Guild Wars 2

Zin.6170:

Dictan.4186:

I have been using this:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-34-43;0kHFH0C4cJVJ0;9;489A;0158157037;45FX0Z;1rRnCrRnCb0f

death + blood + soul has a lot of nice synergies. I believe a lot of fun tanky builds will come out of it. It generates so much life force it’s hard to get rid of it sometimes. I am trying to remember to burn my life force to 50% and then refill it over and over again. I also was surprised how fat the shroud 1 shots are they help give me some much needed AOE.

I really like this build.

It seems to have a great balance of survival and damage. I’ve only played a handful of games so far with it, but I’ve had some epic fights using it.

If you come up with any improvements, please post them up bro.

I did switch to barbarian amulet and earth runes though. I may switch one dagger mainhand to axe as well.

I’m glad your enjoying it as much as I am. How did you feel about losing the healing power, bonus heal, and condition removal from water? Earth seems like a good choice since the builds main boon is protection. It could let you stack almost 30+ seconds of protection and then wait the downtime out in shroud.

Have you found weapon swapping useful? I was a big proponent of using axe/focus for a quick 20-25 vuln stack then going in with dagger but the cds are so low now I found myself sitting on one weapon more and more.

I have been using this:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-34-43;0kHFH0C4cJVJ0;9;489A;0158157037;45FX0Z;1rRnCrRnCb0f

death + blood + soul has a lot of nice synergies. I believe a lot of fun tanky builds will come out of it. It generates so much life force it’s hard to get rid of it sometimes. I am trying to remember to burn my life force to 50% and then refill it over and over again. I also was surprised how fat the shroud 1 shots are they help give me some much needed AOE.

I used to feel a need to diversify my weapon choice, but after the cooldown changes for weapons it feels like I sit on one weapon more often now. I am a big time fan of Dagger/dagger and axe/wahorn but after using dagger with the 33% cooldown it kind of felt like why bother. Axe is also very fast to recharge. Having either of these weapon out makes it feel like there’s to little time to use everything now. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing I just think it feels weird that I don’t feel obligated to swap weapons right now because cooldowns are so short.

Specific questions:

Blood line is clearly awesome. How’s the death line? Are you using it at all in non-minion master builds?

Blood is amazing now. The life siphons feel like they are tuned just right now. I wish siphons would synergize a bit better with runes and sigils though. Unholy martyr + shrouded removal is much better than I thought it would be. I am like a condition vacuum with so much extra life force in my specter build. Banshee wail feels like it’s in an odd location. Vampric presence is very very tough competition. It feels so mandatory it might as well be baseline for picking blood.

Condi was thought to be really bad before everything came out. Have you tried out This build by Zombify? How did you like it?

I tried some condition hybrid builds. I was trying to work an angle with dagger/dagger and axe/focus. Axe is so good at stacking vuln but it feels like it is still only useful for power builds. Now that conditions can use vuln too it would be nice if axe could mesh with condition builds a bit more. Also axe 3’s corruption feels outclasses by the other boon conversions/rips we have now. Very low impact even when chaining it together with the Grandmaster spite trait.

I had high hopes for plague form but it is terrible. I thought the killing yourself thing was over dramatic but the elite is a death sentence. Trying to tank with corruptor’s fervor, putrid defense, and putrid contagion was all in vain. You the enhanced corruption trait poisons you making the healing useless, you can access all your transfers so you are beat down way before you can really use plague, and it feels overall underwhelming. I didn’t feel a decent trade off at all.

Lastly condition builds still seem to have a terrible time getting life force. It feels like an obligation to pair them with soul reaping so they can use their class mechanic. Maybe corruptions should net life force?

Have you been successfully running any odd builds such as minion master or bunker?
Well my spectre build uses three defensive lines so I guess it’s bunker. I am actually having a lot of fun with it. I have never gained life force so fast.It feels like I have 3 lives sometimes especially in even group fights with all the life force and shroud healing that occurs. Healing on unholy sanctuary may need to be buffed but I am unsure. I can easily go from 1k health to 8-10k in shroud just from the heal ticks and siphons. All in all being able to build for defense has been great and their is definite synergy there.

I went with this when i saw it:

http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQFlAS4A7w~

and these utils etc:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNAodWn0IStN2aD+2AHOAA-TJxGwAAeCAGOFAMLDIc/BA

I like a lot of the options added with the changes. I think I will finally get the vampiric wraith build I want. Unholy martyr + shrouded removal becoming infinite condition removal + life force and a few more synergies is pretty nice as well.

If the Devs are still taking feedback on Blood Magic I would just like to add these suggestions.

Minors
Full of Life – Same
Vampiric – Same
Blood to Power – 300 healing power when under 75% health and 150 power when above 75% health.

