Guild Wars 2

Marionette was one of the only PvE things I’ve done in this game since playing at week one. And I really enjoyed it. It was fun getting on TeamSpeak and actually trying with people and failing sometimes. I would play more PvE content like that instead of waypointing around collecting chests.

Thieves aren’t hard to play. Stop making it seem like using stealth or shadow step is hard. It’s not. Stealth really was poorly implemented and now they just can’t go back. There’s no counterplay, there’s no soft counterplay against a thief who knows how to use its kit effectively. CC during revealed buff? Please. Like thieves aren’t constantly aware of that and ready to dodge during the time their actually vulnerable.

I agree for Corrosive Poison Cloud. It could use the boon, and I’ve really been loving it in spvp these days. The 12 second duration is just so good. It’s good on most maps except LoF.

Move all the the four to six month+ inactive accounts to lower populated servers.

Nope, can’t stand the run animation or voice acting.

Rym.1469:

Jasher.6580:

How is everyone forgetting the Beastmastery Ranger builds where the pets hit like trucks and they had perma regen and were super bunkery?

That was the best of both worlds.

Aaand when Epidemic had no AoE limit. That was crazy.

When Epidemic had no AoE limit, I use to have so much fun trying to defend stuff in WvW by myself. Now it’s just sort of sad unless you run a condi party and try to call targets to epidemic.

Are you always clicking every time you need to -move- your camera? Because you really should just be always holding the button down.

Old HGH engineer with pre-grenade nerf. It was instant kill in supply crate stun.

I haven’t seen daily necromancer win in almost a month. —F

Can we think about smaller steps first? I don’t know, maybe pants? I play casters, and all my casters happen to be male. I like a more normal look, and the only option I have for non-skirt, kilt, robe is Asc. Cat. pants.

Blinds counter mesmers pretty well. Spam blinds, get them to waste cooldowns/ blocks and you win.

A lot of players in typical ZvZ fights blow their cooldowns in the first 15 or so seconds and AoE condi clears typically have a decently long cooldown. As a condi player, you just have to wait a bit before throwing out your cooldowns and trying to maximize the potential of your conditions in between enemy cooldown times.

Create a “condi party” in WvW with a mesmer, grenade engineers, venom share thief, and an ele and so on and try to put your boon to conditions well inside of static field. You can call target one person and focus your condition damage on them(mesmer/ necro) and epidemic, maybe. Mesmer usually helps punish condi clears with confusion which necro has trouble reliably applying.

There are ways to make condi effective, but it’s an uphill battle for sure. Just like playing a cleric ele or guardian in WVW; you’re essentially playing a different game than normal builds.

Omnomberry compote is still amazing food for large fights.

You just staff 1 to get life force, then get through threshold with deathshroud. Once below threshold, you should be able to deal with it pretty easily. Save fear for heal and corrupt boon for armor of earth+heal. Save chill for after they swap to water attunement and use cleansing wave+dodge roll and reapply poison asap.

Soul Marks is really inconsequential. It’s enough to absorb like one auto attack or less if you use all your marks then go into DS. Pretending you hold onto staff 4, 12% of 20k around 2400. That’s really not worth traiting, in my opinion. Vital persistance on the other hand rewards staying alive longer and can add up to more “gain” than the other if you play “smarter”.

If you’re having trouble getting focused or one of those people who like to stay in a fight from 100%-0% every time, then soul marks may benefit you more. If you have good positioning and can get off multiple deathshroud uses in a fight or can stay in deathshroud longer throwing out life blasts then VP is more of a “gain”.

Full glass ranger as a power necro. It’s almost impossible with very little counterplay, especially if they have Rampage up.

We can just use the bodies of all the former necromancer mains if we have a problem finding bodies.

Alright, I tried vampirism yesterday, and it was pretty nice with the typical zerker power build. You have good deathshroud generation, so after some practice, you can pretty much guarantee to have your deathshroud up for the rune proc.

I’m a believer..

I tried using runes of air yesterday in power build, and it was pretty strong. When it, weapon sigils, and CoD procced during down state, you could take a fellow zerker to downed in around 2 seconds or so. It was nice.

