Guild Wars 2

I just noticed that the only advantage to Knight’s Gear+Rampager’s Trinkets over Carrion Gear+Rampager’s Trinkets is 16% more crit and 500 more toughness.
Yet Carrion bring sme 2,500 Life and roughly 30% more CondiDamage.

Is the Toughness and Crit really worth it?

Tested now with 693 Condition Damage without any food and dealing 77 damage per bleed is nice I guess. I am used to pure Condition Builds where I deal around 110.
My critchance ir at 59% without any effects, so maybe I’ll drop Deathly Perception for something else. I also took Reaper’s Might, as Might also gives condition damage.
With the new Torment in DS, Hybrid Builds seem more attractive than ever.
I was also thinking about using my full Rabid gear, but I’d prefer the raw Power over more condition damage.
All in all a nice build, the LF alone is enough to keep me alive through most things.
Thank you for the tips, especially the light slice of condition damage.

I am still not sold on the sceptre though. I really prefer using the Staff for its LF generation and potential alone.

I will try the condition damage approach. Still have full Exotic Rampagers Jewelry in the bank, I think I’ll try that on for a fit.
Thanks for the tips, Though I really like the survivability of the Necro alot. I dont care that much about damage tbh, never really did in any game.

I don’t get Sceptre/Dagger on a PowerBuild. I dont use Condition Damage.
I also used Dagger/Horn in additon to Axe/Focus for a while, because Dagger as well allows for immense LF Generation and a bit of extra heal, but the most important thing about the Staff is thus:
The #1 skill generates huge ammounts of LF when fired into a group, allowing me to quickly fill up my pool again in a pinch.
I can do the same with the Warhorn #4, but it has a long cooldown and requires me to be close to the enemy.
12% LF per attack? This is a must have imo.

Dagger as OH for Axe is also udnerstandable for the Weakness and the Boon removal, especially in fights with bosses that have protection.

The Wall is currently a must for me because of how stupid Mobs are and in PvE it is a 8s CC in addition to a good source of protection, Combofield and the LF you get from enemies walking into it.

I prefer to stack more Knight onto my EQ because as a Necromancer I have great ways of dealing with Conditions and thereby, direct damage becomes the greater Challenge, which is easily mitigated by toughness. I was alos thinking about getting some Vitality to buff up my LF pool even more.

I have been rolling with this build for a week now. it as an old, then discarded but now revised build from long ago.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAndWjMah7ZbebM8JAIF7WbkijVm6h7wfOA-TIAA2CoA

Its main area of application is PvE, Dungeons and Fractals, but I can also imagine it in tPvP.
I’m using full knight’s gear.

I really like the immense LF generation this build brings with it, enabling me to have LF back to 100% before the Cooldown runs off.
That allows me to outlast any other player I have been in Fractals so far, to me, Agony is a joke, I had no problems with Difficulty 25 despite only having 5 AR simply because I canswitch to DS to cushion that damage.

What I want to ask is if anyone else uses a comparable build and can tell me what experiences they made.

Edit for spelling and some sentence sanitation

Unpredictability.4086:

Remember percentages and numbers that represent them can be confused… 0.75% = 0.0075%. So at 100% life force, you’d only have .75% chance to cause bleeding… less than 1% (0.0075×100 points).

0.75%=0.75%
What you mean is 0.75%=0.0075. As long as the “%” is at the end it means Percent which comes from the word “by the hundred” in latin.
0.75%=|=0.0075%
What I technically should have said is that for every Life-Force-Point the Chance for bleeding/Damage done/…. is increased by 0.75%P (Percentage Points). This wrong nomenclature is currently the confusion about deathly perception: “Does the trait increase the critical hit chance by a relative 50% (from 44% to 66%) or by a total of 50 Percentage Points (from 44% to 94%)?”

Wayfarer.2051:

Two heads up:

Second, I am aware I am posting this mere hours from “the big rebalance” but since twice leaked notes and already officially updated stuff on the wiki, I am pretty sure what I am about to talk about is not being touched by the patch anyways.

Now that we drew attention to the Problem, let’s conjure up some solution (that will never come, but let us dream!)

Wow, ArenaNet, you really made me swallow my own words on that one.
Not what I envisioned, but definitely a good step towards a good solution.
I applaud you, thaugh I remain cautious.

According to the Wiki, torment has 11% damage gain from Condition Damage.
That is more than poison, which has 10%.

Now how can we tie LF into every playstyle without shoehorning in too much change or additional mechanics/skills?

Same as they tied the elementalist to the attunements.

