Guild Wars 2

The damage output of the viper horror build wasn’t even broken or anything. They could at least have buffed or reworked other skills to make up for the loss. Condi reaper dps is just really bad now.

Well, RIP condi necro in raids. I don’t know what Anet is thinking.

As it stands now every class has at least one viable build in raids. If we’re going to be forced to run mirror comp in order to cover the whole party for quickness, revenant won’t be needed in raids and classes that don’t benefit much from alacrity will be pushed out by other classes that benefit more from it. I fear that this patch may kill the great build diversity we currently enjoy.

Pls no. Just give axe a new animation. Scepter is fine as it is.

I play full zerk necro in the HoT zones with no problems. Just need to get used to it. ^^

Here’s a build that’s been working well for me. It’s a wells/shouts build with very high damage solo with easy might and vuln cap.

Spite: Spiteful Talisman, Rending Shroud, Close to Death.
Soul Reaping: Unyielding Blast, Vital Persistence, Dhuumfire.
Reaper: Augury of Death, Decimate Defenses, Reaper’s Onslaught.

Gear is full berserker, and weapons are Greatsword, Dagger and Warhorn.

I usually take “Your Soul is Mine!”, Well of Suffering, “Suffer!”, “Rise!”, and “Chilled to the Bone!”.

By the time you hit level 80 you will have all the core specs and skills unlocked and you can change them around freely at any time.

Blood Magic can be a nice spec to start with to get the dagger trait, which gives 25% more movement speed. Good for exploring maps.

Minions make leveling really easy, so you might want to use some of those. Wells are also really nice, especially later on when you get geared up and have more traits to play with.

If you want to get the most damage out of your condi necro in PvE, Viper stats is the way to go.

Dagger is a good offhand in a condi build if you choose to run corruptions and want to transfer the self-conditions to enemies. All the offhands are good though.

Why don’t more enemies give themselves boons? Any chance we’ll see more boon application on mobs in the future?

As someone who mains necromancer I must say thanks for no nerfs this patch. And thanks for all the boon corrupts, I’m sure they will be really nice and I especially love the new Corrupt Boon.

The buffs are nice and all, but I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed. The profession balance goals post from a few weeks back said you’d improve the functionality of baseline shroud and look at a couple of reaper traits – and I really don’t think you delivered here.

Death Shroud definitely needs more change than just baseline piercing life blast. The attack needs to fire more rapidly to be able to utilise traits competitively with reaper shroud. Dark Path is also useless as a gap closer and needs to be looked at – I’d suggest dropping the projectile altogether and just make it blink to the target. In addition to this, Death Shroud has no combo play – Life Blast isn’t even a combo finisher.

The balance goal post from a few weeks back mentioned that a couple of reaper traits would be looked at – but the trait that needed looking at the most was not touched. The greatsword trait is useless and really needs to be reworked.

I know this wasn’t mentioned anywhere in any notes or articles, but the axe really needs some love too. I know the range was improved recently – and that is nice – but the trait is pretty bad, the animation on the auto attack is horrible (the old one was good), and it’s overall a pretty boring weapon to play with. It really could do with a new auto attack chain, and some combo finishers.

Not going to comment on the other class balancing. I’ll leave that to people that spend a lot of time on those classes.

Changing fractal level inside the fractal hub is a welcome change, but I really can’t get myself to do fractals anymore. Give us some fun instabilities and new fractals to play with and I’ll be right back in doing them.

Will end with some positive feedback.

WvW tweaks to rallying and point per kill is nice, and new squad commands look useful.

The new Shatterer is nice, I like what you did with that encounter, and the back item looks cool.

Gliding in all the PvE maps is really amazing too.

Death Shroud is still same old. I was expecting some kind of revamp.

If you don’t count all the corrupts tacked on here and there the changes are actually quite underwhelming.

What’s this build for?

Bluewizard.2694:

OlliX.1705:

I don’t like the Unholy Feast idea, as I feel like it works against itself and our other boon-punishing skills.

Dealing more damage per boon on the target contradicts with the boon removal on the skill, as well as our theme of corrupting boons.