But there were so many zerker rangers running around yesterday, I had to go back to terror with double energy/ leeching. -_- No longer are the days where I need geomancy for melee on me when the classes that give me the most trouble are ranged.

And yeah, I meant the Rock Dog from Ogre runes typically ran with power necro. If you don’t plan on leaving a fight,t hen the Rock Dog does a lot of damage, but if you’re trying to leave the fight or run to another point, it can slow you down a lot and slow your health regeneration. Probably still really strong in dueling scenarios.

I haven’t tried vamprisism in power build, but I still don’t think it’s that strong. But I’ll try it for a while today and hope I’m wrong! I’m all up for diversity.

It’s all a coin flip, really.

He asked about runes of air, not sigils. And I think vampirism is garbage since the siphon effect is pretty minimal and doesn’t work if it triggers in deathshroud.

I could see runes of air being decent since most fights aren’t very long as a power necro, and it should be able to add to your downed damage burst. Also that kitten Rock Dog keeping you in combat forever.

#1359220

5 days old, should be a simple change.

I enjoy this class. It’s not the most “powerful” class, no, but you fill a niche of “corruption” that no other profession can do as efficiently.

Epidemic can be fun to bring if you run with an engineer and mesmer in your party. There are fun things to do and experiment with regarding necromancer, but you’ll notice these forums are beginning to be filled with some bitter old queens who have ran out of spunk(because they’ve already tried everything and feel forced into running efficiency). :P That’s every profession after you sink a lot of hours into it, though. Enjoy yourself.

I enjoy necro, really, despite the overwhelming forum opinion. My only complaint right now is lack of a utility with sensible stability and the new stability change making corrupt boon useless(ie: very difficult to use in solo pvp situations).

My queues have been around 1:30 to 3:30 per match unranked in the passed few days. The quality of matches have been much better than any hotjoin I’ve ever played(constant 4v5s and such or people sitting on siege all day).

I’d rather force people in spectator mode than have teams be 4v5 or any uneven amount, regardless of if it’s in my favor or not.

LucosTheDutch.4819:

But GW2 does have a trinity, it just isn’t what you think it is…

In GW2’s trinity, you can be multiple roles of even all 3 of them at the same time.

I think… I think it’s not what you think it is.

Satenia.9025:

Shinoobi.1259:

I’ve no idea why everyone is being so negative and dismissive. This guy has tons of followers and can have a positive impact on the game’s PvP scene, which it desperately needs. Obviously the majority of the people in this thread do not watch twitch, and that’s sad, because if Gw2 wants to become an esport, twitch is the most powerful avenue to make that a possibility(it went from maybe 1000 viewers total to soda making it a top channel. Phanta almost doubled his followers in one night because of helping soda).

I suppose this boils down to a generation-related problem mostly. To me personally, the concept of (regularly) watching some random kid playing GW2 (or any other game) is utterly alien.

While I do understand the benefits of a video-guide (over a written guide), exactly why I should waste my limited free-time with something I can only think of as a reality-TV-show-version baffles me. Maybe if I was in my early teenager-years desperately looking for some sort of idols or kinship I might, I can’t really say at this point as I’ve left those years behind me a long long time ago.

Ultimately, to me this feels like it has the potential to attract the wrong kind of crow: Youngsters which are easily being manipulated, this being the kind of people I have no interest to interact with in my gaming. Furthermore, they are likely not in a position to be able to regularly support the game beyond their initial purchase of the game. Meaning the regular sum I invest into the game has to be distributed further amongst these new free-loaders.

Personally, I would prefer different sorts of marking for this game.

Perhaps. I’m nearly thirty, and I haven’t watched actual television in many years because of twitch. I enjoy watching a wide variety of games and personalities, but mostly, I enjoy watching tournaments. Most of the people I know watch weekly tournaments of their favorite games on twitch or watch them together over skype even. These people aren’t impressionable preteens.

For instance, more people watched the last League of Legends world finals online than watched the American Superbowl. That’s pretty impressive, and giant advertising industries in asia and america(coke, google) are starting to throw weight behind esports. It’s a fascinating and exponentially growing entertainment market.

It makes me excited as just someone who loves video games.

Then I’m not sure why you’re posting your opinion on a pvp topic.

