Guild Wars 2

Rising Dusk.2408:

I just wanted to chime in that while stability on demand like that is nice, it isn’t a stunbreak, and so it’s not as valuable as you’d think. Most other stability-access in-game also provides a stunbreak, whereas this one doesn’t, and so you have to preempt a CC and block it. That’s a lot tougher than it sounds when you only have 3 seconds of stability, even if the theoretical uptime of the stability is just under 50%.

That’s true; it’s actually why I didn’t call it a get-out-of-jail-free card because it requires a bit of prediction or very quick reactions to use effectively for cc fields. It is, however, exactly as valuable as I think; I’ve had my fair share of taking on massive zeRGs with a 20-25-man and coming out on the other end alive, repeatedly; you just need a bit of experience to know when the cc will land and a good reaction time to pop it when its casted right in front of you as you move. Static fields tend to be casted in front or right on top of you so you have a split-second to react, while well-placed lines/rings of warding definitely require you to have stability access to get through, a stunbreaker will not help you so much with those.
It was absolutely worth the 30-point investment back when you were only getting 3/10s out of it and even more so now that you can get 3/7s.
As far as I can remember, DS entry used to be a stunbreak back in beta, but the notorious beta nerfhammer struck that perk as well.

Dhuumfire is a 100% proc on a 10s cooldown, you don’t really need a lot of crit to use it effectively, especially with the Furious Demise trait taken.
That aside, if you go 30 points in Spite you get a decent amount of power; stacking more on top of that from Carrion makes your direct damage be noticeable, especially considering that might increases not only your condition damage, but also your power.
So IMO if you make a might-oriented build on a necro with 30 points in Spite, it won’t be a pure condition build but more of a hybrid and I’d say you’re taking advantage of it better with carrion than with rabid in terms of dps output. Survivability-wise you will see a lot of people telling you that the difference between carrion and rabid is marginal and usually in favor of carrion, mainly due to how vitality scales on necros and how DS scales with it.

If all the times in that table are dead accurate, a potential explanation for x.93s duration of fear generating (x+1)s terror ticks would be a .7s delay between doom’s damage and the application of fear, as the damage starts the combat timer that fear synchronizes with.

Zenith.7301:

Tobbygnome.6793:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Foot_in_the_Grave

Yeah, sacrifice 30 in spite and 20 in curses, kill my power necro.

Forced to spend points in the crappiest tree as well.

I don’t know what the reasoning behind that statement is, you don’t really really need 30-20 for a WvW-oriented power build. Since focused rituals was moved down to Adept tier with the last patch, you don’t really need to go 20 Curses anymore unless you really really want the chill on blind trait. Honestly I’d be more annoyed about the mandatory investment in Death Magic if you plan to run staff in a power spec.

Now, about the “crappiest tree” statement (wow!):
3 seconds of stability every 7 seconds is probably one of the best stability access you will see anywhere in the game for a “quick escape from a cc ring/box/line” due to the low cooldown, unless all you want to do is run away once and cooldown doesn’t matter to you. It also gives you crit damage which is…very much useful in a power build and a bigger lifeforce pool which will allow you to survive that much better. Hell, if you like running so much, it even gives you an option for 25% movement speed bonus while in DS.
Soul Reaping is probably one of the best trait lines we have as there are only 2 or 3 traits of the 12 that you can pretty much call useless at all times. The rest all fit very well with various ideas of builds, so you can basically use that trait tree with both power and condi builds of all sorts. On top of that, really, it’s the ONLY traitline of which I can say that it has 3 strong, useful minor traits (3rd one is only really good in power/hybrid builds). Meanwhile, look at all those awesome (read mostly useless) minor traits you get from Spite and Curses.

Grats man, took you long enough. Good fights tho! o7
See u in CU, I suppose.

- the pink/purple/rainbow sylvari necro.

