Guild Wars 2

I play my necro pretty much only in WvW now. I’ve been only really playing power-well DS bomber builds, which seem to work really well, but lately I’ve had the inkling to satisfy my DoT cravings with a condition necro, especially since condition mesmer and condition thief, which I have tried before really don’t off much for medium-large group fights in WvW. With necromancer, it sounds like that could work a lot better, mainly due to epidemic, AoE condition application from staff/tainted shackles/scepter 2, which could be further improved by the torment sigil.

For those who are veteran WvW necros, how does condition necro compare to power in how much it contributes to these large scale battle? Is the ability to tag just as good between epidemic and staff marks that do more damage for bleeds/poison? Or are conditions cleansed easily before they can tag any players?

I don’t have condition gear on necro at the moment, but I have a reasonable amount of dungeon tokens for rabid exotics, and I can move the ascended rabid/dire gear (no back yet) from my mesmer to my necro. I was also planning on salvaging my thief’s perplexity runeset from back when it was cheap, to give to either my mesmer or necro, or to just sell for a good amount of gold. Are perplexity runes worth running on necro, to proc confusion from our many terror-boosted fear sources and possibly the WH daze? Or am I better off using torment runes or undead runes or whatnot? I would probably run 0/6/4/0/4, with terror traits, and I’m also interested in running path of corruption over lingering scepter, as that GM seems like one of the few new GMs from april thats worth using out of any of the new GMs added to any class.

Thanks for any advice you can offer!

From my limited experience, in organised fight, you won’t have time to stack conditions on a single target and with the few conditions I don’t think it worth to spread. I rather better utilize my fear as I find that the biggest reason to use condition necro in wvw. I do it by bringing corrupt well/boon, wall. Another thing is chilling darkness.

Tagging is still good with our many aoes. Ofc it has more risk being rinsed and probably not as hurt as power wells but it gives you loot bags nonetheless.

Many say condition necro isn’t as good in zerg because of the many water field but I still find the fear quite useful after enemies’ stability used up.

Power is better. Condis get cleared and take longer to get ramped up. Most power attacks for necro are set it and forget it.

Roe.3679:

Power is better. Condis get cleared and take longer to get ramped up. Most power attacks for necro are set it and forget it.

I was afraid of that. I wish they would be viable because the idea of the playstyle of condition necro with epidemic and the weapon skills and just general AoE damage over time is very appealing for me. But thanks for your input, unless I can justify running this kind of build then I’ll save my tokens on the rabid gear needed

How larger are larger fights? 10+? 15+? 50+? Basically the more players the less condis matter. Up to about 15-20 condi can be made to work if you are really amazing with landing corrupt boons and chaining that into easy deaths (its super easy to catch a guardian with a big stack of boons and CB+PoC 7 boons off them, then fear chain to death). But once you’re above that power just gets better and better, especially since if there are tons of players you know some of them are going to afk in your well.

Bhawb.7408:

How larger are larger fights? 10+? 15+? 50+? Basically the more players the less condis matter. Up to about 15-20 condi can be made to work if you are really amazing with landing corrupt boons and chaining that into easy deaths (its super easy to catch a guardian with a big stack of boons and CB+PoC 7 boons off them, then fear chain to death). But once you’re above that power just gets better and better, especially since if there are tons of players you know some of them are going to afk in your well.

I’m on a T2 server so usually we fight decent sized groups probably around 20-30. We also fight random zergs sometimes but usually we go up against organized guilds that are anywhere from 15-40 people. And yeah usually afk players aren’t really a thing, but since these enemy groups are stacked together pretty closely, I feel like epidemic could be pretty strong. I could also epidemic downed players, since we always cleave them down, which gets them loaded with conditions.

From past GvG experience in a 15v15 you need 3 necro’s (condi) or no condi builds period. 1-2 will not be able to pressure the condition removal of a group of 15 but 3 will be able to force unneeded condi removal/heals and allow the hammer train/ strike team to do work.

in a zerg its even worse for condition builds since your damage is just not there.

The old bypassing 5 player AoE cap on epidemic. I miss it so much! 25 stacks of bleed on 50 people was priceless. Too bad it didn’t last long.

Anything sub 15 people fights, condi works well, but so does power. Above 15, condi has a sharp drop off.

