Guild Wars 2

Chaith.8256:

I disagree with your idea of what Celestial is or should be, that’s not exactly clear. Let me start with saying that my opinion over time has changed and I do think the amulet itself should be shaved down to 400 stats in its respective category, down from 438.

You see ‘Celestials’ as D/D Ele or Shoutbow War, but your descriptions of what those professions are actually doing in a match, ie, rolling around, surviving, stacking might, loafing around in mediocrity, that’s just not how it works.

Celestial Ele and Warrior only have their potential unlocked when the player has really mastered playing aggressively as a cohesive unit with the DPS roamers. Shoutbow Warrior can be a big player in winning fights with properly timed Pin Downs, and D/D Ele Updrafts, Earthquakes, Immobilizes, these just ends lives when combo’d with an Engineer or Necro. Someone playing like you describe has no damage game, no CC game.

For example, Phantaram and I can lock select Warriors/Engineers with weak stunbreaks who get caught without them for up to 12 seconds. And that’s not even the maximum, it’s just Earthquake into Updraft, into Overcharged Shot, into Slick Shoes, none of those abilities with a cooldown over 45 seconds.

Once you start tapping into the wreck-your-face mentality, I don’t know how anyone can call Celestials benign might stackers who troll around the point.

I have a question, and I apologize if it is a dumb question. It seems to me that you are suggesting that celestial builds are only really strong in combination with other dps roamers, and that this strength is actually due to the massive amount of cc that can be put out. So, if that’s true, then what will reducing celestial stats by 10% (my guess is that this will translate into only a small reduction of survivability and damage in any case) actually accomplish?

Sartori.6758:

Sorry if I wasn’t being clear. What I meant to say was why bother with this build at all? That’s why I didn’t bother putting together an alternate set.

Ah, sure. In my case, I started out as p/d in WvW with full carrion, and had real difficulties. I felt really fragile (sure, you’ve got a good amount of vit, but every hit feels like it takes a massive chunk off, and let’s face it – you’re going to take damage), and I didn’t feel like I had good healing. To top it off, I was at the start point of the thief learning curve. I gave up on p/d for a while, played p/p, got more used to thief. Then, I thought I’d start working on p/d again.

This time, I went to PvP. I tested out various mixes of carrion, rabid, celestial and apoth on dummies and in matches. I ended up with 5/0/30/20/15 in a celestial / apoth mix, which felt like it gave me a good amount of offense, but more importantly upped my survivability.

I went back into WvW with the same build. Dire had come out, so I got key dire pieces and then used buildcraft to figure the rest… mixing celestial with dire seemed most attractive, as it gave me a lot more offense relative to mixing in apoth, while keeping the high healing potential of celestial / apoth in PvP.

TLDR, it’s because of the improved durability and sustain relative to carrion, and not wanting to give up what you do with apoth to get it.

The cynical TLDR is I sucked too much for carrion.

Sartori.6758:

And while you could get slightly better stats by throwing together a mix of soldiers/berserkers/dire/rabid/whatever but honestly, why?

You’ll hit like a wet noodle, have bleeds that people will ignore because they’ll tic for so little, have a heal that heals more but by such a tiny amount you won’t notice anyways, be slightly tankier than a standard thief using soldiers/berserkers (which will do 2x the dmg you can do) but be a lot less tanky than an actual condition/perplexity dire cheese of the month build.

I went into gw2buildcraft and compared two exotic gear sets. One was based on pretty much straight carrion. The other replaced carrion with celestial everywhere possible.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|a.1h.h16.8.1m.h9.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1h.7g.1h.7g.1h.7g.1h.7g.1h.7i.1h.7i|1h.62.1h.62.1h.62.1h.62.1h.62.1b.62|5.0.u000.k00.f0|30.d|0.0.0.0.0|e

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|a.1j.h16.8.1m.h9.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7i.1j.7i|1j.62.1h.62.1h.62.1j.62.1h.62.1b.62|5.0.u000.k00.f0|30.d|0.0.0.0.0|e

In comparison to carrion, moving to celestial gives: More effective power, more effective health, better damage reduction and more healing power (this is actually noticable in game play, I’ve played both carrion and celestial). All carrion gets is slightly larger bleed ticks, and this is partially offset by more SoE procs in celestial gear… if you do the calculation, the amount of condi damage you miss out on per hit by going celestial is about half or two thirds a bleed tick per pistol 1.

I’m sure one might want to do something with ascended, quibble about particular metrics, come up with some min maxed gear mix that yields a 1% increase in overall damage while keeping everything else the same, etc. But I’m not convinced it’s going to make much of a difference in the overall result. In comparison to Carrion, Celestial trades a bit of bleed damage for better survivability. That’s about it.

I don’t think anybody would complain if the discussion was Apothecary instead of Carrion for p/d… Celestial makes the same tradeoffs, just less so, and gives some crit to play with.

@Oozo

What do you run?

Valvador.4291:

The problem is that Numbers do really tell you everything, it’s just it’s hard to analyze numbers from highly variable situations. How do you include damage from an extra proccing Bleed from the Sigil of Earth? How do you keep track of the fact that in a condition build, Might increases Condition Damage AND Power?

Let me give you an example. In my current celestial / dire gear, I get 95 bleed ticks, 100% duration, 21% crit, 1547 effective power and 27367 effective health. Every time my pistol 1 hits, I get base damage + 8 seconds of bleed (8*95 damage) + 0.6*0.21 chance to get 10 seconds of bleed from the sigil. The expected number of bleed ticks is 8 + 0.21*0.6*10 = 9.26, for a total of 880 extra damage. Note that this doesn’t factor in the 2 second cooldown – the cooldown has a substantial effect on sigil procs, but it’s too complicated to go into here.

If I drop celestial gear for carrion, I get 108 bleed ticks, 100% duration, 11% crit, 1527 effective power and 26917 effective health. Effective power and health (omitting healing power) is a wash. The expected number of bleed ticks is 8 + 0.11*0.6*10 = 8.66, total damage is 108*8.66 = 935.

So, in comparison to celestial / dire, carrion / dire gains about half a bleed tick per hit of extra damage. In exchange, you get a slightly different mix of vitality / toughness (although overall the same effective health), and you lose half your healing power. In my play, I much prefer having the higher toughness and healing power, but going dire / apothecary proved to be giving up too much direct damage and maybe more importantly vitality. So, celestial.

