Showing Posts For Mackster.9726:
Don’t worry too much about specific builds when leveling. Honestly, almost any build should work up through 80.
Minions are actually pretty good for leveling, as they offer some decent damage and protection. You could also focus on power and use the dagger (high DPS) or axe (safer). Or go condition damage and use the scepter. Either way, staff should probably always be one of your weapons. An important thing to know about minions is that they aren’t meant to do everything for you, they more support you while you do your thing, so you need to be doing damage alongside them.
I haven’t tried swapping weapons, but I have noticed that exiting DS seems to trigger weapon swap sigils, which I hadn’t noticed occurring before. Maybe they modified the way Death Shroud works.
The underwater life blast still transfers conditions right? That right there is what I think might make it too powerful on land. I always carry two condition cleansers on my weapons (staff and dagger 4) as well as Consume Conditions and occasionally Plague Signet. Adding a condition transfer in Death Shroud, I think that the necro would simply have too much condition control. It’s more balanced underwater because you don’t have cleanses on the weapons.
The most popular stats for condition build seems to be the Cond/Prec/Tough gear (Rabid Gear). The problem is that it can’t be crafted and I think there isn’t exotic level accessories with those stats (correct me if I’m wrong). The stats have good synergy with Runes of the Undead.
I like to use the Cond/Power/Vit gear (Carrion) if I’m doing a Conditions/Death Shroud build, but I haven’t played with that build much so I’m not too sure on the effectiveness there.
I’ve yet to spend much time on Power or Minion builds, but as far as I know Minions don’t scale off any of your stats (except healing indirectly) so I think that it could be mixed with any other build.
I made a pretty extensive post on this here. Basically, Vitality and Toughness both add to effective HP (how much damage you can take) equally, but there are pros and cons to Vitality and Toughness. Vitality protects more against conditions, which aren’t much trouble for necros, and toughness makes your healing proportionately better. In my opinion, Toughness is the way to go if you’re building just one stat. Of course the most efficient way is to build each one equally, but then you can’t really get the offensive stats you necessarily will want.
And to the people who are saying that Vit is better for DS builds: I know that Death Shroud HP is based on Vitality, but surely armor still has an effect when it comes to damage reduction, so why not build toughness for DS?
The simplest way to look at it is that toughness is multiplicative of vitality. If you spec into vitality you will have more resistance to conditions however direct damage will eat through you (8k crit from heart seeker)
It would be more accurate to say that Toughness makes it easier to recover from damage through healing since the Heartseeker will cost you an equal percentage of your max HP either way.
This is the main take away I want people to get from this. When people say that Toughness is better against direct damage this is not true (for Necros). They provide equal amounts of effective HP (i.e. same amount of effective damage reduction) but the two attributes have different strengths, i.e. Vitality is better vs. conditions and Toughness improves healing indirectly.
I’ve been seeing a lot of misinformation about the effective benefits of Toughness and Vitality with regards to Necromancers so here is some math that I stole from here.
According to the wiki, the damage formula is:
Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)
or
Damage done = Base Damage / Armor
Based on this formula, Effective HP = HP*Armor (pick some numbers if you don’t believe me). There is a ratio that will help you decide if adding more Vitality or more Toughness will provide a benefit, and the ideal ratio is 10:1 HP:Armor (because Vitality gives 10 HP). The fact is that Necros, with their high HP but low armor are already at this ideal ratio at level 80 (with level 80 exotics).
HP = Base + Vitality (916) = 18372
Armor = Gear + Toughness (916) = 1836
So HP:Armor is 10:1 and therefore Vitality and Toughness give the same increases in effective HP. It’s easy enough to test in the mists. Compare effective HP with a Carrion amulet to a Rabid Amulet. This of course does not mean that Toughness and Vitality are identical, they each have their trade-offs. Condition damage is unaffected by armor, so it essentially takes off more effective HP the higher your armor is. Less HP makes healing more proportionally effective, so they essentially restore more effective HP. So basically, toughness is probably overall better for a necro given the abundance of regen and condition removal.
TL:DR Vitality and toughness do provide the same effective HP for Necros, but Toughness and Vitality have their own strengths and weaknesses.
I wouldn’t call this burst, maybe heavy damage ramping or something like that. I have a few recommendations actually. Firstly, Signet of Spite is one of those skills that looks awesome on paper, but in practice is pretty weak. The conditions only last for 5 seconds, are single target, and then you have to wait 90 seconds to use it again. I’d recommend another utility, maybe blood is power or something.