Adept
Master of Ceremonies – 20% well reduction and 4 seconds of protection after well activation to the necromancer and their allies.

Acolyte of Blood – Mark of Blood + Ritual of life

Vampiric Training – 20% dagger cooldown reduction and 20% increased siphoning.

Master

Vampiric symbols – Activating signets gives vampiric aura. Vampiric aura stacks in duration.

Vampiric Rituals – Wells siphon life. Wells can now be ground targeted.

Unholy Martyr – Combined unholy martyr effects with transfusion healing.

Grand Master

Blood from the stone – Gain a 25% chance to proc your life siphon again for every signet on cooldown. ( Up to a maximum of 100% for all 4)

Forbidden rituals – Wells now execute a whirl finisher every 2 seconds

Cheat death – Produce an aoe heal when exiting death shroud. For every condition or boon applied to the necromancer while in Death Shroud reduce the cooldown of your heal skill by 3 seconds ( 5 second ICD).

There are some things left the same in each tier, but also some new things I added. I like the minors overall. Minion synergy isn’t left out but it doesn’t bloat blood magic like it has the tendency to do in other trait lines. I wanted the necromancer to be rewarded for staying topped off and using the extra healing power to do so. That why I modified Blood to Power a tiny bit.

The adepts are mainly just consolidation of traits that makes more sense to me. The blood line weapon is dagger. Theme utilities are wells, signets, an minions to an extent. Adepts get the important starter functionality out of the way by giving a blood necro something useful early ( aoe protection, cooldown reduction) without overly specializing you. The mark of blood is a genric for those who don’t use wells or daggers. It can also be helpful for minions to a lesser extent.

The Masters are where the build defining goodies should be. You are way better at your utility now. You deserve to not only use a utility well but to set yourself apart from another necromancer. Vampiric aura was a great idea on the twitch stream and I believe signets are the best way to apply that easily. Necromancers need more ways to use their signets and vampric aura makes it useful while also being less selfish. Vampiric rituals was already good where it was so I just left it. It has the pieces master of ceremonies didn’t take out. This way you progress your utilities without having a really overloaded trait. Last is just unholy martyr and transfusion together. Again this is a solid generic utility for those not into daggers, signets, or wells. It also has much better synergy with minions without leaving everyone else out.

Lastly the grandmaster should do something crazy. Beyond defining your core the grandmaster trait should add more gameplay. I am a fan of the GM Written in stone that lets elementalists retain their signet passives after they have been used. I thought a necro twist on this could be making life siphoning even stronger when you blow your signets. This way you aren’t punished for using signets that you specialized so heavily into. Forbidden rituals makes an aoe well and support spec even better by adding in even more aoe and proccing a bunch of whirl effects like leeching bolts. Cheat death is the final generic that synergies with minions but again doesn’t leave anyone out. Cheat death rewards you for stayng in shroud to potentially access a second heal sooner, it synergizes with traits like unholy martyr, and it gives you a last ditch effort heal when you leave. This is something that can be flashed or sat on in the hopes that you can pull off a double heal.

Skoigoth.9238:

Dictan.4186:

or staff’s mark to turn all the conditions I’ve put on myself into boons.

Eeehm, that´s not how Putrid Mark works, or am I crazy?

Yea actually that is wrong. I mixed up the effects of well of power and putrid mark since I usually play with dagger/ dagger, staff and well if I am using corruptions. The point is necromancers have a lot of different skills to tear off or turn conditions into a positive. It’s not as if corruptions actually leave us at a disadvantage. Utilizing corruptions with out using condition manipulation is just asking for trouble outside of a power build using blood is power.

I always looked at axe as a setup weapon rather than a a primary weapon. You can spike a high amount of vuln with axe/focus during the weapon swap down time, use the channel and then dagger is usually ready again. Just rinse and repeat since the cooldowns pretty much line up perfectly.

I really liked the article. I think it resonated with a lot of necromancer problems that have just stagnated over the years without really ever being solved.

Gryph.8237:

I never got the self poison/self bleeding crap we have to deal with. I mean, its not like we are outtputing huge amounts of damage that we too have to suffer. Hahaha they give us weak skills and then we take the same amount of damage in return. Design failure, and ill thought out

I actually like the interactions with corruptions as the necromancer synergizes with them very well. You aren’t actually hurting yourself be afflicting yourself with conditions. I always pop corruptions all at the same time then use off hand dagger to pass them off to add even more stacks of conditions or staff’s mark to turn all the conditions I’ve put on myself into boons. You could also use them to set up a bigger heal, pass them on using the signet, or again give yourself a bunch of boons using a well.

Necromancers have a lot of ways to make corruptions completely beneficial or more deadly.

What is going to happen to the necromancer’s access to retaliation now that it looks like it’s all being merged to unholy feast?

After coming back during every trait revamp to see what’s new I still can’t understand how reaper’s precision and vampiric precision have survived.

