Guild Wars 2

This topic is strictly a discussion between Lich Form and Flesh. Plague will be completely ignored. Please, only people who know the math or know what they’re talking about should respond/post. Thank you.

Today, I was running a dungeon (FOTM) with some PUGs. An “experienced” Necromancer (since Beta apparently) stated the Flesh Golem is practically useless vs Lich Form in PVE aspects (PVP was not brought up. WVW = PVP). This made me think a little bit since I’ve tried doing the math before.

Using Lich Form lasts for 20 seconds with a 180 second CD. This gives us a 10% uptime. Within this 10%, you lose all your main spells, utilities, and Death Shroud. As opposed to the Golem, you keep everything.

The Golem hits for a fairly high amount of damage during its auto attack, and it hits even harder for the charge. If the target is against a wall during the charge, they will receive MANY ticks of the charge + Blowout. If the pet dies, it can be summoned after 1 minute. The charge has a CD of 40 seconds.

From my understanding and looking at numbers, holding the same gear set-up and build, you can do more damage from Dagger auto-attacks than the Lich Form auto-attack. Any utility provided by Lich (Boon/Condition removal / Knockback) could be provided by your own abilities / Flesh Golem. Lich only gives you some survivability, but even then, I’ve heard it doesn’t keep you at the same health percentage returning to normal form.

Can anyone give me any insite on this? Perhaps, you could supply some math if needed. Within a 5 minute window, which provides more damage (Different pet uptime).

Here’s my build:
Dagger/Warhorn + Staff Consume Conditions Spectral Walk Well of Suffering Well of Corruption Flesh Golem 20(VI)(VII)/0/25(IV)(V)/0/25(III)(V)

Again, only useful theorycrafters, please.

Using an average amount of Power and Armour:

Dagger #1:
953 * 2400 * 0.6 / 1800 = 762
953 * 2400 * 0.4 / 1800 = 508
953 * 2400 * 0.8 / 1800 = 1016
This chain takes 2 seconds to complete so it ends up being 2286 / 2 = 1143 DPS

Lich Form #1
1000 * 2400 * 2.6 / 1800 = 3466
Attacks approximately 0.75 times a second so it ends up being 3466 * 0.75 = 2599 DPS

I can’t find out the attack rate of the Flesh Golem, but do know that minions don’t scale off your gear so would be a flat amount of DPS regardless of build.

The numbers would favour the Flesh Golem for overall DPS (With 11% uptime Lich Form would provide 285 DPS overall)

But Lich provides the highest burst damage, combined with other cooldowns (Such as Time Warp) Lich Form becomes much better against bosses.

It would also depend on if you’re fighting things with a lot of AoE aswell, since the Flesh Golem could be killed off (I know mine dies within 1-3 hits due to my liking of going against tougher things)

Ideally you’d use Flesh Golem for trash and swap to Lich Form (Since as long as he’s not dead and cooling down and Charge isn’t cooling down you’re free to swap elites) for boss fights to get the burst damage (After popping Utilities/weapon skills etc)

Plague last 20 seconds. Lich lasts for 30.

Taril.8619:

Using an average amount of Power and Armour:

Dagger #1:
953 * 2400 * 0.6 / 1800 = 762
953 * 2400 * 0.4 / 1800 = 508
953 * 2400 * 0.8 / 1800 = 1016
This chain takes 2 seconds to complete so it ends up being 2286 / 2 = 1143 DPS

Lich Form #1
1000 * 2400 * 2.6 / 1800 = 3466
Attacks approximately 0.75 times a second so it ends up being 3466 * 0.75 = 2599 DPS

I can’t find out the attack rate of the Flesh Golem, but do know that minions don’t scale off your gear so would be a flat amount of DPS regardless of build.

The numbers would favour the Flesh Golem for overall DPS (With 11% uptime Lich Form would provide 285 DPS overall)

But Lich provides the highest burst damage, combined with other cooldowns (Such as Time Warp) Lich Form becomes much better against bosses.

It would also depend on if you’re fighting things with a lot of AoE aswell, since the Flesh Golem could be killed off (I know mine dies within 1-3 hits due to my liking of going against tougher things)

Ideally you’d use Flesh Golem for trash and swap to Lich Form (Since as long as he’s not dead and cooling down and Charge isn’t cooling down you’re free to swap elites) for boss fights to get the burst damage (After popping Utilities/weapon skills etc)

Not sure how you found the Armor values / Damage coefficients, but those numbers seem right… My only problem is your numbers for Lich Form. I can’t even come to hitting close to 3k with Lich Form. For the Daggers, I do more than your numbers, which is reasonable for the Dummy’s I’m attacking in LA, but Lich Form is nowhere near 3x the damage of my final attack. If anything, it is 50% stronger than my final dagger attack, AT THE MOST. I’ll change it for you.

The Golem seems to be attacking at a rate of 1 attack per 1.25 seconds. It hits on average for the same damage as my first dagger attack (first 2 hits out of 4). Not exact numbers, but very well close enough. In other words, ~762 damage.