Edit: if I made a mistake in the above or omitted something, I’m happy to be better informed.

Traveler’s runes

I thought about those… at 9 G apiece and because if I go traveler’s it’s a pain to meet 100% bleed duration, I gave up on them. But yeah, the 25% run speed is really tempting.

@ Sheobix – yep, agreed – that is in fact what I run, just PVT gear with rubies in slots. Nothing like dropping wells, hitting DS and DS 5, and watching the big numbers hit. LB is nothing to sneeze at either, especially in chokes. It’s a real shame though that soldier’s / berserker’s ascended jewelry doesn’t exist though – going exotic PVT with rubies to soldier / soldier ends up being a problem.

Helios.3598:

Other than Spiteful Spirit, why go into the Spite tree at all for a DS WvW build? What about this build (0/20/0/20/30) http://intothemists.com/guides/1472-necro_debuff . It has both DS and Wells matched with chill.

This is similar to what I run: 10/10/0/20/30 PVT, with targetable and reduced cooldown wells, reduced DS decay, DS crit and LB might and piercing, and siphoning. You’d think to yourself:

1) “Why go into BM at all, why not just get more power and Close to Death instead?” … sometimes I wonder that myself. Siphoning gives me about a 3-12% increase in damage (averaged) depending on the attack and reasonable offhealing in zerg combat when I’m not in DS. Going 30 in spite instead would give about an 18% damage increase at the cost of about 8% of my effective health and also my offheals… I’m not sure the trade is worth it.

2) “Why not go 20 into curses for chill?” … it’s because Parasitic Bond is noticable in WvW, and once I do that my choices are somewhat limited. Possibly 5/10/0/25/30 or 5/20/0/15/30 would be better.

Death shroud can be awkward to use. My general strategy is to stay in it as much as possible and certainly when my heal is down, and the build I use generally accomplishes that. However, while in DS I don’t get the benefit of any of the healing I’m investing in. I wish I could figure something better, but so far I can’t.

I run a mix of dire ascended and celestial exotic gear on my p/d thief. It is really nice; it feels better balanced than either dire / carrion or dire / apothecary. The crit chance you get can be leveraged into a sigil of earth, which in combo with condi duration gives you about one extra bleed tick per hit.

http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/thief/?7.0|a.5q.h16.8.1m.h9.0.0.0|0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0|1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7g.1j.7i.1j.7i|4x.0.2x.0.3x.0.211.0.311.0.1b.0|5.0.u000.k00.f0|30.d|0.0.0.0.0|e

The ascended celestial trinkets are there because there is no option for celestial gems in buildcraft, but the stats are about the same.

@Rennoko

For WvW have you looked at 0/30/20/20/0 or classical terrormancer-type builds? I thought you had mentioned that in one of your GvG videos…

alindland.5894:

But what i want to try is a condition based wellomancer. So basically i wanna run with scepter-??/staff. And i want to find a balance between the tank/heal im running now into more dps.

For a while there was some focus on conditions / wells builds based on carrion gear. “Nibonisen” posted a Youtube video a while back that might be useful for you to look at, if I remember right he ran 0/30/10/0/30… whether or not the build would still work I’m not sure about. It seems as if deep power or deep conditions are getting most of the attention nowadays.

Siphoning is already decent (not great, just decent), if you 1) use it in WvW zerg fights with AOE skills; 2) use it with minions in PvP; 3) realize that you’re getting a fairly substantial damage increase for traiting in the vitality tree; 4) realize that the signets etc. other classes get have bad main heals attached to them, so they’re not necessarily completely comparable. It’s also outstanding for solo PvE content in minion builds. I go 20 deep for siphoning most of the time and seem to miss it when I’ve tried going without it.

On the other hand, siphoning sucks in 1v1 fights (unless you use minions, in which case you’re nearly indestructable), and I can see why we might feel a little irked about the comparison between signets and siphoning or food and siphoning.

ANet probably should have just buffed Vampiric, Vampiric Precision and Vampiric Rituals by 100%, left Bloodthirst alone, and maybe reduced Vampiric Master by 10% or so. That wouldn’t make necro the 1v1 attrition master that thief is, but it might make BM just a little more attractive and improve our durability somewhat.

Valentin.2073:

warriors aren’t OP. you just need to dodge their stuns. they are balanced IMO.

necs are tougher to beat than warriors.

I usually play a meat tank necro in PvP – minions, heavy siphoning, etc. I played a hot join match, and on the other side was a two CC warrior combo from the same guild (IG I think?). I’d be sitting on a point, they’d come in. The fights would be about 2 minutes long, and they were always the same. Chain CC from one warrior then the other, over and over again, rinse and repeat. For about 75-90% of the fight’s total time I’d be stunned, just getting pummeled. It was I think the dumbest playing experience I’ve had in GW2.

I dunno, maybe it’s OK – 2v1, the build has no stun breaks / stability / vigor, etc. So I’m not really complaining… it’s more that I have the feeling that DR on CC is going to have to be implemented. Maybe that’s the nerf that’s required.

thenoobler.7540:

They got fights enough from GOTL and WAR just fine. For the past week its been fun in DBBL for us in WAR and well as those in GOTL fighting ROCT. If ROCT doesn’t feel the same then /shrugs who cares.

I was there a couple of nights ago. As I recall, the WAR/GOTL/guildless noobs mix wiped RoT a couple of times with pretty even numbers, then PiNK got called in, then the RoT/PiNK blob was able to kill the DB players who came in full berserker gear (shame there are so many), then it became a snore. The WAR and GOTL doritos were fun, GF was around for some smaller scale fights, and I did fill my bags (two exotics!), so it all worked out I guess.

#Dragtanic

Stinson.5972:

So all in all, still deciding between finding a place in T1 or picking a different server in T2.

I thought about this for a while too recently, after coming back from a work related break to find WvW on DB a wreck. I’m hesitant to leave, at least for the time being.

For transferring to a server that is stable and probably about what DB was a couple of months ago, the best choices seem to be Mag, FA or SoS. My guess is that at least one of those is going to be getting smashed every single week in gold league, and at least one will be facerolling nearly every week in silver, so good fights might be tough to come by. TC I thought about too, but my guess is they’ll be getting smashed nearly every week also and have worse queues. … speaking of which, will probably be a problem in any T1 server. I think that there will end up being a lot of people ending up disappointed with their transfer, no matter the froms and tos.

