Guild Wars 2

I assume for those who are it’s more a fear of failure and/or other people than anything.

Raiding tends to be the most difficult PvE content there is and as such there will be wipes. Sometimes many, many wipes. When progressing in WoW raids it’s not uncommon to have over 100 or even 200 wipes on the more difficult bosses.

Some people can’t handle that, and/or are afraid they’ll be blamed for the wipes and treated like trash due to the perceived attitudes of other raiders which aren’t always accurate but since negativity tends to stand out more than anything else that’s what people tend to expect.

All the different builds possible, even if there are only a few “optimal” builds – but with the absence of damage meters and gear inspecting it doesn’t matter too much, I can secretly build tanky and solo bosses while all the silly zerkers are on the ground. ^^

Being able to stick with the profession(s) whose aesthetics I enjoy the most and still play many many different ways and even in different roles is awesome. Not only that but there are always plenty of abilities to choose from. Class design has always been my #1 interest and GW2 nailed it quite well imo.

The art is a close second though. After having reached 100% exploration on my main I found it difficult to do much of it again leveling an alt, but once I changed my mindset from “must lvl faster” to just slowing down and enjoying the sights it was much more enjoyable.

And ofc there are lots more, even little things like what my Sylvari Necro says when his pets die which still makes me giggle.

Ooohh I didn’t know you could just change ascended stats, tyvm. Think I’ll go for Viper’s then one way or another. ^^

I’ve been wanting to get a full set of Ascended Armor + Weapons for a while but I can never figure out which stats to go for. Given my limited time to play + the massive time investment to get a full set + my desire to play around with different builds from time to time I’m at a complete loss.

Should I go for whatever’s considered best and hope that doesn’t change? (I guess that’s Vipers now?)

Should I get stats I like even though they may not be great? I really like having toughness and like the idea of healing power but I get the impression they’re generally seen as wasted stats, especially healing power.

Should I just go Celestial and be sort of ok at everything but great at nothing? If it even works that way.

Have you noticed much difference using healing power with siphons? The scaling is pretty awful and if that’s your primary source of healing (outside your healing spell) I’m not sure it’d be worth it. Before the patch I used Knight armor (Toughness > Power/Precision) with some Zerker mixed in but Vampiric Precision is gone so I’m not sure what to replace my Precision with, if anything.

The damage portion of siphons has slightly better scaling than the heals with power + our multi-hitting abilities are all power based (Dagger 2, Axe 2, Warhorn 5, Focus 4, Wells) which are fantastic with siphoning so I prefer a more power heavy build with those weapons pairing the Axe with the Focus. I don’t see much reason to use condition weapons without condition power other than for Blood 3 which can be activated other ways.

Healing skill is situational, like most skills. CC if you need to remove conditions (also good default heal), SoV in groups because you can’t consume all the stacks by yourself, Blood Fiend with pet traits and if you don’t need CC.

For the elite, meh, I’m a Sylvari so I’m just using the guardian spirit thing. I don’t care for any of em with a Vampiric build though Flesh Golem is probably best, especially if you use pet traits.

Just practice, pay attention, and conserve your dodges and life force for the most dire of situations. That last bit is super important – I’ve seen many people dodging when they didn’t really need to then not being able to dodge when they needed it most (also happened to me when I was learning ^^).

Try to keep yourself in an open area (not standing next to circles) so you don’t get surrounded, keep an eye out for small safe areas in case you do, and only dodge/DS if you literally have nowhere to go – just don’t roll into another mess of missiles, aim for safer areas.

Locust Signet is also nice, I prefer the always-on boost.

A recent post here mentioned how Death Shroud is holding us back as a profession, which got me thinking: Why must our Life Force be limited to one ability? Death Shroud is certainly nice, but not all the time. And what if our Life Force mechanic could be used to solve some of our issues?

The Problems with Necros
1. We’re very unappealing in PvE. Necros are an inherently selfish profession. And you know what? If this was a single player game, that’d be totally cool. But it’s not. Even Necros should bring something to parties that would both make people want to invite them and make the Necros themselves feel more useful.

2. We’re a condition-focused profession in a game with strict condition caps shared amongst players. Plus some boss mobs are immune to certain conditions, further limiting our ability to help our group.

3. Death Shroud sometimes contradicts how our profession wants to play. It does not work well with conditions and self heals do not work while in it.

Possible Solutions
1. Necros are selfish. There are plenty of things that could be done about this, most simply allowing us to buff our party members. We’re pretty good at dealing with conditions, but that’s not always useful and frankly when it comes to removing them from party members Guardians are much better.