First, something that has been bugging me and that is kinda important: Instead of “Percent LF”, it should be “Points LF”. why? Because even with 30% bigger LF pool, we still get a maximum of 100%. Those 100% might be bigger than the 100% of an untraited Necro, but we can’t see that. By using POINTS, we can have a visibly larger LF Pool. Also this will be important in the following.
Make every Minor Adept trait benefit from LF. This however would cause most builds to just sit on a stockpile of LF and never expend it (and thereby never weakening themselves), so to balance it out and bring in some thinking into playing a Necromancer, bonusses should be given for USING LF, i.e. going into DS. This is what the Minor Master traits should be for.
This is actually kinda easy for a few traits.
The following ar ejust suggestions, but I make them to show you what I mean.

*Spite
Adept: “Increases the damage you deal by 1% for every 10 points of LF you have and by 5% while in DS” (remove the two-stage thing from Life-Blast).
Master: “While in Deathshroud, you gain 3 seconds of Retaliation every 2 seconds” (remove Spiteful Spirit)

*Curses
Adept: “For every point of LF you have, you have a 0.75% chance to cause bleeding on critical hits”
Master: “While in DS, you gain 3 seconds of Fury every 2 seconds.”

*Death Magic
Adept: “For every point LF you have, you gain 3 toughness while standing still.” (remove Dark Armor)
Master: “While in DS, you apply two stacks of vulnerability for 6 seconds on nearby foes each three seconds.” (remove Death Shiver)

*Blood Magic
Adept: “For each point of LF, you gain 0.5 points of health when striking an enemy.” (Vampiric Precision would cause the critical damage multiplier to be applied to the Lifegain as well, giving us a semi-scaling for Vampirism)
Master: “While in DS, you slowly grant life to nearby allies.” (remove Transfusion)

*Soul Reaping
Adept: (as old)
Master: “LF drains 33% slower while in DS”

I hope you also see now how the “LifeForce Points” tie into this: by increasing our LF pool, we increase the potential maximum of our bonusses, allowing us to make more of our LifeForce.
These are, as I said, just suggestions and probably horrendously overpowered (though I wouldn’t mind getting a strong nerf to my basic stats in order to balance out how strong I CAN become if finding the right balance between hoarding and spending LF), but they give a vague image of what I am trying to see in the whole LF/DS business: the key to playing Necromancer!
When is it good to hoard LF like a dragon, pumping myself full of steroids, and when is it important to use it all up?
I hope I was able to give a little bit of an idea, what we should be asking for; not stronger skills, but a mechanics that suits us more.
Necros are far from what they are supposed to be, but I belive that when the devs take this step first, the other steps will be easier.

Everything I wrote is open for discussions.

Two heads up:
First, this is going to be a long one
Second, I am aware I am posting this mere hours from “the big rebalance” but since twice leaked notes and already officially updated stuff on the wiki, I am pretty sure what I am about to talk about is not being touched by the patch anyways.

Let me first explain what I mean with “detachment”:
Every class in GW2 has its own unique feature, we know that.
And every class is richer and more interesting for it.
Except the Necromancer.

That can be explained with a bit of devlopment history which I will not explain lengthyly, but let’s just say that the Deathshroud has seen a transformation from an alternate downed-state to an awesome “I OWN YOU”-button to a “HEY GUYS I’M ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING IMPORTANT PLEASE CC MY BUTT!”-button.
Life Force itself was supposed to be a stand-in for the energy system from GW1 that was never carried over into the final GW2.

Now what we ended with is a unique class-mechanic that has itself all threads cut to the gameplay mechanics it was intially tied to.

Why don’t other classes?

Well because they weren’t actually designed around the butchered mechanics or simply AFTER they were cut.

Let’s look at the Elementalist!
Go to the wiki and look at the trait list, just the minor adept and master traits of each line!
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_elementalist_traits
What do we see?
Each of these traits grants a bonus for utilizing the unique mechanic.
When considering that just by investing 5 points into a line already gives you a considerable advantage for using that attunement, that means that every elementalist has at least 3 of those 10 traits that do so much to colour a class that is (imho) one of the most fun and versatile classes to play, even if not the most effective (some even say it’s the least effective).
What do we get?
Only Soul Reaping 5 and Curses 15 give us something that is directly linked to our unique class mechanic.
I acknowledge that that the Elementalist is an extreme case, but check other professions, they all seem very attached to their class mechanic.

If you are running a pure condition build without anything in SR ( and let’s not forget that pure condition builds are far more effective than pure power builds in most situations for the Necromancer!) you can play ages without noticing your LF. There is only one skill in DS that directly benefits from your itemization and stats and maybe one other that can help you in any situation. So most of the time, you only use DS as a trouble-bubble.
Not very effective usage of that mechanic.
What am I going on for?

Well the way I see it every playstyle should be supported by our unique class mechanic. Right now, LF and DS is kinda…THERE. “Yeah, take it if you want, we don’t care. Maybe trait into it, could be cool. Not necessary though!”
A good Necro is not defined by how well s/he can use her/his LF and DS, but by how well s/he can stack conditions, which is important for nearly all classes and builds.

Now that we drew attention to the Problem, let’s conjure up some solution (that will never come, but let us dream!)