I do agree with you about the new condi build (yes I also agree there’s only one real build now save for the 10 “joker” traits) dealing a bit too much damage on a target golem or players that act like one; I also agree it’s heavier than HGH at the moment BUT getting the full condi burst down still requires you to go into melee range and the lack of stability and sustain will still be there to smack you in the face just as it was before. It won’t be long until everyone will figure out that all they have to do is burn 2 stuns/dazes/kb/kds on you and then you’re food for burst damage.
So until we see more play of this I wouldn’t necessarily call it overpowered or too much damage, since you are essentially a glasscannon with not much of an escape mechanism, the lifeforce generation is really weak as you have to sacrifice soul marks for burning and rely on your enemy to not understand that and not stop hitting you while you’re glowing green like a christmas tree. That aside, you will still be the priority target in every teamfight where you show up (probably even more so now with the extra damage necro does) and you will still be trained just as bad as before (in this particular spec anyway). You’ll also still be a guaranteed stomp on most occasions unless your team stealths/flashrezzes/illusion you.

Gabi P.3094:

PlasticHippo.8934:

no way they would make the fear from spectral wall only trigger once, just look at the Mesmer temperal curtain, if you had swiftness when you walked through it then you don’t even get the buff once, I don’t think the current engine the game is running on can tell how many times a foe has gone through it, though probably won’t effect foes that are already feared

Right now, spectral wall (similar to temporal curtain in this regard) does not apply the buff (protection) to allies that already have it – this is to prevent abusing it to stack a ridiculous duration. However, it does not have the same check in place for enemies, so if an enemy is silly enough to walk across it multiple times, or across multiple spectral walls, he will get the vulnerability stacks on each pass (3 times over a wall = maxxed vuln stacks), which is why, as someone else was saying in a different topic, the wall is underrated in wvw, because it makes a massive difference if you run it in a coordinated team and use it at the right time/place coupled with knockbacks/fears/box-in tactics. It also does not have a target count limit in place, so it will affect everyone that passes through it.
You can test this easily by kiting a mob over the wall repeatedly.

PlasticHippo.8934:

no way they would make the fear from spectral wall only trigger once, just look at the Mesmer temperal curtain, if you had swiftness when you walked through it then you don’t even get the buff once, I don’t think the current engine the game is running on can tell how many times a foe has gone through it, though probably won’t effect foes that are already feared

Right now, spectral wall (similar to temporal curtain in this regard) does not apply the buff (protection) to allies that already have it – this is to prevent abusing it to stack a ridiculous duration. However, it does not have the same check in place for enemies, so if an enemy is silly enough to walk across it multiple times, or across multiple spectral walls, he will get the vulnerability stacks on each pass (3 times over a wall = maxxed vuln stacks), which is why, as someone else was saying in a different topic, the wall is underrated in wvw, because it makes a massive difference if you run it in a coordinated team and use it at the right time/place coupled with knockbacks/fears/box-in tactics.
You can test this easily by kiting a mob over the wall repeatedly.

I know what it is, just saying it’s hilarious when you accidentally instagib someone and you’re too busy laughing your guts out to say sorry before they respawn… :s
I must have reported the bug at least 3 times through the various beta events and after launch; it will probably be fixed at some point in 2015, since it’s not the easiest thing in the world to abuse and a rather rare occurrence in pvp.

Pendragon.8735:

My favorite burning is still pick up an Ele fiery greatsword. No. 2 skill does over 16,000 damage for me :O.

You should see what it does in a berserker spec with No. 4 skill on an enemy who has their back against a wall while the the flesh golem is also charging them. Thieves would kill to have that kind of burst lol

Pendragon.8735:

Gabi P.3094:

You don’t actually need the 20 into soul reaping anymore once you go 30 Spite, since you get 30% duration out of that. Add runes of necromancer to hit 50% and you can easily get the 2 terror ticks without master of terror, .

Fear duration for a conditionmancer isn’t just about the 2 terror ticks, its about the extra CC time that is essential to keep the enemy controlled for, during which they cannot cleanse and neuter your condition dealing DPS. As well as for increased attrition as you need to keep damage off you while killing them slowly with conditions.

30/20/0/0/20 gives up increased sized marks, which would be a huge blow to conditionmancers aoe.

