Guild Wars 2

Now that I’ve looked at it, I do believe this post is more than a little fishy

did the math, you won’t. you’re actually short a bit.

one of the most viewed threads in this forum outside of stickies at roughly 5k rn.
and I think out of the 200+ posts maybe six or so are on topic.
and that’s being generous.

people are right. the forums aren’t even on this plane of existence.

fata you’re right. full vipers could be quite good. I think honestly it’d be more dps to sub in a condition main stat food instead of the expertise one maybe?

the healing scalings on barrier is all over the place on everything but the heal skill which is at a stunning 1.5125.
So honestly, it’s your call.

Seraphs could make an interesting set.
Seraphs because the concentration would make your F2 hilarious, the healing power would boost your barriers up just a bit while also giving any regens you gain from converting poison (or rolling with blood magic) just a bit more potent. And if you have blood magic not only do you gain a tiny bit of extra healing from vampiric presence/aura you also gain a HECK of a lot of free healing below 50% hp with last rights. +450.

Necro has 20k base hp, so you still gain about 10k limit on barriers. That’s basically wearing an entire thief on your back as a shield.

For damage, however? I’d say vipers. That or whatever new statset they have for condition damage. (tbh, unlikely that there will be one better than vipers but I’d love to be wrong.)

You only need one druid to upkeep grace.
Sun spirit is a dps increase of around 300 maybe 400 per person, assuming everyone is running full condi with 100% burn duration.
Frost spirit is a harder dps increase to calculate out considering our condi heavy meta and how different condi builds deal different amounts of physical damage. The lack of ICD on it makes it a little better, but it’s still quite low in terms of dps increasing.

However, neither of these will make up for your own garbage personal dps as a druid in healing gear. And will most assuredly fall behind the personal dps of a ventari revenant in berserkers or even zealots. Even the loss of spotter on an entire subgroup could be negligible since crits are not always important on condi builds.

I think that honestly, if you won’t even consider the possibility of at least a single druid losing its spot in raid then you are being simply short sighted. Or perhaps complacent.

If you think I am wrong about any of this, I challenge you to do the hard math and show it to me. Prove me wrong and I will graciously step aside and stop with all of this ventari revenant savior nonsense and necromancer being allowed a slot in raids as more than an epi-bot. Otherwise just shut your ears and ignore this thread since you’ve neither contributed anything of value, nor given worthwhile retorts.

Apologies.

Ooops.8694:

Let’s be honest for one moment: Nobody would request ridiculous amounts of LI if people wouldn’t lie about their experience. And nobody would even consider requesting api keys, if the same kind of people wouldn’t demonstrate on a regular basis that they spend more time learning to manipulate chatcodes than thinking about their character’s role or reading some boss guide to know at least the basic mechanics.

Yes they would.
There are commanders who set up groups and demand 100+ LI and KP just so that they can get carried by a bunch of people who know the fight, while they themselves have 0-6 LI.
But I guess that falls under “people lying about their experience”
… I dunno… it just irks me more than anything to see that nobody ever questions the commander.

Tbh, renegade can heal satisfactorily with full berserkers.
I just wanted an excuse to use zealots. But it’s kind of funny that Rev in full zerks heals more powerfully than druid in zealots. While ofc providing more damage.

And what’s truly ridiculous is the obsession over dps rather than mechanics. Though I suppose it’s to be expected when so many are able to be skipped by distortion.
But that’s another rant for another day.

Scourge in a “worst case scenario” will likely be assured a slot anywhere that epidemic was needed/desired. So roughly the same place reaper is in right now. Not the worst place. Better than power rev/reaper imo.
You could be right and revenant could be a better dps/dps booster than healer (especially if orders from above stays so awful). But this thread is just to explore possibilities since dps numbers are likely to change before release. (and haven’t even been reliably testable yet)

But you are absurd in thinking that these two classes, even if one is in zealots, will each deal less damage than a chronomancer and a dedicated druid. Even with the alacrity downtime, I would wager it would still be a net dps increase to the group.

Also, most main tanks these days take 1400-1500 toughness to avoid warriors pulling when reviving. +250 off of 1k is not enough to pull. The guardian would have to stand in cleave range to apply his quickness, sure, but so far cleaves in this game have been a joke.

mazut.4296:

istortion is already used for this and its better, you avoid all damage, not just part of it. However barrier will be good when moving around at VG, in last phase.

chrono also has abysmal dps. it could be replaced by a guardian for quickness and a ventari healer for alacrity.+
Some sloppy math I did tells me that high alacrity uptime can be done on ventari renegade.
give it zealots, and now your elite on renegade stance has both reasonable dps increase and solid healing. You get so much free ferocity too, that your power dps will still likely heavily outdo a chronomancer.

