Guild Wars 2

Logging in right now to check all your lies and innuendo about minions “working.” Pfft I wasn’t born yesterday.

There may only be a hard cap to Jagged Horrors from Death Nova. Like you Nightwulf I was easily running 10-15 Jagged Horrors during BWE in PvE using Death Nova + “Rise!”. Having minions stacking 20+ bleeds 24/7 was kind of nice with 10-30 stacks of poison now and then from chain explosions. My Condi MM was doing like 5-6K damage from minion conditions alone. :p

So it looks like Death Nova Jagged Horrors are still capped at 8 (or was that removed?), but “Rise!” does not share this same cap limit. I didn’t actually notice a cap on “Rise!” period save for the soft limits of AoE healing so many minions + combat. 10-15 being about the max possible from the shout.

I doubt “Rise!” will share said cap in the future once the minions are changed to Shambling Horrors. The only cap I could see is if the skill proves to be very strong so only 5 or maybe 10 are allowed at one time.

Again doubtful, because Jagged Horrors are hard enough to keep up at the 10+ mark from “Rise!” in HoT PvE (where they have 70%+ more base health compared to PvP/WvW).

Shambling Horrors will assumingly be sharing the same base stats as Jagged Horrors except for damage (2125 Armor, 8700 Base Health, 3.5% degen compared to Bone Minion’s 2125 Armor, 5000 health).

So they will be as tough, but will go down faster with Dark Bond than their Jagged cousins do. At least the one(s) actively absorbing damage will. A sustain/support MM build will get a lot of mileage out of these guys I think, taking less overall damage and being able to counter the degen/damage absorption they take.

I will make sure to keep this in mind during the next Beta weekend. I honestly can’t remember whether that was the case or not with “Rise!” during the last one lol.

I’m betting it was and my Jagged Horrors were just getting killed off while being spiked in Moa. Probably too busy focusing on using Moa skills as well. Oh the “horror.” :p

uhhh Yes Aren you’re right! Nothing seems to add up in our favour. This is going to all the other Necro balances all over again. There is…uhh no hope for the future of Necro. Abandon ALL HOPE!

(Good enough?) :p

Well actually Jagged Horror health is better than Bone Minion health. I just looked it up a couple hours ago.

Meh now that I looked it up again I might as well post all the numbers. This is for PvP/WvW (I guess in PvE minions get around a 71% health boost):

Blood Fiend: 2000 Armor and 13000 Base Health

Bone Minion: 2125 Armor and 5000 Base Health
Jagged Horror: 2125 Armor and 8700 Base Health
Shadow Fiend: 2125 Armor and 10700 Base Health
Flesh Golem: 2600 Armor and 13000 Base Health

Bone Fiend: 2600 Armor and 7000 Base Health
Flesh Wurm: 2470 Armor and 9000 Base Health

The tankiest minions are Flesh Golem, Bone Fiend and Flesh Wurm for overall health and armor.

The best against incoming condis are Flesh Golem, Blood Fiend, and Shadow Fiend, because of their health being almost on par with the health of some classes.

Bone Minions, Jagged Horrors, Shadow Fiend and Blood Fiend are basically glass cannon minions.

Bone Minions are the absolute worse minions for armor and health. It seems Bone Minions are designed to get to the target and BOOM by exploding them.

Jagged Horrors/Shambling Horrors should beat them out when sustained with regens/heals. Assuming they share the same stats except for damage.

They both lose 3.5% of their health per second. So it will take them 10-15 seconds to degen to a point where Bone Minion health is better without intervention.

The spec is basically supposed to be Nemesis from Resident Evil 3. That’s what I think about anyways.

You just don’t want him to catch up with you. :p

I can’t make this suggestion work in my mind logically. Core Necro would be so underpowered in the Shroud department only having one shroud compared to two shrouds for any specialization build. Better to have DS be core only.

Anything else just over complicated the class and causes an internal class balancing nightmare.

The only thing that would work in my mind is universal Shroud utility skills, that carry over from shroud to shroud, that give them more versatility. That in itself would cause a major rebalance though.

What is there to say? All very good and robust changes that make sense with clear and fair reasoning behind it. I’m looking forward to testing out all the rebalanced shouts and GS. I was already having fun with the Reaper, but these changes are much needed and much appreciated.

robertul.3679:

They gonna get cleaved along with the “master” rendering the whole dark bond useless.

You have to remember they spawn on targets hit. The minions were usually never bunched up that much if the skill was used optimally. In fact, I found “Rise!” caused a lot of confusion in PvP when all of a sudden 5 minions popped all over the place… Except for Moa bird transformationist… that’s their queue. :p

Even if they’re bunched together and get cleaved with you, with Death Magic they’re going to have assumingly 13050 health with 2.2Kish armor, will gain area Protection on RS exit. They also benefit greatly from Transfusion, Life from Death and MoE/MoB if traited for healing power. It’s fairly easy, at least with non-Dark Bond minions, to heal your minions 70-100% health in even the biggest spike/cleave fests if you’re not cced well.

Until your shamblings go down (which can be quickly), they’re going to be absorbing a lot of spike damage against you regardless, essentially wasting the spike if you’re hit with Dark Bond up. The better thing to do is to just go after the Shambling Horrors first so the Dark Bond effect doesn’t come into play. Going after MM at the same time just gives them a huge healing effectiveness opportunity (again, unless you chain cc).

Another thing to note is that sustain MMs that wins skirmishes in PvP rather successfully are always going to have like 5-10 Shamblings with them since we can now sustain minions indefinitely. You could have a situation where an MM has 5-10 Shambling Horrors, the extra 150-500ish toughness because of that and “Rise!” ready to go again.

All this adds more of a weird risk/reward dichotomy that was true in GW1 MM:

1. “Should I attack the MM directly and try to AoE cleave minions to the ground with him? If I try, I risk him transferring 50% of my spike damage to minions and Soul Spiraling them back to full health… A Soul Spiral/Life from Death that just got a 300 healing power boost because I got MM down below 50% health… There’s also that pesky RS damage reduction/absorption, self/minion protection on DS exit etc. On the flip side, I can always try to time CC so that I interrupt Spiral, but I still have to look out for possible Death Novas ruining my party.”

2. “Or do I kite minions, cleave/range them down first, avoid Death Novas and make the MM waste a Soul Spiral on only healing minions, rather than spiking me at the same time? The transfusion spike heal of 6-8K will not be healing damage already done to the MM, so the Dark Bond + Transfusion combo is rendered useless. However, will I be able to last that along not focusing on MM with all the minion pressure? Can I successfully interrupt Soul Spiral from range?”

3. “Maybe I should ignore MM/Shamblings and go for Blood Fiend? Let the Shambling Horrors stack on me/Blood Fiend, DPS/cleave them all down and then focus on an exposed MM for 15 seconds?”