Well what I basically said was “you don’t Master of Terror for a Terror build” and what you read was “you don’t need Master of Terror for a Fear/cc heavy build with Terror”. I guess you will have to decide whether you want .5s longer fears or bigger marks with lower cooldown/extra fear on disable – build variety maybe?

Also, you don’t NEED 20 points in Curses to pick up Terror, 30 10 10 0 20 should get you terror, bigger marks and long fears with the anticipated burning trait as well.

Further to that, you will apparently have the option to take Near to Death on those 20 points in Spite, so there’s another choice to make: .5s longer fears or halved cooldown on DS – think of what you’re going to pick up in that spite line, 4s retal on 5s cooldown maybe? Fury on top to help with the burning application maybe?

I’m a bit more worried about the fact that this will probably push us towards a Rampager hybrid build for optimal damage output with any build that includes the burning trait, since you will want to make the best of the power-oriented nature of the spite line while also requiring a high crit rate for burning and obviously condition damage as well. Squishy necro getting squishier yay!

LE: Also, you’re getting 2 new damage-dealing conditions in your arsenal, essentially doubling what you had before, so I think we can start to worry a bit less about keeping the enemy controlled to prevent them from cleansing the conditions.
(also, kitten profanity filter was being silly about 5s cooldown with an “a” in front)

You don’t actually need the 20 into soul reaping anymore once you go 30 Spite, since you get 30% duration out of that. Add runes of necromancer to hit 50% and you can easily get the 2 terror ticks without master of terror, so you can go something like 30 30 10 0 0 or some other distribution depending on which way you want your build to lean towards. Life force generation enhancements will be really important though, as a lack of investment in soul reaping means you will have few options to generate life force.

This looks like a q.q thread about axe damage, which starts with basically saying that the statement actually only applies to when 2/3 skills are on cooldown, so “axe damage is bad when all the axe damage-dealing skills are on cooldown”, you don’t say..

I don’t really see a massive problem with the axe, sure the auto hits like a wet noodle, I personally never thought that skill should be a massive damage-dealer as it’s pretty fast in 2 stages, applies vuln and is (sort of) ranged so not much to stop it from hitting; I think it’s meant more like a set-up skill for the other 2/3 which actually do deal damage. Hitting a non-bunker with axe #2 after stacking some vuln with the auto and focus #4 vuln-burst will chip off at least 50% of their hp, so a properly-played axe set does deal good damage, then you swap, use your other non-axe set to deal damage and then you can swap right back to axe in 9 seconds and you’ll have the skills up again, since axe cooldowns are actually low-ish (especially compared to all other necro skills lol).
The game is designed for you to have 2 weapon sets and another skillset in DS, not linger around in one set and wonder why you’re not dealing damage when you put it all on cooldown.

Ray.3780:

Just thinking about how guys here are all excited/afraid about the potential Terror + Burning, don’t 100% presume you’ll be able to trait for both of them optimally.

If the trait is like deep into Spite, Death or Blood Magic, you will be hard pressed to get all the Terror appropriate traits as well and may well have to go hybrid or something. Incendiary Powder for engi is in a Power Trait line I think, so I wouldn’t be too surprised.

I actually wouldn’t mind having it somewhere in the Spite line, actually if it can go in the 10point slot I would still probably use a 30 spite hybrid-terror build. It’s decently strong even in the current state, adding burning would only make it better, maybe even viable :O

I agree that a terror necro in this kind of build will have the utility and hard cc to shred a bunker to bits (especially with wh), but only with a teammate helping with the actual damage output. However, seriously, if you want to take out a bunker yourself, I think you’re better off doing it in a power spec, prepare well to land an immobilize+wells+lichform and he will just blow up, no assistance required.

Also, someone asked if it’s worth trading geomancy/hydromancy damage for paralyzation. I think it is, because it basically grants you the 10 trait points that you were otherwise missing to make a “complete” build, by allowing you to not take Master of Terror in a Terror build.

