Guild Wars 2

I haven’t found anyone else having this issue, but the rifts for the Oct 4th Gillscale Pond current event don’t appear to be showing up for me. I can see icons on the minimap seem to point them out, but they aren’t visible or interactable for me. Has anyone else seen this?

I personally am an advocate Reaper’s Onslaught + Dhuumfire for open world or FOTMs, especially now that death magic is nerfed, but it’s still not worth it for raids, really.

More frontloaded damage, tank, DPS, and vuln enemies at the same time, and rapidly recharge your shroud abilities. If you’re with other necros your burns get epi’d.

From a design standpoint I think nerfing Jagged Horrors makes sense. It reduces condi necro’s reliance on Lich and Death Magic, just wish condi got a little compensation for it. I wonder if Lich Form is greater DPS than Flesh Golem now. 30 seconds of horrors on a long cooldown seems pretty iffy at best. If it is underwhelming, perhaps FG could win by virtue of utility alone.

That said, I agree that I wish Plague had more justification. It wouldn’t even really be OP these if you got all your abilities turned on at once, TBH. That said, I would prefer each individual form within Plague retained some uniqueness and utility rather than that. If it could push out some solid high pressure short duration condis to be a reasonably high AoE DPS form, as well as offering the defensive options (hell maybe add a chill there too), that would be cool. It IS a plague, it should hurt a good bit. Doesnt have to be top DPS, but just usable in some portions (like say mopping up slublings or xera adds in relative safety, or pressuring a point)

Staff is good AOE…but I think it’s cooldowns have always turned me off. It’s only really good for swapping and spamming your marks before hopping into Death Shroud. I’ve always been more fan of a hybrid approach for open world PvE. My favorites are Scepter/Dagger & Dagger/Warhorn. It gives you a decent amount of everything. You got some cleaving direct damage, aoe condition damage, hard CC, boon corruption, condition transfers, life force gen, movement speed and even some sustain, and all the hits are pretty reliable.

Spite and Curses are probably pretty solid for leveling up. Spite gives a lot of passive might generation, which is good for both condi and direct damage.

Anyone else been having fun messing around with this trait? In what game mode? I’ve been rolling with it on PvP and Dungeons and found it pretty awesome so far. Perhaps I should give the new deathly chill a chance, but the fast ramp with Dhuumfire + Onslaught is pretty handy for shorter encounters. On Golem Testing, my setup is far from optimal but I was coming within 1-2k dps on a 4mil golem vs Viper Horror DPS, and the rotation is a good bit more interesting. You do lose your group utility though, and it loses the advantage of ranged dps so I don’t think it will make sense in most raid settings (maybe on a very add heavy, low hp encounter like Bandit Trio, however). I think in a dungeon setting it’s very appropriate, whipping your scythe around at lightning speeds is very good AoE but you’re probably still better off with a power oriented class if you have one just because of environmental objects not taking condis :\

Still, it’s interesting to experiment with and with a proper equipment setup to boost your Burn Duration up to 100% might make it competitive with Viper Horror.

In PvP I can forsee it being a go to trait, it works very well with Dhuumfire, which is already standard in a lot of reaper PvP builds. Check it out!

If you use Feast of Corruption mid cast, instead of using it after your skill finishes casting it will override your current cast and put it on a 3 second cooldown. Be aware when casting in combos.

Drink your school,
Stay in sleep,
Don’t do milk
and get 8 hours of drugs.

Honestly I just miss RS2. If DS2 was a more reliable movement ability it would feel a lot better.

And with Well of Darkness, I would get it if Chilling Darkness had no ICD, because a well that bled, blinded and chilled folks is pretty mean. But it DOES have an ICD….

Are RS1 autos more DPS than Scepter 1 autos with dhuumfire in vipers gear?

Yeah, I agree with that. What sucks about stacking necros in raids is without an engi or something providing something like burns, epidemics are pretty iffy because you’re only passing 25 bleed stacks and whatever poison and torment happen to be on the target. Still very strong, but don’t pack nearly the punch of passing 8k burns over. But I guess that’s one way of balancing an OP ability like Epidemic, by forcing a more well rounded comp.

If you’ll remember, wellomancer used to be a popular and powerful build.

