Guild Wars 2

Guys I am thinking to use Warhorn for my necromancer in wvw zerging… is it worth to use it? its been buffed to have 2% lifeforce per sap.. but 30sec cooldown on a 2sec daze….. and locust swarm…has cripple and swiftness and does causes bleeds… is warhorn worth it?

Depends on what you prefer in certain situations, if you pop locust swarm right before you hit plague and sit in enemy stack its highly effective. The daze.. not so much.

I prefer dagger off-hand though, i love the condi transfer+blind/chill.

chill? what do ya mean :P

Oswaldzl.3652:

is warhorn worth it?

Yes.

Sandra Martino.3870:

The daze.. not so much.

Aoe-daze is pure gold!

Oswaldzl.3652:

chill? what do ya mean :P

Deathly swarm also blinds your target (and others if it bounches) for 6 seconds, with the trait it also adds a chill effect. Very useful. hence why i prefer dagger.

Dagger is better, warhorn will slow you down in so many ways..

hmm why does it slows me?

In retrospect, it actually speeds you up in terms of swiftness provided :P

It slows you down in that it tends to tag random ai mobs while the zerg is going here and there. Combat speed is slow. Its easy to deal with if you think ahead a little bit though.

Also yes I love warhorn now because it has good synergy with wells. It also has good synergy with life siphons and any other proc on crit/hit effects you may have. Lastly it is good damage. While not as bursty as the focus, it is aoe and is better overall dps.

I used to run dagger as my other OH but now I prefer staff. The way zerg fights go, that moment when you are getting overloaded with conditions is also the moment you need to turn and run away because you are being focused. You can’t cast dag 4 backwards to clear your conditions, but you can drop a mark behind you. and its instant and unblockable with the right trait. Pluss mark 3 for aoe chill to slow chasing enemies and having a ranged option for wall fighting…its nice.

naw , wvw is all about movement and speed..
locust swarm won’t provide you much speed, besides you have guardians to provide the buff. also well locusts mainly just tag unwanted mob’s ^^
Daze is fun but i would rather have the transfer/blind and chill of dagger.
and the aoe isn’t that bad either.

iow, dagger can stunbreak, tansfer,blind,chill. bleed/weakness aoe. and has better range if you are hanging around the edges of combat…

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

naw , wvw is all about movement and speed..

Since when?

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

locust swarm won’t provide you much speed,

Assuming you have 20 in Death Magic if you’re zerg surfing, Banshee’s Wail + Locust Swarm will give you 18 seconds of swiftness.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

besides you have guardians to provide the buff. also well locusts mainly just tag unwanted mob’s ^^

You see the contradiction here? If allies provide swiftness out of combat you won’t have to use Locust Swarm.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

dagger can stunbreak

No.

“Since when?’
ok, Wvw is about movement and speed in an organized guildgroup of 20 when playing a necro with Foot in the grave.

“Assuming you have 20 in Death Magic if you’re zerg surfing, Banshee’s Wail + Locust Swarm will give you 18 seconds of swiftness.” hmm define zerg surfing? if it means running with 40 plus in the middle of a zerg. then it doesn’t matter what you take at all.. but yeah, with those traits you can get some nice speed, only to tag something and lose it.
“You see the contradiction here? If allies provide swiftness out of combat you won’t have to use Locust Swarm.” yes , that’s what i am saying. so why take it? to tag in a zerg?

On dagger: correction, can cleanse immobilize., you will need it ^^

For zerging? Not really, Dagger or Focus/Staff is better here.
But Warhorn is brilliant in small scale WvWvW, roaming and pvp

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

“Since when?’
ok, Wvw is about movement and speed in an organized guildgroup of 20 when playing a necro with Foot in the grave.

What does an organized group have to do with it?
Movement speed for necros is overrated. Everyone else is faster than you anyway, who are you trying to get away from? Other necros?

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

“Assuming you have 20 in Death Magic if you’re zerg surfing, Banshee’s Wail + Locust Swarm will give you 18 seconds of swiftness.” hmm define zerg surfing? if it means running with 40 plus in the middle of a zerg. then it doesn’t matter what you take at all.. but yeah, with those traits you can get some nice speed, only to tag something and lose it.

I was implying that you are likely to have Staff Mastery and Greater Marks if you participate in zerg fights a lot.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

“You see the contradiction here? If allies provide swiftness out of combat you won’t have to use Locust Swarm.” yes , that’s what i am saying. so why take it? to tag in a zerg?

Yes. Plus, it adds up to a lot of damage, stacks very long cripples on foes, and most impostatly: up to 10% lf/sec (11% with Gluttony) over 10 or 14 sec if traited. That lf regen is potentially better than Spectral Armor.