As for our buffs, well, we have a few for ourselves but no one else. So one suggestion:

Toggle Ability: When one of your abilities grants you a boon, that boon is shared with all party members at the cost of Life Force. Cannot be used in Death Shroud.

Might from Blood is Power, Regeneration, Protection, Swiftness, now everyone can have it all. It may be way too good as is, but that could be fixed by reducing stacks/durations or raising the Life Force cost.

2. Condition restrictions are especially harsh on Necros. Necros are great at not only applying conditons, but manipulating them too. We transfer them to enemies, convert their boons into more conditions, and even convert them to boons on allies. So what if we take this one step further and convert conditions on enemies into boons on allies?

Most conditions have a similar boon. Vulnerability and Might, Cripple and Swiftness, Weakness and Protection. They all do similar things in different ways, but the effects are not always equal – or depending on group composition, you may have too much of a certain condition and not enough of a boon.

So instead of the toggle ability I suggested above, we could instead have a way to use our Life Force to apply Might to allies (in a balanced manner) instead of Vulnerability to enemies and so on.

Bleeds I think deserve a special mention since some builds utilize them as a primary damage source, and converting so much damage into buffs may not work so well. Necro Condition builds generally don’t use Death Shroud for much beyond survivability, so it would be nice to have something that worked better with bleeds and also helped deal with the condition caps.

I think an alternate form would be cool here, one that could apply more conditons and also use them for anything from burst damage to boons to healing. We currently have one ability that scales based on conditions, it’s fitting for Necros so why not another. Only problem is that’s really similar to Death Shroud. So instead it could be a single cast-time or channeled ability with an effect that deals with conditions. Really it could be almost anything, just so Condimancers can make better use of their Life Force.

So how to deal with bleed caps… well I’m just throwing out ideas here: we could remove bleed stacks for bonus effects, we could convert our bleeds into either direct damage or an entirely new condition specific to this new Necro form or boons, or we could just have damage that scales with bleeds… but this is a topic that has already been discussed a billion and a half times so I’ll move on.

3. Necromancer contradictions. We have an entire trait line dedicated to applying bleeds, yet our class mechanic limits our ability to do so when used. We have another trait line dedicated to healing including many siphoning traits, but they’re rendered useless when using our class mechanic. Having any additional way to use Life Force would help with both of these issues.

TL;DR: Having any alternate way to spend Life Force besides Death Shroud (even just a couple abilities) could help Necros be more desirable in PvE, deal with their condition restrictions, and add much more depth to the profession by making builds that don’t work well with Death Shroud (like siphoning) more viable plus adding additional choices to all almost any build.

What were some of the good suggestions put forward? If bandwidth is the issue they can’t do anything that would increase how much stuff the game has to keep track of, like increasing the cap or giving each player their own individual cap.

For those saying this suggestion is OP, it does not remove or change the cap and no direct damage would be dealt from conditions until after the cap is reached. It’s primarily to make condition builds viable in PvE – particularly against large mobs that already take some time to kill where a full stack of 25 is reached very quickly.

Is this not a good idea? Or has it been discussed before? Would appreciate some feedback. ^^

As others have said, it should be a heavy. Looking at the other armor sets, each set has one tanky profession (Necro/Ranger/Guardian), one all-out-damage profession (Mesmer/Thief/Warrior), and one that can do a bit of everything with a high skill-cap (Elementalist/Engineer/x). Also the Guardian is more support-based using lots of magic where the Warrior is more damage-based and all about the weapons. So going on those premises, I’d make a highly adaptable profession with a lot of control who uses a mix of magic and weapon damage.

For adaptability the first thing that comes to mind is being able to use more weapon sets, but that feels too much like a Warrior thing. Aha, transforms! Like Vincent Valentine from FFVII perhaps? I can’t really think of a way to implement it without copying the Ele or Engi though. I think having a set of utility skills that transform would be best, since you don’t have access to healing or utilities while transformed, and I can’t see changing that just for this profession. So you could have a healing transform that gives you support abilities, and utility transforms for various other things. Make them have no cd so you can go in and out as you please. Cool. Then let’s have the transform abilities change depending on your weapons, while being able to weapon swap. Maybe. That should give a lot of options.

