Guild Wars 2

On core necro… impressive, though not unexpected ^^

It is impossible to face a full team of primates as a full soloQ group. Beyond that, I can’t guarantee you much.

The system is currently in disequilibrium, this will resolve itself over time. After X games, our final division placement should be an accurate reflection of our MMR. That is, most people will get lots of even matches eventually.

It’s more a matter of preference than balance. Don’t see any reason why people wouldn’t want to play revenant, scrapper or ele in this meta. Good thieves, mesmers and DH will still rock your game. Like Engel said, they don’t stack well, I usually mesmer when I’m the third necro. So yea, I prefer facing lots of necros.

What Is A Mesmer? Necro don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no more!

It’s still a good class to troll people in various ways. Moa still makes me smile every time. Mesmer is really hard to balance in pvp, because portal and moa can result in amazing play in a coordinated team. Balancing at the top level means taking these things into account, to avoid Helseth becoming OP.

Something that is also worth mentioning: the MM system sacrifices the perfect match for acceptable queue times, so weird things can happen with special snowflakes.

Agreed. I’m not so sure that the DH realized this though, it was just not an option for him at first. I may have given the impression that I would stomp with more hp, it’s not the case :p

Not only you Mystic In the fight with the DH, I would have let you bleed a bit over there too, as long as it was safe (not like that though :p). You could probably down him if he tried to stomp, depending on his cds, but I guess he’d win that downed state fight, not sure.

Very enjoyable vid btw

I don’t think he meant that literally.. All I know is to get out of thunderclap →rocket charge (also watch out for the shock aura here), to avoid slick shoes and to cleave that sneak gyro. It’s just a very well-rounded and versatile build.

I’m not sure which class you are playing (warrior?), but here are a few tips that will make your life easier should you chose to return.

1. Revenants: don’t attack revenants that are hibernating, it’s as simple as that. If there are good reapers on your team, they will fear them out if possible, so you can finish them. Otherwise just wait, heal up or prep something. I’m not familiar with other classes that have unblockable cc, but I’m sure there are others. Maybe someone else can fill me in here?

2. Condi reapers. I play this so here’s my go at them. Poke them from range to get rid of the fear from nightmare runes. Many reapers will lead with the chill or the fear mark, dodging this will significantly reduce their options if their life force is low. Avoid stab/resistance when their signets are up. Pop stab when they enter death shroud, they don’t have access to corrupts then. This is also a good time to pop invuln/ resistance when you decide that you want to facetank them. If not available, you’ll need to kite/teleport away and attack from range. Also, don’t attack when the spectral armor is up, unless you can lock them out of reaper shroud and finish them. And whatever you do, don’t facetank soul spiral in the poison field from chillblains. This will get you killed in 6 secs.

3. Thieves are vulnerable to chain cc (I know, that’s obvious). Nightmare runes or other cc-ing runes help a lot with the initial burst. If possible, heal when you’re above 50%, not later. A stealthed thief is most probably behind you/at your side to backstab, turn around to face them when you estimate that the time is right. Good thieves will reset the fight before losing, but you should be able to hold the point for some time. In my experience, thieves have a difficult time contesting, so survival rotations are strategically sound. Even if you’re bound to lose the duel, you’ll still contribute to your team.

Fay.2357:

Demandred.7930:

The biggest necro buff was the nerf to diamond skin. Necros are running basically the same build from last season with wanderer’s instead of carrion. Yes, it now has auto-attack boon corrupt on scepter, but that amounts to 3 boons converted during a match, and almost none when the necro’s are being pressured .

You…clearly missed like 3/4 of the necro patch notes.

I played around with the new corrupts in the other traitlines and also reverted back to normal necromancer, but I still prefer spite (corrupt on signets is still great), soul reaping (unblockable marks for hibernating rev’s, dh with aegis and slower life force drain), and I wouldn’t want to live without reaper’s shroud, too much cc flying around. There are competitive alternatives, but I suspect that this is gonna be the meta build.

Fay.2357:

Pretty much. Chronobunker got a lot of huge nerfs, and thieves/necros got a lot of huge buffs. Non-bunker builds got substantial nerfs as collateral damage to the bunker nerfs, and have ended up in a worse place than before.

The biggest necro buff was the nerf to diamond skin. Necros are running basically the same build from last season with wanderer’s(edit: mercenary’s) instead of carrion. Yes, it now has auto-attack boon corrupt on scepter, but that amounts to 3 boons converted during a match, and almost none when the necro’s are being pressured .

