Guild Wars 2

Naoko.7096:

The reason why rangers and necromancers are bad for dungeon is because of the dungeon’s structure. Every monster feels like a champion. From my experience in daily dungeons, we target one monster one by one. Players lure out one monster and separate it from the rest. All kills one. The tactic became “Lure & target one, kite the rest”.

Ranger and necromancer aggros group of monsters frequently which makes the whole party wiped out. Based on my experience, whenever we have a ranger or necromancer, we always ended up wipe out. It’s not the players classes fault but the designer made it such a way that every monster is “challenging”. So they made each monster like a champion. Imagine 5 champions sitting in a room. Rangers and necro will lure all 5 monsters to attack the party which causes a party wipe.

You need to play with better Rangers and Necromancers. Necros have Spectral Grasp (identical to Thief Scorpion Wire), which we use to single target pull mobs out of a pack ALL THE TIME. We actually prefer that our Necros pull because if they do eff it up, they can usually kite better than any other class with DS4 and ground targetted AEs (Placing marks in front of them as they run around in circles)

Ya.. if your necro is pulling with a staff equpped, chances are pretty good that you’re going to get every mob on that auto-attack path, but good necros swap to dagger, scepter, or axe when they pull to avoid any possible adds from auto-attack

Zoid.2568:

Necromancer is mostly Support/Tank. There’s no real damage builds.

Ranger has the weakest damage + no real support/tanking abillity.

I guess that’s why they won’t invite those classes. There’s no reason to have 2 Necromancers if both are doing the same thing. Rangers are just bad, low damage + weak support and tanking.

We’ll see when ArenaNet fix these issues.

haha.. this is funny. I’ve run multiple dungeons with 3 necros.. and having multiple necros (when working together) with wells provides a TON of group protection, healing, and AE damage. Ya, the damage may not be that of a glass cannon thief, or power spec’d warrior, but we have very few problems completing almost every dungeon in the game with any mix of classes. It’s usually the players that mess crap up, not the class they play.

haha.. this is funny. I’ve run multiple dungeons with 3 necros.. and having multiple necros (when working together) with wells provides a TON of group protection, healing, and AE damage. Ya, the damage may not be that of a glass cannon thief, or power spec’d warrior, but we have very few problems completing almost every dungeon in the game with any mix of classes. It’s usually the players that mess crap up, not the class they play.There are SOME dungeons (CoE, TA etc) where having condition builds on explorable is a hinderance because you need to break objects, but for AC Story mode, you can run that dungeon with anyone over level 30 as long as someone in the group knows the dungeon.

Mkalafut.1273:

Could be for any number of reasons, mind you, but the fact that when someone logs on to find NONE of their members representing is discouraging and disheartening to say the least.

If something like this happens I would say it comes down to the leadership and vetting process. People should play together because they WANT to play together. Every guild I’ve been in over my gaming history has had very different rules, and playstyles. I’ve been in the hardcore, phone-tree raiding guilds, and the complete laid-back casual guilds. The one thing that kept these guilds together more than anything else was that each member WANTED to play with the other members of the guild.

I’ve never logged in and seen more than 50% of my guild running with someone else. It just doesn’t happen. But every “real” member (See my previous post about a few we’ve added for PUG convenience) of the guild is vetted with the officers, and goes through a trial period to see if they jive with the group. I don’t understand these guilds of 100s-1000s of members. What’s the point. there’s no personality, and it’s just a massive chat room and way more drama than what needs to be in a video game. Hell, our EQ2 guild had 28 members, and raid size was 24. EVERY member attended every raid, and we rotated out the 4 that sat. But every single one of those guild members had a trial period, and testing period to make sure that they were good players as well as good people.

I consider almost all of the members of my current guild (we have some new recruits) to be personal friends, not just random people we’ve picked up for the sake of “filling the ranks”.

I co-lead a guild of players who have been playing together, in some cases, since EQ1. We’ve picked up and dropped a number of players over the course of years we’ve been playing together.