The Charge was very difficult to calculate because multiple numbers always show up. At LEAST 1 four-digit number would appear and a few three-digit numbers. The cast time for the charge is .75 seconds. The cast time for the summon is 1.5 seconds. The big number was generally over 1500 easily, and the smaller numbers tended to be between 200 and 300. For easy numbers and leniency, the Golem will do about 2,000 damage per charge cast. The Charge duration is about 1.25 seconds.

Using YOUR numbers, let’s go over math for a simulation of 200 seconds. This duration is fair because it accounts for the full duration of Lich Form and its CD timer. We will also assume we go into combat with the Golem already out. At the same time, since we cannot calculate how often the pet dies, we’ll have to summon my pet twice, so it will be out for a total of 3 times. The pet will survive for 20 seconds, which is very reasonable and very fair. The test will consist auto-attacking / Lich Form vs auto-attacking / Pet Charge / Pet Summon. The start of the Lich Form transformation will be the start of the simulation.

Correction Lich Form Damage (favoring LF on math)
Final Dagger attack x 1.5
1016 × 1.5 = 1524 every .75 seconds
1524 / .75 ~ 2032 damage per second

Pet Auto-attack DPS
762 / 1.25 ~609 damage per second

Lich Form + auto-attacking:
(20 × 2032) +(180 × 1143) =
40640 + 205,740 =
246,380

Pet Charge + Pet auto-attacking + auto-attacking:
200 – (5.25) = 194.75 seconds of player auto-attacking
(20 × 3) – (1.25 × 3) = 56.25 seconds of Golem auto-attacking
(194.75 × 1143) + (56.25 × 609) + (2000 × 3) =
222,599 + 34,256 + 600 =
262,855

Flesh Golem seems to be superior damage by a good amount. Please remember,
we assume the Golem dies after 20 seconds. In reality, it sometimes takes longer to die, or it sometimes takes less time to die. We also assume the opponent is not against the wall, or the Charge would do much greater and incalculable damage.

As for Lich Form, I did not include the time to put the auto-attack into “auto-attack mode.” Of course, I didn’t want bugs to be a detrimental part of the math, so I assumed we would auto-attack no matter what.

If anyone sees something wrong or have questions, please speak up. Thanks

One thing, Flesh Golem is as smart as a donkey with a carrot stick and dies as fast as a rabbit thrown into a wolf den on numerous dungeons, also no Agony Resistance. Golem is fun for general pvp, but lich form is almost ontop of the best elites of the game (Moa, Lich, Time Warp, Renewed Focus, Entangle, Supply Crate, Plague).

War Mourner.5168:

Plague last 20 seconds. Lich lasts for 30.

Ah! I never realized this since both the Elites lasted for so little.
You’re essentially asking me to redo the maths! :’(

Instead of 200 seconds, we’ll use 210 seconds.

Lich Form + Auto-attacking:
(30 × 2032) + (180 × 1143) =
60960 + 205740
266,700

Pet Charge + Pet auto-attacking + auto-attacking:
(204.75 × 1143) + (56.25 × 609) + (2000 × 3) =
234029 + 34256 + 6000 =
274,285

Okay, after I corrected my math, Flesh Golem STILL does more damage.

Andele.1306:

One thing, Flesh Golem is as smart as a donkey with a carrot stick and dies as fast as a rabbit thrown into a wolf den on numerous dungeons, also no Agony Resistance. Golem is fun for general pvp, but lich form is almost ontop of the best elites of the game (Moa, Lich, Time Warp, Renewed Focus, Entangle, Supply Crate, Plague).

I’m not sure where everyone is getting the “Pets are super dumb” idea from. Maybe, it’s the other pets doing this, but the Flesh Golem is far from having terrible AI. If you attack something, it will attack with you. If something attacks you, the Golem will defend you. I’d say the AI is pretty far from “dumb as dumb and dumb.”

You’re right, the Flesh Golem doesn’t have AR, but it’s not like Agony is up 100% of the time. The boss applying Agony the most would have to be… the Jumping Puzzle boss, and he generally aims towards players. The only other threat I see is the Cliff boss. :/

Also, if anyone wants to explain the Lich Form “HP” problem, please do

Im not saying Flesh golem is dumb (just as a donkey aint dumb, but is still ?rse), but once he picks a target its hard to make him focus someone else on the other hand if you stop attacking a boss for something else, he often stops in place trying to attack a npc thats half a mile away and god knows whats in his mind after you use charge and swap targets… He is… different.

Btw Lich form has Marked for Death and Mark of Horror, also Lich Crits, Crit% damage, the on third chain hit of the minion that does 90% more damage than the other 2 and oh right, AOE does exist thus Golem will die on every worthwile boss that exists in game at least once.