I’ve no idea why everyone is being so negative and dismissive. This guy has tons of followers and can have a positive impact on the game’s PvP scene, which it desperately needs. Obviously the majority of the people in this thread do not watch twitch, and that’s sad, because if Gw2 wants to become an esport, twitch is the most powerful avenue to make that a possibility(it went from maybe 1000 viewers total to soda making it a top channel. Phanta almost doubled his followers in one night because of helping soda).

You should care. Any new waves of interests in this game’s PvP is a good thing whether it comes from Soda or NB3. These two have nearly two million followers together.

I’m pretty sure it’s used not for downing people but for killing downed-stated people and their ressers. People who are ressing others immobilize themselves. If they move out of 100b, you win, if they don’t you win.

Otherwise, you’ll need other people to help you set it up better. It’s a team game anyway, don’t ask for 1v1 balance.

Play what’s fun for you. Whether it’s beta HGH pistol, zerker rifle, turrets, grenades, toolkit only— just play. The competitive PvP in this game is gone, so no one’s looking out for you. Just enjoy yourself and try to get the other people around you to do the same.

Make the hammer shots be dodge-able again.

Remove the portal to get to the hammer so people can’t abuse it to engage/ disengage/ know when someone’s coming to prep a KB or pull for a kill. Just have it far away from the other nodes so if a team heavily favors canon control they’ll sacrifice node pressure.

Yes, please put in moun… ResidentSleeper

I’m running this and having great success in tpvp. I honestly haven’t had many problems with any condition builds in tpvp lately, because everyone is running power/ might stacking builds or zerker builds it seems. Arcane thievery to steal might stacks and stuff seems to be clutch enough in most circumstances.

If I feel like I need more condi clear though, I’ll take 1 out of dueling and chaos and pick up mender’s purity.

I’ve also played with Traveler’s Runes because the 10% universal condi duration adds good enough damage to pick up the slack of not picking pure condition damage runes(you only drop 30ish damage on torment and very little on confusion from travelers).

This build I’m posting is more of the “ham” version of torment build, I think.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAW7flknpNtdqxMNcrNysBZuOg6kslYW2AkMA-TZRHwABOIAJLDA4CAI4JAEa/BA

If you enjoy being a martyr, then mesmer is for you!

Glamour mesmer is still very, very -useful- in WvW because null field and blinding melee train can change the outcome of a fight. Feedback on golems, liches, or zerker eles can be powerful. Veil of course. You do very powerful things. You just don’t really get rewarded, personally, for doing them.

I mean… my staff auto attack crits for like 500 damage. I can’t go melee in a fight. Phantasms are more or less useless. We rely on sigils like tormet/ fire/ and stuff to tag people to get any bags at all. We can spec to take out squishies in zerg backlines but even then other professions are much much better at it(thieves, killshot, lich form, HgH engineers(still a thing unfortunately), zerker LB signet rangers and so on). No matter what we build fully for in WvW, classes can build fully for it and out perform us EXCEPT for martyring our tags and damage for utility. We can make the difference in fights but it just doesn’t feel good nor does it really go noticed.

In sPvP we have the same problems, but the individual skill of a player can shine moreover making the class perform well. However, as it’s been stated by top mesmers in tPvP, they feel if they were playing one of the top professions/ builds instead of a mesmer, they would be getting better results without a doubt(and I was the same way. My tPvP win rate was 80% since playing Ele from launch. I switched to memser recently again, and I just can’t carry nor do I feel as impactful(win rate currently 69%. I went like 2-9 with mesmer).

I’ve tried nearly a dozen builds in the passed two years on mesmer, and none of them have been outstanding(original phant mesmer, maybe. The damage was very good).

I can’t comment on PvE. It’s not my thing. But I can imagine the inflated damage and AoE to make it comparable to phantasms being useless in ZvZ.

As to how to fix it? It’s been suggested to at least make phantasms invulnerable for the first 2-3 seconds of conjuring them to ensure the first attack. This would help PvE and WvW a bit. It wouldn’t effect sPvP that much since it’s super rare a phantasm will die before attacking once anyway. It’s more of a quality of life change, I believe. Working and effective phantasms would be a boon in all game modes.

