Guild Wars 2

Bhawb.7408:

They haven’t changed the numbers at all, except an un-nerf in PvP.

The proc is 3s of burning every 10s, which is the same as now. The only change is that it went from being a completely random proc on Crit, to being on LB. So the change just adds play/counterplay to the skill. Necros can finally control when it is applied, and opponents can potentially avoid it.

Except, it’s 4 seconds now in PvE… And with it no longer being applying alongside other things, but requiring it’s own casttime, is a big hit on the trait’s damage. I’m all for making this trait more active, but reducing it’s damage by 50% in the process is not ok… (Unless they are also planning to revert all the other nerfs that were introduced to help balance this.)

@flow @Bhawb @Rennoko When you say you’re happy with the dhuumfire change, have actually looked at the numbers?

I ran them through a build editor real quick and it seems Dhuumfire will deal about 2k damage per proc (note the 10sec ICD). Again, quickly, that seems about 2 to 3 times more than scepter autoattack. So you’re essential doing like a full chain of scepter AA in damage in half the time and you’re adding another condition to cleanse. Though, at the cost of being less reliable to land and using up very valuable sustain… All that as a grandmaster(!) trait? Again, are you really happy with this?

Roe.3679:

urieldhynne.2743:

Idc about the proc only in DS, but 3s from 5s is like 40% nerf in damage.

Per application, yes, but now you can spam this and get tons of burning. With vital persistence you can actually have bigger stacks of burning, although it would happen less often.

I’m not sure it’s worth sledding into over foot in the grave, though.

With a 10 sec ICD? Good luck with that…

stof.9341:

Meh, you think we stack that fight because it’s faster? Wrong.

No, where did I say that?

stof.9341:

Bonus points : melee damage is higher than ranged damage. Well it’s also much more dangerous too.

Except it isn’t:

Meh, you think we stack that fight because it’s faster? Wrong. We stack it because it’s much much safer that way.

And for a large part, that is the core of the disparity: it isn’t so much the stats itself, but the amount of synergy that is created between a full offense party while at the same time lowering the risk. This completely screws up any balance with more defensive/control/support oriented specs. The reason the risk is lowered is because you significantly shorten encounters, while never truly putting yourself in more danger (because active defense is so powerful).

NoTrigger.8396:

but cant you create your own groups?
i mean there are people looking for berserker only.
if you dont like it why dont you simply make your own groups with your own requirements?

i dont understand where the problem is.

Sure you can, but surely you don’t think speedruns should be the intended way to play a dungeon? Off course they should exist, but surely they are supposed to be for skilled players and not the norm? Isn’t there a problem when it does become the norm?

You could actually distinguish more types, like soloing. Imagine someone would figure out a way to make that fast and rewarding. And imagine that pretty much everyone starts constantly soloing dungeons and laughing at the guys that don’t. Wouldn’t that be something you’d want them to address?

NoTrigger.8396:

you envy good berserker players because their reward/time is higher than yours.
thats the only reason why you want to nerf berserker.
because you cannot accept the fact that you are bad.

I know I shouldn’t go into this, but anyway…

I actually play both zerker and non-zerker specs fairly regularly, and believe it or not I’m not bad enough for either one of them. :P The biggest gripe I have with the ‘zerker meta’ (not actually talking about the stats here, but about the type of play that they are generally associated with) is that it is destroying one of the 2 approaches to dungeon running that I distinguish. Basically, you have ‘normal’ runs and ‘speed’ runs, and I truly believe that both are useful (both cater to a different audience) and deserve to exist.

I still remember the first time I did CoE p2 as a normal run, where Subject Alpha has 2 aoe’s that look very much alike except in one you are safe in the middle circle and the other you are safe in the outer circle (I wonder how many people still know this even exists). You have to look closely at the slight differences in animation to see what you have to do now. It was/is honestly very cool and unique in the game. Later, I needed some armor from CoE, so to get the rewards quickly I did a lot of CoE speedruns. It’s a very different (and I would dare say easier) experience and sort of fun as well, except every encounter with Subject Alpha is basically a quick time event: dps, dps, dps, red circle, 1, 2, dodge and repeat… It’s getting old pretty fast. And it’s like this in every dungeon pretty much: you either do a normal run and encounter some fairly unique situations, or you do a speed run and reduce everything to the same ‘stack-buff-dps-dodge’ but get rewards faster.

Up to there, there isn’t really an issue. What the problem, to me, really is is that the disparity between speed runs and normal runs is so large, that more and more people are dragged into doing only speed runs. This has resulted in a (seemingly) very toxic environment where more and more people are pushed into this playstyle where all you ever do is speed runs. Meanwhile, everyone that enjoys playing differently (cause guess what, some of us actually play a dungeon to you know… play a dungeon; if I wanted to be done asap I’d be better off not starting) is ridiculed for being bads and what not.