Brando.1374:

From past GvG experience in a 15v15 you need 3 necro’s (condi) or no condi builds period. 1-2 will not be able to pressure the condition removal of a group of 15 but 3 will be able to force unneeded condi removal/heals and allow the hammer train/ strike team to do work.

in a zerg its even worse for condition builds since your damage is just not there.

This is your answer, and completely correct.

Of course in structured gvg scenarios they can counter this with more fringe and a more condition removal heavy center group. We played around with this a lot with trying mesmers too for confusion stacking, but in the end a strong side group of thieves and mesmers with a clump of the standard removal classes wins out with -40% food.

Well thanks for your input everyone. Its kind of depressing to me because I’m a good portion of the way done with meteorlogicus, and now I’m worried that I’m not going to have any class to use it when my guild does WvW. S/X ele is inferior to staff in WvW, Condition mesmer is bad in zergs (as is mesmer in general), I’m pretty sure scepter is not on the meta guardian WvW builds, and finally as you have said, condition necro is inferior to power necro in for wvw large group fights pretty much in every way. I guess I could just slot the weapon over axe in a power-well build, since its not like axe is that great anyway. I’ll be running something inferior, but at least I know that I will look good doing it..

Condition is better but not because it does more damage. Conditions have less barriers to do their damage and most often have to be cleansed with skills rather than dealt with passively. This means enemies use much needed skill slots to negate them rather than being more optimal at whatever their role is. Lastly, conditions provide effects other than damage which is where, in my opinion, their value actually comes from.

TLDR version, spec power damage and condi duration.

Let’s try thinking about it.

Who would win? A typical zerg of 20 consisting mostly of GWEN or a condition+healing (many condition builds can incorporate aoe healing) composition zerg of 20? Probably consisting of many engineers and necromancers. Note that condition builds are often tanky and have ways to remove boons. Also note that yes, the main condition classes lack stability, but they have ridiculous aoe condition spam with grenades, bombs, wells, marks, etc.

It would be interesting to see, really. Poison should, logically, affect the GWEN zergs healing as well.

The best way to play necro in WvW is to be flexible. I switch between power and cond builds depending on whether or not I’m in a zerg, small group or solo roaming. Also depends on the common enemy and what you are trying to accomplish. Power works very well in zergs, and in fights where conditions don’t work very well for an assortment of reasons. Conditions work very well for roaming, solo camping, or generally a small group fight. I use them also during sieges to keep track of where my targets are behind the walls.

I run hybrid myself. I have about 2000 power 40% crit and 1600 cond dmg.

While only few of the scep/dag+Staff setup skills scale with power nicely, they all scale to some degree. Since DS is part of the condi rotation, you can also squeeze in a few lifeblasts as well as DS 5+4. All that extra upfront physical dmg followed by a hefty cond stack breaks most people. Most importantly you don’t suddenly become nonexistent if you run into a zerg with a lot of condi hate. You can do modest dmg still.

Another nice thing about condi dmg in wvw is siege. When you man siege in wvw, those condi attacks like mortar burning, ac/cannon bleeds and treb poison all scale with your Cond dmg.

It can work, but will require more work to pull off then most people want to invest. What works the best is having a condi grenade engi working in tandum with you.

The goal here is to pressure enough to make the enemy blow it’s condi cleanse prematurely which a good grenade engi can almost do by itself. You’re looking at the 10-15sec mark to use you epidemic.

I wouldn’t count condie’s out in any fight under 20ppl per side. Just because they don’t do burst up front doesn’t mean they are sub-par. you just have to work with them differently then direct damage.

Preacher

borrok.9267:

The best way to play necro in WvW is to be flexible. I switch between power and cond builds depending on whether or not I’m in a zerg, small group or solo roaming. Also depends on the common enemy and what you are trying to accomplish. Power works very well in zergs, and in fights where conditions don’t work very well for an assortment of reasons. Conditions work very well for roaming, solo camping, or generally a small group fight. I use them also during sieges to keep track of where my targets are behind the walls.

This is what I do and it works well swapping gear according to the situation. With the meta in wvw being high toughness I like to use a lot of condi damage on warriors and guards, having both of those classes as well, I know how condi damage can eat through toughness.

Condition duration + Fear, Chill, Poison, Weakness and Power for the dmg.