Guild Wars 2

I’ll join. Idc what the name is since I won’t rep it a lot, but I’ll answer any questions, give help, talk in it.

The fact that LF costs for scourge don’t scale based on your total LF pool is hopefully a bug/not a feature that will remain at launch. As has been pointed out, it just pigeonholes use into taking high vit stats. It becomes a lot harder for me to justify taking viper’s for example when so much of the damage and sustain is tied to the shade skills and you take a big LF pool loss in taking stats without vit.

For support/condi dmg hybrid, I haven’t hashed out the exact details yet, but something along these stats might be solid. You lack condi duration, but you could adjust for that with giver’s weapons instead of magi. And of course you can always mix in some apoth gear if you feel like having no additional toughness is really hurting in fights. 34k hp is prob a bit excessive anyways.

Honestly just go for dire if you want the survivability for zerg fights. Trailblazer might be slightly better since you counter opponents -dura, but your ability to boon rip won’t change and you will still stack a lot of bleeds regardless.

Unless I’m mistaken, the meta for WvW guild groups is cele necro with axe/focus (or dagger or wh) and GS. So if you have the gear to make cele, that would be another option.

Sandrox.9524:

Playing power reaper with small group is so hard. Positioning is so important. Timing the shroud is so important…

Good vid and its nice seeing power reaper /o\

It’s not power. Title and build says hybrid…

Ralkuth.1456:

I immediately thought of this, but it’s not truly relevant: Ice Barrier vs Green Rogue

What I’m worried about is getting spiked too hard while in CC, because Barrier decays rather fast and generation can be limited as the fight goes on.

How would you compare traditional boon corruption to the boon rip + torment?

CC is always gonna be a sticking point for necro it seems since we don’t have that much access to stab. Honestly though, granted people don’t know how to play against scourge yet, you gain some survivability just through constantly corrupting enemies around you since might and fury are such common boons and convert into weakness and blind. My solution to the CC problem was to run double stunbreaks and hope that was enough. Its not an easy thing to solve, so we’ll see how the playstyle evolves after PoF.

Eh I much prefer more traditional boon corrupt. While not every boon corrupt is awesome, might → weakness, fury → blink, stab → fear, quickness → slow are borderline fight changing in their effectiveness. I don’t take the punishment skills (except the elite) for their boon conversion potential really. Its a small bonus, but the damage increase isn’t that crazy. It just helps that the punishment skills have that added for when you need to corrupt/remove a lot of boons at once you have options. The other bonus that makes it a bit better is when you take the LF on boon corrupt trait each of the punishment skills help top off your lf bar which is huge for scourge.

Honestly I try not to curate my clips too much, though clearly since I’m not showing any of the 1v1s I had in WvW I cut those out. The main goal was to show the strengths of the scourge and how it holds up while roaming in a glassy build and to do this is the limited time we had to play the spec.

To answer some of the comments more directly;

Honestly it doesn’t really matter if people try and use resistance against you, as can be seen by the mallyx rev in the video. He puts resistance on himself 5 times and each time it gets stripped almost instantly. Sending conditions back to the scourge is a decent strategy, but with 2 condi cleanse every 4s it better be a condi burst not just a few conditions.

Demonic Lore is already a 3s icd, I don’t think increasing the icd to 5s will really have a difference. Nerfing dhuumfire’s affect with desert shroud seems like a better option, since the condi burst that alone puts out is insane. I also doubt demonic lore will be nerfed since I suspect that anet wants the trait to be powerful in PvE for sustained damage.

Like I mentioned in the OP, range is clearly going to be your disadvantage like most (all?) necromancer builds. That being said, if you play it like you would a reaper vs ranger matchup and use your los well you have a good shot at winning. I don’t think I lost 1v1 against a ranger all weekend, sure they’re a pain when they are the +1 to the 1v2 already, but thats kinda just how it works.

Tick.1605:

what are your thoughts on going the bigger shade instead of three smaller?

I think its not worth the tradeoff currently. You lose a pretty sizable amount of damage in order to have a bigger radius (albeit a sizable increase). It doesn’t increase the burst damage of shades nor really help you via additional barrier, currently you only get the stat boost of 3 shades. If anet changed it to actually have bigger impacts in some of the other skills I would considering taking it, but not currently.