With regard to the multi-guild system. I think it’s great. As a fellow leader I can understand how frustrating it can be when someone is not representing and you’re trying to get something organized, but on the other hand if these players have other friends or groups of people they play with, I have no problem with them representing that guild if they are playing together.

We have a few people that we picked up in GW2 that are members of other guilds. We found them when doing PUGs for dungeons, and added them to the guild as an easy way to get a hold of them without flooding individual contact lists. Our members reach out to these people when they need to fill extra spots in whatever they’re doing. I think this is a huge benefit to all the members of the guild.

We also have a few long-standing members who have joined other guilds who focus more on WvW or S/TPVP as we’ve always been a PVE centric guild, with a number of members who don’t want anything to do with PVP. I think it’s great that these members are able to join a WvW guild and pop over to their guild chat to see what’s going on in an off night. If they’re doing WvW, I think the guild they’re doing it with should gain the influance from that. We don’t force people to represent our guild 100% of the time, just the time they’re playing with us.

Honestly, unless your guild is focusing on all aspects of the game (PVE, WvW, PVP)and running consistant events in all aspects of the game at all times, I don’t think it’s fair to demand that your members represent your guild 100% of the time. Now, if they’re running dungeons all day with your members, and not representing, then I think it’s something to bring up, but representing for the sake of representing and gaining influance for YOUR guild even if they’re not running with you is quite honestly selfish.

As to the OP talking about the member who told you to kitten off. I would have booted them in an instant. Guilds are about players helping eachother. I honestly don’t think you should be demanding that these people represent you unless they’re doing something with the rest of the guild. However, if I got a response like that from any of my roster they wouldn’t be in it very long, and I’d be better off without them.

We have about 30-40 active members and I’d say of the active accounts, they’re repping our guild 80+% of the time because they enjoy eachother’s company, not because we force them to.

warmonkey.8013:

You’ll want 10 in blood. Take the trait that drops a mark of blood when you dodge.

you now have a blast finisher on a 10sec CD.

it’s worth it

Since when was Mark of Blood a blast finisher? I get the bleed part for a condition spec, but I’m pretty sure our only blast finisher is Putrid Mark, unless this one behaves differently than the Staff 2 version?!?

Ya.. my point on the ground targetted wells is they can cause havoc, and not having to be “in the thick of it” to have it land on your targets is more beneficial for WvW than some of our other utilities.
Personally I find if you are going to go with a power build you end up having to sacrifice Toughness more than when you do a condition build. Toughness + Condition Damage gear seems to be more viable where as a true Power/Prec spec you’re going to want Critical Damage instead of Toughness for your 3rd stat to maximize DPS.
With all the back-stabbing thieves and craziness that can happen in WvW, Toughness is a huge asset. You sacrifice less total damage in a Condition spec with Toughness, than you do in a Power spec with Toughness.
As for Staff v Scepter+Offhand. Obviously in a condition build you’ll want to spend 90% of your time in Scepter, but staff switch gives you the much needed range when trying to take/defend a keep.

PVE I’m using Berserker’s Armor with Scholar runes, and Emerald (Knight’s) accessories. I have no problems in PVE with 5-6 mobs and have enough DPS to take them down pretty quickly. My build centers around DS with Dagger/Dagger – Staff or Axe/Focus – Dagger/Dagger (Depending on the fight).

Dungons I always have Well of suffering, Signet of Undeath, and flip the 3rd based on the fight.

Not really that effective in WvW. Condition build would be better there with Epidemic, ground targetted wells and Scepter/Dagger – Staff

Not 100% sure on this, but I believe the Stability buff remains even if you’re not in DS. You should be able to tap F1 twice quickly to get the stability buff then stomp. You lose some of the effectiveness, but I know for sure that the Retaliation on the “Gain Retailiation for 3 sec on DS” trait sticks around even if you don’t stay in DS.

From a purely tagging perspective this is the build I would use:

http://tinyurl.com/8cjo9x5

As much as people complain about axe damage, Axe 3 is usually enough AE damage to tag everything in an event and it’s quick to cast. Utilities are Epidemic (You spread all conditions, not just the ones you personally inflict) Corrosive poison cloud, again, a massive AE, and a combo field, and Well of suffering (The only well that does damage unless you trait for it)

This build also utilizes Death Shroud pretty extensively. DS4 is your best AE tagging ability hands down, and this will give you a faster recast for that.