Also, as far as I know, Target the Weak’s bonus damage only applies to direct damage, and neither the scepter nor the staff are well equipped to do direct damage. If you want to take full advantage of that trait, I’d recommend carrying an axe or mainhand dagger. Otherwise, don’t count on it for significant damage.
With this title, prepare for hostile responses (as seen already).
I’ve been wanting to try a build like this lately, though I’m focusing on gearing my condition build right now and enjoying that quite a bit (I don’t have any trouble getting gold on events so ha!). Plus I hate using wells, I hate using skills that have a cooldown much more than 30 seconds if I can help it and I feel like I can never keep enemies in them long enough to make them useful.
I do have a few questions:
What is your Crit Chance and +Crit Damage? I imagine they’re quite high but I didn’t see it listed ankittenoo lazy to look it up right now.
Why Signet of Spite? It only adds 90 power and the active is pretty meh especially when coupled with the massive cooldown. If you want extra power I’d recommend Blood is Power. The 10 stacks of might gives 350 Power and I feel like 12 seconds is enough to get most of your damage out.
This build seems squishy, even with the added range of the axe. You don’t have any stun breakers so I imagine that up against a CC heavy opponent that you could be killed fairly quickly. Do you find that this is true?
And 12k damage from axe 2? I’ll have to see it to believe it.
Thanks for the info though, this will be a good starting point when I try out my own power build.
When doing PvE I typically keep Spectral Walk on the skill bar just so I can have swiftness for a good amount of the time. I don’t feel like I really need a 3rd utility for most combat situations anyway.
As for plague Signet, as I said, it’s more useful in PvP but I like to have it if facing enemies that have Fears, Immobolizes, or Stuns. I think being able to recover from one of those quickly is too good to pass up. There aren’t too many enemies who really hit hard with conditions in PvE, so you could probably pick up something else and be fine.
I think the general consensus (at least on these forums) is that minion builds are weaker than non-minion builds. The Flesh Golem is the best by far and is a good choice to have as your elite. While I’ve never really liked Wells (cooldowns are too long) they are pretty powerful if you can get enemies grouped up on them. Well builds work pretty well with a melee power build with a mainhand Dagger.
As for Signets, the only one that is really any good is Plague Signet, and that’s really more useful in PvP or dungeons than general PvE. Signet of Spite looks good at first glance, but the active is not worth the 90s cooldown and the passive is lackluster. The other two are not too great either, though Undeath has some situational use.
You could always try the popular condition heavy build. It’s great in PvE, all you really need is a Scepter and Epidemic to do it. Anything else that adds bleeds or other conditions are good in this build too. It gives the Necro devastating AoE especially when paired with a Confusion stacking Mesmer.
What is the fastest or easiest way to get Exotics with Cond/Prec/Tough stats? According to the wiki, the dungeon armors from CM, TA, HotW, and Arah all have these stats as an option. Which of these dungeons have explorable paths that can be completed by a PUG? I hear TA is pretty easy, but I hate the look of the armor (looks ridiculous on a Charr). I like the look of the HotW and Arah Armor, but I’m having trouble finding a group to even do the story mode on HotW and I hear that Arah EM is pretty tough.
If there are better sources of this set of stats, please let me know. The only thing I don’t want to do is simply buy a bunch of gems and purchase them on the trading post. I want to try and “earn” them.
I wish that the Death Shroud appearance seemed more focused. It’s just an uninteresting dark cloud right now. I wish it was maybe like a dark figure following your character around or something more akin to the look of Grenth or something. And related to that, I wish that Life Blast wasn’t just some green missile. It doesn’t really mesh with the dark look of DS. I also wish Life Force didn’t look like floaty green orbs, but more like a wispy soul thing or something. I always say to myself during Life Transfer “I’m stealing yer balls!”
I’d say the staff is your best choice for survivability. If you trait Mark of Evasion and Staff cooldown reduction you can have permanent Regeneration. The 3→4 combo gives Chill and Weakness which will reduce incoming damage as well as transfer conditions if you’re close enough. Then you have 5 which is an AoE fear which is great for interrupting and getting some room to maneuver. The off-hand weapons all have good tools for survival as well.
Plague form will allow you to tank up to 5 enemies with Blind-chaining. You won’t do much damage but you won’t take much either. Then you have Well of Darkness which works similarly for a shorter period of time.
The biggest weakness of Necro survivability is mobility. But I think you’ll have enough tools to overcome that. I don’t know why so many people are bashing the Necro’s survivability. I can take on large groups of normal enemies pretty easily.