I think in SPvP it might be better maybe just due to its synergy with point size, but I think in SPvP you would want to take the damage increase since people are less tankier (statwise) there and you can have the burning make an even bigger impact.

Brigg.3961:

I actually felt like a rat scurrying from one area to another in wvw just to avoid places I could easily get ranged from lol… I’m hoping that the portal, once it’s fixed, helps relieve some of that stress, but I did get kind of used to running a well there in place of it so we’ll see.

Yeah originally I planned on swapping out the punishment stunbreak for well in larger fights, but it’s nice to have even in the small fights so we’ll see. Hopefully the portal gets fixed so I can actually test it. This weekend it was so buggy I couldn’t even really know for certain if it makes a huge difference.

Hello everyone! Hopefully everyone has been having fun playing around with scourge during the beta weekend. I had time to roam a bit and threw together a quick video to just show it in action. Gear is the same as what I run for reaper since beta weekend makes it harder to change gear.

Video

Build Scourge: Bot-Bot-Mid

My thoughts overall Scourge is extremely strong. With Duumfire pulsing on desert shroud and the F2 ability gaining path of corruption corrupt, you can create a lot of down cleave very quickly. The torch abilities seem to be well balanced and a reasonable option instead of dagger (I like it more than dagger tbh).

The lack of shroud for me personally didn’t change my playstyle a lot. My general policy is the best defense is counter-pressure and boy does scourge do this in bunches. Not only that, but you can put shades on downs and cleave them while you kite which is a huge benefit over reaper imo. The ability to use all the shade skills while stunned is very useful since you can create space via the fear or sustain through desert shroud barrier.

I could imagine duumfire getting a nerf prior to PoF release since the pulse per desert shroud pulse is a bit too strong. A single pulse at the beginning of each of the shade abilities is already very good for the trait. My sustain felt better than reaper for the build I use and I never felt in need of lifeforce in general which maybe isn’t a great thing since I haven’t practiced lf management with scourge yet.

The biggest counter to scourge is range of course, but if you play los well you should operate better than a reaper would in a similar situation.

The biggest things I would like to see fixed as the shade charge being consumed if you jump before placing the shade without placing the actual shade (clearly just a bug) and of course the portal being fixed.

Final Word: When PoF comes out I predict I will be switching to scourge for my build. Hopefully power reaper gets the deathly chill change to power damage and gets the speed of shadows old version put into the adept traits instead of the relentless pursuit.

KrHome.1920:

Silv.9207:

One of our main corruption build had been nerfed to the ground: Signet Build.

Signets for corrupts has become inefficient.

SS: 2×5 aoe corrupts @ 10 sec. CD
Weakening Shroud 1×5 aoe corrupt @ 10 sec. CD
Corrupt Boon: 3 corrupts @ 15 sec. CD
Death’s Charge (traited): 2×5 aoe corrupts @ 6/5 sec. CD
Well of Corruption…
Scepter auto, Axe3, Dagger3, GS4…

No one is wasting 2 utility slots and the healing slot for laughable 9 mights stacks and 3×2 corrupts (2 single target, 1 aoe) every 24/28 seconds in exchange to Spiteful Spirit.

I’d argue it had a slightly different use than spiteful spirit since you could target individuals without having to enter shroud so it complimented deaths charge and weakening shroud well. I found niche use for signet corrupts in roaming and was fairly disappointed they took them from me tbh.

I’m even more disappointed if spiteful spirit only procs on sand shroud entry which has a 20s CD. Suddenly signets could’ve been more valuable especially since with scourge traits they would give you DS for each corrupt you made.

Ulion.5476:

I guess no one has though about the amount of healing/support a firebrand can do. Firebrand/soulbeast/holosmith seems like a good 3man group. They have multiple pulls, reflects, quickness and a lot of melee boons. Theirs going to be a lot of testing once the next beta comes out.

Honestly hopefully more people get into roaming, cause it looks like a lot of stuff is going to be viable for small man with some cool combos that are opening up.

Jakal.9582:

I didn’t know that there was a cap on barrier. Do you know what the cap is?