I like the change.

I admit I was having fun in Beta open world sustaining 10+ Jagged Horrors indefinitely with a condi MM. However that’s all Rise! was really good for: PvE. That Beta weekend it saved my MM build once or twice in PvP, but that had nothing to do with the jagged horrors or their bleeds. More to do with Death Nova, the free LF from their deaths and minion trait passives.

These new Shambling horrors will be useful in all game modes and on all builds with Dark Bond. It will be interesting to see if we can sustain these Shambling horrors with them taking 50% of our damage though. Minions up until this point have been very easy to sustain with invested healing power, Regeneration, Life from Death and Transfusion.

What can’t be denied is that Dark Bond will be a big swing in favour of healing effectiveness (Toughness + Healing Power). Splitting damage by 50% between you and a minion not only relieves a lot of pressure, but allows area heals to effectively heal your personal incoming damage twice.

For example: If you’re hit with 20K damage while Dark Bond is up, 10K of it will go to a Shambling Horror(or horrors?). That’s 50% more effective healing vs incoming damage right off the bat. You then enter RS to use Soul Spiral for a 7K area minion heal + self heal from siphons. Then exit Death Shroud to trigger Life from Death for another 2-3K area healing for you and minions. Even if only one Shambling Horror receives your incoming damage (I’m guessing in WvW/PvP they’re getting 8.7K base health like Jagged Horrors), there’s a chance to heal 15K health of the total 20K damage. Without Dark Bond you would take all 20K damage and would only be able to heal about 5-6K damage in the same instance/skill usage (since Transfusion wouldn’t come into play).

With the unblockable and instant cast change, “Rise!” is inching us ever closer to GW1 MM.

As a side note, making Shambling Horrors absorb allied damage would kill their effectiveness big time. It’s better for Dark Bond to only affect the Minion Master. It’s purpose is not team support. It’s to keep the MM/Necro alive when focused and that’s sorely needed. The same way MM in GW1 could create synergy with various enchantments that made it very hard to kill the Necro while minions were up and vice versa.

I’m ok with minions having to attack in order to trigger Dark Bond. Adds counter play with cc etc. What we do need is for them and all minions to get updated AI and allow them to survive transformations. Moa birding is out of hand vs. Necros. :P

It would be nice to have some clarification about how the reduction really works too. Is it 50% of damage to one Shambling or is it 50% of damage split among how many Shambling horrors you have? The former I’m ok with. The latter would be very nice. Basically it would force enemies to deal with minions first. Area Regeneration alone could easily heal that 10K transferred damage in my example if it was spread among 5-10 Shambling Horrors.

They also need to split into two Jagged horror on death cough cough

@Knighthonor: “Rise!” still spawns 1 minion per enemy hit.

Perfect vampire character. I wouldn’t change a thing except maybe the offhand weapon skin, but everythings works. Bravo!

It even looks awesome in DS.

Zerker is a great 1st Necro ascended set.

As others have said, we have high health compared to other classes. On par with Warrior when not counting Shroud. As much as we complain about Shroud mechanics, it gives all Necro builds a universal meat shield that makes it easier for us to survive intense pressure situations compared than other Zerk classes without timing/depending on active defense. Assuming there’s enough LF regen in encounters I feel a Zerker Necro/Reaper, especially after the balance patch (siphons though DS etc.), will be able to perform quite well in HoT even if difficulty of encounters is greatly increased.

The only road block you will initially run into for HoT, is what appears to be a wide range of mobs immuned to power based attacks until you CC breakbars etc. Mastery point lines in HoT appear to solve this though like the one that makes your attacks peal Husk armor off so you damage normally.

As for other sets I’m on the fence about a couple.

To bypass any of the above immunities, Sinister as a hybrid set sounds viable as well. It’s just that old problem of which weapon set combination is best for hybrid to get the most DPS out of both damage types.

Celestial may work too for a hybrid too. I don’t really like celes for Necro though, since our mechanics lend to us focusing on certain roles rather than slapping celes on an OP build and running with it.

Zealots is attractive for high DPS in addition to good healing support from Transfusion and Life From Death+Speed of Shadows heal spam. Could make a good DPS oriented, minion sustaining MM build too. This set isn’t worth it right now for Life Siphons alone, as they still won’t scale well. Better off with full zerkers, because you get the most out of your core DPS with relatively similar siphon effectiveness.

Sustain/support sets and condi sets are probably secondary in priority to getting a Zerker set. First of all condis scale less tier to tier compared to zerker stat synergy (I could be very wrong on this with the new condi scaling combined with the crit dmg/ferocity change). Doing lots of spike damage is always welcomed when in many cases, a sustain/support set isn’t doing much for players and teammates that already keep themselves up.

Lastly Zerker will allow you to experience the pure DPS power capabilities of the new Reaper specialization. while hybrid/condi Reaper builds will play very much like core Necro. So going pure power DPS means lots of damage fun with GS/RS.

Edit: Regardless of all of that, you can’t really mess up with ascended stats anymore. If you find you don’t like a set’s stats just Mystic Forge it into another. The only real loss being infusions. So maybe try not to put in infusions right away or do enough fractals to store some basic ones. I guess MFing expensive infusions would be a no no.

Simple coy answer? It’s more viable than before.

nearlight.3064:

Balekai.6083:

Yeah Condi damage based sustain builds using US really need Soul Marks/Vital Persitence and/or Warhorn to get death shroud working properly for them. I have played condi based US builds for a year or more and got them to work even before the July 3rd. However, I could never come close to competing without Soul Marks/Vital Persistence in PvP as much as I tried (so I could take more support or damage from curses/blood magic). Without those traits natural AoE condi rotations generate about a measly 5-6% LF over 20 seconds. Your only choice is to spam Staff 1 for more that seriously lowers DPS.

On the US interruption heals I want to reinforce what Akrasia said. If death shroud from Unholy Sanctuary pops as you’re trying to get off a heal, that means you just lasted 1-2 seconds more than you should have, because without it you have been too late to use your heal and would have downed in the same situation. It doesn’t trigger at 1% health it triggers at 0% health/downed.

The basic rule of thumb is if you have high healing power, medium/high LF gain and Blood Magic (I wouldn’t see why you wouldn’t with high healing power), you’re going to want Unholy Sanctuary if you take Death Magic. The regen is extremely strong healing effectiveness in DS (100% effectiveness vs. incoming damage due to LF bar absorbing it all) and gets even stronger with Last Rites (about 40 extra health per tick at 50% health or lower). This combined with siphons like Life Transfer siphoning for 5K health is equivalent to a full heal skill if not better. 7-10K net healing because you were in death shroud for 7-10 seconds is better than lots of self heals.

