Guild Wars 2

Necros need serious changes right now. And for those of you hoping the next expansion fixed the problems, I don’t share your optimism.

Necros are forced into taking two traitlines: Reaper and Soul Reaping. Nec is essentially unplayable without them. You need the survivability from SR. Also, Reaper shroud is so much better than Death Shroud that there really is no contest between the two. Death and blood are both jokes right now because the Necro has NO survivability outside of shroud.

So now that you’ve been forced into two traitlines, you have one degree of freedom. But we all know that you’re choosing either Spite or Curses. Blood’s life steal is far too impotent to take, and Death gives you the illusion of survivability. Death also centers around minion-based builds that don’t cut it in spvp.

If you go Spite, you’re probably in a power build; with Curses you’re in a condi-based build. With both options, you’re only option for stability is RS 3. If you go foot in the grave, you tale a serious DPS decrease for quite frankly a medicre GM trait. I don’t know anyone who makes that sacrifice.

As a Power necro, you can take wells. But you don’t have the Blood traitline to decrease their cooldown. Because you have few stunbreaks (with your lack of stab) you are forced to take those for utilities. Condi doesn’t lend itself to wells because now you don’t have the dps to justify them. So because you need a stun break, plague signet is a no-brainer.

All of this is to say is that Necro has no build diversity at all. And the builds we’re forced to use underperform because our high hp pool is misinterpreted as survivability in the HOT world of power creep.

So I’m with others: My Necro is shelved.

Ralkuth.1456:

Crinn.7864:

Yeah, with necro you basically have to go full glass all the time.

I’ve been kitten ing around with this. Obviously it’s paladin so the dps is meh, but it’s got the debuff and boon corrupt spam of ye ‘ole procmancer with the sustain of blighter’s boon.

I’ll have to try it sometime.

I went the opposite direction from your concept with this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBHhF6kZTo2GscTwbTgeTsgLYxVxuYYE6qFAaBUdh2wzC-TpRWABEfCAg+BAU6RAAg9HS+QAARZAA

I dream of landing a Quickness Gravedigger, but in reality those are few and far between.

When you mentioned corrupt + sustain I thought it would be Curses/SR/Reaper, but I guess I just need to learn how to grow some balls and take off Soul Reaping. Curses screws with everyone, so it’s good for your survival, in a way.

I find myself dissatisfied with Necro because of our reliance on Soul Reaping. I’ve tried playing without it, but it just doesn’t work out for me too well. Necro is already a punching a bag; without SR, you’re in trouble. You can go zerk, but what’s the point? Other classes play zerk much better and have safer builds.

The bigger problem seems to be that it’s not converting boons to conditions properly. Can anyone else confirm this?

I’m not surprised. As for myself, I look at the forums to see what (if anything) is changing post-patch, but I’ve still largely moved on from GW2 for now. I think a lot of this has to do with the last balance patch. After months of waiting, it was really just a bunch of uninspired shaves to CDs and damage modifiers. I just find the whole combat system to be out of control, which ruins pvp for me. Between the crazy number of boons and condis, the game-breaking passive effects, and AOE spam, it’s just no longer a combat system that interests me. No patches have really addressed these core problems, so unfortunately I think that GW2 has gone in a direction that most of us don’t care for anymore. These core issues are glaringly obvious in spvp, and so the population takes a hit.

On top of this, as others have said we’re between seasons so people have little incentive to overlook these flaws and to pvp. I suspect that if we had a great balance patch, pvp would be jumpin’. People would be experimenting with builds and happy to mess around with the changes. But there is no sense of experimentation right now, no excitement between seasons. (I actually think the devs know this, which is why they now want to look at sigils.)

Tbh, I just think the whole system is at the point where it’s reached critical mass. It’s got to be largely overhauled, with major changes to the functionality of skills that give classes their identities back. Boons should be powerful but not spammy (same for condis), passives with no counterplay have to be replaced, AOE skills redone to increase their risk/reward, many weapon sets redone to reduce skill spam (e.g., I would reconceptualize the Necro’s staff), and big nerfs to elite specs and buffs to core builds with corresponding reductions in the need for mindless AOE spam in pve metas.