On a more mesmery note, I didn’t have too many problems with the new PU condi build I encountered as a condi reaper because of my two condi transfers, but I think it has potential in capable hands.

Supreme.3164:

fonvitale.9621:

ErazorZ.5209:

I like how people in the thread are now just accepting the fact the game is imbalanced and think that rerolling meta will ever fix anything.

Im sorry to burst your bubble but if they dont atleast attempt to fix the game now, they will never do it.

And with that in mind, if they trully want this game to die out, this is the way to do it.

I like to see how people that claims that this IS an ele’s problem, not a reaper’s problem are constatly ignored in the thread. I will be one more of them:

The current state of elementalits is a inherent issue of the class. Eles need better skill timing to deal with conditions.

This thread claims to be a balance discussion, but it is not. The only hope is to nerf reapers because of people, not the actual situation.

PS to fellow necros: Don’t be fooled! The nerf is comming because of toxic people that populate this forum.

Kk I want to say that ele can learn how to deal with current crap BUT…if you’re telling me that it takes any kind of skill to press one button every 5-6s and apply 5-6 condi on a target…I don’t know what to say, I must be having a nightmare

We want talk about diamond skin, condi clear, ele, engi, warrior, svanir, Disneyland…whatever! But pls have some self-respect and stop saying that playing a condi build in GW2 requires any resemblance of brain activity

If your argument had any value, all condi reapers you play with/against would perform equally well. A somewhat observant person might see that this is not the case. Do everyone a favor and spare us the elitist crap.

ErazorZ.5209:

Chicho Gosho.6507:

Sorry, but i’ve red a couple of posts about necro having high mobility. Is that a joke? Necro might have a lot of things but mobility is not one of them.

Well mobility means map traverse but also gap closers. and reapers definatly have a low cooldown gap closer to there disposal in shroud.

I’m with Gosco here. You’re making it seem like reaper can keep up with an ele. In my experience, this is rarely the case, unless we waste our shroud, and even then. As mentioned above, we don’t want to stay in RS, because it decays, and because shroud contains our most damaging, melee skills (170 range). Putting it on cool-down is also a safety issue for us, especially when other people are around.

I think Sepiroth’s posts about using your superior mobility grasp the essence of this duel. My guess would be that staff eles have the best chance against frostfire builds. Yes, you’re at a disadvantage up close and most likely you’ll have to give up the point, but the frostfire necro is attrition build, and therein lies their weakness.

Just blink/burning retreat away and start charging air overload while I mindlessly chase you to make up for the tears I shed in the DS era.

Ashkew.6584:

“Official evidence for nerfing rangers” title should be: “Claims about evidence for nerfing rangers”
But really this is just a propaganda type of attempt or troll

It is my pleasure to inform you that the truthfulness of your answer is somewhere between 50 and 100%.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Cynz.9437:

Can we see some of those research results and how you collected them?

One of my team is compiling the document. It should be available soon.

Careful Sir, this gal is a notorious thief. She might steal your data.

Lordrosicky.5813:

This was another sentiment i came across quite alot during my research. It doesnt seem like a healthy state of affairs. There is also an issue that the number of people who hate fighting rangers is now up to 42%. Only 2 months ago it was only 21%. This is a shocking rise in such a short period. I have my team keeping an eye on this stat to make sure it doesnt keep spiking up. Some are nervous, but i think the worst could be behind us.

That is horrendous indeed. I move that we replace those people by ranger pets immediately, lest this stat quadruples to 168% by the end of the next season.

Yes, sometimes it does seem like ranger pets are better at pvp than me.

Aidenwolf.5964:

We were impervious to conditions while health was above X% was that too strong? Sure if you didn’t know how to hit an Ele before using your Condi bomb, it was very tough. But Diamond Skin will be worthless now.

You make it sound easy. It was too strong, and extremely frustrating to play against. Try playing against it with a frostfire carrion necro and judge for yourself.

I’m not so sure DS will be worthless, practical play will determine this.

What do you think the effect of the energy sigil nerf will be for necro? I’m worried about being focused after the patch, I really need that extra dodge. And 4 stat gear like Mercenary’s seems good, but results in a higher relative increase in effective hp for classes with low base hp.

The energy sigil nerf takes away 50% of the necro’s only team-wide damage immunity. Focusing the necro is still a thing due to the class’s lack of disengage. I think the buffs to the class are justified, if not warranted, in this case.

It’s not a good dodge roll unless I see 4 times ‘evaded’ popping up.