Andele.1306:

Btw Lich form has Marked for Death and Mark of Horror, also Lich Crits, Crit% damage

This reminds me, and I didn’t see it brought up in the thread: Lich Form increases your power (1832) and precision (916), so I think Taril’s
1000 * 2400 * 2.6 / 1800 = 3466
Should at least be
1000 * 4232 * 2.6 / 1800 = 6113
And needs to in some way to account for the increased chance to crit. (Unless that’s already in the 2.6 coefficient? I’m not totally sure how to get that particular number.) In any case, the increased precision gives around 40% chance to crit at level 80, I believe.

I’d suggest multiplying both results (Lich Form and Flesh Golem) by something like
((0.50 + (Critical Damage / 100)) * (Critical Chance / 100) + 1)
to give a good approximation of the added damage from crits. (Formula stolen from this wiki page, though I did manage to independently create something a lot like it myself earlier.)

If this is included somewhere in the calculations already, my apologies.

With lich form you should probably include the group of 5 minions you can summon. They add a significant amount of damage to the equation.

Andele.1306:

Btw Lich form has Marked for Death and Mark of Horror, also Lich Crits, Crit% damage, the on third chain hit of the minion that does 90% more damage than the other 2 and oh right, AOE does exist thus Golem will die on every worthwile boss that exists in game at least once.

Marked for Death isn’t worth using. Too lazy to do the math for you, but you would have to do 15 auto-attacks after applying Marked for Death to make it worth it. You can only get 13 attacks at the most before the Vulnerability wears out. IDK how strong Marked for Horror is, and they would have to do AT LEAST 18k damage for them to be worthwhile.

I would hope your post isn’t supposed to sound aggressive. If you include critical damage for Lich Form, you have to include it for the Golem / auto-attack formula too.
We cross out common denominators for a reason.

Softspoken.2410:

This reminds me, and I didn’t see it brought up in the thread: Lich Form increases your power (1832) and precision (916), so I think Taril’s
1000 * 2400 * 2.6 / 1800 = 3466
Should at least be
1000 * 4232 * 2.6 / 1800 = 6113
And needs to in some way to account for the increased chance to crit. (Unless that’s already in the 2.6 coefficient? I’m not totally sure how to get that particular number.) In any case, the increased precision gives around 40% chance to crit at level 80, I believe.

I’d suggest multiplying both results (Lich Form and Flesh Golem) by something like
((0.50 + (Critical Damage / 100)) * (Critical Chance / 100) + 1)
to give a good approximation of the added damage from crits. (Formula stolen from this wiki page, though I did manage to independently create something a lot like it myself earlier.)

If this is included somewhere in the calculations already, my apologies.

Already included, but all inputs are helpful.

Zyfram Tyrjala.4561:

With lich form you should probably include the group of 5 minions you can summon. They add a significant amount of damage to the equation.

“IDK how strong Marked for Horror is, and they would have to do AT LEAST 18k damage for them to be worthwhile.”

I play mostly WvW. I found Flesh Golem much more effective than Lich Form. That charge from the Flesh Golem knocks your target down and allows you to chain other combos with it. A well placed golem charge allows you to knock down multiple foes at once.

The key of Flesh Golem is that charge. Don’t worry about DPS since it will die in seconds while fighting zerg. When the time is right you should summon it and use charge right away.

Lich Form sounds good on paper and does deal more damage. However in zerg vs zerg no one will stand there and let you auto attack them to death. The other skills are medicore at best. You cannot heal. You got no speed buff. Other than that nearly useless push back skill you got no defensive abilities and no damage avoidance. All you got is double hp, which won’t help you much against a zerg. Everyone and their mom will attack you when you are in Lich Form because you are so big and such an easy target.

Of course my opinion might be biased since I am a conditionmancer. Lich Form scales with power, but not with condition damage. But in WvW you are asking to be killed by using Lich Form.

Admired.7461:

My only problem is your numbers for Lich Form.

Oops… I forgot to account for the tripled base power when calculating both the coefficient and the amount of power for the equation…. The same Power/Armour would actually end up as:

1000 * 5343 * 0.86 / 1800 = 2552
Making an average DPS of 2552 * 0.75 = 1914 DPS

Testing out the Flesh Golem he appears to attack once every 0.85 seconds
He does an attack chain than on average armour hits for ~640-700/640-700/1000-1200
On high armour targets he hits on average for ~580-600/580-600/940-1000

Which would cause him to do an average of 2440 / 2.55 = 956 DPS on average armour targets and 2150 / 2.55 = 843 DPS on high armour targets.

This isn’t including his Charge (As it can vary wildly the damage it does) nor is it including the Spite 20 trait that would increase his damage by 30% (Which may be more effective than the Marks deal 10% more damage trait in your build noted in the OP)

Admired.7461:

IDK how strong Marked for Horror is, and they would have to do AT LEAST 18k damage for them to be worthwhile.

How do you get to 18k? cast time is 1,5 seconds so you lose out on 2 Deathly claws. Thats more like 6-8k.

And @ Taril: You need to divide through the time for lich auto attack Deeps. An attack that is casted in less then a second should have a higher damage per second then its actual damage per cast.