If you don’t have high Healing Power and have bad LF gain, you can’t really take advantage of Unholy Sanctuary’s cheat life mechanic to restore yourself fully. Therefore there’s no point taking it over Corruptor’s Fervor. A DS pop on lethal hit with no potent US regen and no secondary healing abilities just means you will die 3 seconds later once shroud ends. This is when you take Corruptor’s Fervor, which will actually act as self sustain in non-healing power builds until that low health/LF point.

Is this the odd settler bunker build I’ve heard about skightly? It seems interesting with transfusion rezzes and general tankiness, but I feel like the condi pressure would be so bad compared to even a settler ranger.

Pressure is surprisingly ok when you successfully attrition, because of the constant AoE and lack of dependence on any one skill for said pressure. Instead you’re depending on a constant weapon and DS rotation within close range. MoE and the Geomancy Sigils gives you 5 extra AoE bleed stacks every 8-10 secs which puts it over the top for being able to actually kill people.

I will say it’s a good amount more DPS than the Cleric alternative save for the spike department. It does best in 2-5v2-5s. Well support, Presence support and/or AoE healing support syngerizes really well with the constant AoE bleed pressure of the build.

The downside is that its condition damage. Lots of removal is sort of countered by constant application rather than spike, but your condi damage drops big time compared to higher condi damage

Such builds also require a Necro to be in close range to viably DPS (Dhuumfire helps with this somewhat especially when you want to hang in DS for safety). DPS goes way down when you’re stuck holding a point 2v1 and both enemies are kiting waiting for you to come off point so one can decap for example. If you can’t sustain or whittle them down with lackluster condi, it’s a waiting game until you die, don’t die and just hold the point, more enemies come and they kill you or allies come and kill them. Lastly, the damage just falls flat against comparable sustain builds on classes with good condi removal and mobility.

As always though sustain anything Necro, regardless of Corruptor’s Fervor or Unholy Sanctuary, still doesn’t save you from spam cc. We lack viable escapes, stunbreaks and active defense. Flesh Wurm/Spectral Walk are still our best bet in those situations where sustain isn’t going to save us. For that reason I worked Flesh Wurm into my non-Wells using sustain/support variation when it comes to PvP and WvW.

Doesn’t hurt that Flesh Wurm (when placed close to combat) and Flesh Golem are quicker on the recharge with more damage and more tricks because of minion trait changes. I find it very easy to take Flesh of the Master and Necromantic Corruption. Both attacking adds a good 700ish damage from Golem and 1K damage form Wurm per hit. They also benefit greatly from Transfusion.

Yeah Condi damage based sustain builds using US really need Soul Marks/Vital Persitence and/or Warhorn to get death shroud working properly for them. I have played condi based US builds for a year or more and got them to work even before the July 3rd. However, I could never come close to competing without Soul Marks/Vital Persistence in PvP as much as I tried (so I could take more support or damage from curses/blood magic). Without those traits natural AoE condi rotations generate about a measly 5-6% LF over 20 seconds. Your only choice is to spam Staff 1 for more that seriously lowers DPS.

On the US interruption heals I want to reinforce what Akrasia said. If death shroud from Unholy Sanctuary pops as you’re trying to get off a heal, that means you just lasted 1-2 seconds more than you should have, because without it you have been too late to use your heal and would have downed in the same situation. It doesn’t trigger at 1% health it triggers at 0% health/downed.

The basic rule of thumb is if you have high healing power, medium/high LF gain and Blood Magic (I wouldn’t see why you wouldn’t with high healing power), you’re going to want Unholy Sanctuary if you take Death Magic. The regen is extremely strong healing effectiveness in DS (100% effectiveness vs. incoming damage due to LF bar absorbing it all) and gets even stronger with Last Rites (about 40 extra health per tick at 50% health or lower). This combined with siphons like Life Transfer siphoning for 5K health is equivalent to a full heal skill if not better. 7-10K net healing because you were in death shroud for 7-10 seconds is better than lots of self heals.

If you don’t have high Healing Power and have bad LF gain, you can’t really take advantage of Unholy Sanctuary’s cheat life mechanic to restore yourself fully. Therefore there’s no point taking it over Corruptor’s Fervor. A DS pop on lethal hit with no potent US regen and no secondary healing abilities just means you will die 3 seconds later once shroud ends. This is when you take Corruptor’s Fervor, which will actually act as self sustain in non-healing power builds until that low health/LF point.

Kharr hit the nail on the head. Unholy Sanctuary is a perma Regeneraiton boon combined a cheat death mechanic that makes shroud perform more as intended for attrition. Corruptor’s Fervor is really good, but isn’t going to save you when you have 20% LF, with shroud having 5 seconds more recharge to go, your healing skill having 8 seconds and your sitting at 1% health. Unholy Sanctuary easily can.

I have been in so many situations like Kharr where I have pretty much lost a 1v1 a 2v1 and even some 3-4v1s, but then I pop into DS on fatal hit, use Life Transfer and milk my shroud. After I exit I usually have enough health back to get off my healing skill with my others skills finishing up their CDs. So I go from being dead to being near or full health resetting the fight and sometimes winning right after leaving my opponent(s) wondering what just happened.

On July 3rd patch day I did this in a 3v1+NPCs killing a lord and managed to down all of them while not even using my heal (Which was SoV and used signet of locust, Wells and life transfer for active heals). One guy was freaking out about how I managed to get full health three times without ever using SoV and beat them. My allies arrived and finished them off and we killed the Lord. Unfortunately Well of Power and Darkness were nerfed indirectly by the latest siphon patch (no longer trigger Vampiric or Vampiric Presence) which killed a good portion of that build’s Well sustain.

I’m looking forward to Blighters Boon as well. It doesn’t have the cheat death mechanic that makes shroud work better, but it’s essentially the old Signet of Undeath passive tick or Regeneration boon tick (if it scales like Unholy) but triggered on boons. Definitely going to want Spite for Reaper’s Might spam.

Edit: Stacking and multi-trait/skill synergy actually does make all traits/skills involved better. If another 300ish regen in DS manages to cover close to or all damage over time due to synergy, then you have reached near immortality where you would eventually die without it.

I could see revealing for like 3 seconds or something. Perma reveal during death shroud would eliminate stealth as a counter to necros and teams with one which wouldn’t be balanced. We already do a pretty good job depth charging stealthed players with Marks if you equip Staff. More so since the AoE buff of greater marks was made baseline.

All in all you want to build for whatever purpose you feel or find yourself playing role wise in Stronghold no matter what your class is. You should also consider being able to hold your own because you will find yourself outnumbered and chain dieing is bad in Stronghold (well at any time in any mode). For the most part, Necros are good at killing NPCs and groups of enemy players in small/large skirmishes with Condi builds or Well builds.