Build your gear for Power > Precision > Crit Damage and you will have zero problem tagging everything in an event.

Use dagger 4 after using corrosive poison cloud and/or epidemic to transfer their latent conditions to the mobs. Use Consume conditions as the heal if Dagger 4 is down.

Marks will be huge, and recharge faster, and life blast pierces making DS1 an additional AE with the proper positioning (And it’s a beast for damage.)

I wouldn’t use this build in PVP or WvW, but for simply Karma/matt farming you’ll have no problem.

Swap out epidemic for Spectral walk for when you need to move around.

TL:DR – Leave the damage where it is, but for the love of god adjust the stealth mechanic so it’s not a free pass.

The main problem with Thief is the current stealth mechanics. The fact that Thieves can re-stealth every 3 seconds and trait stealth to almost invulnerable status is ridiculous. Revieled debuff should minimum be increased to 5-6 seconds.

I’m OK with a thief being able to unload on you for 8-10K as their class is designed around burst capability. But the fact that they can unload on you, then re-stealth and if traited, regen health, lose conditions, etc while stealthed, then come in and smack you again for 2-4K with zero warning or ability to realistically dodge/counter without getting lucky is absurd.

I also think Stealth should be treated as a boon, and abilities that strip boons should strip stealth allowing other classes the ability to “reveal” hidden thieves with well timed utilities. This would cause thieves to actually use some tactics when approaching a group instead of downing 2-3 players in 10-15 seconds with little to no risk.

I have a guildy who used the typical thief/stealth build, he spent 10 minutes practicing and could down any one of us in 1V1 without issue or in some cases even taking any damage. A well played thief with the right build and practice can take out a whole team without breaking a sweat.

@XXVI Red – If the bonfire is hitting you for a different amount depending on how much VIT you have, then the damage is percentage based, not flat. If the damage is % based regardless of how much LF you have you will be hit for the exact same percent each time. It’s the test that’s the problem not the result.

I think the only way to truely test it is to get someone who is naked with a steady weapon on to auto attack you with something that doesn’t have any conditions (Such as Necro Dagger 1).. The damage from that should be a fixed amount which will give you a realistc picture of whether or not the 30% gain is actually working.

Corrupt Boon: Strips all boons off enemy and converts them into conditions on the Necromancer.
- HOTFIX – Guardians complained about removal of boons so Corrupt boon now leaves boons in place while still converting them into conditions for the Necromancer.

Blood Curse: Now deals 1 damage and adds 25 stacks of unremoveable bleed to the Necromancer. Animation changed to convert Scepter into a feather which tickles the enemy. Enemy now laughs maniacally while watching the Necromancer die. There is a 0.001% chance the enemy will die from laughter
- HOTFIX – Removed 0.001% chance to die from laughter as it was OP. (Necro’s could actually kill something on a rare occasion)

This thread is only funny because it’s true

Another trick to path 3 is bring a couple ele’s with Frost Bow. Frost Bow #4 ability will down a burrow in one shot. With two ele’s you can summon 4 bows.

Leaving the north one up (the one at the door) as long as possible is the simplest way to finish that encounter. out of the two that spawn, one warrior/guardian can hold the door almost indefinately. Also of the two, the other spawns a breeder which is typically our target #1 on that fight to keep the gravelings to a minimum. Scavengers are #2 priority, and Howlers can almost be ignored.

@Bruno – Dodge and LOS are key, but I agree sometimes it can bug out. You need to dodge just before he throws. Too early he’ll get you, if you dodge after the projectile is in the air, he’ll usually get you as well. LOS has limited success as well as I’ve been pulled through walls on occasion, but I think it may be timing on that as well.

Only 100% surefire way to not get caught is stability. If you have a utility/trait with a fairly short cooldown that can give you stability, then it’s a joke.

