major impact on your build. You can put this skill on a boss, crippling their physical damage as well as locking them out of being able to use their projectiles if they have some. And later bosses will have them. You can count on that for sure. Another element of this is you can protect yourself with it by placing it over you. I’ve even combined this skill in the Mai Trin fight while training the guildies in fractals. Placing this around me and using transfusion to pull them out of her focus as well as preventing shots being fired by Horrik and as well as Mai’s herself. The usefulness of this skill will only increase with raids.

Further control is that the boss seems to stick on high toughness allies. The necromancer can take a hit far better than most other professions and compared to highly mobile professions such as thief or mesmer the necromancer is in a unique position with both flesh wurm and spectral walk to both take the hits and lure the boss into a favorable position with lowest possible risk. I know this concept may sound a bit alien to some people reading this. However I’ve had massive success using both of these skills in fractals while soloing or fighting in the aetherblade fractal boss fight.

The necromancer also has a high number of unblockable skills and even a trait that makes marks unblockable putting the staff as a seriously useful control weapon. Nothing can save will will see heavy use in raids if we find a boss who has a break bar while blocking that also causes heavy damage. Why would you want to struggle with your group to out heal the damage when a reaper can just cast nothing can save you and rip through their break bar with their high number of stuns and long lasting chill.

Boon corruption is also a thing on necromancer. They have high number of targets hit in a 600 radius meaning that their focus can be where it needs to be while also breaking through those boons without having to break agro. The mesmer has extremely strong boon stripping but their issue is that their aoe boon stripping is no where near as powerful as the necromancer’s. This will most likely be extremely valuable in the raid as we progress further and the content gets harder and harder.

Support:

The necromancers support is something that people don’t value too highly. But even a pure berserker necromancer provides a tone of support for allies that people might not even realize. Just on my power wells set I provide protection to allies as well as a dark field. The dark field is actually extremely handy for increasing a party’s DPS as well as providing healing. Whirling in a dark field or firing projectiles can provide a bit of healing while increasing their overall damage. And since might and vuln shouldn’t be much of a problem in raids this puts a stronger focus on these extremely powerful fields.

The vampiric aura is minor in terms of our support but can be absolutely vital for allies survivability. Anyone who’s run a flamethrower with a necromancer around in a world boss knows the feeling of going from almost dead to full health from this trait. Other life stealing abilities such as Signet of Vampirism which normally take a while to trigger can cause some more minor healing to your entire raid as they focus a boss as well as boost the damage.

I’ve already mentioned transfusion. I’ll mention it again. In the first raid boss I’d personally probably require this trait to be used in my raid. The effectiveness of this trait is just too high not to consider it. Battle Standard and revive skills lack the ability to pull allies out of damage while this can do just that. I saw a lot of raid runs where people where going down and going down trying to revive their allies that I couldn’t find a good reason not to have at least one necromancer running this trait. Even if you’re not specked into healing power the teleport can mean the difference between a dead ally and a living one. This trait can be a bit tricky to use at first but once you get it down you’ll love it.

Well of power and well of blood have also been useful for helping allies. Buffering attacks with healing and well of power being an extremely solid counter to burning with its conversion to aegis. I’ve used this skill against the imbued shaman on many occasions to nullify its attacks, against Mai trin to save my allies from the 14 stacks of bleeding. This might not sounds so great to some people who think a shout guardian can do the same thing. But remember that there is a major difference between 600 and 900 range. You’re also not doing anything different than what a berserker necromancer will probably be doing anyway.

More testing required:

There are a few ideas that I’d like to test out in raids a bit more. The minion master is something I want to see. There is a tone of talk about endless minions thanks to rise and that can seem valuable with the high toughness that the minions will provide. Using something like Apothecary stats on a minion builds with dozens of little bombs sounds like a solid strategy and would have been extremely notable in GW1. The added bonus of transfusion in this sort of set and being almost exclusively focus with its extremely high sustain could make this a build worth looking into.

Conclusion:

The abilities that the necromancer provides are numerous. Although when compared side by side with abilities of other professions it might seem like the age old tale of “Everything the necromancer can do someone else can do it better” but the fact that most of the necromancer’s abilities actually overlap in multiple roles that the raid requires anyway should make any group consider the necromancer for their raid. Our highly effective skills that might not preform as well in some situations as other skills, such as Corrosive poison cloud when compared to wall of reflection, are more tool box skills that can do everything that you need it to do all at once. The necromancer has multiple examples of this from their wells to their corruptions, to signets and even shouts.

The necromancer might surprise you. Many people during the beta weekend really wanted to try the reaper as it looked to be the coolest. Though many of these people didn’t have a firm grasp at what the necromancer was capable of before they decided to do the raid. The devs of GW2 are not lying to us when they say they pretty much always bring at least one necromancer into a raid. And considering the first boss and that’s supposed to be the easy one I only see more and more reasons to consider 1-2 necromancers in a group.

Although we will have to wait and see the more I think about it and the more I’m practicing for raids by doing fractals without using abusive stacking mechanics the more valuable me and my guild are noticing the necromancer truly is. I hope this is helpful to some people. I’ll see you all in the mists.

DPS:

Engineer dps calculation:

http://i.imgur.com/gUGC1KJ.png

Give me a condition necro build that can do even 75% of that and i’d consider it competitive. I doubt you will be able to even get past 50% though with our current numbers. We are simply not competitive dps wise. You can keep claiming otherwise, but at least on the condition front it is simply not true.

Direct dps looks better, but certainly not at range. Not sure how you can claim that ranged DS spam is good dps. I’d like to see some calculations on that because I simply don’t believe it. Gravedigger sub 50% dps is actually pretty decent at this point, that may be our best bet for a direct damage raid slot.

You talk about chill damage, but chill is worthless in its current form. I tried it in 3 different raid groups this past BWE. I found it had a <25% uptime due to the chill cap and our short duration. I was unable to get higher than this even though I was the only reaper in 2 of the 3 groups. Other classes apply chill through random attacks and traits and consistently hit the cap in a group of 10. I switched this out for blighters boon in every group after a while to get better sustain.

Tanking:
This is probably our best role, I actually agree with most of what you said here, I think we will be decent tanks after listening to different people and trying different builds.

Control:
Weakness, chill, blind, fear, all things the bosses are completely immune to in raids. These offer no benefit in raids and should not be considered control in the raiding environment. The chill break bar degen was either broken or worthless in the last BWE, having perma chill on the boss had no effect on the break bar. Additionally it needs to be broken within 10 seconds, so any small degen is not worthwhile anyway. We do a decent job of breaking break bars though, with 2 fears, and a stun. This is comparable to other classes though and not really a bright point.

Boon corruption, unblockable and boon strips may be things we are liked for, time will tell, though for standard boon corruption a mesmer will be much more wanted, or necro will have to specifically trait for corruption on RS2 to keep up.

Healers make transfusion fairly silly looking. You will have a dedicated healer in all raid groups and they can do what transfusion does in less than a second with no CD. I suppose if you want to have a group with no healer and everyone needs to bring their own healing then transfusion may be worthwhile, but I don’t think that will be the norm after playing with healers this BWE.

Wells have some interesting possibility and I think they could see some good use in raids, so I agree with you there.

IMO, our best strength for raids right now is epidemic.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

DPS:

Engineer dps calculation:

http://i.imgur.com/gUGC1KJ.png

Give me a condition necro build that can do even 75% of that and i’d consider it competitive. I doubt you will be able to even get past 50% though with our current numbers. We are simply not competitive dps wise. You can keep claiming otherwise, but at least on the condition front it is simply not true.