Vitality. You got no condi clear as zerker unless you go for mender’s purity and use mantra heal.

You’re kitten out of luck if you get caught either way with or without toughness.

As someone who’s played bunkery eles since beta and all kinds of builds as an ele, I can say that it is our boons that make us live so long(as well as knowing when to use our evades/dodges). If you keep stripping our boons(at least protection/regen), then you’ll see us die very quickly or at least have to blow cooldowns. Also make sure you are watching which attunement that elementalist is in and putting all your conditions/fear on when water is on cooldown.

Immobilize is also a killer. You can many times bait an elementalist to blow his water attunment cooldown by applying immobilize. Many eles afterward would switch to earth for the protection boon when being pressured. There’s your chance. You can remove both regen and protection which makes them very vulnerable afterward and bait bigger cooldowns.

Like any bunker, it’s a battle of cooldowns and attrition, and defensive cooldowns are almost always longer than offensive ones. If you get an ele of any kind stuck into your convert boons into conditions well on a point, then you’ll see them just melt away.

Save fear for offensive pressure instead of just to chaining them together for no reason. Use them to actually interrupt our abilities and put stuff on cooldown. If strip protection/ regen/ stability off someone channeling ether renewal and DS fear them, you can probably kill them immediately afterward.

I’ve fought many necros who just blow all their fears one after another so they can get like 3 scepter auto attacks or 4k terrormancer damage. It’s awful.

I use rampagers with dire trinkets.

adelaide.6213:

Also, stun-breaks do indeed remove daze.

kitten , you’re right, they do.

adelaide.6213:

Shinoobi.1259:

Copy pasta my build from another thread since it’s more relative here.

When roaming with a small group, I find being a blanket daze mesmer is so much more useful when roaming than any other build. Daze is completely overpowered to me, and the lockdown with a mesmer(asuran especially with blanket Technobabble) is terrific. I use Moa because it removes a target from the fight long enough for your party to lock down a called target covered with blanket dazes to ensure a kill especially if you follow the moa up with some fears.

I use mantra of recovery for the 0 cast time condi removals which often save me from immobilize set ups. I use sword main hand when roaming for i leap. Not for the immobilize or even the activate, but because it spawns a clone close enough to them often enough to get a quick diversion proc. It helps set up shatter combos without having the clones on dodge trait.

This build is all about setting up kills for your party, but it’s pretty effective at 1v1 too. Scepter/ Pistol is better than Staff to me simply for the on demand and consistant daze/ stun. It adds another melee ranged parry which is important for all thieves you’ll fight. I keep a staff in pocket too, but staff is mostly for chaos armor stacking and the RNG daze proc or standing in Chaos Storm against thieves. Removing boons with your shatters really helps to mitigate stability or protection nonsense and set up your party’s burst more effectively to help finish someone while you have someone else moa’d.

Change MoD for Arcane Thievery if you need to(mostly against Condi Thieves so you can swap their immob stacking and gtfo). You can switch MoD to pretty much anything you need as it’s not very crucial, but it is very nice with this build for the extra burst on interrupts, immobilize, lock outs. But sometimes decoy for better shatters or blink for better mobility can be optimized choices.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhQQRAra8cl0np0tNqxGNMrNipBZ6XEjccqqQ6A0ghC-TVSDwAzU/J/+Di0cAV5XlTCAATQKUCO4BBI5IAEAABgduzje0jmUAjNMC-w

It stacks might pretty well with runes of traveller/ sigil of battle/ and interrupt might. So with full sigil of bloodlust, wvw bloodlust, guard stacks and might, you can be at around a comfortable 2800-2900 power with decent crit damage and tankiness. All the might stacking gives you decent condi damage as well which makes scepter not too terrible.

- Wouldn’t confounding suggestions (25% daze duration) be better than power lock in this build?

- IMO, pack runes are better in a gank squad than traveler’s. Traveler’s are meant for solo roaming.

- This build seems pretty vulnerable to enemy gank teams overall, especially when you don’t have staff/blink equipped. You don’t have the deceptive evasion + distortion that a shatter mesmer has, nor the perma protection of a PU mesmer. I don’t see how you can live against continued pressure if the enemy gank squad decides to focus on you.

