Guild Wars 2

Good day everyone,

Some of you might remember my old SPvP build/guide that i have done many months ago. Since then the game has changed, the necromancer has changed… and my interest for TPvP has increased… so i thought it was time i’ve made a new, updated… perfected guide. So without further ado, i give you…

… and they shall fear my name [TPvP perfected guide – part I: the TPvP conditionmancer]

Do not be alarmed by the size of the video, in the first few moments of it you will encounter a table of content/menu designed for an easy and comfortable viewing experience.

Who ever wishes to get the quick information from it can simply browse through the categories… and those who wish to understand all there is to know about the TPvP conditionmancer can sit back and enjoy…

This time as you can quickly notice, i chose not to present some “final” stats… I chose to take a different approach when dealing with a shifting PvP environment. I chose to build something from the ground up so it will fit the requirements of the PvP meta regardless of what that meta might now… or in the future.
You will always require “enough damage” & “counters to (everyone and everything, or as close to that as possible)” so that you don’t die like a mob… and you get to do your enough damage.

In the last part of the video i’ve also included a customized table that i have made which has all the condition counters (ways to negate our damage) each individual class has… also a suggested course of action based on these facts…
Basically how you must fight vs < insert class here > in order for you to be victorious.

This is something new even for me, so i am really curious on the results… which can be judged not only by the feedback, but also by how helpful it was for each and every one of you.
If i missed anything or if you have any questions feel free to comment here, on in the comment section on youtube.

PS: I know 1-2 things have changed in this last patch, and i released the video a few days ago… i will modify them with annotations, nothing major though…

Good work, as always nemesis. I wish you luck in whatever you decide to do next !

Good guide, as always, but you REALLY should give a tldr version. I only listen to it because I’m somewhat new to the game and still have map discovery to do, so it’s easy to listen in the background. Hard to imagine someone would dedicate hours focusing on your videos though :/

Corrections as to my knowledge:
Weakening Shroud: 15 sek ICD instead of 25.
Weakness is -25% damage on average, not -50% (as it’s a 50% chance to reduce the damage by 50%).
Chill of Death proccs at lower than 25% hp (from what i can tell. It happens to finish off guardians sometimes )
Oftentimes you are not going for new condition ticks (80% fear, talk about 3.x second dhuumfires). Although you probably know better, it’s confusing in a guide.

Good work

Bawi.9541:

Chill of Death proccs at lower than 25% hp (from what i can tell. It happens to finish off guardians sometimes )

Chill of Death (and most similar things) actually trigger on the next hit after dropping below 25%. So dropping below 25% HP itself “primes” the trait to be used on the next attack.

Excellent guide Nemesis, I always enjoy how clearly you break down the game mechanics. Your 2nd video (the profession-by-profession guide) was particularly useful.

Would be a shame if you stopped making videos! How come you’re quitting?

Hi Nemesis.

Deleted my first 80 necro over 6 months ago and decided to try the class again after finding your vidoes. Good stuff!

just tried this out, I have roughly the same stats, still have rune of Necro (for the fear duration), not quite willing to commit the $$ for rune of Lyesa just yet.. I play wvw so I improvised a bit cause not everything translates 100% imo.

running with rare veggie pizza master tuning XLs for condition duration and damage boost. Fully stacked I have 1,907 condition damage. With defense against guards stacks I have a bit over 22k health and 48% base crit. Which could be higher but I run with a ranger a lot who has (forget the ability) that boost my crit chance quite a bit.

I have a sigil slot open on my dagger, and I went for sigil of Earth, not sure if this is the best choice, but hey more bleeds. edit forgot the earth and weapon swap overwrite issue, put on a sigil of burst instead

anyway: I spent about 30 min in eternal running around. Stomped an engi I “know” I would not have been able to kill using my old school Nemesis Terror build, and then back to back killed a Mesmer and the guardian who showed up at the end of the fight.

Awesome build. Awesome Awesome Awesome!!

I have watched most of the video and I gotta say, yeah it is long, but even if you don’t play a condition build it is probably worth a watch just because of all the things he touches on.

I am only just scratching the surface of this build, but man is it solid.

Cheers

edit sometimes you can get away with not having spectral walk in WvW, gonna tinker with running epidemic and see how that goes.

The Primary.6371:

yski.7642:

tom.7468:

I like it the way it is i actually think it would be a little bit OP if you got healed when you entered DS. and remember its not a guardian its a necro their not meant to be able to heal like a guardian.

Well, we are supposed to be an attrition profession, which we aren’t really at the moment.

Still, I don’t think making DS heal us is the right way to go – wouldn’t it be easier to just remove the “you can’t be healed while in DS” part anyway? Even if DS itself didn’t heal us, it would be nice if it didn’t block other sources of healing like regeneration. That, or maybe they could make the life steals from Blood Magic be like.. actually noticeable? All it would take is a slight buff to the amount they steal and suddenly life steal builds would be perfectly fine.

How much do those things heal these days anyway, like 30 health/attack? That’s around 1/1000 of our health, which isn’t exactly helpful when an average attack deals something like 2-3k damage and a good burst can be close to 20k. It needs to be several times what it currently is to make any difference.

I agree but it will be very difficult to separate and allow regeneration along with life transfer to work. It will mean a rework of the boon and the life steal mechanic, that in turn will breed various bugs and require multiple fixes.

What makes attrition work though is sustainability, constant pressure and reduction of effectiveness.

We don’t have sustainability worked out yet. Necromancers can’t effectively maintain themselves at a certain level as not every single skill provides life force. This means a necromancer must also win his first fight and accumulate life force as we have no life force to use our class mechanic “death shroud”. Life steal is also simply too flawed to work as death shroud stops its affect or it is easily out dpsed as it does not provide enough healing to be a benefit in the first place. Life steal is also limited to one trait line, one weapon, one utility, one heal skill and two sigils. We also do not have passive countering to conditions or control affects. We have burst counters but no passive counters or they aren’t feasible.

We have the constant pressure but some view it as fine while others view it as over powered. We do need to have good viable ways to provide constant pressure to kill our enemies or force them to make hard choices. If it is heavily nerfed then we cannot be an attrition based class.

We do have multiple ways to reduce the effectiveness of our enemies. Some are not applied as often as others which then makes people think a centralised way to actively weaken enemies is required. But what it seems like the necromancer needs is simply to improve or further ingrain “reduction of effectiveness” into the offensive capabilities that the necromancer has or have better trait options implemented to provide it.

In conclusion a necromancer requires these three points to be a attrition based class which are: sustainability for themselves, constant pressure against the enemy and to reduce the effectiveness of the enemy.

This was posted 3 months back but still reigns true in the fact that we still need better sustainability and improved or wide spread “reduction to enemy effectiveness”. You also hit the nail right on the head Nemesis, on how DS does not scale vs 1vX. Here are a few questions that just spring to mind:

How to make the necromancer a true attrition based class?

What would allow them to maintain themselves in a fight therefore allowing them to slowly melt the enemy away?

How to effectively counter control affects with hardly any access to stability or quick rechargeable stun breakers when plague form is down?

Should they only be able to just melt the enemy away?

What should be the limit before they can no longer sustain themselves and simple die if “sustainability/reduction to enemy effectiveness” was somehow fixed?

How to help in 1vX and attrition required scenarios. Well for one remove that stupid ICD crap on the Spectrals they added, why they did that i will never understand.