Guild Wars 2

DeathenShada.6397:

I have crappy luck so I’ll try the food it’s only 3 silver lol

Magic Find doesn’t work on chests though, so no need to buy any food for that

GW2 Wiki

Magic find is an attribute that increases a player’s chance to receive uncommon loot from dead foes.

@Ursan
Actually I have no clue whether what I asked is true or not, it was a real question, not a statement, but for the sake of argument it was my place to pose the question like I did. It also explains my annoyance, for a lack of a better word, with Mr. Smith and Nike who decided just to shrug it off. After all, even if I’m totally wrong, it doesn’t render my question or concern any less relevant. Only stupid questions are those not asked.

After all, don’t we all agree that there is something wrong with the current precursor system? Anet’s decision to figure out alternative methods speaks volumes.

I think you are fearful that my concerns might be correct Why else take such a tone of voice about all this? Like I was personally attacking you, when I was actually quoting Mr. Smith and saying my opinion on the matter and his posts. Fear indeed is a powerful weapon, my son.

Funny that you do exactly the same what you accuse me of doing. After all, I never did mention anything about a sole controller. I just voiced my concern and used that gold seller mail as a starting point for what I hoped to be a proper dialogue, but I guess it was too much to ask without resorting to personal stabs such as “get over yourself.”

As for the magic button that Mr. Smith supposedly has. Isn’t it rather easy to him to come here and say “there’s no group controlling the prices of precursors, you can move along now?” That would do a lot of good to everyone concerned and make my topic completely pointless. After all, all I got is “evidence” found from numerous similar topics here plus a ton of gold seller sites listing those precursors for hard cash. I doubt that they’d do that if they didn’t have their hands on them.

John Smith.4610:

That comment wasn’t sarcastic. This thread is evidence of why they put precursors in their mail, because it makes you think about it. That’s how marketing works.

You seem to paint a picture that somehow all marketing is false or exaggerated. I’m pretty sure not all gold sellers are scammers. Otherwise they would’ve stay afloat for too long. Therefore I think my concern about them controlling atleast a part of the precursor market is legit.

Also, I doubt that this gold selling company’s idea was to highlight your (= Anet’s) shortcomings when it comes to economy and especially precursors, but that’s exactly what I thought when I saw the mail in my inbox.

Nike.2631:

The person who started this thread is advertising for the goldseller, inadvertently or not.

I knew exactly what I was getting into, when I started this topic. Don’t you worry

As for the psychology that you mentioned, I think your analogy is far off. Fear has very little to do with it. But I can only talk about my own and my guild’s situation. The whole precursor business and its problematic nature has more to do with having reachable goals in the game.

I just logged into the game and saw a mail from a grey market gold seller. This is nothing new. These mails are rare but sometimes they find their way to me. I reported the mail and was about to delete it until I took a look at its contents.

It was otherwise a normal gold seller mail, except for this part:

We are sole agent for the best equipment in the game

Then it goes on to list all the precursors.

While this certainly isn’t proof of anything, just alarming, it’s easy to ask some questions. It seems like a logical conclusion that they are atleast trying to control the market and drive up the prices to create more demand for their services (selling gold and possibly precursors). Isn’t this tactic of theirs something similar that drug pushers use? Is Anet really still denying that the precursor prices aren’t manipulated by a group of people like this? I’d add more questions, but I’m sure my fellow players will help me out.

(My backstory is that, while I’m not going for a legendary as I think they all look rather bad, I’m trying to help my guildmate to get his shortbow. We have a small group of players, who were gathering cash for him to buy the precursor from TP, but after the price steadily rising every month, we gave up on it and are now just hoping for a drop as it seems a bit pointless to throw away over 500 gold for it.)

I played around with axe or dagger in mainhand power/crit builds a long time after I got my necromancer to level 80 about four months ago. These experiments lead me to believe that any necromancer going for full burst spec for PvE is effectively shooting himself in the leg, just compared how much more we can bring to the table with condition damage and how much better other classes are delivering the burst damage. (In WvW and PvP things are a bit different.)

The encounters in PvE, that you actually need to spec for, are longer boss fights and this is where burst damage does not shine no matter how you spin it. Conditions are simply better (unless there are too many condition-based classes in your party).

However, for PvE a hybrid build of axe/focus and sceptre/dagger is a good option, but traiting and gearing up for it can be a pain. Berserker’s axe and focus with +5% crit chance sigil on one of them might be a good start. Perhaps you should go for a full rabid set (condition damage, precision, toughness) as you would in a condition damage build and then throw in some beryl/celestial jewellery for more power and critical damage. If I recall correctly, Nemesis had a pretty decent, albeit way way too long, tutorial for a decent hybrid build (and a burst one too).

Bailey.1724:

What crafting skills would you recommend for a new Conditionmancer to take?

Artificer is the obvious choice for sceptres, staves and tuning crystals. As for the secondary, it’s a bit harder to choose one, since most of the jewellery and armour you want cannot be crafted (cond/prec/tuff spread is from dungeons). I guess tailor and jeweller are equally good, perhaps even cook is viable choice for those pizzas and pumpkin cookies.

Lopez.7369:

I’m actually not sure if this is much of a concern in fractals. Mobs and bosses don’t really seem to stick to toughness-geared players like they do in other content.

It can definitely be a problem with dungeons, though. But it’s not like the bosses will absolutely always stay on the necromancer, and, honestly, it’s probably not a bad idea for a necromancer to have aggro in a group that’s so squishy.

I’ll add a mention of this to the guide just to keep players informed. I don’t think most people know mobs tend to focus whoever has the most toughness.

Perhaps “glaring problem” was a bit too strong wording. I must admit that I have gone back to full toughness build already. But sometimes it’s annoying to be the tank of the group even when you are running with guardians and warriors. Sometimes you just want to relax and damage stuff

Definitely this problem isn’t as bad in Fractals as it can be in other dungeons. I just wanted to give people a heads-up, because they might want to take different utility skills, if they need to tank the whole dungeon run. But as you said, necromancers are good for tanking too.

Firstly, this is a great build and a brilliant write-up. The best class build guide for GW2 I’ve seen. In my mind this is how necromancer should be played. My own build is very similar. I just switched some traits to fit my own playstyle.

There is one glaring problem, however, that comes with this build. I think it’s important to make a note of it, since it definitely affects the so-called average player. If you don’t play with a set group, but often find yourself playing in pick-up groups with random players, you will notice that with great toughness comes great responsibility. This stat-spread will turn you into a caster tank, because most players in this game are more concerned about their damage output than tanking ability. In other words, players tend to go with berserker’s gear (or hybrid builds) meaning that you will have the highest toughness in the group and more often than not end up having the hate of the mobs.

I understand the reasoning behind min-maxing and actually support it, but if you don’t have a tank in your group, you might want to lower your toughness a bit. It becomes rather tiresome to be the one who needs to kite the boss all the time, even if necromancers have a lot of survivability.

My solution was to drop 20 points from Death Magic and put them into Spite thus dropping 200 points of toughness. The minor traits that you lose are pretty much useless. Losing the major ones does hurt though in some cases. The other option is to slot exquisite chrysocola or coral jewels to your accessories instead of rabid crests. Or even drop those runes of the undead and go with krait and afflicted runes (Lopez even mentioned them in his guide).