I was able to upkeep perma quickness on a little group of people on guardian in the beta with only 2 abilities and no alacrity. (granted this was with 100% boon duration)

+edit: I did the actual math and it looks like there will be gaps in alacrity. orders from above is pretty weak rn, with a 20 second cooldown and only applying 6 seconds of alacrity when traited, you will likely run into alacrity problems.
Still, you may run into these problems anyhow on a chrono who is inexperienced and shatters willy-nilly, or someone who has to distort e v e r y mechanic because their teammates are chimps. TBH, either the trait needs to be buffed, the cooldown reduced, or the alacrity be moved to 2 seconds a pulse because right now this skill is incredibly inefficient for it’s energy cost and cooldown.

Tbh, it’d likely be fine on any boss where you can be immobile for small periods of time, or that require you to be packed in anyhow.
So like certain VG runs and MO.

Okay, b-but it’s not all terrible right?
Just gotta stack I guess? Not run in circles like a bunch of imbeciles?
Oh god who am I kidding? People in the average group are akin to headless chickens.
Even in experienced groups, there’s a lot of “unscripted movement” that makes this build harder to play than it should be.

… on the bright side this thread is giving me plenty of chances to use some of my reaction folder.

I can’t believed I overlooked something like this.

mazut.4296:

Nothing under Tyria sky is easier then playing warrior and stacking might with it. I know because Im lazy and found out how good warrior is being semi afk

You completely ignored every other point I made.
Also, this might not fully replace warrior, I realize now I failed to mention this.

In fights where heavy cc from wildblow or headbutt are needed, or where you simply do not need the defensive utilities a scourge brings, it’s highly probable that a double CPS comp will still exist.
And it’s also very worth mentioning that scourge may only need to replace ONE warrior to give the entire group it’s absurd benefits (condition conversion and barrier) as they can apply these things to 10-15 people quite easily.

It’s also possible that with a scourge negating spike damage every now and then, only a single healer may be needed.
After all, it is quite possible (albeit difficult) to upkeep grace on 10 people.

Tell them to get bent and find a less absurd group.
They’re basically asking you to give out hair, blood, urine, stool, and skin samples. Along with previous work history, your entire extended family’s full names, your own address, and what kind of things you spank the monkey to.

Literally none of that is their business, and while it doesn’t break the ToS (to my knowledge) it’s incredibly scummy and as mentioned above can make you a target for account hijackers.

Now before anyone reads further, this is not dps math.
I couldn’t care less what the scourge’s dps is in testing since things are highly subject to change still.

What I am currently looking at is boons, might application, potential off healing, barriers to cover spike damage (tankbusters?), and other defensive support that could trivialize a few fights to the point of it becoming a meme.

Let’s assume for a split second 100% boon duration and all “realistic” conditions on a foe (perma imobi, taunt, slow, and fear are impossible or at the very least wildly impractical in any scenario that isn’t being zerged by 50+ players)
With alacrity, Oppressive collapse has a 16.5 second cooldown and the might it applies lasts for 16 seconds. 10 conditions that are realistically found in any raid encounter would mean that you gain 20 might off of one skill with a .5 second window of downtime.
Use of dessicate immediately after would bring you up to 25 might. Dessicate has a 13.2 second cooldown with alacrity. So already, assuming 100% boon duration, you can upkeep 25 might on 5 people with arguably less effort than CPS.

But that’s not all that is offered, barrier values with even base healing power can cap out 10k hp classes with a single skill. non 10k hp classes will be likely fine when hit by spike damage due to the nature of them having high hp anyhow. (A reaper nailed by spike from greens in vg still has roughly 4k hp for example. adding barrier just makes it even safer for them.)

And the fact that this huge soaking mechanic can be applied to the entire raid by either using sand savant or simply having people stack in multiple shades (each can hit 5 players) means that only a single scourge is needed.

Moving back to might stacking, I have slopped together a theorybuild rather lazily.It’s worth noting that you gain 15% boon and condition duration from sand soul for simply having shades out, so you need nearly no boon duration from armors. You also gain 7% expertise from condition damage. (so roughly 180) which gives you a heft amount of free duration. Sigil of concentration is likely insanely unnecessary, but I’ll leave it in for a reason I’ll explain later.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRQQJAroCV3A/NMEGqYAkAPAtKyieF-TxRhABAs/Qf6B6U5nTPAgZVCO5JAoR1fIEwi1A-e

With this build you have 65(+33%) might duration and 76.17333.. condition duration. 20% more bleed duration brings you to 96% bleed, and 76% everything else.

Frankly, if I weren’t so lazy I’d theorycraft a rotation to stack might.
BiP is used in literally every condition rotation I’ve ever seen for necromancer due to its high damage, the might it adds would only make mightstack scourge even easier.
Dessicate would likely also take a utility slot for the lifeforce gain alone, helping you to boost dps from dumbfire procs.

