Guild Wars 2

I believe AB and TD chests are the primary source. Or at least, I’ve gotten a massive number from farming crystalline supply caches looking for ley line sparks.

If you’re around when they typically patch the game (late evening US time), then you can zone to the event when you see the “a new build will be available in 10 minutes” message then wait for new patch to be available. Most players will leave that instance immediately and no one new will coming into it, so you have a much better chance at successfully failing the event.

I’m not sure I have anything to add at the moment, but I am interested in the thoughts of other folks working towards 250 crystalline ingots for their legendary. (Assuming they didn’t buy any fulgurite when it was still able to be traded.)

This seems like the kind of thing that sounds great when you’re having a design meeting and writing stuff on a whiteboard. But clearly no one bothered to play test it and clearly they forgot the “massively multiplayer” part of “MMO” because there’s pretty much always going to be people in every zone and it only takes one person to kill the shaman.

Also, while you’re waiting for the meta to happen, make sure not to enter an instanced adventure because you’ll lose participation credit.

To sum up the problem with TD, it’s the combination of the relatively short event chains (that are typically done in 30-45 minutes) combined with the long map cycle (2 hours) capped off by a meta event that is most likely going to fail. If you show up at the beginning and complete the event chains, you’re probably at 200% participation but there’s not much left to do for another 45+ minutes if you want to get the bonus currency from the meta failure (or unless you enjoy wandering around while covered in chak goo all the time).

(And if you pop in during the middle of the cycle on a map that’s had all chains completed just to pick up an achievement or something, there’s really no reason to ever stick around for the meta because you’ll have to work extra hard for participation and you know the meta is going to fail.)

All around, it’s a pretty unfun experience, possibly equaled only by the level of fun involved in being one of the first people in the AB meta to win a challenge, so you get to sit in an exalted armor for 12 minutes doing nothing while the game yells at you after 30 seconds if you don’t move.

I play in tier 1 NA and I’ve been having a whole lot of fun lately playing a p/p condition (rabid gear) or flamethrower power (soldier gear) build. Survivability is comparable to my necro and guardian when using elixirs and 409. Both of these builds will let you tag lots of enemies and deal decent damage. Furthermore, intelligent use of glue shot and supply crate can be devastating in choke points. (And personally, I’ve never had a problem with getting hit by too much retaliation. Are you fighting zergs of all guardians?)

As someone above said, Blackgate suffered at the hands of siege trolls in T2 for a while. I’m really sorry to see this sort of thing happen.

Drake Phoenix.6158:

radsaq.8269:

If you’re using knights gear and have high precision, you may also want to consider vampiric precision instead of ritual mastery. Yes, the cooldown on wells sucks, but vampiric precision heals for an additional 54 on top of the 40 from vampiric, and can trigger from any skill that hits enemies (including wells). If you’ve got about 66% crit chance (a reasonable amount with knights gear/consumables/sigil of perception), then every hit heals you for an average of 76 instead of just 40.

Of course, if you already feel like you’ve got enough life stealing going on, then ritual mastery is definitely better.

I’m not sure I agree with that take. I haven’t checked out the numbers, so won’t make a specific suggestion, but you also have to keep in mind the overall siphon increases gained from being able to use wells more often. On the one hand, taking Vampiric Precision would increase your healing per strike from wells, but Ritual Mastery increases how often you can make those strikes and gain siphon from Vampiric Rituals. I think it would be important to compare the relative gains of each before making a decision on it, and that wouldn’t be possible without knowing the full Crit Chance percentage as well. Just something to consider.

That’s why I said “you may also want to consider.” The right thing to do is probably also highly dependent upon the type of content you’re running and how long your typical fight is expected to last.

If you’re using knights gear and have high precision, you may also want to consider vampiric precision instead of ritual mastery. Yes, the cooldown on wells sucks, but vampiric precision heals for an additional 54 on top of the 40 from vampiric, and can trigger from any skill that hits enemies (including wells). If you’ve got about 66% crit chance (a reasonable amount with knights gear/consumables/sigil of perception), then every hit heals you for an average of 76 instead of just 40.

Of course, if you already feel like you’ve got enough life stealing going on, then ritual mastery is definitely better.

Everyone zergs at some point somewhere in WvW. Can’t we all just admit it, or is every thread from here on out going to be the same argument dragged on forever?

Also, if anyone wants a pretty blue, purple, pink, or red sylvari to team up for a score update, hit me up in game. (Though I’ll be at work for a few more hours.)

(… yes, I like sylvari :\)

Talentless.5708:

radsaq.8269:

The hate on Blackgate was a little unnecessary (:P), but it’s nice to see Rune of the Pack get some love.

It was, but as you heard, I was WvWing during the interview and it was what I was seeing at the time and day before… BG does camp kitten for no reason a lot though

It’s so your 10 person squad can’t take towers (which is now trivial to do without popping orange swords). :P

The hate on Blackgate was a little unnecessary (:P), but it’s nice to see Rune of the Pack get some love.

This is pretty close to the build I’ve been running forever (and have mentioned various times on the forums). You can switch out Curses and Spite points depending upon what combination of dagger, axe, focus, and warhorn you want to run and everything will still work. I covered my latest modifications in Nemesis’ thread at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/The-Abomination-necromancer-tank-build/first#post1621070

(And the fact that there are numerous things you can swap out in the build given personal preference without breaking it is why I think necros aren’t lacking in flexibility, though there are a few key areas that I think necros are missing things)

It’s about 2000 with full rabid gear, 30 Curses, consumables, and full stacks of corruption. 25 stacks of might will add another 875.