Direct dps looks better, but certainly not at range. Not sure how you can claim that ranged DS spam is good dps. I’d like to see some calculations on that because I simply don’t believe it. Gravedigger sub 50% dps is actually pretty decent at this point, that may be our best bet for a direct damage raid slot.

You talk about chill damage, but chill is worthless in its current form. I tried it in 3 different raid groups this past BWE. I found it had a <25% uptime due to the chill cap and our short duration. I was unable to get higher than this even though I was the only reaper in 2 of the 3 groups. Other classes apply chill through random attacks and traits and consistently hit the cap in a group of 10. I switched this out for blighters boon in every group after a while to get better sustain.

Tanking:
This is probably our best role, I actually agree with most of what you said here, I think we will be decent tanks after listening to different people and trying different builds.

Control:
Weakness, chill, blind, fear, all things the bosses are completely immune to in raids. These offer no benefit in raids and should not be considered control in the raiding environment. The chill break bar degen was either broken or worthless in the last BWE, having perma chill on the boss had no effect on the break bar. Additionally it needs to be broken within 10 seconds, so any small degen is not worthwhile anyway. We do a decent job of breaking break bars though, with 2 fears, and a stun. This is comparable to other classes though and not really a bright point.

Boon corruption, unblockable and boon strips may be things we are liked for, time will tell, though for standard boon corruption a mesmer will be much more wanted, or necro will have to specifically trait for corruption on RS2 to keep up.

Healers make transfusion fairly silly looking. You will have a dedicated healer in all raid groups and they can do what transfusion does in less than a second with no CD. I suppose if you want to have a group with no healer and everyone needs to bring their own healing then transfusion may be worthwhile, but I don’t think that will be the norm after playing with healers this BWE.

Wells have some interesting possibility and I think they could see some good use in raids, so I agree with you there.

Show me these calculations in practice. Not a chart. Also the chart looks HORRIBLE off. And 75% of that? Okay, my sinister reaper build was doing about 12k in a practical situation. Not this fake 20k that the chart shows since I know for a fact the stacks its showing are unsustainable since I’ve run a sinister engineer with food and its condi rotation. So I ask you to show it in practice. People seem to be increasing DPS out of nowhere. A few months ago it was 15k DPS with full zerk. Today I’ve heard claims of 30k DPS. The claims I’ve heard are complete nonsense and don’t have merit. SHOW ME! Show don’t tell.

Also, I saw groups with dedicated healers failing horribly because they couldn’t pick up downed allies. The value of tranfusion is the ability to move downed allies. Not so much of the healing aspect which I’ve mentioned many times in the post. Trust me on this one. Bring it, you wont be disappointed.

During the second beta event I used chill along with other CC abilities and the break bar was actually degenerating. Not regenerating. because of blind, crippling and chill. And at an alarming rate even. Which the break bar will most likely be adjusted.

I"m also talking about raids as we progress further into it. The first fight is the easy one. Just remember that. The anomaly fight is extremely simple without too much to worry about when thinking about the content moving past that. And I’d still suggest something like transfusion and shield on guardian in the group. As far as I could tell, the red orbs of pain were not immune to conditions. Just immortal. This means that chill is even more valuable.

I’m paying very close attention to these fights and Looking for the cracks in the raid boss’s armor as well as looking at the potential of each profession. Trust me on this. we are more than valuable.

@Zudet: how did you calculate 25% up-time on your chill in a raid? I just looked through the list of abilities/utilities/traits that apply chill, and I’m curious which ones are actually being used regularly.

Here are the Necro abilities that inflict Fear, and their durations based on the following thrown-together build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYWCO3YJYwiHiNxoI1VYK8riSABgIAA-TRBMABnq+TqK/eZ/gR1HAwCCkCAmpRA-e

Staff:

Chillblains: 7 seconds. 16 second cd.
Reaper’s Mark: 5.25 seconds. 32 second cd.

OH Dagger:

Deathly Swarm: 3.5 seconds (5 second icd on trait). 18 second cd.

Reaper Shroud:

Death’s Charge: 3.5 seconds (5 second icd on trait). 6 second cd.
Terrify: 5.25 seconds. 20 second cd.
Executioner’s Scythe: 2.25 seconds. 30 second cd.

If Chill is really doing it for you, you can use Spectral Grasp to give another 7 seconds of chill (and a quick 16% LF). Chilled to the Bone! also gives 10.5 seconds of Chill you could use if you needed it, unless Lich is higher DPS even with a condi build (or maybe Flesh Golem? I’m assuming Plague is terrible for PvE DPS).

In short, I’m a bit skeptical about a 25% uptime.

This is the list of attacks/traits/utilities that apply Chill. Which of these are the real offenders in your raids?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilled

Weakness, chill, blind, fear, all things the bosses are completely immune to in raids. These offer no benefit in raids and should not be considered control in the raiding environment.

I think you’re mistaking “raiding” for “Vale Guardian”. Who knows how these conditions might be useful as encounter design evolves?

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Zudet: how did you calculate 25% up-time on your chill in a raid? I just looked through the list of abilities/utilities/traits that apply chill, and I’m curious which ones are actually being used regularly.

Here are the Necro abilities that inflict Fear, and their durations based on the following thrown-together build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYWCO3YJYwiHiNxoI1VYK8riSABgIAA-TRBMABnq+TqK/eZ/gR1HAwCCkCAmpRA-e

Staff:

Chillblains: 7 seconds. 16 second cd.
Reaper’s Mark: 5.25 seconds. 32 second cd.

OH Dagger:

Deathly Swarm: 3.5 seconds (5 second icd on trait). 18 second cd.

Reaper Shroud:

Death’s Charge: 3.5 seconds (5 second icd on trait). 6 second cd.
Terrify: 5.25 seconds. 20 second cd.
Executioner’s Scythe: 2.25 seconds. 30 second cd.

If Chill is really doing it for you, you can use Spectral Grasp to give another 7 seconds of chill (and a quick 16% LF). Chilled to the Bone! also gives 10.5 seconds of Chill you could use if you needed it, unless Lich is higher DPS even with a condi build (or maybe Flesh Golem? I’m assuming Plague is terrible for PvE DPS).

In short, I’m a bit skeptical about a 25% uptime.

This is the list of attacks/traits/utilities that apply Chill. Which of these are the real offenders in your raids?

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilled

Weakness, chill, blind, fear, all things the bosses are completely immune to in raids. These offer no benefit in raids and should not be considered control in the raiding environment.

I think you’re mistaking “raiding” for “Vale Guardian”. Who knows how these conditions might be useful as encounter design evolves?

25% uptime is because of the chill cap, not because of my personal uptime. Solo I can get 100% uptime.

After 5 chills (any duration) are applied to a target, no more chills affect that target until 1 has fallen off, and then the next chill applied sticks. so if an ele does 5 stacks of 1s chill right before I do a 15s chill, there are 5s of chill on the target and no chill damage and my 15s of chill is now on CD. Due to other classes, and our class applying chill pretty often in groups of 10, I found I was running into this cap continuously and not applying my chill damage. 25% is a rough estimate of how often I saw the chill damage indicator pop up, nothing scientific.

As for control conditions i’m not very hopeful. Anything that those conditions effect can be CC"d, which is much stronger than those effects. Anything with a breakbar is immune rendering them useless. Consider druid who has 30s of daze on 20s of CD. I’d much rather AOE daze a group of enemies then apply weakness to them if they don’t have breakbars.

Breakbars need to be reworked for our effects to be useful. I see no reason that 100% protection uptime is considered ok but 100% weakness uptime is considered bad.

So if other classes are doing multiple stacks of super low duration chills, is that their optimal DPS rotation? I know Freeze Grenade is part of Engineers since you recently provided that rotation, but if another class is stacking those Chills, can you ask that person to stop? I’m really curious what natural rotation abilities other classes are using that are integral to their damage, since the only class really gaining benefit out of chilling the boss is a Necromancer.