I run a power / crit /crit damage build. Full berserker’s gear, with runes of the scholar. My power is 2200, my crit damage is 55. These would be higher if I ran with Ruby jewelery, but I’m using Emerald for the toughness in dungeons. I run a deathshroud build for the most part, and the Axe is one of the quicker ways to increase LF on a single target when I can’t melee with a dagger. I run either Axe Focus / Staff, or Axe Focus / Dagger Dagger if I can melee.

In PVE, Ghostly claws totals to 5K damage (depending on crits), Axe 1 is good for vuln stacking, and Axe 3 is a beast with retaliation stacks in mass AE groups. I use focus off-hand for the chill and bouncing damage/regen.

Build is 30/0/0/10/30. and all major traits focus on DS, with exception of increased axe damage in the power line. Utilities are Well of Suffering, Signet of Spite, Signet of Undeath (targetted rez is invaluable in dungeons), and Lich Form/Flesh Golem elite (Switch between the two). DS1 is hitting for 4-5K a shot, Life transfer ends up being a great support AE Heal from the blood line trait, and having a teleport with chill (DS2) is great for moving around when running daggers. I spend 50-60% of my time in DS and the damage is pretty insane. I hop into death shround when my life force is full and hop out when it reaches 50%. I’m working on building up an exotic ruby jewelry set to see if I can still survive without the added toughness.

I mainly run dungeons, and rangers can cap-out bleeds faster than we can. Having me in direct damage seems to make our core group kill faster, not to mention taking stuff like turrets / burrows etc out is 100x faster with the power build over the condition build.

PVP on the other hand.. Condition / well spec is king.

I will agree that high HP/Defence is not difficult, it’s just annoying. I understand they want you to invest some time clearing dungeons, but jacking the HP of mobs, bosses especially, isn’t the way to do it. Boss mobs should be able to be downed in 1-2 minutes. Some fights take 10+ minutes, not because they’re difficult, just because the HP pool is so large it takes that long to beat them down. That’s not challenging, especially when there are no mechanics that really threaten you.

I agree, the Kholer fight is an example of a good use of the game’s mechanics with a reasonable amount of health. Valena? (Mesmer boss in TA) is another good example of a good use of mechanics. You either need a lot of condition removal, or you need to know when to stop attacking so you don’t kill your self via confusion. Sounds simple, and it is once you get it down.

Example of bad mechanics are stuff like the mobs on I think path 2 in HoTW. 2 mobs with almost identical abilities that take forever to kill and aren’t that challenging. Or the nightmare trees in TA. If you do it “wrong” your dead, but I don’t think standing in/near the door auto attacking and fending off a couple spiders is a good mechanic either. I’d say make it so you can’t stand in the door (lock the room or something) and tone down the amount of spiders that spawn.. That way you HAVE to fight them, but you don’t get swarmed to the point of stupidity. The other mechanics I hate more than anything are ones like the Gravling Scavengers. If you get knocked down you’re dead, with little to no chance of recovering unless someone revives you. There should at least be a chance to get out without having to pop stability or have someone else remove conditions.

TL:DR version – Bosses that EFFECTIVELY make use of game mechanics are good. bosses that have HP for the sake of making the fight longer or kill you (not just down you) with no chance of escape from one mistake are bad.

I’ve run both a condition build and a power build and I would say the damage is similar, but playstyle is very different.

In my condition build I focus on stacking bleeds/poison for sustained damage, using wells for extra damage and support. Spec I use is 0/30/10/30/0. I use death shroud only for the #4 ability to provide some area damage and healing. My complaint with the condition build is the lack of damage to inanimate objects (Burrows / blossoms / walls etc) but again, I built it around support, not DPS. I run a full Rampager’s set of gear with 6 runes of the undead and I’m near impossible to kill. Weapons are Scepter/Dagger with Staff swap. I use consume conditions to heal, with Well of suffering, darkness, power as my utility skills and Flesh golem elite (mainly for the knockdown)

