I play Necromancer and have been on the East-most turret. All turret operators should be using Mango Pies because they are the only heal you can give yourself short of releasing the turret. Necromancers are also a decent choice for turrets because (a) they are likely to have PVT gear with a similar build and (b) they have naturally high health.
Having a water Ele near by for spike heals on turret operators is also recommended and I found, only if on a turret, Consume Conditions is worth more than Well of Blood. Releasing the turret, punching Consume Conditions, and dropping Well of Power can get me back on while the support team addresses the undead invasion or finger problem.
Turret operators should be in groups so your group members can watch your health and know when to repair the turret, rez, and sub for you if you go all the way down. At least one person from the support group should hang closer to the turret to address fingers and support while the others work on champions.
Buff your own turret for time warp. I just learned this after last night’s attempt.
Everyone should trait and equip for boon duration and might stacking. We all know to forget about precision and crit bonus but 3 pairs of boon or might duration runes do not cost that much and can really get your might stack high. As a Necro, I have been using might and boon duration runes along with Blood is Power and Well of Power for both 10 stacks of might and vigor. On the turret, BiP is useless but in the dps zerg you should have cool down for wells traited and be spamming BiP as often as it comes off CD.
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Well, this answers why I get no chests on turret duty. Guess I’ll just have to let them get overrun.
I spammed 1 at Teq’s head for 9K+ each when stunned but still got nothing. Is that a bug, or by design?
Bump for this thread. Even with a PVT build, a large portion of Necromancer’s skills and damage is in conditions so this event highlights Arenanet’s continued focus on power builds and reduction of condition’s importance to game mechanics.
I agree with this. Make this Tequatl fight instanced. Sell tickets usable as an entry fee and cap the number of players like normal. Tickets would help ensure players are not AFK or out exploring the map for story, farming, leveling, etc.
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I am asking because last night NSP completed 2 phases and I received nothing while others were rewarded with 2 chests. I have been running a turret for the last several major attempts but still have not received a chest after completing the first phase.
Northern Shiverpeaks got him to about 40% last night. That is way better than we have been able to do so far.
Corrupt Boon is only really useful in PvP or WvW roaming.
Your utility skills (wells and corruption) are better suited for a power build.
You do not need targetable wells or a short protection outside of group support.
WoP is good in PvP and a few PvE situations with lots of conditions but, if you run that, you could trade Corrupt Boon for WoS, which hits hard and does not depend upon your opponent having a miltiple boons. Alternatively, You could slot BiP and follow its use with WoP to turn your bleeds into vigor.
If boons and stun breaks are important to you, look into boon duration improvements.
Don’t know if a berserker MM is that much better than a vampiric MM but my server is still trying to down Teq so I won’t be doing much else for a while.
Siphon health may do as much dps as a zerker’s bonus and Death Nova hits pretty hard while Bone Minions can be popped pretty frequently. Berserker may sound like it has a clear advantage but it will take some verification. Training of the Master is not the only damaging trait and I have gotten out of some hairy situations with Blood Magic and/or Death Magic.
Hard to expect otherwise. A 1 sec Fear on a 2-3 min CD is pretty poor. All it can do is buy an instant to complete calling your Elite. Compare that to Superior Rune of the Pirate.
I just dropped Signet of Undeath for the Tequatl fight. Three seconds, three people, and three minutes make the signet frustratingly useless in that fight. It should be 1 second, 5 people, 1.5 minutes, traited in PvE.
They’ve done the 1/4 s delay with many skills. IT’S NOT A NERF. Protection against wasting Death Shroud would be a buff, if anything. It’s actually neither, just security against lag. 1/4 second is less than the latency you get if you play on the East Coast US. 250ms, it wouldn’t affect skills at all. If you don’t understand how it works, do some research and look at all the skills it’s already been added to.
I can give you a good example of a skill set it was added to and a reason.
Shatter skills were being abused to get the same set of clones to cause multiple shatter effects. They added the 1/4 second cooldown to prevent that. That wasn’t to make the skills easier to use or to prevent accidental double tapping, it was to close a bug loophole.