If lowered staff cooldowns means no more ground targeted marks, no thank you :P

To be fair, from a raiding perspective, the chill was terribly designed and I was proponent of chills adding another condition like poison instead of making chill do damage, because of chills inherent limitations…extremely often the chill trait was not actually dealing damage because of how it worked in raids. But all the other nerfs make me feel pretty bleh.

At least wells got a bump?

Curse that scarlet…

I think it’s because it’s 4 events instead of 1. I suspect it was a technical limitation but I agree it should be fixed. It’s just unhealthy all around for the meta.

Basically what insanemaniac said. Transfusion is another benefit for VG, in case someone dies in the AOE.

Raizen.7981:

reikken.4961:

Raizen.7981:

Dante.8965:

Each class can play different roles

Except thief who is the only class that doesn’t have a spot in raids, and warrior who has exactly 1(one) role.

Thief is great for wing 1, and can do two roles on the first boss. Less good for wing 2 due to increased demand for utility over sheer dps, but you should have no trouble finding a spot in a wing 1 raid

True. Thief is great. But tempest is the best. That’s why every single raid says “LF 2-4 tempests”. I know what I’m talking about, I’ve pugged the raids since they were implemented. Please don’t tell people to play thief if they want to raid. It’s not fair for them.

I’m not disagreeing with you (though I do think thief is fine because of high dps, mobility, and cc, it’s not the best option for first getting into raids), but the justification of “PUGs do it” is flawed, at best.

You should be able to find some guides for pve builds for raids with a bit of searching. Getting ascended trinkets and a main ascended weapon with the proper stats are the biggest deals, proper sigils and runes are a big deal as well. Eventually you’ll want to have multiple chars moderately geared because of the flexibility it offers in raid comps, increasing your value as a player.

There are a lot of pug groups running at all times, but their reliability is questionable. I would advise finding a guild that runs raids and joining a group within them. The fights have been out long enough that it’s reasonable to expect you to know the basic strats, even if you’ve never done it before. Definitely read some guides before you attempt a boss, and watch a few videos to get a better feel for it.

Bosses themselves are not difficult to get you, but you should not be surprised to find yourself be bashing your head against a wall for several hours before getting a kill. It should get easier to repeat kills after if you’re playing with similar people.

Once again, I reiterate finding people to consistently play with for a lot of reasons, but getting familiar with a group and learning to trust others is definitely a big deal. So that’s where I would start, is with joining up with a guild that’s oriented towards raiding, since they can help you get prepared as well as allow you to identify group needs, perhaps you can gear and learn a class they have a hard time getting.

PS Warrs, Druids and Chronos pretty much always have a spot, all of the classes are good in their own right, but these 3 will always have at least 1 slot in a raid, if not more.

maxinox.6283:

I’m glad you like it ! Keep going and spread the info., we need more people =). This build must be knowned.

Do you use a build similar as mine ?
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQRBLRtG2JDNQ5mYzNg1NA7NYpYwi7hFxkYUAYAkAk+AhgOAA-TBSAQBYTJXIVO0GlgRU9HGu/AFOJAA4JAEQ9DkCYRlVA-e

I drop flesh golem cause lich form jagged horrors are a lot more dps. Flesh Golem is only useful if your breaks are really terrible. I use Sigil of Energy on my offhand dagger and geomancy on my warhorn, and I usually opt for Blood Magic for utility on most fights over death magic, but death magic should be a lot more dps.

Also while Suffer is good, I almost always take epi on all fights, even on VG (for seeker control, aoe spread chills/immobs), though some vgs I bring spectral grasp (ranged breakbar, seeker control), otherwise Epi is great for basically all fights.

It definitely is, I find myself purposely taking flak hits on sabetha to keep up more stacks.

Otherwise, I’m pretty happy with the rune so far, it might just be my imagination but I think the increased condi damage afforded from the rune as well as being able to drop expertise 20% really helps a lot with the strength of my epis and condi transfers.

Here’s a run of me using Thorns on Matthias:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H_5GjxI47w

Here was a kill from one of the first weeks, using Berserker runes. The DPS seems a decent bit lower:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7oAhBm4cns

Staves are used by more classes, as well, I have 4 ascended staves and still want some more.

It’s worth noting that the elite spec collections are good ways to get cheap ascended items as well (you can get 2 staves by completing the druid and thief collections), but you’ll have to farm a fair bit for them, but I enjoy it.

Are you saving the scientists in the southeast room? That will reduce his HP by 25%.