I think all your other ideas are good. The potential 25% damage modifier might be a bit much though.

The theme of corrupting boons is mostly useful for condi-oriented builds. This is something that isn’t really the case for axe, as it’s supposed to be used as a power weapon as opposed to condi weapons. Therefore, adding more boon conversions to the weapon would mean you would convert them, but they would hardly do any damage due the lack of condition damage. One could off course insist on the usage of offensive hybrid runes/armor sets but, as one could see, this would really limit the general usage of the weapon as non of the other attacks have any sort of damaging conditions.

I personally therefore don’t agree with the fact that this change would make the weapon skill works against our theme. We would still be in the theme of punishing people with lot’s of boons, however this time this would result in direct damage as opposed to condi damage.

Condi conversion is not just about dealing damage. Non-damaging condis like weakness, chill, cripple, vulnerability (and so on) are universally valuable.

We already have a power boonstrip weapon, the focus. The Spinal Shivers attack on focus deals more damage for each boon stripped, and the associated trait rewards us 5% more damage against boonless foes.

I don’t think the skill idea is bad in itself, but I really don’t feel that it’s coherent with what we already have.

5th skill needs to get its cast time cut in half. That’s my only big complaint about focus.

Necro used to be really bad in PvE, but it’s pretty good now if you have Reaper unlocked.

Only been kicked from 1 group for being necro since HoT, if that counts for anything. :P

I don’t like the Unholy Feast idea, as I feel like it works against itself and our other boon-punishing skills.

Dealing more damage per boon on the target contradicts with the boon removal on the skill, as well as our theme of corrupting boons.

I think all your other ideas are good. The potential 25% damage modifier might be a bit much though.

spoj.9672:

I got the impression they forgot to mention a few preview notes they were planning to reveal.

Corrupt boon is interesting because it can potentially become the new second best dps option for pve condi necros when using master of corruption and transfers.

Yea, I think and hope they did.

Condi necro changes are nice and all, but what we know so far does very little for power necros – and if piercing life blast is the only thing they change about Death Shroud I will be majorly disappointed.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

What’s the scepter change? I see another thread says boon corrupt but when in the chain?

last attack in the chain

If you look at the power creep everywhere I really don’t think a nerf to Deathly Chill is warranted. I’d be all for buffing Terror though.

Zerk will serve your best in terms of dps, unless your party is well organised and can always provide you with discipline banner and fury (then valk can be better with the right nourishment).

Power builds should be fine now in higher level fractals. I’ve been running it with no problems.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

If Life Blast attacked faster and Dark Path travelled faster, it would really be a tossup between the two.

Pretty much my thoughts on it too.

A source of stability would be nice too, but that could be from utilities or something instead of shroud.

Core necro really could use a buff. Reaper is fine as it is.

Buff staff, buff life blast and buff axe.

Life Blast needs to be the 100% projectile finisher it deserves.

Staff could use some extra damage overall, and higher chance of finisher on the auto attack.

Axe needs more damage and the finishers people have been asking for since I don’t know how long. The awful attack animation needs to be addressed too. Range is fine.

I don’t know about actually using utilites, but I definitely think being able to see the cooldowns should be a thing.

I have two ascended sets of gear for my necro. My main set is full berserker that I use for open world PvE, Fractals and WvW. My 2nd set is a viper’s set that I use for conditions in raids.

Condi is good fun, but it’s more reliant on food buffs to be effective. On low fractals I’d definitely take zerk over condi because of how slow the dps buildup is compared to how fast things die. I feel like the place condi really stands out though is raids, so if you want to do raids as a necro condi can be a good choice.

If you decide to go condi you should definitely avoid rampager stats. You lose condi damage compared to other sets, and you get an excessive amount of precision. We have plenty of other ways to get crit chance in our traits.

If you’re planning to do raids also make sure not to take any gear with toughness on it unless you’re going to be the tank (and even then only 1 or 2 rings should suffice).

Vipers is the best choice for a condition build at the moment because it has extra condition duration and relatively high power and a moderate amount of precision in addition to fairly high condi damage.