It’s not worth it, no. Power lock has no internal cooldown and can really mess someone up. Technobabble becomes 3 3/4th a second, MoD becomes 1 1/4th second, pistol 2 1/2 second and so on. It’s not terrible, but it’s definitely not as good as putting enemy heal skill or evade/ escape or anything on a 10 second longer cooldown.

Pack runes aren’t for me. I don’t have any swiftness without a party nor do I have any access to give allies any other buffs besides that. It seems really situational.

This build was meant for roaming. I usually run blink instead of MoD, but if I have a good roaming party, I’ll sacrifice blink for MoD. You have two parries that are very punishing to attackers, blurred frenzy, and blink if you need. The immobilize on interrupt helps you gain a bit of distance if being chased. If I find I need more mobility, I’ll switch sceptor/ pistol to staff, yeah.

I’m not even sure what this person means as gank squad. I know gank squad as a party within a GvG group that hunts backliners. I know gank squad as roamers who meet up with zerg and then split off and hunt backliners. I don’t know a group of 15-25 being considered a gank squad. This build starts to fall off the more numbers you throw in it. Anything over 3v3 or 5v5, it becomes less effective. If you have good focus fire and CC, then you are almost guaranteed the first stomp though. You can’t remove daze with condi cleanses or stun breaks.

Copy pasta my build from another thread since it’s more relative here.

When roaming with a small group, I find being a blanket daze mesmer is so much more useful when roaming than any other build. Daze is completely overpowered to me, and the lockdown with a mesmer(asuran especially with blanket Technobabble) is terrific. I use Moa because it removes a target from the fight long enough for your party to lock down a called target covered with blanket dazes to ensure a kill especially if you follow the moa up with some fears.

I use mantra of recovery for the 0 cast time condi removals which often save me from immobilize set ups. I use sword main hand when roaming for i leap. Not for the immobilize or even the activate, but because it spawns a clone close enough to them often enough to get a quick diversion proc. It helps set up shatter combos without having the clones on dodge trait.

This build is all about setting up kills for your party, but it’s pretty effective at 1v1 too. Scepter/ Pistol is better than Staff to me simply for the on demand and consistant daze/ stun. It adds another melee ranged parry which is important for all thieves you’ll fight. I keep a staff in pocket too, but staff is mostly for chaos armor stacking and the RNG daze proc or standing in Chaos Storm against thieves. Removing boons with your shatters really helps to mitigate stability or protection nonsense and set up your party’s burst more effectively to help finish someone while you have someone else moa’d.

Change MoD for Arcane Thievery if you need to(mostly against Condi Thieves so you can swap their immob stacking and gtfo). You can switch MoD to pretty much anything you need as it’s not very crucial, but it is very nice with this build for the extra burst on interrupts, immobilize, lock outs. But sometimes decoy for better shatters or blink for better mobility can be optimized choices.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhQQRAra8cl0np0tNqxGNMrNipBZ6XEjccqqQ6A0ghC-TVSDwAzU/J/+Di0cAV5XlTCAATQKUCO4BBI5IAEAABgduzje0jmUAjNMC-w

It stacks might pretty well with runes of traveller/ sigil of battle/ and interrupt might. So with full sigil of bloodlust, wvw bloodlust, guard stacks and might, you can be at around a comfortable 2800-2900 power with decent crit damage and tankiness. All the might stacking gives you decent condi damage as well which makes scepter not too terrible.

I know this is PU discussion, but when roaming with a small group, I find being a blanket daze mesmer is so much more useful when roaming than any other build. Daze is completely overpowered to me, and the lockdown with a mesmer(asuran especially with blanket Technobabble) is terrific. I use Moa because it removes a target from the fight long enough for your party to lock down a called target covered with blanket dazes to ensure a kill especially if you follow the moa up with some fears.

I use mantra of recovery for the 0 cast time condi removals which often save me from immobilize set ups. I use sword main hand when roaming for i leap. Not for the immobilize or even the activate, but because it spawns a clone close enough to them often enough to get a quick diversion proc. It helps set up shatter combos without having the clones on dodge trait.