Now… there is no question of “will scourge be able to perform as a ps” but rather “how well does it perform other tasks” … and that will remain to be seen until we witness how valuable 5k barriers on 10 people is in the new raids.. and of course the dps since that’s all half of you care about.

Moving on to other utilities scourge brings. Condition to boon conversion on a 4 second cooldown.
What does this mean? This means matthias will be giving everyone aegis,regen, and resistance instead of burning, poison, and chill. This will likely trivialize the fight.
Abusing sigil of concentration before using your conversion means that the boons you gain will last even longer.

So. In summary, you lose (theoretically) minimal damage in order to apply 25 might trivially, have access to single skills that can cap out most classes’ barrier limit, and you convert conditions into boons on a 4 second cooldown (not counting alacrity)

Any questions?

Oh, and because I had forgotten for a moment. You can swap soul reaping for blood magic and viper’s to seraphs for a more fun “I’m a healer too, mom” build with ridiculous boon duration for conversions. Likely not raid “optimal”, but likely insanely fun in pug dungeons or fractals with most assuredly more damage than the average zealot revenant or whatever.

Kahrgan.7401:

Sigmoid.7082:

its a mini-game just to keep them cleared.

You arnt supposed to be able to clear them all all the time.

You arent supposed to be able to stack burning to 3k with only auto attacks, but here we are

power necromancer gs chain can hit for 3k easily. gravedigger for 10k. these aren’t even on particularly glassy builds either. it’ll kill you just as fast as a condi burn build with 10k burn ticks. especially if you let them reset on you… hell, it’ll cleave your teammates and kill them too most likely.

the thing is if you get hit by a gravedigger who’s kitten fault is it? is it anet’s fault for not giving you more blocks? the game’s fault for allowing such damage to exist? is it the enemy’s fault for using a “power cheese build”?

the logic I see on these sort of threads is abhorrent. so rather than try and further explain I’ll just use the good ol’ meme response.

“Learn to play”

Unfortunately I’m one of many who are unable to find a static.
I’m in a really stupid situation because I’m A: very picky about people; I’d love to find a group that isn’t all tryhards who think they’re the gods’ gift to pve… but I also don’t want people who put literally no effort into the fights and make silly mistakes that dont need to be made.

I also have a really lame schedule. Feelsbad.
I’m lucky to cap magnetite each week. A full clear is something of a fantasy for me.

CptAurellian.9537:

snip.

They’re exploitative because they exploit oversights in how the game or fight works.

Exploits and bugs are not the same.
Distortion working on green circles for VG is an exploit, not a bug. Technically speaking both are working as intended, even if that’s not how the fight is intended.
Anet doesn’t fix this because they likely see it as a unique and interesting alternative way to clear the content. So why on earth would they take peoples’ toys away when they’re having fun?

But this doesn’t change the fact that all of the people in the party don’t have to deal with green circles. one or two players now deal with the mechanics instead of four. Personal responsibility has been cut in half for that mechanic.
Druids often solo deal with seekers, stand the boss in the right spot and then tides every now and then. No longer a party problem, just the druid’s problem.
So most of the fight, two to four people actually do the mechanics in a group of ten.
A fraction of the group experiences any sort of ‘difficulty’ while the rest simply dps a dummy. And because the enrage for VG is 53k and some change; you will likely never see an enrage timer.

And it’s worth mentioning that in both of these examples it’s a single button press.
One of which is an instant cast.

So to add more fuel to the fires as i watch this place burn…
Raids, or at least the real ones, are about prestige and progression.
In a traditional raid mmo, these pretty armor skins would be made into the “old patch” sets and the new patch progression grind begins again.

Eventually, with this system players can “overgear” the old raids and trivialize them. Which means the gear is easy to be gotten for pugs.

But this is gw2. Where they let the community decide who is raid ready, and who is a “casual”.
Due to high accessability, all of the people who have no right raiding, who do not know the math and dont care to.
They google some exploit-tier builds and strats, and shrug away as much personal responsibility possible as a raider.

Its all a sham. There are few raiders, but a lot of people claiming the title.

Gating is required to keep lazy people out, harsher mechanics which cannot be cheesed are required to keep those who do no research out.
Maybe anet will find a better solution, but what we have now is a travesty.

It looks good imo.
Sb is bad in single target, but has great condi cleave.
Kalla utils give solid team dps, and mace axe is of course still great even paired with kalla bleed traits.
So now rev has ranged options, huge dps and group dps boosts, and good survival.

dagger torch with sigil of torment and sigil of geomancy or something similar.
perhaps sigil of earth? more likely geomancy.
that way you can swap between scepter and either dagger, torch, or wh. depending?

it sounds fun, though. good on you for seeing that.
I’m a little disappointed in myself for not thinking it first.