Hmm, the only thing worth critting on staff is putrid mark, damage on everything else is pretty meh, but I guess they’re big AoEs. Leeching only hits one target, AFAIK.

The only procs I can think of worth triggering are Plague Sending. Swapping to staff while swamped with condis would be a good way to ensure removals, since necro crit chance is pretty low with most pvp builds. That’s pretty good, actually. Thanks for the idea!!

Yeah, assets from the dungeons available as guild hall decorations is actually a fantastic idea. Members could trade dungeon currency for decoration tokens. It would be a cool guild activity to work towards, and is a natural fit since dungeons are already group oriented content.

The assets already exist too, it would be a little work for some very cool payout. I think Guild Hall decorations are one of the best things they’ve done in the expansion, aside from the costs associated with them, which they’re fixing soon.

Remember that Shroud isn’t just a second health bar, but halves direct damage as well, so it’s very good for soaking up direct damage burst like the Rev has.

I think more recipes with tokens would be a great start, if they’re willing to put a few one off weapon skins into the game. Maybe some more cosmetic auras/infusions?

I think it was irresponsible just nerfing the gold without giving something else to compensate, like an extra rare or mats, or something else more creative.

I mean, I think some of the 1-2s ICDs are there BECAUSE they don’t want higher speed weapons to outclass slower ones. You already get the advantage of being able to more reliably land attacks, why do you need to stack might faster too?

I don’t get your reasoning for buffs too, you just say “25% instead of 20%” but why? Are the sigils weak in their current state or you just like that number better?

They didn’t say never, they just said this time around, they couldn’t justify it. And frankly, I agree. It’s a fun mode to have but there are core systems that we all know need improvements that will give us a lot more hours of satisfying gameplay than a few hours in SAB.

I’m happy there is content in the game that rewards you with unique skins that isn’t just a straight grind. I’m sorry you don’t like the process, but I rather do. Prestige stuff is great, and Gen 1 legendaries don’t do it, that’s for sure. I’m sure in time, the Spirit Vale legendary armor will be common enough that it is uncool, as well.

I don’t really understand your justification for thinking it’s terrible.

What makes you want a set of legendary armor so bad?

FWIW, I actually prefer energy as my off-sigil. Extra mobility and survivability can be extremely useful. Though I do put geomancy on my warhorn, since I’m probably in melee range when swapping to it.

Also it wasn’t my find for agony- I got the idea from Flumek’s build.

Thanks for this! I finished my set last night, and with a sinister helm, and 2 accessories and a ring swapped out from viper’s to sinister’s, I have 59.93% condi duration (with consumables), with a sigil of agony. With traits, puts me at just around 100% bleed/poison, 80% chill. I gained about 75 condi damage from the sinister gear, plus the several hundred I’ll be getting from the buff itself. Looks solid.

It might even be worth it to use my other sigil as malice, because of the great stat value (150 expertise), you could then drop a few more pieces or a weapon as sinister’s, but I wasn’t willing to convert it yet. You could probably get more condi that way than using something like bursting.

It seems like it should be a little better for a lot of reasons, and it certainly shouldn’t be much worse. If I have any good footage using this I’ll add to the thread.

I definitely get spoiled by necro in raids. When I can face tank so many mechanics without issue, when I swap to other classes I make a big fool of myself. Like druiding on matthias last night, I got hit by way too many hadokens. I felt like a numbskull. On my necro, I can normally live through it, and if I don’t, unholy sanctuary pops and saves me.

Aaah, so in your build you drop your condi cap to 60% before traits so you can maximize the poison bonus duration. It wouldn’t lower your epi dps for the most part either, in fact, should increase it because of higher condi damage.

However, you’re also sacrificing your chill dps, with a 20% loss. What would you think of putting a 20% chill duration sigil on weps?

Does anyone have a reasonable DPS breakdown of what kind of % of necro damage is? At least vs a single target.

i.e. 60% bleeds, 15% poison, 10% chill, 8% torment, 10% direct, 3% leeches (I know thats not 100%, w/e)

Interesting, Flumek, do you have your calculations anywhere? Looks like I’ll keep getting my airship parts, if anything just to be Indie.

More things to use spirit shards one would be nice. Hell just add some items that take kittening dumps on your spirit shards, like more infusion auras like ghostly.