That being said, a viper’s condi set is a lot more specialised than a zerker set, while zerker is a strong allround set that you can have good success with in every aspect of the game.

Zerk was my first ascended set and I don’t regret it.

I’ve been running condi reaper on both the 1st and 2nd boss just fine. Sure, I’ve had to swap for other classes a couple of times while we’ve still been trying to figure out our composition, but reaper can definitely have a place in raids.

As a condi reaper on the 1st boss you can do circles pretty well without losing much in terms of dps since your attacks all have long range. On the later phases he moves around a lot too, making your torment quite effective.

On the 2nd boss epidemic is really nice for clearing adds, and you got plenty of soft CC for the 4-spirit phase. It’s even better if you have 2 condi reapers, then one can epidemic the boss and then the other can epidemic all the conditions back from one of the adds.

I’ve not yet cleared the last boss, but from what I have seen you can maintain really good condi dps on her with Lich form and epidemic.

I can’t say much about power reaper since I’ve not been running that a whole lot, but it has good survivability, even as full glass. It has the advantages of being able to spec quite tanky without losing dps. It also has a lot of CC, which is valuable. Power reaper tank seems to be pretty good.

I’m not trying to argue that people should be taking us over any other class, but I definitely think we have our place in raids and we’re far from useless. I guess it also depends on the mindset of the people you run with.

Hit just over 161k on the same boss earlier today while pugging daily fractals. Should be higher in an organised party with the right buffs.

(I had spite signet, empower allies, 20 or so might, and some power from food)

LeSavage.1359:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Okay, so it’s not super legitimate, given the boss it was on, but this was with no Ferocity aside from the Berserker Greatsword and backpiece andCelestial amulet. Also, no food or utility consumable. All Ascended gear, though.

How high can others push it? I’m curious to see the world record. I was running without Soul Reaping and I think I had Bitter Chill instead of Spiteful Talisman on, so I know this isn’t even the highest I could have hit.

If i hit a rabbit for 500k will this make a hero?

All hail..!

Khristophoros.7194:

OlliX.1705:

Is this on EU or NA?

I am on NA, but I don’t have anyone yet.

Can’t help you then, sorry… but I’d be very interested in seeing the results.

Maxzero.4032:

580729kitten.1705:

Maxzero.4032:

OlliX.1705:

Maxzero.4032:

OlliX.1705:

Maxzero.4032:

Brayzz.6524:

You dont need weapon switch to proc geomancy just go in RS and out.

Only if you have the weapon with the Sigil as your current weapon.

Again test it out for yourself.

This is wrong. I have a scepter with bursting in my 1st set, and an offhand dagger with geomancy in my 2nd set. The geomancy procs every weapon swap (exception being when I procced it with shroud).

No not wrong.

It works exactly as it says on the tooltip.

I know this 100% because I just tested again a second time right now. In combat when I switched to the weapon set with the Sigil it proced. When I switched to the weapon set without it didn’t.

Don’t go off how you think it works go test it right now (like I just did) if you don’t believe me.

I already tested it before I claimed you to be wrong the first time.

Maxzero.4032:

Brayzz.6524:

I know that and and you use Scepter+dagger all the time. It is not rly the biggest problem of geomancy . Only problem is the melee range.

If you are running Scepter/Dagger and you are going into Shroud every 10 seconds then something is wrong.

Nothing wrong with just flashing shroud for the proc.

Well then we get someone else to test it because both my tests showed the same thing: it works exactly as the tooltip says.

Every jump in will cost you a bit of time.

What, like half a second tops? And you get 3 bleeds for it.

That half second in one auto and one Bleed. So you just lost a third of the benefit. Switching between weapon sets does not have this problem.

If you double tap F1 fast it isn’t really any slower than swapping weapons.

Maxzero.4032:

spoj.9672:

Maxzero it does work by splitting it across two sets. Its how i solo’d lupi with energy sigils on condi necro. If it didnt work i definitely would have noticed and wouldnt have been able to solo him on condi necro. x)

This was months ago though.