My 2 cents Gaile? I don’t see any use for a single item slot. I’d like to use it to switch ascended gear between characters. To get any comfort out of this, I would at least need 6 shared slots, and preferably a lot more so I can switch weapons too.

BurrTheKing.8571:

The worst thing about Chrono is the excessive visual spam. I thought base Mes could clutter the screen (I could still easily spot the real one,), but Chrono takes it to another level.

Fully agree with the excessive visual noise. I tend to get startled and dodge out of my teammates wells, esp. when there are 4 chrono’s in mid. >.>

Both your effective health and your condi damage should be higher with trailblazer’s compared to carrion, but carrion has higher effective power (around 1900 without might and fury compared to the base 1000 for trailblazer’s). Trailblazer has essentially the same condi damage as viper’s. The condi damage from trailblazer’s is about 12% higher than carrion, assuming you spec for 65% condi duration, with an effective health of about 2 times base. Carrion gives around 1.5 times base (quick estimate from my pvp health bar). I’m assuming you don’t mean raid tank since you don’t have toughness. I’d recommend trailblazer’s as a tanky condi spec. With carrion, it would be advantageous to make sure you have some power damage and crit from reaper traits. For more details I refer to the trailblazer’s vs viper’s thread.

Up you go

Josh XT.6053:

Are we playing the same game? This is definitely bunker. We have full healing rangers, most classes running durability runes, most classes don’t actually do much damage. The most damage is coming form condition revs right now, and even they are pretty tanky. Mesmers are running soldiers amulet and durability in a lot of cases to be able to soak up any extra damage they might take between evades and blocks..

We are the friendliest MMO community indeed. Killing people is not nice..

That’s mostly semantics, Timston :p

So true. Everything camp is fully upgraded on my bottom tier server. I spec to reaper just to faceroll the camps.

Fenris Amarok.4052:

In my mind, making sure I stay alive is more important than eking out every last little bit of damage.

Absolutely Fenris, I’m planning to craft both and switch out pieces/tweak my build to a point where I feel comfortable. The dps from Trailblazer’s alone will probably be quite satisfactory.

Trailblazer’s*, not Wanderer’s thanks, edited. :p

Sheobix.8796:

Why power is always good to run: traited shroud will always bump your crit chance and scale with power.

Viper>other condi sets

Not always, only for hybrid dps. If you’re looking for tank builds with great condi dps, Trailblazer’s comes to mind.

Death perception is part of the answer. For hybrid dps, the two main options are traited shroud for dhuumfire hybrids +well-bursting or decimate defenses for a non-shroud build (also up to 50% + around 33% from viper gear + 20% from fury).

Edit:
My answer is also a very rough indication, but since I am Captain Obvious-ing here: basically you’ll want to use the sparsity principle to select your traits and press hard-hitting power and condi skills (reaper shroud 4 comes to mind), while adjusting your build to take the mechanics of the fight and your team comp into account. Nemesis loves hybrid buids, and he’s publishing some new ones soon. Lengthy and more accurate explanations will accompany them.

Just throwing it out there since it seems to elude some people: Trailblazer’s could be pretty amazing for a tank with Viper-ish condi dps in raids, if aggro issues allow it.

We have a small charge on Reaper Shroud 2, nothing fancy. Not being able to disengage is a thing for necros. But we’re alright without it. Besides, we wouldn’t want to steal the spotlight from our Flesh Golem.

As necromancers, we of course prefer to see our party members dead so we can reanimate their corpses and use them as our minions. That said, we’ll happily provide protection and life steal through our wells, vampirism traits and we’re pretty good at boon stripping, boon conversion and cc-ing, including lots of blinds, and recently even some stability. Our breakbar-breaking is worse than slick shoes, but then again, everything is worse than slick shoes. But I get salty. Debuffing is a thing for necros, and this too is utility. And then of course there’s epidemic…

There’s more than one way to be useful, even for a selfish class. Try it, you’ll be amazed.

I’m not entirely sure about the exact stats, but this is what I used for trailblazer:

1087 toughness (= major stat precision from marauder, couldn’t find major stat toughness)
579 vit (= minor stat vit from marauder)
1096 condi damage (=exotic viper)
38,6% condi duration (= exotic viper)

Your hp will go from 19212 to 25002, while the increase in toughness brings your armor from 1967 to 3054 (ascended gear). The 55% toughness increase equates to a damage reduction of (1-(1/1.55)), or about 36%, which together with the hp increase doubles your effective hp as a necro. The relative increase is a lot higher for low hp classes such as ele.