So, if addressing the (too) large disparity between the 2 types of play brings back a certain balance between them, then I’m all for it.

NoTrigger.8396:

Arvid.3829:

you will be ‘safer’ in a full zerker team than in anywhere else, as you will need to ‘skillfully time evasion’ for a shorter period of time.

so you are saying not timing or even better, not using evasion at all because you dont have to, is more skillful?

Are you serious? Do you even read?

I’m saying if you don’t need toughness+vitality because you dodge/block/evade everything anyway you will be a lot better off with zerker. How is that not clear?

Ahlen.7591:

…

If you truly believe that Zerk is the ‘lesser’ skilled between the two types, then we can’t really have a discussion. That is so far removed from reality that I cannot even comprehend how someone could think that.

You have hopefully seen the video of the tank specs doing Arah, without ever evade rolling? This is somehow more skillful than Zerk specs clever use of evades, and other defenses to avoid damage?

Facetanking is more skillful now than timing evasion?

I dont’ even….

As he has said in the post and repeated throughout this thread, he went from the assumption of equally skilled players. I don’t think you can really disagree that, once you have mastered the basics of dodging (and ‘active-defense’ in general), you will be ‘safer’ in a full zerker team than in anywhere else, as you will need to ‘skillfully time evasion’ for a shorter period of time.

And that video… afaik, these guys routinely 2-3 man Arah. So now they slapped on some tanky gear and traits, disabled their dodge, 5-manned it and did ok… What’s that even supposed to prove? One could just as well say that dodge+zerker gear is apparently worth 2 to 3 people… Yeah, seems balanced, no problem to see here…

I should probably add that in your average pug the guy on bucket duty does not attack the suit/elemental. Attacking gets you aggro, which derails him from his path, and pugs can not be expected to reliably switch roles on the fly like that. As such, choosing the lower dps but significantly higher rate of success option here results in faster kills on average. (And since you’re not attacking, you easily have time to spend to cast this.)

Bhawb.7408:

This skill is objectively worse than every other skill we have in every situation in an optimized build.

I call kittens, I found at least one super niche scenario in which the skill is more useful than other heals : when you’re doing the molten buckets in dredge fractal, it adds some damage and some healing for your party when you shouldn’t be needing much healing yourself anyway. (Wish I knew if the damage part benefits from his vulnerability, I’m going to guess ‘no’ though…)

I agree with Zaganna. I pug high lvl fractals almost daily with a 30/30/0/10/0 full condi build (dire armor and weapons, dire/rabid accessories, scavenging runes). Upwards of 4k dps (single target) is indeed not at all uncommon, while being plenty tanky and having some options open for support.

The only times this build isn’t up to par is when the bleed stack limit is giving you trouble (pretty uncommon nowadays, it seems) or when you’re expected to do more than 5k dps (which just plainly never happens in fractal pugs and in other dungeons only if the run was advertised as a speed run). In such cases, I’d personally much rather bring my warrior or something anyway.

I’ve tried zerker necro before and I just can’t enjoy it for several reasons:
1) I feel/I am less useful than if I would have brought my warrior (and I’m even A LOT less experienced on warrior).
2) You need a like-minded team to do well or you will go down a lot. Seeing as I mostly pug, that just isn’t always the case.
3) If you go down say half-way the fight, it really doesn’t matter if you just did the combined dps of all other 4. No one cares. No one sees your dps. They see you go down and they have to stop what they are doing to pick you up (and sometimes repeatedly). You feel like a drag to them (even though you might actually be contributing the most) and they will treat you as such (which will make you angry). So, more often than not, at the end of the dungeon everyone is unhappy.

I tried to calculate it for my own build a while back and the difference is small, but I would go for dire (even in PvE).

Rabid’s (which you would normally pair with undead runes) only advantage is a higher crit rate (53%), which is severely limited by ICD’s on your most important on crit effects (all except Barbed Precision) and very low direct damage to benefit from the extra crits (results in about 40 more direct dps under base circumstances).

Dire loses some crit (only has 24%), but it’s still enough to reliably trigger your on crit effects. But because dire is better paired with scavenging runes, you actually have significantly higher condition damage (more than 100 more than rabid+undead). All in all, the actual dps more or less evens out (not taking into account the leeching on scavenging, which helps dire take a small edge).

But the most important factor, to me, is that dire also gives you a significant health boost. You may not need it in PvE, but I see no reason to trade it away for no apparent benefit. Furthermore, on a class who’s whole defense is base around ‘just take it to the face’, dire just feels a lot more synergistic to me (which somehow gives me a better feeling ). So I’ve been using dire in both PvE and WvW for a few months now and not regretting it one bit.