Then again, if you think the environment is toxic and if it’s “can such-and-such server be any worse than DB” instead of “will such-and-such server be better than DB,” it might be time to move or take a break. I can sort of see why you think that, no commanders on any map, constant 3-5 on 1 numbers against PvE geared DB militia vs organized and experienced TC WvW guilds, TC players who refuse to fight on the rare even player number matchups that happen, etc. does not make for a fun WvW experience. But I am guessing (hoping) that things will change soon enough. There are new commanders starting to pin up occasionally, and we’ll see how it goes. T1 and T2 will always be there and hungry for new players, there’s no rush.

You want both. Pick either PVT or CVT, and gear / spec in that. Mix in appropriate gems, jewels, etc to up your offense if you feel like you can afford to.

I understand what you’re doing, I’m just trying to work out for myself what the pros and cons of your full Celestial are relative to PVT for a tanking / power type build.

The arguments about spiking are sort of a two-way street; in Celestial you get more spike, but you get spiked more easily. For me it seems that at 20 might stacks, the effective power of full Celestial is about 18% better than that of PVT, you’re giving up power for health at a 1:1 ratio, and I’d argue that Celestial might be a better choice in that case because of the intangibles.

In general, I think what I’ve always heard (and what I thought) is that Celestial is not as solid as other options, because you’re spread too thin across stats. Maybe that’s not as true as I thought. As a final comment, I wonder if comparing Celestial vs PVT is the right thing to do. Possibly the comparison should be against some combination of Carrion + PVT, or PVT + Rampager’s, or something like that.

Banjal.7328:

You left out the main reason why Celestial is nice Crit DMG.

That build isn’t made to run with PvT,it wouldn’t work out to well .You want at lest 3k power with PvT if you want to do DMG.

So I thought about this comment for a little while. I imagine that what you’re thinking is terror and bleeds and the 50% crit trait in SR. I don’t have much to say about terror except that at 700ish condi damage you’re getting like 475 damage a tick, at the opportunity cost of a 20 point trait in SR and an additional 10 points in curses relative to going 30 in spite.

In DS, after the 50% gain in crit chance, the effective power of celestial vs PVT would be

Celestial = 2128*((1-0.91) + 0.91*2.5) = 5032
PVT = 2706*((1-0.71) + 0.71*1.92) = 4473
Relative power of celestial = 5036 / 4473 = 1.13

In this case, you give up 18% of your effective health for a 13% gain in power, relative to PVT. Maybe the intangibles of the build make up for the extra loss in effective health, maybe not.

Banjal.7328:

Main Build for WvW and PvE.Best of both worlds.
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;00;3kHVF0847I-K0;9;4JJ;0T53-38;558B4Nl0-Rk0V19cV19c00Feeda9-7eqet5uau5vav5w53DWDF3V;5cYDqkYCq;9;9;9;9;7V5-6f

Here are my calculations for this build. (EP and EH calculated as detailed in GW2 buildcraft.)

Effective power = 2128*((1-0.41) + 0.41*2.5) = 3436.72
Effective health = 23602*2420 / 1836 = 31109.39

Here are similar calculations for a build where I’ve swapped out every bit of the celestial for PVT, and left everything else the same (http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;00;3kHVF0847I-K0;9;4JJ;0T53-38;558B4Nl0-Rk0V19cV19cc-FLN6R7-7eqe9-E0J1OYTZZ4050Ds0V;571CwF2Eo;9;9;9;9;7V5-6d).

Effective power = 2706*((1-0.21) + 0.21*1.92) = 3228.80
Effective health = 26402*2624 / 1836 = 37733.58

Relative celestial / PVT calculations:

Relative effective power = 3436 / 3228 = 1.064
Relative effective health = 31109 / 37733 = 0.824

So I guess one could quibble about an extra 500 condition damage or the extra healing power, but my guesstimate is that you’ve given up 18% of your effective health for a 6% gain in effective power. My further guesstimate based on doing builds is that the usual percent loss for a 1% gain in effective power is about 2%; here it’s 3%. I’m not sure why you’d want to do this. (If I miscalculated or was in any way unfair, I’m happy to be informed.)

This isn’t to say that the gear doesn’t work for you, etc., I just never really see great advantages to running anything other than PVT.

After sleeping on it, I think I might agree. Here you go.

1) Make Bloodthirst baseline for vampiric traits, and remove it from tier 1.
2) Move Ritual Mastery down from tier 2 to tier 1, and move Vampiric Rituals down from tier 3 to tier 2.
3) Move Vampiric Precision up from tier 1 to tier 2. Move Deathly Invigoration down from tier 2 to tier 1.
4) Introduce a new 30 point BM trait allowing vampiric siphoning effects to heal health through death shroud.

So now, the tree is more attractive for wells play that doesn’t involve siphoning; gives a slight utility buff to heavy siphoning users that don’t take the 30 point DS trait (in the form of a adept slot that is now freed up); and has fairly heavily nerfed healing for users that take the 30 points DS trait (they have to choose between siphoning on crits and on wells).

The alternative is to simply give the 30 point DS trait a toggle that reduces siphoning while in DS, but that seems like a kluge.

So I guess the premise is that BM needs to be more attractive, ergo buffs. Generally, I don’t think new complicated skills is the way to go for such things. I think I’d argue the following:

1) Bloodthirst is more or less required for vampiric builds (vampiric precision is an option if you’ve over 40% crit and only going to take one of the two is my understanding). Without it, siphoning is reasonable but not great. Making it baseline might slightly improve siphoning for standard well-based 20 point investments in BM, and make a 15 point investment more attractive.

2) Ritual mastery from tier 1 to tier 2 would promote diversity in non-siphoning wells builds. Likewise, vampiric rituals from tier 3 to tier 2 would provide some diversity in wells builds… my sense is that vampiric rituals as a tier 3 trait is definitely not worth the investment, but it might be attractive in tier 2.

3) So currently, I think I’d argue that the best option for necro bunkering might be MM with a 30 point investment in BM for condition clearing. Giving a 30 point BM siphoning through death shroud would again promote some diversity in necro bunkering possibilities (or bunkering more generally) and power based DS builds. I don’t think it’d be strictly better (30 points in BM is a big investment, if you wanted a DS bunker you’d need 30 points in BM + 30 in SR I’m guessing), but might work well for some applications.

I’d argue that the Blood Magic tree could be vastly improved in four simple steps.

