Guild Wars 2

How will current player rankings and achievements be reflected in the upcoming system?

13 posts in a row? wtf dude?

Blaine Tog.8304:

Condi Necros have a few major disadvantages in zergs. Epidemic is ungodly overhyped in a zerg fight. The Staff is probably our strongest zerg weapon and it’s strongest on power Necros. And since condi specs are unlikely to be focused in a zerg fight if they position correctly because theyre not a threat, they will be able to toss out their damage in the manner which they prefer: more carefully and deliberately, losing damage to massive condition clears. It’s false that you run into condition caps because of AoE condi clears negate all condi damage in zergs and resets any stacks you may have built up back to 0 before you can cast that 1sec long epidemic, and having more condi-spec’ed characters makes it easier for the enemy zerg to overwhelm your own zerg and steamroll you over.

Power Necros can still be useful in zergs but they have way more at-range AoE damage than Condi Necros as shown in Ormeega’s videos. They can still use the staff, but their damage will be somewhat overwhelmingly awesome.

Conversely, I generally find my necro’s Power build letting her tear through enemy roamers in 1v1 and even some 1v2 situations (it’s very difficult for Necros of any stripe to fight more than 2 opponents at a time, and even fighting 2 is extremely dangerous if they’re any good), whereas my Condi build has an even easier time dealing with multiple targets who can disengage well because I can just cripple, chill, fearlock, or tainted shackles and they are forced to bring multiple condition clears to get away.

Fixed it for you. Thank me later

Liquid.9672:

This question is asked quite often, with varying opinions on the subject. If you dig back through this forum a bit you’ll probably find some detailed discussions.

My views on the matter and general rule of thumb …

Solo/Small group = Condition Damage
Large group/Zerg = Power

What this guy said. A lot of Nemesis fanboys will tell you condition damage for large group/zerg fights but it’s not as effective as a power build. So for solo roaming or small groups go with condition damage with epidemic. For large groups and general zerging definitely go power build. I have plenty of large group fight videos on my youtube channel using a very effective power build.

Sheobix.8796:

for the OP, the build you linked is a great fail, the person who made it didn’t understand what they were trying to achieve. The terror traits are useless unless you have a specific rune setup (its like, 2 of 3 different types of runes to boost condition duration) and you need rare veggie pizza running 24/7 to get the second tick of fear damage.. and even then it’s mediocre.

Curious as to what you’re trying to do.

Actually he has over 100% fear duration with this build so I’m curious to know where you learned to do maths.

And here I was thinking beating Liadri with a Necromancer is like cheating lol. Once I got the hang of 1st phase and how to do it properly 2nd phase was a joke. I even told a guy that was running it with me all I needed was 30secs in 2nd phase and it would be over. That poor thief that was running it with me was still trying and I had already gotten all the gauntlet achievements including Light up the Darkness.

Team wide condition removal is not unique to the necromancer and I would argue they’re not even the best at it. I would take a guardian or elementalist for condition removal over a necro any day. And definitely don’t have great sustained healing. I would say that once again guardian and elementalist have us beat by a mile on that one as well as engineers, rangers, and cleric geared warriors with vigorous shouts.

In the end though none of that matters because like you said the meta is all about going full berserker and DPSing a boss down in seconds.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The OP does reflect my sentiments using a necro in sPVP. There’s a reason why I main the engineer in sPVP, and that is basically it.

People complain about necromancers being OP all of the time, but whenever I play them, I never see it. They talk about terror chains being uncounterable and unfair, but I rarely managed to pull it off. It seems like every player I fight that I try to chain stun just breaks out of the fear and then teleports away/dodges/gains stability, ruining the whole chain. That, or they counter-stun me and then I’m on the defensive because Necros don’t have the best stun breakers.

They paint the necro as incredibly tanky, but I get focused and killed the moment I’m not pole positioning with the staff at 1200 range. Unless I actually build myself to be really durable, most classes just dance around while stabbing me to death. Even when I go minion master with PVT, I still get smacked around. The only time I’m really durable is when I have a full Life Force pool, and that only happens after I’ve leeched a few 2 vs 1 kills to fill it up.