I’m personally excited for synergies between corruptions and F2.
Turning condis into boons. With the free concentration from your traits, you gain longer boons and with something like seraphs your boons last even longer.
with blood magic you gain even more healing power for free (so regens heal more), and you gain access to mark of blood on dodge (more regen)

So on other words, a boon spamming, condition cleaning, healer that does okay damage in its own right.

Okay. But to bring the thread back on topic.
I’ve made a few… minor? … edits to the OP’s build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBHhF6kjGo2GsmGwnGgeTsgLYxXxtYYEqNFAOATZhTQVA-TZxHQBA4EA8tDBQ9KDkwnAQ52fAA

Soul reaping is useless in this build, imo. Spite gives you more survivability, damage, and boon corruption through the first minor trait, spinal shivers, and the grandmaster (the retal applies after you go into shroud, meaning you get a burst of healing if you hit multiple foes.)
greatsword is too good now. it was decent before, but it’s genuinely good now after the soul eater change. passive lf and hp regen? sign me up. sigil of agility because quickness is insanely strong for getting off heal skills or clutch gravediggers.
chronomancy runes for the same reason. think of quickness as a dual purpose buff; you use it offensively AND defensively.
Faster wells, faster blind fields, faster heal skills, faster elites.
It’s insanely good on necro and any access you can get is 10/10

you can of course change it to even better suit your playstyle. but you need to keep trait and weapon synergies in mind. and remember, that even though your damage is low, you are a power build.

I thought it went fantastically! it was painfully close for almost the entire duration and—
oh…
you sly little…

flow.6043:

Duuuuude. First you trash Eremite’s build but then you use action cam? That’s a worse handicap than a bad build.

That’s what you’ll burn me over?
Not my sloppy play towards the end that gets me killed?
My use of dagger+wh/greatsword?
Not my spam of wells basically off cooldown?
The fact that I’m playing necro as a pseudobunker with boons (somehow)?
Not going to try and discredit the gameplay as my opponents being bad?
Not going to say it was all luck?
Not going to insult my taste in music?
Not going to insult my choppy video?

no.
this idea is plain awful.

druid when you don’t need much healing but like doing more damage
ventari rev when you want to be healed A LOT AND QUICKLY (super burst heals)
magi auramancer for HIGH SUSTAIN HEALING (think things like ignore-mechanics-o-clock vg runs)
minstrel chrono is more of an off healer. they’re still insanely good, of course. but I’m not sure having a minstrel chrono would mean you could swap a healer for another dps… you ccould try. it could be interesting.

all healers can sustain and burst heal, but those are the strengths from what I’ve seen.

I mean. First of all, cite your sources for this “most players consider their main content” claim.
Because personally, I play everything -but- fractals regularly.
the only gamemode I play less might be WvW.. but that will likely change in the expansion. (NECRO ROAMING!? WILL IT BE A THING?!?!)

Secondly, I prefer quality far over quantity. Just look at the early living worlds.
They’re uh.. they’re not trash, but they’ve definitely improved since then.
Then HoT. When they crunched it in a short dev time and it turned into.. well, frankly a trainwreck.
There are STILL people erupting with hate over raids being released in the way they were.

And while the fractals are rather slow to update, I ADORE the nightmare and shattered observatory fractals. They are amazing, and the entire reason I even want to consider upping my fractal level.

Since I’m putting up a video, I may as well shamelessly plug my awful channel.
Feel free to view it and all the other low-quality kitten posts I put up whenever I get the urge to do so.

STIHL.2489:

Spare me any other hyperbola.

couldn’t resist.

People derail my thread about bringing the community together into a flame war and it keeps going. I get angry and tell them to stop (albeit in an unpleasant way) and I get my post deleted.
I can tell when I’m not wanted.

Blaeys.3102:

snip

I don’t hold grudges against anyone here.

Anyone (but anet it seems) could have seen a bit of a rift would form when Guildwars 2 took its first, and most cautious step away from being fully casual to cater to those who sought challenging content.

And I guess to quote my friend again:

“I worry it won’t ever get better tbh since there’s no… quantifiable standard, I guesd.
In FF or Wow or even wildstar you can tell within like 5 seconds of meeting someone if they’re the real deal or not.
[…] You can tell by the way someone thinks about their class if they are up to standard
There IS no standard in gw2.
It’s made by the community, which is a bunch of [bad players] who don’t know the math behind raids and don’t care to.
They find the broken exploit builds from people who do a little math, say that’s gotta be what’s required because raids are SO HARD, and curse anyone who says otherwise.

As someone who does math every day to raid, I was not amused. So I kittened off because it’s not fun enough to be casual and not interesting enough to justify the elitism.
Like, casually I can do literally 4x the personal check on vg. It’s easy. I can handle that, and you as my friend knew that.
If I wanted to join a chill [not awful] group (if that exists) I’d have to do nearly 10x the check.
I’m not going to spend enough time to SOLO THE DPS CHECK as a one off. I’m just not. I have better kitten to do.
The fact THAT’S the kind of standard people hold is neat, but extremely misguided. And it’s festered into a hell hole."