The Changes to Near to Death and the missing Death/Blood Magic changes upset me. I was actually looking forward to a Shrouddancer build, hopping in and out of Shroud all the time.
Hell, 3 seconds is still good, it just seems that 30/10/0/0/30 will be the build of the future. I thought they wanted to rework Vampirism!
I seriously hope these are somehow fake, wrong or outdated.
Also, where can I get an update on the skills?
I really want my Vampire-Knight to finally work.

The basic principle of attrition is that the Necro is SUPPOSED to get stronger over the course of a fight, while the enemy gets weaker.
This was every true for, let’s say, Warlocks or Paladins in WoW. Warlocks could Siphon life from the enemy and turn that into Mana, supplying them with and inefficient, but endless stream of ressources. The fear and DoTs helped too.
Paladins could draw up on a nigh infinite pool of Mana and the most efficient healing spells in the game. Combined with great defensive measures and in some cases even damage reflections that made thives stab themselves to death.
In both these cases the given class had the means necessary to outlast any enemy simply by having the largest pool of ressources while at the same time having great means of defending them.

But the Necro:
Nothing.
The only thing the Necro has better than anyone else is Condition Removal/Transfer.
Eles and Rangers can stack bleeding up way more quickly (I know, Epidemic, I don’t care, I hate how this skill is held against any suggestion of balance).
Guardians can heal/Regenerate more quickly.
Mesmers can Conditionbomb the enemy better.
Engies have the more usefull minions.
Warriors and Thieves have longer fears.
We can’t do anything better.

I still remember the devs promising changes after we send them a freaking CAKE!
I really can’t stand this anymore.

I still think LF should either be removed or given an additional role. Maybe to power up or to recharge spells.
Maybe just replace DS with 4 F-Button spells that all consume LF.
F1 is a weapon-deendants attack
F2 is a teleport with blind-splosion
F3 is a standard blank minion that can be transformed with minion spells
and F4 is a shield.

Has anyone noticed that they severly increased the Area of Geysir???
Seriously, it’s a major buff it seems to me

Advent.6193:

Well, I can see perhaps swapping OH Dagger for Focus in a Condimancer build. MMs got some nice hookup, as did Axe Necros. Still no improved scaling on Lifesteal, tho.
Verdict: (Slightly) Sad Quaggan …

Enfeebling blood is still kind of good and another condition transferal is pretty important on corruption builds!
Vampire builds will most likely get a rennaissance, I know I will dig my power gear out again, maybe even using the Bloddfiend and no other minions on it.

So I recently made a Cond/Power/DS Hybrid build, but I think I’ll switch back to my Spite/SR/BM build.
Ca anyone tell me if Vampiric Rituals also affects allies?

I’m for removing hearts gradually alltogether.
They are repetive and boring compared to events, and that makes the low-lvl areas desolate and boring.
Compare the price of Wool to the price of Silk! Silk is freaking everywhere because lvl 80 chars only play lvl 80 areas. low-lvl areas are too easy and there’s nothing to do except the occasional event.
Orr and Southsun cove are fun as hell without hearts.

What did I just read?

So, playtesting with:
Exotic Carrion Armor, Exotic Rampager Trinkets and rare Rampager Weapons (Staff and Scepter/Dagger. Using Consume Conditions Plague Signet, BiP, Epidemic and Golem, 6 Runes of the Adventurer, thinking about switching them with gems.
2,975 Attack
45% Critical Chance
1,936 Armor
20,612 Health
Plus the bonusses form traits (such as 92 HP from power and 20% critical damage boost).
Bleedings tick for exactly 100 before Might or Sigil of Corruption.
Poison ticks for 199.
Staff crits for 800-900, LB crits for 1.8 without might or vulnerability, can go up to 3k in large group fights with lots of vulnerability and might stacks. Very usefull, since Condition Damage means squat in those situations.
Can easily uphold 7 bleeding stacks on an enemy, Scepter goes up to 10-12.

Tested in Dungeon (Arah P3) and was able to support team, Focussed rituals might be used instead of Weakening Shroud, to up support role, but without the 20% recharge Wells seem kind of underwhelming however. 10% boon duration works fine with Well of Power. Same goes for WvW.
sPvP forces the 10 out of DM and into one of the others (depending on taste really, but I found myself going for SR because of Stability). Because of the lack of any good survivability however, this is not sPvP material

Bottom line: One of the most versatile builds I’ve tested so far. I like it, it works well in any situation and allows for just mindless playing into the day, without having to go back an grab another set of gear if you come across a dungeon group.
Only remaining field to be tested: Fractals.

I’ve done some testing with leftover gear I still had.
Carrion gear and Rampager Accessoires prove far better than Rabid.
HP scales with LF and a critbuild without Power is like a Cannon with .45 calibre.