Transformations you don’t want to go into and out of immediately ever. a 1/4 second cooldown on those is fine. EXCEPT for DS, which I often want to go into just long enough to cast DS3 and back out. If I can click F1, 3, F1 in less than 1/4 second, more power to me. Don’t force me to fat finger that combo because of a delay.
I never have lag that would cause me to need this.
The servers have to tally and relay damage from local clients. A quarter-second delay may not be desired but it is practical. No skills should be less than this.
I was hesitant to want pistols only because I want to avoid being too much like mesmers. But the ideas I’ve been reading here have changed my mind. A phantasmal duelist is very different from the dark soul hunter we’d become. Something a la unholy Alucard would be insane, casting marks that would curse an area, firing corrupted bullets, blanketing an area in choking dust, etc.
I want off-hand pistol to “shoot” jagged horrors. It is my one and only wish, and I will give all of my monies to ANet to make it happen if I have to.
Lol. Mercy Kill: Sacrifice your Jagged Horror for Vigor and a Warm Fuzzy.
Fear used to be great for a lot of things last fall when it was an interrupt that worked on bosses. Last winter, fear/terror was still powerful for PvP. The recent patches nerfed it, somewhat, so fear is just good for PvP and PvE. Other skills can be traited instead so do not feel like a fear build is the best one. The tricky thing about YouToobe is that the videos represent the state of the game when they were made. Nemesis has tried to keep up with the patches but it is a never-ending chore.
What it comes down to is you must decide what weapons you want to play and build your skills and traits around them. I have dozens of, “This is no good,” builds I have tried. Axe and focus work well in power builds because that is where the trait buffs are so that is what you need to plan for. From there, you can do power, hybrid, or MM. If you do MM, you should plan on Axe Mastery and Training of the Master and forget about both grandmaster skills.
I will not bring signet of undead. It’s been nerfed to ground. Not only it has kitten radius compare to battle standard, the 3s cast really make it next to unusable when Teq cast waves. I’ll say leave it to warriors and we just dps.
Comment if you like. Signets need help, still. The cool-down in PvE discourages their activation in major events. Signet of Spite is a nice passive but, again, activating it and other signets on boss fights is nearly useless. Let’s take Spite, for example. Now, imagine what activating Signet of Spite does for a huge group on Tequatl. Signet of Undeath takes up a utility slot until I use it, then goes on CD for over 2 minutes even when traited. Necromancer skill set is pretty thin for fights like Teq where large groups need damage avoidance from mobs that ignore conditions like Blind, Chill, Cripple, Weakness. For those kinds of events, I think a trait that reduces CD on signets more than Signet Mastery is needed.
Hell no.
/15 char
Please explain why you think Fetid Consumption should not be changed.
A rifle with high single target damage, daze, poison, and cripple would be handy.
Except axe is a terrible vuln stacker. And most groups stack vuln passively. Im surprised necro doesnt have a vuln on crit trait tbh.
I would rather have more Weakness than Vulnerability, anyway, and the former is more thematically correct for Necromancer.
2H, short range, slow hits with high damage and Bleed application, cleave as the only AoE, single target Torment, Weakness, Blind, finisher, and a channel.
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@ bar tonight but have been running 30/10/0/30/0 WoB, WoP, WoS, Undeath, Litch. Traited for max wells and heals using staff. Wish everyone else ran full power/heal/condi cleanse spec on my server but know some do not. Some try to skate by with their favorite builds.
BiP+WoP. I used to use this in power/boon-duration builds for Teq.
A power/boon duration/wells/corruption build can get you Might most of the time, Vigor pretty frequently, and even Stability but you need to build for it and it will cost dps when Might isn’t up so you have to keep after it.
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Scepter focus is good for a hybrid build.
I was going to say something similar. If you are running a powerish build but like the scepter for its bleeds, traiting focus for reduced CD is not wrong. A hybrid using scepter/focus is a valid build and will not be horrible. You will probably use staff, too, just like a lot of players so don’t let people troll you for wanting focus without axe. Build traits around your weapon and skill setup. Then try it for a while.
Replace Fetid Consumption with a trait that further reduces signet cool down so that those skills are less than half of their original. That change should go a long way toward making Necromancer better at group support without significantly increasing condition damage, self heals, or total dps and will definitely be more tempting than Fetid Consumption. There are enough traits for minions elsewhere.