This is the case with any duration increase that doesn’t effect conditions or boons as a whole. Any of the rune sets that increase the duration of a boon or cond will not reflect in the tooltip.
If you’re using DS regularly for damage, then power will be helpful. I personally put points in Spite on my condition build (which it seems you’re doing with the scepter?) for the increased condition duration as well as the Major Trait that gives Might on Life Blasts. I also like to take either the increased Mark damage or the Retaliation in DS.
The only really “must have traits” are the Curses line for all of the condition benefits that it gives.
Why is Rabid gear preferable to Carrion gear? As I understand it, Vitality and Toughness both add equally to a Necro’s effective HP and they each have their drawbacks (Toughness bad vs. Cond Damage, Vitality reduces proportional effectiveness of heals). So to me the decision would come down to Power vs. Precision (and maybe the 5% Tough → Cond from the runes). Is the benefit of a higher critical chance much better than the damage from more Power? Do the on-crit bleeds add that much more damage (I thought they had cooldowns)?
There have been several threads lately about how much HP Death Shroud is worth (and I’ve seen posts asking the same thing as this one). It would be incredibly useful information for Necros to have and it would help when it comes to creating builds and selecting traits. I can’t think of any reason why this information shouldn’t be given to us, except to maintain the aesthetic while in Death Shroud.
And while we’re at it, why not let us see what boons and conditions are on us while in DS? And maybe the cooldowns on our utility skills?
In other words, if i read that right, THEIR DAMAGE scales with our life force…..that is plain dumb and poor design as we get no benefit at all from the extra life force.
Why do I get the feeling we are becoming more broken every day…..no wonder I have stopped playing…waiting for some dev activity to prevail in fixing our bugs.
You aren’t reading it right. The only “damage” that scales up with increased life force is the amount that each tick removes because it is based on a percent of total life force. So more Life Force = more loss per tick (but the same percentage).
To the OP: I did similar tests like this. What I did, and what I think is a better way to do this, is to perform the tests in the Mists using fall damage. There are numerous advantages to this: you can use the Amulets and jewels to test the effects of Vit etc., you can freely adjust your relevant traits, you can easily regain your LF from the golems, and fall damage is relatively constant (maybe +/- 100 dmg). I’ll look and see if I still have the data that I collected somewhere and post it here. I think I got similar results to what you have here, but I think I had some issues when comparing traits etc..
I honestly think that such a combination of stats would be OP on any condition damage builds. Condition damage builds are all about outlasting your opponent until your conditions can do enough damage to kill them, such an amulet/stat combo would simply make it too easy to do that.
I know there is an equivalent power amulet, but that is a different story since Power builds aren’t as much of an attrition focused playstyle.
How are you getting good LF generation from the Scepter? It has the worst LF generator of all of the Necro weapons. Unless you’re getting a lot of crits with it to proc Reaper’s Precision I don’t see how that’s possible.
I think the scepter benefits much more from condition damage, but it does ok with power. I’m not a fan of crit builds so I typically go power, vitality, condition damage (Carrion set) for my stats.
Also, where are you getting quickness from? Are you running with a Mesmer or Guardian who uses their elite on you or are you using the sigil?
As for the negative conditions thing, none of them are particularly game changing, in that you would never change your behavior because of them (except for confusion maybe). Some of them are powerful, but they don’t go beyond just being bad. I’d like to see more interesting effects that you could apply. Like a condition that does damage when it’s removed or something. Conditions with effects that reward quick thinking and punish thoughtlessness. I don’t think that really fits into Anet’s vision of the game though.
The bleed builds are fine, nothing wrong there. I don’t like the bleed cap and I hope that is changed somewhat. Personally I’d like the Necro to have a unique DoT condition that behaves somehow differently than bleed, poison, or burn.
The pets need a lot of work AI-wise. I’m not sure I like Anet’s approach of having fewer minions that can have a bigger effect rather than a horde of monsters. The way the game is designed though, I think it wouldn’t fit very well.
The way the game is set up right now is that support characters get the short end of the stick reward-wise. Event rewards are based currently on how much damage you did to the enemies, and that’s it as far as I know.
Anet has also said that every class should be able to switch between doing damage and tanking and supporting their team. If Necro’s damage is lacking (which is arguable) then its support and tanking capabilities aren’t comparatively better than other classes. What I mean is, most classes can tank or support their team as well the Necro while still being able to output more damage (arguably).
My only problem with Entangling Roots is that as a Necro, it is nearly impossible to hit them with some weapons, and when you manage to hit them you do crap damage unless you’re using axe or dagger MH. Staff hits are inconsistent as are the auto-attacks in Death Shroud. And if you can hit them with Staff or Scepter, you’re not doing any damage to them.