Is that with full raid buffs? 25 might, all food/utilities? Because I believe the 5% from zerker’s applies after that.

Has anyone done any good testing or math on what is the best rune for raids?

For those who don’t know:

Rune of Thorns:
(1): +25 Condition Damage Condition Damage
(2): +10% Poison Duration
(3): +50 Condition Damage Condition Damage
(4): +15% Poison Duration
(5): +100 Condition Damage Condition Damage
(6): +20% . Poison Duration; gain 50 Condition Damage Condition Damage for 60 seconds when you are hit by a poisoned foe. (Cooldown: 10s)

Rune of the Berserker:
(1): +25 Condition Damage Condition Damage
(2): +35 Power Power
(3): +50 Condition Damage Condition Damage
(4): +65 Power Power
(5): +100 Condition Damage Condition Damage
(6): +5% Damage and +5% Condition Damage.

For raiding, for most encounters you will be taking pulsing damage from the boss (VG, Gors, Sloth, Matthias), so you can guarantee a near constant 250-300 extra condi damage throughout the fight, which is a lot. But the 5% Condi Damage on Berserker is very very good because it affects ALL outgoing condi damage, not a flat modifier like Sigil of Bursting to your condi damage stat. This means it scales very well, and I think is one of the only condi damage boosts of it’s type.

The secondary of both are not inconsequential, but smaller by comparison. Berserker gives you a slight bump in your power DPS, and Thorns puts you over condi poison cap, which otherwise would be sitting at 80% after buffs and food.

The rub is, a set of Rune of Thorns will run you 1500 airship parts. A decent investment of time. Has anyone either done testing or at least run the math of what would do more DPS in the long run? The 250-300 condi damage on most fights, or the flat 5% modifier to your damage?

Not really, because the best rewards are a weekly thing. The weekly rewards per encounter are usually something like an exotic, a rare, a legendary insight (used for crafting legendary armor, but not in game yet…), and a shot at an ascended item, or other unique raid drops. Otherwise the 100% drops you get from every kill are about 5-8 bags of gear and 2-5 champ bags, and a few gold. Additionally, for attempting and killing bosses you get magnetite shards, a currency used to purchase the ascended skins available so it’s not all luck based. The cap for shards from attempts/kills is 100 per week, its easy to cap if you clear the wings. Items usually cost in the range of 250-600 shards.

Short answer- no, there is nothing above ascended. That said, you get a fair amount of ascended gear and when you can clear wings in under an hour it’s pretty lucrative gold.

Can you become stronger now? With new stat combos, runes and sigils, not to mention the elite specializations, absolutely, yes. Dungeons and Fractals are even easier now.

With raids though flexibility of classes is very valuable, since a good comp for a fight will dramatically increase your chances for success. So all the ascended loot is pretty nice for gearing your alts and getting them better prepped for raids.

1 Rev is usually a staple in raids, mostly for granting the chrono 50% boon duration and might stacking. Necros are doing quite well in raids, we usually bring 1 for wing 1, and it’s common to see 2-3 in wing 2 because of condi transfers. Thieves are okay, they’re fine DPS but the only really fight they’re an advantage on is Sabetha because of mobility, and Eles fill that role well too. They’re not bad by any means, though.

We run a similar event in our guild weekly to get new members in raids, and practice on alt classes. Its been tremendously successful, we normally get at least 4 raids going at once, and I think it’s helped us build a rock solid roster of players . I encourage other guilds to do similar events, I hear a lot of stories from other guilds that only have their “main” raid group and everyone else just gets left out in the cold.

It’s a great way to form new raid groups too.

That’s a great idea, the only problem is fights without damaging auras, which I think right now is bandit trio and sabetha. But otherwise that definitely sounds like a great idea, and the poison condi duration is a nice bonus too.

Collecting 1500 airship parts is daunting, but that kind of increase might be worth it. It might be a good idea to craft another set for fights it doesn’t do anything for, but since those are in the minority it would probably be okay to just have the one.

Which I find kind of ironic, cause I would take a pug thief over a pug ele most days because a much higher chance of the player pulling their weight due to it being generally easier to play right.

Ascended Viper’s Everything except Sinister helmet with Berserker runes puts you at 50.2% condi duration. AFAIK, that’s the most optimal you can get.

I converted my helm yesterday.