They talk about how well we can stack conditions… but that is actually something we do well. The thing is, though, is that necromancers don’t stack conditions the fastest. Rangers and Mesmers get that distinction, stacking 4 or 5 bleeds every second. Necros can burst conditions in an AoE, but they have to blow nearly all of their cooldowns to accomplish this. Epidemic is touted as being overpowered, but it is extremely hit or miss, since to work it needs a series of specific circumstances to ever work, and even then the long windup and bad line of sight errors make it so epidemic rarely works. You end up copying 2 bleeds and a cripple most of the time. Of course, I’ll sometimes fight a super aggro class that has so many cleanses stack onto themselves that I get neutralized. The most effective strategy I’ve thought of isn’t even used in tPVP.

For non conditions builds, I don’t have burst. I have high sustained damage, but I don’t have a method to lock down and do a ton of damage. Wells are slow and suffer from the flaw that players can choose to not stand in them. Other than wells… there isn’t much to increase DPS other than minions. Minion builds can never catch evasive enemies, die to the AoE heavy meta, and often leaves the necromancer helpless in order to supplement offense. You’ll get some utility, but nothing too special or even notable.

I think I know why people think Necromancers are overpowered. During some particularly bad nights, I watched a dozen or so tournament videos, and I noticed a couple of big flaws in people’s builds:

#1: Most of the “underpowered” classes are running old builds and refuse to update their build. The guys in random tPVP and hotjoin don’t have a problem using a lot of stun breaks or condition cleanses, but in these tournaments they have no stun breaker, no condition cleanse, and complain when a condition class beats them. They say that they can’t use cleanses or stun breaks because it makes them useless, but bellying up to the primary offense for the moment also makes them useless. Seriously, mesmers: use arcane thievery.

#2: People are more concerned with what is on paper than what happens. In the videos I’ve watched, I saw epidemic used maybe once. I saw one fear chain that consisted of using more than one fear. Now I know that the announcers can’t see everything , but generally they keep focus on where the action is. The necro builds being run all have the exact same thing: Epidemic, Spectral Walk, and Corrupt Boon. Literally, every build I saw used those utilities. Epidemic is rarely used, corrupt boon is also rarely used, and Spectral Walk is the necro’s only tricky movement skill. That is it. Any and all combos that complain about necromancers that doesn’t use these utilities is immediately suspect.

#3: Something else necros are good at that not a lot of people mention is the condition transfers. This is highly situational, since it only really affects other condition classes in a 1 vs 1 scenario. But outside of that scenario, a necro can accumulate a lot of conditions on themselves, then suddenly transfer them all over, throwing the opponents offense right back in their face. This doesn’t mean much against warriors, guardians, elementalists, mesmers, and thieves, but against engineers and rangers it is quite dangerous.

A-net start taking notes right here

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

flow.6043:

Alright, everyone who says necros are useless and/or not the best at anything: wrong!

If you read something like this you can instantly tell that this person plays only PvE or not a necro at all:

So? To be fair, the majority of the player base plays either PVE and WVW. So if they complain regarding those aspects of the game, those may be valid complaints.

I also play mainly PVE, and the necromancer is pretty rubbish in PVE. Oh, I do just fine in groups, but I can certainly see the weaknesses of the class. We are Anet’s least favorite profession. All of our traits were broken on release, and we’re still struggling with the various broken/bad traits that remain. Our trait lines are also horribly divided, often limiting our build potential (like having to invest heavily in a rubbish trait line like Death Magic, just to get Greater Marks or Staff Mastery).

Our Death Shroud has always been a poor ability. It used to be our down state, but instead they removed this and made it our primary class mechanic…. and gave us nothing in return. Necromancers are pretty much dead meat in their downstate, with no ability to stealth or move out of the way. And after the recent tpvp Pax change to overflow damage in DS, we are even worse off with our Death Shroud ability.

This bring us to our lack of defense against spike damage, which dominates PVE. Many bosses have one-hit kill attacks (often poorly telegraphed as well), and we have no defense against it, especially now that damage taken in Death Shroud leaks into our actual health pool (great job devs!). And we also don’t have access to vitality for extra dodge rolls, or to invincibility, evade or block.