Im curious if anyone else has noticed this. Because of my not so great internet and not so great computer, Im not sure if this is lag or not…
When using Plague form, the tooltips on your three abilities do not have a cooldown listed. When setting one attack or another to autoattack, there is sometimes a noticable difference in the amount of time each attack is on cooldown. I have made sure that no condition that affects my cooldowns is currently on me, and it still seems like the attacks have ‘variable’ cooldowns, from about 1 second to maybe 2 seconds.
There is a 1.0 second global cooldown for the skills in Plague Form. If you are setting one skill to auto-attack and then trying to use a different one, what may be happening is that you cancel your auto-attack skill which delays the casting of the next one.
One thing that is possible to do while defending a keep is to exit the keep through the teleport at the gate and wreak havoc while using Spectral Walk or the Flesh Wurm to return to the teleport. Plague Form and the AoEs on the scepter can disrupt a lot of players.
Don’t forget that you still have Epidemic to spread conditions around (it has 1200 range) as well as Wells and Poison clouds for combo fields.
Lich Fro Gain a sweet death-powered afro to terrify your enemies.
I am convinced that the trait Last Gasp (applies Spectral Armor at 50% HP) is working as intended and is not bugged, just a misleading tool-tip. The tool-tip for the trait is:
- Gain Spectral Armor at 50% health (60-second cooldown).
and the tool-tip for the skill Spectral Armor is:
- Gain life force as you take damage. Removed when you enter Death Shroud. Also applies protection.
I think that “Spectral Armor” refers only to the Life Force on hit buff that is applied by the skill. The trait “applies” the Spectral Armor buff, it doesn’t cast the skill Spectral Armor. Contrast this with the trait Weakening Shroud:
- Cast Enfeebling Blood when entering death shroud.
I think the trait works as it should and they just need to clean up the tool-tips for the trait and the skill.
That’s a real shame.
I play engineer most and enjoy them, but necro was the first class I ever was interested in, and what I really loved the idea of, was the tough, daggery, melee and healing guy.
When I really look at it, too many traits are too weak and negligible.
Damage seems low whatever you do.
Most utilities seem weak and not worth slotting.I did like the death shroud though, I like how the fear is instant cast and can be done at any time.
And the staff, while being pretty weird, is pretty great with visuals.
I mean, I could give it a shot.
Hopefully by the time I get to a higher level they get some buffs but I never know.
I still love playing the Necro and am having a lot of fun. I really like the theme of the Necro and its abilities, I just think some of them were executed poorly. The scepter/dagger build is getting some flak because it is so common, but I still have a lot of fun using it. If you’re interested don’t let all of the hating change your mind.
Making it a major talent would then force another talent out. The talents I choose are almost mandatory as it is to make MM viable. The only way I could see them using it as a major is to have it added to one of the others such as training of the master which in turn feels way to powerful of a major.
I can handle a change I just don’t want to lose it or the other viability. It is hard enough to play MM in its current state as it is.
I agree reanimator is a pointless trait as it is but if it was fixed it would benefit everyone.
What they need to do is a rework of the Death trait line and a rework of minions. As has been pointed out, the Death trait line is very unattractive to anyone who doesn’t want to use minions because of its first two minor traits. I think this is terrible design. What I think they should do is get rid of Reanimator or buff the crap out of it, and either make Protection of the Horde a major trait of its own or combine it with one of the other major traits and maybe make it a bit weaker to compensate.
I personally chose the Necro because the DoT/condition control build really appealed to me, but I don’t like that that is basically the only build that I feel does well. I wish they would bring the axe back up closer to its BWE1 power. Ever since they’ve nerfed it, I’ve been underwhelmed by it’s damage. I’m personally not a big fan of minions, but they could be so much better with just a few tweaks. There’s a lot of stuff about the Necro that I would like to see changed.
The problem with Power builds for the Necro is that for the most part, they’re all pretty underwhelming.
The Axe does pretty poor damage, even with the grandmaster trait. The channel on 2 takes a long time without that much damage being done. The number 3 skill is very good though, but again, the damage is lacking.
The dagger 1 skill does good damage and attacks very fast, which is good, but I find that the Necro’s lack of mobility makes it difficult to stick close while dodging attacks. The immobilize on 3 is really good, but you still have to walk up to the enemy to hit them, and they’re attacking you the whole time. The channel on 2 is powerful, but the life siphon on it is pretty lackluster.
