Guild Wars 2

I do remember a few months ago the devs were talking about expanding the end of game stats. It would be really cool if we could get some Sabermetric type stats like they use in baseball/basketball to more accurately define how much impact a certain player has on a game to game basis.

Having been a forum lurker for a few months now I still have yet to see any builds for necromancer that out do what I was using back in December/January.

This was back when hybrid well necros were rampant and terror had just been changed to actually do enough damage to be considered viable.

For a while before that I was really getting tired of playing necromancer since every match devolved into which team could control the initial engagement and remove the other team’s necro from the fight as fast as possible. This lead to constant focus fire and a frustrating play experience.

In order to combat this I tried various things like working on positioning, making teammates lineback/peel more aggressively, and even using different amulet/rune combinations in an attempt to be tankier.

These changes improved the experience a bit, but things didn’t finally click until they introduced the change to terror. Suddenly fears were a legitimate damage tool and defensive mechanic all rolled into one.

This lead me down the path of exploring a new wrinkle in the “standard” build. In my testing I found that 40% condition duration was enough to get me 2 ticks on all of my fears. Because of this, spending points in the soul reaping tree to pick up the fear duration trait like many were doing at the time was actually a waste.

Instead, I decided to focus on maximizing the number of fears available, and keeping the damage output from the hybrid well build. Here’s what I came up with: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=V1_-300-kHVI0p3JJVJ0;9;4TJJ;036B58-17;5S-F6a;1hoHAhoHA1Fl

It offers a good amount of versatility, self peeling, damage output, mobility and unmatched battle control. You have 4 fears + an aoe daze to punish people for trying to train you or for res/stomp denial. You have good removal and a potential for more fears through stability conversion.

Condition classes generally aren’t a problem as long as you use your transfers/consume properly and all your cc allows you to create and maintain space from melee classes. It excels in both 1v1 and team fight scenarios.

I used this build in “high level” play right up until I decided to step away from the game for a while.

If anyone has questions about the build or necromancers in general feel free to message me and I’ll try to answer them as best I can.

I haven’t played in a few months, but here are some of the general spvp tips and tpvp tips I learned over 1500+ hours of pvp in this game.

1. Engineer elixir tosses are considered projectiles and can be “blocked” by things like Sanctuary, Shield of absorption, or Wall of reflection. This includes Toss Elixir R so you can prevent the res utility.

2. Elementalists can swap attunements while channeling spells like churning earth or before a dragon’s tooth lands to be under the effect of fury when damage/crits are actually calculated. If you are playing as Scepter/Dagger, you can also swap to air attunement and use your 2+3 abilities to clear blinds that people may put on you to prevent a churning earth from hitting.

3. You can use any instant cast abilities while stomping and not be interrupted.

4. If you use the unblockable marks trait as a necromancer you can completely negate a guardian’s shelter heal if you time your fear marking to land between them activating it and the delay before the heal actually takes place.

5. Condition removal is treated as last in first out so if you are a condition based damage class it is often good to “Hide” the damaging conditions like burning/confusion/bleeds by stacking as many other effects on top of it as possible.

6. If you are fighting a Mesmer and you see a clone come running at you, either kill it or try to dodge. You can avoid the immob this way and severely hamper their shatter combos.

7. In a Tpvp setting, if you control 2 points it is often better to fight “off point” and try to keep the other team from being able to regroup fully. If you control only 1 of the 3 points, try to avoid situations where you are fighting away from the points.

8. In a Tpvp setting, Secondary objectives like the forest creatures or your treb on khylo should really be treated as secondary objectives. Only focus on these if you have a proper opening (if you just won a big team fight with 3-5 members of the other team off the map and accounted for or if you are a bit desperate and need the boost to try to get back into the game). Not doing this can often lead to improper time management for teams and having people in the wrong place to prevent counter attacks from the opposing teams. Also having forest creature kills stolen is a huge swing for the other team.

9. In a Tpvp setting, if you have voip try to get your entire team communicating who gets stomped from the other team and when so teammates can make decisions about roaming/pushing/secondary objectives. Keeping track of spawn timers and how many players are on the map and where is one of the biggest keys to improving at Tpvp. If you don’t have voip, try to keep track of the stomps that you can see for your own personal decision making.

10. In a Tpvp setting, understand your role within the team. Are you the bunker? Are you the back point defender? Are you a defensive roamer? Or are you an Offensive roamer? You should experiment with all of these play styles to find the one that suits you the most and then practice with it as much as you can. Over time your awareness towards your responsibilities, decision making, and comfort level should improve drastically.

Been playing with this build for a few weeks now working out the kinks with Hiba and it’s pretty solid. It has high sustain damage just from the rifle abilities but has the ability to instagib out of nowhere. The cleave on downed players is great, and overall the build is balanced. Give it a whirl before knocking it.

Xeph.4513:

Firstly, I would like to say that I have deep respect for “SS” and especially lowell.