TLDR: Pvp is self-sustaining if the combat is fun and engaging. GW2’s trajectory over the years has been hurting pvp, the players know it, and they’re leaving. The only way to fix this is with substantial changes addressing core combat/balance issues.

Condis are still very strong. Right now, the Necro is the problem because it’s essentially a free kill in pvp. Most other classes, like Warriors, have better condi output and condi defense than the necro. So the Necro has no real role right now except boon control, which other classes can do without being a liability to the team.

choovanski.5462:

SteepledHat.1345:

BrotherBelial.3094:

If you are getting killed by heaps, then you need to learn how to kite, or stop trying to facetank. It will not work.

Kiting around point as the score ticks. No other class has this level of control over a point.

good thing you can just dodge roll and stand inside ToF… which is the main trap you see.

also dude, you ever heard of necro wells?

Necro wells? You’ve GOT to be kidding.

Karl McLain.5604:

Kuya.6495:

Karl McLain.5604:

For those asking about it: We’ll be keeping tabs on a few of the buff (+nerf) splits and will take them into other parts of the game in future updates, as is seen fitting.
Thanks for your continued feedback!

-Karl

While you’re here:

Are there also skill changes for warrior, necromancer and ranger coming next week as well? The skill balance preview didn’t include them so i assume they won’t be receiving changes on this specific patch?

I’m always here.
This update featured very directed changes with PvP specifically being the target, to herald in the new season and shake things up a bit. It’s not a full balance update and not all professions are being covered at this time.
Does this update substitute for a full balance update? No. We’ll still be doing game-wide balance updates in the future, in which case you’ll probably see a full spectrum of changes.

-Karl

Thank you for communicating so openly with us. I think my concern is that the necromancer’s current performance appears to be perceived very differently from the devs vs the players. As an example, during the last patch, the notes stated that “We feel that necromancers have been faring quite well gamewide…” Quite a difference from how many Necros on these forums appear to believe! Indeed, Necro viability in raids is concerning outside of epidemic use, and without a coordinated team, Necros in pvp are often free kills.

Are you willing to discuss with the Necro community your current thoughts on the class and the future balance directions you have in mind? For example, are you happy that we can’t dish out condis as well as other classes outside of epidemic in some context-dependent fights? Are you happy with the performance of axe? Do you think our elites are on par with other classes’?

Keep up the good work and thanks again for communicating with us.

Thank you! I think splitting the skills is the right direction to go in, and I’m glad you’re taking the comments from the pvp community seriously.

Super excited about the new season now.

If there’s anything this topic has shown, it’s that the pvp community does not trust the devs. The disconnect between the pvp team and the balance team is and always will be the problem here. No changes to matchmaking will change that.

That said, since thoughtful class balancing appears to be asking a lot, I appreciate the time the pvp devs have put into the changes, and I look forward to not playing my necro while I give them a try.

I don’t want Core harder, but I do wish it were as profitable as HoT. I’d love to mess around in the older zones and make some money.

I think bringing back SoloQ is a great idea, especially for boosting pvp numbers again. After reintroducing it, it might then be possible to add 5-player queues later on for more organized parties. I think the priority should be getting our players back, and SoloQ will do it.

Happened to a group of us in Fractals. People were either stuck in the Mistlock Observatory or stuck in Lion’s Arch. I can log in now but I can’t play.

Permafrost.2695:

Here’s the thing: it’s only displaced resentment. The resentment itself is completely warranted. Why would anyone be pleased with the fact that we’re back in a system that was already deemed to be inferior and thus rejected?

WvW got polls for this type of thing. However, sPvP still lives in the dark age where we’re forced to endure a reversion—and only on a 1-day notice. Shameful development practices.

Anyone internal can see the true age of my account. Let’s just say I’ve seen it all for GW2 and this is the nadir of how the development team has treated the players—especially when they seemingly already learned their lessons and tried to fix their practices!

The current leadership just can’t seem to help itself.

And what good did those polls do? Wvw is basically unplayable for some servers, now that some servers are grouped with others.

We don’t need polls. We need balance. For way too long ANET has been attempting to balance this game without going through the challenge of actually balancing it (eg, removing amulets, nerfing runes, removing certain maps, etc.). I mean the original RotC map was despised for underwater combat that ANET couldn’t figure out how to balance. So their solution was to scrap the map. Imo, it doesn’t seem like ANET has the resources to balance this game properly. Because the idea that you can do a massive number of changes every few months to achieve balance is laughable.