Bellamy.9860:

An attack that is casted in less then a second should have a higher damage per second then its actual damage per cast.

Theoretically, yes.

In practice, there is a delay between casts that affects the DPS, so I use that attack speed rather than purely the cast time.

Similar problem with the Dagger chain, which even though all parts of the chain have a 0.5 second cast time it takes 2 seconds to complete the 3 part chain.

Knew about the dagger chain because tooltips are lacking values for them and it takes an eternity to go through the whole chain but didn’t know about lich auto. So the cast time for lich auto is about 1.33 secs? I’ll take a look at that.
Edit: Took time with a stopwatch and yeah it has some silly delay. In 28,5 secs i counted 25 casts so it is roughly at 1,15. Bwargh, what a letdown.

Taril.8619:

Admired.7461:

My only problem is your numbers for Lich Form.

Oops… I forgot to account for the tripled base power when calculating both the coefficient and the amount of power for the equation…. The same Power/Armour would actually end up as:

1000 * 5343 * 0.86 / 1800 = 2552
Making an average DPS of 2552 * 0.75 = 1914 DPS

Testing out the Flesh Golem he appears to attack once every 0.85 seconds
He does an attack chain than on average armour hits for ~640-700/640-700/1000-1200
On high armour targets he hits on average for ~580-600/580-600/940-1000

Which would cause him to do an average of 2440 / 2.55 = 956 DPS on average armour targets and 2150 / 2.55 = 843 DPS on high armour targets.

This isn’t including his Charge (As it can vary wildly the damage it does) nor is it including the Spite 20 trait that would increase his damage by 30% (Which may be more effective than the Marks deal 10% more damage trait in your build noted in the OP)

Your Lich numbers are confusing me. If you were to transform into Lich (power being 2400 beforehand), your new Power should 4232, and your dagger should still remain at 953. The armor stays the same, obviously. I don’t know how your skill coefficient changed, but if that’s the actual number, then it’s workable. Also, you’re supposed to divide when you do DPS for attack vs cast time. I’m also hearing the cast time for the Lich Form auto-attack is longer than .75

Bellamy.9860:

Knew about the dagger chain because tooltips are lacking values for them and it takes an eternity to go through the whole chain but didn’t know about lich auto. So the cast time for lich auto is about 1.33 secs? I’ll take a look at that.
Edit: Took time with a stopwatch and yeah it has some silly delay. In 28,5 secs i counted 25 casts so it is roughly at 1,15. Bwargh, what a letdown.

953 × 4232 × .86 / 1800 = 1926
1926 / 1.15 ~ 1674 DPS

Okay… Time to redo some math…

Lich Form:
(30 × 1674) + (180 × 1143) =
50220 + 205740 =
255,960

Pet Charge + Pet auto-attacking + auto-attacking (still the same):
(204.75 × 1143) + (56.25 × 609) + (2000 × 3) =
234029 + 34256 + 6000 =
274,285

Lich Form gets put down again while Flesh Golem still remains higher.

Bellamy.9860:

Admired.7461:

IDK how strong Marked for Horror is, and they would have to do AT LEAST 18k damage for them to be worthwhile.

How do you get to 18k? cast time is 1,5 seconds so you lose out on 2 Deathly claws. Thats more like 6-8k.

Well, you’re trying to argue for Lich Form I assume, right? You want Lich Form to be better? Well, I took the damage of the Flesh Golem simulation and subtracted the Lich Form simulation from this. To rephrase what I said earlier, you need to do at least 18K damage with those little minions to surpass the damage effectiveness of the Flesh Golem simulation. Hope this helps.

Andele.1306:

Admired.7461:

I would hope your post isn’t supposed to sound aggressive. If you include critical damage for Lich Form, you have to include it for the Golem / auto-attack formula too.
We cross out common denominators for a reason.

Actually, no it was supposed to be aggressive since i hate intentional stupidity, what it was since you were thinking in another world where flying spaghetti monsters are used as submarines by talking cars and the main religion is about a giant space butterfly (with what i mean no aoe, no damage taken to the player, 1 enemy that doesnt move, perfect ai).
What you are doing isnt theorycrafting its trying to justify using golem over lich, what is fine, but not if it has nothing to do with how it actually works it is pointless. To theorycraft between 2 different setups and decide what is the most efficient one may not exculde things that do happen on a consistent rate for one of them, i mean what good zerg player in starcraft would just say, oh no i dont need one or two spore crawlers pre base, im sure that the terran will never ever build a banshee or every baneling will hit 5+ marines so i dont need to bother with infestors to get fungal and then decide his build upon that?

Golem is one of the better minions, it can be used as a mob tank or taking a boss hit or two, it works as a battering ram in WvWvW and Legacy of the Foefire, but no it wont outdps Lich form because of its base design and one summon minon system.
Also both lich marks are very well worth the cast (and so is Grim specter after Horror since it removes the bleeds, but its a better aoe condition removal for the team).
/thread

Wow, you’re a jerk.

Okay, let’s do it your way. Let’s add some “stuff that could happen”.