Necros are also ok at supporting NPCs/players as a support role w/ blood magic. I find Transfusion revive teleportation has turned the tables near the end 2-3 times by reviving a good portion of my team at once (lots of walls to teleport them behind). Life from Death + Transfusion is pretty good at keeping nearby NPCs up too if you got lots of healing power. At least enough time to pressure off a solo enemy player before they kill your skritt(s) or champion(s). Vampiric Presence can add DPS and passive healing to NPC attacks and Lord specials too I think (haven’t checked to see if stronghold NPCs get buffed by it, even though I run it all the time :p ).

Winning games is a balance between protecting your skritt door breaker/champ offenses and killing enemy skritt door breakers/champ offensives. The longer you keep your enemy from breaching all your gates and the more successful you’re at breaking down their gates, the more assured you are of winning. A general run down of priorities when there’s little organization or designated roles are these:

Both teams are still trying to break down eachother’s gates:

1. When the game begins you want to summon and continue to only summon door breakers when you get a chance. That means controlling the middle when not reacting to bigger short term priorities. When the fighting is won (or there is no fighting), channel and run back supply to summon more skritt. Do not summon archers until all the doors are down.

2. Kill all incoming door breakers/champs asap if you’re in a position to respond, are designated to do so or built to do so. You don’t need a whole team for this. Only as many teammates as needed so you don’t die to player defenders before the job is done. Once enemy door breakers are dead try to disengage, or at least move the fight to somewhere more useful (the middle is a good place to keep it contested or champion spawners if they’re about to activate). You don’t want to get held up fighting players after their door breakers are dead because players can’t break down doors without a champion or skritt. There’s always something more you can do like protecting your own door breakers. The only time not to disengage is when you’re fighting and winning against superior numbers and prolonging their down state means their team is handicapped to respond to offensives, champ summon capping etc.

3. When you’re not under threat of gate attack and are close to the middle, this is a good time to wrestle control of the middle again if needed and run more supply to spawn skritt door breakers asap.

4. When you feel safe enough or in a position to go on the offensive, you can help protect your Skritt/Champs as they progress. This is usually a job suited to support players who can dish out enough DPS to clear the way or also pressure enemy players off your NPCs. There should always be one or two people doing this for the most part in order to be successful in the long run.

5. When Champ summon timers pop your team needs to cap these, it saves a lot of time and effort defending your lane and saves a lot of time and effort summoning door breakers to take out the enemy lane.

When enemy gates are all down:

- This is when you switch to summoning archers with supply and most of your team continually assaults NPCs in the main stronghold, sending one person to take out any enemy skritt. The longer your team sustains damage and fights vs. Lord the more panicky the enemy team gets, making their progress vs your gates manageable. By this point you should win through sheer attrition. Ideally, you want to be in a position where 1-2 players can single-handingly take out a Lord quickly while not dieing to NPCs/Players defending it.

When your gates are all down:

- Your in trouble if this occurs if you haven’t made a lot of progress vs. their gates. If your team is good enough and with enough support they may be able to take on superior numbers and keep your friendly Lord alive, so 1-2 allied players can breach their Stronghold and assassinate the enemy Lord.

When both stronghold gates are down:

- A race against time to kill eachothers’ Lords. The most skilled or luckiest team will win out here, because the weaker team will likely not have the numbers to defend their Lord adequately while killing the other Lord. As above, you want to be that team that can easily kill and control the enemy team and if you’re not, somoenes got to play rambo and assassinate their Lord/NPCS before the assured killing of yours. Prologuing enemy down states or finishing them so they only spawn one at a time is sometimes a good thing too. The more they’re attempting to revive eachother or lying there useless, the less time they’re DPSing Lord, or aren’t respawning all at once to ruin your offensive against their Lord.

It’s ok. The biggest problem with Rev right now is the huge opportunity costs of using one legend over another and being stuck with one very role focused weapon. Rev is pretty much locked into one role at any given time. There’s some issues with Energy generation and the overall DPS of weapons too. The weapons really need to be multi-purpose unlike legends. I also found condi to be lackluster DPS, unwieldy and has no synergy outside of mace/axe/demon legend.

I guess we will have to wait for the DPS weapon/legend and for whatever changes they make based on feedback.

On the subject of Rev support which I found to be the most robust, is almost the polar opposite of Necro support design wise.

Rev sustain/support builds focus almost entirely on outgoing heal spam and lots of micro-management that sacrifices weapon use as an opportunity cost. Basically spamming Ventari’s will, Natural Harmony and Staff AA (if equipped) or Hammer AA and 2, then waiting for Rolling Mist buffed fury to trigger so you can semi-spike and actually do “some” damage . Healing is all you do and VERY well, but offer little else.

Necro sustain/support is passively traited or slapped on to shroud skill use or mechanics, requiring near zero micro-management, is universal to condi or power based builds and virtually has no opportunity cost in combat. This means we can follow our full DPS rotations while delivering our full support naturally. My support necro can sustain, support, AoE DPS/pressure, boon corrupt, condi transfer and cc all at once, even if the healing is a lot less over time.

Honestly between playing Necro support while roaming in a group/zerg tonight and playing a Rev, my Necro was performing better. Transfusion was getting 7K heals to those that needed them over 600 range. It was teleporting back downed players to backline for revives. My Necro was successfully reviving more people and not dieing, compared to my Rev that died even while spamming Natural Harmony while reviving. Lastly I can actually do damage on my Necro and AoE damage that easily pressures multiple toons. My Rev couldn’t sustain pressure if his life depended on it (and it does and he dies).

Could be L2P issues though.

I wouldn’t take Runes of the Undead without condi amulets. It’s not worth it especially with the new condi scaling and only for tainted shackles/staff bleeds/poison. You need about 1200+ condi damage to break even with pre patch scaling. that should tell you how bad your condi damage will be hovering at 100-300dmg. Better off taking power or defensive oriented Runes that give you nice bonuses.

If you want perma boosts with Soldiers amulet take Runes of the Ogre. Other options are Doylak, Lich, Strength, Melandru, Hoelbrak or Traveler (traveler allows you to drop warhorn and/or quickening thirst, but soldier amulet allows room for the latter).

Drop Dhuumfire for Foot in the Grave or Death Perception. you will get a lot more DPS from 50% crit chance of Death Perception compared to a super low burn tick. Not to mention Dhuumfire nerfs range of LB to 900.

Death Magic choices are fine. Take Transfusion over Unholy Martyr to help keep minions up. It’s about 2K healing I think base and will benefit from 450 extra healing power when you’re low on health. The extra revive benefits are independent of stats. Drop quickening thirst and take warhorn or traveler runes if you really want Blood Bond. Otherwise Quickening Thirst is fine for a speed boost.