Welp for play style I’m thinking lots of ways to control enemy positioning, conditions, and interrupts. Let’s call it a uh… idk… a Reaper, and have it spend health to do cool stuff because there’s nothing like that in GW2 yet (unless you count Necro life force… I don’t). To balance this, stick in an immunity or four and have increased effects for having less hp with abilities that trigger on downing and more abilities that get you back up fast. So in play you lose a bunch of health, then go immune for just a second and burst. Something like that. Would require careful and precise use of defensives.

So a set of utilities that spend hp similar to Necro Corruptions, another set for defensive purposes, and a set for control. That should about do it. Also, screw Signets.

The OP mentioned LoL and now I’m thinking of champs like Aatrox, Tryndamere, Vladimir, and Zyra/Karthus for this guy. Sure why not, it’s all imaginary anyway.

Still don’t have a class mechanic. Uh… drawing a blank there. Any ideas? :P

If you’re so dead set on wanting a new elite, then use your brain and suggest a new elite, not trying to fix what isn’t broken.

Ooh, me, me!

Spectral Signet – 180s
Spectral and Signet ability (affected by traits that affect both)
Passive: Drain life force and heal every second. Works in Death Shroud. (? Maybe not.)
Active: Gain 90% life force.

Lulz. Or or:

Spectral Mending – 120s
Spectral Ability
The next time you enter Death Shroud, all healing effects applied by yourself heal your hp as normal.

Eh? ^^

From what I understand, bleeds are limited to 25 stacks because of bandwidth issues and keeping track of hundreds of bleeds from dozens of players is too much. This is of course a massive issue in PvE, with some professions more than others, creating an imbalance.

What if each bleed beyond the stack cap applied its damage instantly and directly?

There wouldn’t be more to keep track of, just additional direct damage. Since many players already shy away from condition builds for PvE because of the cap (myself included), it shouldn’t result in many more numbers flying around. Nor should it be overpowered in any way, since it would only really apply to long-lived PvE targets and the total damage dealt should (in a perfect world) be close to that of direct damage dealers.

I also don’t think this would be an issue in PvP because when removing a bleed, all the stacks are removed at once and, well, if you have 25 stacks and can’t remove them you’re pretty much dead anyway.

If this is something that could be implemented, I wonder if it could also work in some way with other condition (and maybe buff) caps.

DriV.6203:

Tulzscha.4231:

I doubt 20% every minute would help much

lol i guess you dont play conditionmancer very often do you?

I have. No, they don’t generate as much life force as some powermancer builds – though Staff auto can potentially generate a lot. They also don’t benefit from it as much, nor do they need it as much. Life Blast doesn’t scale with condition damage, they have more range on their weapons so Dark Path isn’t needed as much. Everything else has a 20s+ cd.

Since there is no crit damage equivalent for condition builds, they innately have more toughness (with Rabid gear) and both of their weapon sets (Dagger 4 and Staff 4) have condition removal for even more survivability. In addition to that, they have about everything they need damage-wise from one trait line, allowing them to put more points in defense.

If conditionmancers were to get more access to life force, I would put it on OH Dagger since that’s the only weapon that doesn’t generate any at all, and possibly buff the generation from Scepter. Then I would make Life Blast scale with either power or condition damage – whichever is higher – or have a trait somewhere that makes it apply bleeds or something. Conditionmancers don’t have a lot of wiggle room in their Curses line for Spectral Attunement, or much room in their utilities for Spectrals with Blood is Power and Epidemic being practically mandatory. (I guess you could cut Epidemic, but myeh, it’s so nice.) The stats from the Soul Reaping line are kinda bad too. :/

It’s unfortunate that for a profession based on conditions, the condition build doesn’t benefit much from our profession mechanic or the trait line that affects it. :/

Lopez.7369:

That’s wrong. The best power-based DPS comes from dagger / warhorn and dagger / focus and switching between both. You never want to lose dagger. (Also, Life Blast doesn’t come close to its DPS even when traited. It’s that terrible.)

Hm, looked it up on the Wiki and did some maths, you are correct. Both Ghastly Claws and the Dagger chain have about the same scaling. Claws are getting a 10% buff soon, I assume that’s only to base damage, but the +10% trait should also effect the scaled portion of the damage, which means that Claws has both higher base damage and higher scaling than the dagger chain. BUT the dagger chain being faster means it still does more dps no matter how much power you have. Even if the upcoming 10% buff applies after scaling, dagger is still better. Man, what a crappy weapon. Lol.