As for DS hopping:
I dont intend to. I tried the same build with 30 in SR and getting the 50% less cooldown, but I noticed that LF lay below 50% most of the time anyways when it was ready to use, since I was using staff. That’s why I went 10 into DM.
I go DS as a grand finale or the opener, to stack might.
Because I go both Conditions and Power, I can utilize the full sprectrum.
What’s left now is testing it in Dungeons and bigger PvE events. I’m not that interested in PvP, but I guess I’ll try.

Orr is the heartland of the undead corruption. of course the enemies are everywhere.
there ar elots of events towards the war efforts.
Hearts can only be done once and therefore only offer content once, so packing orr full with events is the only sensible option, since most people spend the majority of their time there.

pluzoid.2597:

Consider it like end game content, sure they are hidden, but that just gives you something to do when your level 8o. Also you can transmute better stats on them for yourself.

Which makes them 100% like the items I find everyday when doing daylies or I can buy with karam from vendors.

I have no reason craft them, yet linen armor still has some style at lvl 80. And Asura look pimp in wool sets. Splint armor is actually pretty good loking.
Crafted lvl 10 Weapon=Crafted lvl 75 Weapon. Only difference is stats.
No need to craft anymore.

What really ticks me off about crafting weapons is the following:
With each new material, crafted Armor gets a new skin.
Weapon-crafting does not have that, except the 400-tier. I know there are special skin-recipes hidden around the world, but they are hidden, and they merely act as craftable version of weapon skins that can already be found.
Why don’t crafted weapons get extra skins as well?
It wouldn’t be so hard to make up some simple weapon designs. I am just tired of the same old gnarled sticks with a rock, cow-bell on a stick, sword from the armoury or hunter’s bow.
Maybe a straight wooden staff with a crystal ball? A scroll? A claymore? a double-armed bow?
Nothing big really.

Another Problem with “no crafting XP” would be the following:
People who level nearly ALWAYS gather, jsut because it’s there and especially since the dailies.
People who use those materials for crafting get XP and A FEW items they can use.
People who sell the stuff get alot of money, especially below lvl 70 mats, who are extremely expensive.
getting no XP from crafting would be unfair to those people, since selling the materials outshines the costs of just buying all gear you need BY FAR. Stage 300 fine crafting materials can score up to 3-8 Silver per piece. So to compensate, hanging on to those materials and crafting unnecessary stuff, that is barely sold at material value (anything below rare, even mystic items can barely generate any profit over grinding and selling those materials) is rewarded with XP.

Why are you flaming people for not liking your idea?

Crafting is a fine way to get to lvl 80
In order to hit lvl 80 by pure crafting you need ALL professions to 400.
I’ve recently bypassed alot of the same-y content between lvl 20 and 70 by just crafting. I’ve spent 7 gold on mats for 50-325 tailoring alone and I had a few mats previously and recycled alot. Stating that all it needs are 2g to get to 400 is a very risky statement. I dont like mid lvl-areas, I like Orr and Southsun cove and big boss events. You don’t get that in low-lvl areas.
Crafting Exp must stay in game. ArenaNet offered a peaceful way to get to lvl 80 for people who are into that sort of thing.
It makes little sense to become a better elementalist by smithing, cooking and tailoring your way to lvl 80, but I think it’s a neat idea.
and if people tell you that it is a fine way to play the game don’t tell them they are “blind” or “trolling”.

Normal way takes you 10+ of grinding to get llvl 80, craftings takes 3hours to hit 1-80 it’s wrong, and it shouldn’t be so…

Why are you so angry other people hit lvl 80 faster than you? why do you think “grinding” is a legitimate way to lvl?

Toughness is better if you use alot of heal/life-siphon
Only if you do NOT utilize any of that, Vitality is better.

Temple sets in general are bad, because they offer no pure specific stats, only mixtures of sets. Get another Set of Armor and transmogrify if the skin is important.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature
Read up here what you need.

I’ve recently been trying to get into DS-centered builds and come up with a seemingly balanced build:
It uses rabid gear, Sceptre/Dagger and Staff, has 20/20/10/0/20 traits and uses increased Staff recharge, Weakening Shroud, slower LF drain and Soul Marks.
The basic Strategy is to amass Bleeding on an enemy, using BiP and going into DS to stack more might.

Is this a good start? So far only tested it in the Mists, because I currently have no money for full on rabid gear.
If this checks out I’d go to whispers and get some rare equipment.

I dont get it.

Orr is the best zone in the game BECAUSE it has no Heart-Tasks!

They just dont build Condition Damage because they have no synergies.
Poison is already easy upholdable for Condition Necros with Scepter or Poison Cloud, so the GM trait does nothing for them, really. SO either they are useful or removed and replaced with something else.
What’s kindof ironic also is that the Staff upgrades are most usefull for Conditionmancer,s because it allows them to spam Mark of Blood for a great ammount of bleeding on many targets.