I believe the cap is half the total hp. Though I could be wrong.

No one can really say at the moment. We’ll know more after this next beta is done. Kinda like how it is now I’m sure it will vary based on what you (and your group) are trying to fight. Stuff that excels 1v1 isn’t always good 1vX and what is good 3v3 isn’t always good 3vX etc.

Keep in mind that HoT specs won’t necessarily be DoA when PoF hits either. If I were to say what the most intriguing area to look at with PoF release it would be 3 man comps since those usually give a decent indication of what the roaming meta is. My current idea of intriguing 3 man PoF comp is scourge/spellbreaker/renegade if you’re looking to group bust, but we’ll see how it all pans out.

Any chill you apply through any method applies the bleeds. Chilling darkness, rune procs, or food effects. This is one reason why ele necro duo is a strong WvW roaming duo since frost aura gives you a lot of chill application just by being hit.

Flumek.9043:

Its must pick now.

The alernative went from possible to ohgodplzno.

And now let’s wait with held breath to see how shades interact with spiteful spirit, path of corruption and weakening shroud. If they don’t, well goodbye any reason to take curses or spite in PvP environments (ok exaggeration but it would really limit what traits are worthwhile).

KrHome.1920:

@ OP: Did you read the patchnotes?

They mentioned that they weren’t happy with the collision of signet and Spiteful Spirit Grandmaster both targeting boon corruption. That’s why they buffed Spiteful Spirit to 2 corrupts and reworked the signet Grandmaster to some other functionality.

This is reasonable and one of the (very few!) better changes of the patch.

Eh just because anet says that is why they’re doing something doesn’t make it good reasoning for making the change.

Buffs to signets are welcome, they had fallen far out of favor in the meta recently. Anet just removed the only reason you would ever take this trait in a pvp environment though. One of my primary builds recently has been an viper signet build that focused on direct boon removal as a sort of “sniper” boon corrupt build. The build is now gutted to uselessness. There is no longer any reason to take the signets trait because it doesn’t really offer anything outside of (maybe) a pve environment (even then you’d just take the +dmg mod).

I was looking forward to playing around with a signet boon corrupt scourge build, but that is now out of the window. The signets corrupt trait opened up some build diversity that now just got taken away. This is a very bad change imo and makes necro signets now (outside of plague signet) tied with guardian signets as some of the most useless utilities in the game.

Spiteful spirit buff is nice and all, but the targeted boon corrupt and further range offered by the signet corrupts aspect has no alternative.

EremiteAngel.9765:

P.S. on the side note of being carried by others though, I think vT guild has an on-going? thing where they invite other players to join their party during their roaming runs to let them experience high-end coordinated small scale roaming and I think that is a fantastic idea. I hope more coordinated roaming guilds can start extending such invitation to random roamers too. I can imagine it would be a totally different and exhilarating experience from uncoordinated roaming.

Its a little less formal than that, but basically if we notice someone is out there and see that they know more or less what they’re doing we’ll invite them into discord and roam with them a bit.

And deep down all the problems anyone has while roaming is because of Clown, so if a zerg chases you down? Blame Clown. Lose that 1v1? Blame Clown. Too many roamers on your own server? Blame Clown.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

That’s not bad if it’s reliable. Plus you can bring allies with you. Granted it isn’t a ton of mobility but you do have options.

I’d take a 20s mobility that doesn’t have deaths charges issues with actually going to it’s target any day.

I enjoy listening to these people say roaming is bullying. It’s nice to see people who clearly have never attempted actual roaming chime in.

Personally roaming is anything from 1-5 players, with 5 being on the high end and the ideal being 2-3 if you want good fights (though I love solo roaming). Actual roamers aren’t looking for even numbered fights usually and want to challenge themselves to do group v X. Having played in gvg guilds at the height of gvg, I would easily say a good roaming guild is much more difficult to play in and requires more skill.

As for roaming vs havok. It’s about your group size and objective. Havok in my eyes is much more objective based and isn’t focused on fights. While roaming is entirely centered around fighting.

And for those who seems to think that all roamers do is pick off Zerg tails, by all means check out some of my guilds or others videos on YouTube. See if it’s just us picking off zergs tails.