Enemy against the wall? Bam! Golem becomes supreme.
Taking too much damage? I guess you’ll have to leave Lich Form to use utilities.
Have to walk away from boss? Don’t worry. The Golem will stay on to do damage. You can miss out on your own attacks because you have to run away with your back facing the opponent, and we have zero abilities allowing use to attack backwards directly.
AoE damage? Doesn’t exist for every fight, but I guess you’ll have to avoid either way. Bye bye Flesh Golem. You got a point here.
Enemy moving or not, none of them move fast enough to where they can avoid a player or even the Flesh Golem. This is hardly an issue. If anything, it helps the Golem if the NPC runs in the correct direction.
Enemy size affects pet charge too. It helps the damage.

Let’s look at the utilities (just for you) Lich Form provides vs Flesh Golem and Player.
Knockback? The Charge can do that.
Summon 5 minions? I can do that out of Lich Form with my Golem out.
Removing Boons/Conditions? We have utilities, but Lich Form doesn’t get to use it.

Any PVP statement from you will be ignored because I clearly stated we would ignore any comments about PVP in the main post.

Also, the difference between the use of Lich Form and Golem would be 1 use of LF while you can have 3 uses of Golem within the CD of Lich. Another thing, if you know anything about math, you’d know casting Marked for Death isn’t worth it. You would have to do at over 13 auto-attacks within a 10 second time frame for it to be worth it. 100 / 8% = 12.5 Duration is 10 sec and the CD is 10 sec. Impossible to stack. Mark of Horror needs to do a ton of damage for it to be worth the cast, too, but wait, you said there’s no such thing as perfect AI, so I guess these things will die when they spawn anyway. Finally, Grim Specter is nowhere near worth casting for higher damage. You can do more damage from the auto-attack in less amounts of time (cast time plus targeting).

Admired.7461:

Another thing, if you know anything about math, you’d know casting Marked for Death isn’t worth it. You would have to do at over 13 auto-attacks within a 10 second time frame for it to be worth it. 100 / 8% = 12.5 Duration is 10 sec and the CD is 10 sec.

Careful with involving Vulnerability calculations into PvE content, especially dungeons since every other person attacking the target gains benefit from it.

If you would ~8 attacks for about 2k damage totalling 16k damage or 7 attacks for ~2.1k damage totalling 15120 PLUS an extra 8% of every one elses Direct Damage. An average Hundred Blades would already do an extra 1k+ (1200 for a 15k HB, 2000 for a 25K HB) while used during the vulnerability for example.

Golem is nowhere near the Lich Form as long as DPS is concerned. Utility-wise they are probably close, with Lich having more options.

Admired.7461:

Well, you’re trying to argue for Lich Form I assume, right? You want Lich Form to be better? Well, I took the damage of the Flesh Golem simulation and subtracted the Lich Form simulation from this. To rephrase what I said earlier, you need to do at least 18K damage with those little minions to surpass the damage effectiveness of the Flesh Golem simulation. Hope this helps.

Actually i thought you tried to compare damage with Lich and casting Mark of Horror vs damage with Lich and not casting Mark of Horror. So thats why i wondered where that 18k came from.
In regards to pro or against flesh: i personally do not use flesh golem in dungeons (except AC for buggy charge against burrows). Lich has just stronger “burst dps”, a high range auto and stability which is nice. Flesh golem on the other hand offers less control about your elite.
But there also is one downside to Lich that was not noticed once in this thread and that is how you have to commit to dpsing for the next ~30 seconds or you are essentially wasting a 3 min cd. From time to time people get downed and drowned in AoEs and you are not able to help or have to cancel your high cd elite to help them out.

Flesh Golem will put out more DPS than Lich Form if the Golem is going to have a 100% uptime (which as any necromancer can tell you, will not be the case). I also feel like this thread hasn’t brought up the fact that popping Lich in a Time Warp is the equivalent of dropping a nuke.

Flesh Golem is a great elite, and I personally enjoy using it on my Conditionmancer in instances where I won’t need Plague, but with the proper build I feel like the Golem will almost always fall short of Lich.

JohnnyBoy.5471:

Flesh Golem will put out more DPS than Lich Form if the Golem is going to have a 100% uptime (which as any necromancer can tell you, will not be the case). I also feel like this thread hasn’t brought up the fact that popping Lich in a Time Warp is the equivalent of dropping a nuke.

Flesh Golem is a great elite, and I personally enjoy using it on my Conditionmancer in instances where I won’t need Plague, but with the proper build I feel like the Golem will almost always fall short of Lich.

It will… there are more instances then I can count where golem gets 1 shoted and its a 60 sec cd worthless skill. Why argue elites on trash mobs… if your group is competent by the time your golem decides to do something productive things will be dead. Its all about boss fights. And how many of those don’t have aoe damage? Pfft 1 shoted golem that did 1 charge and died isn’t damage its a sad joke. Lich form got its own drawbacks but as far as pve dungeon dps goes this isn’t even debatable.
towards op…The fact that you dismiss everything but autoattack speaks volumes on your ability to grasp the situation and make use of something other then ramming your face over keyboard. Switch to warrior… I hear facerolling is amazing on them.
you failed to theorycraft at base level.