Exotic viper will give you 2067 power and 32.5% crit chance, which brings your effective power to 2401 (power x (1-crit%)+ power x crit dmg x crit%), which with 25 might stacks goes up to 3273, and up to 3550 with might and fury.

Trailblazer will give you none of that, which results in an effective base power of 1000, 1750 with might stacks, which is about 50% of viper’s power damage, and 1925 with might and fury. A lot depends on your crit% from traits here!

And of course, condi damage is basically the same as viper’s. For full exotic viper this is about 12% higher then ascended sinister which has only 65% condi duration from runes, sigils and food.

In conclusion, this estimate puts us at half the power damage, double the effective hp, identical condi damage.

rogerwilko.6895:

Could someone explain or direct me to an in-depth explanation of why Condi Reaper is a good choice?
I fail to understand why the Chill is so good (is the DoT high or?).

Chill is “meh”, it will tick for 1k, but adds some cc.

(1). Epidemic uses your condi damage stat with the remaining duration and can be used to bounce the condi to Gorseval’s adds and the wall.

(2). Sinister and viper are hybrid stat sets and reaper has good synergies (i.e., decimate defenses) allowing great condi+power dps.

hotcarl.8621:

So while I agree that few of us are reaching our full DPS potential due to the high difficulty and steep learning curve, condi engi is second to none when it’s played well.

When it comes to condi damage, it seems like -in a practical scenario- berserker surpasses engi based on the footage I saw so far. That said, as long as you have slick shoes eating break bars the way it currently does…

Hah, no surprises here. :p

When I obtained 85% breakeven, I plugged in the 100% duration damage solution for viper and solved for the condi duration. I have since realized that it’s doesn’t have a practical relevance since it’s not possible to achieve this duration with sinister…

Based on the outcome, I also thought that it might catch up before condi duration is capped in a sinister-viper mix, maybe mid 90%. Turns out I was wrong, and you should indeed always go for 100% condi duration first to maximize the condi damage part. I’ll leave the proof here for illustration purposes, and for people like me who need to play around with the equations to have a feel for it.

I interpolated between the viper and sinister set, starting with 65% condi duration (trapper, undead, malice, veggi pizza and toxic sharpening stone). For the same bleed example with full might (133 viper dmg, 144 sinister dmg) , this gives:

(1) Condi dmg = (133 + 11 * Fsin)(1.65 + (0.386 * Fvip)) if Fvip is ? 0.9067 (condi cap)
Where the fraction of sinister (Fsin) and viper (Fvip) stats sum to one.

Equation (1) can be rewritten as -4.246 Fvip ²+ 37.434 Fvip +237.6. This damage parabola increases between 0 and 1 and continues to do so until Fvip equals 0.9067 because of the condi cap, with a maximum of 268 total damage.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The very next paragraph you omitted says the following

Normally I would just say “Run Viper you fool!” and be done with it. But, there is an asterisk here. Or there might be. I’m not sure. Anyway, the issue is that condition duration is capped at 100%. Or it might be. This means that, although Sinister can never truly match viper in condition damage, Viper becomes redundant after that 100% threshold is hit. This is… actually quite hard to do. For Viper’s to start becoming redundant, you need to have 61.4% condition duration from traits/runes/sigils. And specifically condition duration, not just stuff like Lingering Curses

So please, before you levy a criticism, make sure I have not already covered the topic…

Sorry, I missed that part, my apologies. The results of this first equation are – as you stated – misleading. My point is that if you take into account the condi duration cap, sinister will catch up before the 100% cap (only in terms of condi damage).

Edit: thanks for the marauder-zerker numbers. Concerning the dps vs enrage timer, I got the impression that people tend to be fairly optimistic about their dps uptime. Still, I completely agree that zerker is the way to go for skilled players.

Junkpile.7439:

You don’t need power in condi spec.

Builds with sinister and viper are basically hybrids, not pure condi. A large proportion of your damage will be power-type damage (see the sinister vs viper thread linked above).

Solomon Darkfury.3729:

Have you done calculations for Reaper Viper vs Reaper Sinister?

Looking purely at the condi damage aspect, I think it’s largely class -independent.The difference will still be 193 condi damage, which equates to about 11 extra damage for bleeds, 30 for burns and 12 for poison. In a scenario with sustained max. might, the breakeven points (condi damage only!) are around 85% for all conditions (using the equations from Blood Red Arachnid accounting for the condi duration cap), while they are closer to 75% for scenarios without might (larger relative difference).