In my power build I went 30/0/0/10/30 and built it around using deathshroud as much as possible. I use Axe/Focus with Staff swap, but will flip Staff for dagger/dagger if I know I can live in melee range, or need to take out stuff like burrows. Full set of berserker’s gear with superior runes of the scholar. It’s probably not the most powerful power build out there, but it does really nice burst damage. DS1 is hitting for 5K a shot when over 50% lifeforce. Utilities flip about every fight depending on what we’re after. If there’s a boss that summons adds I have epidemic, well of suffering, and signet of undeath. I’ll frequently swap in signet of spite for the extra power when needed. If there’s a large pack of mobs I’ll use well of suffering / darkness / poison cloud for the AEs

The playstyle is very different My power build is not full glass cannon as I use exotic emerald jewelery for the added toughness. I might eventually change this out for coral and see what happens, but I like having a bit of meat on my bones for when they get chewed.

Kholer is a joke if you know how to dodge, or are able to pop stability. We typically will skip him if we’re doing path 2, but 1 and 3 it’s handy to have the waypoint to reduce some running (not from death, just running in general).

All they need to do to fix the mob skipping part (in all dungeons) is up the chance of receiving yellow loot from trash, and up the rewards in the chests. Chests should offer a higher chance for exotic sigils/runes, or rare crafting matts. I also think chests should have a 10-15% chance to drop dungeon specific armor (exotic). The current system is the running joke with my guild. Killing a boss mob for whites, blues, and greens is a waste of time, and the only reason why content gets skipped regularly.

I like the idea of the token counter someone mentioned above to keep people from farming the first boss.

My only real complaint about the dungeons is risk v reward. For the difficulty of some of the trash with a very rare chance of dropping anything worth using / selling / breaking down, if it can be skipped it gets skipped.

The loot tables seriously need to be addressed. Outside of tokens there is absolutely no reason to run them. Getting a white and 1 copper off the final boss in a dungeon should NEVER happen, however it happens all the time. I did all 3 paths of AC explorable last night and received 1 piece of level 80 loot and it was green.. 3 paths, 1 piece of GREEN gear. Yes, I got my 120 tokens and 20 silver and a mash-up of level 30-40 blues and whites. However, for the time spent, not needing any exotic gear I get a better return following the zerg in Orr and it’s not even remotely challenging.

The only reason I’m running dungeons at this point is because I like somewhat challenging content, playing with my friends, and I want a couple pieces for the look. If it weren’t for that I’d probably be watching TV instead.

Story modes are completely doable at the level they open up. We ran all story modes as we leveled with few issues. Our first few runs were painful, but as we got familiar with the mechanics, we were able to get through with little to no death our first attempt on later dungeons. They are a ton easier (too easy) at level 80, with fully spec’d traits, and rare/exotic gear.

Explorables on the other hand. While they can be done at the level intented with a group of competent players and level appropriate gear, they are obviously tuned to level 80 gear / traits. Some are much easier than others (CM vs AC for example). We ran AC Explorable at level 40 and it was painful. We cleared the first attempt (path 2) after numerous full wipes but decided it was a better use of our time getting levels and gearing up at the time. Going back at level 80, it’s still challenging, but can run pretty much anything with little to no death (except Arah).

I get that it may “break immersion” for some people because no, you can’t bleed or poison a log/door/rock whatever, but I think it may be an easier fix by saying X/Y/Z conditions can effect this object as opposed to rewriting the skill system to have a separate number for mob vs object on those conditions and still keep the DPS in check.

OP, the person you ran with is an idiot, and nothing more. I run a lot of dungeons, usually with guildies, but there are occasional pug groups or members. I fully admit to the group if I haven’t run a certain path as do other members of the group. I’ve run into my share of idiots, but it’s best to either ignore them, or simply choose not to group with them in the future.

When I first read the topic I was thinking of Dungeon Etiquette, such as random 10 minute AFK’s during the dungeon, not paying attention, pulling stuff when everyone clearly isn’t ready, things like that.

I have to say random AFK’s are one thing that dive me crazy more than idiots. Dungeons for the most part are fairly short. If you group up for a dungeon you’re expected to be there for the full duration. Emergencies happen, but I have a few people on my short-list I choose not to run with because I know I’m going to spend more time waiting around than actually playing.

equally frustrating is the lack of condition stacking on these things. A condition spec’d necro using Scepter is just useless as the base damage is garbage without the bleeds. I’m sure other classes have the same issues. I can understand not having confusion, weakness, chilled etc have any effect, but poison, bleed, and burning (DoT based conditions) should have the same effect they have on regular mobs.