This build is all about setting up kills for your party, but it’s pretty effective at 1v1 too. Scepter/ Pistol is better than Staff to me simply for the on demand and consistant daze/ stun. It adds another melee ranged parry which is important for all thieves you’ll fight. I keep a staff in pocket too, but staff is mostly for chaos armor stacking and the RNG daze proc or standing in Chaos Storm against thieves. Removing boons with your diversion really helps to mitigate stability or protection nonsense and set up your party’s burst more effectively to help finish someone while you have someone else moa’d.

Change MoD for Arcane Thievery if you need to(mostly against Condi Thieves so you can swap their immob stacking and gtfo).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhQQRAra8cl0np0tNqxGNMrNipBZ6XEjccqqQ6A0ghC-TVSDwAzU/J/+Di0cAV5XlTCAATQKUCO4BBI5IAEAABgduzje0jmUAjNMC-w

It stacks might pretty well with runes of traveller/ sigil of battle/ and interrupt might. So with full sigil of bloodlust, wvw bloodlust, guard stacks and might, you can be at around a comfortable 2800-2900 power with decent crit damage and tankiness. All the might stacking gives you decent condi damage as well which makes scepter not too terrible.

I run armor of earth over signet of air simply because I haven’t been caught with my pants down in CC for a long time. What kills me more than anything now isn’t chain stuns like it use to be but immobilize spam. People are getting smarter(espeically at our level of ladder) to know to save stuns/dazes to interrupt ether renewal. Not running armor of earth or rock solid to cover it won’t give you any staying power and staff can’t immediately exit a fight like D/D can.

I play with clerics however as I only need to help escort map objects(like assist with svanir, take out a treb, escort orb) or go from home to mid and back, really. I let people with actual mobility and not pretend mobility like 25% movement speed(with air 4((same CD for swiftness, it’ll be back up for immob worries)) and fire 4((180, 4)) I get to anywhere I want to be before swiftness really runs out) rotate more effectively than me(unless I’m d/d).

Armor of Earth just has more universal utility to me. You can use it to cover renewal. You can use it to secure stomps against any class(air, tumble, stomp. It’s been that easy since launch, now you have rock solid to cover you anyway without -needing- to pop armor of earth). You can use it to secure resses. You can use it to secure important channels of icebow 4, 5, meteor storm.

Movement speed signets have always been super wasteful to me, even in WvW, where you can have permanent swiftness without it anyway. I don’t need the movement speed that critically to do my job as a staff ele(clerics). You do seem to be trying to run a more DPS oriented staff ele though, so maybe you are trying to out rotate people with real mobility(and being successful obviously). It’s just not for me and never will be.

And I run both armor of earth and rock solid. It’s just too good in my eyes. Unless I need staying power mid against conditions, then I go 0/0/2/6/6 cantrips give regen/vigor with cleansing wave/ runes of dwayna.

I think Forest may be the only map I don’t run blasting staff on. The smaller static and meteor storm seem to be more effective when I’m doing my rotations. Otherwise a misplaced static is more consequential with blasting staff as they have plenty of room to just stay.. inside of it. Healing Rain/ Geyser/ Eruption and all that are big enough otherwise. Henge and Keep are set up so you don’t need all the extra range with staff, and with Mine, you just play the LoS game like everyone else does, or as a cleric ele, they are forced to train you and stand in your stuff anyway.

Personal opinions, end the end, I suppose.

Dire stats. Healing bombs. Toolkit auto attack cleaves. You’ll do very minimal damage, really, but it’s what you’re asking for.

Only duelists. Swap GS to Sword/ Sword or Scept/ Sword. Parry until duelist is up again. Play super lame.

Why in the world do you run signet of air? It’s such a waste of a slot. Armor of Earth is so much better in almost every situation. Not to mention since you have air dodging for spot blinding, you can’t really rely on the active.

Depending on the map, I’ll switch blasting staff for renewing stamina for the vigor procs.

Blink, 180, staff 2 not cutting it?

Just kidding, it sucks.

Edit to acknowledge the unintentional Blink182.

Thanks for SoAC for all the different profession podcasts. There is a lot of good information in them.

Roaming asuran mesmer with Technobauble and just chain dazes for your glassy roammate. Daze is so broken. Kreygasm.