We all know this, and ANET rarely communicates with us about balance (except to remind us the pvp team has nothing to do with balance!). So it’s no wonder why players are salty.

I agree. In my opinion it all comes down to balance. Simply, they don’t balance often enough. What’s worse is that when balance is attempted, ANET balances pvp and pve game modes with the same skills across each mode. The power creep is absolutely fine for pve’s new and challenging encounters. But in pvp it just doesn’t work because pvp encounters are fundamentally different. so when we tone something down in pvp, it hurts pve and vise versa.

Tried these builds and they’re a lot of fun. I don’t know though. I really like chrono because I get moa on a short cooldown with continuum split. Shield is also crazy powerful, offering tons of on-point survivability when paired with sword. And the condi removal and healing from Inspiration is just too hard for me to give up right now.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

Thanks for the response and the clarification. By with respect, how is the pvp team not involved with balance? The pvp team should be in the best position to handle balance, right?

I just don’t get it.

For those of you who think HoT is the problem, think again. Maybe of us pvp veterans were told that HoT was the solution with the addition of more cleanses and more boons, but that clearly hasn’t helped. So the problem existed well before HoT.

The first problem is that gw2 hands out conditions, boons, and passive abilities like candy, which encourages passive, sloppy play. Not to mention, condis (or boons in other metas) are far more potent than the condi cleanses/boon stripping used to control them.

Second, conquest maps are garbage. They discourage actual pvp by emphasizing point captures instead of player interaction. And with no SoloQ, teams are inherently imbalanced in terms of coordination. Courtyard might not have been such a terrible map if it were always 5 random players vs 5 random players. There is absolutely no variety. And it takes ANET a long time before scrapping bad ideas. I don’t even queue for Stronghold anymore.

Third, ANET is attempting the impossible by keeping pvp and pve skills the same. The game modes are completely different. Having dozens of stacks of boons in pve is fine for some of GW2’s epic content, but that just does not work in pvp. Splitting these skills is the ONLY way to keep the power creep under control. Otherwise, when you nerf something in pvp, it needlessly suffers in pve, too. Similarly, buffing underused skills in pve dramatically alters balance in pvp. This couldn’t be demonstrated more than with the “balance” in wvw. It’s non-existent. Spvp is better-balanced, but the more a pvp mode resembles pve, the more the balance suffers because the skills you’re given in pve are meant for fundamentally different encounters.

Fourth, and worst of all, balance doesn’t happen often enough. These quarterly updates are great for content, but balance requires shaving. You CANNOT balance everything in one go every few months. There are way too many variables for that to be effective. Worse still is that you may inadvertently neuter a build or class (like Eles), forcing players to wait for months before changes are made.

I have a lot of respect for GW2, but this balance philosophy has been ruining GW2 for a long time.

EDIT: I should add that class roles also overlap way too much. If it were up to me, I’d rethink what roles I want each class to have and redesign the class around those roles. For example, if Necros are supposed to be the kings of conditions, why can every other class dish out more condi damage than the necro? You might argue Necros are supposed to be the Kings of condi transfers, but then what good is that in pve? The class roles are so blurry right now that many classes can dish out tons of boons or conditions, with the only “role” for a class almost relegated to ONE skill (e.g., Mesmers as portal bots).

I actually don’t have a problem with wvw/pve skills being the same because Wvw is more about larger scale combat, so changes to retaliation (and Mesmer skills that caused confusion to large numbers of players in the distant past) were important. I’m not saying wvw can’t benefit from a skill split, but I think it’s a lower priority than spvp. Given ANET’s limited resources, wvw skill splitting would be a lot of work and wouldn’t necessarily address the real problems with wvw (e.g., giant blobs, server linking, glicko ratings).

I was out of WvW for a while and decided to come back to see what was going on, especially since they vowed (again) to increase communication with all of the wvw changes. There are clear problems with the linking, but what makes me angry is ANET’s complete silence. They once again demonstrated their inability to communicate with their player base.

It seems like they go through phases where for a few weeks they decide to communicate. Then we get radio silence for extended periods of time, followed by a detailed apology with a promise to increase communication, then back to silence, etc.