You’re playing advocate for what seems like unintended levels of mobility here, just because they took too long to “fix” it (for whatever reason) and now you’re used to it. If teleports are not meant to work on Z-axis or at least follow basic projectile LoS rules, you can’t say that all the teleports on Khylo were ever fair, they just made the map extremely small for some classes, while others had to walk around/do a jumping puzzle. IMO teleports should work between A and B on the Z-axis, but only if the distance you’d have to travel between A and B without teleporting is shorter than the teleport’s range. The way it is/was, you were getting way too much shortcut pretty much for free.
Also, you’re not building a good case if you start to defend excessive teleports/escape mechanics with a story on how you’re going all the way through the enemy team to train a low-mobility target and then dying cause you can’t port back through walls/ignoring pathing.

Liquid.9672:

Having base Toughness in WvW scares me a bit, but I’m going to wait until the June professions patch and choose a path. I’m sitting on 100 Laurels because I just haven’t been able to make a definitive choice in gear/gameplay for my Necro (I WvW exclusively in large team play). This thread has really got me thinking about Carrion over Rabid for my conditions build, although I may just ditch conditions altogether in favor of a Power build.

If you’re playing with a coordinated team in WvW you’re much better off with a power build using the 2 damage wells and whatever you prefer as a 3rd util (spectral wall is nice, well of darkness+chill trait also nice); 0 20 20 0 30 used to be a pretty effective build as I recall, knights armor with berserker trinkets gets you some really nice dps output, especially if you coordinate your wells with a static field/guardian ring/other similar effects.

If not, condi can provide some nice giggles too I guess

Well, another good thing about necromancers (in the current state) is brought by one of the main bad things about it: you can’t make 1-2 cookie-cutter builds that are actually on par with other professions in tournament play, but you can make 10+ builds and variations of similar strength (in some cases very situational) that are almost there. This pretty much makes it the most fun to play class outside of tourneys imo, because whenever you get bored of one build’s rotations/playstyle, you still have a dozen other builds and their respective playstyles to go to.

Andele.1306:

give me your with it and 85% cond duration if you want and ok whatever it does increase fear duration, till then im plain gonna say no.

Here you go:
http://postimg.org/image/413v0z3s1
http://postimg.org/image/3n2j1djoh
http://postimg.org/image/7yr4qdqld
http://postimg.org/image/ahctr2cbl

1st ss is out of combat to show i did not hit that golem with anything prior to reaper’s mark, 2nd ss is while casting, 3rd is first tick, 4th is second tick just as the fear ran out

20% from runes of the necromancer (afaik can’t get more)
15% from spite traitline
50% from master of terror trait
I’ll let you be the judge of what the other 15% is.

Sure you’re not going to start hitting a target with fear nobody’s arguing that (I hope), but that 15% coupled with 20% from runes means you can get 2 ticks of fear reliably in a normal rotation without the master of terror trait, so you get the option to use that slot for something else.

- keep as much distance between you and the mesmer as possible at all times
- save your endurance and dodge the leap (up to you to figure out how)
- apply as many conditions as you can as fast as you can (shatter mesmer condi removal not so good)
- fear him as often as you can
- assuming you use staff, make sure you land your marks on both the mesmer and the clones
- if you run wells, use them as a peel to give urself some breathing room
- chill and cripple are your friends
- stand in their staff bubble thing for 2 seconds, then pass the condis back to him

hf

Unless you’re going to come up with a good testing method that proves what you’re saying about getting 2 ticks with a less-than-2-second fear without other condition applied, you’re not really making a point.
As a matter of fact I’m willing to bet you whatever you want that if you apply fear to a target before any other condition with less than 100% extra fear duration, you will never get a 2nd tick with the way it works now. If, say, you have 50% bonus fear duration and cast a mark of blood immediately followed by reaper’s mark you will pretty much always get the 2nd tick.
Also, your point about bleed stack damage being chained and not stacked is completely moot; go stack 10 bleeds and poison and whatever else you like on a golem and watch how his hp bar moves in chunks each second, not draining slowly as you see the numbers pop up. The on-screen damage display is just for show, doesn’t accurately show the timing of damage application.