Rym.1469:

For zerging? Not really, Dagger or Focus/Staff is better here.

Why focus?
My personal zerg-fight off-hand weapon rating:
warhorn > dagger (with Chilling Darkness) >>> dagger >>>>>>>>>>>>> focus.

Traited focus is 1200 range and has relativly low cd. Spinal Shivers allows you to rip some boons, like swiftness or stability and apply chill, which in constantly moving zerg can be a death sentence for target.
As for Reaper’s Touch – It’s kitten good damage at 1200 range, bouncing. It applies helpful vun, gives you ton of Life Force and regeneration to allies

1. Reaper’s Touch has also another good thing-it is 100% projectile finisher on all bounces. What does it mean? Well, for example:
   -Lauching it through Water Field will provide very long regeneration to all allies standing near your target
   -Lauching through Light Field will cleanse multiple conditions on multiple allies standing near your target
   -Launching it through fields like Fire will make each bounce to apply condition, in this case, Burning.
   Everything on 14 sec cd with 1200 range.

A 100% projectile finisher would indeed make this a rather good choice, especially with Spiteful Talisman. But it’s not a projectile finisher at all.

I pondered this question myself, what offhand horn or dagger? and after posting a topic in this forum and then trying both:
warhorn is insanely good with “banshees wail” trait, and borderline useless without it.

the trait gives you 15 seconds of applying 3 sec cripples to 5 enemies around you each second! , and each tick gives you 1 % of LF, in a good situation it can refill almost half of your lifeforce bar and tag half the zerg just by running thru the enemy… ( if you manage to live)
and you can recast this beauty 9 seconds after it finished!

the 3 sec daze is also priceless, but you need some skill to land it properly.
most of the time i use it badly or only on one person, but sometimes when you manage to daze a group. it makes the fight…. because unlike ele static field, it doesn’t have red circle on the ground, so a surprise daze can really ruin somebody else day,.

In a zerg I tend to trait staff and wells. Then use consume conditions, 2 wells, and alternate between SoS and SotL. I have no problem running war horn, though. A 10/20/20/20/0 point allocation will get you Banshee’s Wail along with good staff and well support but not Spiteful Marks. When zerging, I prefer to imitate an arrow cart and make coming in range inconvenient for the other server.

I USED to trait into staff mastery in wvw, but found the trait EXTREMELY lack lusture. Reasons:
1) The minor traits in that line are terribad (jagged horror in a zerg? no thanks)
2) if you are traited for well reduction, have plague, staff, axe/warhorn, and actually know how to complete a full rotation, the staff marks really are just filler dps… If all you do for your zerg is staff spam and drop wells well… yea that kinda sucks

Your rotation should probably go something like this-
1- drop wells to open when you got the shot, get them on cooldown
2- drop marks
3- pop axe #3 and warhorn #5 and enter plague
4- roll around in plague form until its up, at which point your wells should be back up – drop wells again
5- death shroud 5 and 4 (this really doesnt have an order whenever its necessary really)
6- drop marks again

Out of those things listed the mark dropping part is REALLY not that big of a deal and is really minimal for the amount of time doing all the other things. Not to mention if you do complete that rotation you aren’t utilizing the cooldown reduction at all.

OH YA!
And warhorn >>>> dagger for zerg fights imo. You won’t get slowed down if you have half a brain and avoid npc trash or ambients and necros lack speed. the daze is pretty solid as well.

Anchoku.8142:

… but not Spiteful Marks

… a trait that no one should ever pick anyway.

Lalangamena.3694:

each tick gives you 1 % of LF, in a good situation it can refill almost half of your lifeforce bar and

I just had to check in game because I wasn’t sure anymore myself.
The tooltip says 2%, but a traited Locust Swarm (13 ticks) on 5 targets will give you 98% life force without Gluttony. So each tick is roughly 1,5% life force.

Warhorn is the best choice for zerging because the cripple is reappliable and can last very long. Daze on their backline is nice to.
Focus is single target.
Dagger will be cleansed immediately.

All good points, Dirtybird, but I use marks much more frequently when a zerg turns into a siege and it is nice to improve the odds of tagging more enemies with Greater Marks when zerging.

Also, while I agree Spiteful Marks is kind of blah, Flow, putting 20 into Spite nets me 30% more damage when golem-ramming during a siege.

These are not easy trades, though, so I will not criticize anyone else’s build for WvW. The one I described is certainly aweful for anything but zerging and siege.