LameFox.6349:

I wish the demented rodent thing would at least stop bleeding to death. Isn’t there a limit to like 8 of them anyway, with a 30 second cooldown on reanimator? If anything so much as stepped on it, you’d never get two up at the same time anyway, but at least that one might have more than two meagre attacks in it before it keels over. And if you did manage to accumulate all 8 of them, well… so what? They’re marginally more dangerous than white creatures… it’d just give you something funny to look at.

Currently it’s the only way for condition damage to pay off for Minion Necros, maybe a trait that would instead add Conditions to all Minions?

Through a lucky find I recently came into the posession of 18 expendable gold.
I want to use it to bring my lvl 27 Ele’s tailoring to 400, he is currently 50. Are there any guides on this on the internet? How much will it set me back? I have a lvl 80 character and already lots of mats on the bank.

Nebilim.5127:

Ahhh…aside from the lack of skill buttons i fail to see what’s new about this. Can we see our conditions now?

It’s a bug. And I dressed it up as a joke.

I recently made a long post about the game World
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Liven-up-the-Game-World/first#post1393202

Finally the dev team has taken our complaints about the DS interface onboard. I was able to snatch this from the internets before it was removed.
Rejoice.

I’m sorry, I just had to
In all seriousness, please fix this bug before we loose all we have.

I’ve recently started playing my 80 Necro again and experimented ALOT with builds.
I realized once again, that instead of 12, or at least 9 decent traits to pick from, each traitline had about 7 to 5 decent traits for any build.

So I made a list of them and thought of some Improvements. This does not include any bugfixes though.

• Spite
  Parastitic Bond:This seems fine, but letting it be affected by Bloodthirst would be great.

• Curses
  Chilling Darkness: other than Chillbuilds, this has barely any apliability. One Second is barely enough to activate a skill.
  Reapers Precision: Probably the weakest Trait for Necromancers. Instead of the weak chance for a weak effect, the effect should either be stronger or the chance higher. Instead it could say “You have a 33% chance to gain 1% life force for every condition on the target on critical hits.”
  Focussed Rituals: I don’t get why this is in curses. We already have Well-Traits in Death magic and Blood Magic, why do we need another 20 points in a Tree that in no other way is connected to Wells? Only Well of Corruption and Suffering can critically hit and only Well of Corruption CAN inflict damaging Conditions. This should be swapped with something more useful.
  Withering Precision: Why is THIS a GrandMaster Curses trait? It has nothing to do with damaging conditions and in order to make it work properly you’d need some hefty Condition Duration extra. Instead this should either inflict a Damaging condition (maybe even Fear if we already have Terror) or read “25% chance to steal a Boon and transfer a Condition on critical hits.” This would make Life Transfer very usefull for its high Critchance if combined with Furious Demise.

• Death Magic
  Reanimator: We Necros just love to hate this Rat, don’t we. For someone who is NOT going into DM for the Minions, but for the Staff or maybe even the Wells or JUST the Toughness, this is a major turnoff. Replace it with something useful for most builds. “Grant Retaliation to Allies when an Allie goes down/dies” Perfect for Teamplayers an Minion Masters. Many people also suggest replacing it with Dark Armor.
  Protection of the Horde: This is a bit of a tough one. 20 points in, we can assume someone takes an interest in Minions, but I suggest it to be swapped with Deadly Strength and upped to 30 Toughness.
  Minion Master: It should apply to both Minion and Command.
  Shourded Removal: This could be swapped with Focussed Rituals, considering Curses already has Precision and lots of “When entering Deahtshroud” it is prime material for a DS Dancer Build.

• Blood Magic, a.k.a. the 20-Point Wonder, is our best build, no complaints here.

• Soul Reaping, same as with Blood Magic, a very solid Traitline, although sometimes seems to lack a bit of stuff for other builds, especially Condition based builds.

These are my current thoughts on most traits. It maddens me, that many Traits seem to not work for their respective traitlines or not support any synergies. At other times it seems, while most classes have very sharply defined roles for traitlines, the Necro’s synergies seem to be too spread out (for example staff being all over the place). I haven’t tried all possible builds yet, I use the most common and “standard” builds, while specialized builds, like ‘Ice Queen’ or ‘Terrorizer’ all have special needs, that could be upset by seemingly minor changes.
Any thoughts or improvements?

Try switching to DS and spam your 1/4, since you’ll have 20% more crit chance when going into DS for a few seconds. This could potentially up your Damage output.
A Power/COndition Build isn’t bad either, because the condition duration extra also increases your condition damage indirectly ba great deal!
I went Carrion for Spite/Curses build.

Theives have the extra dual wield skill
and their steal is based on the target.

Yes, It’s another one of those Threads.
But please remove Deathshroud!
It locks us out of our Utilities, it stops us from using anything in synergy, it is primarely only for Power-Builds, it has poor synergy with all other builds, it is tedious to go into DS and then try to make the most out of it and most importantly: it is the ONLY static Class mechanic.