With traited Life Blast – does that take into account the Might and Vulnerability stacks from Reaper’s Might and Unyielding Blast + 50% crit chance from Death Perception? Talkin’ all-out Life Blast build. o.o

Lopez.7369:

And every single class has “to do a little more than stack signets and auto attack with one weapon for optimal damage.” I can’t think of a single class that works anything like that. In fact, if any class comes close to that, it’s actually necromancer or ranger, funnily enough.

Lol, sad irony. From what I hear, that’s basically what Warriors do. >< Buuuut I also don’t play one, so really can’t say.

Edit: Here’s a thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG5fqtiP2x0

A bit outdated, but I went in Heart of the Mists and whacked on a dummy for a bit, this still seems to be true. He does maths and sims that show a fully buffed Life Blast does the most damage, followed by Dagger auto. The only reason to stop using a Dagger is when you can’t be in melee because you’re squooshy and there are red rings of death or what have you. So, Axe 2 is ok for those situations… still sad the damage is so low though.

DriV.6203:

heh? Necromancer do not have any special “utility-like” elite skill. We have only transformations and dumb minion while some other classes have elites that benefit them all the time – no matter what their build is. Where would warrior be without Signet of Rage hmm?

Blood is Power was an elite skill in GW1 so it realy make sence to make it Elite skill as it would also give so much needed attrition to necro. Bare in mind that necromancer does not have any active defense, you cant block eviscerate with aegis, you have no source of vigor so you must use your dodges carefully, you have limited source of stability, fury, retaliation or even protection. While other classes do have other means to mitigate damage, necro must tank it all or most of it. DS as a class mechanic cant take much of it as it does have fixed amount of HP = dmg it can take.
You must know, that sometimes it is better to block a kill shot than to “eat it” with DS…

SoV, it is joke and it always will be. Necromancers use consume condition as it is one of the best heal in game. Having SoV as a heal right now is just stupid.

SoL is worthless and i try to reswap it if i have the time before a fight. That active effect should be changed too as it is realy useless.

The dumb minion is our elite that we can (potentially) benefit from all the time. Not saying I wouldn’t mind a different elite, I don’t like minions either, but we do have a good selection currently.

Our active defense is Death Shroud. Of course it’s not perfect, nothing is, and even though we can’t give ourselves vigor we can still dodge for those “kill shots”. We do have a few sources for protection as well. Is it as much as a Guardian has? Of course not. We’re not Guardians, and they can’t weaken, chill, etc. nearly as much as we can.

Not sure why you bring up fury and retaliation here as they’re both damaging buffs, but we have access to both… we can even get a permanent 50% crit chance while in Death Shroud. We can’t get as much retaliation as Guardians, and we can’t get as much fury as Warriors, of course. We’re not a buffing profession, we’re a debuffing profession. I’d like to see those Guards and Warriors get as high an uptime on Vulnerability/Weakness/Chill/Cripple/Poison/Fear/Bleeding/Blind at the same time as we can. Oh, and on the entire enemy team/pack of mobs. :P

Axe+Focus is our burst combo. Just do Focus 4 > Axe 2 > DS 1 x4 > Axe 2. Add in Blood is Power and Well of Suffering for even more burstiness. Axe auto is only really useful in a group to stack vulnerability for the others. Since our power trait line also gives condition duration, we’re pretty good for this – other professions stack might, we stack vulnerability.

Dagger MH is best for sustained overall power-based damage, with the risks that come with being in melee (2nd ability helps with that). I believe its auto dps is even higher than close range (untraited) Life Blast. Not sure how it stacks up with Life Blast when traited.

To max your power-based dps you’ll want to use both. Axe 2 and Focus 4 on cd, Dagger auto while they’re down, Life Blast while both abilities + weapon swap are on cd.

We’re not bad, we just have to do a little more than stack signets and auto attack with one weapon for optimal damage. :P

Edit: Incorrect infos, Dagger > Axe in pure dps all day erry day. Necros suck.

Blood is Power is good as is, as are our elites imo. Only real issue (ish) is the lack of underwater options, but underwater play is pretty limited anyway.

SoV could use some tweaking for the passive, but the active is pretty strong with the Bloodthirst trait. Using that in combination with Dagger 2 heals a ton… as long as you don’t get interrupted. That’s a pretty big liability with SoV. Plus we have the Locust Signet for healing on a utility already.

Lily.1935:

I’d rather just take blood is power and not have to fool around with signets.

PS: I personally think Well of blood’s combo field should be changed to Dark or water. Primarily water. So we can do blast finishers in it with bone minions or staff putrid mark to be splashing in blood. Elizabeth Báthory would do it.