EremiteAngel.9765:

Zero.3871:

scourge will be useless for solo roaming. hope they give us some way to stay at reaper for roaming. PLZ anet, pllllllllzzzzzz. dont kill reaper for roaming.

I have to agree with this one. Scourge cannot solo. No stab, no gap closers.
New specs like Deadeye is going to eat Scourge alive.

We don’t know the range on the portal but thats a 20s cd utility that is a gap closer.

It is simply too soon to be hype or be disappointed guys/gals. It might be great it might not, but right now its all guesses and conjecture. Let’s all just wait a bit and we’ll see once the xpac comes out if what we’re guessing at is true or not.

apharma.3741:

Helly.2597:

Tyaen.5148:

I’m biased since I’ve Engi mained since launch. Scrapper is what I currently roam with.

Power HgH build. Fairly meta with some minor tweaks. Mobility is the big weakness, and coordinated small groups using the chain root will get you every time, but for the most part it’s strong. Nothing can beat you 1v1 and only a couple of builds that can work you to a draw.

Nothing can beat power scrapper 1v1? You get torn a new one by condi reapers. The reapers don’t even need to be good really. I think that every major roaming spec that is run currently can play scrapper to at least a draw.

Only condi reapers really hurt scrapers because of all the corrupts, however even then there’s very little a reaper can do to prevent you getting away in stealth, that’s without mentioning purge gyro will keep you in the fight for a while. Scrapper is a great roamed capable of winning or drawing many fights against many builds but it truly shines when fights scale up and turn into small team fights.

If an engineer stealth gyros I just Condi bomb on that and the scrapper usually will die unless they’re just full on running at that point.
I disagree completely with the scale up comment. Scrappers do not support as well as eles or guards, don’t damage as much as reapers or warriors, don’t harass and Chase as well as thieves and Mesmer’s. They’re a bit of everything and weak against the meta specs for roaming currently. They tail off extremely hard.

Tyaen.5148:

I’m biased since I’ve Engi mained since launch. Scrapper is what I currently roam with.

Power HgH build. Fairly meta with some minor tweaks. Mobility is the big weakness, and coordinated small groups using the chain root will get you every time, but for the most part it’s strong. Nothing can beat you 1v1 and only a couple of builds that can work you to a draw.

Nothing can beat power scrapper 1v1? You get torn a new one by condi reapers. The reapers don’t even need to be good really. I think that every major roaming spec that is run currently can play scrapper to at least a draw.

Crinn.7864:

snip

Unless I misheard WP he mentioned that the reaper change to deathly chill hadn’t been implemented yet in even that demo version. Previous leaks (largely correct from what I’ve seen) mention that deathly chill will be changed to do power damage each time chill is applied instead of bleeds.

EremiteAngel.9765:

Good fights as always. You guys really make it look easy.
And I used to think your opponents were easy.
But when I actually fought you guys, I realized I was as easy looking as those opponents on your video XD
Like my friend who always reminds me when I get critical of others, good players have a tendency to make their opponents look average.

Been wanting to ask though, your thoughts on what mix of classes would you recommend to have in a 5-man group comp for roaming and fighting outnumbered? I noticed at least in your latest video that you were without a Revenant which I’ve been hearing from others that they are one of the best class to have in a roaming party currently.

Haha thanks man.

As far as 5 man comp goes I think 3 spots are automatically taken with 2 hybrid/condi reapers and 1 ele. Usually the rest we fill with whatever we have online at the time, support guard is a good choice since it opens up easier rezzes and gives group stability. We also sometimes like having a boon share mes since it really ups the necro damage with the quickness it gives out. Condi revenant is probably one of the best to put into the comp, but we don’t always have our rev players online so that’s why you don’t always see them.

The best 5 man comps in my eyes currently for outnumbered are:
1. 2 necros, support ele, condi rev, support guard
2. 2 necros, support ele, boon share mes, support guard
3. 2 necros, support ele, boon share mes, condi rev

All 3 of those are tied for “best” comp currently. You still have a weakness to ranged pressure, but those group comps would allow for the largest groups to be taken on.

Also new video is now out.

Video 8

Hope everyone enjoys!