I’m going to assume reaper’s precision was always meant to be a way for condition builds to produce more life force. Power builds never had this problem because dagger and axe always provided good life force and super fast life force together. Spectral skills always seemed to be the better alternative for condition builds in need of life force. Reaper’s precision was always made to compete against more important traits while doing next to nothing. If anything it should be baseline for the class and occur every critical hit.

Vampiric precision is odd simply because of the stats it demands. Siphoning builds want healing power and toughness as their main stat. They also want a lot of multi hit skills so this means channeling weapons in the form of dagger and axe. Then depending on if you use wells or minions you want power for wells, power for minions, or condition damage for minions with the new proposed traits. There isn’t any room for precision or support for a critical vampire builds . Conditions don’t proc siphons so I’ll assume criticals from conditions don’t proc vampiric precision. If you want to heal from conditions you are more likely to get a bigger benefit focusing solely on the healing condition trait. Lastly vampiric competes against important traits just like reaper’s precision while being sub-par. Even base line or merged I doubt it will produce the desired effect.

Suggestions:

1. Reaper’s precision becomes baseline for the class and procs on every critical hit since having good life force gen is less of a problem now that shroud has an actual CD and many counters.

2. Delete vampiric precision. Rename trait vampiric symbol. It should be a trait that supports signet vampires since well and minion necros have great support for their siphon builds now. Signets are only half way done with vampire signet and locust. Signet vampires could use a way to make all signets useful and vampiric.

Vampiric Symbol:
Upon activating a signet gain mark of the vampire for x seconds. Mark of the vampire allows you to deal x damage and leech x health per attack. Mark of the vampire stacks in intensity but not duration. Siphons have a chance to proc twice per signet equipped.

I haven’t played in several months but the new specializations peaked my interest once again. I was surprised when one of my favorite traits was said to be going away. It may have not been as strong as other traits but the functionality was sound. Being mainly a dagger and axe user dark armor saw plenty use swapping channeling skills between dagger’s siphon and axe’s ghastly claws.

It filled a definite niche for builds that use a lot of channels and need defensive measures to keep themselves safe while they leave themselves open. It would be nice if it still had a chance to return in some other form.

After a few more days of tinkering I have settled on this build:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmYbvx2QlEABFGgw4BIiQiowDlCzA-ToAgyCuI2RBkDIzOSgsANCY6B

it is condition/power heavy that uses signets / dagger auras to maintain near infinite protection/fury/swiftness uptime with some added might due to constant fire shielding.

My attrition build has come down to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhEmYbxx3QlDAkHmcCLjHZIyIlCzA-ToAg2CrI2RBkDIzOSgsANCY6B

Really easy to tank damage, dot’s are still decent and water can full heal me every now and then. Also fairly easy to keep protection up for long periods of time.

I have been trying to get a lava axe build to work. lava axe has some interesting mechanics going for it when it is combined with glyph of elemental power that can let you spam chill,burn, weakness, cripple depending on what your attuned though even when doing fire damage. it also seems to get whatever attunement damage bonuses you have for whatever attunement your on. It has a pretty lengthy fire application and a pretty fast auto attack for the base damage it has.

I be messing around with lava axe and a air/war auto attack build for max % damage via traits and vulnerability stacking.

I have not played guild wars 2 for about 7 months but have decided to come back and try elementalists. I was always a necromancer but I have always been drawn to the melee caster hybrid ( I picked for the same reasons).

After playing around with the weapons and elements I have come to the con conclusion that I really like dagger/dagger and am interested in dagger/focus. My favorite element without a doubt in this game has to be earth. I very much like the bleeding slow heavy damage game play that it offers mixed with short burst of fire for added pressure and air/water for defense.

I will be mostly pvping so any help on what works mostly with earth focused builds, dagger/dagger and sigils etc would be appreciated. I am only aware of certain benchmarks and stat weights that works well with necros so i am at a bit of a loss when it comes to elementalists. Right now my build has come down to this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fEAQJAoYhImYbxx2QlDIkHvgJwCjHagI0hlCzAA-TgAg2CrIASBkDIDQyds7A

I can the build has offered various layers of protection up time, good healing between condition rotations especially mixed with using air for miss direction/shielding, and moderate condition damage.

Any other builds I tried to press fire and earth more for higher damage had me dying to fast to actually apply damage. What is the consensus on poison? elemntalist have no access of it outside of weapon swaps yet I think it may add more pressure to a fight then just stacking more bleeds through geomancy.

Are there any successful power builds utilizing earth/ fire. elementalist traits seem to have a crazy high amount of raw damage . Coupled with the fact that airs first trait can be a executioner trait (20 extra damage and low health) where most classes have to wait till their final trait to unlock it seems promising. Air/water may be better to pursue this because of the way air damage and easy water vuln stacking is however.