And to further explain why this isn’t theorycrafting and some lame attempt to have others strike your ego and give you reasons why your way is right way…
You dismiss every single condition that makes pve…well pve.
Pve isn’t about standing and hitting a dummy which does nothing in response. This game lacks threat mechanic that can gurantee 100% dps upkeep. Which isn’t possible in most cases even with such mechanic present.
You are comparing skills that are nothing a like in any reasonable dimension. 1 offers a skill that provides a melee minion that can get 1 shotted and put back on 60 sec cooldown. Other is a fully ranged partially defensive skill with both stability and hp buffer that can extend the upkeep of this skill. What good is comparing a skill that can be instantly put on its full cooldown in a dungeon against a skill that can’t?
In your “theoricrafting” this is perfect situation of you having no gear, no party and your opponent being a practice dummy. What about haste? What about crit?What about golem not scaling with anythign at all? What about aoe? What about water? What about louzy terrain? What about the team?
Is lich form all that grand? hell no… you can’t revive people in it. And pve in dungeons has a lot of that. And dismissing parts of skill further leads me to believe that you are nothing but a child in need of attention and self gratification in form of others agreeing with you.
Have a wonderful evening.

HiSaZuL.2843:

It will… there are more instances then I can count where golem gets 1 shoted and its a 60 sec cd worthless skill. Why argue elites on trash mobs… if your group is competent by the time your golem decides to do something productive things will be dead. Its all about boss fights. And how many of those don’t have aoe damage? Pfft 1 shoted golem that did 1 charge and died isn’t damage its a sad joke. Lich form got its own drawbacks but as far as pve dungeon dps goes this isn’t even debatable.
towards op…The fact that you dismiss everything but autoattack speaks volumes on your ability to grasp the situation and make use of something other then ramming your face over keyboard. Switch to warrior… I hear facerolling is amazing on them.
you failed to theorycraft at base level.

And to further explain why this isn’t theorycrafting and some lame attempt to have others strike your ego and give you reasons why your way is right way…
You dismiss every single condition that makes pve…well pve.
Pve isn’t about standing and hitting a dummy which does nothing in response. This game lacks threat mechanic that can gurantee 100% dps upkeep. Which isn’t possible in most cases even with such mechanic present.
You are comparing skills that are nothing a like in any reasonable dimension. 1 offers a skill that provides a melee minion that can get 1 shotted and put back on 60 sec cooldown. Other is a fully ranged partially defensive skill with both stability and hp buffer that can extend the upkeep of this skill. What good is comparing a skill that can be instantly put on its full cooldown in a dungeon against a skill that can’t?
In your “theoricrafting” this is perfect situation of you having no gear, no party and your opponent being a practice dummy. What about haste? What about crit?What about golem not scaling with anythign at all? What about aoe? What about water? What about louzy terrain? What about the team?
Is lich form all that grand? hell no… you can’t revive people in it. And pve in dungeons has a lot of that. And dismissing parts of skill further leads me to believe that you are nothing but a child in need of attention and self gratification in form of others agreeing with you.
Have a wonderful evening.

It’s sad to see people are responding so immaturely. Insulting and name-calling is NOT a good way to get your point across.

You know, I don’t think think I’ve ever claimed LF should never be used. I’m just trying to show you the damage of the Flesh Golem and how it’s not useless at all. Fact: being allowed to use an ability more times is always a benefit. You can never name an ability where you wish you weren’t able to spam (this would make everything overpowered obviously). You’re too busy looking at the realism of the Golem, so you’re too distracted from looking at the realism of LF. I do look at both sides. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even bother discussing this.

Sure, there are times the Flesh Golem can get 1-shotted, but it’s not every situation where it dies within a second it spawns. You’d have to be doing the same anti-golem boss over and over again . I won’t deny the weaknesses of the Golem, like the Cliff Fractal boss demolishing it. I’m also not denying the strengths/weaknesses of Lich Form. You talk like you’ll always get to constantly be doing damage while in LF. You act like you’ve never had to stop while in this form or considering leaving it because you’re very vulnerable without utilities.

For ever auto-attack you don’t use in LF, you’re losing a lot more than from the death of Flesh Golem. That’s simply how it is, no matter the situation. The Flesh Golem is supposed to be short and sweet, not everlasting. Not once did I say it would be up forever. I clearly stated the situation on the math, and you’ll see the uptime isn’t very high. You’ll also see how the majority of the damage is done.

Let’s actually do a pro and con list for each. It should be obvious which is which.