If you want to survive on a necromancer what you need to rely on is life siphon and blinds.
You need to build and spend LF very wisely.
Your shroud IS a second lifebar; treat it like one. Protect it. Never let it go empty.
You’re dead with zero death shroud, just as much as you’re dead with zero hp.

I’ll upload one of my dinky plat games if anyone is interested in seeing how I play a somewhat “survivalist” necromancer? I doubt anyone is though so I won’t bother.

Also, greatsword IS your utility weapon with power builds. Staff is very weak on power, bordering useless imo.
Maybe I’m an odd-man-out for saying it. But the pulls, blind and corruption field, high cleave and chill aa chain makes for solid utility imo.
The hefty clunking damage is a nice bonus.
You should use the GS3 to spike LF by cleaving in teamfights (if possible).

You don’t need good reactions to be decent in pvp. You just need to know the “tells”
For example: when a ranger hits you with point blank the next thing to come is practically -always- rapid fire. The response should be for you to flash shroud, RS2 in their direction to eat the RF, then walk at them and make them regret challenging you.

But try to avoid high tanking statsets.
Seriously.. it’s such a MASSIVE hinderance when it comes to teamfights. Sure you live longer, but what do you accomplish with your longer life?

+TL;DR OF HOW TO SURVIVE+
Stall. You stall for deathshroud, use deathshroud to stall for your heal skill, use any form of stability or quickness or just cc to get off your heal skill, use life siphons and blighters boon and anything else to just… stall. And with wells and a greatsword? Cleave
Stall and cleave.

Hello, plat scrub here with plenty of raiding experience.
Just wanted to say necromancer is not as kitten as you all make it out to be.

It’s not great; it’s got flaws.
But it also has strengths and people seem to either gloss over it, or hump the metabattle builds into oblivion despite it being outdated to all hell.
Necromancer is a class that thrives on something rare and unique.

“Gimmicks”

Epidemic, plague signet/sending, and that long forgotten skillset “wells”.
In pvp, wells create areas of denial. When traited and played with any inkling of damage or skill, wells tell bunker builds “no. this is my point. leave or be corrupted and killed as I heal off of your pitiful attempts to hold point.”

Even mender’s druids get told to bugger off as you destroy their predictable (even in plat) Pointblank + Rapidfire combo.
The metabattle condi burst build that was going on? Signets of suffering or something like that being used to just burst corrupted condis on people and gain like 15-20 might in a short timespan?
That’s a gimmick if I ever seen one.

Plague signet/sending is one hell of a “no, kitten you”. Especially to bursty condi builds.
I want to say plague sending/signet is one of the bigger reasons burn guards and condi thieves rarely make it into higher divisions. (that and teammates using cleanses properly, applying good cc, and coordinating to obliterate threats)

Also do you know how much of a dps boost an epi bounce gives?
It’s kind of backwards. You not only explode the heck out of the boss, but any adds nearby will scream as they get two epis worth of conditions.

And lets not forget the “bugfixed” raiding build of the past.
Viper horrors. Where you use a power elite for a singular skill and any spillover healing from the druids boosts your dps, theoretically infinitely.
It’s CURRENT dps build is by and far the most gimmicked thing to date. CHILL FIELDS Hello? That’s so backwards lmao.

You guys though, you’re so keen to tunnel in on the flaws.
Weak to cc, vulnerable to focus, lack of immunities/invulns.
Maybe it’s not a bad thing to lack such mechanics? Those things do kind of promote very annoying play patterns.. especially when stacked up on the same class. (remember perma evade thief?)

Oh well. That’s my two cents. Necro is fine, a few other classes are busted… and even then not by much. (average dps of dps builds is around 30-32k with few outliers)

Would I turn down buffs to my favorite class? Absolutely bloody not.
IMO, power is kept down because of the problematic nature of deathly chill. Until that trait is reworked, power will likely continue to be kept down. (something about power budgets)

Condi is blatantly more interesting than power.
You can do so much to play with conditions such as cleanse, transfer, heal through, resistance. you can block it’s applications, shorten it’s durations.
you can only do so much with power.. you either take the damage or you don’t- anything (currently) in game to play with power is either a block, evade, invuln, or some form of passive reduction that is incredibly low in “play potential” we’ll call it.

Power burst kills you outright.
Condi burst… shouldn’t exist, but in a world where we have so few windows to deal damage it has to otherwise it’s garbage.
Lingering conditions in pvp get cleansed long before they do meaningful damage. That or they stack so kitten ed high they burst out the target long before they finish ticking.