You’re not paying attention, really. The reason why fear ticks twice without 100% fear duration is because it goes in sync with other condition’s ticks. IF fear is the first and only condition you apply to a target, it will generate the condition tick timer and will NEVER get a 2nd tick unless you have 100% fear duration.
So, the only way to reliably test what does and does not affect fear duration (since we’re talking tenths of seconds and we can’t reliably observe the debuff) is using Terror and stacking up Fear duration to the limit where it does not get a 2nd tick (2 seconds+) and then applying the extra duration effect we are testing (in this case the sigil).
I’m not trying to say that this sigil’s effect it is a massively important discovery in practice, where you will more often than not have other conditions on target and 50% duration from the fear trait is enough to reliably get 2 ticks of Terror most of the time (not all the time though). What I am saying is that it has some synergy with more than just the WH daze and you don’t really have any better options for the warhorn sigil in a condition spec anyway, so I can’t see why you wouldn’t take it.

Andele.1306:

Melandru runes reduce the duration of control effects in general, but Fear Knockback Pull and Knockdown dont count as stuns/dazes, otherwise they would work with Unsuspecting Foe and said Sigil of paralization, that is one thing im sure of since i checked on my warrior to see if there could be a hammer build based on fear me (and a 3 second fear turning into a 3.45 second fear would be easy to notice).

Ok, here’s how I tested the effect of the sigil on fear, I’ll let you judge if it’s reliable or not:
- Terror trait, Master of Terror trait (50%), Runes of the necromancer (20%), 20 points in Spite (20%); all of this amounts to 90% fear duration
- NO other conditions on golem so fear will not get 2 ticks without 2 second duration
- casted a fear (they’re all 1s base) on a golem without sigil of paralyzation, got 1 tick of Terror
- swapped to weapon with sigil of paralyzation (105% fear duration), got 2 ticks of Terror

Also, melandru runes reduce condition duration by 25% AND stun duration by 25%; the thread I was referring to was about the fact that fear is affected by both these effects, which makes those runes reduce it’s duration in half.

I’m gonna drop my 2 coppers here as well since I’ve tested a few things about this in PVP and have come to agree with the OP that warhorn AND (not despite) all it’s effects on the build are actually beneficial overall (I’m assuming a condi build with terror).
What does the build look like:
20 Curses: Terror, Banshee’s Wail
20 Death Magic(only 10 mandatory): Greater Marks, Staff Mastery
30 Soul Reaping: Vital Persistence, Master of Terror, Soul Marks
Sigil of Paralyzation on warhorn and staff

Why:
- fear is a condition and a stun so the +15% stun duration from the sigil affects both your warhorn daze and all your fears (thanks to the guy that opened the q.q thread about the effect of -stun and condition duration runes on fear, made me realize this). Also, you don’t really have any good off-hand sigil options for condi necro (minor corruption is marginal, since you tend to go down relatively often in tpvp)
- lifeforce generation (and sustain while in DS) – if you couple it with the Vital Persistence trait it will make it not drain at all while the swarm is up and hitting someone, especially if you channel ds 4 while you’re at it.
- warhorn obviously provides you with better control tools for teamfights – aoe cripple and long aoe daze
- the 15/25s swiftness uptime does wonders for your mobility, allowing you to ditch spectral walk (in favor of say, rez signet); you can also stack them if you really want to I guess.

The main downside of this build is that it reduces the “bleed-bomb” potential, which you can somewhat alleviate with a slightly different trait distribution, getting the Weakening Shroud on DS activation trait.

To also give an opinion on Elvahaduken’s question about amulets, Rabid’s benefits are limited to Earth Sigil procs at the moment (the trait is horribad imo). It does not provide you with better survivability unless you receive considerable healing from your team. (tested this with steady weapon, even factoring DS out and using one self-heal, you stay alive for the same amount of time vs the same source of damage with carrion and rabid amulets; carrion is proven to be more effective when it comes to DS sustain, so overall there’s not much reason for it to not be better in this regard). As far as the Scepter Duration trait goes, I think it’s not worth it at all because it applies to the base duration, so it only affects the conditions applied by scepter #1 and #2. The 25-point minor trait that you get in the process only affects direct damage, so it’s effect is pretty much negligible.

