Guild Wars 2

Neek.9531:

Oohhhhh interesting…..

I understand that these kinda things pop up every now and then, but showing interest keeps the forums active and might even give developers a few ideas.

TheOneNOnlyGeneralBama.9586:

Absolutely love it , out of all the hammer specs i seen i have to say this one seems quite thought out and logical in some fashion but the hardest part you have left is finding the correct spectrum of damage of each skill.

I was thinking about the damage a lot and came to a conclusion like:

Autoattack chain comparable to greatsword autoattack DPS of warriors (it’s not very high and encourages the use of other skills). Since the 2nd and 3rd hit are the main action here it would be important to not interrupt the chain too soon.

Skill #2 would be a decent DPS boost whenever used, especially against a wall/object so all hits connect easily. Should be about the damage of greatsword #3 of warriors.

Skill #3 could be slightly above hammer #2 of guardians because of the bigger recharge and missing leap motion.

Skill #4 isn’t about damage at all, so low damage.

Skill #5 is more about the combofield so i would compare it to a smaller version of the adrenalin skill of the bow.

The damage would be through skill #2 and #3 in combinition with F2-F4, while the auto attack would provide decent base DPS.

For traits i would work it into explosives and tools. Especially the bomb/grenade specific trait could involve the hammer aswell. Trait IX (turrets explode) could be removed and 20% cooldown reduction and a special effect for hammer could be added as a trait.

50 more damage for the weapon(kit) itself is about a 5% damage increase.

Comparing that to might stacks, you would need to calculate how many might stacks result in 5% more damage.

Now let’s say you are might buffed by your group and are sitting at about 3k power, you would need 150 power to increase your damage by 5%, that’s 4 to 5 might stacks.

So 50 base damage = 4-5 might stacks.

Considering the current implemented weapons, don’t you guys think too that the hammer would fit the engineer perfectly.

I can imagine a power based and steampunk themed melee weapon in the form of a hammer.

Imagine the skillset as something along these lines:

Skill #1 (3-hit chain)
Calibrating Blow 1/2sec
Hit foes infront of you to ready your systems.

Loaded Blow 1sec
Unload your charged hammer with a massive strike to the ground damaging foes around you.

Aftershock 1/4sec
Emit remaining force through the hammer-head’s nozzle accelerating it to the ground.

Animation would be a horizontal swing, followed by a charged hit to the ground (think autohit #3 of guardian hammer) and a very quick strike to the ground shortly after raising the hammer slightly.

It would punish interrupting the autochain like most other melee-weapons because the main damage comes from the last hits.

Skill #2
Staggered Drill 3/4sec 10sec CD
Activate 6 microrockets in your hammer shaft, forcing you forward with rapid succession and damaging foes in your path.

Range: 300
Number of Hits: 6

Skill #3
Explosive Smash 1sec 15sec CD
Equip hour hammer with explosives which detonate by impact damaging nearby foes.

Combo-finisher: Explosion

Skill #4 1/2sec 15sec CD
Static Tearing
Overload your hammer with a strong current. Dazing nearby foes and rip through their defense.

Vulnerability: 8 stacks for 10 seconds to nearby foes
Daze: 1 second to nearby foes

Skill #5
Greek Fire 3/4sec 25sec CD
Smash your saltpeter coated hammer into the ground, covering the area in flames. The initial explosion burns and blinds nearby foes. Foes within the area keep getting burned.

Radius: 120
Duration: 5seconds
Combo-field: Fire
Blind: 3 seconds
Burn (6 times): 1 second

Everyone in my group hates this little fella with sucha passion it’s hilarious. Especially because i told them there’s no way i could change that trait, because the following ones are so important.
Of course i’m messing with them, but seeing and hearing them rage because the little guy runs towards lupicus amuses me every time.

We learned to kill lupicus with the occasional 1-2 stacks of the buff.

That trait is so useless and punishing, it’s hilarious.

Best damage you can deal to these structures is:

Wells + Dagger/focus.

The two damaging wells + focus 4 + dagger 1 spam should be the highest possible direct damage avaible to necros.

We have no access to a power based “aoe” or “cleave” weapon, which is the reason for our lackluster power-builds.

Sorry about that.