Power is, honestly, fine as is.
Condition damage and condition cleansing seems to be in an arms race.
Too much condi burst and your cleanses’ cast times will kill you.
Not enough condi burst and you do nothing because everyone has ways to keep cleaning.

It’s absurd.

How on earth has this thread derailed into yet another “raids need an easy mode” vs “l2p freeloaders” ?
Don’t we have like six different dedicated threads for you lot of grawl to oot at each other and throw excrement?

Jugnificent.2061:

snip

I like this. I like it quite a lot.
A few things I disagree with, but honestly very solid overall.

My own build is very offensive when it comes to wells.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhF6kjGolGsnGwmGgeTsgLYxXxtYYcqI0EqCQtpAwBA-TpxHQBJ8BAQwjAAAOBAD8QAUu9HuWZAA

I am hovering between high gold and low plat with it. It’s ofc highly vulnerable to cc, but what necro build isn’t?

Everyone is forgetting blood magic when talking about scourge.

“Last rites”
+150 healing power above 75% hp
+300 healing power below 75% hp
+450 healing power below 50% hp

450. FOR FREE.
That’s a minor trait; you just get that. FOR FREE
Barriers will be good in those clutch situations where you need to buy time for your healer and you won’t even need a single infusion’s worth of healing power being slotted in for it.

In terms of damage, ofc soul reaping wins. You can’t compete with the dhuumfire shenanigans. But for support? Blood magic. A little bit of healing, a lot a bit of free healing power.

Imo they’re both insanely strong traitlines, but for different reasons.

wh-.. what’s the goal behind this build?
because it doesn’t deal damage. I can tell you that…
it’s boon corruption is really weak, and the staff is so absurdly out of place.

It also looks like you put on soul reaping just to trait the staff marks??
My guy, this is.. this is abysmal. In terms of survivability you can do MUCH better on necro. Even then, you don’t play necro for its survivability (ironically).

Your area of denial; the strongest aspect of wells… is very weak because knight’s makes them absolutely toothless.

But before I just thrash this build further. (I respect the fact you say you rarely pvp)
Tell me what your goal is and I’ll assist you where I can in performing that goal— regardless of if it’s meta or not.

Guuuh. A seperate currency maybe? Otherwise there will be empty wings.
Wing with sloth seems ultra empty already.

This thread seems to have gotten derailed.
Oh well. I standby my ideals that raids are fine, but people are crazy.
Strong points stand and i want to acknowledge them:

Find a group.
I have a backwards inconsistent schedule so until very recently i thought this was impossible. I feel lucky. And now i agree this helps even if you think you lack the time.

Lead if you cannot find one.
I disagree with this one wholly. Not everyone can lead. It comes with great effort and responsibility that few are willing to go through, not to mention pure charisma that SO many lack.

Tbh, the last poster is totally right. Pugging is dumb. I wish we could fix the pug mindset
somehow, but this idea is just fantasy.

So with a full set of raids so far and pof in less than a month. Does anyone know if the mag shard cap will be raised?

It feels so absolutely tiny considering the 150 cap is WEEKLY.

I don’t raid nearly often enough, and i know most likely don’t, to justify this being made daily.
But already we get people capping within a day or two.
Giving them no reason to play the raids any further other than the low rng drops.

I worry that if the cap stays small like this we could end up with empty raid wings as people will flock to the easiest sources of shards then bugger off when capped. Maybe to the default material cap of 250?

I would love to raid more.

Solstace.2514:

snip

This honestly looks like a copy and paste.

So a bit of background; I am casual garbage. I do not intend to minmax my gear, and I don’t care about spending 2 gold a run on foods.

I will learn a rotation, but only on the classes I give a kitten about. Otherwise I will perform the task I am given in my own way, regardless of the personal dps loss it incurs (with the exception of dps, as I run a parse and I get competitive with others).
EG: I stack my 25 might on cps with strength runes and dumplings + aristocracy runes.

I am a player who gravitates towards necromancer’s power spec, and revenant’s condition spec. I am interested in burn guardian for the expansion, scourge, and whatever the heck renegade is going to be. I do also have a set of cleric/magi mix for revenant in case I am put on kiting of any sort.

I also play power thief when able to, and I have a CPS warrior.
I am willing to gear a chronomancer, as last I played it was pretty enjoyable.

I have experience in every raid wing, with the exception of the final boss on each. I have witnessed the travesty that is matthias with pugs, however.. but I’ve never cleared.
slothasor I have never fought as literally no one pugs sloth it seems. I couldn’t even start my own training runs for him.

Lastly, I do have my own tag. That may not be useful to most groups, but I’m sure its at least worth mentioning.

I am open at various times through the week, but the only 100% day I have completely free is Thursday. I’d be willing to raid for the entirety of that day if I could. I’m very interested in the content, and while I’m not sitting at 200 LI yet or legendary armor, I can say confidently that I’m not completely green either.