I do see your point, and I’m also curious if ANet is going to do something about it. I just think that issue can be somewhat organized away.

And as far as just using CC over soft-CC for mobs that are susceptible, they could easily just make the mobs immune to stun/knockback/daze/whatever. However, how much DPS would classes be sacrificing by bringing hard-CC? Would it be any, or might it be worth noting?

As an aside, 30s of daze on 20s of cd makes me sad. I’m curious how that’s going to play out in PvP, but that’s neither here nor there for this thread. I just hadn’t seen that metric before.

I had no issue with the chill cap. I could sustain chill permanently because of the long lasting duration combine with food as well as the recharge of my skills. I had no problem adding a new chill stack when my chill was about to vanish. 100% up time was even possible in a group situation like dungeons, fractals and even in world evens where other people were pushing off our chill. There wasn’t a moment when I couldn’t have chill on the foe.

Few questions. Reaper Condi build, if it’s doing 12k dps, how much of it is condi?

See that’s a big reason Engi was stacked in raids, they fulfilled the condi damage requirement of some enemies the best in the game.

You’re completely right Lily though, that 20k is just a theoretical number. It drops quite a bit in practice (seeing more like 12-17k personally if I’m executing well).

Range DPS is something to note, Engi has to revert to nade spam or mortar spam at range, which you’re looking at about 60% damage in Power build (roughly 10k dps) which isn’t that much more than DS spam with wells. In condi I’m not sure but I’d imagine the same at best, again, not that much higher than Necro.

That all said, Condi necro needs a LOT of help. Power Necro seems to be in pretty decent shape, especially Melee.

Cogbyrn.7283:

So if other classes are doing multiple stacks of super low duration chills, is that their optimal DPS rotation? I know Freeze Grenade is part of Engineers since you recently provided that rotation, but if another class is stacking those Chills, can you ask that person to stop? I’m really curious what natural rotation abilities other classes are using that are integral to their damage, since the only class really gaining benefit out of chilling the boss is a Necromancer.

I do see your point, and I’m also curious if ANet is going to do something about it. I just think that issue can be somewhat organized away.

And as far as just using CC over soft-CC for mobs that are susceptible, they could easily just make the mobs immune to stun/knockback/daze/whatever. However, how much DPS would classes be sacrificing by bringing hard-CC? Would it be any, or might it be worth noting?

As an aside, 30s of daze on 20s of cd makes me sad. I’m curious how that’s going to play out in PvP, but that’s neither here nor there for this thread. I just hadn’t seen that metric before.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frozen_Burst

For the blast, really only other one I can think of that would be used for something other than purposely to chill.

And don’t worry druid is getting nerfed

Jerus.4350:

Few questions. Reaper Condi build, if it’s doing 12k dps, how much of it is condi?

See that’s a big reason Engi was stacked in raids, they fulfilled the condi damage requirement of some enemies the best in the game.

You’re completely right Lily though, that 20k is just a theoretical number. It drops quite a bit in practice (seeing more like 12-17k personally if I’m executing well).

Range DPS is something to note, Engi has to revert to nade spam or mortar spam at range, which you’re looking at about 60% damage in Power build (roughly 10k dps) which isn’t that much more than DS spam with wells. In condi I’m not sure but I’d imagine the same at best, again, not that much higher than Necro.

That all said, Condi necro needs a LOT of help. Power Necro seems to be in pretty decent shape, especially Melee.

A full condition reaper does very little direct damage. Scepter does pretty much 0 direct damage. Your best direct damage source is RS1 when trying to burn stack, which in sinister gear can probably provide 3-4k(?) direct dps. I don’t really know as I didn’t have sinister and was wearing rabid gear. But if you stay there you lose out on all your other conditions pretty quick.

My groups did have at least one engineer and ele in each group, and one had another reaper so I might have run into the worst case scenario chill wise. I personally still think the chill cap should be removed in PvE. I see no good reason for it.

Jerus.4350:

Few questions. Reaper Condi build, if it’s doing 12k dps, how much of it is condi?

See that’s a big reason Engi was stacked in raids, they fulfilled the condi damage requirement of some enemies the best in the game.

You’re completely right Lily though, that 20k is just a theoretical number. It drops quite a bit in practice (seeing more like 12-17k personally if I’m executing well).

Range DPS is something to note, Engi has to revert to nade spam or mortar spam at range, which you’re looking at about 60% damage in Power build (roughly 10k dps) which isn’t that much more than DS spam with wells. In condi I’m not sure but I’d imagine the same at best, again, not that much higher than Necro.

That all said, Condi necro needs a LOT of help. Power Necro seems to be in pretty decent shape, especially Melee.

I can stack 6 burns on my own without bath runes as well as 600-1000 from chill, close to 30 bleeds, 20 poison and sometimes 40 poison, 7-14(depending on runes) stacks of torment plus fear triggers which adds terror damage. The condition damage the necromancer gets is extremely high on just their passive numbers. They can stack clost 3.5k condition damage stat? Something like that. And I’ve even heard of 50 bleed stacks along with sustaining other conditions such as poison and chill. Very little of the damage comes from physical. On average about maybe 700? Is this all sustainable at once? No, that would be insane.

Also average, I’d say the engi’s DPS is closer to 7k. 12k with full berserker at the highest on their own. 15k if the group is running to max damage as much as possible. But hybrid is going to be lower damage regardless.

Someone did a mossman run in level 50 fractal with an engineer(solo) and completed it in about 4 minutes. Now to put that into context. they didn’t do 20k DPS. They didn’t even do 15k. They did close to 10k. If the health I used is right its around 10k. If its lower than I suspected than its closer to 6k DPS. A pretty massive difference than the claims made by the community. So the important part about this lesion people need to learn is that what is claimed and what it actually is in practice doesn’t seem to add up.

I’ve also seen someone post a video saying “Warrior 80k DPS” which showed them hitting 100b for 80k. Well that’s just fantastic. But that’s not 80k dps. its 26.7k over 3 seconds. But it drops after that to about 7k a hit. So drops to 18k. As it goes longer they drop to 3k per it. So the DPS drops further. The foe died before their boons fell off them in the fight, and what you’re looking at is a burst DPS and not sustained like you’ll be expected to run in a boss fight. Now, most people I know can’t get 80k 100b. They average around 30k 100b. Which is closer to 10k DPS. occasionally they’ve gotten 50k. But seeing a 50k damage number doesn’t mean that that’s 50k DPS.

I have no doubt that an engineer can do 20k burst with conditions. I can do that too with the reaper. Its not hard. You just need to know their rotations in order to do it.

Not trying to challenge anything Was honestly curious as I didn’t try to do any condi reaper, was having too much fun blasting out 20-30k gravediggers in the time I had to play.

But, we’re talking about raid roles right? Why bring up solo?

I’m honestly just curious to hear more about Condi Reaper, if it’s described somewhere a link would be cool, or just explain it a little more I’d be interested to know. I imagined it was more of a hybrid with a lot of RS spam doing decent physical and decent condi, sounsd like I was wrong on that. It sounds pretty powerful, MUCH more powerful than what I’ve seen from Condi Necro. Obviously the stack numbers you posted can’t be maintained, otherwise you’d be pumping out 22k in condi damage.

Did reaper bring condi damage for necro up to a viable level?

And it’s not about Engi being able to burst 20k in conditions, it’s about being able to maintain a high level of DPS once they get rolling (takes a few seconds) that is theoretically able to average out to 20k (emphasis on theoretically as I haven’t seen someone do it yet, it’s just on paper).