Tick.1605:

good stuff buds

Thanks Ticks. I appreciate it.

Coolguy.8702:

Except that Condi necro in spvp has low damage and rarely if ever gets to even 4k ticks. You play a lot of wvw and I’d agree with you in that game mode since deathly chill is broken there. The change should only be in spvp since deathly chill is only 1 bleed per chill and necro sustain is hilariously underpowered .

My argument is that making necro good at sustain simply isn’t how balance should work. You wouldn’t have a tradeoff for taking the trait. You would still do as much damage as you did before just now you have a huge sustain increase in shroud. I would rather this trait not be touched, and overall class dps gets toned down instead of just buffing sustain for every class. Then our sustain would be buffed simply because dps would be down across the board.

I understand the necro sustain in sPvP is tied extremely hard to the quality of the team around you, but I disagree that buffs like this are healthy for the game and favor a dps shave across the board instead.

Video 7 now out. As always feedback is welcome.

Enjoy.

Video 7

Jayce.5632:

Secondly, I see you’re on Ferguson’s Crossing. And from the sound of it, I had no idea you guys were facing off against the A.I. there. For that, I must apologize as I was primarily looking at the trait from a sPvP perspective. But I do step foot into WvW from time to time, and against Maguuma or Blackgate, I see actual players. The only time I see 5k+ condi ticks against 5+ targets is when I solo an undefended supply camp.

You do realize I have fought against every server in this game and every single one gets bombed the hell out by our conditions currently right? Hell I fought Mag last week and just like the rest of the servers they got hit by the 5k bleed ticks. Blackgate has some of the worst roamers I have never witnessed, I would say that I have video of me killing them but sadly they stopped trying to fight me and my guild a long time ago. Mag at least tries to, but doesn’t do a lot better overall.

It wouldn’t be balanced in SPvP either. Stop asking for buffs and start looking at ways to shave classes and nerf things to bring the sustain and damage in line.

Honestly you aren’t worth my time here man. Have a good day.

Jayce.5632:

A percentage of your condition damage heals you.
Percent: 10%
Percent: 3%-5% While in Shroud

Problem solved, and I’m not even on Anet’s team. Some synergy is still a lot better than no synergy at all. No other class in the game has to deal with conflicts of interests involving their class mechanic.

Thank goodness you aren’t on Anet’s balance team. Even 3% is insanity when I regularly see 5k plus tics on 5+ targets in WvW. That means I would have at minimum 2.5k healing per SECOND while my hp can’t even be touched. And then once I’m out I have even crazier regen (now 5k) and boom I’m using spectral armor to get my shroud back. You create a monster out there, even moreso since necros already are currently a juggernaut on the battlefield (in WvW especially).

This mindset of “let’s buff everything until everything is perfect and a must have trait” is just silly. Curses has 3 grandmasters which all currently have tradeoffs. You’re trying to make a trait that is simply superior to everything else we have.

You mention conflicts in traits, but really what you want to say is tradeoffs and counterplay. IF you take this trait, you acknowledge that you can’t just camp shroud (not that you should anyways but most necros seem to love to do that) and regen at the same time. Just because this small amount of timing and presence of mind is beyond you doesn’t mean you should buff an already viable trait to OP levels.

Making it work through shroud is not a good call. Would be difficult to balance and give anet a reason to lower our overall nuking ability/dps, since suddenly our dps would be tied to our sustain.

Currently if I put down ds5 and spin in it in wvw (assuming I used it at a good time), I would be healed up to full before I came out due to the number of people that are eating 5k+ bleed ticks. A full heal everytime ds5 and ds4 are up doesn’t really seem balanced to me. It is already a situationally strong trait especially in smaller group fights.

Necro is in a good place in WvW and SPvP, meta in both and overtuned (due to deathly chill) in WvW. Now is not the time to ask for buffs.

Annnd video 6 is out. Had some time to roam during the week which I normally can’t due to work. Any comments/questions/complaints/riddles are welcome.

Video 6

Dawdler.8521:

Helly.2597:

Deathly chill just needs a nerf back to where it was then necros will be fine. Heck I would support a buff to deathly chill that isn’t just a straight dps buff.