What are some useful utility skills I may not be reading into? I picked mostly signets because they looked like they would be affording me the most use all the time. The skills with 75sec and 90 sec timers didn’t seem like they were worth it in a fast paced pvp setting where you would only have them up for maybe 1 in 5 encounters.

What is the best healing skill in you opinion? The one that heals over time and clears conditions has been very useful to me combined with earth toughness channeling trait( along with waters channel and fire channel). The glyph has afforded me some awesome regen however and more protection uptime.

The signet that heals every cast seems a bit low to counter the burst being thrown out condition wise or direct.

How is flame axe? would it possibly be better to swap my signets for conjurs like flame axe to push damage and utility?

waiting on fixes I would give it atleast till the end of October maybe mid November if glaring issues like minion AI become to hard to solve. Then you have to wait for possible backlash if skills become broken after all the bugs are worked out. December will probably see this class being good on all front balance and bug wise if nothing major happens like minion AI tweaking suddenly allows necros to solo entire dungeon encounters or cheese entire battlegrounds (unlikely)

their are things that work though, just make sure you search the forms and find whats working atm so you don’t get your hopes up and find out something silly like your life leech heals 25 damage at 80….

hate is a very strong word.

why They kept the heal at 4300 i will never understand. even if you can trait the blood fiend down to 16 seconds it is the only heal that can be killed and needs to cast to use. the only other heal that comes close would be the mesmers mantra

while I don’t mind the reincarnation of the necromancer in the game developers eyes eyes, I do mind the lack of solid theme support for the builds they were trying to form.

Traits still do not feel completely synergistic or supportive of all builds hinted at or made available.

for instance deathshroud has pieces of skills smattered in every trait line. Vampire builds have no real theme defining utilties of their own. the closest thematically would be spectral skills which do nothing to enhancea full time life leecher. instead the vampire theme is made to enhance other skill such as minions or wells.
Death magic almost entirely minion dependent. i could go on but you get the picture.

we are currently at the bottom of the barrel healing wise compared to other classes. we rank some where with rangers and engineers.

even theives leech lif ebetter than us having a signet that make every attack leech 100 health and a trait that has poisons leech somewhere around 200. so basically 300 a hit. combined with the theives multi hit arsenal we are outleeched. aoe healing can be trumped by the guardian and it would seem elementalist. Given the amount of life leeches and the life force mechanic necromancers have been given it would seem that devs feared necro healing would become overpowered thus they gave us something like .00000000000000000000000000001 rations for heal power. After bug fixes let’s hope our healing is reevaluated.

I made a video showing the lockout I just made 5mins ago here:

as you can see every time I crit a chill sigil my hydromancy doesn’t work. I can’t make it more simple than that. After testing my spectral grasp depending on how fast you mouse over it comes to 22 second ( so almost 24). I didn’t think i would have to actually log on to prove these things spectral is easy enough to test without me having to put a video on it. I grow tired of trying to prove this so I’ll just leave with this I have been dabbling with chill, power, condition etc builds for quite sometime though. I thought to give advice and and show you what works for me because every build i do post has won atleast 1 tourney gold and has been able to get me to silver consistently (some build performing better than others) while being a tourney solo pug player. I wish you luck on forming your chill build

atrait spectral grasp and use it with spite and runes you will see it chills for almost 24 seconds. nothing in that post was theory crafted I assure you. you also avoid spectrals limitations by casting it close up either after an immobilize or a dark path. the bleeds are also very easy to reapply 10-15 at a time as long as you learn how to chain both weapon set together every 9 seconds. That 1k-1500 dps unmitgated dps a second

• if nothing else chill will greatly decrease a mesmer/thief’s ability to heal and use utilities to reset a fight

You left out the easiest and highest chill ability we have in spectral grasp. traited it chills for 12 second with runes and spite it chills for almost 24 seconds.

I have been using power / condition hybrid build as of late in tournament solo pvp. They have shorter damage ramp uptimes than power builds atm, although they are more combo intensive and require more chaining.

I use a poison/bleed build and a chill/bleed build.

my chill/bleed goes like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQIQRAoY7djMaV7pbyb87JAoH3mrzRPO2YlpKAPA;TwAgyCqogyImQMrQOokCtKYUw2jpHA

this build allows me to easily hover between 10-15 stacks of bleed in 9-12 second windows, and 30+ seconds of chill permanently. anymore leans on chills is excessive given the short cooldowns on our chill moves are.