Lily.1935:

I can stack 6 burns on my own without bath runes as well as 600-1000 from chill, close to 30 bleeds, 20 poison and sometimes 40 poison, 7-14(depending on runes) stacks of torment plus fear triggers which adds terror damage. The condition damage the necromancer gets is extremely high on just their passive numbers. They can stack clost 3.5k condition damage stat? Something like that. And I’ve even heard of 50 bleed stacks along with sustaining other conditions such as poison and chill. Very little of the damage comes from physical. On average about maybe 700? Is this all sustainable at once? No, that would be insane.

I’d like to see a video or at least some math on the rotation that shows how you get 6 burn, 30 bleed, 40 poison and 7 torment on something at same time.

Drekor.5217:

Lily.1935:

I can stack 6 burns on my own without bath runes as well as 600-1000 from chill, close to 30 bleeds, 20 poison and sometimes 40 poison, 7-14(depending on runes) stacks of torment plus fear triggers which adds terror damage. The condition damage the necromancer gets is extremely high on just their passive numbers. They can stack clost 3.5k condition damage stat? Something like that. And I’ve even heard of 50 bleed stacks along with sustaining other conditions such as poison and chill. Very little of the damage comes from physical. On average about maybe 700? Is this all sustainable at once? No, that would be insane.

I’d like to see a video or at least some math on the rotation that shows how you get 6 burn, 30 bleed, 40 poison and 7 torment on something at same time.

Read what I bolded in her comment

Jerus.4350:

Not trying to challenge anything Was honestly curious as I didn’t try to do any condi reaper, was having too much fun blasting out 20-30k gravediggers in the time I had to play.

But, we’re talking about raid roles right? Why bring up solo?

I’m honestly just curious to hear more about Condi Reaper, if it’s described somewhere a link would be cool, or just explain it a little more I’d be interested to know. I imagined it was more of a hybrid with a lot of RS spam doing decent physical and decent condi, sounsd like I was wrong on that. It sounds pretty powerful, MUCH more powerful than what I’ve seen from Condi Necro. Obviously the stack numbers you posted can’t be maintained, otherwise you’d be pumping out 22k in condi damage.

Did reaper bring condi damage for necro up to a viable level?

And it’s not about Engi being able to burst 20k in conditions, it’s about being able to maintain a high level of DPS once they get rolling (takes a few seconds) that is theoretically able to average out to 20k (emphasis on theoretically as I haven’t seen someone do it yet, it’s just on paper).

Except a condi engineer can’t sustain 20k DPS. Its closer to 7k. MAYBE 10 if they’re extremely good with the rotation but that’s pushing it. I have the good sense to admit that that sort of sustained DPS isn’t actually possible. Especially considering that the current meta says that full berserker is expected to do around 15k sustained DPS. Which also isn’t actually possible. 12k is possible maybe 13k, but pushing up to 15k far far beyond what any profession is reasonably capable of.

Also I bring up solo play, such as soloing Mossman because it gives us a base to talk about what DPS someone is actually doing. We know how much health mossman has and how long it takes you to kill it. In order to be doing 20k DPS you’d actually need to be able to solo kill mossman in a 50 in about a minute and 30 seconds. In the best case senario if we assume the mossman has 2 million health 4 minutes is about 8k DPS on full glass berserker stats. The community has unanimusly agreed that berserker is the highest possible DPS. And I don’t even think Mossman has even 2 million heath on a 50. However I don’t think its even that high so we could be looking at 6k or even as low as 4k DPS. Now if we also calculate for the fact that Mossman stealths into that calculation dropping the damage you can maybe calculate 10k in an ideal situation. Though looking at it I’d say closer to 9k.

So the reason to bring it up is to give you an idea just how incredibly off people’s DPS calculations actually are. With my reaper condi rotation. I expect that I’ll average around 8-10k with a burst of maybe 20k. Which that short burst would bring me up a bit. I’d have to calculate it a bit further but conditions have higher ramp time than berserker does and their damage is back loaded. I’ve used the example just to point out the flaws that the community has about DPS. They think they’re doing 20k-30k when in reality they’re doing closer to 6-9k.

Why I bring up my experience with fractals while soloing is because I looking for uses for mechanics in high tension situations. I’ll bring a single party member or a 3rd simply to further test high stress situations. We want to see how these skills can be effective in the encounters without actually cheesing the system by stacking or abusing line casting.

Basically I’m doing my research!

“Did reaper bring condi damage for necro up to a viable level?”

The only thing that Reaper adds is more might/vuln stacks and an extra 750 dps from chill. But that’s already better than what the other trait lines give for condi Necros.

Lily.1935:

Jerus.4350:

Not trying to challenge anything Was honestly curious as I didn’t try to do any condi reaper, was having too much fun blasting out 20-30k gravediggers in the time I had to play.

But, we’re talking about raid roles right? Why bring up solo?

I’m honestly just curious to hear more about Condi Reaper, if it’s described somewhere a link would be cool, or just explain it a little more I’d be interested to know. I imagined it was more of a hybrid with a lot of RS spam doing decent physical and decent condi, sounsd like I was wrong on that. It sounds pretty powerful, MUCH more powerful than what I’ve seen from Condi Necro. Obviously the stack numbers you posted can’t be maintained, otherwise you’d be pumping out 22k in condi damage.

Did reaper bring condi damage for necro up to a viable level?

And it’s not about Engi being able to burst 20k in conditions, it’s about being able to maintain a high level of DPS once they get rolling (takes a few seconds) that is theoretically able to average out to 20k (emphasis on theoretically as I haven’t seen someone do it yet, it’s just on paper).

Except a condi engineer can’t sustain 20k DPS. Its closer to 7k. MAYBE 10 if they’re extremely good with the rotation but that’s pushing it. I have the good sense to admit that that sort of sustained DPS isn’t actually possible. Especially considering that the current meta says that full berserker is expected to do around 15k sustained DPS. Which also isn’t actually possible. 12k is possible maybe 13k, but pushing up to 15k far far beyond what any profession is reasonably capable of.

Also I bring up solo play, such as soloing Mossman because it gives us a base to talk about what DPS someone is actually doing. We know how much health mossman has and how long it takes you to kill it. In order to be doing 20k DPS you’d actually need to be able to solo kill mossman in a 50 in about a minute and 30 seconds. In the best case senario if we assume the mossman has 2 million health 4 minutes is about 8k DPS on full glass berserker stats. The community has unanimusly agreed that berserker is the highest possible DPS. And I don’t even think Mossman has even 2 million heath on a 50. However I don’t think its even that high so we could be looking at 6k or even as low as 4k DPS. Now if we also calculate for the fact that Mossman stealths into that calculation dropping the damage you can maybe calculate 10k in an ideal situation. Though looking at it I’d say closer to 9k.

So the reason to bring it up is to give you an idea just how incredibly off people’s DPS calculations actually are. With my reaper condi rotation. I expect that I’ll average around 8-10k with a burst of maybe 20k. Which that short burst would bring me up a bit. I’d have to calculate it a bit further but conditions have higher ramp time than berserker does and their damage is back loaded. I’ve used the example just to point out the flaws that the community has about DPS. They think they’re doing 20k-30k when in reality they’re doing closer to 6-9k.

Why I bring up my experience with fractals while soloing is because I looking for uses for mechanics in high tension situations. I’ll bring a single party member or a 3rd simply to further test high stress situations. We want to see how these skills can be effective in the encounters without actually cheesing the system by stacking or abusing line casting.

Basically I’m doing my research!

Of course you left out the fact that the best necro solo of 50 mossman is 50% SLOWER than engineer. so if engineer is “only” doing 9k dps then necro tops out at 6k.