We are severely handicapped in PVE due to the cap on conditions, which is reached easily when playing with other players. This limits our damage potential greatly, since our class is almost entirely focused on conditions. We are also pretty poor at DPS, due our lack of access to a cleave attack.

All bosses in the game have Defiant, which makes them immune to fear (our primary defense basically, next to Death Shroud). And fear is also often despised by dungeon groups, since it makes common enemies flee, when you typically want them to cluster them into a tight group. Fear is also a bit buggy, since sometimes enemies don’t run away at all, or are rooted in place by default.

Our minion ai is messed up for a very long time now. Minions often do not attack their target (and just stand around), or attack the wrong target (drawing unwanted aggro), or even run away from their target. This is enough reason to not invest at all in minions or Death Magic. Moa Morph also instantly kills all our minions if we’re hit by it, and our Flesh Golem dies underwater.

The Staff is our only real ranged weapon, but it’s projectiles are so slow that players can actually outrun them easily.

Life Stealing is underpowered. It is currently not strong enough in my opinion, to be entirely viable.

We lack escapes. We used to be able to dive off cliffs in DS, but that was recently changed. Sure, you can place a Flesh Wurm (with it’s absurd cool down time) in advance, and hope it’s not dead when you need to use it. But apart from that, we have no ways to escape. This is especially a problem in WvW. And I’ll ignore Spectral Walk for a moment, because that’s going to get nerfed soon too.

Yeah, we are a pretty broken class in PVE. All those complaints are valid. The only reason I’m still playing one, is because I hope at some point our class gets fixed… and I’m just very stubborn.

This post has merit… kinda. PVE necros have nothing that they’re good at. In sPvP and WvW they’re great but PVE they don’t bring anything unique to the table except epidemic. The funny thing about all this is that the reason Necros are so awesome in sPvP and WvW are also some of the reasons why we suck in PVE (in comparison to other classes).

Try this one instead. You won’t have to change much.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQNArYWjMap7FbubM8JEoH7CuAiRKOmghSR5kOA-jEyA0CACDI9BKHWEN2qZR0Y1QYqUioafQR0qFCYxEA-w

A few things about your build. You have 100% fear duration but no spectral wall? Remember you can use spectral wall behind you as you’re being chased to fool people into crossing it. This is especially helpful against Thieves and GS Guardians that leap. If they dont cross it then use staff 3 or scepter 2 to cripple and then spectral grasp them into the wall. Make sure to cross the wall as well to get that protection boon. Use spectral armor to get another protection boon and to regain more life force since condition damage specs lack life force generation. You are using precision oils instead of condition damage crystals. Most of your damage is condition so use crystals instead of oils. Finally, use plague form to guarantee a stomp or a rez.

Condition damage specs are far superior to power ones for small group fights and roaming in pvp so I would stay with your condi spec just gotta move some things around. Switch out spectral armor for epidemic when you’re taking out camps and locust signet for when you’re on the move.

EDIT: And if you lose to a warrior don’t feel bad. A berserker warrior with berserker stance will counter anything a condi spec necro can do

I’ve been thinking about switching to mark of evasion since I find my survivability to be too high actually and I could use that extra AoE attack.

As for 10 in spite for 3secs of retaliation its not worth it to me. I’ll lose a faster life transfer and tainted shackles plus 10% crit damage and life force pool for 100 power and condition duration that does nothing for me since I’m not stacking any conditions. It just doesn’t make sense in this build and I’m not looking to tag people. I just want to provide what’s best for my team.

Hehe deathtickle lol. I know someone on my server that uses that trait point allocation with mostly knights and berserker gear although I’m not sure as to what traits he uses.

I use to use this build and it’s a great build. Most of the wvw clips I have up in my channel is me using this build.

Lately though I’ve been using this build and it’s awesome! Great damage. Great Survivability. Melandru Runes and Bowl of Roasted Lotus Root are awesome.

Very important thing about this build is that I actually have 2 staves. The first one has Sigil of Perception. When i get 25 stacks I switch to a staff that has Sigil of Fire.

edit: gw2 forums apparently has a problem with using the wrong plural form of staff. stakitten is a no no apparently :P

I facepalm whenever someone says terror conditionmancer was ever an effective build for zerg vs zerg pvp.