I would also strongly suggest switching the rune of chill out for a 5% damage or 5% crit rune. on crit runes being mixed with on swap runes have always been a disaster due to the fact that they lock each other out. Hydromancy will always beat out rune of chill due to it’s consistency, duration, and lower cd (9 second per swap instead if 10 second per random crit). when the 10% frozen duration rune is fixed it may be beneficial to switch back as it may by 3-5 second of chill back in total after a full combo.

you will see most likely see more damage with juggling bleed/chill via dagger/dagger and specter/ focus than trying to juggle dagger/dagger and axe/focus with vulnerability/ chill because of the huge power investment you need to make the damage worthwhile and the longer damage amp.

ke what you will from the post.

I would like to say that power builds don’t suck, but they are behind. More on that later.

Might I suggest runes of the scholar 5 and a rune of air? you gain 100 more power with only a loss of 2% crit damage. I have found dps higher even if marginally with this rune setup for power.

Your sigils are off because of an important mechanic concerning sigil stacking. whenever an on hit sigil goes off all swap sigils or on hit sigils go on cooldown. Your sigil set up atm is putting 3 of your sigs on cd every time one is activated. The same rule applies to swap sigils putting on hit sigils on cooldown. For a dramatic example imagine proccing sigil of rage and not being able to use your sigils for 45 seconds. A better is to have 1 constant sigil 5% damage or 5% crit chance on your main hand and a swap or a on hit sigil on your off hand. Fire or lightning being the best choice for crit build(35%ish+) and might swap being the best choice for power damage. I see you want healing instead of higher dps so to each his own.

Now let’s get to the big number you put after your combo. I would assume the combo is referring too the Vs combo. The time you take to do all of that alot of professions can do as much or more damage. I’m not saying it’s not alot of damage I just feel the big number makes it out to be more than it is.

Lastly as stated before power necro does not suck, but it is also not the shining paragon people make it out to be. there is a power gap between builds mainly due to large base damage differences weapon wise, access to quickness, and power ratios. Thief and warrior namely are our biggest competitors power melee wise and they are having a much easier time of it with much higher damage. Also I don’t get the point of the posting those 3 screenshots. With the state of tourneys as it is anyone can do what’s shown on those shots. Especially since Anet allowed guild stacking vs pugs. Myself as a solo pvper I find it odd when people try to prove how good of a player they are through means such as this. As far as I’m concerned all the tourneys I que win or lose are nothing more than practice and make no real showing of a players worth. No real tournaments have even been started yet, the field is obviously not competitive seeing as guild stacking can occur vs randoms, and the game isn’t even a month old yet.

• don’t encourage people to exploit golem charge =\ that multi hit bug should be shelved soon as it’s supposedly effecting world pvp concerning buildings

I did some testing with a necro power build of mine, which maxmizes power while giving you the highest crit damage % possible. I compared Dagger/dagger Necro vs Dagger/Dagger theif in which the theif uses 2 power builds and comes out even or very far ahead damage wise. further explanation is in the video description. These are basically the highest raw numbers you’ll see bar any extreme boon/utility set up.

http://youtu.be/NegHYgW4BnId

ok so you try to defend you stability claim with a 6 piece rune set bonus that gives 5 seconds of stability every 90 seconds if and only if you are at 25% health or less meaning that 5 seconds will most likely be very short lives because you are about to die. I see alot of outright lies and misinformation when I browse these forums. Honestly it’s so much i can’t be bother to attend to it all so i just skip it all together, but this statement today just takes the cake. Your runes cover your stability woes you say? no….no they don’t

I updated the thread with some ideas that were thrown around. I tried to expand on the ideas given and throw out some possible numbers for the skills. if you want any change tell me why so we can have a discussion on what should do what etc.
I believe healing as damage and damage as healing has already been covered, I did name change to banshees wail because it is similar to the warhorn trait name.

I look forward to more ideas and discussion. Remember to expand on your ideas and keep them coming

no + damage works on conditions. close to death only increase damage by 10 not 20% atm. you should really look at the necro bug collection sticky if you don’t know about big bugs like this yet

the fury buff is a gimmick at most. if nothing else deters you from using the build becuase of how awkardly the 30/15 splits your points let me just say constant deathshroud swapping like that not only messes up deathshroud as a survial tool since you will be swapping it on and off for the short term buff instead of when you need it, but deathshroud also lags your skills causing a dps loss. It’s a nice gimmick for a power build necro who wants to go soldier but in the end the points don’t line up right and it will do more harm than good.

any mix of Engineer, Warrior, Guardian, elementelist, mesmer or ranger can provide almost if not full boon coverage to a party. the only sustainable boon necros can bring to a party is regeneration, which trumped by other professions to begin with. it’s not theorycraft it’s fact

I am looking to shape a suggestion with the help of the necromancer community to brain storm ideas on new utilities. Minions may or may not work out and let’s be honest most of our utilities are bland(spectral) or are lack luster(signets) compared to other professions. I made up utilities that I would like to see and I would like to see other people with ideas so i can make a concrete post before taking it to the suggestion part of the forum where it will have tons of competition for ideas not just necro based. Just list what you guys think, maybe a possible theme you see missing from necromancer and the cooldowns you want to see on your abilities. Don’t focus on possible traits or if it is a leap finisher etc right now. if all goes well we can complete a neat revised list with a lot of flavorful skills to make a concrete argument vs the utilities we have already.