Try to copy paste this:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQIQNArYWlMaS32uxzG/2EgkinveSR2fH94YjTG;TsAAzCpogxAjAGrPOfk+sqYUxUEA

edit: uh, yea.. someone showed me the sticky over there a couple seconds after i created this… feel free to move my post.

I try to avoid other necros when i play as one (bleedcap), but i like to group with necros when i’m on my warrior and i’m often confused what the necros i’m grouping up with are trying to do (only using staff and a mark every now and then.

When i play my necro, i can keep up 20-25 bleedstacks on the main target alone and 10 to 25 stacks on up to 4-5 targets around it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQIQNArYWlMaS32uxzG/2EgkinveSR2fH94YjTG;TsAAzCpogxAjAGrPOfk+sqYUxUEA

edit: might be “bad link” copy/paste it if neccesary.

Why did i use this kind of (at first side defensive?) setup?
Let me get to the traits.
30 curses.
Seems to be a no-brainer. Weakening shroud is so good, you really dont want to miss that one trait. It applies two really long bleed stacks and (extra-)weakness, something you can’t compensate with other traits. Corruption skills and scepter conditions are the backbone of your build, you want them. (especially the longer cripple on grasping dead is important)

20 death magic.
In this specific build marks are very important. And we are switching between staff and scepter/dagger a lot and you want those marks to be avaible as soon as possible and make them hit as much enemies as possible.

20 blood magic.
Enfeebling blood as a very strong skill and deathly swarm is one of the strongest utilities necros have access to (and a really neat skill to kill your own teammates when hitting an enemy with reflect).
Mark of Evasion turns your dodge into a blast-finisher, which is fantastic. Moreover you easily apply regeneration on your group and more bleed stacks onto the enemy with it.

Having toughness on gear and blood and death makes as pretty strong on the defense side, so how do we use all that to be offensive aswell?

Certain combinations of skills work extremely well.

Let me give you a few combos that you might want to use.

I’ll start with the rather obvious ones:
1.) Staff 2 – Staff 3 – Staff 4 … haha, you just applied aoe weakness, chill and 3 or more bleed stacks, fantastic.

2.) Scepter 2 – dagger 5 … dagger 5 has a rather slow cast time, might want to cripple them before using it (results into 5-7 bleed stacks)

3.) Blood is Power – dagger 4 (or staff 4)… you applied 2 stacks of bleed onto yourself for how many seconds?! no, you don’t want that, just transfer them to your enemy. BONUS: When standing at about 900 distance use dagger 4 before using BiP! that way the stack onto yourself is removed immediatly due to dagger 4’s travel time. (results in about 4-6 bleed stacks)

4.) Dodging into the enemy – switching into Death Shroud – DS 2 (dark path) … while doing so, you trigger 2 traits. Mark of Evasion and Weakening Shroud. That results in: AoE-regeneration. 7-10 stacks bleed. Chill. Weakness. You can combine it with DS 4 (life transfer, because of its high attackspeed you will most likely apply a few bleeds with it and it deals decent AoE-damage)

A normal fight in a dungeon works like this for me:
scepter 2 – dagger 5 – staff 2- staff 3 – staff 4 – shrapnel mine – dodging into enemie – DS 2 – DS 4 – staff 2 – BiP – dagger 4 – epidemic – scepter 2 – dagger 5

After that you will autoattack a few seconds and use one of the combos when possible. Constant cripple, weakness, chill for the first few seconds, a blind, very high bleed stacks… it really really hurts those stupid npcs.

If you are not a charr. Shame on you. The shrapnel mine is very good. It has a really long bleed and extra cripple (one of the strongest support debuffs). And it hits twice when activated which often results in 1-2 more bleed stacks from sigill or trait.
Other utilities would be things like corrupt boon, well of darkness, etc. depending on the fight.

Epidemic is best used when your maintarget has 15+ bleed stacks and ideal would be after a BiP + dagger 4 combo.

The whole build offers a lot of defense for yourself through high toughness and decent life. It really shines as group support because of nearly 100% uptime of cripple and weakness (cripple makes most melee-enemies a joke, weakness makes those nasty gunmen/whatever ranged enemies somewhat managable. The occasionally chill is nice too of course.