1) Make Bloodthirst baseline for vampiric traits, and remove it from tier 1.
2) Move Ritual Mastery down from tier 2 to tier 1.
3) Move Vampiric Rituals down from tier 3 to tier 2.
4) Introduce a new 30 point BM trait allowing vampiric siphoning effects to heal health through death shroud.

Bhawb.7408:

@sas, toxic gameplay is when gameplay is bad for one or both sides. Generally it involves very little play/counterplay, or the play/counterplay is badly designed. Right now condi Necromancer play/counterplay is based around the Necromancer wanting to get out massive amounts of damage in the best spikes they can (there is some interesting play/counterplay in baiting out cleanses/stun breaks, but that is about it) because they have very little meaningful sustain/escape, and the enemy team tries to kill them as quickly as possible, or at least pressure them so hard they can’t effectively do their bursts. The entire play/counterplay there is a game of who kills who faster. Another problem is that the condi Necromancer’s burst has relatively small tells. They have been fixing this with the new casting animation on stakitten , but it is still possible to get chain feared and condi bursted.

Other toxic gameplay examples are stunlocking warriors and the old backstab thief.

Again, this is pretty much straight obfuscation. There are many, many examples of gameplay that is bad for one side, that don’t involve much counterplay. Most if not all PvP pretty well boils down to who kills who faster. Condi necro play is “toxic” because a few teams found themselves on the losing end and then cried about it and made some cherry picked videos instead of adjusting. Strategies used by those teams previously wasn’t, of course, to be considered toxic, even though teams consisting of say rangers and necros probably wouldn’t have fun playing against those strategies.

I heard that evolving metas were a really fun part of the game. I didn’t realize they’d induce so many tears amongst the e-sports crowd.

Bhawb.7408:

sas.6483:

… on the one hand I feel as if I’m being a bit unfair, but then again I actually think you have these positions and haven’t really thought them through. So I feel justified.

I want good balance for Necromancers. Having a build that has some of the highest burst condition damage and such toxic gameplay stay around is not good for us.

…

We are not balanced right now. One build is over the top strong, and most of the rest of our builds are either too dependent on teamwork (which just isn’t that fun to play for the majority of people) or are too weak in general. However once that OP build is toned down to proper balance, ANet might finally realize, again, that we are still in need of buffs to bring us up to good balance.

Let me translate the buzzwords. “Toxic gameplay” just means a meta evolving in ways certain players don’t like and are unwilling to adapt to. The junk about “condition burst” is bunk based on the math, which has been posted probably dozens of times. Acting like condition burst is somehow different and more out of line than DD burst is pretty much doublespeak. “Balance” is what everybody wants when they’re QQing about something they don’t like and ignores when gameplay suits them. Pretending that a few builds won’t stand out for certain applications is just silly, and pretending certain classes won’t have certain niches is also silly.

As far as going through another nerf / buff cycle, here is an aggregate of what has been roughly proposed in this thread. The new condition necromancer will have:

No terror damage.
No Dhuumfire.
A 2 second bleed and / or no poison on scepter 1. (No idea why there is crying about scepter 1 of all things now, but there it is.)
Slower than 1 second casts with massive animations.
Reduced lifeforce generation / lower sustain.

Inform us how you propose to buff the condition damage necro so that they will be fun to play, capable in 1v1s against other classes, distinct from a power necro, etc. Healing through death shroud and improvements to necro stability are out of bounds.

Bhawb.7408:

How do you heal through damage when they just spiked you with 15 stacks of bleeds, burning, all the extra conditions, and then feared you for 2 seconds, and can chain fear you for longer if you don’t start pumping out those stun breaks?

…

Also, your big “this is why necros aren’t OP” is that they lose to thieves, warriors, and mesmers (LOLOLOLOL at mesmers). Its called being countered (mesmers aside, it would have been difficult to have made a worse comparison, being as we’re a big reason mesmers are on the outs).

…

I respect the top tier Necromancers who I know aren’t just top 500, but have been top 1 on the leaderboards, and have had major success on teams. They all agree that the Necromancer changes made us OP.

World according to Bhawb:

It’s OK for necros to have to stack vit and toughness to deal with getting trained, but it’s not OK for other classes to have to use Melandru’s or spec for heavy condition clearing.

It’s OK when you’ve got eles, guardians, P/D thieves etc with a heavy attrition playstyle, but it’s definitely bad when necro gets tools to work the attrition game.

It’s OK when other classes get uncounterable high damage attacks, but it’s definitely bad when necro gets such attacks.

It’s OK for necros to have counters, but it’s not OK for necros to counter other classes.

It’s OK for 90% of teams to have a guardian or an ele or a mesmer, but it’s bad when 90% of teams have a necro. (Or ranger.)

It’s OK when necro players play other classes to be effective in PvP, but it’s bad when ele or mesmer players swap to necro to be effective.

It’s clearly bad when top teams that don’t play a necro but do play guardian, ele or mesmer say that necro changes made necro OP, because clearly those top teams couldn’t possibly have any alterior motives.

… on the one hand I feel as if I’m being a bit unfair, but then again I actually think you have these positions and haven’t really thought them through. So I feel justified.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

What changed was that necros gained the ability to kill people effectively

Quoting to reveal the true, bottom line cause for necro QQ.

Bhawb.7408:

Why do people find Necromancers OP? Because there is one spec right now that is.

We should have a slumber party. You can tell me a story about the OP necro that signet of spite-dhuumfire-epidemic-terror bombed a point with five berserker thieves circle jerking on it. Then we can go watch Phantaram’s video and cry a little about necro survivability. Maybe then we can eat some pizza or something, and watch a 1vX roaming thief video and gush about the true meaning of skill.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

sas.6483:

Why do people complain about necro?

…

1) False. If you get stomped in a 1v1, you’re doing it very wrong. Throwing up Spectral Armor and going into DS can really easily keep you alive. Add in the fact that Doom can be casted while CCed and how damaging you are, it’s easy to stay alive. Your defense is counterpressure.
2) ??? It’s because Necromancer is dipping heavily into two parts of the trinity. It has high CC and high Damage. Anything that dips too much into two or is EXTREME in 1 is pretty OP. For example, Spirit Ranger is high Support and Damage. Air Spike Ele is extreme in the damage area.
3) Heartseeker doesn’t CC you. It’s also an incredibly easy to pick out animation. If you look at a LOT of the necro skills, the animations are very similar and hard to pick out. Not to mention the chain can be done from 1,200 range away. Furthermore, if you HS spam, you run out of initiative, which basically puts everything on cooldown. This doesn’t happen with necromancers.
4) Even if you spec condiclears, you need a TON of them to face a necro. Signet of spite? Two marks? All of these put up crazy amounts of conditions. As for berserkers, yeah, they deserve to die quick, but also remember that conditions ignore armor.