Life and Death:
*Cheat Death: Double your toughness for 5 seconds 45 second cooldown
*Forbidden Curse: useable when victim is at 30% health or less. deal 100% of your condition damage per second for 5 seconds 10 second cooldown
*Extinguish Life force: useable when victim is at 30% health or lower. Consume your lifeforce bar to excute your victim dealing 100% life force consumed as damage. 10 second cooldown
*Beyond Judgement: If the necromancer recieves fatal damage within the next 5 second they will instead be healed for half their hp. 60 second cooldown
Brands:
*Brand of Defeat: All Healing recieved does damage to the victim for 5 seconds 30 second cooldown.
*Brand of Bloodletting: all Life leeches and siphons on the branded target are doubled for 10 seconds 20 second cooldown.
*Brand of Deception: All damage from the branded target is converted into healing for 5 seconds 45 second cooldown.
*Brand of Demonic summoning: If the branded victim dies within 20 seconds of being banded the necromancer summons a fleshweaver from their corpse for 30 seconds cool down 60 seconds
Vampire:
*Sanguine exchange: Bite your victim granting yourself 10% extra health and 10% extra damage for 10 seconds cooldown 10 seconds
*Blood feast: For the next 10 seconds all damage done is converted into healing 30 second cooldown.
*Unwilling transfusion: Bite your victim transfering all conditions from you and all boons from them cooldown 45 seconds
*Blood Work: All bleed stacks applied by the necromancer are doubled for 10 seconds 30 second cooldown.
*Ravenous Appetite: Bite the victim consuming all bleed stacks as healing and deal damage per stack consumed. 15 second cooldown.

Undead:

*Undying Army: Elite 30 second Mass Rezz ability Akin to warrior down skill vengeance. Due to power cooldown should range between 200-240 seconds depending on radius of revival and undead minion utility.

• credit Venom

Spectral(revised):

*Spectral Mirage: Cloak Necromancer and allies for 5 seconds within 600 radius. Upon breaking stealth necromancer emits a 300 aoe fear for 2 seconds and weakens emenys for 5 seconds. 60 second cooldown

*Spectral Wraith: Grant Stability for 8 Seconds along with a random boon (fury, swiftness, or regeneration) for 20 second. 90 second cooldown.

*Irrevocable Horror: Aoe fears all enemies in a 600 radius for .5 seconds per conditon they have on them. 60 second cooldown

Grim Reacher: Extend All weapon skills range by 300 for 10 seconds. 45 second cooldown.
*credit Karther

At the moment minions are only really important because it’s pretty much a staple necromancer theme. However if they can’t get minions right I wouldn’t mind them changing all the minions over and opening up options for a new theme. I also don’t understand who thought spectral was a good idea. Quite frankly all of the spectral abilities are bland and suck. We have no utilities that expand on the vampire theme only traits. I also don’t see any utilities that should be capitalizing on a necros ability to cheat death or control life and death in the form of hardcore executes or health swapping etc. Even the signets seem more lackluster than other professions.

I would like to shed some light on why Protection of the Horde is actually a bad trait and unfair to other necro builds.

First we have to remember that Stats and Utilities define the build(theme), while trait are there to enhance our build(theme). the 5, 15, and 25 traits we have no choice over therefore they should be interchangeable so that they can enhance any build that uses the trait line for a stat boost or slotted trait.

Now compare a well necromancer to a minion master. while a minion master benefits from all traits the well necromancer suffers from gaining 0 benefit from triat 5, 15, yet their support build needs key trait like wells grant protection and aoe vulnerablity in death shroud. No necro buildshould be punished for wanting to add toughness or slot death magic traits. No other trait line in the game punishes someone like this.

Even worse Protection of the horde only benefits 1 of 2 minion master builds. Minions masters who choose to use their minions as disposable meat shields to stack poison fields or as blast finishers will have protection of the horde fluctuate far to often to be of use. 3 out of the 6 minions we can obtain have suicide option. Blood fiend will always be getting sacrifced and bone minions make up almost the same dps being blown up every 20 seconds than if they were attacking for 20 second.