Regardless, take warhorn instead of off-hand dagger for the extra siphon healing and DPS with Locust Swarm. Let minions condi clear you.

Edit: Bah let my post sit too long, Bhawb’s got you covered. :p

As mentioned, minion mechanics technically allow for any damage build because power, precision and crit damage don’t effect MM damage. Condiion builds pretty much have jagged horror/wurm (as ButterOfDeath pointed out) as condi damage opportunities.

However, Death Nova poison is a lot stronger now with stacking opportunities. When your minions get murdered this can be a lot of extra AoE condi DoT. I can’t remember, but I was pretty sure Death Nova didn’t trigger on bone minons when we used Putrid Explosion pre-patch. It appears now that they do so there’s that for condi users too. I assume minion condi transfers do not use your condi damage except for the conditions you apply to self.

My belief is that its really up to your playstyle and more importantly whether you’re better at playing power or condi based necros.

Sustain while minions are up and attacking is never really an issue. It’s what happens when they all get clobbered/cced which is the problem. In GW1 we were able to sustain our minions better while they sustained us and could depend on them always for DPS. So you have to ask yourself the questions:

“What weapon sets/combat styles fit me best when my minions are up and when my minions are down?”

“What weapon sets/combat styles will allow me to keep the pressure on enemies after my minions are all dead?”

The benefits of power weapon sets have already been made clear. So too has healing power for minion sustain and healing power/toughness combo for self-sustain and healing effectiveness. Except that if you’re not using regeneration, SoV or transfusion there’s really no point to healing power. The Blood Fiend attack doesn’t scale and siphons in general are pretty effective without investment.

Celestial stats are all about using “Jack of all trades, master of none” mantra to your advantage, hybridizing your damage. The advantage of MM is that you can focus your gear to be a lot more sustain/support oriented while still maintaining DPS or obtaining hybrid status. Might as well take advantage of that with cleric, apothecary, solder, dire, rabid etc.

Condi setups, especially melee oriented ones, can be more supportive of minions staying up. Or at least, killed at different times rather than burned all at once. Natural use of condition weapon skill rotations can keep AoE regeneration up 50-75% of the time. 100% of the time if you forget rotation and camp Staff while doing light condi damage (Better than camping staff with power).

Condi can be better at sustaining pressure at all ranges too. Minions a lot of the time attack one target and stay with it (or stop attacking due to AI). So they’re good AoE meatshields for a short time until they die, but aren’t so good at applying AoE pressure themselves. Just very good single target DPS. Add in AoE condis being applied at any range, and that forces players to make a harder choice when facing MMs as Kahnen alluded to. The question being:

“Do I kite and focus on the Minions first like I usually do? Or should I take out the Minion Master who’s DoTing me to death while I try to do so?”

I think Reaper will end up being a good power version of this in addition to AoE chills helping minion sustain and keeping the enemy CCed. It just won’t have the range pressure option.

In a straight up MM vs. MM fight, a condi MM will likely DoT to death or CC a power MM’s minions before they do the same. Depends on how compact the minions are. The new Necromanctic Corruption should have helped power MM with this though.

My personal condi MM gear setup is identical to my other condi sustain/support builds. Settler (Apoth in PvE/WvW), Runes of the Krait, Geomancy/Renewal sigils, Staff+Scepter/Dagger. Enter melee with close combat minions and start churning out AoE bleed and minor AoE weakness application. Let AoE regeneration naturally stack up on minions. Dodging on weapon swaps applies 5 stacks of AoE bleeds, regeneration and 800-1000 AoE healing alone with MoE, Geomancy and Renewal procs every 8-10 secs.

My biggest gripe with MM necro as condi is that the AI tends to fudge itself a lot easier because of all the AoE skills and target switching involved with condi damage. The second is scepter which is only really useful for Grasping Dead for another quick AoE bleed and the AA to maintain condi DPS in between weapon swaps/shroud. Feast of Corruption is almost useless. I just use it whenever its available for the lowly 3% LF generation.

That’s funny, mine turns into 1500 range…

I guess I’m a special snowflake.

Err no.

I just tested it and it isn’t just the tooltip. It changes both the tooltip and the range to 900. It may be an oversight.

It’s working. Just tested it out in PvE and WvW and got the procs. Remember that the passive is triggered when you’re hit once per second and it can be hard to the numbers because of that. Especially when you get bursted with crits that hide the little green regen numbers.

Checking your combat log is a good way to see if something is happening. It will show the amount of healing and by what skill, boon or trait. It can be hard to find like you say in real combat.

Klaeljanus.7695:

Balekai.6083:

I have to admit I myself have been able to 3v1 a lot better post patch. Sometimes even win with those 3v1s, but it was because I’m pretty good at sustaining myself, I’m built for sustain and they were inexperienced and didn’t know how to focus. In all the cases I survived they just mindlessly use their DPS skills and spiked my shroud and let me get off all my key attrition/heal skills.

[snip]

Now vs. experienced Necros you actually have to bring your A game rather than getting an easy kill due to the technical limitations of the class. Technical limitations that gave us the opposite of attrition, with all the expenses that came with assumingly having it.

Something fun I ran into for sheer troll purposes is to go with Death / Blood / X(Personally, soul, but spite could work in order to actually kill things.)

Only traits that really matter are Shrouded Removal and Unholy Martyr, their ICDs line up and provided you can keep pulling condis from allies, you can keep getting +10% LF per 3 seconds.

Must try this. :p

I think noticed something weird with Unholy Sanctuary and Moa. First and as expected, whenever I’m not in DS and I get transformed and “die,” I instead pop into DS form with whatever LF I have.

However, when I get turned into a Moa while in DS, I swear I get Unholy Sanctuary regen.

DS may not be a counter to pesky moa transformations, but DS+Unholy Sanctuary may soften the blow.

I have to admit I myself have been able to 3v1 a lot better post patch. Sometimes even win with those 3v1s, but it was because I’m pretty good at sustaining myself, I’m built for sustain and they were inexperienced and didn’t know how to focus. In all the cases I survived they just mindlessly use their DPS skills and spiked my shroud and let me get off all my key attrition/heal skills.

Once people started focusing intelligently, I go down a lot faster if not instantly.

- Let Shroud run out of LF and evade Life Blast if it’s a power build or Dhuumfire buffed. Interrupt Life Transfer after channelling starts asap. Interrupting Life Transfer just as it starts channeling is very important to cutting off LF generation and if they take BM, from getting a near self heal while in DS vs. multiple foes through siphons. If you do that you put that skill on its full CD since it counts as casted.