@Dinosaurs, it’s an interesting question because of the prevalence of Epidemic as a source of DPS, means that you actually get a substantial amount of alternative damage sources than bleeds alone, but I’m fairly sure that Epidemic is ignorant of condi duration, though not of condi damage. So regarding that question it’s a little different to consider (since the expertise does nothing for it). Still, the majority of a necro’s damage is going to its bleeding, but there is a substantial amount to consider from poison, direct damage, leeches and torment. I think you’re right in that most people underestimate the direct damage.

I wouldn’t buy Matthias, he’s a new boss and anyone selling is going to be at a BIG premium. Also, there is a very good chance you won’t get any ascended pieces, much less the skin you’re looking for.

You can buy the White Mantle skins with Magnetite Shards, as well, which you get in Wing 1 and Wing 2. People are a lot more experienced with wing 1, and it should be easier to find groups for it. You can get Magnetite Shards from killing as well as just attempting bosses, up to a cap of 100 per week. (you can also trade in ascended chests from the raid and minis for more magnetite outside of this cap). This would be the strategy I’d go with. Just try to get groups to do wing 1 with to begin, get yourself used to raiding, and start piling up magnetite. It might take a while but with a bit of perseverence you can get that skin. Even if its repeatedly dying to bosses with bad pugs, you’ll still get a small handful of shards for the attempt, if you do half decent.

Thieves are good on the last boss of the 1st raid wing, and are good dps in general, but most of the fights there is probably something more well suited, because of other utilities brought. But its fine if you’ve got your bases covered.

I think any serious raider is going to need familiarity with multiple classes, unless you’re just the best mesmer or druid in the land.

I see people like to constantly spout that players who try raids somewhat regularly only make up 1-5% of the player pop, but that seems to always be without any sort of evidence. I thought I heard Anet mention on stream that the numbers in raids were higher than average for MMOs, but never anything more concrete. Does this exist anywhere? I’d love to see some sort of recap on a raid wing launch post mortem about players playing this wing and last wing, trends over time, etc. But of course we likely won’t get one unless the news is good.

I’m frankly happy they’re touching on GW1 story at all in a large way. I wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, I love when they mesh the old with the new (and any devs reading this, I know there are a LOT of connections you draw from GW1 constantly, but rarely are they front and center like this).

Though I would be a little disappointed if such a threat is one and done. We’re just cracking open the white mantle, Matthias is literally the first member we’ve seen. If we reach the conclusion within a few hours of the next wing, their pacing will definitely be too fast. The Mantle have supposedly had 100s of years to coordinate this back, they better be a lot stronger than we realize, and Lazarus too. The next wing will be our first real look at the White Mantle, so it better not be our last, and just the start.

FWIW, the behind the scenes seems to say they’re setting up stuff that will go “well past that” but we’ll see what that actually means: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PseAcOhag8

I understand the concern though, I hope they don’t fall into a blizzard trap of just killing every major villain who ever existed (or just corrupting friends) in the universe because "hey wouldn’t it be cool if we fought this guy)

I’ve thought it was moronic because of the low cap (5 stacks) that it has. I’ve been of the mind that it should do something like your chills apply some other damaging conditions like poison of bleeds. Definitely changes a lot though, but it’s frustrating how hard it is to do any chill damage on a world boss.

I hope raid rewards for repeat kills are increased a bit, if the shard cap isn’t increased. It would be a shame if people don’t feel encouraged to help friends clear, I think adding some more bags or some other unique loot might go a long way in helping that. Even if you’re speedclearing in 30 minutes over and over the number of bags you get can’t be much higher, if higher at all than something like SW.

Yikes, a month of no ranked PvP? What the hell are they thinking?

Dagger and Scepter are probably your highest DPS weapons (and the cleave is very nice on the dagger), so keep them close. Learn to use your Death Shroud effectively, it is a powerful tool for all necros, regardless of spec. It is worth noting that direct damage taken is halved while in shroud. Might stacking affects both your condition and your power damage. While I’m at it, when GW2 says “increases damage by x%” they are referring to DIRECT damage, not condition damage. It usually specifies condi damage when relevant. Otherwise assume it’s only direct (i.e. Spites 20% more damage under 50% health trait is direct damage only)

Necro’s now, more than ever are manipulators of conditions and boons on friends and foes. Unfortunately this doesn’t come into play as much as I’d like in PvE,