Lastly 120 toughness with all your minions out not only isn’t constant as minions are recycled all the time, but you are only getting around 3-4% extra damage reduction with all minions out. Simply put protection of the horde isn’t worth fighting for if all necros build will benefit from a revised trait that can help everyone.

blood fiend heals 2k less than the tool tip states and is the only heal in the entire game that can actually die. It’s not worth the risk well of blood and consume are both better choices for different circumstances.

with a 1k+ healing power investment your life leeches will benefits 1 or 0 points
your life siphon will heal an extra 40 hp a second or 360 health total. blood thirst is the only thing that makes these terrible heals even scale up.

so with a full blood line and blood thirst your getting a crappy 2.7k health after 3 seconds of channeling or 3kish with a 1k+ investment.

warriors heal 4-5k+ with no almost no investment using shouts and have almost 3k+ more healing on their highest heal utility

Guardians heal 6-8k+ with staff heals, utilties, and what I beleive is called meditation or shout healing. they also share the highest heal utility

thieves can leech something like 200 per hit off of any hit including conidition and multi hit attacks.

elementalist get 100s of healing per chain spam of their skills and can burst with water healing

I would argue we battle engies, rangers, and mesmers for the worst healing available. My bet would still be on the other classes because at least they aren’t channeling a sub par heal to stay in the same heal bracket.

not at all. with my power build and the 50% downed damage trait i usually hit people for 300-500 damage per tick. the ticks are also extremely fast they look like they are maybe 3 hits per second. combined with fiery blast procs you can do quite alot of damage while downed. death nova also hit for 1k+ and crits for 1.4-2k damage while leaving a poison debuff. I’ve downed plenty of people just from downed state this week alone. No one should beat you downed state vs downed unless it’s a warrior because of vengence. if it was buffed any more it could risk power crit builds like mine having better dps while downed then while standing which would be totally off.

you can blow up minions on spectral wall for a 2 second chaos armor buff per minion blast. close to death says 20% increased damage when in only increases damage by 10%d. Fetid consumption passes on condition to every minion but bone minions. most of these bugs have been listed and forwarded in the bug section of these forums to the devs, but it never hurts to have a well organized list just in case these bugs persist.

top ones Pve and bottom ones pvp for right now. m chars eyes are actually green and glowing but it hard to see in the pictures because i purposely made them really beady. I really like the hoods it makes me feel like I’m in assassins creed

So first you discount that the more vitality you have the more death shroud you have, which is does.

then you say the forum posters information is baseless yet you pull the exact numbers they use to try and prove toughness is flat out better than and that vitality has no place in survivability.

the only thing you are proving with the chunk you pulled out of the post if that going from 1800 armor to 2600 armor is a 42% increase. that’s doesn’t mean a 42% increase per point in effectieness

The formula isn’t just guess work it actually conveys how long you will survive vs damage with your stat weights. You are also grasping pretty hard if you think necros scale well at all with healing. Healing through siphon builds are pretty much a non factor when it comes to looking at a necros survivability. It’s actually the key factor separating us from being as tanky as guardians and warriors.Toughness only increases from healing if you have meaningful healing to begin with. If you say necro heals can compare you are flat out lying.

put simply an extra 26k health will be harder to chew through at 30% reduction than 20k hp at 40% reduction. especially when you have to contend with direct and condition damage.

honestly you seem set in your ways though so anyone reading can take what they will from this.

if you want to believe that necros have good enough healing to increase our toughness stat weight over vitality, that toughness is what makes death shroud more potent defensively than actually increasing it’s pool, and that necros make conditions completely irrelevant by all means just stack toughness.

It’s wrong but I’m tired of hitting my head on a wall.

it’s honestly just an aggro juggle. you will get a hang of what ticks certain mobs off. distance, damage dealt etc all play a role, but in most instances you can break their aggro and get back into the fight without being focused.

it’d not assumptions it’s flat out math

here since you can’t be bothered to find it

http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/60838-math-damage-reduction-toughness-and-vitality/page__hl__+toughness#entry1911847

here’s another thread going into EHP as well explaining how discounting vitality’s worth is completely false and becomes way better than toughness during certain stat weighting.

if cold hard numbers are to much of a bother you can simply test it on npcs in the heart of the mist and you’ll find what I’m saying to be true.

also because necros can manipulate conditions doesn’t mean they are up all the time or that every build can afford the weapon choice/ utility sacrifice. Full condition teams will burn through most of these counters relatively early and then you will be begging for vitality.

I have researched this class plenty and I know this for a fact necros scale best survivability wise 1:1.

aggro flops around all the time during dungeons. most times if your locked onto a mob for to long you have to flat out run away from them or LoS them until they switch target. my melee necro runs effebling shrouds in both offhand dagger and the crit line, while also stackign corrsive poisin. I find perma weakened mobs are easier to deal with

the minor trait actually adds 20 toughness per minion which is counter intuitive to the whole idea of minions seeing as half your minions and meant to be blown up, while the other half aren’t meant to stay much longer. meaning you have a constantly fluxing trait that doesn’t give you a substantial buff to begin with.