If you have some spare cash kicking around I’d highly recommend picking up a multi-button mouse. GW2’s limited skill set means you can bind every skill to the mouse and use the keyboard for movement. It took me about 2 days of solid play and some mucking around with what’s bound to what to naturally know exactly which buttons to hit for what effects.

I have a Logitech G600 with 12 buttons on the thumb, and a “Shift” key (ring finger) to give you another 12 actions. I’ve bound 1-0 on the main set, and weapon swap + F1-F4 on the shift set.

After using it for a week, I could never go back to clicking, and I was a hardcore clicker in every game previous since EQ1.

Yulan.4069:

Thanks for the fast reply! I will be a much happier dungeon crawler once these are fixed. Keep up the good work and send my regards to the team!

Rising Dusk.2408:

Just as a note, though, I’d argue that the Volatile Blossom hit boxes in TA are far more significant an issue than the Graveling Burrows in AC.

Well, I can imagine myself missing some shots, these flowers are really thin while the burrows are bigger than myself! Jokes apart, I do it fine with my shortbow with these and haven’t seen people complaining. But I can say in general that a lot of static targets need some hitbox tuning..

Necro Staff 1 doesn’t work on the blossoms consistantly. You get a lot of “obstructed”. Scepter and Axe work quite well, but the damage on both of these weapons means you need to hit each one twice (at least) to take it out, and becuase you can’t stack conditions (like bleeds) on these things it’s a major PITA!

Thief shortbow is great because you can literally take out 3 at once.

BlueprintLFE.2358:

How is your damage without any power? I am looking for a dungeon build, I play a power Crit wells build with daggers now that doesn’t do bad, but I would really like to try the blood line, but without any points in spite how is your damage looking? I think I would have to try and work 15 points in the death shroud trait line (mind blank on the name) for the spectral armor at 50% that’s a great ability.

I run with a full set of Rampager’s gear which has +power +precision +condition. I’ve slotted 6 superior runes of the undead which give me toughness and condition damage. and my accessories are all Emerald with power, precision, toughness. My main weapons are Scepter and Dagger, and I run with those about 90% of the time.

Well builds aren’t really focused on DPS, they’re more for support and messing with your enemies. There’s only really one well that is focused on damage, which is well of suffering. All of them do an OK amount of damage, but it’s the secondary effects/boons/heals which make you shine in a dungeon. In a dungeon group, my job is helping keep conditions off my teammates, doing damage, and giving protection and healing (via DS4) when it’s needed.

If I was going for a pure direct damage build I would build it around minions, or corruptions, and focus more on power/prec using daggers with an axe switch.

Depends completely on your weapon choice, and what you mean by “Combos”. If you’re talking about optimal cast order to do the most damage it will typically rely most on using weapon swap effectively. Generally add vulnerability with Axe or Staff (3+4), then swapping to Dagger or Scepter to do damage either by straight DD (Dagger) or bleeds (Scepter).

As for your first combo above, you’d be better off using Staff 3, then 4, then 2. 3+4 gives AE vulnerability making 2 and 1 hit harder, so order should be Chilblains, Putrid Mark, Mark of Blood

For combo fields, Necros can set up Poison (Staff 3, Poison Cloud), Dark (Well of suffering, corruption, darkenss, power), Light (Well of Blood), Etherial (Spectral Wall)

For finishers, sadly we have only two, and both are staff. Staff 1 is projectile (sometimes), Staff 4 (when triggered) is blast. Using these with your combo fields effectively will help you and your group do more damage as well as survive.

Example: laying down spectral wall weilding daggers and running the mob over it keeps up stacks of vulnerability as well as protection on your self.

JonasV.4209:

Yeah that is similar to what I was thinking. But I was going to go dagger instead of axe for second set and Plague for elite. That way I can lock down an area for the maximum amount of time with Wells and Plague, and swap to dagger at close range if need be. With high tough/vit I should be able to last the full duration on Plague before popping DS for the AoE.