I’d even be happy with a 3-ability, weapon based Death Shroud tht further intesifies the gameplay styles of the Necro Weapons.

General “Dream-Mechanic” thread I guess.
I am still in favour of 4 F-Skills that consume Lifeforce: Empowered Attack, Flash/Fear, Shield and generic Minion that can later be Shaped into a specialist with Minion Skills

When I started the game in beta I had much fun experimenting, trying new classes, seeing new places and all that, but by lvl 30 I think we all realized that we were going to be in some repetetive stuff for the rest of the journey.
The game World looks beautiful, I am sure we can alll agree, but most of the time, thats about it.
I’ve seen the same events over and over again, scoring gold even when just passing through, fought the same “epic” boss dragon fights that provide no change to anything….
When going to orr for the first time and later southsun cove, I finally experienced some decent metagameplay, most commonly because of the scarcity of waypoints and the huge Metaevents.

So here is a list of changes to the world, that would polish the immersive experience of GuildWars 2 for future and current players:

*Remove most Waypoints. Or at least make most contestable. When in Orr and Southsun cove, i realized that the long walking distances work really well for creating an immersive experience, making death something punishing beyond my wallet and grouping up more important. Only leaving the Waypoints INSIDE of fortified cities as permanent gives some sense to the entire world. Why would a waypoint be on half the way between Salma and Delania never be contested, Centaurs could easily set up roadblocks there.

*Add Metaevents and incorperate more sub-events into them. Most zones already have Meta-Events that merely act as some kind of Timer, when a specific, bigger events is going to happen. An example: In Kessex hills, the Centaurs could be in a severe hinderance when trying to attack Salma and not in posession of central camps. Why don’t Centaurs and bandits have supply lines between camps? Why cant we raid bandit ccaravans to get back the stolen goods.

*Add more types of events. Right now we have: kill x/y Enemies, kill this enemy, gather x items, defend this place from waves, break the morale, destroy buildings. Only larger, giant events like the Eventline for Malchor mix it up some time.

*Make World bosses more threatening. What exactly happens if the Shatterer isn’t defeated? Why does he even bother with us? As long as at least 30 people are there, it’s no biggy, because the mere spam of attacks will widdle him down. World bosses, or even smaller bosses should have a goal, set a certain target for them to assault and destroy if not stopped. The Shatterer could destroy that bridge/outpost, Tequatl could try to squeeze through the stone arc and then destroy the camp on the other side, even the kitten Wasp Queen could start setting up nests in the forest and drive other NPCs off.

*Make Events harder or adjust the rewards. I’ve recently seen that events can fail, due to a certain NPC dying and not being able to be revived. This is cool. but still, most events are really easy and all I need to do is killand enemy on the way through, then, 3 minutes later, when I’m far away: DING Gold Medal! I Want to be Proud of Gold Medals.

I really hope that with future updates, these changes will come and I am excited to see the Fire and Frost events!

Aretak.3826:

I forgot how inept people on the official forums are. I’ve had 6 lvl80’s all geared for a while now (only ones missing are Mesmer and Ele), and whilst better off than Ranger and to some extent Engi, Necro is still only on par with others rather than having a niche in them like it really should.

Necro has a single utility capable of transferring all conditions to an enemy yes, but this requires a target where as Contemplation of Purity amd Elixr C as counter examples do not. Granted staff #4 is great but as a weapon is only viable as a swap in for condition builds, which is weird seeing as this is exactly what you claim to not want encouraged over other gameplay types.

Maybe I didn’t make it clear, I’m using condition removal in the broad sense of getting them the kitten off you in a more controlled way that promotes synergy. Conditions of course don’t rely on condition builds either and can be incorporated into any builds for utility, eg cripple, immobilize, vulnerability and even poison for its debuff.

But, you’re wrong.
Staff is currently one of the best weapon for most builds.
Plague Signet only works with a target, big change, still pretty powerful.
If you#re not making a well-build, Consume Conditions is the only decent HealSkill out there, because our Minion healskill is a bit of useless. As soon as they fix minions, Fetid Consumption might seem weak, but for a Minion master, it’s a pretty powerful Trait, considering 6 Minions is the max.
No other Class can controll conditions on foes, self and allies as well as the Necro.
There might be alot of skills that remove conditions, but most only remove between 1 to 3, some remove only specific, so in terms of getting rid of all conditions, necro STILL is best.
And yes, we DO fill a niche. namely the Niche of Condition controll.
Sure a mesmer can stack a bunch of conditions onto me with Chaos fields, but he sure as hell should be ready to eat them himself. Becaus eif he doesnt get them, I’m going to use them to heal myself.
Dagger 4, Staff 4, Plague Signet, Well of Power and Consume Conditions can be MAJOR gamechanger when going up against Mesmers, Thiefs or Rangers.
Everytime I play another class I miss the controll i have over conditions.