Fair enough. Blood is Power is awesome.

Since we already have quite a few Dark fields a Water one would be nice. Thematically Light makes no sense, and Water… is a liquid… as is blood? That you splash on people to magically cure wounds? Sure, I can see that, as long as it’s tested for HIV. Alternatively, make it Poison.

The condition removal from Light fits better mechanically, though you could certainly make an argument for Necros providing extra healing as well – Transfusion, Deathly Invigoration, Marks of Blood… hey, Blood magic has a lot about healing, Mark of Blood grants regen, Well of Blood should also. Dem logicks. ^^ Anyhoo, that’s a different topic.

Bhawb.7408:

It was removed because Putrid Mark was a 1200 range full cleanse of up to 5 or 6 targets (don’t remember if it counted you as part of the target limit). It was absolutely too strong, it blew every other condition removal in the game out of the water by miles.

So why not just make it a partial cleanse and/or remove the transferring portion for conditions on allies (if it did transfer those)?

Lily.1935:

I see a major flaw in your reasoning. You said you use it to heal allies… Take well of blood. It heals for much more for both you and your allies.

Well of Blood is not always better. It requires your group to be stacked and stay stacked for 10s to get the full effect – people do this a lot, I know, but it doesn’t always happen especially in pugs – and the combo field could interfere with other, more useful ones.

Signet of Vampirism has a (slightly) shorter cooldown, deals damage in addition to healing, does that healing in half the time of Well of Blood and has higher base healing through siphons with lower scaling and is affected by Bloodthirst.

From the Wiki:

WoB: 152 healing per second for 10s, total 11 ticks (I think) = 1672 with 40% scaling.

SoV: 392 healing per hit for soon to be 6s. kittens (variable, I think 5 will be max with the 6s duration and it works with 5 party members + the 25 stacks) = 1960 with 20% scaling. With the Bloodthirst trait it’ll be 2352 healing… not sure if that affects allies though.

In addition to these things, with SoV being a Signet and WoB a Well, picking one to use will depend on your build. The traits to improve them are in Spite (4) and Blood (8) respectively. Signet Mastery, being Adept as opposed to Master, is easier to obtain and also grants might. Plus I personally don’t like many of the Adept Spite traits, but that’s me. :P

SoV is a more aggressive option than WoB. It’s not useless, although its passive kind of is. ^^

Bhawb.7408:

Why this small of a change? Because a buff is a buff, even if its minor. This addressed a very important concern, which was the fact that a single Necromancer couldn’t realistically proc more than 4 hits of it, and that a group of 5 couldn’t really proc all 25. This at least allows that to happen.

It all makes perfect sense now, thank you.

process execution.8014:

This trait would redirect all damage received by up to 4 allies to the necromancer while Death Shroud is active, but reduced by 75%. So you could effectively tank for other players by sacrificing your own Life Force.

LOVE this idea. But… I think having it up whenever in Death Shroud would not be so good. Perhaps just transfer damage from nearby allies for a few seconds upon entering Death Shroud, and cancelling the effect on exit.

manveruppd.7601:

Restore ally cleansing to Putrid Mark!

I didn’t know this was removed either why would they do that? At least let it remove 1-3 conditions from allies without transfer. :/

Apokriphos.7042:

[For High-end Dungeon Running PvE]

Give Necromancers traits that directly benefit the party they are in.

Yeah I wouldn’t mind feeling more helpful to my group. Problem is, Necro “support” comes primarily in the form of conditions, which have caps. Sure you can stack vulnerability on your enemies, increasing your party’s damage, but if other people are already doing that you’re not contributing as much if anything at all.

I would like to see something along the lines of “Nearby enemies take increased damage.” Basically a damage buff for your party in the form of a debuff that isn’t affected by condition caps, and affects all types of damage. Or modify/remove condition caps? I’m sure that would cause some kind of problems, but I can’t think of what.

A pure utility kind of ability would be awesome though. Other professions can stack aoe stealth or swiftness, things that are useful out of combat. We can stack aoe vulnerability, or convert conditions/boons, but those aren’t as useful in as many situations. Namely out of combat. So, hrm, what would fit a Necro that could support your party outside of combat… that’s a toughie.

But you know, I think a portal-style ability would be great. It would reduce the “need” for a Mesmer in certain situations, like the oh-so-loved Swamp fractal. How about this:

Spectral Guise 120s recharge
Creates an ethereal field that turns allies into Specters, allowing them to move through objects and be invisible to monsters for 8 seconds. Using an ability cancels Spectral form. If a player is inside an object when Spectral form wears off, they die (and their corpse is moved outside the object).