I would Like to see meaningful sustained healing for the necromancer. As it stands they gave guardians and warriors the highest healing skill and what looks like the best heal power ratios. Couple that with the fact that their shout / meditations builds respecitvely burst heals thousands of health( warriors seem to be around4-5k while guardians seems to be able to push 6k+). They can have the burst heals but let necros have proper sustain healing and actual heal power ratios we can invest in. right now the only thing that scales directly is our 6 slot heal skill. life siphon scales something like 1% of our total heal power you only see real returns by traiting bloodthrist. even after it’s traited the healing is to low. Life leeches don’t scale with heal power at all and come in the forms of 29, 51, 79, and 42 respecitvely. the highest sustain you can mana now is with all minions including heal minion for something like 600ish hp a second if every minions lands a hit a second. that’s ridiculously low health returned for the damage we are competing against. Give us real vampire builds and traits.Make minions viable. I bought the game thinking I could have access to good blood vampire builds and minion builds obviously I was wrong even after all the reading and stress testing I did.

I had my doubts about the regen trait but it does constistently provide the boon for 10 – 12 seconds before falling off every 30 seconds when your at 90% or more. thats around 1-2k healing depending on heal power. it isn’t the best but it is nowhere as useless as the jagged horror trait.

McWaffle.1927:

Toughness >>>>>> VIT

Mainly because of talents/runes/cosumables that synergize with Toughness

Runes : 5% Tough -> Cond Dmg
Tuning Crystal 6% Rough -> COnd dmg

But most importantly vitality is worthless when in deathshroud, while toughness still is calculated and prolongs time in deathshroud.

this is simply not true the condition damage you would get back from the 5% toughness rune set is around 100 condition damage if you stacked toughness. Even if you did stack toughness to condition damage buffs your getting what 200ish condition damage back? only 5% of that goes into the actual condition damage so that like 10 extra damage a second.

Put simply a necromancer with a shaman set with stack toughness will have 3200 ish armor, but they will have like 20k hp

The same stacking necro with a soldier necklace will have around 2900 armor but 26k+ hp

better yet a soldier necro that stack toughness vit evenly will be around 27k hp and 2800 armor.

now the extreme toughness stacked necro will be reducing maybe 8-10% more but will have a dramatically lower pool to defend themselves with, while the even stacked necro survives longer and at almost no extra damage taken.

also toughness is completely passed over by condition damage while vitality is condition damage’s main counter stat

condition damage , precision , vit would be Carrion
toughness version would be Rabid

you would most likely die in wvwvw if you jumped into a mass of people off a wall in bright green spectral mode. also walk and flesh wurm have a terrible time with the elevation meaning the teleport won’t work almost all of the time except maybe if you glitch it by accident. I’m pretty sure most of the class teleports have been limited like this to avoid jumping puzzle exploits.

the 50% life siphon trait does not boost life drains damage or traited life steal.

if you want to see high damage from it at all you would invest in power and crit and then maybe you could reach the 5-7k aoes it nets with alot of crit procs.

I don’t know how to feel about shroud it punishes you for using it to much becuase it lowers life blast by 50% damage when you get it under 50% and you lost power if you have the lifeforce to damage trait.

Bascially 2800-3k crit in my power build with life blast at full and then really crappy 1kish damage after 50%.

dark path makes chill builds very easy to stack and can set up bleeds with it’s 3 bleed stack but the projectile is very slow moing and easy to dodge. basically only viable in melee range to begin with.

the 1 second fear is ok.

fairly bland but saves me some uneeded damage taken. it could have cooler moves or adapt to your build/weapon selection but maybe that’s asking to much.

daggers immobilize is currently the only way to garuntee somewhat decent up time on well damage in Pvp. I can net 8-12k damage depending on armor values and crit frequency when both wells go off. Chill and cripple are in no way a guarantee in landing the same amount of damage because immobilize stops dodge rolling for 4 out of the 5 seconds wells need to pump out damage.

if anything I would appreciate life sihpon acting like a brand of sorts on opponents where it leeches and does it set amount of damage so that I am not stuck channeling. The channel cuts into the higher dps of the harder hitting auto attack chain and screams interrupt me. The heal is also to lack luster to warrant spending 3 seconds channeling while you could have sustained 3x the damage being dealt to you. Something more hands free that leeches and damages consistently could make the healing not so much of a drag and add more dps to daggers in general.

Axe is also in a fairly good place I believe it went from being the power go to weapon to a damage amp weapon. axe/focus can reliably net 20 stacks of vuln in a very short time frame. this setup allows dagger around a 9 second unload time of 20% increased damage if timed right . if anything the vuln stacks could last a tad longer so it’s possible to net a 25 vuln stack in between weapon switching but i don’t know if it’s needed.

jagged horror amounts to nothing more than a vanity pet. it hard enough to look at useless traits like 5% power becomes healing power, but to be the only profession that spawns a useless vanity pet as a trait is saddening.