The fact that scourge can convert condis on such a low cooldown would tell me that you -want- to get loaded up with conditions. So dagger to transfer feels almost like a waste.
Torch I think would be a bigger dps increase anyhow.. so if anything, scepter torch, and then staff for the fear, regen, chill for kiting, and lf gen.
I’d argue staff is a must have on every condition build for necromancer. It’s too good.
Warhorn can be made a case for, however due to the doot of doom for breakbars.

— edit—
unless you’re talking pvp.. in which case I’d have no idea lmao. dagger for condi transfer is still good, wh would undoubtedly add more condi and cc pressure, and a swap staff is still strong af. Mainhand dagger… who knows. We have to see first.

TexZero.7910:

[…]create your own raid group[…]

I came back because this needs to be talked about right now before anyone makes the same mistake as me.

DO NOT. I REPEAT, DO NOT make your own group.

You will be taking on a massive amount of responsibility, like it or not, you will be thrust into an authority and leadership role and if you’re not looked up to as an authority then nobody will listen to you and the group will fail.

You will be forced to disband and recreate, recruit, and deal with irrational people insulting, questioning and ignoring you. Players growing complacent or lazy and not doing research, leading to wipes and sloppy kills. Unless you crush out this sort of behavior swiftly and cleanly; but few people have it in them to be so surgical all of the time, then your group will stagnate and fall apart.

You will deal with so much crap both in the forming and maintaining of a static.
I’ve both personally experienced, and witnessed groups fall apart because the leader vanished, wasn’t taking the job seriously, or was too lenient.

As my dear friend told me multiple times before during and after my group fell to crap due to my inability and unwillingness to manage it…

“Do not start your own group unless you GENUINELY want to be a raid leader, and you enjoy the responsibility that comes with it.”

Then there’s the fact that the entire group has to get along and play well together. Once cliques start forming its up to you to make sure they stop that. The entire group needs to be one happy family or new people will be put off and eventually (once cliques leave, and believe me, entire groups will leave together if you let any form) you’ll be left with nothing.

It will ruin the game for you if you do not want to do any of these things.
Or at the very least you’ll end up not wanting to do raids anymore and come complain on the forums about the awful community (heh)

ventari has absurd burst healing. So maybe in another raid wing we may see a desire for that sort of thing? who knows.

Pertaining to your topic, I would say glint makes for better burst healing thanks to the heal on shield. But also applies pretty darn good defensive and utility buffs, such as perma swiftness regen ticks that nears elementalist levels of passive healing (highest I personally hit was just shy of 1k a tick) thanks to bonkers healing mods.
But kalla would most definitely add more dps to the group. So I’d say its a tradeoff rather than “this is strictly better”

Honestly, due to how beautiful this game is, you could play both and swap as needed. Due to them both being healing specs, you likely wouldn’t even need to swap weapons out much.

Sorry. I’ve been derailed a bit. I’m biased, of course.
I do want to find pugs who aren’t so horrid either as people or as players that it takes hours to clear either due to this or that.

The main post is about really just… somehow getting things better. I don’t know. My idea isn’t grand or clean, but it’s an idea that’s worked in other games, and in one case quite well.
I just want the community in raids to be closer to dungeons or mid/low level fractals where I occasionally see goofy titles and people not taking themselves so seriously. but in the end we have a good time.. even if the clear isn’t a sure thing.

I guess what I really want is to casualize the air of raids without compromising the difficulty.. which sounds contrary to what I post, so I apologize. It’s difficult for me to be neutral on a subject like this when it does directly affect me.

That’s my two cents, and I’ll leave it at that. I’ll go back to my kittenposting and harassing people who take themselves too seriously now.

Jahroots.6791:

snip

I’m sorry if I gloss over the others for now, but I want to address this one head on.
The community HAS done a fantastic job, yes. There are more resources on bosses, mechanics, builds, rotations, and not just that—- but GOOD resources to boot.
Where your written rotation is the optimal middle ground between mathematically perfect, and raid realistic. There are established raiding mmos with solid communities for raiding that don’t have it half as good as we’ve got it!

But who on earth is going to make people read, find, or do these things? Who on earth is going to enforce that people know what they’re doing? That they simply practice before the attempts?
And more importantly. How will it be enforced?

That quote you made is spot on; Everyone does want to raid. And nobody wants to be a raider.
Nobody wants to put forth the effort -required-, and in the case of GW2, nobody makes them.
Any bozo with a generated link can get into an experienced group with whatever gear they scrounged together (if they even bothered to do that much) and get carried by their experienced teammates. The frustration can come from the inherent lack of trust you have in your teammates to even know what the kitten ed mechanics are!
I’ve had someone do vale guardian who couldn’t even tell me what the spawn for greens were or the rotation timer. This person was in legendary armor. Or perhaps he had a code gen’d for the set as he was wearing a gemshop outfit over his gear? Both feel just as likely, if you ask me.