Not sure of the timing or other details, but the idea seems solid to me. The coding would probably be a nightmare. :/ Also being able to see while moving through an object could be an issue.

Apokriphos.7042:

Always show utility and heal cooldowns in deathshroud.

Yes please. For all transformations, not just Deathshroud? ^^ Only problem would be a lowering of skill cap.

Apokriphos.7042:

Make Life Blast/Plague Blast a projectile finisher.

Don’t see why not, it’s very similar to our Staff auto.

Apokriphos.7042:

#Allow for use of utilities in death shroud by sacrificing 1/3 of your total DS lifebar.
#Heal or vampiric ability use in death shroud by some reduction in total DS lifebar.

Don’t think this is necessary. Proper use of Deathshroud in conjunction with our other abilities takes some amount of skill. You can heal or use whatever ability > Deathshroud while said ability is on cd > use the ability again.

My only real issue with Deathshroud is that it doesn’t benefit a condition build much. The newer torment ability helps, but has a long cd. Dark Path does apply bleeding, but again the cd. I guess it makes sense, after all the Soul Reaping line which buffs all things Deathshroud also gives ferocity, which is only useful for power builds, it just irks me a bit that condition builds don’t get as much benefit from our class mechanic.

Apokriphos.7042:

[Staff Changes]
Increase staff autoattack speed.
Change staff auto attack to apply 1 stack of torment (5sec) on hit.

In its current form, Staff Auto is so slow most players can simply outrun the animation. Adding torment would be a slight buff, but sorely needed.

Wouldn’t do both of these buffs at once, just one or the other. The slow Staff cast is kinda annoying but our other weapons are pretty fast so it makes sense. It also pierces and is a finisher, so there’s some balance. Personally I like the torment idea, but could see it causing issues with its piercing effect. Maybe have a trait that adds torment to it? Regardless, we have the Dagger and Axe that are strictly power weapons, and only the Scepter for conditions, so making the Staff more condition-friendly would be nice.

Apokriphos.7042:

[Axe Changes]

Axe auto should not require a target to strike.
Axe auto should cleave (at least 2, as dagger post patch).

Unholy Feast should be a whirl finisher.

Disagree with the cleaving since the Axe isn’t a melee weapon, but maybe adding a cleave while in melee only? Don’t have a problem with more combo finishers, but Unholy Feast already does quite a lot so it might have to lose something for that.

Apokriphos.7042:

What do you guys think?

(^.^)b

Anchoku.8142:

Signets have what for synergy? Who runs all signets? SoV requires Plague signet to clear conditions. That is two slots with poor heal and long condi removal CD just to transfer conditions to an opponent and siphon a little health.

I understand how it is supposed to work: A Spite – Blood Magic vampiric build seems like it should work but I have not had much luck with it. I even tried to mix signets and minions.

I’ve been using a 20/0/25/25/0 PvE build that uses lots of Signets and siphons with Knight armor, and it’s… good for the most part. Tanky enough to not go squish along with the zerkers in the group, but unable to facetank all the things – can take a hit, kite and heal, and repeat, using SoV mostly to get other people healed (and do damage I suppose). I have Spite Signet just for the stat boost, Plague Signet for condition removal (and a little support since I can take more damage than others), and Locust Signet for out-of-combat speed and in-combat healings. I do swap some of them out for other things depending on fights of course, usually Wells.

The biggest downfall I’ve noticed is when you have no enemies around, you can’t heal well or remove conditions. Also getting spammed with knockdowns and such really hurts. But there are a couple ways around these things.

But anyhoo, I guess SoV really isn’t that bad, it’s just a little difficult to see all that it’s doing. I mean with my current gear, if I can get 4 siphons from the active it heals a tad more than Consume Conditions with 1 condition, and also can heal the whole group plus do some damage – 9150 with all 25 charges (scales with your power, so more with might), not too shabby. So it’s really more about the support where Well of Blood is inappropriate, imo.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I’d love to see people attempt a dungeon with SOV on their skillbar, and while not being healed by their team mates.

I did that in fractals today. ^^

20/0/25/25/0 Vampiric build with Knight’s gear, lots of kiting and siphoning. I only used SoV to help the group heal up a bit on a few bosses. Couldn’t tell if it made a difference, probably not since I don’t have much healing power.