If you’re talking zerg vs zerg pvp power builds have always been and will always be the best builds for zerg vs zerg fights for the Necromancer. Only instance I have ever found condition damage to actually work is when one unorganized zerg is fighting another unorganized zerg and both of them are afraid to push on each other so they just stand their exchanging 1200 range spells.

Condition builds are terribly dependent on the other zerg not having a bajillion and one condition clears which they always, inevitably, do since theres so many ways to actively and passively clear conditions.

And with the current meta where organized groups ball up, stack might, and move as one to create an AoE bomb of destruction on the enemy, the damage that conditions do is negligible compared to the damage power necros can put out.

condi necros are more than viable in s/tPvP especially when compared to where we were before. Even with the nerfs I still think condi necros can apply better counter pressure to survive than power necros and can also provide better team utility too

No John, the issue is that Asuras are tiny and we need an option to have everyone appear as humans especially to the spectator. The particle effects are an entirely different issue. Don’t try to derail or compile the particle effects issue with this one because they’re entirely different issues. Spectators don’t want to see tiny Asuras all over the effing place.

I’m assuming the OP is talking about PvP builds since burning doesn’t affect PvE.

For WvW I run this build
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmQDbkRrSPTzbjfTBIp46nnU494RKKeYqClD-jEyAoLBZKCARBiEBn9KiGbZsIas6aMlLRUtIA+FA-w

Video of the build
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXff-ZgSWUM

For sPvP I still use dhuumfire even though its been gutted
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMad7Vbab87JEoHvHuAiRKOmghSB8kOA-TkAAzCpIiSFlLKTUyosRtWA

And another video of the build in action
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEhE1YKnnoQ

Our commander got confused and thought the DH borderlands were the Kaineng borderlands so he took everything

fileark.4709:

All I can say is that getting smashed four weeks in a row from servers 2 – 6 levels higher is killing moral on Kaineng. Sure we are out matched but over half of our WvW players have finally stopped playing. We could have fun even if we didn’t win before, now it’s making people quit and leave. Give us some dignity and drop us a few tiers… please… if random matchups put a server against massively OP servers for or more than four weeks in a row then it shouldn’t be so random… add some logic so the same server cant draw the short straw every time.

Having a system that takes months to balance when WvW guilds migrate can kill the game for some people.

All of this right here

For people who get paid to develop games for a living I really can’t believe that you guys didn’t account for the variables that could destroy or enhance a servers performance. Maybe if we had an Arenanet dev in a Kaineng WvW guild they would understand the situation… oh wait we did… they left to Tarnished Coast /goodbye

Like fileark said, 4 weeks of this garbage it’s not even worth playing. Most of us are asking ourselves, “is it friday yet?”

btw you guys take forever to figure kitten out

Amins.3710:

nikkistar.1409:

Kyuzo.4675:

nikkistar.1409:

P.S. You mostly win, except when you lose…to us.

LMAO. Don’t you actually have to fight in order to win?

I’m sure the comment about “driving GF nuts” was an attempt to get you to fight btw.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_90f4p4tjSI

Enough said.

Are you really making video’s of 3 thieves who can disengage at will, and calling that skill?

I’m confused.

More importantly though is… are you clicking?

And whats up with people posting GW2 videos and speeding them up? I don’t get that at all

This thread is just hilarious. Its funny because the OP thinks that the best way to counter a Necro is to play Necro yet according to his sig he plays warrior and doesn’t realize the best way to counter a Necro is the warrior he’s not using because he’s too busy playing Necro with no amulet. This is all just too funny.

Gilburt.9146:

This has continued to happen to me numerous times since this post. Example: my guild and I just spent 3 hours capping a fully upgraded hills and when we finally succeeded me and at least 5 others got no event reward even though we each got plenty of player kills, helped kill the lord, and stood in the circle while capping.

I have only ever missed one event reward in PvE due to a bug (and I have played a lot of PvE). Why have a I missed out on dozens of event rewards in WvW when in PvE I ALWAYS get the event reward I earned. Can this problem please at least be acknowledged???

Was in that same fight with Gilburt (same group too) our guild and many others took Keep at hills and a lot of us that were there and participating from the beginning of our siege on hills got nothing while some others that had just gotten to the fight were saying they got gold level participation rewards.