- Once Shroud runs out, be ready to hard cc, interrupt and focus DPS. Most Necro builds no matter the sustain will die right there, since they don’t have any time or the ability to counter such. Other skills to look out for now is preventing Signet of Locusts from triggering too. It’s a pretty powerful heal now when invested in. Mine heals 2-2.5K per hit, so drop blinds on shroud exit too if you see that SoL signet passive on a Necro.

- Experienced Necros will be anticipating this, dropping out of shroud behind obstacles, or prepping Well of Power/Darkness, or other stunbreaks/skills to give them more of a chance to recover. It may be a good idea to hard CC a Necro right before they exit DS and after they use stunbreaks to counter this.

-Against Condimancers using Parasitic Contagion. Make sure you time your condi clear for after they drop their condis and right before you’re ready to focus. If you don’t, those condis will keep healing the Necro even while they’re flat on their face.

- Remember, post-patch it’s probably easier now to 1v1 sustain Necros rather than 2v1+ in some cases. Once you start giving Necro’s extra AoE procs from pets, minions and adds, you’re scaling up Necro sustain significantly. Meaning that a good Necro can keep a team busy a lot longer than before. Long enough for allies to do some damage or reinforcements to arrive. In WvW when it was wise to focus down a Necro first just to eliminate them as an easy kill, it may be wise to take out lesser attrition classes first and leave the Necro for focusing later. ( I see this already working against myself in WvW/PvP)

That’s pretty much it. Necros still have the same anti-cc they have always had. Basically none. Take advantage of that to prevent them from regening with siphons and other attrition skills in and out of DS.

Necromancers don’t need a LF generation nerf. They’re now much closer to what they were stated to be: The ultimate light armored attrition class that controls its zone of control. That means a good Necro should be able to control the area around him and sustain vs. multiple enemies (attrition) if built right, at the expense of mobility, escapes, stability, boons and stunbreaks.

Before when playing Necromancers you were playing against a husk of a class. A class that had builds that would normally be one on another class, split into 2-3 builds on Necros. Counter intuitive mechanics were also a big deal with half of our mechanics not working with the other half.

Now vs. experienced Necros you actually have to bring your A game rather than getting an easy kill due to the technical limitations of the class. Technical limitations that gave us the opposite of attrition, with all the expenses that came with assumingly having it.

I use Krait Runes on my condi Necro sustain/support builds.

Basically if bleeds and bleed application are practically your main/only source of condi DPS, you should buff them with Krait runes.

With Rabid amulet in PvP Krait does about 21% more damage than Undead Runes. On Settlers (which is toughness primary) Krait runes do a bit less damage compared to Undead (about 19%). The downside is that you’re less tanky with Krait Runes by giving up the toughness bonuses. Also Undead Runes are front loaded condi DPS while Krait rely on duration and the lack of condi clears. Lastly Undead runes up other condition damage from poison, burning and torment stacks.

Still, those stacks don’t compare to the amount of AoE bleed stacks we get.

However, it sounds like you’re build is mostly a Terrormancer with Parasitic Contagion for sustain while dabbling in BM. I would probably take Fear of Death over Vital Persistence since Parasitic Contagion does nothing for you in DS. Also, you can’t build up burning stacks in DS using FitG when you exit for extra healing. I would then take Nightmare or Perplex runes. In BM you’re going to want Blood Bond for sure, Vampiric Presence and Vampiric Rituals or Transfusion, depending on whether you want to use wells or not. For WvW Transfusion may be the way to go if you’re group roaming. In PvP/WvW solo roaming, Vampiric Rituals feels more useful to me with Well of Power/Darkness.

Menaki.6329:

I was there when the commander was raging. There were fighting against blob. I think, what he means is, if siphoning is proccing retaliation, you will hurt your allies who have a power build. They have a higher damage output then a necro and get more damage back in return.

He was probably just trying to play it safe. However, Necro siphons have never multi-procced Retaliation. It was possible that Vampiric Presence was bugged, but the combat logs and other tests show that it’s working properly. I guess that commander will find out eventually.

He should probably do that soon though. For well bombing Necro builds in zergs, Vampiric Rituals + Vampiric + Vampiric Presence is easily 200+ siphon per target hit with a well. Which translates into 5000+ unblockable extra damage per well overall. 2500-5000 healing per well for the Necro too. That’s not counting non-necros buffed by VP pulling off nice siphons with their own AoEs and burst skills. A fair amount of potential for so little investment to give up for fear of something that isn’t happening.

A year or more ago the duration of WoB was changed to 5 seconds from 10 seconds.

Unfortunately, Anet “forgot” to up the scaling of healing power with the change nerfing the overall healing dramatically. Vampiric Ritual siphons were also closet nerfed on WoB due to losing 5 seconds of possible procing.

Rym.1469:

He better advise that only competent Necros with good positioning should be using Transfusion.

Today I escaped a zerg in dowstate because of some random Gaurd’s Banish. While being revived, I got pulled into the zerg stampede with Transfusion.

Transfusion is okay, but you have to know how to use it.

Don’t tell me how to use Transfusion!!!

aarrg!

Balekai getting ganked by zerg, panic uses transfusion and teleports all his allies that were being ressed on top of him for the slaughter

I just tested this extensively vs. vet karka which have 30 seconds of Retaliation or Regeneration every 25% health lossed.

When Retaliation first popped on my first Veteran Karka, I dropped Vampiric Ritual buffed Well of Power and Well of Suffering (Late edit: Meant Well of Darkness) after evades. Note they only do siphon damage. Result? No retaliation damage at all.

Then I tested auto attacks. Result? Only one tick of Retaliation per hit with Staff or Scepter.

On another Veteran Karka I tested Well of Suffering. Result? 1 Retaliation proc per hit.

Conclusion: The WvW Commander better stop asking Necros to not take Vampiric Presence because he’s wrong.

Edit: Now it’s one thing to test this as a Necro, maybe the allied version of vampiric presence procs retal. I doubt it though, since they act like siphons in every other way as far as I know (not damaging doors in wvw etc.)

Edit 2: Just tested with a friendly toon in Southsun. They did not get more than 1 tick of retaliation per hit w/ Vampiric Presence active.

Aro.8275:

The thing about Parasitic Contagion now is that it’s not possible to take it and the increased condi duration (Lingering Curse) when using wand.

Making the 2x condi duration only affect Scepter skills made the choice a lot easier. You don’t really need the extra duration on scepter. Especially if you use a Staff+Scepter/Dagger rotation with MoE + Geomancy procs in melee range (which sustain builds can do).

Khristophoros.7194:

DrArmature.4619:

The problem is this parasitic contagion doesn’t scale with healing power, it scales with condition damage. I want a parasitic contagion build to work so bad, but since it doesn’t and as Tulzscha said the scaling of siphons isn’t that great I don’t know if it will work.

Actually that does not matter at all.