Still didn’t work at all on Mai Trin. After 2 wipes I just went Consume Conditions… and beat her.

CratZ.6270:

They way I see it, is that it needs to have the shortest CD of all our healing skills to warrant its lesser self heal potential. If the CD was around 15-18 seconds I might be interested. I can live with a smaller heal if I instead get to use my heal more frequently.

edit: make that 20 seconds for starters so we have the same as healing signet.

That might work. Currently you can get it down to 28s with the Spite trait, but that’s still longer than Consume Conditions.

I think it would be excellent if unused stacks turned into something… say, each unused stack reduces the cd by idk 0.5s – before the cdr trait. And reduce the base cd to 30s. It applies 25 stacks, you use 5, the cd’s reduced by 10s. Untraited would make it 20s, traited would be 16s. It would improve its usefulness when solo without making it too strong in groups. Bump up the numbers a bit, rework the passive and it’d be a good ability.

But nothing like this happened, it got a buff but is hardly different, so what’s the deal? ><

WireTramp.1504:

What outfit should I be suiting up to take this mighty task? Preference into Toughness/Vitality & Power/Condition damage explanation would be of benefit.

Toughness is almost always better than Vitality when healing is concerned. The reasoning: Heals will always heal the same amount regardless of Toughness/Vitality. Therefore the less hp you have, the higher % of your hp you’re healed, and vice versa. When you reduce the damage you take, it essentially makes your heals more effective.

Vitality does have some use as it increases your Life Force pool by some small amount, it might edge out Toughness for a 6/x/x/x/6 build… maybe.

As for Power vs Condition dmg, you can go both ways depending how you want to play. Balekai posted a nice Condition dmg version, but for your build I would definitely go Power since you rely heavily on Life Blast. I would suggest dropping Near to Death for Unyielding Blast (Life Blast pierces and causes Vulnerability) and moving 10 points from Death into Spite, getting either Spiteful Removal to help with the conditions you’ll be taking with Unholy Martyr or Reaper’s Might because Life Blast spam. At that point you’ll be only 5 points away from a nice Healing Power bonus in the Spite tree, so if Unholy Martyr isn’t needed you can drop it for oooh 80-150 more base healing power depending on gear (yes that’s taking into account the -50 from Blood) + more from might buffs + 50 base power.

I would also consider dropping Deathly Invigoration for either Ritual Mastery or Ritual of Life, and use Signet of Undeath to pick people up + hey more life force for Blasting. Runes of Mercy are another thing to consider since Necros don’t have much for mitigation and dem zerkers are squishy, buuut you lose out on better stats and if people don’t go down, they’re useless.

Cleric or Zealot armor is the way to go, depending if you want to be more defensive with crap damage or offensive with less healing and survivability.

Unfortunately not many people are interested in having a healer in their group because it “slows them down”, but if you can manage to keep all the silly zerkers from going splat, that’ll result in more dps.

I’m one of those Necros that loves all things siphoning, so naturally Signet of Vampirism is something I want to make work. But as far as self-healing is concerned, this ability is beyond horrible, as I’m sure many of you know. It has a long cooldown, doesn’t remove conditions (I feel this has to be mentioned when it’s competing with Consume Conditions for a slot), doesn’t heal for much, and the part of it that would be awesome – the siphoning – is limited by an icd to the point of near uselessness. Let’s not even get into the passive… it’s really bad.

So it’s getting buffed, yay! One extra second to the active ability. Uhm… still a horrible passive, still a long cd, still doesn’t remove conditions, still limited by an icd, and you get maybe 1 extra siphon out of the active. What is the point?

The only conclusion I can come up with is that maybe SoV is actually balanced as more of a support ability than anything, to be used only in one extreme situation: You have lots of healing power and a group of about 5 people (less = unused stacks, more = insignificant healing on each person) who are either unable to stack for Well of Blood or you don’t want WoB’s light field interfering with other fields, and everyone’s focusing a single target, and you don’t need much healing or condition removal yourself. That’s… incredibly niche, but the 1 extra second would mean maybe ~5 more total siphons.

Someone help me out here… the ability got attention from Arena Net, and got only a seemingly insignificant buff. It must be good for something more, else why this small change? ><

Jazzyyc.9046:

I can’t believe the different varieties of professions etc. Can anybody give me some tips on the different professions?

What is your favorite profession and why?

:)

The best way to learn about the professions and whether or not you like them is to create a character of each profession that interests you and take them to The Heart of the Mists (sPvP staging area). In that place you’ll have all your abilities and traits unlocked, with some dummies and enemies to test them out on. It’s pretty awesome.