So after all that typing we are back to the same point, engineer dps >>>> necro dps

Zaroua.2714:

“Did reaper bring condi damage for necro up to a viable level?”

The only thing that Reaper adds is more might/vuln stacks and an extra 750 dps from chill. But that’s already better than what the other trait lines give for condi Necros.

Also better Dhuumfire application thought right? But that leaves you in RS not applying the other conditions, again why I’m surprised by the proposed numbers and curious for more information, as I just don’t see how it could really be a solid upgrade to the poor level current condi necros are at in group situations.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Lily.1935:

Jerus.4350:

Not trying to challenge anything Was honestly curious as I didn’t try to do any condi reaper, was having too much fun blasting out 20-30k gravediggers in the time I had to play.

But, we’re talking about raid roles right? Why bring up solo?

I’m honestly just curious to hear more about Condi Reaper, if it’s described somewhere a link would be cool, or just explain it a little more I’d be interested to know. I imagined it was more of a hybrid with a lot of RS spam doing decent physical and decent condi, sounsd like I was wrong on that. It sounds pretty powerful, MUCH more powerful than what I’ve seen from Condi Necro. Obviously the stack numbers you posted can’t be maintained, otherwise you’d be pumping out 22k in condi damage.

Did reaper bring condi damage for necro up to a viable level?

And it’s not about Engi being able to burst 20k in conditions, it’s about being able to maintain a high level of DPS once they get rolling (takes a few seconds) that is theoretically able to average out to 20k (emphasis on theoretically as I haven’t seen someone do it yet, it’s just on paper).

Except a condi engineer can’t sustain 20k DPS. Its closer to 7k. MAYBE 10 if they’re extremely good with the rotation but that’s pushing it. I have the good sense to admit that that sort of sustained DPS isn’t actually possible. Especially considering that the current meta says that full berserker is expected to do around 15k sustained DPS. Which also isn’t actually possible. 12k is possible maybe 13k, but pushing up to 15k far far beyond what any profession is reasonably capable of.

Also I bring up solo play, such as soloing Mossman because it gives us a base to talk about what DPS someone is actually doing. We know how much health mossman has and how long it takes you to kill it. In order to be doing 20k DPS you’d actually need to be able to solo kill mossman in a 50 in about a minute and 30 seconds. In the best case senario if we assume the mossman has 2 million health 4 minutes is about 8k DPS on full glass berserker stats. The community has unanimusly agreed that berserker is the highest possible DPS. And I don’t even think Mossman has even 2 million heath on a 50. However I don’t think its even that high so we could be looking at 6k or even as low as 4k DPS. Now if we also calculate for the fact that Mossman stealths into that calculation dropping the damage you can maybe calculate 10k in an ideal situation. Though looking at it I’d say closer to 9k.

So the reason to bring it up is to give you an idea just how incredibly off people’s DPS calculations actually are. With my reaper condi rotation. I expect that I’ll average around 8-10k with a burst of maybe 20k. Which that short burst would bring me up a bit. I’d have to calculate it a bit further but conditions have higher ramp time than berserker does and their damage is back loaded. I’ve used the example just to point out the flaws that the community has about DPS. They think they’re doing 20k-30k when in reality they’re doing closer to 6-9k.

Why I bring up my experience with fractals while soloing is because I looking for uses for mechanics in high tension situations. I’ll bring a single party member or a 3rd simply to further test high stress situations. We want to see how these skills can be effective in the encounters without actually cheesing the system by stacking or abusing line casting.

Basically I’m doing my research!

Of course you left out the fact that the best necro solo of 50 mossman is 50% SLOWER than engineer. so if engineer is “only” doing 9k dps then necro tops out at 6k.

So after all that typing we are back to the same point, engineer dps >>>> necro dps

And, aren’t we talking DPS in a group with full buffs, not solo?

First off Engi condi dps>>necro condi dps.

About the Mossman: Engineer has ground-target AoE that doesnt require a target, necro needs to have a target for scepter 1,3, life blast, dark path, so engi has uptime on its dps compared to necro. Also it’s a very specific scenario you are comparing which is in favor of the engineer. And it is also a completely useless comparison…

Guys remember Robert Geezus mentioned soft CC will be useful in raids. If a boss spawns countless adds who move fast i would really like a necro to do soft cc/ epidemic stuff.
Not everything is DPS, every class has its own utility, why do we have to compare DPS all the time. The devs have tools to measure DPS much much better than the spreadsheets we make and it’s the easiest thing in the world for them to raise it, there are reasons why they don’t do it.

Also @Lily nice summary great post.

Jerus.4350:

Drekor.5217:

Lily.1935:

I can stack 6 burns on my own without bath runes as well as 600-1000 from chill, close to 30 bleeds, 20 poison and sometimes 40 poison, 7-14(depending on runes) stacks of torment plus fear triggers which adds terror damage. The condition damage the necromancer gets is extremely high on just their passive numbers. They can stack clost 3.5k condition damage stat? Something like that. And I’ve even heard of 50 bleed stacks along with sustaining other conditions such as poison and chill. Very little of the damage comes from physical. On average about maybe 700? Is this all sustainable at once? No, that would be insane.

I’d like to see a video or at least some math on the rotation that shows how you get 6 burn, 30 bleed, 40 poison and 7 torment on something at same time.

Read what I bolded in her comment

So how much can you sustain?

Pelopidas.2140:

First off Engi condi dps>>necro condi dps.

About the Mossman: Engineer has ground-target AoE that doesnt require a target, necro needs to have a target for scepter 1,3, life blast, dark path, so engi has uptime on its dps compared to necro. Also it’s a very specific scenario you are comparing which is in favor of the engineer. And it is also a completely useless comparison…

Guys remember Robert Geezus mentioned soft CC will be useful in raids. If a boss spawns countless adds who move fast i would really like a necro to do soft cc/ epidemic stuff.
Not everything is DPS, every class has its own utility, why do we have to compare DPS all the time. The devs have tools to measure DPS much much better than the spreadsheets we make and it’s the easiest thing in the world for them to raise it, there are reasons why they don’t do it.

Also @Lily nice summary great post.

Although I do agree that the engineer’s condi DPS is much higher than the base necromancer’s, I wouldn’t necessarily agree that its higher than the reaper’s. More testing is required.

My estimated guess for whats actually sustained is about 30-35 bleeds, 5 poison and chill. Those are what we can sustain indefinably. However where I get my numbers is from the burst as well as the cool downs. I have gotten up to 40 stacks of poison using corrosive poison cloud and the soul spiral. During that burst the 30 bleeds stick on and I can quickly build up around 5-6 stacks of burning. Throw terror into the mix and you’re adding more damage to the burst. So for burst I’d estimate around 20k, but for sustained I’d say 8-9k at the stabilizing point.

I’m just throwing out rough estimations on that. I have gotten over 40 stacks of poison using my rotation and over 30 stacks of bleeding at the same time with the 6 stacks of burning and chill all ticking at once.

But thank you. I’m really trying to help the necromancer community out. I think we’re starting to get to a really good place and we provide so much more than just damage that I honestly believe that we’ll be one of the best professions for raiding content.

PS: On its own, With food Corrosive poison cloud ticks for about 2k with once the second second starts. So you have about 6 seconds of that damage. Whirling in it to get the 30-40 stacks, depending on how large the enemy is that you’re fighting, you’re looking at around 8-9k damage just from poisons. And getting 30 stacks of bleeding isn’t news for the base condi necromancer, let alone reaper.