The real secret to builds like this is to realize that healing power is terrible for any type of build that focuses on healing yourself.

The true stat to buff your personal sustain is toughness. Healing power is incredibly weak. The ratios on things are too low.

Sort of true. Although group heals are designed to benefit most from Healing Power scaling, self healing over time skills/traits do become quite effective with more Healing Power as well. This creates potent sustain in combination with lots of toughness and siphons.

So Regeneration, Unholy Sanctuary, Edit: Signet of Locust /Edit, Blood Bond/SoV’s Active and SoV’s passive, pretty much in combination, are the real reasons to go Healing Power for self sustain. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for Parasitic Contagion/Curses, but the healing is less “conditional” (hehe).

Basically you’re right though. It’s terrible to build Healing Power for the sole purpose of buffing Siphons alone.

The Siphons are just complimentary in such builds and shouldn’t really be built around stat wise at all, unless other parts of your build demand it.

Durnik Dk.6301:

Life from Death scales nicely with healing power. It heals for ~2k with ~1k healing power. But healing power isn’t really the most wanted stat on necro :p (at the moment)

I’m liking it. My PvE sustain set is pulling 2K heals on Signet of Locust per hit, 320ish regen from Unholy Sanctuary/Regeneration, 830 healing from Signet of Vampirism stacks (SoV/Blood Bond), 476-500 health from SoV passive, 1K swaps on renewal, 7.1K Transfusion heal on allies, 87 siphons, 71 siphon from pet. Life is good.

It’s even a condi build. When I’m going through my Staff + Scepter/Dagger skill chains w/ Geomancy + MoE, I actually notice my health go up a lot when hitting 5 players/mobs.

That said, I’m taking Vampiric Presence over the 2.7K heal of Life From Death. It just helps me and others more I think being passive in nature. Life from Death is quite situational and it’s hard to time shroud exit and ally healing. The same reasoning why I’m leaning towards taking Vampiric Rituals over Transfusion in pvp. Harder for enemies to mess up and I personally get more out of buffed wells.

Now if I was playing a full backline/support build in WvW, I would definitely take Life From Death if I wasn’t in the thick of things or dropping DPS wells on enemies. Allies down, pop Transfusion from backline, pull 5 toons to you, revive whom you can before the pressure, then exit death shroud for an extra 5% revive to help those still down and a 3Kish ally heal for those up.

ZeroStrifeX.2183:

Life from Death: Heal and partially revive allies when you exit shroud.
- revive percent = 5%

Question: does the “revive” here refer to reviving down state player? or is it defeated state player? :X

Thanks for the answer in advance!

5% of the downstate. Life from Death and Transfusion have no effect on full dead players. Would be nice if it did in PvE.

Although I have always used MoE with my other Marks as traps when OOC on PvP points etc., the best of all worlds would probably be to make it trigger in combat only. Even in PvP, there’s times when it triggers out of combat when you don’t want it too (dodge rolling to evade a ranged skill, fear or whatever before closing), thus you have to wait 8 seconds to trigger it again against your target.

The downsides in PvE I think outweigh the advantages. I have always hated agrroing mobs in PvE while traited with MoE. We used to be able to untrait it but now you have to switch the entire line.

Well, I guess we could just do that in PvE since switching out lines is as easy as switching out traits now…

Serious answer?

In my opinion, the baselining/merging of our traits combined with new goodies has condensed our builds a lot. So much so we’re performing pretty well beyond my personal expectations.

I was testing my condi sustain build I am so in love with and its night and day from 24 hours ago. In a good way. I thought I was going to get pummeled and I was right, but its not me dying. :p

Not to mention, all the different proccing stuff like blood Bond, Transfusion etc etc. is really fun in of itself.

Edit: We will have to see if it holds up as people get used to new builds across all classes.

MM w/ Death Magic: Death Nova or Corruptor’s Fervor. You have minion siphons working through shroud to replace Unholy functionality in DS. I guess if you had Healing Power in your build you may want to take Unholy on top of Minion siphons. I will try it tomorrow. :p

Non-MM Necro with Healing Power + Death Magic: Unholy Sanctuary or Corruptor’s Fervor. It’s hard to figure out without playing, but I think perma 250-300ish+ regen while in DS and the special would help more in most situations. Corruptor’s Fervor would seriously reduce condi damage though, which is the a weakness of toughness+ healing power builds compared to vitality ones.

Every other Necro using Death Magic: Corruptor’s Fervor. Just do it.

ronpierce.2760:

Bhawb.7408:

I can’t give it up and move on, my minions are keeping me in combat

Sacrifice some and then jump in a lake. That’ll fix it.

But he’s got minions specced for underwater too… and they’re aggroing a giant fish (somehow).

Bhawb.7408:

nekretaal.6485:

Look forward to testing blood bond, but it looks awful.

The trigger condition asks you to be running staff or scepter, which means that you will at best get 600 point of healing when it triggers (or even nothing if the target dodges). 600 healing every 20 seconds of “in combat” with a ramp up time is awful.

Quite easy to proc them, it is literally impossible for any base Necro to not be able to proc it, since Mark of Evasion + Dark Path. If you want to increase chances Staff (which is getting enough of a buff that even I might use it, as much as it physically pains me to do so) or OH Dagger both allow extra sources of bleeds.

Also, assuming it is simply 5 strikes of the SoV, it is literally just a 1v1 version of SoV without the heal on activation. It is at least 1k damage and 2k healing, with the ability to scale up significantly, and that doesn’t include if they applied Bloodthirst’s base when removing it, and any extra scaling from Healing Power/Power you have. That is a completely reasonable amount of damage/healing, and if they blow CDs to avoid it then you used an adept trait to force them to use dodges or defensive abilities. The trait is fine.

Just to add to your first point. For even better odds, we can use Dark Path first and if it’s successful, we can then dodge roll on top of the toon we teleported to and trigger MoE. Viola 5 stacks of Bleeds.

Not to mention there’s no news on the bad AI of Minions.

MMs can get all the buffs they want, but if they don’t attack…

Especially for an elite skill.

Roe.3679:

The plague change is definitely the one that I’m most unhappy with. Everything else I like or can see the point, but the plague change makes me shake my head,

I’m still wondering how it got through myself.

Rym.1469:

Balekai.6083:

I have the solution.

Plague Skill 4: Sending Plague
Cooldown: 5 seconds
Cast time: 0

Add a condition transfer to your Plague. (1 condition transferred per enemy hit),

It fixes nothing. Plague pulses short duration bleeds every second. You’d transfer 2 stacks of 3s bleeding and that would be it.

If bleeding was applies every 3 or 5 seconds, but in couple stacks and with longer durations, Then we could indeed think about transfers.

I have a solution.