I’d have more respect for ANET if they just once said that something is not working as intended and tried to fix it BEFORE people protest with hundreds of forum threads. But this is tough to do when ANET’s business model capitalizes on the money gained in gem purchases for transfers.

Liston.9708:

Nuzt.7894:

What date?

We’ve only been back a couple days so all we know is it’s every two weeks. So seeing as how the link was there before reset is it safe to assume the new linking will be next reset ?

On another note, why did they bother with linking?
Why didn’t they just merge servers so it wasn’t as chaotic?
Recruiting is a nightmare because of Linking.
I just don’t get the thought process behind this brainchild.

we are 2 weeks into an 8 week link.

There was a vote to keep linking or dump it and “keep” won. there was another vote for how long to keep links. 1 month was the ‘most popular’ (not a majority) choice of 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 4 months, or 6 months. It was not overwhelming, so Anet did some averaging of votes to come up with 2 months. Some were ok with the averaging and some thought it was a way for Anet to avoid more work since Anet originally proposed 3 months…

And then there was the dbl votes…..

Was there an option for no linking at all? Lol as an outsider it just seems weird. I’m in Darkhaven and our two matchups have three and four servers. There’s almost never a time when we are outnumbered, and there are so many enemy players it’s even tough to roam.

We seriously have to wait that long? Man I came to wvw because spvp was a mess. But here I find that wvw is in even worse shape.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Aidan Savage.2078:

How close is the dev team to leaving in such “nerfs” just to rightfully spite a segment of this game’s community?

Not close at all. Our devs are professionals, and they want what’s best for the game and the community at large. I think I understand what you’re asking, but honestly, we try very hard to look beyond the form of messaging to the content, and we work with that as much as possible.

My comments were, again, on a personal level. I do believe our community is the best in the business, but I recognize also that sometimes some players lose sight of the big picture, and sometimes they post imprudently or impulsively and I just firmly believe we can do better, as a whole.

Bottom line: I’m asking everyone to try very hard to share input, feedback, even complaints (and yes, we do allow those ) in the most meaningful way possible. I know I might use “constructive” a lot, but really, that’s what it’s all about!

Look, I’ve been around since before the beginning—when GW2 was beta testing. This community started strong and then communication issues started happening. That’s NOT the players’ fault. And it’s not the players’ fault that they believe the only way to get attention to real issues is through toxic forum posts.

So I’m glad you’re setting a great example for people of what conduct should look like on the forums. But if you want the GW2 community to improve, it needs to happen because there is mutual trust between ANET and its player base. Right now, it’s not there. And while in the past ANET has sworn to give its players better communication, that just hasn’t happened.

I’m hearing a great deal of frustration. Between class balance, build diversity, more raid content, and today’s patch with skins that can only be obtained through MORE rng, I can see how this bug could bring players to their breaking point. Now Im not excusing toxicity; there’s a forum code of conduct, and it’s there for a reason. But asking players to ignore all the underlying reasons for that toxicity—most of which is ANET’s doing through its own inability to model GOOD communication—is a low blow.

So please keep up the good work and spread the message to your colleagues, too.

Agree with OP, but the solution is much more complex than he makes it out. As long as pve and pvp skills are the same, then nerfs to pvp will generally nerf pve, too. As a pvp and a pve player, I cheer when a nerf happens in pvp to something obviously strong (like Deathly Chill), but then I shudder at the nerf in pve bc from a pve perspective it seems ham-fisted.

ANET is attempting to balance these skills across both game modes simultaneously and it just doesn’t work that way. There’s a reason GW1 had split skills.

It had to be done; DC was pretty potent. But it didn’t have to be gutted, which is what ANET did to the skill. It’s almost useless in pvp now and it’s a grandmaster trait.

TD frustrated the hell of me at first, but I have to say, no map made me say “wow” as much as TD. It’s just so kitten beautiful.

I want more maps like TD IF they can make it more navigable. The minimap is almost no help at all. The other problem is that the mobs are tough, and their difficulty actually punishes exploration.

So overall, TD is easily one of my favorites.

paperclip.7014:

Stuck on : defeated the Blighted Pale Tree, Reality Rift does nothing! what a bug mess.
starting to regret my buy!