No it’s far more simple than that.

Deathly chill needs to be balanced for PvP in WvW.

It’s just 1 stack in sPvP yet 3 stacks in WvW which completely kitten up balance.

For people saying “huehue ranged counter them”, 1v1 isnt the issue. People can kite, people can fight and at the very least come close to killing necros. Sure some foes will snap like twigs but anti-condi builds can kill them. The issue is that their bleed damage become exponentially insane the more necros you throw into the mix. To equal the bleeding damage 20 zerg necros have today, you needed 60 necros prepatch. No zerg had that. Well unless maybe it was a necro raid but even then not everyone would run cancer build.

You do know that’s exactly what I said right just in a less condescending tone? Revert back means back to 1 stack like spvp has it currently.

Deathly chill just needs a nerf back to where it was then necros will be fine. Heck I would support a buff to deathly chill that isn’t just a straight dps buff.

The fact of the matter is, with DC as it currently is, in order to maximize dps a necro doesn’t need to even think. You can use all your shouts at basically the same time and then go into shroud and spam abilities. It is incredibly punishing to opponents without requiring skill on the necros part.

If anet doesn’t want to nerf deathly chill, then the condi stack limit needs to be looked at at least on players. The reason you see so many condi necros atm is a combination of the fact deathly chill is overtuned and that there isn’t any dps loss for just putting more necros into your group. They all end up increasing your damage output with no drop off.

Video 5 now is out. Mix of commentary and just clips. Let me know what you think as always.

Video 5-Commentary

Levijeh.9643:

There’s always people that finds a reason to discredit others inputs. If he’s successful using that build and you don’t it’s because he can and good for him, that’s why people asks him to show his build. I use a vanilla condi necro with some variations and I’m fighting a position to top 50 with that build so you don’t have to be a meta boy to perform well, keep up the good work mate.

While this isn’t exactly a straw man argument on your part it’s pretty kitten close.

No one is arguing he shouldn’t share his build. People are simply stating that his method for delivery reaked of simply wanting more people forced to watch the video. Why make a build video when you can just use the editor. Editor is neater and easier to gather the important information.

Honestly it just seems like you wanted to bring up how you’re getting close to top 50 on a core necro build and chose to do it by arguing something no one else was arguing.

miguelsil.6324:

i thimk condi damage should never be as efective as power because theres so many ways to avoid deny power damage unlike condis. know the classses and their rotations cleanses etc and you can get condis on people with100% duration that will burn them easily while you focus on defending urself or runnings away.

i guess thats why myself and most people say condi builds are cheese and easy mode, but sad truth we are being forced upon it.

I disagree with the thought that Condi should never be as effective as power, but I think condi is clearly overtuned currently in WvW. You shouldn’t be able to condi burst people 100-0 in a few seconds without having to be full glass, but with the balancing currently we see dire/TB specs bursting players down with conditions. The main offenders are the stat sets and the dramatic buffs anet made to conditions to make them viable in pve. I would fully support a reversion to a cap of 25 for damaging conditions in WvW along with a deathly chill nerf/tweak. It would make it so taking more and more condi classes isn’t beneficial.

I also think that if you have as much knowledge of the opponents classes as you attribute to that condi player that a burst player can be extremely impactful as well. The issue is more that atm a bad Condi player has a much larger impact than a bad burst player. And that needs to be addressed, whether it’s armour nerfs or trait changes to nerf Condi application.

miguelsil.6324:

The more i watch ur vids the more i think elementalists need the nerf hammer. Entertaining vid none the less with good gameplay.

Thanks.

I’m on the fence about an ele nerf right now. In larger fights and against the guilds we fight they usually have some support eles in there, but they either aren’t effective at healing so we can ignore them or you can just train them down and after their invuln and blink are gone they’re usually just food.

The biggest counters atm to ele are thief and condi necro which are huge parts of the roaming meta currently it seems. So the tools are out there. I view support ele as sort of like necro. If you ignore the class and focus something else or don’t handle it correctly, it is insanely strong. It easily swings fights onto the side that shouldn’t be winning (the outnumbered side). But it does have a huge lack of stability and without water up doesn’t have a ton of condi cleanse which can doom it.

