Guild Wars 2

Does it actually remove conditions already on you? does it just stop people applying more to you?
The tooltip says “greatly reduced”, seems a bit vague to me…

I’m currently playing a variation on the skull cracker build that suits my play style:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fIAQNApeRjcOBv1OGPMxBEkiroKOKUCmQ9wO2w4A-TsAg0CvICSFkLITQygsBNsYZxEBA

I’m running signets of dolyak and stamina with the signet mastery trait which gives full condition remove every 36 seconds and a stun breaker every 48. I’m also running with stomp, which is currently my favourite utility, it breaks stun, has a HUGE knockback and chains perfectly out of a Skull Crack>100b combo. Not to mention the fact you can use it to knock people off point and allow yourself time to neutralise. I’m also running the Shield Mastery trait. I love this trait because I spend most of my time sat with my Mace/Shield out, the extra toughness isn’t massive, but the 20% reduced cooldown is too good to pass up imho. You can use Shield Bash more often to bait stun breakers and of course Shield Stance being 6 seconds quicker is a massive boost to survival.

I’ve seen a lot of people promoting this new stance based Skull Crack build, but I honestly cant see the appeal of it (this is most likely due to my lack of understanding regarding ’zerker stance). Would anyone be kind enough to try and explain to me why the stance build is “better”.

It does not remove conditions.

It just gives you 8 seconds of -100% condition duration. Because condition duration stacks additively, this means that any condition that is applied without any +condition duration% won’t affect you.

So then how do you use it as a condition removal?
Or are you supposed to use it pre emptively?

Seems like a bit of a gamble considering the cooldown…

For that 8 seconds you can stick to your target without worry of conditions hindering you. Yea, it doesn’t remove conditions, and yea you have to use it pre emptively. You see necro, you press the button and get personal with him.

Above Olba says that conditions with + duration % will still effect you.
Surely anyone that has conditions which are going to be a problem will have + duration %? meaning you are still going to feel them anyway. All be it a lot weaker than without the stance, but still…

Also, necros have like the worst movement in the game, they aren’t exactly hard to stick to anyway.

*edit: spelling.