I came across this thread using Google for the same issue. I took down the Blighted Pale Tree and now I can activate the Rift endlessly without anything actually happening.

The reason you might have a hard time finding open world builds is because you can pretty much do what you want in open-world, especially with a Reaper. Condi is fine for open world and you’ll find lots of condi builds if you search the forums a bit. The most accessible gear for a condi build is full rabid. As you progress through HoT, you can switch to Viper gear.

If you go zerker, you can make yourself a full glass cannon, but you sacrifice lots of survivability. In my opinion, the best option is a zerker minion master build like the one we talked about here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Reaper-Minion-Guide/first#post6116670

It combines the necro’s survivability skills in blood and death magic with minions and berserker gear. But it might feel a little… clunky… until you get Reaper Shroud.

When I first started in HoT, I got all of the hero points in central tyria first. Using maps online it only took a few hours. Then when I went into HoT I had most of the Reaper unlocked. I started with a Rabid, minionmancer condi build then when I unlocked Rise I switched to a zerker minionmancer build.

By the way, you can always mix in stats for more defense. You don’t need to max your damage in open world, so you can mix in cavalier or Valk gear.

WereDragon covered it really well. I run almost the exact same thing, but I prefer a Greatsword. I’m not sure why, as it took some getting used to, but Gravedigger does massive damage when you are full zerk and it’s spammable when you hit an enemy with less than 50% hp. With GS 4, 3, 2 and Shroud 4 & 1 our aoe is simply sick. And best of all, it’s low risk. I then use an axe/warhorn as a swap. The secondary set is really just for longer fights, though. Locust swarm builds life force pretty quickly and the axe I just use for axe 2 and a couple auto attacks before switching back to GS unless I need the axe’s range. I use runes of the scholar for that 10% boost; they were well worth the price tag.

Btw, I’ve also tried minions with sinister gear and valk gear. In valk, you’re basically unkillable, but you sacrifice a lot of DPS for extra survivability that imo you don’t really need. In sinister, with some changes to playstyle and a focus more on condi, you have some advantages against foes in Heart of Thorns with higher toughness. The problem for me with sinister though was that my dps was only as good as zerker in longer fights when those conditions could really tick. Now Sinister let me do some pretty sick epidemics in HOT, but idk if that’s worth the ease and convenience of zerker gear since I can handle large groups with zerker just as well. I didn’t get a chance to use Viper, which would be better in longer fights with its expertise, but you’d still have the condition ramp-up time to deal with.

So right now in zerker gear, I can kill some things with a gravedigger+auto attack while my minions do the rest in much less time than if I had to wait for conditions to tick. So bc it saves me time and it’s better all-around for most encounters, I recommend zerker.

Def don’t use staff unless you’re running a condition build. It’s damage is pitiful.

I second the awesomeness of the scaling system. Sometimes I don’t even think it scales ENOUGH.

Without a scaling system, you get WoW: A collection of nice, fun, and nostalgic early areas that are basically forgotten unless you are flying over them. Now I do think ANET can do even more to take us back to some of that early content, but with scaling in place, they have more options for revisiting these old areas.

They got me back, too. Now I only hope we don’t have a wait a few months to see updates to the balance changes they’ve made. Balance seems to happen so slowly. I’d rather more frequent shaves and changes than a ton of changes all at once.

It was already announced: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Upcoming-changes-in-Spring-Quarterly-Update

Warhorn and locust can safely supplement almost any build. I use a Dhuumfire burn build for pve with locust and warhorn and it’s ridiculously easy.

I posted about this a while back here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Communicating-with-us/first#post5287244

What’s sad is that at one point the devs communicated with us quite well. Now it happens in hiccups—we get a burst of activity and then they disappear. Every once in a while we even get a pledge from them that they’ll do better, lol. It’s very frustrating.

Apolo.5942:

Javonovich.5280:

See this is why we PVPers get so angry. The elephant in the room here is why being a solo player immediately puts us at a disadvantage by matching us against premades (and by giving premades such a huge advantage themselves). And yet despite your glued eyes to the feedback on forums and social media websites, you continue to ignore what the community sees as a very serious problem.