The Game Slayer.7632:

alanis.6094:

The Game Slayer.7632:

What is the difference between kiting out the war for 8 seconds or doing physical damage for < 8 seconds. both are completely realistic counters.

If a conditionmancer could get an Diamond skin elementalist below 90% within 8 seconds by merely physical/power damage, this thread wouldn’t exist.

Except, you’ve literally done nothing to change your build and you think you can still steam-roll everything that walks your way. Too bad. I don’t feel sorry. This thread is ludicrous.

Summary of every complaining necro in this thread- “Wahhh! Wahhh! I can’t faceroll everyone anymore! I’m going to ignore everything anyone tells me, because I like my old build! I hate change! They’re all WRONG!”

Peace.

Except, if you would have actually watched the vid, you’d have seen that OP made the following incremental changes to the the build after every defeat:
1/ Switch Plague Form for Flesh Golem
2/ Switch Rabid amulet for Carrion
3/ Switched back to Rabid, switched utility to Flesh Wurm, changed traits for more minion damage; which kind of worked (as long as the ele kindly ignored attacking the minions).

So now, 4 pages into the thread, you actually now what was in the very first post: congratulations. Now, what other ‘changes to the build’ do you propose? Maybe we could switch some trait points around to more power oriented lines? O wait, 30/20/0/0/20 is already 30 points in the power line and 20 in both precision and crit damage lines. Hmm, yeah…

I guess we can at least conclude that the point is that this trait hard counters ‘the build’ and all it’s variations, no?

The tooltip does not mention the ICD on the active, yet (as you’re very well aware, as it was explicitly said in the livestream) there is one.

/rant
If you’re going to restrict a skill as much as you did (making it utterly useless according to 99.9..% of the necro community, but maybe we are all just wrong?) by:
1/ putting fairly low numbers on both active and passive
2/ putting a fairly large cooldown on it
3/ restricting an already very ‘meh’ passive by an ICD
4/ further restricting the active by:
4a/ a stack limit (fair)
4b/ players only (Guess you don’t want MM’s to use this?)
4c/ a time limit (Seeing there’s a stack limit already, one might consider removing this, but there’s something to be said for it)
4d/ an ICD (What? Just what? The other 3 were still not enough??? This means you need at least 6 or 7 players to even achieve the 25 stacks!)

… one might consider it fair to at least include them all in the tooltip, wouldn’t you say?
/rant

If changing the the tooltip (due to localisation issues and all that) is too much work, maybe you could consider doing the sensible thing and just removing the ICD altogether? Pretty please with a cherry on top?

The one that was leaked a while ago, but yeah, I also heard it’s not available in-game yet :P

Got to love the whole “just take flesh golem” (he did at 1:30 into the 9:48 minute long video) and “just take carrion” (again, he did at 2:35). Have these people actually watched the video?

Great potential heal smashed to pieces from every direction conceivable, “We felt that a few traits and skills were too powerful, while others were lacking in efficacy. So we tuned down the good stuff and left you to figure out the rest yourselves.”-balance and now this (which we said would happen when it was previewed)… Guys, I think it’s time for another cake!

Nike.2631:

I kinda wonder what miraculous build we’re not seeing that scared them so badly…?

I guess they feared something along the lines of what this guy is saying:

The signets active can be used very effectively in order to spike targets in WvW or Pvp. It needs coordination though. It is true that dodge rolling or blocks can negate this but a common theme in all the healing skills is that they can be very effective but have counter play as well. I expect to see videos of teams instant spiking with this signets active within a few days

Lopez.7369:

It’s going to be good in PvE because it’s essentially a free 7,000 damage every 28 seconds, but it’s pretty terrible otherwise.

It would be something if it did that, which, as others have said, is barely above your normal dps. Except, with 1 sec ICD and 5 seconds uptime, you’re looking at 3-4 procs per person max. Also, Karl pretty clearly stressed “Allied PLAYERS will siphon life from that enemy.” In other words, you’re looking at using up between 15 and 20 stacks of the 25 in a group of 5 (and need at least 7 players to use them all up), which is only 4.3-5.7k.

In it’s initial implementation, I was really looking forward to this skill. It’s like an ‘order’ type skill from GW1 and, as Spoj, I saw great potential in it for high end PvE necroes. Basically, our version of Frost Spirit: a unique mechanic that adds significant DPS to the party and thus that makes you wanted over a second warrior/guardian/etc. In our case, it’s sacrifice some personal healing for a team DPS boost.

