Guild Wars 2

Dietzen.6127:

I see the resemblance and I made this even without looking at that particular post

However, it IS great for WvW, I can tell you that much

I do a lot of solo roaming :P. Minions and Condition spamming seems to work better for that. Other than that, interesting idea on taking scepter/dagger to setup instead of D/WH or Staff.

Del Onasi has a fantastic build. If you can pm him in game he would be glad to chat with you about it. He single handedly kept all my minions alive during multiple runs.

@mindx – the probelm is your perception of minions. You feel there are better alternatives. However, many of us disagree we feel it’s a great alternative that gives us more freedom to play the way we want too. I personally think Corruption skills outside of Epidemic are horribly, signets are just bad all the way around except Undeath, Spectral skills are gimmicky and situational, and wells are easily countered in anything except pve.

But again that’s perception, I have good in game friends who can use all those skills much better than I can, and have very logical reasons for not wanting to use minions. I have made a video (poorly done) of how effective minions are in dungeons, and their strengths in pvp. In wvwvw there is a small contigent of MM who spend their days farming supply camps because no one can do it better than a necro. As an MM I can solo it with ease.

Your point about not speccing for it is really weak. If you don’t build around any specific utility they lose their value. Except signets which are always bad. Minions just have a preset build if you want to use them effectively. However the same thing is true for DS builds, Condition builds, Well builds, and Staff builds. Every single style requires you to take a few key talents and then build around it. I am not sure how you can only see minions that way.

Jax.5261:

Danto.6748:

Hey there, I’m Danto, the Guardian of Team Curse and I’d be interested to join you in this podcast. Please let me know through PM if you require any particular info or any other details.

^ Ideal choice if you want somebody who knows the most about the class in pvp.

He will be at the meeting along with a few other contributors. I am looking forward to meeting up with him.

fishergrip.4082:

I’ll give you my thoughts from a wvw perspective: power necros are weak, condi necros are strong and minion necros make me lol.

From a Minionmancer to a guardian – We don’t even think about you :P.

Mindx.9610:

Minion builds became fairly popular in spvp for a short time a few weeks after release. They need to add bone fiend shadow fiend and Bone minions to F2 F3 F4 leave wurm as a utility and give us better utilities. Minions taking up utility slot is horrible design. Jagged horrors are terrible and only have 2 uses both of which require 30 points in either BM or DM. (Fetid Consumption and death nova). Overall the entire design is uninspiring and its a shame that 90% of NECROMANCERS dont even summon minions or the dead. They look terrible and most of the community agrees with this.

Absolutely not, adding the F buttons is ridiculous, and we have countered that point numerous times in the past giving examples as to how it can be abused and how bad that idea would be to be implemented. Please stop trying to encourage a badly thought out idea.

@Bellamy, the main issue a majority of the community has with minions is the misperception that they are pets. They are utilities designed to do damage and die. Once you change your outlook you realize how strong they can be. In fact, there are more and more players moving to minion builds as a better perception of them is learned.

Next week, bhawb is going to come out with an instructional video on minion ai. In our recent podcast with Talentless, he actually gave one of the best reasons as to why he doesn’t take minions. However most of the community is slowly coming around to the build as they put more time into trying it out.

For the Cross profession you are correct Eurantien, but for hosting, I would prefer someone who plays all facets.

Andele.1306:

I must apologize for all the digression, random ramble and how i speak, english is my 4th spoken language.

You did great. I think there was just so much information we could have gleaned from you and that you wanted to share. We will try and fine tune the process a bit more. There are so many pve only players that just want to feel more comfortable.

I actually did the new AC path 2, and it did not go so well. Granted 3 of us were testing new builds and 4 out of the 5 of us had never been to the new path 2. I hate the new final boss.

I am meeting with the Guardian possible podcasters tonight, and would love a few great pun names like the Necro “But of Corpse” and the Mesmer “Mesmerized” podcast names.

Go ahead and shoot a few names on here!

Once again we get one of the top Necromancers in the game to join us and talk about the Necromancer as a whole, but this time we talk PVE, Dungeons, and the open up with some new portion of the show call Podcast Forums. We had a great time with the But of Corpse Dungeon Master, Andele, as he talked about the strength of the necromancer in a dungeon. Positioning being key, and gave us a general run down of examples of where the Necromancer’s abilities prove to be a great time.

Don’t worry fellow Necro’s he takes the time to bag on My Minionmancing ways.

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-but-of-corpse-episode-4/

Any and all feedback is appreciated

CHIPS.6018:

5 Necro with 5 Flesh Golems can take turn knocking down a boss. 5 bone fiends can take turn chaining a boss. And 10 Bone Minions+ Putrid Explosion can kill anything quick.

I don’t think minions are bad in dungeons. Most of the PvE stuffs are do-able with minions. It is wvw, with AoE everywhere, where I think minions are bad.