Oswaldzl.3652:

chill? what do ya mean :P

The Curses trait, Chilling Darkness (trait III), applies chill whenever you blind a target.

Oswaldzl.3652:

hmm why does it slows me?

Locust Swarm gives you swiftness but also surrounds you with a cloud of locusts which count as a direct damage strike if it comes into contact with anything. When this happens, you’re then placed into combat mode (slowed) despite the swiftness buff. Locust Swarm is buggy in that it will sometimes put you into combat slow even when you haven’t hit an enemy or neutral mob.

Do not use Locust Swarm for out-of-combat swiftness; use it purely offensively. You’ll get more mileage out of it anyway; direct damage, crippling enemies, speeding you up to better stick to opponents, and life force generation.

I use it succesfully as a out of combat movement device. It doesn’t cause you to slow down if you didn’t hit anything. If you think it does, that just means you hit something and didn’t realize it.

Speaking of hitting but not hitting things, Warhorn can be used on bridges in eotm to rebuild LF without going into combat. The same way thieves can C&D off of them too.

Warhorn + barbed precision + sigil of earth + reapers precision = awesome way to bleed and maintain life force while you’re in death shroud

Lorelei.3918:

I use it succesfully as a out of combat movement device. It doesn’t cause you to slow down if you didn’t hit anything. If you think it does, that just means you hit something and didn’t realize it.

Speaking of hitting but not hitting things, Warhorn can be used on bridges in eotm to rebuild LF without going into combat. The same way thieves can C&D off of them too.

It’s been a bug for quite some time now. It doesn’t happen to everyone, nor does it happen all the time; but it does happen. Nor is it a case of hitting something and not realizing it. I used to use it for out-of-combat swiftness, too, but it was just too unreliable and putting me into combat slow too often despite not having hit anything.

If you have BM specced you will hit things that should never have been hit, ever.

Arah story. The first airship you get on has a spot that will take damage from locusts.

Dredge fractal, the grating at the 2 buttons will put you in combat.

I could go on and on. And I frankly think it is more of a problem with the BM traits, but that could possibly explain how you get put in combat when you supposedly didn’t hit anything….

Yerffejy.6538:

If you have BM specced you will hit things that should never have been hit, ever.

Arah story. The first airship you get on has a spot that will take damage from locusts.

Dredge fractal, the grating at the 2 buttons will put you in combat.

I could go on and on. And I frankly think it is more of a problem with the BM traits, but that could possibly explain how you get put in combat when you supposedly didn’t hit anything….

Also you can destroy bombs on Marionette, hurt the invul jade maw, hit invul wurm and do real damage to husks… thats kinda what life leech is supposed to do if you look at GW1, nothing except true invul was actually immune to it (same for shadow damage, something that necro was also very adapt at).

i use the wh to get some speedbuff when needed and also to keep up with my guildies. i also like that i can get lifeforce quickly with it when killing critters on the way or hitting players when passing by. wh 4 saved my life a couple of times though, so over all a pretty neat choice, but also depends on your playstyle.

I wish there was a good looking Warhorn for Necros.

There’s seriously like nothing aside from the Legendary.

What about the charr cultural weapons? The look quite decent.

Rym.1469:

Traited focus is 1200 range and has relativly low cd. Spinal Shivers allows you to rip some boons, like swiftness or stability and apply chill, which in constantly moving zerg can be a death sentence for target.
As for Reaper’s Touch – It’s kitten good damage at 1200 range, bouncing. It applies helpful vun, gives you ton of Life Force and regeneration to allies

1. Reaper’s Touch has also another good thing-it is 100% projectile finisher on all bounces. What does it mean? Well, for example:
   -Lauching it through Water Field will provide very long regeneration to all allies standing near your target
   -Lauching through Light Field will cleanse multiple conditions on multiple allies standing near your target
   -Launching it through fields like Fire will make each bounce to apply condition, in this case, Burning.
   Everything on 14 sec cd with 1200 range.

Wow, I didn’t know that. I mean I knew it was always treated as a projectile (reflected, absorbed etc.) but I never knew it was a multi projectile finisher. Are you absolutely sure about it? I want to believe

Hmm, tried it. It isn’t a projectile finisher, nor the tooltip don’t even show it should be one.

edit: Also the bounce thingy works really well on close range, so it goes back and forth between you and the enemy, granting you a lot of regen and 12 stack of vuln to your opponent.

Yeah, most people already use it for the 12 stacks. With traits and condition duration it is a very potent tool. However, I am not sure about the projectile finisher part as I just tried it for myself (Reaper’s Touch through Spectral Wall = nothing so far).