In addition to Signet Mastery in Spite for 20% cool down reduction and 3 stacks of 10s Might, I would like Signet Grandmastery in Blood Magic for 40% cool down reduction and a small secondary effect like an AoE regeneration.
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Until you get high enough level to have precision above, for example, 30% critical hit rate, precision and crit % bonus are only useful for the trait skills. Stack power and condition damage for offense, toughness and healing for defense.
Remember, you need enough precision to proc a crit regularly and apply a crit bonus so neither of those stats will do much unless you have at least a decent chance to crit in the first place. This does not just apply to Necromancer, either. Minor runes without 2 stats in power, cond. dmg., toughness, healing, or vitality are a waste, imo. Once you are high enough level to use major runes, you can try a berserker or conditionmancer builds but I found at least one defensive stat mixed with power produced the most consistant results. I spent a lot of time trying to make conditions stronger when leveling but the fights just seemed to drag out longer. If you want conditions, only use + condition damage stats. It shortcuts the poor translation from precision.
Besides, some of yor most important conditions do little to no damage; blind, cripple, chill, fear, weakness, vulnerability, etc. Placing trait points in Spite make them last longer while Curses does not.
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I should have said, “Fixed it for Arenanet.” There is absolutely nothing of interest in the sunless rune. Those stats belong on a major rune, not a superior one.
1) +28 condition damage
2) -15% condition duration
3) +55 condition damage
4) +20% condition duration
5) -15% condition duration
6) When you use a healing skill you inflict fear for 1 second on nearby foes with 30 second ICD.
Fixed it for you.
This rune, if real, looks horrible.
Axe was originally just a Vulnerability applicator and was not much good at anything else. It has been buffed in several ways, since, but its main purpose is still the same. If you are running minions or group support, axe should be one of your top weapon choices. I doubt Necromancer will get another vuln-stacking tool.
Cleave and Torment are higher priorities for the next weapon and I hope Blind and other defensive or mobility-reducing conditions are on the list, too.
A short-range 2H weapon is what most seem to want. If Necro had a second long-range weapon, stun, confusion, and paralyzation seem like good candidate conditions along with Necromancer DoT staples such as poison.
Played a bit last night. There were, perhaps, too many working turret defense as opposed to attacking Teq. Definitely need a power build and plenty of group heal, condi-cleanse, and teamwork. Players should group up and keep each other alive and fighting. Dps on Teq cannot be allowed to slack off.
For Necromancer, I am uncertain if the best use is in (a) wiping out adds, (b) ranged damage to Teq, or © condi-cleanse and heals for high-dps professions gnawing at Teq’s legs.
Teq will be patched, soon, to make it more challenging. Really, you do not need a specific build to get event participation.
With that said, power does more damage using a staff at range so gear for that if you like. Run the lich for your elite and pop it just before getting feared. If you use it early, ir may come off CD for a second use before the end.
Consume Conditions, WoB, WoP, Bone Fiend, Flesh Wurm, Signet of Spite, and BiP are all good choices for the ranged combat. If you are traited for corruption and have might duration gear, Blood is Power can keep Might up a lot; even into lich form. The minions are both ranged so they will not die as quickly in the chaos. Well of blood is a nice, neighborly heal and well of power will take care of the poison Teq likes so much. If you are not feeling so friendly, CC is fine, too.
The Blood Magic line has been most players’ least favorite and these pre-release patch notes acknowledge that. The community has been pointing this out for an entire year but fixes in other areas of the profession like minions and dps more urgent. The Death Magic line is packed with desirable traits but BM seemed to be good only for minions and vampirism. The vitality line definitely needs something else besides improved siphons. The two grandmaster traits are not an easy sell considering the cost of traiting 30 in vitality. BM has not been attractive enough for group support, which is sort of expected of players foregoing some of their dps by placing points in the vitality line.
I think I will spend some time with a power/vit vampiric well spec so i have a fresher memory for comparison after the patch. Will probably make a Carrion set, too, I have not had one since last fall, but I also have a Tahlkora set to mess with. Going to try maxing the vampiric while not giving up too much dps.