In that we agree, though I had an interesting discussion with some wvwvw mesmers who think having a few MM’s ikittenerg is pretty awesome due to aoe plus 5 taking out a minion over a player.

Rok.5260:

If you guys really want to prove that Minion Master is “Fine” in dungeons, may I suggest Arah? I’m not trying to be rude, I mean this with sincerity. Since Arah is mostly considered as the “Hardest” dungeon of them all to most people, I just think that you guys would get your message across and receive much more support if you do.

I agree that Arah is the most difficult, but you don’t normally see videos of 5 of any class beating that place. AC was one of the dungeons used as a Minions aren’t viable because that place does too much aoe damage.

sittingonacouch.com is proud to present a join venture with the Mesmer Community.

Mesmerized - A Mesmer Focused Podcast with special guest appearances by Grimm, Osciicat, and many others.

Today I was able to meet with our upcoming hosts Kylia and Pyroathiest, and we had a great time conversing and talking about different ways classes are played. Kylia killed me at least 10 times in wvwvw until my minions won the Victory!!!!

Mesmerized is scheduled to launch on none other than the day all Mesmer’s cherish April 1st. As we get closer to that day, we will come out with more information to satisfy your curiousity.

I knew it was one of you that kept yelling. Stand Still I am trying to use well of Power. QUIT DODGING! haha

This essentially The Zerker :P. It’s been posted and talked about for the last month. It’s a great pve, bad for pvp, decent in wvwvw build. We actually have a few videos of the build in action down a couple posts.

See the Posts: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/The-Zerker-Maximum-Damage-Axe-Build-1-1/first#post1633398

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/The-Zerker-max-axe-damage-build/first#post1631892

Haha, my appeal has been won. Welcome Back to the right forums!

Wow, this conversation took a turn in a direction that I hadn’t planned haha.

I am not looking for an esports or tournament guy for a regular host ((they are fantastic as guests)) I am looking for a player that is unbiased and is willing to work with another player who might be more well-versed in another field.

For those of you who haven’t check out our current show. You will notice I bring in guests who know more as a side note than I know from my experience. I brought in top tournament players like Symbolic as a guest, where we talked about the different aspects of tournament play. I brought in tier 1 wvwvw necromancers to talk about team dynamics, and this week we are going to talk to a few Fractal 40 players.

There is more than one side to the game, and more than one side to players. I play every facet of the game moderately well, but I know top tier players, and the truth is the high ranking players want to share their thoughts in a non-threatening way where newer players will get an idea as to how to better their own play.

Better new players = more tournaments or wvwvw participants = a better GW2 community.

Haha, I ran this same build but came to a few different conclusions. I bring Epidemic to spread the love to mobs right before dropping the Wells or BiP for bosses.

Question – Enfeebling blood how close do you have to be for the trait to work?

I actually used this build in HoTW on our All-necro run. We need to get together to do a run with all of us using this build and see how much damage we can do in a lvl 80 explorable mode.

I use all ruby orbs or exquisite ruby jewels in order to maximize base stats. I did run with Flesh Golem, but he dies so fast Plague form is just better because it also takes advanatage of conditions!

Tark I was thinking of running with Sigil of Strength. Since I run Omnom berries and Maintance oil to maximize crits.

You guys up for doing a test dungeon run tonight where we run with just Zerker builds. I will record if you are up for it :P

BTW, you can use my youtube dungeon run video of HoTW as one of your see this build in action videos mate :P.

nolop check out the Minion AC dungeon run we did. Minions are just fine in dungeons, even in the aoe castle of AC. We destroyed it running multiple minion builds with only one spider wipe and one other wipe due to pulling half the dungeon. It was one of the easiest runs I have been in, and proved quite easily that people way overreact to minions.

http://youtu.be/NVU4noYqrQE – Because Minions are just fine.

Nay of the Ether or Del Onasi run a great support build. It was strong enough to keep all of my minions alive on a majority of pulls in dungeons. It is entirely possible and revolves around using wells, staff, and Spectral wall to create a constant state of protection, weakness, blinding, and conditions.

Just to spite all the Minionmancer haters. BoC decided to prove that even in a High AoE environment, Minions can be extremely effective. The only real trouble we had was spider boss, but that had more to do with 3 of our guys dying to the fire that is on the stairs haha.

http://youtu.be/NVU4noYqrQE

We all ran Minions with one of our players in full cleric gear and carrying well of blood. Some of the fights were so funny because all you saw was all Minion. We had a dagger Necro complaining he was having trouble targeting haha.

It was a good time and for a majority of the fights most of the minions lived. Plus it’s hilarious watching us destroy single targets.

Amazingly after such a short time up. But of Corpse has reached 100 Necro’s willing to share and enjoy in being Necro. Granted 95 percent of the time we are all repping other guilds except me and Andele, but the willingness of the entire Necro community to jump on board and get involved and try to help each other is amazing.