Up the self bleeding stacks to 10 seconds.

Rym.1469:

Balekai.6083:

Cecilia.5179:

Balekai.6083:

Secondary trait lines in combination with curses relieves the need to take Consume Conditions as a healing skill.

Yep. Time to run Prayer to Dwayna/Antitoxin Spray. In sPvP, I guess we’ll just turn off our heal skill somehow.

I think you will get more healing out of SoV using it as a might stacker, boon corruptor and potent siphon in DS skill when activating the active.

Combine with Parasitic Contagion and barring really good condi removal by enemy or enemies, you should start seeing 300-350ish regen per second or so from SoV when hit, and anywhere from 300-1000+ healing per second from conditions depending on the amount of enemies ticking with your stacks. 600-1300 healing per second just from SoV and Parasitic Contagion (not counting any regeneration, siphons or other skills/traits) should make up for the lost healing from CC if you choose not to use it.

Edit: Or you can use CC and use Parasitic Contagion as cover regen.

Just saying that if you somehow manage to get 10’000 dps just from conditions in PvP, you’ve already won the fight and you don’t need that healing.

Realistic scenario is about 200-300 hps max. Which wouldn’t be bad, but doesn’t heal in Shroud.

Depends, in pvp with a condi sustain build I usually work up to 10-15 stacks of AoE bleeds with no investment in curses. That alone is 80-100 tick healing with the new Parasitic Contagion against 1 toon. Now take a full condi DPS Necro, with the new scaling and conditions condi stacking. You should be able to easily reach 2K-3K condi damage per target. Hit 2-3 targets with your stacks and you’re golden… until the condi removal starts. Even terror fears will heal 100 health alone per tick. The healing will fluctuate for sure.

Still the pressure will be high and the added sustain from the trait allows condi necros some breathing room, so they don’t have to use heals like CC as emergency heals after exiting death shroud. We also gain breathing room to pick something like SoV for added utility by combining it with Signets of Suffering and the active to heal in shroud.

If we think sustain as condi necros is getting hit by the CC nerf, why not take a buffed Parasitic Contagion which adds another level of sustain? Especially with Lingering Curses duration buff only affecting Scepter conditions.

I have the solution.

Plague Skill 4: Sending Plague
Cooldown: 5 seconds
Cast time: 0

Add a condition transfer to your Plague. (1 condition transferred per enemy hit),

Cecilia.5179:

Balekai.6083:

Secondary trait lines in combination with curses relieves the need to take Consume Conditions as a healing skill.

Yep. Time to run Prayer to Dwayna/Antitoxin Spray. In sPvP, I guess we’ll just turn off our heal skill somehow.

I think you will get more healing out of SoV using it as a might stacker, boon corruptor and potent siphon in DS skill when activating the active.

Combine with Parasitic Contagion and barring really good condi removal by enemy or enemies, you should start seeing 300-350ish regen per second or so from SoV when hit, and anywhere from 300-1000+ healing per second from conditions depending on the amount of enemies ticking with your stacks. 600-1300 healing per second just from SoV and Parasitic Contagion (not counting any regeneration, siphons or other skills/traits) should make up for the lost healing from CC if you choose not to use it.

Edit: Or you can use CC and use Parasitic Contagion as cover regen.

Vizardlorde.8243:

siphon cant crit cant be boosted by vulnerability and it’s not affected by damage multipliers, unless the numbers are HUGE dagger/warhorn are the only way to make it not garbage.

It will have its moments elsewhere. Working through shroud siphons will gain the benefit of Life Transfer channels. Which can end up healing 3-4K in siphons while in shroud, making the healing 100% effective. Also Marks hitting 5 targets and other AoEs (condi Staff+Scpeter/Dagger rotation), also do very well against enemy numbers procing siphons. Pretty much 300-500 healing potentially per AoE.

Of course Warhorn+Wells then entering DS (with a Life Transfer on top) will proc the most siphoning for your buck.

I haven’t heard anything about changing the way other stats work, but If you took Death Magic at any time and don’t have primary toughness gear, those builds are going to lose some toughness damage reduction. This goes for other stats you traited for but didn’t invest in of course.

Toughness is ignored because the viability of sustain builds currently is questionable. So vitality is favoured because hardly any necros built healing power and power necros benefit more from vitality so condis don’t eat them up.

However, with more damage reduction becoming available, sustain becoming more viable and siphons working through shroud, the toughness + healing power combo may become a lot more popular due to it increasing effective healing/health.

Remember toughness also affects shroud. The logic being the more damage reduction you have the less damage you take from foes. Less damage from foes means less damage for heals and regens to restore over time. Which means more effective health and healing. The drawback? Poison kills healing and DPS condis ignore armor/damage reduction.

Regardless, the closer you get to canceling out incomming damage with incoming healing, the better this combo becomes compared to vitality. If you get close to net 0 damage you will never die, while a vitality and even a vitality+toughness toon would.

The added benefit of healing through shroud is that your effective net healing within it is 100%. So as longer you stay in shroud the better. Toughness will go a long way in reducing damage from power builds and in some cases will allow you to stay in DS longer than more vitality. Once condis get into the mix that fails though and vitality wins out.

Edit: Another thing to consider is that currently its hard to build for sustain and have DPS as Necro. Changes to condis, the addition of Reaper, the extra trait points and the baselining/merging of traits will help with this. It will be much easier to pick up traits to counter balance taking toughness and possibly healing power as stats.

flow.6043:

I’m not sure what you did, but your testing method must have been flawed in some way.
Transfers are your own conditions, they always have been, even 9 months ago when you made those screenshots.

I tested this myself in PvE a couple months ago. It may be a PvE problem.

I went to the Silverwastes and did a similar test on Devourers (although I was too dumb to switch out krait runed armor at first) trying to see if the damage from Deathly Swarm transfers got modified by my condition damage. I think it was for a forum post as I was under the assumption duration+ condi damage modified the remaining duration and the damage.

Not only did the bleeds not get modified by condition damage, the transferred bleeds appeared to do 0 damage to the devourers. In the linked post/screen the 1 second passing seems to show damage, but I don’t know what happened in that second. Maybe mob health bars being larger and their condition damage being low makes it look as if they’re not being DPSed, but I could have sworn I transferred like 7 bleeds a couple times and their hp bars didn’t budge. That would explain why Parasitic Contagion isn’t healing at all in screen, because the transferred bleed is doing 0 damage or is too low of healing to show up.

I couldn’t figure out condi duration though. Let those dust devil things stack like a minute of blind on me then tried to control deathly swarm and kite dust to see if the duration went up. It appeared go up by like 20-40 seconds but I can’t remember if I decided they just hit with another blind AoE.

Again, this may be an unnoticed bug in PvE.

Edit: Oops I meant Drytop