As far as offhands go, any of them is decent. The focus is good for the chill and the chance to get some regeneration stacks. Dagger is good for the blind and weakness, though the cast time on 5 is pretty dangerous at melee range. The warhorn is very powerful, but the cooldowns on it are too long.
As you said, you can do some pretty good damage in Death Shroud, but it doesn’t really compare to the kind of direct damage that other classes are putting out because you can’t be in Death Shroud forever.
Another big thing that hurts a Power build, especially in PvE, is the lack of good AoE direct damage. Except for the Well of Suffering, and maybe Corruption, almost all of the Necro’s AoE damage is from bleeds or poison. The minion skills don’t scale on Power as far as I know, so stacking Power there is pointless.
I’m all for trying out new builds, but I’ve been disappointed with the Necro’s direct damage capabilities.
I totally agree that the first two minor traits are worthless. I’m of the opinion that the minor traits (which are mandatory if you use the trait line) shouldn’t rely completely on you using a certain build or skill. The Jagged Horror would be OK if it lasted for more than 5 seconds, 2 of which were spent spawning. I know that in some of the BWEs that the Jagged Horror wouldn’t even count for the second minor trait either (don’t know if it’s been fixed or not).
Please source me on vitality raising your pool for death shroud
This is actually really easy to test. Go into the Mists with 100% LF and switch between an amulet with +Vit and one without. You’ll notice that with less HP your LF should be at 100% but with more HP your Life Force will be lower (in my tests it was at 74%). The difference in HP was 26% which matched up with the difference in LF which suggests that your Life Force pool is directly linked to your HP.
Note that since Life Force is always gained by percentages that the more HP you have the more valuable Life Force is. I’m still trying to test whether the LF drain is the same or not depending on the total Life Force pool.
Is it possible that it’s a result of condition spam? In my experience it’s really difficult to tell when a condition is from a Plague Signet transfer or from any other source, except when I’m not in combat. I’ll pay attention to this though.
From what people have been saying, it seems that the best comp would be:
- Thief
- Thief
- Thief
- Thief
- Thief
But seriously, I don’t think there is any ideal comp profession-wise. I think you need some high mobility high burst players to roam and pick off enemies. Some high survivability players to stall on points. And some support players to help alleviate conditions and provide boons. Some combination of those like 2 burst, 1 tank, 1 tank/support, 1 support/damage. So maybe: Warrior, Thief, Guardian/Warrior, Guardian/Necro, Ele/Mesmer.
>Last Grasp (gain spectral armor at 50% hp) does not apply protection when it procs, even though the skill Spectral Armor does.
I think this is working as intended, just the tool-tip is confusing or misleading. The tool-tip on the skill Spectral armor is:
- “Gain life force as you take damage. Removed when you enter Death Shroud. Also applies protection.”
I think “Spectral Armor” is the buff that gives you Life Force when hit and the Protection is just a benefit of the skill.
Spectral Wall does work as an ethereal field, it just seems a bit finicky about it, and it only seems to work for projectiles. I think you need to be pretty close to firing through it at a right angle.
Another thing to add to “Close to Death” is that it appears to only be a 10% damage increase.
Mark of Evasion appears to have problems when you have a Mark of Blood from the staff already cast.
Thanks for the info on Corrupt Boon, I was wondering why I couldn’t get it to connect. I think this might be intentional though, because it seems that Anet has been trying to nerf the skill without completely ruining it.
It’s definitely based on total HP. In the Mists, I switched between a Carrion Amulet (+Vit) and a Rabid Amulet (no Vit). With the Rabid Amulet I had 18,372 HP and 100% LF. With the Carrion Amulet I had 24,812 HP and 74% LF. The difference in HP is 26.0% (6440 HP).
This still doesn’t tell us how much Death Shroud HP is, but it tells us that it is some multiple of your HP. One thing to note is that Life Force generation is always a percentage of total Life Force, whereas Healing is a flat number. So with very high HP your heal is proportionately less useful but your LF generation is the same (each % of LF is actually worth more).
What I want to know is basically how much HP the Life Force bar is. Does anyone have any estimates or ideas on how to test this? The only thing I could thing of would be to deal some damage to a Necro and to estimate how much of the bar was removed.
Knowing this would make it a lot easier to judge the usefulness of the Soul Reaping trait line. If Life Force is equivalent to 10k HP, then 30 points in Soul Reaping should essentially give you 3000 HP which is equal to the gain from the Vitality trait line. But if it’s a higher amount, like 15k or 20k, then it’s more valuable than Vitality.