Drekor.5217:

Jerus.4350:

Drekor.5217:

Lily.1935:

I can stack 6 burns on my own without bath runes as well as 600-1000 from chill, close to 30 bleeds, 20 poison and sometimes 40 poison, 7-14(depending on runes) stacks of torment plus fear triggers which adds terror damage. The condition damage the necromancer gets is extremely high on just their passive numbers. They can stack clost 3.5k condition damage stat? Something like that. And I’ve even heard of 50 bleed stacks along with sustaining other conditions such as poison and chill. Very little of the damage comes from physical. On average about maybe 700? Is this all sustainable at once? No, that would be insane.

I’d like to see a video or at least some math on the rotation that shows how you get 6 burn, 30 bleed, 40 poison and 7 torment on something at same time.

Read what I bolded in her comment

So how much can you sustain?

I don’t do condi reaper, I’m asking the same question

Cogbyrn.7283:

Weakness, chill, blind, fear, all things the bosses are completely immune to in raids. These offer no benefit in raids and should not be considered control in the raiding environment.

I think you’re mistaking “raiding” for “Vale Guardian”. Who knows how these conditions might be useful as encounter design evolves?

That’s not “Vale Guardian” that’s “defiance bar.” Which you can be guaranteed will show up on every boss in a raid.

Those things will be totally worthless except on trash mobs. At least in the Vale Guardian fight, the trash mobs are ignorable anyway if you move every so often.

Lily.1935:

Pelopidas.2140:

First off Engi condi dps>>necro condi dps.

About the Mossman: Engineer has ground-target AoE that doesnt require a target, necro needs to have a target for scepter 1,3, life blast, dark path, so engi has uptime on its dps compared to necro. Also it’s a very specific scenario you are comparing which is in favor of the engineer. And it is also a completely useless comparison…

Guys remember Robert Geezus mentioned soft CC will be useful in raids. If a boss spawns countless adds who move fast i would really like a necro to do soft cc/ epidemic stuff.
Not everything is DPS, every class has its own utility, why do we have to compare DPS all the time. The devs have tools to measure DPS much much better than the spreadsheets we make and it’s the easiest thing in the world for them to raise it, there are reasons why they don’t do it.

Also @Lily nice summary great post.

Although I do agree that the engineer’s condi DPS is much higher than the base necromancer’s, I wouldn’t necessarily agree that its higher than the reaper’s. More testing is required.

My estimated guess for whats actually sustained is about 30-35 bleeds, 5 poison and chill. Those are what we can sustain indefinably. However where I get my numbers is from the burst as well as the cool downs. I have gotten up to 40 stacks of poison using corrosive poison cloud and the soul spiral. During that burst the 30 bleeds stick on and I can quickly build up around 5-6 stacks of burning. Throw terror into the mix and you’re adding more damage to the burst. So for burst I’d estimate around 20k, but for sustained I’d say 8-9k at the stabilizing point.

I’m just throwing out rough estimations on that. I have gotten over 40 stacks of poison using my rotation and over 30 stacks of bleeding at the same time with the 6 stacks of burning and chill all ticking at once.

But thank you. I’m really trying to help the necromancer community out. I think we’re starting to get to a really good place and we provide so much more than just damage that I honestly believe that we’ll be one of the best professions for raiding content.

PS: On its own, With food Corrosive poison cloud ticks for about 2k with once the second second starts. So you have about 6 seconds of that damage. Whirling in it to get the 30-40 stacks, depending on how large the enemy is that you’re fighting, you’re looking at around 8-9k damage just from poisons. And getting 30 stacks of bleeding isn’t news for the base condi necromancer, let alone reaper.

I really like the poison burst with reaper. I wish the whirled poison lasted longer though. 40 stacks really only lasts 1 tick, by the second tick it is down to 15 or so, then back down to 6 by the third tick.

I also can’t seem to hit the numbers that other necros do. I think I need to do more testing or improve my rotation. I usually max out at about 25 bleeds not 30, sustained. And taking the time to cast CPC, enter RS, and spin usually drops that down to about 22 stacks.

What I really wish is that there was a way to sustain our bleeds while using RS1 for burn. I can stack burn up pretty high, but it is at the expense of pretty much all my bleeds.

When talking about DPS, are we assuming a solo boss encounter with no adds? Because otherwise, epidemic hits really hard.

A thread like this is premature. We don’t know everything related to bosses yet.

“So how much can you sustain?”
“I don’t do condi reaper, I’m asking the same question”

10k to 11k. Significantly more with Alacrity and significantly more with Quickness. With both of them at 100% uptime, I’m guesstimating between 15k to 16k. Sustainable indefinitely in melee range. If you’re at range/moving, subtract 6 Bleed stacks from Sigil of Geomancy.

I’m also 99% sure that Reaper shroud 1 with Dhuumfire is a DPS loss over spamming scepter 1 with Blood Magic instead. I’m 90% sure that spamming Reaper shroud 1 with Dhuumfire is a very slight DPS loss over spamming scepter 1 without Blood Magic. Of course, I don’t know the exact aftercast times, but from my tests on during the last BWE, scepter 1 spam with Blood Magic had the edge in terms of raw DPS and had the edge in terms of utility (low damage loss from dodging, higher weakness uptime and the healing shenanigans from Blood Magic).

style.6173:

A thread like this is premature. We don’t know everything related to bosses yet.

Wrong!!! some of us here and see into the future or something. With that said, by complaining now we can shape the way future raids are made. I do agree that a couple of people here are overreacting, but that is not shocking, given their history. The problem is their certainty like they have seen the full raid.

But in a way, by whining about it now might be better. Since the other raids are still being worked on, developers can really consider the role necromancers will play. From the video I saw about the first wing, raids don’t see that much better than dungeons except they are new.

Zaroua.2714:

“So how much can you sustain?”
“I don’t do condi reaper, I’m asking the same question”

10k to 11k. Significantly more with Alacrity and significantly more with Quickness. With both of them at 100% uptime, I’m guesstimating between 15k to 16k. Sustainable indefinitely in melee range. If you’re at range/moving, subtract 6 Bleed stacks from Sigil of Geomancy.

I’m also 99% sure that Reaper shroud 1 with Dhuumfire is a DPS loss over spamming scepter 1 with Blood Magic instead. I’m 90% sure that spamming Reaper shroud 1 with Dhuumfire is a very slight DPS loss over spamming scepter 1 without Blood Magic. Of course, I don’t know the exact aftercast times, but from my tests on during the last BWE, scepter 1 spam with Blood Magic had the edge in terms of raw DPS and had the edge in terms of utility (low damage loss from dodging, higher weakness uptime and the healing shenanigans from Blood Magic).

Thanks, so what is it from Reaper that helps? Just the extra chill damage?

Extra chill damage/mitigation and the extra might generation. Other than Curses, the Necro trait lines are pretty awful for condi builds.

style.6173:

A thread like this is premature. We don’t know everything related to bosses yet.

Except we have a dozen and a half threads already about how the necromancer is completely useless and will never see use in raids already. I’m challenging that idea. I think its complete nonsense with the various tools we’ve been given.

Zaroua.2714:

Extra chill damage/mitigation and the extra might generation. Other than Curses, the Necro trait lines are pretty awful for condi builds.

Life force as well. Chilling Force is extremely handy for the condi necromancer since it can generate 5% life force a hit on occasions since its trigger is per target hit before the cool down goes on activation.

Go Lily go!

http://i.imgur.com/gUGC1KJ.png

The rotation showed in this chart is pretty easy to pull off even when in danger. Engineers just have better condi damage than a necro at this point in time. They can also pull off that condi damage with good upfront damage as well. Unfortunately everything a necro could potentially bring to a raid, another class can bring and do it much better. Now does that mean raids are going to be “everything but necro gtfo”; No i do not think so.
But to say that a Necro can do all these roles greatly is just not true. Literally anything you said a necro could do? another class can do the same but better.