Probably going to put this on the back burner until I get my Ranger to 80 since I’m going to have to rebuild by Necro’s whole armor set. My current gear is glass cannon condition/prec/crit%, which I am not at all fond of.

I tend to swap out elite and utility skills pretty regularly, and will go Dagger/Dagger, or Dagger/Focus in my secondary if I know the mobs don’t have a short range AE that will kill me. Max range fights obviously I put on a staff, but i switch it back as soon as possible. Staff 1 has LOS issues, marks are too small, recast is too long, and not everything triggers them.

Depending on the pull, I"ll swap well of suffering for: Spectral Grasp, Spectral Wall, Epidemic etc. I pretty much always have Well of Darkness and Well of Power on my hotbar because they are invaluable when you need to reduce damage or help get conditions off your group-mates.

I run with a well spec (Which probably doesn’t help your ground targetting issues) however I don’t use staff. My Dungeon running build is as follows:
(I can’t find a working build calc at the moment for a link)

Traits:
30 curses: II, IV, XI – Increased bleed duration, wells use ground targetting, scepter skill conditions last longer
10 Death: IV – Wells apply protection
30 Blood: VI, VIII, XII – Life transfer heals allies, Wells recharge faster, Wells siphon health.

Main Weapons – Septer/Dagger
Swap – Axe/Focus

Heal – Consume Conditions
Utility:
Well of Suffering
Well of Darkness
Well of Power
Elite – Flesh Golem

This build provides a ton of group support and fairly decent DPS (Not counting inanimate objects like hell blossoms)

With your wells you can lock down groups of enemies with blinds, add weakness, and strip conditions off your teammates when needed.

If you need a quick group health top-up, Use Deathshroud 4 (Life transfer). The heal is actually pretty decent (Approx 240 × 9 over 3 seconds to your group). You don’t have to hit enemies with life transfer for the heal portion to work.

Fights start with Axe/Focus to add vulnerability and chilled, then swap to Scepter/Dagger to get the bleeds going. On large group pulls I will hit the group with well of darkness out of the gate to minimize incoming damage until the group is able to get some conditions stacked.

You have 3 ways of removing conditions from your self, so you can effectively tank 3-4 mobs without too much issue. Dagger 4 transfers up to 3 conditions to your enemy, Heal removes all conditions, and Well of power strips a condition every 5 seconds.

Wells also apply protection which helps reduce incoming damage to the group.

Suprisingly, this build is also pretty effective in sPVP when capping or holding a point as you can really mess with people for a long time. I can typically hold off about 4 people for 10-20 seconds which is usually enough time for reinforcements to arrive. I would swap out well of suffering for well of corruption to convert enemy boons into conditions. Highly effective against warriors and guardians.

I use the Golem as my elite basically as a DoT. it does pretty decent damage to a single target, and the charge is a great knockdown or interrupt when needed. Sometimes I’ll pop the golem simply to interrupt something even though I know it will die about 3 seconds later.

My only issue with this build is that it doesn’t generate a lot of life force unless you’re up against a pack of mobs, and that bleeds specifically don’t work against doors / walls / blossoms etc so you’re going to take a while to down anything like that on your own.

Same issue with Necro Staff 1, and well, any other staff ability (They don’t set off marks, which they should). As well to add to the annoyance, conditions do nothing (bleeds specifically) to objects like this accross the game making you have to hit 2-3 times with scepter to down one, where a Thief for example can take out 3 with one shot of an arrow.

I’ll 3rd the Bomb planting event in CoF. I ran this last night for the first time (Others in the group had done it before) and it’s just not fun. The closest we got was 60% after about 8 attempts. The last one being pulling the mobs out of the room and purposely leashing them (keeping them at the threshold). I can’t imagine this is the desired tactic. The mobs have too much HP/Armor to realistically kill with any normal group (Mix of Rare/Exotics) and their ability to one-shot just about anyone who makes the slightest mistake just isn’t fun. Too much risk for not enough reward.