Well its a simple enough to test to do. I did two sets of tests yesterday, one set of weapons with the sigil one without. It worked exactly as the tooltip said: it only procced when switching to the weapon with the Sigil.

And if you have your mainhand weapon and offhand weapon split into different sets it will work as if that weapon is in both sets… which will proc the sigil each weapon swap.

I’d say zerker. Both are fun, but the zerk playstyle really enables you to go balls deep and wreak havoc. :P

Here’s the build I’ve been using on the HoT maps:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBhQD7kZTolGscTwbTgeTskLYxTxu4YkqMsGeWQBgGwKA-TxRBABRcRAuS5HN7PgnuBAeCAUq+jZKBJCwaLA-e

Is this on EU or NA?

Maxzero.4032:

OlliX.1705:

Maxzero.4032:

OlliX.1705:

Maxzero.4032:

Brayzz.6524:

You dont need weapon switch to proc geomancy just go in RS and out.

Only if you have the weapon with the Sigil as your current weapon.

Again test it out for yourself.

This is wrong. I have a scepter with bursting in my 1st set, and an offhand dagger with geomancy in my 2nd set. The geomancy procs every weapon swap (exception being when I procced it with shroud).

No not wrong.

It works exactly as it says on the tooltip.

I know this 100% because I just tested again a second time right now. In combat when I switched to the weapon set with the Sigil it proced. When I switched to the weapon set without it didn’t.

Don’t go off how you think it works go test it right now (like I just did) if you don’t believe me.

I already tested it before I claimed you to be wrong the first time.

Maxzero.4032:

Brayzz.6524:

I know that and and you use Scepter+dagger all the time. It is not rly the biggest problem of geomancy . Only problem is the melee range.

If you are running Scepter/Dagger and you are going into Shroud every 10 seconds then something is wrong.

Nothing wrong with just flashing shroud for the proc.

Well then we get someone else to test it because both my tests showed the same thing: it works exactly as the tooltip says.

Every jump in will cost you a bit of time.

What, like half a second tops? And you get 3 bleeds for it.

Maxzero.4032:

OlliX.1705:

Maxzero.4032:

Brayzz.6524:

You dont need weapon switch to proc geomancy just go in RS and out.

Only if you have the weapon with the Sigil as your current weapon.

Again test it out for yourself.

This is wrong. I have a scepter with bursting in my 1st set, and an offhand dagger with geomancy in my 2nd set. The geomancy procs every weapon swap (exception being when I procced it with shroud).

No not wrong.

It works exactly as it says on the tooltip.

I know this 100% because I just tested again a second time right now. In combat when I switched to the weapon set with the Sigil it proced. When I switched to the weapon set without it didn’t.

Don’t go off how you think it works go test it right now (like I just did) if you don’t believe me.

I already tested it before I claimed you to be wrong the first time.

Maxzero.4032:

Brayzz.6524:

I know that and and you use Scepter+dagger all the time. It is not rly the biggest problem of geomancy . Only problem is the melee range.

If you are running Scepter/Dagger and you are going into Shroud every 10 seconds then something is wrong.

Nothing wrong with just flashing shroud for the proc.

Maxzero.4032:

Brayzz.6524:

You dont need weapon switch to proc geomancy just go in RS and out.

Only if you have the weapon with the Sigil as your current weapon.

Again test it out for yourself.

This is wrong. I have a scepter with bursting in my 1st set, and an offhand dagger with geomancy in my 2nd set. The geomancy procs every weapon swap (exception being when I procced it with shroud).

siestakey.9378:

So if I epidemic the boss and see some big condi tics on trash mob #1

Then if the other necro epidemics one of the trash mobs spreading the condis back to the boss the boss will now have 25 or every condi ideally.

But now will Trash mob #2,3,4,and 5 have 50 of every condi on them! cuz they got hit by my epidemic and another necros epidemic?!?!?!?! 50 burns is armegeddon.