Here’s a logical reasoning behind why hp might be bad, since we’re talking about pve and fractals:
agony deals a percent damage of your hp per tick, reduced by agony resistance. Let’s assume you had the same AR on a vitality set and on a non-vitality set and that agony hits you for 30% of your hp. The bigger your hp pool is, the more damage you take from it and the less your healing (and the healing you get from the group) will help you survive all the ticks.

Now, theory aside I do agree that the Soul Reaping tree is best suited for terror builds and I wouldn’t go farther than 15 points in it for a pve build. IMO the crit damage stat should be moved to the Spite trait line instead of condition duration, then the attributes gained from both these trait lines will be more in line with the uses of the actual traits in them.
As it is now, you’re better off sticking to max 15 points in Soul Reaping and stacking crit damage from trinkets/jewels, power and precision from armor, running the obvious 2 wells and BiP for the extra might. Whether you want to go full glass or use knight stats on the armor is up to you really. Worrying too much about survivability in pve as a necro is a bit silly if you ask me, we’re not the most squishy cats out there so it’s mostly about maximizing your damage output. There’s very few things that could 1shot you, regardless of whether you choose to go full berserker, knight or soldier, but the difference in dps is noticeable.
Unfortunately our trait options that do benefit from crits are not extremely useful in pve, can’t really name any besides lifesteal (which is arguably useful as well, since the numbers are so low).

If we’re talking pve/fractals, the best set to go with IMO would be knight armor with berserker trinkets and jewels, wellbomb spec. Use an axe instead of dagger if you find it hard to survive in melee range, or use both if you don’t feel staff is must-have. The third util slot is ur wildcard, signet of undeath is nice for some fights, for others you’re better off with blood is power for more damage, for stuff like the grawl shaman top fight you may prefer spectral grasp to save teh villagers.

If we’re talking 1v1, there are several ways to go about it, the most effective one I’ve found so far is a condition/fear/well hybrid spec with Carrion amulet. Makes mesmers rage/cry. Thieves are 50/50, bunker eles and rangers…not so much. It’s not very easy to pull off though, takes some planning of skill use over time and dodge timing must be really good.

There are several ways to go about it. The weapon set you’re using now is condition-oriented so it’s only normal that it takes a longer while to kill mobs, however it provides you with good aoe damage and kiting options, so you can take on 5 mobs at a time and deal with it pretty well by staying away and using your ds when you run out of kiting options until the cooldown runs out.

If you want to continue with a condition spec, it will be fine for leveling, but not the most popular option for dungeons due to a few things like bleed stacking cap, defiant buff on bosses affecting fear damage etc. For this I would personally go down the Death Magic line to 20 points to get the bigger staff marks and reduced cooldown (they work together now, yay! /sarcasm off). 10 points in Blood Magic will give you some regen for a little sustain when you start the fight and another mark of blood on dodge, which is up to you to use cleverly for those extra bleed stacks. If we’re talking strictly pve, I’d also go for 20 points in Curses for that extra condition damage, picking up traits II and IV for longer bleeds and the extra bleeds applied when entering ds (which is again up to you to put to good use). A simple rotation with this would be starting in staff, cast marks 2,3 (feel free to cast 4 and 5 as well whenever), dodge into the mobs, enter ds, exit ds, swap to scepter/dagger (have a geomancy sigil on one of them), cast scepter 2, dagger 5, dodge away. For utils you can bring whatever fancies you, epidemic is ofc nice to spread conditions further.

Now my personal preference is an aoe power build, basically staff with dagger/focus (or warhorn instead of focus, up to you), go for knights armor with some berserker accessories, wells of corruption and suffering. As a third util I normally go for the movement speed signet so it doesn’t take decades to get from A to B (also the aoe lifesteal is not negligible when you have 5 mobs around you). Trait-wise you will want to buff your staff so again the staff mark size and cooldown, then Blood Magic III and VIII for wells cooldown reduction, then you can go anywhere from there (Curses 20 points for placeable wells, soul reaping for more crit damage, life blast piercing and marks generating even more lf, or blood magic up to 30 points for wells to siphon life).