My favorite is easily the Necromancer, because I’m extremely biased towards the dark magic types that slowly suck the life out of things while rendering them helpless in fear. ^^

Hellooooo peoples. I’m looking for some advice in tweaking my build. It’s been working pretty well but there are a few things about it that bother me, so hopefully someone here has some ideas for it. ^^ Here’s the build as I currently have it:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;00;3kHVB0r3FJkJ0;9;4TJ-J-15C16;214;2J7H4XFG4wlrsYEysEwkT-GJYTsYudIVNWSXX2cZh49V-7c-9V6TsW6T;9;9;9;9;9;59F7T

It’s largely based around Parasitic Contagion and life stealing. I very much enjoy the play style of hybrid Necros and life stealing is my favorite thing to do; this trait brings both together nicely. ^^ It pains me to not have Curses at 30, but this is first and foremost a Vampiric build – 20 in Blood is a minimum and of course I need 30 in Spite for Parasitic Contagion. Oh well.

My primary concern is that this build has too much going on to be really effective. I lack any kind of toughness or vitality because too many stats are needed elsewhere, and don’t have much condition duration either. It gets by, but doesn’t seem optimal… healing is always more effective when paired with toughness. This build is very heavily centered around crits for more bleeds and siphoning, so I think it’s best to have my crit % very high with full Rampager gear as opposed to Nemesis’s hybrid build which aims for 50% crit and no more. For this build crit is damage and survivability.

The Sigils and Runes I’m not really sure about… the Leeching Sigil has a noticeable heal that I can use a lot and the Earth Sigil is doubly good for bleeds+heals. Is the Blood Sigil worth it? I think another Earth might be better. And the Runes… eh… I just have Vampirism and Scavenging because life steal stacking. They may not be the best and I really don’t know if they’re healing for any significant amount. The next-attack heal has a 25s cd, the same as Consume Conditions. :/ Maybe condition duration or toughness would be better here, to make the other heals more effective? If so, which ones should I go for?

The weapons I’m also conflicted with. Scepter+Dagger is always a solid condition combo. MH Dagger is obvious for siphoning and good damage, and a Focus goes well with it for burst damage, stacking vulnerability, and getting some regen – all from one ability. But due to my lack of toughness/vitality I often find myself not using the Dagger because being in melee is scary. :P I’ve been considering replacing it with an Axe since its second ability can trigger some siphons and it has an aoe ability that the Dagger lacks, it’s just really weak… though I could trait for it and replace Reaper’s Might I guess since I only really use Death Shroud for mitigation, cc, or burst aoe.

I don’t think a Staff would be good for this build since it’s more of a supporting weapon. Also Marks are boring and it’s slow – bad for single target, good for multi-target, but with all the bleeds I have with Epidemic I don’t need help there. The Warhorn… well, Locust Swarm means lots of siphoning I think (does it?), so that’s also an option, I just don’t like it as much as the Focus or OH Dagger because the Daze doesn’t seem that useful for PvE and Locust Swarm has a long cd (don’t think it’s worth it to trait for it); overall the weapon doesn’t do much damage at all.

As for utilities, they can be changed around as needed so they’re not as big of a deal. I usually keep Signet of the Locust just for getting around faster and switch it to a Well or something if needed. I also tried numerous times to use Signet of Vampirism, but it’s just sooooo bad. :‘( The passive healing is more like a flat damage reduction so your health is constantly going down, the effect is gone when you activate it (which you’ll certainly need to since your health is always dropping) at which point you’ll be struggling to stay alive. Plus the cd is long and it doesn’t do anything about conditions. Seems like SoV is better as a support heal, but we have Well of Blood for that. :/ Well, that’s getting off topic.

I’d appreciate any helpful advice/insights anyone has to give. ^^

Ah it feels like a few years but I suppose it’s been just one and some months. I had a hard time getting into it, actually deleted it off my computer since I wasn’t playing it which is why I’m asking here.

Anyhoo, the news posts seem to be mostly about some living story stuff and new transmutation items. Haven’t done a living story, is that a single player type of thing like your personal story while leveling?

I guess what I’m more interested in is if there have been any significant profession or mechanical changes, or changes/additions to PvE or gearing… if the game’s different to play from before or just more of the same with different stuff to look at.

I haven’t played GW2 in a few years or so and I’m wondering if much has changed since then. Any new and improved awesomeness to be excited about and come back for?