I recommend actually going and taking a look at the definition of a cooldown and what the actual cooldowns are for necro skills, and what the typical builds / utility skill combinations are. Then, look up what CC skills are available for other classes and do a comparison. If you still feel like complaining, you can go back a few patches and see what actually changed as far as necro condition application / damage to make condi necros supposedly so OP. I think what you find will be surprising and possibly informative for you.

Or just keep on moaning about how unfair things are. Whatever floats your boat I guess.

Why do people complain about necro?

1) It is because they are clueless and haven’t actually played a necro, so they don’t actually know how non-faceroll the class is / how many ways there are to get stomped into the ground.
2) It is because of bullkitten e-sport class nerf politics youtube videos.
3) It is because they can’t do math, so they don’t realize that the “fear CC burst chain” does less damage than a couple of heartseekers.
4) It is because they are wearing berserker gear and don’t want to have to actually spec any condition clears / regen / vitality / l2p.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

Lokheit.7943:

P/P main problems are the lack of synergy between the main attack and the main damage source, and how poor the cheap skill (Body Shot) is, which is mathematically garbage.

More problems would be the lack of either mobility or ways to decrease opponent mobility, and very little team support.

Having shifted from a brief run at P/D and played P/P for a couple of weeks, my impression is that the main attack / main damage source synergy isn’t the problem – I think you’d be hard pressed to justify this based on the numbers. The problem is that the secondary skills, outside of unload, are not all that great.

Look at it this way: If you play P/D, you get a stealth, a cripple, and a gap opener. If you play shortbow, you get two gap openers and two AOEs. These are on top of what you choose for your heal and utility skills – if you decide to go with either mobility or stealth for these, you can back that choice up with weapon skills.

On the other hand, if you play P/P, you get direct damage burst. You also get an interrupt and black powder. The trouble is that you’re pouring the vast majority of your initiative into unload, so these might not be as available as you’d like, and that neither of them synergize with your heal and utility skills. P/P ends up being pretty much all about endurance and utility skill cooldown management, whereas in P/D and shortbow, you get more leeway (at the cost of no single target burst, I suppose).

@ Taquito – I have a question about the build. I don’t understand the generosity / fire sigil combo. Fire is obviously good, generosity makes sense to me in this build since there’re few condition clears, but I thought stacking didn’t work because of shared cooldowns. Am I right about the logic / wrong about the condition clears? Also, I just went down to the 30% endurance generation meat stew, which is running at about 1.6 s. There’s not a huge, noticable difference.

@ Expiatus: You should do it. My thief was gathering dust, but after watching the Taquito series, I picked it back up, got P/P, and am having a lot of fun.

Aberrant.6749:

sas.6483:

Aberrant.6749:

I really wish they would rework PP myself, but atm it’s just too scattered… aa is cond, unload doesn’t do the best damage, it has some ok utility but not worth the ini it costs while in that set… : /

I guess I don’t completely understand the cond damage vs power damage argument when it comes to pistol mainhand auto attacks. …

900 for a ranged auto attack when you’re in full zerk (I presume that’s what you’re compairing full zerk vs full cond) is low damage. Compaire the aa of shortbow vs the aa on pistol when you’re wearing the same gear… the shortbow wins not even considering the bounce. Iirc a sneak attack in full power/crit does about the same damage as a frontstab.

Condition damage does indeed have other benefits Vs. condition damage as well as you mentioned. In addition to that though… condition builds also naturally come along with more survival from the vit/toughness which you give up for more damage in a power set up… but you’re NOT doing more damage in this case, but less.

It’s been a while but I remember doing more than 115 per bleed tick… I remember 120+ and I wasn’t using full carrion. I was using a carrion/apothecary mix for more survival, which would have a little bit lower condition damage Vs. full carrion.

You also get more Ini refunded from c&d as long as you’re using the 2 ini when you go into stealth (that’s build dependent though). Unload will have a higher cost on average.

My numbers came from doing a sample build in gw2buildcraft, but it’s always possible I made a mistake. I didn’t use any ascended gear or anything, just a simple build with exotics.

I agree that shortbow is better aa damage than pistol, probably regardless of whether you choose a power or a condi build. But, it’s probably not the go to weapon for single target unless you’re going full on evasion. Also, it’s true that you could argue that there are other playstyle differences due to builds that matter more than the absolute damage… I guess I feel like the builds are intrinsic to the playstyle. For example, 0/0/30/20/20 wouldn’t make sense for P/P.

I think in some respects, the argument about P/D condi vs P/P power might be mainly about those differences. P/D play feels like it’s about stealth and attrition. P/P play is about ranged burst and mobility.

I’ve played both in limited amounts. Although my impression is that P/D is better, I think that personally I do better in WvW and PvP with P/P, but that is probably because it’s newb friendlier… 333333 while staying 900 distance away from your target is not too tough to make sense of. P/D takes more skill to pull off because of the need to hit CnD, and I’m not there yet.

Opinions:

1) For zerg v zerg, I think that most people would argue some variant of power wells is meta. Amongst these people there’d be an argument about how much tankyness is desirable, and whether / how to go into the soul reaping tree / use death shroud. There’d be a large minority however that’d argue for some type of condition damage build. The most popular of these would probably be 30/20/0/0/20. Amongst those people there’d be a further argument about using carrion vs rabid. There would be however almost universal agreement that plague form is the elite to have.

2) I think the consensus would be that necros deal with CCs and speed issues badly. Your option for stability is 30 points in SR. Most people I think would suggest learning to use death shroud to absorb burst. Your options for speed are basically either spectral walk or signet of the locust.

As for how to play, I think it depends on how you want to play and how you gear / spec. Often I’ve seen advice along the lines of play on the back line, dropping well bombs and staff / scepter AOE. But I think if you watch the way zerg necros play, you’ll find they don’t play like that. Rather, it’s a mix of close in play using plague form and DS, and then backing out when those options are down, when you want to control a choke, etc. Check out videos by Quenta of the Black Talons. I learned a lot from watching those.