Absolutely love the patch from a spvp perspective. I never felt like a free kill or underpowered pre patch, but with this new patch and the addition of torment my Necro feels godlike now.

Haha looks like Arkham beat me to it

Sir Morgan Malory.2069:

Buffs to Elems appear impressive. But most buffs Staff skills, which was only usable in a few situations. D/D elems didn’t get anything and that is >80% of the community. Buffs to specter and focus were much needed too.

That may have been the point. Most of the community runs D/D. With some staff buffs maybe we might see some interesting staff builds coming up.

1. Solo Queue

2. Solo Queue

3. Solo Queue

the holy trinity of tank/healer/dps has been replaced by mesmer/guardian/warrior

Shadow of Azrael.1205:

Ormiga.6183:

i really hope the rating is determined entirely on win/loss

It isn’t cause the dude on the first place has only 64% win rate.

I meant our ratings should go up or down depending on the outcome of the match and not what was done during the match like capturing points or kills. i guess i should have elaborated a little on that. determining ranking entirely on win/loss ratio would be really bad lol. people would just play 10 games with a premade, win all 10 times, and never play a tpvp match ever again after that

I guess ill put in my two cents here.

First the achievements leaderboards counts points earned via dailys and monthlys which really sucks for those people who didnt get the game since launch. Would really like to see the achievement leaderboards count all achievement points earned except for dailys and monthlys. I would love to hear why they decided to include daily and monthly achievement points in this leaderboard. Usually theres a good reason why the designers make the decisions that they do but with anet i find myself scratching my head more than usual. Maybe im just spoiled by trion’s openness with rift and defiance, idk.

tpvp leaderboards are finally here but we’re not sure what the rating is actually based on. It could be as simple as win/loss, or complex like a combination of win/loss and kills/deaths and objectives captured. without understanding how our ratings are affected each game this leaderboard is useless. we dont need to know exactly how this formula works but just a little bit of transperancy here would be appreciated. i really hope the rating is determined entirely on win/loss and not a combination of win/loss and other things

nothing new about wvw leaderboards…

EDIT: forgot to mention that tpvp still pits solo queuers with full on premades. another reason this leaderboard is useless. i think splitting the queues should have been done first, just my opinion

Harrier.9380:

I vote Auron.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOlBX14Ei50

really? this guy clicks on his utility skills lol. was this a troll?

sooooo in other words if you dont have a team anymore because they all left due to lack of:

rating
ladder
bad class balance
lack of game modes
spectator mode

then we’re stuck solo queuing against premades… great. see you all in smite/LoL solo queuers

Tyler Bearce.3427:

The point is to have competitive matches. If you are so good that you beat every other solo group. Then yeah you should have at least a reasonable shot at beating the lower tier premades.

at this point none of us even know if your rating/matchmaking system is even working which reinforces the fact that you’ve decided to have an invisible rating system, cause it probably doesnt work

oh and you also just basically quoted jacobin but used different wording…

Jacobin.8509:

Solo queue = low rated players without teams. If at any point you start to win you will again be matched against pre-mades until you are knocked back down.

I will be livestreaming Agony’s Tuesday Nights Dungeon Event. Hop on to the livestream at http://www.twitch.tv/ormigarbm and check us out at 6pm cst

Eliteseraph.4970:

Listen up, all you prospective pvp video makers: THIS is the kind of fighting we want to see. I don’t care about your crit highlight reel. Show us clean, smooth, long cuts of you fighting, even if you occasionally get downed or killed. Skip past the rez timer and fast forward the parts of you running between points, with minimal text to point out what you were doing/thinking. No stupid moviemaker special effects either!

Nice work, Hid. I enjoyed it. You kept you calm and showed some serious awareness of the battlefield and good supporting fire. That part at 7 minutes where you shadow refuge and call for backup, but stayed out of the capture ring so the enemy didn’t know you were still there: excellent!