Check out Lopez’ guides at http://lopezirl.com/ for useful condition necro information.

I consider any Well-focused build a ‘support’ build, especially when using Ritual of Protection. The added protection is a nice bonus on top of the ability to cleanse conditions, do AoE healing, blind, apply conditions, etc. And the light and dark fields have very useful combos. Also, staff is good for its ability to give regen, remove conditions, and do AoE fear.

I tend to combine both of these with vampiric tank builds, so it’s pretty unselfish and helpful to the group (even though most of the green numbers I see aren’t shared with the group, unlike a guardian).

Agreed. I think out of all the complaints leveled against the necro profession, the most valid ones are the long cast times for relatively weak skills and the excessive (and seemingly inexplicable) use of projectiles.

This build is also quite viable with knight’s gear instead of PVT.

For a long time I was running dagger/warhorn and staff with 0/30/10/30/0 and all wells/vampiric traits. I switched recently to 30/0/10/30/0 with axe/focus and staff so as to stack vulnerability on camp guild claimers in WvW. Unfortunately this doesn’t work any more, so I haven’t been feeling quite so hot on that combination any more. But after seeing this thread, I decided to try out 15/0/25/30/0 with dagger/focus and staff and.. I think I really like it.

With full knight’s gear, a sigil of perception, and food/oil, you’ll have about 66% crit chance combined with about 3050 attack and 3000 armor. HP is only about 21.5k, but with vampiric precision, most of your hits (including ticks from wells) will be healing for 51 extra per target hit on top of the 38 from vampiric. This also means that sigil of blood and lifesteal foods will be highly effective (though the cooldown that was just added is a bit of a bummer). I use runes of the pack on my armor for the extra precision/power and the fury on a 10s timer.

The only real downside is that you have to sacrifice decreased well cooldown to use vampiric precision (ugh, I really wish they would just shorten the cooldowns period and remove that trait). But the constant sea of green healing is great.

Also, everyone’s getting tons of bags since the patch. People should not be judging themselves or others by that. =-o

Try 0/30/10/30 with:

Hemophilia (II), Banshee’s Wail (VIII), Withering Precision (XII)
Ritual of Protection (IV)
Bloodthirst (II), Vampiric Precision (V), Vampiric Rituals (XII)

Use all wells for your heal/utility slots. The elite can be whatever you like, though plague form is generally a useful panic button.

For weapons, use dagger/warhorn and staff. Equipment should be all knight gear with a sigil of perception and blood. For runes I like to use the Pack, as these give plenty of power/precision and the fury procs quite frequently while tanking in PvE, which will bump you up to 100% crit chance with food/oil.

With this setup you’ll be able to put out decent damage while soaking up a ridiculous amount.

This is a bug with specific weapons on multiple classes.

It has been raised a few times on the forums, so hopefully it’s on a list to get fixed sometime soon.

Thresher.3049:

I do WvW and that’s about all I do so there is a slightly biased perspective, but there’s about 1 other full-time WvW necro I see regularly, couple of part time alts/irregulars and the usual pve-carebears that crawl out from out of their dungeons long enough to get their monthly-achievement component done.
So, I really do worry that the class isn’t played at all.

I see a lot of necros on Blackgate. :o

Healing power does not increase life stealing. It only scales your healing well.

Healing power isn’t really doing you too much good here. I roll a similar build with 0/30/10/30/0 with knight’s gear (toughness/precision/power).

There are a few threads about vampiric well builds out there. It doesn’t seem like a super-common setup (perhaps due to the lack of non-PVE viability), but it is highly effective and I don’t think anyone is going to ridicule you.

cesmode.4257:

tyvm for that.

Here is my current build:
Curses: 2, 8, 9 (hemophilia, focused rituals, banshee’s wail)
Death magic: 4 (Ritual of protection)
Blood Magic: 2, 5, 8 (Bloodthirst, Vampiric Precision, Ritual Mastery)

I run D/WH and Staff with sigil of blood on dagger.

Utilies:
Consume Conditions(I chose this over well of blood because it really keeps me upright in heavy condition fights)
Well of Power(Here is my contribution to the group via a skill. )
Well of Corruption
Well of Suffering

The wells heal me per tick, my auto attacks heal my per tick, Life Siphon heals me per tick, and crits heal me. While the healing stat doesnt scale with most of this, it seems, I still do not go down a lot.

I’m using nearly the same build with knight armor + emerald orbs and all emerald trinkets, along with a sigil of blood and sigil of perception on my weapons.

However, I highly recommend swapping out consume conditions, focused rituals and ritual mastery for well of blood, withering precision and vampiric rituals. Given the fact that you’re fighting at melee range, you don’t need to target wells. Withering precision will help to further reduce incoming damage. And vampiric rituals is amazing. As long as there are enemies in range, it essentially gives you four healing skills instead of one. Which also give you 3 seconds of protection every time since you’ve already got ritual of protection (and as far as I know, you need to be inside the well when it is cast to receive the boon, and so is another reason to not use focused rituals).

Pop a blackberry pie (or similar, but these seem to be at the sweet spot of cost/benefit) and you’re nearly invincible in PVE. I never go down outside of dungeons with this build, and can tank pretty much anything if I play it right (intelligent use of death shroud to soak up damage while waiting for the lengthy well recharge helps here). You’re also providing a decent amount of support for a group, given the protection with wells, the massive amounts of damage you’ll usually be sucking up, the frequent combo fields, AoE condition removal, and conditions and boon removal on enemies.