Sorry but its true. Be happy that Necros are extremely strong in WvW and reaper is going to see a ton of use in PvP. We can’t all have everything. =/

What about giving a necro-specific ability of being able to reduce target armour?

Let’s assume for a second the blanket statement of “literally anything a Necro can do, another class can do better” is true. What are those classes that are filling the Necro’s shoes for each role doing besides said role? Is there still merit to bringing a Necro because the Necro can have pretty high effectiveness across multiple roles at once, reducing the number of slots required to fulfill a set of roles to 1 instead of 2+? What benefit does that bring?

Also, you don’t have to apologize for having the opinion that Necro is a jack of all trades. I’ll accept your apology though if you think your opinion is infallible. There’s no reason why each class can’t submit feedback in each realm of GW2 in order to ensure their class is useful and fun. To say a class should abandon hope in one realm because they excel in another is defeatist and unhealthy for the future of the game.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Let’s assume for a second the blanket statement of “literally anything a Necro can do, another class can do better” is true. What are those classes that are filling the Necro’s shoes for each role doing besides said role? Is there still merit to bringing a Necro because the Necro can have pretty high effectiveness across multiple roles at once, reducing the number of slots required to fulfill a set of roles to 1 instead of 2+? What benefit does that bring?

Also, you don’t have to apologize for having the opinion that Necro is a jack of all trades. I’ll accept your apology though if you think your opinion is infallible. There’s no reason why each class can’t submit feedback in each realm of GW2 in order to ensure their class is useful and fun. To say a class should abandon hope in one realm because they excel in another is defeatist and unhealthy for the future of the game.

The real problem comes with how this is all setup. For an optimized group you want a PS warr, a tank guard, although any class can do this role really you most likely want a tough class that can also buff really well, thus bunker guard makes logical sense. Finally, you want a healer, which currently druid is the best.

What does that leave us with? Needing dps, sadly… The imbalance in numbers is large enough that there isn’t a reason to NOT run the highest dps classes. Also, in the Vale Guardian fight you need condi damage. So of course people will stack condi engi’s.

Necro can’t take any of those roles besides tank, but they aren’t the optimized choice for even tanking. We can’t group stack might so we can’t replace the PS warr, we can’t heal so replacing druid won’t happen. This is the problem, in the end we have one role and that’s dps. According to the raid that downed him they had nearly a minute left on the timer, which means If it doesn’t get nerfed we’ll need optimized group dps to make it. Don’t forget, Vale Guardian is the FIRST BOSS.

Back on subject, to the OP… This has been gone over a thousand times and It’s beating a dead horse at this point. Necros have never been very good at condition damage, Reaper might help it out but the gap between us and a condi eng is too large.

I truly hope something will change during raids or they’ll make us more powerful. It’s just really hard when you have a mechanic like DS that basicly goes completely against the design of the game.

Actually, the best tank is not the tankiest character, but rather the character that can tank without dying while putting out the most damage. I would argue reaper to be one of the best contender for that role.

Truefrost.6815:

Cogbyrn.7283:

Let’s assume for a second the blanket statement of “literally anything a Necro can do, another class can do better” is true. What are those classes that are filling the Necro’s shoes for each role doing besides said role? Is there still merit to bringing a Necro because the Necro can have pretty high effectiveness across multiple roles at once, reducing the number of slots required to fulfill a set of roles to 1 instead of 2+? What benefit does that bring?

Also, you don’t have to apologize for having the opinion that Necro is a jack of all trades. I’ll accept your apology though if you think your opinion is infallible. There’s no reason why each class can’t submit feedback in each realm of GW2 in order to ensure their class is useful and fun. To say a class should abandon hope in one realm because they excel in another is defeatist and unhealthy for the future of the game.

The real problem comes with how this is all setup. For an optimized group you want a PS warr, a tank guard, although any class can do this role really you most likely want a tough class that can also buff really well, thus bunker guard makes logical sense. Finally, you want a healer, which currently druid is the best.

What does that leave us with? Needing dps, sadly… The imbalance in numbers is large enough that there isn’t a reason to NOT run the highest dps classes. Also, in the Vale Guardian fight you need condi damage. So of course people will stack condi engi’s.

Necro can’t take any of those roles besides tank, but they aren’t the optimized choice for even tanking. We can’t group stack might so we can’t replace the PS warr, we can’t heal so replacing druid won’t happen. This is the problem, in the end we have one role and that’s dps. According to the raid that downed him they had nearly a minute left on the timer, which means If it doesn’t get nerfed we’ll need optimized group dps to make it. Don’t forget, Vale Guardian is the FIRST BOSS.

Back on subject, to the OP… This has been gone over a thousand times and It’s beating a dead horse at this point. Necros have never been very good at condition damage, Reaper might help it out but the gap between us and a condi eng is too large.

I truly hope something will change during raids or they’ll make us more powerful. It’s just really hard when you have a mechanic like DS that basicly goes completely against the design of the game.

+1

Xae Isareth.1364:

What about giving a necro-specific ability of being able to reduce target armour?

World bosses ruin this concept, there is a reason why signet of vampirism has 25 stacks.

How much DPS does a Power Engie do? What if you are in a raid instance, and the next boss after needing condis is immune to condis? Do you bring 4 condi engis for the first boss? What if you can’t dynamically drop groups/add new people in the middle of a raid and have to bring a group that can tackle the entire thing?

Also, you assume you want a tank that can buff really well. What about a tank that can strip boons well? What about a tank that does solid DPS instead of buffs?

The limit on imagination is a little strong. Maybe the highest DPS class for one fight won’t be the highest DPS class for the next. Maybe a Necro’s ability to go Power, Condi, Tank, Strip Boons, and relocate downed Allies will be a great asset to a group for only 1 raid slot.

Also, what is the guarantee that every DPS in the groups who downed Vale Guardian and made videos pulled their fully optimized weight? Without meters, it’s like we’re assuming every single player of every class/spec is performing optimally. If you’ve raided in other games, you know that’s very much not the case.

Star.8401:

http://i.imgur.com/gUGC1KJ.png

The rotation showed in this chart is pretty easy to pull off even when in danger. Engineers just have better condi damage than a necro at this point in time. They can also pull off that condi damage with good upfront damage as well. Unfortunately everything a necro could potentially bring to a raid, another class can bring and do it much better. Now does that mean raids are going to be “everything but necro gtfo”; No i do not think so.
But to say that a Necro can do all these roles greatly is just not true. Literally anything you said a necro could do? another class can do the same but better.

Sorry but its true. Be happy that Necros are extremely strong in WvW and reaper is going to see a ton of use in PvP. We can’t all have everything. =/

the problem with these numbers they’re presenting is that the stacks that are required to be maintained in this build can’t actually be done. If this was the case everyone would be running engineer for speed runs. 20k sustained DPS isn’t a thing. And these numbers are extremely questionably. Even in the raid runs that I’ve seen engineer’s doing they were hitting for MAYBE and this is a big maybe, MAYBE 7k. But I’m skeptical that they where even hitting for that much. The rotation is extremely questionable. I’d like to see a video, see it in practice because from my testing and from what I’ve seen from more experienced players showing off their skills. Those numbers are physically impossible.

Cogbyrn.7283:

How much DPS does a Power Engie do? What if you are in a raid instance, and the next boss after needing condis is immune to condis? Do you bring 4 condi engis for the first boss? What if you can’t dynamically drop groups/add new people in the middle of a raid and have to bring a group that can tackle the entire thing?

Also, you assume you want a tank that can buff really well. What about a tank that can strip boons well? What about a tank that does solid DPS instead of buffs?