Unfortunately, they seemed to have whacked it into the ground from every direction conceivable:
- The passive might as well not be there: it was ‘meh’ with the damage portion, it’s very bad without… and then they threw an ICD on top it…
- The active has potential, but not with these numbers. At the very least, the damage portion should go to achieve what I described above (which is really the only worthwhile niche I see for this skill) or the cooldown needs to go way down; probably both.
- Even then, this could have some merit in a situation where a lot of players/minions smack on the same target (world bosses, certain dungeon bosses): introducing 25 stack limit
- Even then, an MM might be able to put this to some use by achieving a large part of the 25 stacks on his own: introducing ‘player allies only’
- Even then, a team might actually get close to the 25 stacks: introducing ‘just let the passive ICD bug through to the active’, making this the only skill that comes to mind that actually needs 7 people present to have a chance at achieving it’s full potential (excluding portal, mass invisibility and the like). A full potential that isn’t even very super to begin with…

Then you look at warrior heal, guardian heal, etc. and I have NO clue what kind of argument you can make that warrants ours having an ICD and theirs not?

Hi Jon, thanks for your post. I’d like to share my own (somewhat high level) view as well (focusing on condimancer mostly):

• ‘Flavour’ text:
  [quote=3133116;JonPeters.5630:]For the necromancer, we felt that a few traits and skills were too powerful, while others were lacking in efficacy. We brought down some of the raw DPS conditions that necromancer enjoys, while also maintaining their pressure and sustain elements. The necromancer’s mobility will remain where it is currently, as we want the Necromancers to be focused on sustaining themselves through death shroud, siphoning health, and slowing down their opponent’s ability to act.
  [/quote]
  I mostly agree with this, but then I look at the actual changes and I don’t really see the same. Or to be more precise, if you read everything literally: the first and second sentence somewhat contradict one another. Basically, you’re saying: some stuff is too strong and some stuff is too weak, so we brought the strong stuff down a bit and left the weaker stuff as it is (aka ‘maintained’). Again, that’s taking eveything litteraly (I don’t feel that this is the spirit of the text), but unfortunately that’s pretty much exactly what I see in the changes…

• Terror+Dhuumfire
  With the introduction of Dhuumfire, you basically gave us the tools for strong burst potential (terror + dhuumfire) on top of our already decent sustained damage (bleeds); in other words it allowed us to play a kind of condi glass cannon (at least in traits). In itself, I see nothing wrong with having this option. Where the problem arises is that this option basically overshadows any other for 2 reasons: traitwise there are no other roles that you can choose that are this impactful (more on this later), and you don’t give up a lot of survivability doing so. I (and others) feel that leaving Dhuumfire where it is and moving Terror up to grandmaster could resolve this somewhat, as the difference between 30/20/0/0/20 and 30/30/0/0/10 is losing our best defensive trait (making the glass cannon more glassy) and losing that 50% fear duration.
  There is a lot to be said for changing Dhuumfire to torment as well, but that’s another discussion that others have already gone into extensively.

• Other build option
  [quote=3134349;JonathanSharp.7094:]We want to bring down that raw dmg but still allow the Necro the ability to “shut down” targets. Notice we’re not bringing down Chills much, or Vulns, or Blinds. We don’t mind the Necro shutting targets down, we just don’t want them also doing a ton of condition damage on top if it.[/quote]
  I found this very intersting, but unfortunately, there is pretty much no way to specialize in this role through trait choices: these are build in to the necro’s base rotation, but you can’t really improve upon that. At the same time, I feel A LOT of necroes would greatly welcome a role where you do some base pressure (bleeds) and add to that some pressure relief for your team through non-damaging conditions (chill, blind, weakness, etc.); compared to the current base pressure+burst (terror and dhuumfire). This is also in line with other balance decisions you made for other classes, where if some options were a bit strong, you instead opened up other options more, thus having more people chose those and thus relieving some of the problem. Maybe a new trait (GM Death Magic?), that greatly affects the duration of non-damaging conditions, could do a lot here?

• Defense through Death Shroud and Life Siphon
  While this is all good and well on paper, I still feel this is lacking in practice. Death Shroud can be very good, but there is a night and day difference between fights in WvW and sPvP here. I can only beg to consider making us start with some life force in sPvP, as building it up as a condimancer can be really be a problem and just makes you flat out less useful at the start of a match (and if your opponent knows this and focuses you early on, I can assure you you’re raging hard…)
  For life siphon I think most will disagree with you that “On the defensive side, the Blood necros are starting to feel pretty good.” At least, siphoning isn’t something you pick up if you want to improve your defenses a bit. You either go siphoning all out (mostly in a minion master build) or you don’t bother with it at all. An extra effort in that department could still go a long way, e.g. it has been suggested to let life siphon work through death shroud (as the 2 counteract each other now).

shimmerless.4560:

Clearly an autoattack whose bleed application has had to be nerfed twice…

Well, that just proves how much you know…

Superior Rune of Antitoxin
Superior Sigil of Torment
Toxic Sharpening Stones
Toxic Mantenance Oil
Toxic Focusing Crystal

Your toughts?