As a first guess for Hybrid Reaper specs, I’m with Arachnid on the power choice, looking at the effective power comparisons which prefer Viper.

Edit2: Switching in a few sinister pieces will slightly increase your condi damage (as long as you are above 85% duration), but you’ll lose out on power while gaining crit chance, which might put the Hybrid Reaper above 100% if you take decimate defenses. In raid scenarios, you’ll be at 100% crit with decimate defenses and fury anyway. Not sure about the hybrid reaper trait choices, but it seems likely to me that this trait is essential to optimize hybrid dps for reaper.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I bet you thought this was a question thread, didn’t you? Hah! I bring answers!

I decided to make an equation to check how much condition duration would be needed for Sinister to surpass Viper. It works something like this:

Sinister Bleed Damage x (1 + Condition Duration) = Viper Bleed Damage x (1.39 + Condition Duration).

You can substitute in any condition you want. I’m going to put in bleed

99 x (1 + Dur) = 88 x (1.39 + Dur)
9/8 x (1 + Dur) = 1.39 + Dur
9/8 + 9/8 Dur = 1.39 + Dur
1/8 Dur = 0.265
Dur = 2.12

Yes, fear my mighty maffs! Tremble before Algebra! Anyway, what that 2.12 means is that your total additional condition duration must be 212% from traits/runes/sigils before Sinister does the same condition damage as Viper. The more might you add, the larger this percentage gets, because the difference in condition damage between the two sets is always a static number.

Tl:dr RUN VIPER YOU FOOL!

I’m going by the principle, if you get silly results, you probably made a mistake Unless viper duration ignores the 100 condi duration cap , this comparison is erratic. The break-even point is then somewhere past 61% mark for 39% viper condi duration, depending on the relative damage difference. For your bleeds example, this is around 78% for 88 vs 99 bleed damage, around 85% for 133 vs144 (full might).

Edit: Thank you for this great thread, I really appreciate the explanation and there is some great stuff here (like the marauder -berserker comparison)! Just pointing out a small error on an otherwise amazing job.

Btw, I heard a 5% difference between Marauder and Berserker for eles from dekeyz, I wonder why these numbers are different (maybe she adds in more power buffs in her dps calculations?) Anyway, the point remains the same: the dps difference is quite small and the increase in dps uptime likely compensates for this for average players.

Cheby Shev.4671:

“-More violets i say… less violence…” I think we need more youtube video showing how to play necromancer in specific encounters. For example, Brazil did a couple of these not too long ago. I’m always surprised how many PUG necros don’t know what their class is capable of. It’s really ironic when you think about it, but what I learned from playing Warrior was how to swap weapons and utilities for every encounter.

Brazil’s fractal vids for necro are pure gold indeed! OP, I defer to Nemesis’ explanations of balancing ranged and melee dps around the expected dps uptime, risk vs reward gameplay and practical versus theoretical expectations. This gets you to the root of this misconception.

In practical terms, the only reason to wait for another party member (and thus effectively finish slower) would be to when you’re attempting a – high risk – world record speedclearing run, because the dps that can theoretically be achieved by other classes appears to be slightly higher.
Edit: safe to say, no team played flawlessly ever (otherwise people should stop trying to improve on the speedclearing records), and there is some rng involved in these matters.

Khristophoros.7194:

Well what I meant is you didn’t show a large enough sample to be convincing.

A more convincing way would be to average out the real DPS of a character over many instances of the same encounter, then compare that to the theoretical DPS of the character. That gives you a ratio. Do this for other builds and compare those ratios.

If the ratios are all roughly the same for every build, then you were wrong and theoretical DPS is a good benchmark. If you find that the ratios vary drastically from one character to another, then you were right and theoretical DPS is a bad benchmark.

Scientifically sound, but impractical, too much work. Except for those people that use third party programs that access memory… Your point is obvious, and those people surely attempted this, but remained quiet about this. One might ask why? To publish the data is to relinquish that coveted position where people are dependent on you.

The extent of the error surprised me, until I learned about the 20k dps values. I can hardly imagine that they forgot to account for the animation times, so it must be the unknown heavy/mid/light armor reduction right? But that doesn’t influence the condi damage. Which leads me to speculate that some animation times were wrong or not accounted for (complex rotation), or there is another source of error besides dps uptime and errors in the rotation (very scary).