I use III of spite. For Power builds it’s heaven. When running a condition build it’s annoying having to go 10 into spite for it.
Necromancer is one of the classes with the most condition controll.
You’ll seldomly find THREE skills on a class that not only remove ALL conditions from youself, but also DO something with them.
Stunbreakers: Well we have Spectral Walk and Signets, but DS should surely be a stunbreaker, even if by traits.

These changes seem kind of nice but here is a problem that i see:
with vampiric precision in curses while all other vampiric traits are in BM people who want a vampiric build will have to go 20 points into curses
This is hardly fitting seeing as so few other build possibilities exist for vampiric builds. They most commonly focus on dealing damage while leeching life and protecting that life as best as they can. Improving life leeching cries for using a mainhand dagger which has no damaging conditions.
i know that curses have precision on them but they have barely anything to do with healing or supporting making vampiric a fish out of water there.
Instead the combination of crits and conditions should be tightened

also: why is reapers precision still so bad?
Its already the worst trait the necro has.

Since Conditions are useless in WvW most of the time and in bossfights in PvE and Minions are kind of a weakpoint, I’ve designed a foolproof PvE/WvW build that can be bended and flexed simply by switching traits and utilities between battles.
The Necro-Knight can fill the role of a DD, a semi-tank and a support depending on traits.
the Layout is simple:
30/0/0/20/20.
Dagger+Focus and Staff
The Gear is Knight’s equipment (Tough-Power-Prec) with Emerald trinkets (Prec-Tough-Power).
With Rare Weapons/Armor and Exotic trinkets I have: 43% crit chance, 20k HP, 2,6k Armor and 2,7k Attack.

The Traits (in order):
*solo PvE: (II;VI;XII / II;V / II;VI) Traited for lifesteal and using Consume Conditions Signet of Locus, Well of Suffering and Well of Darkness. Provides good defense and offense, stacking vulnerability and using DS when LF is full (as finnisher or opener). Using Spectral Skills is also cool when using DS exessively. I most commonly use grasp because of the massive LF boost and short CD.

*Group PvE/Dungeons/WvW: here it really depends on your preferences. Sometimes I switch improved life-Siphon for faster Wells and Transfusion, combined with Path of Midnight, for spamming Life Transfer or Wells.

Playstyle:
Mostly switching between weapons and DS, hopping into the different states as the situation demands it. Having alot of Toughness, extra HP from Blood magic and alot of LF-regeneration helps staying alive. The high Power and Precission keep crits high and frequent (around 1,6k Lifeblast and 3k if crit).
The only drawback I can see is the weak AoE-Damage because conditions are missing and wells don’t really do that much damage.
The massive amounts of Vulnerability (I managed 20 if alone and timing everything right) I am capable of stacking with this build helps keeping group-DPS high as well.

In sPvP I had limited success with this build. It can’t outdamage condition builds and can’t outheal most enemies. I’ve had sucessfull attrition fights with Guardians and Mesmers, but Eles, Warriors or Thiefs have just too strong burst damage for this build. Best chance is to hop in and out of DS.

I admire the Minion and Condition Playstyles, sadly neither of those are as effective in grouping as they should because of current mechanics.
It really saddens me that Power builds are currently the most viable outside of sPvP and that especially Necros have to resort to either playing crippled, broken or boring builds.

Astral have you even read the thread by the designer on the news and announcement .board?
They made that promise there
the AMASS on German reddit was not.authorized to make such statements.
The deeper fractals.are identical to lower fractals in content. They are just harder. ANet stated they would hold true to their promise that content would be independent from gear.
Try to make some freaking points instead of just belitteling others and using the phase “let’s be frank” out of context.
Get your game on and go into WvW with a big guild. They mobilize lvl 20 camps to overcome an entire keep.
The ultimate fact remains that the financial payoff would not remedy the costs of a extra build. An extra development team.

ANet has just recently introduced the Ascended and are thinking of more ways to implement it.
You do realize that exotic dungeon armor takes.23 explorable runs o aquire ?
Thats an entire week of going the same dungeon every day three times.
You tell me that isn’t grind. You had this progression grind before just without progression. Bragging rights are nothing compared to the endless going to dungeons you have to.do.for it.
Without ascended rewards in dungeons there will barely left anyone left to play them within 5 months. And indeed look: maybe a few AC or Arah runs looked for in LA but everyone else is going fractals. Because fractlals is like a wunderbag of content. Never know what comes next. It’s modular structure is designed to be updated as they indeed said they’d do. Id rather grind fractals for a dozen hours than any other dungeon simply because it.still.promises progression and content to come. But still when the ways to get ascended come to the.old dungeons those dungeons will see a rebirth as well.

TL;DR: start making points. Read what the devs say instead of some unqualified dude on reddit. Open your eyes to the possibilities and let go of your whiny hate.