Lich Pros/Cons:
High burst damage
Loss of all Utilities/Pets
Very high CD
Can’t pick up items / revive
Most secondary abilities can be replaced with main abilities/utilities
Increase in defense, but no healing

Flesh Golem Pros/Cons:
Short CD
Knockback
Susceptible to damage (especially AoE)
Moderate damage
Utilities bar still exists
Will always attack target (Cannot be controlled, does damage even if you aren’t)

The difference between you and me:
I’m able to keep a civil post while you harass and antagonize.

Get a clear head to actually argue between the two abilities rather than just pointing out your reasons to dislike my arguments.

Please be aware: I’m not saying Lich Form should never be used. It definitely has its situations, and when it is used, it’s just as fantastic and sexy as the Golem.

Why the hell do you keep comparing these two elites?

This. is. pointless. This thread is really pointless.

According to a recent post I seemed to have missed, it is said the Flesh Golem attacks at a rate of 1 hit per .85 seconds, which helps increase its DPS by a good amount.

Taril.8619:

Testing out the Flesh Golem he appears to attack once every 0.85 seconds
He does an attack chain than on average armour hits for ~640-700/640-700/1000-1200
On high armour targets he hits on average for ~580-600/580-600/940-1000

Which would cause him to do an average of 2440 / 2.55 = 956 DPS on average armour targets and 2150 / 2.55 = 843 DPS on high armour targets.

This isn’t including his Charge (As it can vary wildly the damage it does) nor is it including the Spite 20 trait that would increase his damage by 30% (Which may be more effective than the Marks deal 10% more damage trait in your build noted in the OP)

Throwing in some old math but simply replacing the numbers (assumes Taril is not wrong at all):

Flesh Golem:
(204.75 × 1143) + (56.25 × 956) + (2000 × 3) =
234029 + 53775 + 6000 =
293804

This number seems to be significantly higher than before if Taril’s numbers are true.
Whether the Golem scales or not, it will still be doing quite a large sum of damage.

leman.7682:

Why the hell do you keep comparing these two elites?

This. is. pointless. This thread is really pointless.

All theorycrafting is pointless then, I guess.

leman.7682:

Why the hell do you keep comparing these two elites?

This. is. pointless. This thread is really pointless.

Why compare 2 elites?

Well, unless you’re hacking or something you can only run with 1 elite at a time (Not counting the ability to swap out the Golem if the Charge is not on cooldown)

Thus it’s only logical to try and theorycraft which elite is the best one to run with.

Just like it’s logical to theorycraft trait selections and which weapons to use with what builds etc.

Now, I am just speaking purely from a pve perspective and dungeon, to a lesser extent wvw.

Flesh golem is useful in situations where it is safe to dps. In those situations, ie trash-clearing, there’s nothing your team can’t already do by auto-attacking, and you’d probably not notice any difference in dps by the flesh golem (if any) since by the time it actually reaches the mob it’d have already died. In wvw roaming, flesh golem is actually a really good companion for its charge, but if you’re roaming as a necro there must be something really suicidal about you, but that’s another story.

In situations where you actually need bursts, or where targets are significantly harder than normal mobs (situations where elites are mostly needed), flesh golems are sub-par. Either a bunch of random aoes will take it down, or it’ll end up taking a shot (or two if traited) from the boss and it goes down. You can argue that you have 2 more uses in the one cd of LF, but if the two other subsequent uses of it consist only of 2 charges (assuming it hits and even then bosses are usually kept at defiant stacks so cc is null) before it goes down again.

Flesh golem has its uses. I love it when solo running some pve where there is no real need of an elite (which begs the question why it finds itself in the elite slot to begin with, but that’s another story too). Even more than one young karka will pose a big problem for our elite friend, so let’s not go discuss about its survivability.

bottomline, flesh golem, whilst it has its uses, does not warrant the elite slot it currently occupies (possibly because of the flawed system of pets in this game). If you are comparing two elites, for situations where elites are needed, I will take LF.

In situations where no elites are needed, well..

abelooi.9156:

Now, I am just speaking purely from a pve perspective and dungeon, to a lesser extent wvw.

Flesh golem is useful in situations where it is safe to dps. In those situations, ie trash-clearing, there’s nothing your team can’t already do by auto-attacking, and you’d probably not notice any difference in dps by the flesh golem (if any) since by the time it actually reaches the mob it’d have already died. In wvw roaming, flesh golem is actually a really good companion for its charge, but if you’re roaming as a necro there must be something really suicidal about you, but that’s another story.

In situations where you actually need bursts, or where targets are significantly harder than normal mobs (situations where elites are mostly needed), flesh golems are sub-par. Either a bunch of random aoes will take it down, or it’ll end up taking a shot (or two if traited) from the boss and it goes down. You can argue that you have 2 more uses in the one cd of LF, but if the two other subsequent uses of it consist only of 2 charges (assuming it hits and even then bosses are usually kept at defiant stacks so cc is null) before it goes down again.

Flesh golem has its uses. I love it when solo running some pve where there is no real need of an elite (which begs the question why it finds itself in the elite slot to begin with, but that’s another story too). Even more than one young karka will pose a big problem for our elite friend, so let’s not go discuss about its survivability.

bottomline, flesh golem, whilst it has its uses, does not warrant the elite slot it currently occupies (possibly because of the flawed system of pets in this game). If you are comparing two elites, for situations where elites are needed, I will take LF.