The sad reality is that Nemesis’s sample is the best one publicly (!) available right now. He showed both the bad dps and the good (check out the icebow vid for the bad ones). Some people argue about cherrypicking, but usually, their arguments come down to details like small mistakes in the rotation. Of course, some systematic error remains. It’s a pity that Nemesis is in this beef right now, so he can’t direct his talents in more interesting directions than proving stuff that has been obvious to him and many others with a brain, probably including those that he proved it too.

From a practical perspective, I can highly recommend Brazil’s advanced tactics for necromancers in fractals. All numbers aside, this shows that necro provides utility for parties. Now excuse me, for I’m going to casually perform a world record dungeon run.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Nemesis.8593:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

AngryBear.8741:

I respectfully disagree because if you kick Necro right after he joins a party or write in LFG tool “no necros” then you are not doing it because he doesn’t know how to play their class. You are doing it based on pure prejudice. Or maybe you want to tell me that number of necros that can’t play their class is somehow significantly larger than number of eles that can’t play their class, if taking a necro is a risk, but taking an ele isn’t? I have never heard of the case of ele being kicked from the party just because being an ele.

Please, read my posts again.
The important factor here is that Necros and Rangers barely bring things to their group when played badly/with the wrong setups. Thus many people don’t risk it and just kick on sight because there’s a high chance he’s kitten and not bringing anything to your party. A bad ele still often rolls staff so that you have decent dps + fire fields to utilize, there’s still a high chance they have ice bow and at least spawn an earth elemental now or then. So even though they’re kitten, they at least bring something you can properly utilize.

… see what i mean AngryBear ? Icebow did nothing to targets with a small hitbox without the linecasting exploit (which doesn’t work anymore btw) even before it was nerfed in half, and elementalist staff auto-attack DPS is laughable, yet people still cling to it.

See… what 2 years of misleading information has done to the community.

My friend… i can explain it to you, but i can’t understand it for you.

Take your favorite elementalist build, and test out your REAL DPS in a fight of your choosing, you don’t have to tell me what it is… because i already know it… i know all the values, all the real HP values and so on…

Do it… and after that if you still wish to argue with me, i will agree to everything you say.

Oh… oh wow. lol

Nice to blow things out of context. You should’ve been aware that I was talking about the past here, because back then ice bow was a major reason to take an ele, even before linecasting (which I wasn’t even around for and I think that’s silly anyway)
Yes, you hardly use ice bow now, especially not against small target because as you noticed, there’s barely a reason if you don’t need Deep Freeze.
Also, fire staff AA is laughable? Properly traited you also have a 100% uptime on lava font, which additionally increases your DPS + you have meteor shower, which, again does more DPS against large hitboxes and hordes of trash but is still good. On top of that, there’s all the utility staff offers (no, it isn’t all about dps, who would’ve thought) and for the times where staff really doesn’t cut it, there’s still setups like D/F.
I don’t even play Ele much because I can’t keep up with the proper rotations and I know that lol

Besides, information is there to be shared, yes. However, people should be wary of what information they consume and expand their knowledge based on said information, verifying it on their own and checking what it exactly says. If someone says “Necromancer has no place in an optimal group setup”, then that doesn’t mean Necromancer is bad, just that it doesn’t offer the best way to get something done. If people interpret it as “Necromancer is bad” then that’s the fault of the people and, quite frankly, the lack of their brain/their willingness to use it, not the fault of the person who gave out the information. That’s given the information is true, of course. This applies to virtually anything anyway.

Very sensible post, especially the last paragraph. If only more people would think for themselves…

To elaborate on your ele-necro comparison. Necro brings little buff/debuff to the party except vuln stacks which are thrown around like candy. However, I think it doesn’t matter, because many team compositions can easily achieve sustainable max buff and debuff caps, especially since HoT. In a practical scenario (now), necro will probably have higher dps uptime than ele, and I’m pretty sure we can assume that class dps is balanced around that.

For all practical purposes, there is no compelling reason to exclude classes, you just need to complement each others assets.

I agree with Gomes here. You can unlock the whole elite spec in about 8 hours if you have world completion. 16 hours without then I guess. I’ll probably be even faster once guides start to pop up.

Aye, I would reply more eloquently, but I have too much fun playing the expansion.

I think tempest support builds are quite alright for the raid, it’s just that druid outshines them due to the huge base heals. Apparently, the people who finish bring cleric druids, even with the bad scaling for healing power. One proposed fix which I support and which could be the saving grace for support ele: bring the scaling on healing power more in line with the other stats, so other classes can approach the druid’s huge base heals (and bring down druid’s base heals, but allow to scale them to the same values).

A quick question to OP, how’s the lag in WvW from Brazil?