Aberrant.6749:

I really wish they would rework PP myself, but atm it’s just too scattered… aa is cond, unload doesn’t do the best damage, it has some ok utility but not worth the ini it costs while in that set… : /

I guess I don’t completely understand the cond damage vs power damage argument when it comes to pistol mainhand auto attacks. At least, it doesn’t totally make sense to me.

From memory, if I run P/D with a heavy cond damage build (carrion, 0/0/30/20/20, 50% duration from food and a giver’s weapon), I get something like 6 bleed ticks at 115 damage + typically 225 or so damage from the main attack. There’s no appreciable crit, so I get about 900 damage per hit. Initiative is going into C/D.

If I run pistol mainhand with the kind of gearing El Taquito Bandito uses and a 0/30/0/20/20 build, I get 4 bleed ticks at about 40 damage apiece, + typically 400ish damage from the main attack if it doesn’t crit and + 1.1k-ish damage if it does; 50% crit gives about 900 damage per hit. Not that it matters much, you’re doing at most 4 or so auto attacks before another unload.

I understand there might be some quibbles here and there about bleed durations, amount of armor, etc., but I just don’t see a massive advantage to cond damage. What am I missing?

spoj.9672:

… your heals will heal back a higher percentage of your base hp = better sustain. Therefore toughness still benefits you when taking condition damage because of healing. Its difficult to explain what i mean exactly over a forum.

Our hp pool is big enough to survive plenty of conditions and cleanse them. If we have it any bigger we lose even more effective healing, which is not acceptible. I tried a PVT bunker build in the new condi meta in tpvp and I just couldnt sustain myself. I could last a long time, but i was slowly getting warn down and losing fights against eles and such which werent even built full bunker (and they didnt even have to disengage). My high hp pool was what was causing the problems. I guarantee if I used a clerics amulet instead I would of had a much better experience. Even a rabid amulet would of allowed me to sustain better.

I have a hard time with any argument along the lines of low vitality being somehow good because it increases heal effectiveness relative to your total health pool. That’s not to say I couldn’t be convinced.

Arguing that rabid would sustain better than soldier’s seems crazy. Clerics I could maybe believe, or maybe Valk’s or Shaman’s. I do not see how lowering vitality without achieving compensation in healing power equals more sustain.

I suspect the reason that you are getting worn down in your bunker build is the same reason we all get worn down – we can’t heal through DS, and we can’t get enough of a combination of healing and LF generation enough out of DS to effectively rotate in and out of DS without being worn down.

I’m curious about your bunker build though – is it not DS-based?

BillFreist.1527:

So a few things about the latest DS changes:

1. Death Shroud incoming damage
   • You now take the correct amount of incoming damage. Before this change (and it wasn’t always like this, either) you would takes the same damage twice.
   • Your Life Force pool is still the same as it has always been. 60% of your maximum health while alive, plus an additional 0-30% of that base value for Traits, meaning you can have a maximum of 78% of your max health.

Some clarification would be good here: Does this mean that the tests we did were wrong and the life force pool is 60%, or did the life force pool go from 60% to 100% and is being dropped back down to 60%?

Ascii.9726:

If i was running PTV over Cavalier this would most likely be my build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBHhZakRLbPUTTjfTBIV46JFcPOUhdjeU8wLD-jEyAoLBRyRgIEgZvioxWGLiGreBTXSEV7xLiWtMAMjB-w

…

You know, after playing another night with 5 points in spite, I am totally convinced it is the right way to go. As for the rest of the difference, I used to run with WoD instead of WoS, and I still run SA in my PvP build… maybe I should give both of them a second try in WvW, although I’ve been spoiled by 25% movement speed for a long time. The other thing I’ve been spoiled by is the DS improvements from SR; I think I’d have a hard time giving them up.

The one thing I’ll suggest in the build given is that one might swap out the azurite jewels for ruby. Although it isn’t in line with disruption, ruby gems are I think the cheapest (in terms of relative cost) way to increase effective power. From the builds I’ve done, it’s usually the case that to get a 1% increase in EP, one has to give up about 2% of EH. Ruby gems are the only exception to that, I think it’s about a 1.5% increase in EP per 1% loss of EH.

carrion vs rabid

toughness vs vitality

on crit proc cooldowns

Ohhh this topic has the potential to go places.

After reading this thread, I decided to revisit my tanky WvW build and gearing. Maybe what I did would be helpful to somebody (or maybe it’ll just be troll comment food).

From a 0/30/0/20/20 build using PVT gear with undead and carrion gemming, I dropped 10 points in curses to pick up 5 points in spite and 25 points in SR, and regemmed to knight’s and berserker’s. I ended up with this:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=V00;3kH-G0D43KkJ0;9;44J-JO;135;217-19-c;04c;9c-F61-qW90;0V9-E0J1OYTZZ_9sVG-6kW8;0V8a-0-qc2;9;9;9;1VVVVVV;9;14-6Z

… one could swap out Weakening Shroud for Chilling Darkness if one wanted; I found losing Chilling Darkness to be noticeable, so maybe it’d be better that way. Likewise, you could swap out 5 points in SR for 5 in curses. The increase in sustain from going 5 points in spite was pretty impressive. I think for a low crit PVT gear build it’s worth getting.

The next experiment I am thinking about is to drop exotic soldier’s gear, pick up knight’s, and go 0/20/0/30/20:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=V00;3kH-G0D43KkJ0;9;5J-TJ;135;217419-c;04c;9c-k91-31D0;0VAVFWKXP2V3a_9sVGk-BV8;0V8a-0-qc2;9;9;9;1VVVVVV;9;14-6p

I’m curious as to whether the combo of both vampiric and vampiric precision will provide the same kind of sustain as my previous build… the trade off of vitality for toughness I’m not totally thrilled about, but the gain in crit chance I think is required for the build.

Thanks again to Ascii for this thread. Just when I thought my necro was settled, it’s become interesting again.

Ascii.9726:

@sas.6483
An 0/30/0/20/20 is quite a viable build too, as i mentioned before if i did ever change for more damage Soul Reaping would be the tree i go into with something like 0/25/10/20/15. I tend to favor Deadly Strength alot though because 9/12 pieces and runes add toughness were-as your using Carrion but i would give up toughness if its made up in health (or DS health in this case).

I have considered running Dagger infact its a topic were discussing right now in SoR TS3 (a immobilize + epidemic combo) but having used axe since beta i would find it difficult to change especially considering Unholy Feast is stupid right now (18 second Retaliation going into Plague does so much damage).