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Necromancer could use a short-ish range 2H weapon with cleave, a finisher, and Torment. We only have one 2H weapon so that seems like an obvious requirement. Trait improvements should also be considered so that was another readon to favor the spear: staff buffs could be wrangled for the spear with Greater Marks translating into cleave range.
Built in limitations could be (1) no AoE other than cleave, (2) no combat mobility skills, (3) conditions should be single-target with a focus on Torment, Bleed, and non-damaging defensive conditions to compliment existing weapons while giving the profession something else effective in 1v1 or PvE boss fights.
I would really like to see a slower but stronger auto-attack than axe, too. Most of the Necromancer’s weapons benefit highly from Precicion so something closer to the staff’s speed for the first skill slot would favor power without precision, yet not apply burning too frequently. Bleeds attached to the auto-attack would not stack too quickly, either.
Regarding my choice of bleed as the primary condition along with single-target damage on the auto-attack, the scepter could use a partner in bleed application. Right now, we can stack bleed with scepter but changing weapons allows them to run out so somethingwith a slower rate of bleed application can help players balance bleeds below the cap.
Necromancer really needs a finisher, too, so it would be nice if there was a whirl similar to War’s axe/axe (without so much dizzy body-spinning, though.) However, I could also go for a leap that pulls the opponent. I know giving the Necro a real leap in position goes partly against the design philosophy unless it is only to a valid target.
Blind – I want another blind and maybe another cripple. A channel skill would be handy, too.
The next weapon will, hopefully, be an alternate 2H weapon to staff that works with and compliments scepter’s decent range with bleeds, or synnergizes with axe and MH dagger builds for different kinds of damage while competing for trait skill allocation.
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You do realize we don’t have a single weapon that we actually hit stuff with right?
*sudden sobbing from my underwater dragon-thiny spear for noone loving it.
I love my spear. We should have more under-water map to use it on. Instead, we have Quagg and fishing.
Oh, and naginata ftw.
Yeah spears should just be transfered to land and be used as naginatas (even if technically they shouldnt be usable by males in that case since naginatas were originally just for female self defense before people just said its stupid to deny a more efficient war-scythe).
Meh, the naginata is just a spear with an expensive saber blade but spears were way more popular than swords, even in Nippon, because of the cost/benefit curve.
Torment covering bleeds seems like the best way to go but is only useful in PvP/WvW. I’ve played with it but am not convinced it is a silver bullet for Necromancer versus its cost to make/buy.
You do realize we don’t have a single weapon that we actually hit stuff with right?
*sudden sobbing from my underwater dragon-thiny spear for noone loving it.
I love my spear. We should have more under-water map to use it on. Instead, we have Quagg and fishing.
Oh, and naginata ftw.
We could always do a voodoo doll-focus where we stick a needle in an opposing player’s foot and pin it to the ground, then one to the eye, one to the hand, etc.
Of course, that would make it a 2-h weapon…
Main hand focus?
Have the focus summon temporary pets for one-shot damage?
Summon a fire elemental that looks like a dragon from another MMO for fire damage!
Summon an Ascelonian prince for poser damage!
Summon an electric chipmunk for shocking damage!
Summon a Sylvari vegetarian for kudzu damage!
Summon an Orrian wino for the ultimate grapes of wrath damage!
I had been pretty unhappy with my choice of Hume until (and it took months) I tried Prayer to Lyssa on a boon-duration build. It was not much use outside of a fixed dragon fight because there are other skills more effective in general but I kept punching that button and it’s quirky, you get what you get, boon lotto.
How about a scaling siphon that increases with each consecutive hit within say 2 seconds, scaling up 10 times. Stun the necro, and you break the siphon chain. Let the chain go up to 10, and he is really stealing a lot of HP.
Of course I doubt we will ever see anything like that.
I’ve been thinking about something like that, and I think it could work, if they implemented it more like Vlad (from LoL)’s E. You have a self-buff that you stack up over time, and by keeping it up, it makes your siphons stronger.
An idea I had a long time ago was Masochism where healing CD or something behaved non-linearly depending upon damage taken per second – kind of like War’s adrenaline but dependent upon spike damage. Higher incoming dps = more healing. This is something for a grandmaster blood or death magic trait (preferably blood magic.)
The tanking capability of the Necromancer is good up to a point but there is little reward (especially for group members) for fully traiting the death or blood magic trees.