Ok
some clarification so you know the facts:

• there will be no gear treadmill. They merely raised the gear ceiling and already promised to not raise it again in the future.
• The ascended items are not required for any content that is not otherwise accessible without ascended and it will not be.
• Ascended and agony are supposed to be a way for players to completely test their limits and strife for ever more. Some.people just like grind and ANet tries to accommodate them. With the current system none is influenced by this decision.
• Running a second build of a game is an immense amount of work. ANet is already working on a small margin because of no.monthly fees. They try to.keep.it.slim. Adding another build is not economical.
• An additional server would be.completely.desolate! Why? Because only people who hate ascended too much to ignore it would play on it. Everyone else would merely ignore ascended but stay on normal servers in the hope to someday get some of it.
• As already said: in WvW zerg>skill>gear.
• That analogy with the ice just does not work. In GW2 you can “eat around the chocolate”: you simply never go FotM and never upgrade to ascended.

The game is three months old and you complain that you demand a vanilla server?
I really do not get the whining about ascended
really not
this is a perfekt example of vocal minorites

I like the two basic concepts for this class that fit it so perfectly in theme:
“I’ll kill you slowly” and “fighting me only makes me stronger”
Increased damage for every condition, transforming and transfering conditions , meatshields, LG gain on getting hit, etc.
It all formes a slow paced strategic gameplay that the marks and wells fit in perfectly
the more.vicious and vampiric themed dagger and axe gameplay is my favourite currently
it may not be bursty but it hurts right away, tearing the enemy apart quickly while remaining strong and refilling lost health before hopping into deathshroud. I just enjoy being evil so much. I just wish there would be.profession specific quests and locations like Necromantic order at a graveyard taking care of graves, holding mourning ceremonies and speaking to lost.souls

All in all I feel like a.dark a vicious Necromancer. And considering the lack of an army of spooky scary sceletons, that is an achievement on ANets side.

Yes i take slow damage high survival builds on purpose
Muhahahahaha

Modkip.7681:

There is a thread that keeps resurfacing every once in a while about using “pacts” or something as a deathshroud mechanic. I always thought that would be a neat rework to the current (IMO boring) mechanic. I guess that would go under #3 on your list in the OP.

That was actually mine.
Yeah, i tried to use the guardian’s virtues as inspiration, but tried to not completely rip them off.

In the end, the focus of anything should be on the following:
Direct Damage
Conditions
(Minions, Healing or Buffing, the latte rbeeing universally applicable)

having in the End at least 3 possible modi.
Expanding on them with Traits is a must.

So far, what I’ve been seeing most in this forum regarding changes is Deathshroud, Minion AI not counting because it should be a kittening given that Minion AI works.
But many different approaches to how to!
I myself made quite a few propositions, but what I’d like to think is: HOW would you like to see the LF and DS mechanic changed.
We can all agree that what it needs is more flexibility and a way to accustom every playstyle at least 75%.
I do not want to discuss about which abilities should be implement or replaced or changed, because there is a kittenton of those. This is all about the general ways, the end Product should look and feel like-

So here are the ways to change DS I’ve seen so far:

1. Remove the favouring of DS towards certain builds (Power Dagger most notably) and add usefulness for every build via traits, Minor traits if necessary. So to say to strip DS down and keep only the most basic things.
2. Add more Deathshrouds, either by making them dependant on weapons or just giving us 3-4 DS that each favor one approach to Gameplay.
3. Remove DS and instead give us 3-4 skills that use LF as aressource, enabling us to use them seamlessly on the fly.

Which would be your favourite?

Innocente.4271:

I did not say it was to difficult to implement now.
I said :

• If it was EASY to implement, it would have been there at launch.

• Any implementation they do is likely to be bug ridden and cause more problems that it is worth.

The argument has hardly changed.
And it is worth it, because it allows cross server guilds to actually play together. especially with ANet wanting to move group-action to larger areas outside of dungeons.
If all we can do together are dungeons, then cross-server guilds are more or les snot worth it. I wanna do the big content with lots of people and leaving a few friends behind on an underpop server just to join another one for WvW suddenly becomes a much greater and weightier decision.
People shouldn’t be divided by the server they are on, but united by the game they are playing.
Downkicking and server guesting are 2 fundamental features to achieve this goal.

TL;DR: Server guesting is worth every single bug we have to go through, because it transcends the content and the mechanics of the game in its purpose: to bring people together to play together.

I too wish there would be nights like in the Snowblind Fractal.
They couldthrow in Lunar cycles, with 14 instead of 28 phases to speed it up a bit, for those who like “a bit lighter nights to see the landscape” there would be full moon, every other night would be a bit darker up to complete darkness.
Would be awesome to see an Elementalist or guardian in a fight from a distance (sadly there is no option to turn on foreign dynamic lightning).
I actually really hate how people speed by mobs in snowblind.