Ideally yes, but probably not 25 of every condi. Still a significant amount of condition damage, especially if you have a good amount of burning on from other classes in the team.

siestakey.9378:

What do you guys mean when you say you need two epidemics to “bounce the condis”

I have a fully vipered out necro and were going to try this tonight. But do we need to coordinate our epidemics? For example I cast epidemic on gorseval and then he casts epidemic on on of the trash mobs so now gorseval is also taking the dmg too?

Cuz I know if I just epidemic the boss it doesnt copy everybody elses condis on to MY target.

Explain to me like im 5 and I will love you forever. Or better yet somebody plz find the necros POV from Woodenpotatoes video!!!!

First necro casts epidemic on the boss. That will transfer all the conditions (up to 25 stacks) to the surrounding trash mobs. The other necro then casts epidemic on one of the affected trash mobs, copying those condis again back to the boss.

Make sure you decide first who is going to which part. The first necro should call out his epidemics so the other can get the timing right.

Yeah, putting the dagger and the scepter in two separate sets is what I’ve been doing while using the Geomancy sigil and swapping on cooldown in melee range.

Good point. So whichever works the best probably varies a bit from encounter to encounter.

So.. with the Sigil of Earth being a 60% chance to proc, how realistic is it to get all 5 stacks of bleeding with it?

What about Sigil of Geomancy instead of Sigil of Earth? If you swap whenever you can, shouldn’t that amount to more bleeding stacks?

If you want to maximise your damage in shroud you should take Decimate Defenses instead of Chilling Victory, Dhuumfire instead of Death Perception, and Reaper’s Onslaught instead of Blighter’s Boon. Any decent raid party should be able to cap up on vulnerability, so Decimate is all you need for crit chance.

Also worth mentioning that when the boss gets below 50% you’ll be receiving a big damage boost from the Close to Death trait, and your Gravedigger attack on greatsword will instantly recharge on a successful hit, making it spammable.

If you want to further optimise I’d suggest taking Blood Magic instead of Soul Reaping. You’ll lose some of your shroud damage, but the cooldown reduction on wells and the vampiric aura will make up for it. Your party will most likely be able to still cap on vuln without your shroud anyway, and Decimate Defenses will keep your crit chance capped. If you have Phalanx warriors and revenants might shouldn’t really be a problem for you either.

Edit: Worth adding – if you go for Blood Magic you really don’t need Reaper’s Onslaught anymore, making Deathly Chill the best option. Even with no condi damage it still ticks quite high when you have might up. Signet of Spite is also a nice damage boost you could consider over “Rise!”, and Chill of Death trait instead of Rending Shroud.

If you keep him close to the wall you could just dodge roll into the wall, or strafe out of it. Even if you dodge away, it’s not like he’ll move significantly.

Fair enough. I’m not gonna argue about it being optimal, but my group found the epidemic to be a very convenient way to do the cleave. Let the others focus on the boss while I just did the trash with epidemic.

Our wipes were never due to low dps so it seems like a viable tactic to me so far, but I’ll probably try with power necro a few times when my group does it again.

Here’s the condi build I’ve been running in raids:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJA7YnM0AV3gd3AmbCs3gliBbKpNDiBx9wiYSMKAMASAA-TRiHQB0T9ndp0jWPAggs8gz2Bgc6EaiSQAcQAIoyASBsoyK-e

I have Scepter and Dagger in separate sets, and then just swap as often as I can for the geomancy sigil proc, and I always transfer my Blood Is Power self-condis with Dagger 4.

I take CPC instead of Epidemic in fights where there are no trash mobs to kill.

Golem is nice for breakbar, but if breakbar duty is not needed Lich is a nice option just for summoning the minions that have bleed on their auto attacks.

The build constructor is not completely accurate in the stat calculation, I get 100% bleed/chill duration with this build, and 80% on the others.

Even just 1 condi reaper at Gorseval is nice for the trash mobs.

Surely a cultist should use the hammer, just like in the Cliffside fractal. :0

Nice. Now I can rest peacefully knowing that all the gold I spent on crafting ascended Viper gear was not all wasted.

I just run the best of both worlds in fractals, D/Wh in one set and GS in the other.