If you want to kill single mobs faster then yeah, minionmaster is your friend, take a dagger and warhorn/focus and the traits that buff their damage and hp, maybe the one that makes them siphon life to you, though they will most likely tank for you as well. Use well of blood heal and regen from mark of blood to sustain them in harder fights, also putrid mark to take conditions off them if needed.

Pendragon.8735:

-snip-

True, however without substantial investment in duration it is extremely unreliable, not to mention that 2 sources of fear are out of your control, which brings us back to the point of having to sacrifice soul marks to obtain the necessary duration. So regardless of which route you choose to follow to obtain around 50% extra duration (condi duration traitline or master of terror trait), making it plausible to intentionally time your fears around your other condition ticks, you will lose a lot of lifeforce generation and possibly lifeforce pool if you choose to use the Spite line.

Right now imo the necro is lacking in a few aspects that should be balanced out one way or the other:
- ability to disengage/better mobility
- ability to sustain (either through more dodging/vigor or more regeneration; no healing in DS is also a major issue here)
- ability to reliably avoid one stomp
- ability to apply heavy condition pressure to enable more offensive play

These issues are present regardless of spec and they make a necro too much of a liability for the team. I think getting all of the above would be over the top, but at least 2 of those will be needed before the class can become viable for high-level play.

Tixe.3684:

In my testing I found that 40% condition duration was enough to get me 2 ticks on all of my fears.

That is actually not true, at least not at the moment; Terror applies it’s damage after each second of fear, so you need 100% extra condi+fear duration to pull off 2 ticks of it.

Also, as Symbolic said, the Soul Marks trait is currently mandatory in any staff+s/d build for somewhat half-decent life force generation, without which you are pretty much dead meat in any tournament game. Right now, every decent enemy team’s reaction to seeing a necro is: “there’s the necro”, <target on>, <commence burst>, stomp with stability/mist form/stealth, so you will need to have as much life force as you can possibly generate before that in order to survive long enough to at least get a peel/babysitter.

You’re also counting in 2 very unreliable sources of fear from the runes and cc-fear trait. While the runes are actually strong and most condi necros will use them anyway and the trait is a nice way to delay the burst, both are on a 90-second cooldown which means they’ll only help you once in a fight where you will be targeted by at least 2 burst-specced enemies with heavy cc and by their passive nature it also means you don’t have the option to use them as an offensive tool.

Right now, the only way to be considerably useful in tPVP as necro is to run with a strategy that revolves around forcing teamfights and putting one enemy down asap, which would allow you to put the massive aoe pressure capabilities to optimal use against the rezzers. Of course you can be of great help to take down a bunker guardian or the focused target with fears, chills and poison, but then the above-mentioned aoe pressure will be diminished as the cooldowns needed to pull that off are too long.
Sure, with a good team you can get decently high up the leaderboard and get a decent W/L ratio <points at self>, until you come up against the top teams that know how to work around your strategy.
But the question is, why would a team force themselves into only one possible strategy for all games and have to worry about constantly peeling for you, rezzing you etc, when they can get so much more condition pressure overall out of a much more survivable, mobile and versatile engi?

…any…way….the warrior…blooows >gong<

TheWalkingDead.7298:

Acelerion.6820:

Gotta leave the dueling room to face a pug

PZ, loooooose
Didn’t mean to queue yolo, sometimes I wish I never raised mmr

Carry on, carry on, as if ranking really matters…

Mama…tourneys just began…

Personally I don’t really care how many people it takes to pop orange xswords or if they exist at all, as far as I’m concerned if they removed them entirely it would have been just as fine. I wasn’t “born” in tier1, I’m not in tier1 now and I’ve played everywhere from bottom tier to tier 2 so far, so I’m decently informed about the metagame across tiers.
Here’s a personal example of why it doesn’t really matter as much as some people make it out to be: Waaaay before this change, I’ve solo-broken both outer and inner walls of a keep to then cap it with 3 more ppl called in over mapchat and white swords were up all the time. Nobody bothered to check, so the keep was lost.
Now, instead of up to 4 guys attacking your keep, it will be up to 24, white swords will still pop, you will still have a window of time to check on it and call the nearest group/zerg (whatever you prefer to call it) to come and defend.