Edit: added wiki links

Bhawb.7408:

snip

So your point is that a 6.9k aoe heal+blast heals on a 40 second cooldown would be completely OP, based on some hypothetical situation you justed kittened up?

Meanwhile, for the same investement in healing power, engineers have a 3.1k aoe heal on a 15 second cooldown
+5 seconds aoe regen (another 1400 healing)
+2 conditions removed in aoe
+water field
+double the radius
+all instant (no need to stand in that area for 10 seconds)
+a ton more blast finishers

That’s in the game now… and no one is turning it into some OP beast of a heal in whatever niche situation.

I agree with flow.

13000 self-heal and 10000 to allies isn’t all that much considering the cooldown. Even with Ritual Mastery, that’s 400 hp/sec. To put it into context: that’s about what warriors get passively through healing signet (no risk of it being interrupted, no need to stay in the aoe, etc.) without any investment in healing power. That’s also about what engineers get from Healing Turret if they ‘place healing turret> overcharge > pickup’ (which is the standard routine to use it) and half of that is aoe as well + they have multiple options of creating water fields with it (one of which self-comboes with the field, but puts everything on a considerably longer cooldown); again no investment in healing power needed, no need to stay in the aoe, etc.

To me, the number one reason they should change the field type is this: the guild I do organized wvw with pretty much doesn’t allow necroes to even use Well of Blood, as the long lasting light field risks covering up water fields, which are more needed than the healing that Well of Blood can provide. So this skill having any combo field attached to it that isn’t water, while still needing to be used in the same area as where you want water fields, destroys it’s own purpose: it would literally be better of (in WvW) not having a field at all…

First of all, thanks Martin and Rachael for clearing this up.

thelabmaster.8035:

Arvid.3829:

Yeah, your point being? They said he would remain. He was still selling his stuff, pretty much next to where the candy corn guy is now (hence why I guess he may have been moved or accidentally removed).

I don’t often say this, but if he was purposefully removed, I will not be happy. I have 1000+ zhaitaffy left that I was keeping to buy food, counting on the fact that he would remain there. If they had announced that he would be removed (as has pretty much always been done in the past with this type of stuff), I would have traded it in…

My point was Zhaiataffy isn’t related to the Blood and Madness event so it shouldn’t have been posted here. Its should have been placed in the players helping players, gw2 discussion, or living story discussion.

If I look through any of the living story release forums, they are never exclusively used to discuss the new story, events, etc. but also to discuss new loot, changes to recipes and in general anything that was introduced or affected by the new release. Since the vendor was changed in this release, I couldn’t be sure it was a bug or an intended change and I find this at the very least as constructive, useful and on-topic as thread #56 about how expensive the changed recipes are, I made the judgement call to post it here as it would have the biggest chance of being noticed and getting a response from a proper source.

displacedTitan.6897:

Zhaitaffy vendor never left. Hes standing by the Laurel vendor in LA.

Not anymore, as of today

Yeah, your point being? They said he would remain. He was still selling his stuff, pretty much next to where the candy corn guy is now (hence why I guess he may have been moved or accidentally removed).

I don’t often say this, but if he was purposefully removed, I will not be happy. I have 1000+ zhaitaffy left that I was keeping to buy food, counting on the fact that he would remain there. If they had announced that he would be removed (as has pretty much always been done in the past with this type of stuff), I would have traded it in…

Either I’m blind or the Zhaitaffy Vendor is gone… Was this intended? Was he move to somewhere else?

This may have been mentioned somewhere in the thread already, I just didn’t have a chance to read it all yet.

On the topic of PvP rewards and incentivizing people to play PvP:
From some of the PAX interviews, I gathered that a skin locker for armor/weapon skins is not out of the question and that it is either currently being developed or may get developed some time in the future. First of all, I think this would be an awesome addition to the game in general. But specifically for PvP, it would be cool if this locker spanned the whole game, instead of having both a PvE/WvW locker and a PvP locker seperately. In other words: ‘just’ make the PvP locker game wide and adapt it to fit with PvE/WvW.

Why this would be good is that PvP would become the prime way to quickly and easily acquire a bunch of different skins for people that want to flesh out their locker (assuming skins in PvP would still be acquired in a similar way as they are now; and compared to gathering them in PvE/WvW and adding these skins through there, which would probably require some kind of gold or transmutation stone/crystal cost). Looking at my own motivations, I can only assume that this would be a huge incentive for a lot of players to do some PvP. Additionally, PvP crafting would become a lot more meaningful.