Im of 2 minds about this, first you are completely right in what you stated, on the other hand i just dont think this game is popular enough to support 2 queues, as a profesional programmer my self i can tell you that separating the queues is trivial technically if the soft has any cense to it (which given anets track record is a big if), so its not a matter of whether they can do it, but whether the population can support it.

I get the logistical problems of it. The irony here is that Anet is on an uncomfortable spiral. Most people want soloq, which Anet has staunchly opposed for a while now because there aren’t enough players. Yet most pvp players play soloq, so in its absence they leave the game after being wronged by bad matching algorithms. Then with fewer players overall matchmaking worsens for everyone, PVPers complain more, and Anet ignores them on the issue of soloq because there aren’t enough players (who Anet alienated to begin with). As a result, more players leave… Etc.

So I get it—not enough players increases queue time and there are all kinds of problems with undermining teams of 2 and 3, as well. But to be honest, it’s hard to tell if they are being transparent with the problems of soloq. Anet has a history of staunchly defending some of the worst of pvp, including Skyhammer. It was only until people cried about it on the forums 12x daily that we finally saw something done. So honestly, idk if this is a genuine problem with soloq or another example of ANET’s bullish stubbornness to admit they were wrong.

Either way, they’ve failed to handle the community’s responses/concerns on this issue, and that’s bad for all PVPers because we need a united community with a strong player base.

See this is why we PVPers get so angry. The elephant in the room here is why being a solo player immediately puts us at a disadvantage by matching us against premades (and by giving premades such a huge advantage themselves). And yet despite your glued eyes to the feedback on forums and social media websites, you continue to ignore what the community sees as a very serious problem.

Thank you! These horrible balance changes mean that I’ll get plenty of time to play other stuff around the holidays. It’s actually refreshing to have GW2 off the table.

Depends on what kind of condi build you’re running. I’m running a burn condi build with sinister, dhuumfire, and balth runes, so I spam RS #1. With the might and vulnerability I cause, I get consistent burn ticks well over 4k without food. If I get quickness, ticks over 7k are trivially easy. Not to mention the raw damage from my autos. When I run out of life force, a few shouts plus a little greatsword play is often enough to fill the LF bar completely. For this build, I use reaper’s onslaught because deathly chill would give me less damage then the faster application of burn.

Now my friend uses a more all-purpose condi build. He still runs Dhuumfire, but he doesn’t spam RS #1, he spams scepter auto while waiting for his rotation cooldowns.

Honestly, I think I pull more dps with the caveat that I’m usually in melee range. Also, I’m more susceptible to CC because I use burn almost exclusively.

Another consideration about deathly chill is that you have to be the one to apply chill in order to get that damage. Once chill is overridden by an ally, your trait isn’t doing damage until you reapply it. So deathly chill gets substantially weaker in group fights.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Obtena.7952:

I guess it depends what question you’re trying to answer. I won’t deny you can get more condi damage adding another condition and using traits to support it. My big issue is that the build is rather forced into service instead of something that feels more natural. I’ve looked at the ‘reaper condi’ question myself; I concluded something similar to what you’ve demonstrated and speak of. For me, there is too much ‘stuff’ dedicated to a too small part of your damage. Min/maxing, you’re right on the money; squeeze every little bit from whatever you can.

But it’s just the little bit extra that we need — and the cost isn’t very high, either.

For Condi, you really only have a choice between 4 lines: Curses, Spite, Soul Reaping, and Reaper. Blood doesn’t have very much synergy and Death is all defensive. The Scepter has pretty terrible LF generation, so Soul Reaping is kinda necessary to bolster it (plus Soul Reaping is just a good traitline overall and comes with Dhuumfire to boot). Curses is the condi traitline so, tuning issues aside, let’s say it’s a shoe-in for your build.

This leaves you choosing between Spite and Reaper. Spite does give Reaper a run for it’s money: the Might and Vuln are really helpful, plus there’s some spare boon corruption tucked in here and there, but ultimately, I still think Reaper wins out. You still get some Might, but you also get more Life Force as well as the extra damage condition. All in all, I’d eyeball the two as pretty similar in efficacy here.

What really puts Reaper over the top, IMO, are the changes to Death Shroud. 1 cleaves naturally and has a much faster attack speed, making Dhuumfire much easier to apply en masse. 2 gives us the engage/disengage we really need, but the Blind can also proc chill (giving you extra damage). 3 is obviously notable for being our best source of Stability, but it also turns into an AoE double-nuke thanks to the free Chill on Fear. 4 smokes Death Shroud’s 4 for condi builds by a very wide margin, and 5 again helps apply that nice Chill damage.