I didn’t even consider Unholy Feast into Plague… that is a fantastic idea. And yeah, I can see if you prefer Knight’s gear over PVT, there might be some preference for grabbing Deadly Strength instead of plowing into Soul Reaping. In defense of PVT and SR, once you get to 30k health, the idea of a 35-40k death shroud on top of that is really appealing.

Question: I’ve seen pre-Greater Marks patch people prefer 0/30/10/0/30 for the stability, and have considered it, but I just can’t seem to let go of Vampiric… thoughts?

I can maybe offer a couple of comments, take them with however many grains of salt as you like… as a reference, I run 0/30/0/20/20 wells now, going PVT with either carrion or berserker gemming, depending on how I’m feeling. I run staff and dagger/wh.

1) I don’t see the point of going more than 10 points into DM anymore (20% cooldown trait). That investment has a huge opportunity cost in terms of going deeper into blood magic or SR.

2) Speaking of SR and death shroud, I highly recommend considering going 30 in curses for Weakening Shroud… It’s interesting that in the curses tree, there are 3 great choices in minor traits.

3) It’s good to see somebody else who realizes that vampiric doesn’t suck. I run bloodthirst and no vampiric precision… my guesstimate is that the additional damage gain is in the range of 3-10%, and this doesn’t consider healing. That’s for a 15 point investment… my guess is that this would compare really well to 15 points in say spite.

4) Have you considered running dagger instead of axe? … I used to try to run axe, and have found dagger to be so much better.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

It is really hard to make a fix otherwise, since the necromancer is in an uneasy place from which there seems to be no balance:

Survivability: great when you are by yourself and can build up Life Force, terrible in groups where you are helpless to focus and are vulnerable to CC.

Damage: Good when you are by yourself and the opponent has limited cleanses and stun breakers. Bad in groups where you are easily peeled, there are more cleanses about, and when your offense is reliant on blowing all cooldowns or an incredibly situational epidemic.

…

I do have on idea. Someone else on the Necro forum mentioned the idea of having Death Shroud get a scaling damage reduction based on a number of players around. That is fine, however I’d like to go one step simpler.

So, for necromancer survival, I will come up with a very simple suggestion. I do not know if it is good or not, but it potentially will solve some of the problems necromancers have:

Make it so, while in Death Shroud, Necromancers do not take direct damage, period. Then, increase the degen on Death Shroud to be at 20% per second, giving them 5 seconds of DS time at a full bar, before traits are applied.

…

Not to be overly critical, but I think your survivability / damage breakdown is limited to how a particular build plays in sPvP. My experience has been different; I tend to play power / survivability builds in casual PvP and serious WvW.

I have this feeling that there are a bunch of name-recognition necros out there that really want big, complicated changes to necro mechanics. I hope that doesn’t happen. I think that small, simple quality of life changes are sufficient. For example – the whole Dhuumfire incident could have been avoided if Anet just improved baseline power scaling for weapons used by power builds (assuming that the talent was intended to bump power build damage).

As for the proposed changes in DS, again I hope they don’t happen. I think the modest changes that were made by Anet put DS in a better place than it was, although the bleed over into health should be reverted for the obvious reasons. The only further change I’d make is to allow vampiric traits to heal through DS.

… one last comment, that I hope Anet considers, is this – the way this has gone down has pretty well wrecked any interest I might have in organized sPvP, on any class. It seems pretty clear that “balance” is achieved on the basis of listening to a few players that have alterior incentives to say one thing or another. I’m not sure why this is, considering the limited appeal of cash tourneys and such.

Phantaram.1265:

…1200 range necros…

necromancers actually have a chance if the other team doensn’t coordinate right and I pop plague form as I see the damage start hitting, which has happened.

… so now 1200 range on staff is the problem?

… and plague form, the 3 minute cooldown elite skill that prevents you from getting melee trained for 20 seconds but doesn’t stop ranged or condition damage, and gives you a whopping 200 dps to melee range opponents?

Well alright then, I look forward to your next video. I suggest sitting on a point and popping plague form while having 3 or four CC warriors beating on you. Be sure to break from the video immediately after the 20 seconds are up so nobody sees what happens after plague form ends. You can call it “NECRO SURVIVABILITY SO OP” or something like that.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Necro survivability is incredibly finite at the moment, with Death Shroud as mitigation being limited by HP. In small scale fights of 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2, it is currently overpowered, since a full bar gives Necromancers an incredible statistical advantage over other classes. However, when you get larger than that, DS offers very little comparative protection, being worn away quickly. Then, the necromancer’s lack of escapes and blocks/evades/invulnerability comes back in full force, getting them killed quickly.

There’s almost no balance to it. Either the necromancer is overpowered because it is a small scale fight, or the necromancer is really underpowered because it is a large scale fight. No other class seems to have such a polarized effectiveness, and the design philosophy of Anet can only make the problem worse. If you give the necros more damage or survivability for team fights, this makes them more overpowered in small scale fights. If you scale them down their damage or survivability for small scale fights, then they become even worse in team fights and large scale fights.

For what it’s worth, my experience has been almost the exact opposite… I think the people who have tried to build bunker necros have also found that it’s just not as effective as one might think; if I remember right I saw a post just a bit ago about somebody going up against an ele 1v1 and losing in a 5 minute bout because they were gradually worn down.

I just can’t tell at this point what is going on.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey all, just wanted to let you know that we’re watching this thread closely.

Really appreciate the constructive feedback, particularly yours, Phantaram. You seem to be analyzing from a very objective and unbiased point of view, which is very helpful.

This is not confidence inspiring. I am not sure why it is that somebody with six hours of necro experience who produces a troll video is labeled as “objective and unbiased.”

Allie Murdock.8152:

Ok, here’s the deal. I’m hearing different things from everyone I talk to.

1. Necro DS is too much and should be brought down
2. Necro damage is too much and should be brought down
3. Necro survivability is bad

Which is it? At this point, I want to see streams and videos of matches.

Why do you want to see more streams and videos of cherry picked “data” that is basically going to just show you whatever the person who videos it wants you to see?

Here is what I think a fair assessment of what is going on with the class is:

1) You probably botched up with the addition of Dhuumfire. You then compounded that mistake by nerfing terror instead of Dhuumfire or swapping the the 30% condition duration in the spite tree with something else. The reason that’s so is because you made 30/20/-/-/- required for anybody that wants to play condition damage. The natural place for the remaining 20 points is soul reaping for some additional survivability.