Obviously, there’s a fair amount of stuff that you need to take into account for this (like current pvp skins actually being pvp items, thus do you retrieve an item or a skin from the new locker?) and maybe some tweaks will need to be made (like maybe some skins that are really rare in pve are dropped by low rank pvp chests and thus you may want to have them reflect the same rarity?). But anyway, I hope I managed to get the main idea across?

Afya.5842:

3) Doesn’t out dps direct damage build with (2) as disadvantage

After the initial ramp up (which isn’t all that long) and assuming no buffs from other sources, condition necro (I don’t know about other classes) actually outdps zerker builds in sustained damage (I’m not aware of a zerker build that it doesn’t). The thing is that when you start adding might, vulnerability, fury, banners, potions, empower allies, spotter, etc. direct damage scales way quicker and with way more, thus leaving conditions far behind.

I did it once in a Necro/Ele/Guardian/Engi/Mesmer group yesterday and we actually took down the final boss on the first try. Maybe we were just lucky, but he didn’t seem all that hard tbh. Spectral Grasp was a big help to pull the holograms to him (I still had it on my bar after trying to pull the hologram in the security room that way and it turned out to be a pretty kittenet). Contrary to what most preliminary guides suggest now, we mostly ranged him (my guild doesn’t exactly keep up with the latest meta, so we end up falling back to ranged pretty quickly when something looks like it could give us a hard time. That also means we didn’t exactly abuse projectile reflects and the like at all.). In this case, it was a fairly good thing as all you have to do is stay clear of his spinning blades thing. (And if you see you’re going to fail to prevent his supermove, you can easily run out of range.)

Only part where we wiped (and we did a few times) was the Slick and Sparky part, due to the oil degen. After killing Sparky the first time and then wiping to Slick, we tried it the other way around a few times (we wanted to get rid of the oil asap) but we always wiped when slick was around 0-5%. Something that we then figured out and isn’t mentioned in the guides either: the bosses get harder at lower health, not solely when they enrage when their partner goes down. Sparky pretty much never does his spinning fire thing when he’s at high health and Slick increase the oil thingies at low health whether Sparky is alive or not. So we switched back to killing Sparky first (he goes down a lot faster), engaged them on the side of the plant (so one guy could dedicate himself to kiting the ooze without much downtime) and with only Slick still alive in the hard part (like 10% to 0% health) it was a lot easier.

All in all, I didn’t see anything that blatantly disfavors either necroes or conditions in this dungeon.

spoj.9672:

You are assuming I go down alot in zerker gear when pugging. I dont. It really makes barely any difference. If the groups bad you are going to go down no matter what gear you have. If your skilled its better to be in dps gear to finish the fight faster even if that means soloing it.

/facepalm

Show me one sentence where I assume that YOU go down a lot? The topic (seeing your comment includes soloing, I doubt you still know) is about random zerkers that go down repeatedly and then blame the team. Your claim is that ‘at least they are trying to do it properly, not like you baddies’. My claim is ‘if you need an organized team to stay on your feet as full zerker, then don’t play full zerker in an unorganized team…’. Nowhere have I made any claims about which category you are part of.

spoj.9672:

Zerk warrior is so easy to survive with lol. Fat hp pool just like necro and regen an extra dodge from eviscerate. Also ww attack.

spoj.9672:

Its not easier, its quicker. In some instances that is easier but people dont realise the amount of teamwork that goes into a real speedrun. And in more casual dps runs a lot of experience and knowledge of encounters is required for it go smoothly. Even then theres chances for things to go wrong and when they go wrong its almost impossible to prevent a wipe.

Don’t forget to oversell it… Sure you need to have some knowledge about the encounters and a be a bit decent at dodging, but past that there’s is really nothing hard about it. Really, you were right the first time… given you do it in an environment that you have the proper skill for (see my previous post). I’ve done my fair share of speedruns on warrior in various dungeons and I’m yet to see a single encounter that comes even remotely close to Liadri in terms of skill needed (and I’m not event talking about 8-orbs Liadri)…

spoj.9672:

I take my gc builds into pugs and never have a problem. If anything it teaches you more and allows you to properly carry a group.

Now you’re just being sillly. You can bring 10 times the dps of the rest of your group combined, if you go down regularly you’re not carrying anyone. It doesn’t even matter if you end up contributing most, people have had to stop playing their own game and start picking you up from the floor (so in a way, all dps past that is theirs…) If that happens regularly, you’re just being a drag and are ruining people’s fun in the game (including your own).