Also, Chill to the Bone is a really good ult. I don’t find myself using Shouts very much as a Condi Reaper, but Chill to the Bone is a lot of damage, perfect when I don’t need the Flesh Golem to distract people.

Have you actually tried out Condi Reaper?

I’m seeing two condi builds. The first is a Reaper condi build and then second is a Burnmancer

On a burnmancer, my dilemma is actually between Spite and Curses, since I think Reaper Shroud is too good to give up, and that in turn essentially requires Soul Reaping for LF generation and Dhuumfire. The vulnerability that you get from Spite plus the increased might generation and Close to Death seems like a lot to give up for Barbed Precision in Curses. Lingering curses is only useful if you are applying conditions while using the scepter, so that won’t help a burnmancer.

I’d keep this distinction in mind if you are deciding between the two condition-type builds that we have.

I prefer to play condi more than power, but the encounter (discussed above already) really dictates which is better. In general, for the HoT content I’m finding condi more potent. The thing about condi is that you’ll be good in most encounters (slightly less efficient than power, but still good), and excellent in the longer ones. With power, short encounters go by very fast, but some encounters may be annoying to extremely difficult, especially if an enemy has high toughness.

Hammerguard.9834:

It’s more about the pugs vs premade than the skill level. Abjured isn’t the only team that’s going to demolish pugs. There’s nothing to take away from matches like these. They aren’t something you can learn from. It’s just slaughter.

Even when you’re in a 1v1 or 2v2 with them inwhich you could learn something, they out-rotate the hell out of your team and end up +1 or 2’ing. You end up with nothing to show for it.

This.

And the idea that leagues will fix this is absurd. What does MMR even mean when you are a solo player against premades? The truth is that spvp is hostile to solo players, it’s been that way for a while now, and it doesn’t appear to be changing.

Agreed. Haven’t played real spvp for a couple weeks, so I gave it a shot today. Almost every game was a loss, and they weren’t even close. Not to mention the constant premades. I think we need to accept that spvp is not for solo players. ANET has been loud and clear on this point.

Warscythes.9307:

Condi Reaper is one of the top builds right now, don’t know exactly what you are doing, especially after they buffed deathly chill we are a really strong condi class in PvP.

Also take flesh wurm if you want disengage.

What’s the typical condi build now with reaper?

The prob I’m having with this build is that the life force generation is pretty low. Swapping curses for soul reaping has helped me out a bit.

+1 VERY tired of this. For me, luck is much worse. I use my artificer and still might have 200 essences to click through. It’s so bad that I dread having to click through my inventory.

You can do quite a bit without the expansion. In fact, it’s easy to get lost in the possibilities. So far I haven’t really touched the new expansion content even though I bought it. Take your time, complete all the maps, and if you still like the game get the expo. You’ll be nicely set up for it since you’ll have lots of hero points.

Thanks for the faceroll examples. Is condi doomfire faceroll enough, too?

For those of you going condi without burn, have you noticed increased dps without burn or is the dps comparable and the playstyle just a little different?

What is this face roll build that everyone is using to dominate the jungle? Bc I sure could use some help!

Engi is amazing for condi, but I’m not sure if condi is worth it with HoT out now. I ran Engi until HoT then switched to a zerker Mes to take advantage of the chronomancer’s new skill set. Even though I’m zerker I think I’m pulling as much dps with more survivability then I had before thanks to Chrono’s shield and wells.

I’ve thought about going condi Chrono but I can’t shake the feeling that conditions are slower for pve solo play when I can vaporize most regular mobs with simple shatters.

When you use the “playable” mark it only downloads so much and requires additional downloads as needed. For example, if you go into game with “playable” and then want to go to Dredgehaunt Cliffs, when you click the WayPoint the game might tell you that the map needs to be downloaded first. Then if you want to go to Kessex Hills, you might need to download that map, too. I’m not sure if anything is further downloaded in the background, but you don’t have to download anything again if you already got it.

Has anyone tried old map events to get this stuff? Not sure how efficient this is yet.