The offense is not that obvious. You won’t see high numbers. You will see many numbers.
But bleeding is pretty powerful. Your bleed will hit for about 110-1kittenage, depending on group support. When you keep up 20 stacks, you will deal 2000-3000 (sometimes nearly up to 4000 when fully buffed and 25 stacks) damage a second and quite a few thousand damage to enemies close to your main target.

You really want to use veggie-pizza to be as effective as possible (the lvl 70 one is enough and really cheap).
My BiP lasts 55ish seconds on the enemy with veggie pizza, pretty fun.

I have a level 80 Necro and 80 Warrior. So maybe i can compare them a bit for you…

The necro stacks bleeds to about 20stacks withing 5-10 seconds and keeps them at 20-25 stacks on the main target and about at 10-25 (depending on rotation) stacks at 4-5 other targets.

The direct damage while going full bleed-spec as a necro is pitiful of course. Normal attack hits for 150-300, one single strong attack at 15sec CD which hits 1500-2000, other skills not reaching 1000 damage. So 80-90% of my damage are bleeds.

The warrior on the other hand cannot reach that high bleed stacks. Or at least not against more than one target. And that serious lack of AoE (which necros get through huge AoEs that stack bleeds + epidemic) makes the condition-warrior not that viable in dungeons in my opinion.
You can however mix condition damage and direct damage with a nice rotation of sword/sword (or rifle if pure ranged) and longbow, but you should not drop power completely. Either go power/vitality/condition (s/s + lb) damage or power/precision/condition damage (rifle + lb).

Burning in itself isn’t that strong sadly. When my necro was at 2000ish condition damage (might and stuff) the burning(through guardian) hit my targets for 800ish. My bleeds on the other hand hit the target for 160ish, but multiplied by 20-25, which lets you reach about 3000-4000 damage/second. That is 4 to 5 times more damage than burning.

That’s why real condition builds are forced to focus on bleed and maybe burning as a sideeffect. Without applying bleed on multiple targets, pure condition warrior is not viable in my opinion (talking about dungeons).

I use 3/3 afflicted/krait.

With veggie pizza and a 0/30/20/20/0 build i can keep up 20 stacks on 5 targets alone. No need for any more bleed duration (the other 5 stacks are mostly applied passively by other group-members, i’m the only condition heavy build in our setup).

The key is a very effective rotation switching between staff and scepter/dagger, with timed rolls and timed switching in and out of death shroud.

That way i can reach about 2150 condition damage while BiP is active (14,5sec/24sec).
Duration alone isn’t important a good rotation can be worth a lot more because it allows you to stack condition damage.

With toughness/prec/cond.dmg armor i have currently 2454 armor and 20800 health. I can only recommend a 0/30/20/20/0 build.

Deathwish is a pretty typical necro-staff (skulls and stuff). About 9-10g on the trading post, it fits the necro style 100 times better than the legendary.

Pirate staff for 9.3k karma from the karma vendor after the jump dungeon in lions arc is pretty nice too. It’s a steering wheel on top of the staff with skulls on each side. I personally like it.

The tribal staff would eb another option. It has a wierdo-face + hair on top and looks pretty necro/freakish.

I play charr, so the TA set looks horrible on my toon, i don’t know how it’s for you. I love the arah-dungeon set on my charr tho.

Helm – Arah
Shoulders – Arah
Chest – Arah
Legs – Citadelle of Flame
Hands – Citadelle of Flame
Shoes – not sure.

The dagger deals twice the damage of an axe to a single target. It would still be far stronger than the axe against one target if used correctly.

In recent threads it was shown that the autoattack of the axe only provides as much damage as the staff’s. Moreover it can’t stack vulnerability realiable because you really want to use other skills most of the time.

I think necros lack a decent AoE-weapon with direct damage.

So how about changing the autoattack of the axe to hit 3 (or 5?) targets. The current one is rather low damage, medium range (600) and the debuff lacks impact. It would be by no means “overpowered” if it hits multiple targets.

It would be a decent weapon for events, because we could deal a few direct damaging hits rather easily compared to now. It would give us an utility weapon for things like the little flowers in the twilight dungeon (which are absolutely horrible to kill as a necro).

What do you guys think?