Then again I think support ele is a huge reason why we have a prevalence of condition builds in the meta right now. The fact their prot gives -40% effectively counters most power burst specs and has promoted the condition builds that are popular right now. I think if you nerf support ele and condition builds (cough deathly chill), you might start seeing more power specs out there. That could be a very good thing.

But your reasons for making it a video instead of just a build link aren’t valid if those are your reasons…

Ralkuth.1456:

There are a lot of tasty comments over at the video. Nice gameplay again cheeky jumping.

Ele does an amazing job of keeping you up, the team coordinates to stomp and get you rallied, you have great positioning for your AoE spikes… and other stuff I might have missed.

Oh yeah, I saw a Charr Viper Necro crowd-diving, just when I thought I saw it all already. stares off into the distance

Some things I liked were the shroud swap bursts (as always), build changing, and the sneaky stealth Elite. Axe and GS aren’t bad weapons on their own, and is so much more effective in a group setting than scepter and staff due to the AoE boon corruption. The LF generation is also important, and we shouldn’t forget that Shroud has a 50% direct damage cut built-in, which can be considered to scale better the glassier you are and the more vitality you have.

Haha I was extra jumpy idk why. Probably cause the comp we were running was getting to my head making me think we were invincible (which wasn’t really entirely untrue).

This video is really on the supports for the fights. No way we pull off most of those fights without some really good play from Thorp (ele) and Punch (guard). Looking back at the fights I made a lot of mistakes, but they covered for me and let us win the fights.

The build changing and fact that we have multiple weapon sets that pair well with hybrid builds (staff/gs/axe all go well with scp/wh) really is an underrated aspect of necro imo. Not many other classes have so many choices in a single build itself for weapons each fulfilling a slightly different need. They also both have great lf generation (as you mention) with axe 2 and gs 3, which allows for you to do those dives in to punish the opponents (as you mentioned as well). I personally find staff extremely lackluster in those situations since you end up using the marks on the opponents clump and then you stand there saying to yourself “Now what.” Even moreso if you don’t have shroud up.

You can also see the disadvantages of some of the builds as well. The fight at desert swt against the guild group that consisted entirely of guards/revs/necros was not the fight to be using the signet build (in fairness we hadn’t seen that group on the map before). The signet build shines in duo/trio roaming where you are facing 5-6 at a time. If you position yourself poorly (of which I am entirely at fault for for that fight), you get punished hard on it. If I hadn’t been a dumbo and really thought through my approach to that fight, the build would have worked fine but with my headon approach it was punished by the opponents (thank you Punch, Loyal, and LSD for carrying me).

New video is now out! Only group roaming this time. We were running a bit more than we normally would, but we got some good fights in against guild groups and larger groups.

Video 4

Crinn.7864:

No Geomancy and Hydromancy are (or were in the case of sPvP) extremely strong sigils when playing against players. Why? Because weapon swaps are instant which means the sigils can be used as part of low-telegraph burst combos.

Also entering shroud counts as a weapon swap so you can combine geo/hydro sigils with on-shroud procs to create a very nasty instant burst. (in fact there used to be a meta build that exclusively focused on doing exactly that)

Crinn is right here imo. In WvW the hydro and Geo are still stronger than ice. And torment is better than ice for exactly the points that are made that ice is good. I’d much rather have that cover Condi so my bleeds and chill don’t get cleansed instead of just more chill.

And honestly for good players having control over the proc when using hydro and geo is very important since as Crinn mentions you can set up instant burst combos without having to count on rng. Considering my WvW roaming build is more or less a viper variant of that spvp build Crinn references I can speak towards hydro and Geo’s effectiveness in WvW.

Julius Seizure.4985:

First, let me say those videos were well done. You had some excellent team play/comps with your allies and good solo fights as well.

But man, Deathly Chill is just so broken in WvW… Enjoy it for now— I’m still shocked it hasn’t been given the PvP treatment after all this time.

Thanks!

And I couldn’t agree more. When they made the change I told my guildies I bet it lasts 1 week before they patch it. Yet they seem to think its ok that I can do a swap combo and get 25 stacks of bleed in 1s. I understand why it needed a buff for PvE, but anet should just revert it to pvp levels in WvW. I actually really like their leaked change for the expansion for deathly chill, assuming the new spec gave some average/decent condi options.