Secondly, if you feel that I am unfit to do the podcast than I would be happy to step down and you can take my place; I have no problems or quells with that; I was just contacted by the hosts of the show and they asked me to make a reappearance, but if you feel that you are more fit to take my spot, than by all means go ahead.
Also, this show is meant to be a collection of opinions some may conflict and hopefully spark good discussions, people in the community will be able to tune in, ask questions and hopefully join in on the discussions; I don’t understand what you think this podcast is meant to be ?
Our initial hope with doing the podcast was to give the pvp community a little boost and entertainment; I don’t get why you are taking great offence to that, our why it is that you feel people need to win some sort of “lan event” before being given the right to make a podcast, which essentially is just a collection of players discussing the state of the game from their prospective.

I also feel that you made a poor choice in words when talking about the NA scene, I have recently played with QT (really really nice people, I had a lot of fun and learned a lot from them at the same time), and I don’t feel that they are behind in the meta at all; I am actually every excited to see the EU Meta meet the NA Meta, because they are two different playstyles and it would be interesting to see how they fair against each other; there is no such thing as “Our meta is more advanced than yours”.

Anyways if people feel that I am unsuited to do the podcast, than I am more than happy to step down and have someone else take my spot, the only reason I signed up for it was to give back to the community and keep it growing, but if you feel that you have something more valuable to offer, than I will not hesitate to give you my spot.

Thank you,

Much love to EU and NA!

Spoken like a true ambassador of the game. Leave the egos at the door and enjoy the show.

Well my first reaction is usually to scream “HALP” over whatever voip my team is using and then try to survive long enough for a teammate to show up… I guess that mainly applies in tpvp though.

They said with the initial state of the game that they wanted to make it a monthly thing so people could continually voice opinions on the game and the direction it was heading.

Last time was all EU players, some of those who didnt really deserve to be there. So they cut it down to 3 guests and decided to give NA players a voice.

Java being the team leader for PZ and Vain from QT which are 2 of the top NA teams. EU is still being represented by Xeph, and while TP hasnt played much in the last month that was mainly due to people being away for the holidays and dealing with real life things.

I’m going to take the rest of your post about NA meta and teams as troll and just leave it at that. Seems kinda silly to talk trash about 1 of the only active community events going on in a game thats trying to hold on till missing features are added and the game can once again grow.

Hey guys Demonsurge here. I’m rank 43 currently and have 20 qp. My main classes are necro and engineer, but I can play ele, guardian and ranger as well. I prefer to play roaming dps over bunkering though.

I’m looking for a solid, consistent team that has the skill and drive to compete at the top level. Message me in game for more information or if you have any questions.

It removes the last applied condition. If you get 2 applied on you at the same time like say bleed + cripple from caltrops then its random between the 2 which 1 it will remove.

leashmaygoss.2140:

To bring the mesmer burst along the line of engineers, we are increasing the engineer autoattack delay by .4seconds.

Hey thats my line!

While we have had some interest so far, we will still be taking applications over the holiday while we are on break.

Most of the gw1 guys have either quit or play pve exclusively. Valor is still around from those days but the rest of us are “new”. Our core has been playing together since shortly after launch and are looking for that person to complete the roster so we can continue to grow as a team, as well as players while we wait for this game to really take off.

If you have to ask… you dont rate

Warrior: hman, java, talic, gasmask
Thief : payne, jumper, ruin, merialcs(sp?)
Mesmer: zclipse, sataarcoeny, hiba, xyrkain
Element: skovex, gronzy, en vain, sivvy
Necro : jajaja, powerr, creecher, zzyzx
Guard : intense, redek, montage, kaypud
Engi : seether, klwpp, fizzicks, glick
Ranger : vyndetta, aussie archer (really not many rangers in paids)

The meta right now for high level pvp in NA is pretty much:

Thief (glass burst)
Guardian (bunker)
Mesmer (glass offpoint/roamer)
Necro (glass wells aoe/support)
Ele (some teams run glass some slightly tankier)
Note: A couple of teams run warriors in place of thief but it’s rare.

This sort of comp excels at team fights as well as skirmishes. The aoe potential is huge and there is still a good level of res utility throughout the team.

Physical damage is king right now. The majority of burst damage classes rely on high physical damage attacks that are supplimented with short duration, high damage conditions (Ele burning, mesmer confusion). The necros are generally keeping teams honest and making sure they are packing some form of condi removal and not just stacking physical defense on their bunkers.

The camera is zoomed in a bit but I actually find it more responsive when turning to aim the shots. You can still see a majority of the map, at least on a widescreen display. I do think the change makes it a bit tougher for new players to just pick up learning the treb, but for people that have been using it right along you should know the angles and distances to hit each point.

So I get the error 41 (power-kernel) computer shutdowns but they only occur during sPvP. Doesn’t happen pveing, wvw, or sitting in high pop areas. Most of the time it occurs in the starting bases, but occasionally happens while sitting at a node.

I have tried Limiting the fps down to 30 and playing on low settings. Checked my ram/cpu/gpu for stability/overheating and performed stress tests which they passed. I’m not overclocking anything and all of my drivers are up to date and installed properly. On performance power mode with UAC and automatic restart on crash off as well. Oh and the guildwars2 folder is on my desktop and not in program files.

If it makes a difference my computer specs are:

i7 q740 1.73ghz(stock)
6 gigs ram
GeForce GT 425M
windows 7 premium 64 bit

I’m seriously at a loss here.