If you wanna watch pvp videos with minimal/no editing Eliteseraph you should watch the videos on my channel. all my videos are unedited start to finish pvp matches. Some are tourny matches others spvp ones and its all recorded with in game sound, no cheesy background music, tourny matches contain our mumble comms as well.

www.youtube.com/user/Ormigarbm

no glass cannon builds here either so you wont see me running base health sub 2200 armor builds

original post: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/PvP-Hammer-Time-PvP-Build/first#post363678

Wanted to share a pvp build that i came up with a few days ago that I’ve been using based on the hammer weapon and the warriors superior ability of keeping enemies controlled via immobilizes, stuns, knockdowns, and knockbacks.

Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fIAQNAS5ejgOtuxO2OMxBC0DswltYeYExTkTBlA;TsAA1CtoCyEkIIbQugkBtQYgwWEA

Build: http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/warrior#1|0|10|5728|259|1004|246|30|2368|2414|1502|10|1061|0|0|30|1542|1529|1491|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|16|9|0|28020|28047|21055|21055|21055|21055|21055|21025|48789|0|0|0|0|

Build: http://www.guildhead.com/skill-calc#ccRc0Vc9Mmmwxmmmwxmxax9MMkqmVaq8khS707khS7khs707kGo70V7owY

with this build i have a total of:
five 1-2secs stuns
one 5secs immobilize
two knockbacks
one cripple
one 8sec weakness
one 1sec daze
two 3secs and 1sec blocks that reflect missiles

Here is a video of me using this build. Keep in mind that in the video it was only my 2nd playthrough using this build so some refinement in my play still needs to be made and i didnt have the proper rune set on my armor since i forgot to change it but overall the video shows what this build is capable of.

2nd video i made just yesterday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tFxzRMo0Kk

franzuuuuu.9421:

Would just like to say that I tried this build and I’m loving it, are the runes correct on the build you linked? Or was that only for the video?

the runes are correct on the link in the video and on this forum

Dreadspectre.3456:

This build’s probably really crappy without proper team support. I run Hammer/GS tanky build, I love the Hammer but it’s really meant for use in supporting a team in a team fight. If your team isn’t making use of the openings you give them you’re better off just going for a real burst build or something.

All my builds that i run in pvp try to bring something more than just damage to the team but are still capable of going 1v1 against other classes without being a glass cannon.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I don’t believe I saw any swapping to Mace/Shield in the video, which could have provided a lot of additional survivability.

This is one of those “refinement in my play” issues that i mentioned. It was only my 2nd playthrough with this build and warrior is not my main class but you are correct, swapping to mace shield brings 1 more stun, 1 more interrupt, and 2 blocks so swap often.

Dreadspectre.3456:

The problem with taking so many physicals is though that he is susceptible to CC himself and conditions would just keep stacking up pretty bad. I can’t give up Balanced Stance regardless of what build/weapons I’m using, it’s just needed too much.

Ive been playing with this build for a while now and i havent run into too many problems as far as condition stacking goes. In 1v1 once i get my opponent with one of my stuns i put them in such a huge health deficit that they dont have enough time to stack enough conditions on me before i kill them. In teamfights (tournament pvp not regular structured pvp) we usually run a condition clearing guardian. If conditions are still an issue swap one of the physicals for “shake it off”. Both mending and shake it off are on 25sec cooldowns and all together remove 3 conditions.

I miss balance stance too. If the enemy team has alot of cc replace one of the physicals for balance stance. I recommend keeping 2 utilities at least physical though.

Wanted to share a pvp build that i came up with a few days ago that I’ve been using based on the hammer weapon and the warriors superior ability of keeping enemies controlled via immobilizes, stuns, knockdowns, and knockbacks.

Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fIAQNAS5ejgOtuxO2OMxBC0DswltYeYExTkTBlA;TsAA1CtoCyEkIIbQugkBtQYgwWEA

with this build i have a total of:
five 1-2secs stuns
one 5secs immobilize
two knockbacks
one cripple
one 8sec weakness
one 1sec daze
two 3secs and 1sec blocks that reflect missiles

Here is a video of me using this build. Keep in mind that in the video it was only my 2nd playthrough using this build so some refinement in my play still needs to be made and i didnt have the proper rune set on my armor since i forgot to change it but overall the video shows what this build is capable of.

check out my newest pvp video and the rest of my thief videos on my channel. Will be putting up some warrior pvp videos soon too