The limit on imagination is a little strong. Maybe the highest DPS class for one fight won’t be the highest DPS class for the next. Maybe a Necro’s ability to go Power, Condi, Tank, Strip Boons, and relocate downed Allies will be a great asset to a group for only 1 raid slot.

Also, what is the guarantee that every DPS in the groups who downed Vale Guardian and made videos pulled their fully optimized weight? Without meters, it’s like we’re assuming every single player of every class/spec is performing optimally. If you’ve raided in other games, you know that’s very much not the case.

Power Engi in ideal situations is about 17kdps, It’d probably be right about the same as necro in a realistic situation.

Anyways I agree in that I think Necro is one of the best tank options. A guard I actually think is one of the more mediocre options. I’d say Necro or Rabid Engi are my favorites when I think about it. The big thing is you need to get enough toughness to pull agro. Necro can potentially do that in a few ways (minion build spoj just posted an idea in another thread), while Engi has rabid + scrapper which is a very minimal damage loss, and if they need more blocks they can grab toolkit, again not a huge damage loss, and shield which can help for breakbar as well as provide more defense. Necro build that toughness, RS for defense or utility. Guardian I’d feel forced out of a lot of damage stuff and it’s already falling behind those two in damage.

Jerus.4350:

Cogbyrn.7283:

How much DPS does a Power Engie do? What if you are in a raid instance, and the next boss after needing condis is immune to condis? Do you bring 4 condi engis for the first boss? What if you can’t dynamically drop groups/add new people in the middle of a raid and have to bring a group that can tackle the entire thing?

Also, you assume you want a tank that can buff really well. What about a tank that can strip boons well? What about a tank that does solid DPS instead of buffs?

The limit on imagination is a little strong. Maybe the highest DPS class for one fight won’t be the highest DPS class for the next. Maybe a Necro’s ability to go Power, Condi, Tank, Strip Boons, and relocate downed Allies will be a great asset to a group for only 1 raid slot.

Also, what is the guarantee that every DPS in the groups who downed Vale Guardian and made videos pulled their fully optimized weight? Without meters, it’s like we’re assuming every single player of every class/spec is performing optimally. If you’ve raided in other games, you know that’s very much not the case.

Power Engi in ideal situations is about 17kdps, It’d probably be right about the same as necro in a realistic situation.

Anyways I agree in that I think Necro is one of the best tank options. A guard I actually think is one of the more mediocre options. I’d say Necro or Rabid Engi are my favorites when I think about it. The big thing is you need to get enough toughness to pull agro. Necro can potentially do that in a few ways (minion build spoj just posted an idea in another thread), while Engi has rabid + scrapper which is a very minimal damage loss, and if they need more blocks they can grab toolkit, again not a huge damage loss, and shield which can help for breakbar as well as provide more defense. Necro build that toughness, RS for defense or utility. Guardian I’d feel forced out of a lot of damage stuff and it’s already falling behind those two in damage.

a cavalier necromancer might be good for tanking as well. Their damage would be solid and very sustainable as well. the biggest issue would be life force but with blighter’s boon with all the boons running around that shouldn’t be an issue.

Cogbyrn.7283:

How much DPS does a Power Engie do? What if you are in a raid instance, and the next boss after needing condis is immune to condis? Do you bring 4 condi engis for the first boss? What if you can’t dynamically drop groups/add new people in the middle of a raid and have to bring a group that can tackle the entire thing?

Also, you assume you want a tank that can buff really well. What about a tank that can strip boons well? What about a tank that does solid DPS instead of buffs?

The limit on imagination is a little strong. Maybe the highest DPS class for one fight won’t be the highest DPS class for the next. Maybe a Necro’s ability to go Power, Condi, Tank, Strip Boons, and relocate downed Allies will be a great asset to a group for only 1 raid slot.

Also, what is the guarantee that every DPS in the groups who downed Vale Guardian and made videos pulled their fully optimized weight? Without meters, it’s like we’re assuming every single player of every class/spec is performing optimally. If you’ve raided in other games, you know that’s very much not the case.

If I want a dps tank, I promise you necro won’t be my first choice. I’ve already covered this and now you are going in pointless circles. In a 10-man raid everything will be covered, including boon removal (Interesting to note here, Mesmer can remove boons with It’s basicly sword auto attack).

As for bosses that will be immune to conditions, honestly in the current state non-condi engi is better then necro power anyway, lol. And let’s not forget I’m sure groups will be taking eles or thieves (Who are WAY beyond necro in power dps builds).

As for player performance, that’s always going to be a thing, It’s unavoidable. Honestly, I’d love If they’d add a meter, cause then It would be a lot easier to show everyone where the classes stand so people can truly see how terrible the balancing is currently. Most of the bad players will most likely not be doing raids or doing them in casual manner, which in the current state of raids is impossible. (A casual non-optimized group would reach the timer.)

Not that this means anything, but I’m amused you singled Eles and Thieves out in particular as classes that you’re sure groups will be taking, as this thread is active over on the PvE boards:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Thief-Ele-have-no-place-in-raids/first

In general though, I don’t subscribe to putting each individual mechanic under a microscope and throwing a class away because another class might handle that situation better. It’s like saying a Swiss army knife is useless because you could buy a better individual version of each component.

Lily.1935:

Star.8401:

http://i.imgur.com/gUGC1KJ.png

The rotation showed in this chart is pretty easy to pull off even when in danger. Engineers just have better condi damage than a necro at this point in time. They can also pull off that condi damage with good upfront damage as well. Unfortunately everything a necro could potentially bring to a raid, another class can bring and do it much better. Now does that mean raids are going to be “everything but necro gtfo”; No i do not think so.
But to say that a Necro can do all these roles greatly is just not true. Literally anything you said a necro could do? another class can do the same but better.

Sorry but its true. Be happy that Necros are extremely strong in WvW and reaper is going to see a ton of use in PvP. We can’t all have everything. =/

the problem with these numbers they’re presenting is that the stacks that are required to be maintained in this build can’t actually be done. If this was the case everyone would be running engineer for speed runs. 20k sustained DPS isn’t a thing. And these numbers are extremely questionably. Even in the raid runs that I’ve seen engineer’s doing they were hitting for MAYBE and this is a big maybe, MAYBE 7k. But I’m skeptical that they where even hitting for that much. The rotation is extremely questionable. I’d like to see a video, see it in practice because from my testing and from what I’ve seen from more experienced players showing off their skills. Those numbers are physically impossible.

Reason it’s not run in speed runs is that it takes 14s in optimal sitautions to overcome a power build, and Ele’s blow everyone out of the water in burst damage, so when a fight lasts 10-20s Ele’s become king. When a fight is lasting kitten well yeah, engi even in an imperfect rotation is quite awesome.

If you think Engi’s are hitting 7k, you really need to try it. Even an amateur in a real situation should be pulling off 10k+, a good player it’s going to be around 12-15k, expert more. I’m on average ticking about 6k burn, 4k bleed, 750 poison and 500 confusion along with about 1.5k in direct damage. That’s just what I see as averages from adding up a dozen or two seconds over the course of the last few months when I feel like checking what I actually do in game with combat log. That’s just casual fractals/arah where I’m not too concerned with optimization and just running the rotation. I’d like to think I’m above average at it but I’m not an expert.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Not that this means anything, but I’m amused you singled Eles and Thieves out in particular as classes that you’re sure groups will be taking, as this thread is active over on the PvE boards:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Thief-Ele-have-no-place-in-raids/first

In general though, I don’t subscribe to putting each individual mechanic under a microscope and throwing a class away because another class might handle that situation better. It’s like saying a Swiss army knife is useless because you could buy a better individual version of each component.

My point was that necro is on bottom end of dps, thief and ele are a considerably better choice. So even If they can’t get the best in slot classes, they’ll get the closest thing to it.