I don’t see this as changing the reality of ninja takes; they occurred before this change and they will continue to occur (arguably more often now and at a faster pace), which means less time for defenders (that are possibly zerging around halfway across the map) to react. Even before this change you could, for example, take 25 people, build 5 catas outside hills walls and take down both outer and inner walls really fast without any orange swords, then proceed to cap. This change makes this kind of tactic viable through doors as well. (such a massive change, wow!)
The difference this should lead to is that now you won’t afford to have your entire map population running mindlessly in one mega-blob (for higher tiers) or mini-blob (for lower tier) from point to point following the orange indicators on a map. You will have to either:
a) leave scouts and regroup to defend where needed;
b) split your <insert size here> blob/zerg into 2 or more <insert smaller size here> group to cover designated areas of the map.

Sure, the effect of this change is different as you move up and down the tiers, but relying on orange swords meant offering the enemy opportunities for ninja takes as much before as it does now:
In a lower tier, chances are you don’t have enough people to run a big zerg during off-peak anyway and ideally you would be scouting keeps and holding/recapping camps and calling people in from all over to defend when needed (at least that’s how we used to keep a decent ppt over night across all maps in lower tiers with like 20-30 ppl online total). If you have less than 25 people yourself, you will be able to “ninja” a keep at a decent rate now from an enemy less adapted to change, instead of wasting an hour solo-ramming/catapulting 2 doors/walls. If you’re on the outmanned side and your enemy is running a big zerg instead of spreading out, you can confuse them more easily by triggering white swords on multiple objectives while you’re at it, increasing your chances of success as they run between all objectives to check.
On the other hand, in the higher tiers this cripples the map-wide blob tactic which relied on running your entire map population between objectives marked with orange swords thus overwhelming any enemy that didn’t want to blob the entire map up.

I don’t know what kind of scouts your servers have, but you shouldn’t need more than one person per objective to ensure a timely call of attacks (and I don’t mean the idle lazy type), maybe 2 for SM and garrisons. Just improve your communication within and across maps and you will do just as well, if not better. Make it even more simple: just treat white swords as if they were orange swords. (don’t forget to kill the quaggan node )

The issue here seems to be both server and client side; it’s not only that each client has to receive all the information about all the 100+ enemies around him, but also that the server has to process and send all this information to all those 100+ players. There are a number of ways to reduce the strain on both sides:
- like the OP suggested, an option to use standardized models for enemies
- another solution which worked rather well in another mmo that had huge fights was the option to turn models for enemies off altogether, showing only the name (which in this case would be generic), meaning that the client and server would not have to transmit any model information at all for enemies and the client wouldn’t need to load anything from disk; I’d add some form of indicator (like a circle on the ground) to show the location more accurately in this case.

GaileGray.9587:

I believe that we will be offering name changes in the Gem Store sometime in the future. Hold tight and you will be able to change that name.

Hi,
I’m having a slightly different problem that would also require a character name change, however it’s not that I picked a wrong name or anything, but that the profanity filter on character naming does not allow the use of the word “weed” in any name, though there are obviously certain words that contain this without even slightly hinting at what you may be trying to filter (a random example would be “seaweed”). I raised a ticket on the matter asking to get the character name changed (ID 120905-004546) and got a response that looks like a copy/pasted list of character name related info that doesn’t have much relevance to the issue at hand, especially since even if I could change my name, the profanity filter would still not allow me to use the name I want (which is really not offensive in any way).

Naturally I wouldn’t imagine this to be a priority compared to access-blocking issues that other people are having, but I’d like the issue understood and addressed eventually, as the workaround name I had to resort to is obviously causing problems with people trying to whisper/mail/invite me.

Thanks!