In situations where no elites are needed, well..

This… is how you start theorycrafting properly. You consider if it is even reasonable to compare two to begin with. Not throw numbers around while dismissing every variable imaginable.
Calling me immature are you? while you went off and started calling people names when they proved you are wrong? Pfft you reap what you saw bud.
I clearly stated the same things you listen as pros and cons to using either one. Kind of pointless to state same things I already mentioned. And what I quoted again states it fairly well why two aren’t really comparable. They are used in different situations under different conditions. As I stated before lich form SCALES, if you are condition spec…. lich form is useless and plague form is debatable as far as pve is concerned(its a good defense but… its pve). If you are mm spec… its again useless and so is the other elite for obvious reasons.
You mentioned loosing utilities… okay lets touch up on that one. Only time you would use lich is if you aren’t condition/mm… that leaves power spec… so wells since other stuff isn’t really useful in pve so burst spec. Mkay… wells… 40 sec cd. You pop them and you are DONE. Then what? You can’t deal with not seeing you utility slots on cd? Last I checked DS did the same thing. Granted its a poorly designed mechanic in itself but thats another topic. Point is your utilities are already on cd what exactly are you losing here?

HiSaZuL.2843:

abelooi.9156:

Now, I am just speaking purely from a pve perspective and dungeon, to a lesser extent wvw.

Flesh golem is useful in situations where it is safe to dps. In those situations, ie trash-clearing, there’s nothing your team can’t already do by auto-attacking, and you’d probably not notice any difference in dps by the flesh golem (if any) since by the time it actually reaches the mob it’d have already died. In wvw roaming, flesh golem is actually a really good companion for its charge, but if you’re roaming as a necro there must be something really suicidal about you, but that’s another story.

In situations where you actually need bursts, or where targets are significantly harder than normal mobs (situations where elites are mostly needed), flesh golems are sub-par. Either a bunch of random aoes will take it down, or it’ll end up taking a shot (or two if traited) from the boss and it goes down. You can argue that you have 2 more uses in the one cd of LF, but if the two other subsequent uses of it consist only of 2 charges (assuming it hits and even then bosses are usually kept at defiant stacks so cc is null) before it goes down again.

Flesh golem has its uses. I love it when solo running some pve where there is no real need of an elite (which begs the question why it finds itself in the elite slot to begin with, but that’s another story too). Even more than one young karka will pose a big problem for our elite friend, so let’s not go discuss about its survivability.

bottomline, flesh golem, whilst it has its uses, does not warrant the elite slot it currently occupies (possibly because of the flawed system of pets in this game). If you are comparing two elites, for situations where elites are needed, I will take LF.

In situations where no elites are needed, well..

This… is how you start theorycrafting properly. You consider if it is even reasonable to compare two to begin with. Not throw numbers around while dismissing every variable imaginable.
Calling me immature are you? while you went off and started calling people names when they proved you are wrong? Pfft you reap what you saw bud.
I clearly stated the same things you listen as pros and cons to using either one. Kind of pointless to state same things I already mentioned. And what I quoted again states it fairly well why two aren’t really comparable. They are used in different situations under different conditions. As I stated before lich form SCALES, if you are condition spec…. lich form is useless and plague form is debatable as far as pve is concerned(its a good defense but… its pve). If you are mm spec… its again useless and so is the other elite for obvious reasons.
You mentioned loosing utilities… okay lets touch up on that one. Only time you would use lich is if you aren’t condition/mm… that leaves power spec… so wells since other stuff isn’t really useful in pve so burst spec. Mkay… wells… 40 sec cd. You pop them and you are DONE. Then what? You can’t deal with not seeing you utility slots on cd? Last I checked DS did the same thing. Granted its a poorly designed mechanic in itself but thats another topic. Point is your utilities are already on cd what exactly are you losing here?

Kind sir, I believe you have the wrong guy. I am not the TS.

Just my two cents, the Flesh Golem currently has some really big AI issues, causing it to just stand around doing nothing. Also, it often targets the wrong enemy when you activate the charge. But the fast recharge really is a big advantage. I’ve often tried using Lich Form against bosses, but that skill has such a long recharge time that I often only get to activate it once. At least you can resummon the Flesh Golem quickly, and bosses such as the Jade Maw will target it, which offers some protection. I really don’t understand why people love the Lich Form so much. It is a skill that is on recharge for most of the dungeon.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I really don’t understand why people love the Lich Form so much. It is a skill that is on recharge for most of the dungeon.

Lich Form is incredibly powerful in builds with a lot of Power and Crit Damage. You are correct when you say that it’s normally on CD, but for those glorious 30 seconds of uptime I’m shooting out auto attacks every second or so that are piercing and hitting for 6k+. Add in the other 4 skills (that have a surprising amount of utility) and you have one BAMF Elite.