Necromancer has a lot of small heals via regen, life trans, WoB, even WoP but does not have a “spike” heal, which people need to truly rescue a player low on health. The majority of Necromancer’s party support is in chill, blind, etc. Unfortunately, these conditions are not well appreciated and are unable to make a save. Running Signet of Undeath is bitter-sweet, at best.
I like the improvements. The condition damage aggregation may even help reduce lag. I definitely like buffed vampiric traits. It should be very good for the carrion stat gear though I do not know if it will benefit cleric and other healing sets. At the very least, it should help draw off some of the popular berserker/rampager/assassin builds that go for high dps because of the Necro’s less attractive “sustain.” I do wish the profession had better group healing capability. Without stronger transfusion or WoB group heals, Necro’s are still better at AoE conditions so those skills are unlikely to be used regularly.
Minions are stopped by any break in terrain, even a small bump that must be jumped over, and they are prevented from falling down a break you would normally step off of. Minions must go around breaks or port to your position if they fall too far behind. Flesh Wurm teleport, Dark Path, and Spectral Grasp are also subject to those limitations, afaik. Spectral Walk is the only Necromancer skill that ignores pathing because it returns you to your point of origin.
I believe the minor adept Reannimator trait should be “Glow in the Dark” where minions light up dark areas for their masters and group members.
Upon the Jagged Horror spawning it genuinely dies in a matter of seconds…
LOL. This is a buffed reannimator. You should have seen it before a patch improved it.
The jagged rodent adds bleeds and acts as bait to draw aggro – not terrible for a minor adept but listening to it die all the time drove me insane. Now, I get a warm fuzzy feeling whenever I hear it lay down and gurgle to death.
Naginata! (land spear)
Range between axe and dagger.
Cleave!
Whirl finisher!
Darkness!
Channel!
Torment!
Weakness!
Give me a shield with defensive moves. Scepter/shield ftw.
Meat Shield!
New spell on slot 5 for off-hand shield causes a minion in slot 7 to port into your off hand and take one for the team. Like a shield skill, if canceled before the timer runs out, it can activate an offensive skill as it dies. If the timer is allowed to run out or it takes too much damage, it dies and slot 7 goes into CD. Minion/shield defense is a combination of the regular shield and minion attributes.
Time gating is what keeps grind in check.
Absolutely false.
Limiting the amout of effort to achieve the maximum award and diminishing return on grinding beyond it is what keeps the grind in check. The reward structure for post-game and living world has been continuously increased while relative payoff for completing story and world exploration has not changed much; in some cases, increased (gold), and in other cases decreased (karma). However, rewards for farming LS events are substantial awarding more of everything along with tradable materials.
I understand why luck was changed but that has driven players toward a farming grind, which was supposed to be secondary after the actual story. I like that ascended recipes are being released but the higher material cost is also encouraging a farming grind. Niether of these things are bad in my book but they come after a blitz of limited time event grinding.
How many game currencies and limited-availability event items are necessary? The game is becoming a grinder’s paradise and that usually leads to RMT. I want more story, more map with a lot less limited time to explore them and grind for limited materials, gold, etc.
The game has become all about the grind. I have purchased a lot of gems with real money but all I received in return is a treadmill that spins faster every quarter. I do not buy skins and other things on the BLTC because I need them. I buy them on faith that the money is going toward serious content expansion and the only thing I have seen thus far is Southsun Cove.
All of the events must be done within a few weeks and I am really getting tired of it. There is very little new explore or and story content. Instead, almost everything except the Southsun map since October has been limited time events with the grind for candy, skins, tokens, sprockets, luck, treasure, etcetera. Limited time events are becoming so large that both lag and the need to loot first are driving the fun out of the game. It just isn’t casual gaming anymore.
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The other could be just Fear… over and over, again. (^_^)
Plague 5: Clown Plague, particle effects of spewing out balloon animals, red noses, assorted clown-related items, and causes 1s of fear every second.
Imagine the forum outcry from a plague form fear scattering a zerg. Then, imagine two groups of opposing Necro’s just being sick as they tear into each others’ battle formations herding other professions off cliffs, into walls and corners… Arenanet should do this for just one day to capture the footage.