Ralkuth.1456:

I wonder if anyone can be fast enough mechanically to Shroud 2 counter Ranger LB knockback.

I’ve seen this twice in sPvP but I’m not sure if he had stab from Foot in the Grave, but he was definitely reacting.

Honestly it isn’t that difficult to dodge it if you’re focusing on the ranger. If anything dodging it is the better option than going into shroud and getting 3 off in time (though it would be fairly impressive if you could do that on a regular basis.

Ralkuth.1456

Snip

I barely even have a comment. Again your analysis and write-up is spot on.

I’m always shocked with players who underestimate and play down necro strengths in fights. You would think people would know better at this point. The players who eat my GS pull and don’t punish my shroud flashes are sadly the majority of players.

Necro ele pairs extremely well due to the reason you mention along with the synergy with aura sharing frost aura. The aura punishes people such as rangers who just ping away at you while the bleeds stack up.

New video is up, hopefully everyone enjoys. As before, this commentary isn’t so much focused on the individual skills I use but instead focused on what I’m thinking in the fights and why I move certain ways.

Video 3-Commentary

Josh.4016:

I’m probably missing something, but why not use the chill sigil to get 3 stacks when we chill instead of geomancy?

Geo is an AOE and has a lower cd. Ice isn’t as popular due to its 10s icd which really limits it. I would prefer torment over ice since it is lower cd and an AOE proc plus a new cover Condi. In additional Geo is a longer duration bleed than the chill applies.

flow.6043:

Oh look, it’s our monthly “pls fix my twitchy fingers by nerfing the class”-thread.

Was buy one get one free this month with two in a week.

Justine.6351:

I tried signet corrupts but people around me were dying like flies so I had to go shout trooper. Nothing Can Save You! is pretty crazy.

Haha well people dying like flies isn’t a bad thing. I do love that shout too, shreds dhs with the rip and unblockable. My only qualm with it (and why you don’t see it often in my vids) is that it isn’t a true corrupt. You only get the vuln stacks from it, which is one reason why I love the locust signet since it has basically the same function, but corrupts and can act as a secondary heal if you hit three or more with it.

Ralkuth.1456:

Video 2 @12:45, aerial sneak attack on Necro. This is how you NvN boys, you out-thief and jump that kitten with a giant scythe. #subtlety

Signet build has truly disgusting corrupt output (most of the video consists of people going from yellow -> red -> dead, great focus from your team), and that snazzy might is just icing. In fact I’ll call you a walking font of corruption right now. It looks pretty unforgiving to pilot though.

Charging into mobs like that, does your Ele suffer from frequent heart attacks?

Nice video again. Gotta mention good target calls.

What’s your favourite class/spec to explode with your corrupts?

Haha. Yeah I personally love the signet build, absolutely destroys certain classes if you time things right. It is fairly rough if I solo roam and there are a lot of thieves out, since the fact you’ve got so many corrupts means nothing. Group fights, if I position well it really does well since as you mention it lets us call a target and just blow it up through burst and corrupts quickly. Not always easy, but its one of my favorite builds ingame.

Haha I think Thorp should hate me for how often I charge in like that, but most of the time he’s encouraging it so maybe he just likes the pain of having to support me.

Warrior without a doubt is my favorite class to blow up especially with the signet build. They all think they’re invincible with their pretty little stances then boom suddenly they’re dead and don’t know what happened.

eden.5796:

snip

Thanks and welcome back!

For the gear, short answer is I don’t have a good reason for not using full viper for everything.

Long answer is I have values in my head for each of the stats. In this case, I have personal values that I wanted to have for prec first (~20%) and then I wanted a power stat around 2k without might. I hit the prec mark through the viper gear I have then I was free to put in more carrion gear (great since the vit effectively has double the impact due to shroud). Then I put just a few tankier pieces mainly for the vit and some token toughness. The Dire/rabid ring was what put me at the right crit value which is really why it was kept.

Well… new video is out. Somehow had some good fights immediately after I made that previous one so decided to toss a new one together.

Video 2