The raids. Are too. Accessible. Anyone can try, and so anyone does. But by god, not everyone should until they’ve proven they’ll take it seriously… and few do.

I apologize if I’ve gotten a bit blunt and abrasive with this particular post, but it’s absolutely frustrating to see something like a clear new player squeak into an experienced group on a gen’d code and then watch as an elementalist, doing just fine otherwise, gets exploded by a seeker pushed onto the group by said new player.. and the ele gets kicked for going down.
I’ve seen that sort of thing happen twice and I felt sick both times.

There needs to be a rite of passage of some sort; a trial by fire if you will. If you can clear THIS, you’ve earned the right to raid on this character (or account). That’s possibly the best solution for it. At least short term.
I wouldn’t even be bothered if I myself got gated out of raiding. I’m willing to do some legwork if it means the people around me were willing to as well.

TL;DR: Casuals ruin video games, yadda yadda. Salty nonsense blah blah blah. Normies posting misinformation, etc etc. Memes, dreams, and well oiled machines, or some such.

Raids are factually too accessible. The fact that a level 80 in missmatched masterwork gear, some not even being level 80 can enter a raid is unacceptable.
And everyone and their mother knows this. Someone who has absolutely no business raiding is, by the game’s own ruleset, allowed to raid. So players who (not unfairly) want to keep this sort out, have to make their own rulesets.
With little viable way to showcase skill in a raid without having raided, the default falls to LI. I’ve already mentioned my problem with this.

Elitism is currently totally unjustified, by the way. The clubhouse that’s being run is more or less (please pardon the euphemism) a flimsy tree fort made of sticks and branches with a sign scribbled in crayon reading “no noobs alloud ples”.

I will stand firm in the belief that to make raids more accessible within the community, they must be considerably less accessible within the game’s ruleset.
Otherwise “noobs” will just wander in aimlessly, as they’ve been known to do, and get attacked by the experienced raiders, the learning parties, and the bosses and lack of knowledge they have on them.

There have to be hard systems put in place that somehow teach people how to raid. Not mechanically; but the mindset.
The fact that you must do legwork to be useful. That you must read boss fights to understand. That you must have some semblance of a rotation, or bring valuable group utility to be desired.
None of that is enforced or even implied before someone is allowed to walk into the aerodrome and queue up, and so the community makes things up and enforces it themselves… often with frustrating results for all involved.

I didn’t think this thread would explode so quickly, but let me just address a few things.
The biggest one that I’ve noticed and that personally annoys me the most…

The legendary insight requirement is inherently very flawed as a means of gating.
It’s not unfair just very flawed. Not only can it be cheated via code generating programs or websites, but I’ve noticed more often than not the commanders refuse to ping their own LI. This leads me to believe there are a lot of people with a tag looking to get carried by more experienced players.

My friend’s opinion, while it may seem unfair to everyone who plays this game, is her opinion.
Telling her she’s simply wrong, or uninformed as some way to attempt to invalidate the very real problem she felt is silly.

And if I were to make a suggestion on how to help raids that could be put in by the devs?

*Give some sort of incentive to bring new players along and clear. Perhaps the first clear bonus is given to the entire squad (nonstacking)?

*Gate the raids behind something of lesser or equal difficulty to “train” players. It’s likely too late for this current wing, but next wing.. there should be some gating of some sort; preferably behind this current wing? And raids be an expansion content, not just HoT or PoF content. Much like the revenant.

*Make raids require tighter dps AND tighter mechanics. The way things are now, the content is incredibly easy to blow up by experienced (and even some inexperienced) groups. Mechanics can be ignored, enrage timers can be ignored as healers work into overtime, and overall there is little punishment for the individual being sub-par.
I’m not asking for -more- mechanics, I’m asking for mechanics that matter. Being able to ignored everything in VG with a strong healer and a good chronomancer is unacceptable.
It’s cool… but clearing the content normally should be the cool part.

In the end, I think what could be one of the big attributes to the feelings of frustration a lot of players have is simply because raids are supposed to be this thing with a lot of prestige that few players can accomplish, but most players look up to for advice from those who can… and yet it’s hardly a step up from fractals. In fact there was a debate that the newest fractal on CM 100 is harder than most of the raids currently (if not all of them).

Tl;dr: If the devs were to implement things to fix, it would be to gate the content behind other hard content (fractals is a good idea), give some sort of rewards or incentives for helping new players learn and clear the encounter, or simply make the raids much harder and punishing for individuals’ kitten ups. Too many players are getting carried with no knowledge of the fight.
Honestly, too many GROUPS are clearing with little knowledge of the fight.

But in the end, it’s mostly up to the COMMUNITY to make the community better. At best the devs can only reward you for being nice.