Also, what the hell kind of ego tripping idiot are you if your goal in the game is to ‘carry the group’? I can assure you that most of the people in the game would much rather play with people that are roughly at the same skill level as they are. Which is pretty much the point of this thread: randoms aren’t asking to for some guy that wants to try to carry them and then fails… they’d much rather play the dungeon 10 minutes longer and have a more smooth experience than having to pick you up 24/7; and really, I can’t see why you want to continue arguing with that?

spoj.9672:

You shouldnt be rewarding or encouraging players to play in crutch gear.

That it’s crutch gear is your opinion. Imo, it’s pretty clear that dungeons are rather balanced around using ‘crutch gear’ than using ‘zerker gear’. Having a full zerker party pretty obviously ‘breaks’ a lot of the encounters in the game and as such one could argue that you’re basically meta gaming. Not sure why you think that should deserve better rewards…

I think you need to make an important distinction here. Yes, it is true that in organised groups “full zerker everyone” is currently the way to go. One of the main reasons for that is that, if all party members do their job and are on the same line, the risk for everyone is greatly reduced and thus encounters become a lot easier (shorter duration, right support at the right time, etc.).

That swings both ways though: playing a glass canon spec in a group that isn’t playing that way is A LOT harder. As such I can’t agree with the sentiment that “at least he’s trying to do it properly and improve himself”: as long as you haven’t thoroughly mastered your glass canon spec in an organized group, you have no business bringing it into a random pug and then blame others for your inability to judge the right and wrong place to use your build. You’re not doing anyone any favors by doing it and it’s really pretty easy to just join one of the plentiful speed runs, that are clearly advertised as such, that will suit your needs…

It’s both: “On top of this, you’ll also see new legendary weapons and new types of legendary gear in 2013.”

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

Similar issue as with Strength of Undead : this trait gives +90 power instead of +5% damage and also updates in a weird way.

I have to say: great comparison by Blood Red Arachnid here, founded on a good analysis. Too bad people still think you can counter this by throwing a bunch of words around…

—
Anyway, a summary, for the people that actually want to learn something. Both builds share the same 2 rotations:

• Dagger rotation: best single target dps
• DS rotation: overtakes dagger if you can hit more than 2/3 targets (depends on your traits) and is your best ranged option (if such a situation would ever arise ).

Both builds switch between the 2 depending on the circumstances. They differ in that 30/25/0/0/15 favors the dagger rotation (single target), while 30/10/0/0/30 favors the DS rotation (aoe, ranged). How much they differ in both areas depends on which buffs you have on you, but we can still make some estimates:

• Dagger rotation: biggest difference is around 10%
• DS rotation: biggest difference is 30+%

As such, both have their merits and you choose which one you play based on your team, play style, etc. Don’t be fooled by people saying either is a trash build, they don’t know what they are talking about (I had to think of Nemesis’ “There is no best build, only best at” here).
—

Personally, I am playing 30/10/0/0/30 since a few weeks because, given that I don’t often have the luxury of playing in an optimal team, it offers a lot more flexibility: imo, the max 10% single target dps loss is a very small price to pay for a big boost in aoe (stuff doesn’t die in 2 seconds in my teams), ranged (again, if the rest of your team isn’t build for pure dps, ranged is often a must) and survivability (the difference between using DS as an ‘oh crap’ and using it as an actual health bar, especially with how quickly you can replenish life force in pve, is a lot higher than I anticipated).

PS. Strength of Undead is bugged, but it’s actually on their tracker now: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Strength-of-Undead

Actually, according to the wiki, Potion of the Ascalonian Mages is still usable in WvW…

This achievement seems bugged in some arenas. I personally experienced this tonight: completed the requirements for the achievement 4 times in the ‘sylvari arena’, but got no credit for it. At first I thought I miscounted, but after the 4th time I started having my doubts… I ead the forums and moved to the ‘asuran arena’ and got the achievement there fairly quickly.

Additional testimonies : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/livingworld/jubilee/Liadri-8-orb-achievement-bugged

Thanks Grouch. I have to add that you’re doing a great job here, keep up the good work!

@Andele: as you say, the UI (both hero panel and tooltip damage) only updates per 20 percent. I did have instances where the tooltip predicted eg. 74 damage and I did 75, I assumed it was a difference in rounding, but I guess a hidden +10 power could explain it as well.

I just completed it 4 times in the sylvari arena, no credit. First few times I thought I misscounted or missed her and didn’t notice. But 4 times is a lot… So I came across this thread, tried the asura arena and got it fairly quickly. Thanks guys!!!

@Shpongle: the asuran one is in the North above the bridge separating the centaurs and the flame legion. All the ‘officials’ there (except the repair guy which is always a Kodan) are asura.