2) The latest changes to siphoning and death shroud were probably overall good, if your vision of the class is a meat shield for attrition fighting. The bleed over of life force into health was a bad choice, because it means that we can’t absorb any kind of burst damage if life force is low, and we need that possibility because we have no other defense in that case. Irrespective of that nerf, I think that necro players are of the opinion that we do not actually fight attrition fights as well as a variety of other classes, even if we are specced to do so. We have reasons to think this beyond just “I think my class should be able to go 1v3 and win.”

3) Right now, there are too many asinine proposed “fixes” to the necro class to count, and you guys are spasming through a bunch of ham handed buffs and nerfs. Further, you are giving lots of necro players the impression that all of your balancing is being done on the word of tourney players with alterior motives. This is really not great. What you need to do is actually sit down and take a look at the math for yourselves on what the possible damage inputs and outputs are for a few builds, think up a couple of possible fixes or adjustments, and then actually talk to necro players about them.

With regards to WvW – after a day’s experience with the new DS in big three-way ZvZs, while I think that the LF damage-into-health nerf sucks, I am not convinced that our sustain in large scale fights isn’t pretty solid assuming that we trait and gear for it. Going 20 points into SR is possible without giving up much if any offensive utility, and DS does in fact soak more damage than before. Likewise, siphoning is not terrible, if you’ve actually done the math. … I think that if we were to get some of a baseline reduction in LF decay, better ranged LF generation, healing through DS, use of slot skills while in DS, or something like that, I might be reasonably happy.

As a related comment, not to be inflammatory, but it might be unreasonable to expect that 30/30/10/0/0 or similar builds will be or should be tanking much damage through DS. Maybe that’s a problem, but I’m not sure it is.

Last, one of the things that is bothering me is that I get the feeling that the dev team listened to a bunch of vocal high end tourney players with alterior motives, and then nerfed some of the wrong things. Some honest commentary from the dev team about what’s gone on in that regard might be nice, but we probably won’t get it.

Death shroud fall damage nerf – lame. Really, really lame.

Death shroud bug fix – good, but who knows how good since Anet didn’t disclose how much extra damage we were taking.

Spectral changes – mixed.

Staff mark sizes and GM – possibly or probably a buff.

Terror damage – really disappointing, Anet made a really bad choice here.

This is something that I’ve been in favor of. Chill seems like it’d be the right thing, since it works in favor of necro attrition and being hard to get away from. But, I think chill should not do damage. I also think that 4 seconds might be too long, considering that it’d actually be 5ish seconds after factoring in +30% duration.

I’d be in favor of a 1 second chill on crit, no cooldown or maybe a 2 second cooldown. The duration of this would be short enough to make epidemic difficult; if it were intended for single target damage, the 2 second cooldown would probably be preferable. No cooldown I think would be interesting, but probably OP.

I rolled a thief to see what all the fuss was about. I played S/D and just PvE’d my way to 80 (cleaving sword autoattack+black powder+heal signet+health on initiative is silly OP in PvE btw), then grabbed a pistol and played a troll P/D build in WvW for a couple of days, since I don’t go for burst builds.

My experience was (and keep in mind I was definitely pretty bad at thief) that I could 1v1 very effectively using about 5 actions, and not die unless I more or less decided to. That is, I would either win or just disengage. 1v2, again I would definitely not die unless I pretty much chose to, but wasn’t really very effective at downing opponents. In zerg combat, I thought that my thief seemed pretty useless, although it wasn’t specced for shortbow I guess.

I think people think thief is OP because it is an amazing class for making your opponent feel helpless and / or stupid in 1v1 or small group play, which is when I think such things are most glaring (this actually is why I decided to try the class out – I was taken apart 1v1 by a P/D thief, and wanted to figure out the hows and whys). The reason your opponent feels that way is because they are in fact often pretty much helpless – they can’t get hold of you to kill you, conditions slip off you, you heal up every few seconds, they can’t run away because of cripples, etc. Thief was just given a lot of (I won’t say too many) tools on top of stealth.

All this said, I don’t play my thief much anymore because I don’t think it’d be as effective as other choices for large group or ZvZ, which it seems to me is what actually decides WvW matchups. So maybe it’s balanced in a way, but not in a way that will make people not cry when they get abused by a thief in 1v1 or small group play. For what it’s worth, I think thief is pretty much fine. I think a thief class or something like it probably needs to exist, just like ZvZ AOE classes need to exist.

I run vampiric / wells builds similar to this in both WvW (0/30/10/20/10, used to run 0/20/10/30/10) and PvP (0/10/10/20/30). For both I choose to run pretty much all PVT gear, so I don’t run well of blood.

In WvW, vampiric is nice; it ups my damage by about 5-10% and gives a reasonable trickle of heals that is noticable and helps compensate for incidental damage. I don’t think 30 points for siphoning wells is worthwhile, considering their cooldowns. The 10 points in soul reaping is again noticable – the gain in life force and the reduced life force decay is nice. The lack of stability from not going 30 points into SR sucks however. I often wonder if I’d rather play 0/30/10/0/30, but then I think I’d miss the heals from vampiric, so it’s a catch-22.

In PvP, I need to caveat that I am a rabbit newb that runs solo hotjoin and then tries to bunker points, rather than roaming around in a zerg. I initially ran without 30 points in SR (0/10/10/30/20 if I remember right), and the lack of stability was terrible so I had to adjust. The 10 points in spite are for Weakening Shroud; for sitting on points targeted wells doesn’t seem to me to be required. Originally I ran with 3 wells, and am playing around with dropping one for Spectral Armor… it’s a work in progress.

Thanks to Mammoth for the build posts, I’ll be looking at those closely.

loseridoit.2756:

sas.6483:

I think “necro is OP” is pretty much nonsense. But if something has to be done, choose one of the following: 1) Replace Dhuumfire with a 1 or 2 second chill on crit, no cooldown;

no offense, that actually sounds so op

it so op that i will seriously make a gimmicky build thay maximaize theuse of chill

chill is kinda like weakness. most class do not have good acess to the condition which most people dont realize its true strength until they are stack permentally

Then put a cooldown on it. Chill on crit as a 30 point spite trait would remove the damage that people are complaining about, give a condition that fits in with “attrition” necro theme, and give powermancers a snare to work with so that they could actually be hard to disengage from (which is what Anet says is the case, but isn’t).