While conditions are indeed good in ‘normal’ circumstances, if your group is really working together to maximize offensive boons then they will start lagging very far on behind direct damage builds. Under these circumstances and with 5 characters that are fully specced into damage (class really doesn’t matter here), all bosses in the game are killed before they can do enough damage to overwhelm even a zerker build. Not only does this lead to completing the dungeon that much faster, but it’s also safer as there is less time where someone can mess up. So it’s only normal that this is considered to be a superior way to complete dungeons.

Obviously though, you’re very reliant in this case on everyone in your party pretty much doing max damage. Cause if even one is lagging behind, it increases the kill time and it can become detrimental to your party. As such you can’t really expect to pull this stuff of in your average pug, which is probably where some of the frustration on both sides is coming from.

An interesting read on the subject can be found here: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/84416-guide-minmax-dungeon-groups-with-any-class-composition/

And a video showcasing it in practice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5uGiLj1caN0

Rennoko basically said it anyway, but concerning the second part: Earth equates to more damage than Bursting, so it’s best to put Earth on scepter and have Bursting on your switch dagger.

I reported this way back in november or so through the in-game bug report function, but it hasn’t been addressed yet: Strength of Undead (soul reaping, grand master, minor trait) does not increase your damage by 5% when having >50% life force as the description says. Instead it gives you 20 power per 20% life force (for a maximum of 100 power), which basically matches the description of the trait in the earlier BWE’s: “Gain up to +100 power based on how much life force you have.”

This makes the damage gain considerably less than advertised in pretty much any power build (when power > 2000), but especially in the current high end pve meta, where necros can really use every little gain they can get…

Additionally, the power bonus doesn’t update dynamically (whenever a certain life force threshold is passed), but is rather triggered by certain events (weapon switch and killing a foe are 2 that I found).

Bhawb.7408:

DS damage is based off your total attack, not just power. Meaning the more damage on your weapon, the more damage DS #1 does. Staff has the highest, but Axe is better than dagger.

Actually, axe and dagger have the same (average) weapon strength.

The reason is that, since DS inherits some of the properties of you current main hand (e.g. weapon strength) to calculate it’s damage, it apparently also inherits the 10% damage boost from Axe Mastery.

Worth mentioning as well: the difference in weapon strength between axe and staff is 10% as well, so DS damage for staff and axe+axe mastery is exactly the same.

I agree with Fizwitz.

Additionally, to those that basically claim that, due to the abundant aoe cleanses, conditions are a minor annoyance at best and have no place in organized zerg play: assuming this is true, why are Runes of the Soldier, Runes of Melandru and Bowl of Lemongrass Poultry Soup still such common choices then? There are plenty of other choices that could made, yet extra defense against conditions is deemed important? Interesting…

I love the whole ‘just pick a 30/25/0/0/15 dagger build’ cause it outdpses everything else… I always wonder: so in any encounter with more than 1 mob (the more the better this gets), you drop Well of Suffering, Locust Swarm and Life Transfer then go cry in a corner for the next 30-40 seconds or what exactly? And guess what, lifeblast outdpses dagger the moment you hit more than one mob with it…

Thing is, it’s not a dagger OR axe-DS thing. It’s very easy to combine both and pick whatever is more useful in the current situation. That brings us to the following: there are no traits that directly increase dagger damage, everything boils down to increasing your effective power. Conversely, DS has 5 traits that either increase its ability to deal damage. A 30/10/0/0/30 build picks up all 5, a 30/25/0/0/15 build only has access to 3 of them.

So the question is then, how much of an effective power increase is 30/25/0/0/15 really over 30/10/0/0/30. Assuming 4 conditions on the target and no team support, I calculate about an 8% difference in favor of 30/25/0/0/15. But simply add 100% fury from your team and it’s down to 2%… In DS, it’s pretty much the other way around: 17% in favor of 30/10/0/0/30 without team, going down steeply with additional team support.

So, all in all it really boils down to a trade-off between a few % more single target vs a few % more aoe, with the difference going down to pretty much negligible values the more team support you have…

Edit: you covered most of what I said in your own edit

Well you clearly see him hovering over it (where it says condition damage) and he evens goes so far as to say that the 6 condition damage is wrong and that it should be 6% condition damage. This (tooltip missed a %, then they ‘fixed’ it by adding the % but messing up the damage part) would make a lot more sense than them adding 2 exactly the same sigils in the same patch… (Yeah, there’s sanctuary = conjuration as well, but that’s hardly normal either.)

wiazabi.2549:

Ye just tested it, dont play enough anymore and what gets changed vs what tooltip says is still a complete mess :<

Love how you made out the dev for being completly ignorant and then found out it was kind of the other way around…