The BoC podcast has over 1200 unique downloads already and is looking forward to clearing even more when we start our much anticipated Cross Profession series starting in April. Not only has BoC been such a big impact so far in terms of people being willing, but the Necro community as small as it is has already made my youtube channel and website a hit.

Because of the support of this community I have been approached by other communities to see about starting a Profession specific focused podcast for them. I opened a forum post on each of them, and I am proud to announce that BoC is going to be supporting a Mesmer, Guardian, Ranger, and Warrior Podcast starting in April as well. Don’t worry though, BoC will not be changing nor will it take time away from my Necro. sittingonacouch.com will simply host the shows. BoC will help launch them, but we will stick to making the Necro community a better place.

So keep spreading the corruption, well bombing, and minionmancing! And above all remember to USE DEATH SHROUD CORRECTLY!

Check it out kitten: http://youtu.be/5riJJHRoY-0

HoTW Run updated with The Zerker Build – http://youtu.be/5riJJHRoY-0

Anyone in the guild can invite, so you will probably get one shortly. The Necro community is amazing at tossing out invites. Most of the guild doesn’t do full time reps most of the time they will check events on here or msg people in game to find out about events.

If you have technical questions just private message and a large majority will take the time to help you out.

Because ours is the only utility that allows you to not be damaged while using it for a nice chunk of time.

At least, I think that’s what would be said, plus it would also be something you would have to use first than restock, we have so many ways to build it, that you would essentially waste utilities if you had to use a utility.

haha, looks like I may have made a mistake when adding music to it. I think it’s bugging out or maybe I got hit by the copyright bug.

Bumping for those looking for Necro help

haha, nice, I figured it out last night when playing around, I figured ground targeting was way to awesome. As for the third one, epidemic is way too important. Unless you are facing a boss, I always use epidemic just before I throw my wells down. 5 targets with 6-8 conditions on them now my wells are hitting for 12-18 percent more damage.

It was only the third one that was short. I believe the rest are still working fine.

Not really since chill is probably better suited for pvp, because it doesn’t deal damage nor does it really do much since PvE Mobs generally don’t do attacks at a speed that worries you with chill. I still use it as a condition.

I actually found that running two wells with Ground Targeting is better than master of Corruption for personal damage. Granted you lose the BiP Bleed and the Might stacking, but the well damage was incredibly strong.

DelOnasi.6051:

I was there and it was a lot of fun. I think I still enjoy a support build better in dungeons, but the dungeon runs went pretty well, and demonstrates minoins can be viable in dungeons. It was one of the better AC runs I’ve been in even though it was the new AC.

(Also the forums seem to have used an experimental duplicator on part of your post.)

Haha, that was pretty hilarious thanks.

still working on this thanks for all the help so far.

One of the key parts of being a host is realizing what you don’t know, and making sure to bring people in that do know more than you.

I know that I don’t know much about high end play of any facet of the game, I am about middle of the road in tournaments, tier 2 or tier 3 in wvwvw, and just started fractals in pve. However, I know a lot of guys who are in the end and how to get them to talk about the things they see and know.

You may not know top end, but that’s what the podcast is for to help bring these top end guys and have them help explain to the beginners and those of us who are in the middle of the road.

Takarazuka.3025:

But it is based on the number of different conditions, not how many are stacked correct? So regardless of how the bleed is applied, they still count as 1 condition. Vulnerability counts as a second. Those are the ones with basically 100% uptime and all others fall off before being reapplied.

I am not against 25 Curses at all… I would even run it if I felt I could rely on having enough conditions to really get the potential out of Target the Weak and it be more than a 1% difference (3 conditions). The scaling potential of it is amazing, but I try to rely on consistency and self-sufficient damage boosters without burst.

Correct it’s based on individual conditions applied. Vuln and Bleed are easy permanent stacks. How often in a dungeon do you see a permanent stack of cripple, poision, and burning as well? Pretty much all the time. Chill is up and down, and blind is a nice little occasional pop. I know in the one run I did, there were over 5 conditions constantly up. I will post the video later today.

How do you guys post videos on here without the link? ;p

Takarazuka.3025:

What is the third one? This is my build:

http://tinyurl.com/bh7p4lz

Chill is only up for 5s on a 20s cooldown (traited 16s cooldown if you get that) and Cripple is 5s on a 12s cooldown traited with Axe Mastery. So there is still a delay between them… not long, but its not 100%. So you have a 6% damage increase to my 5%, but agreed my Life Force will drop sometimes, but I can bring it up quickly and continue.

I also usually run pugs from the LFG site too…. so there is that >_>

Vulnerability ;P and bleed on crit. That’s 3 plus utilities from the Minions or if I am running this build BiP’s bleed (I didn’t like bip and eventually dropped it for another well), and if it’s not just me someone else always has poison or bleed or burning going. So even in a full berzerker party someone is attaching another.

Takarazuka.3025:

Bas.7406:

Takarazuka.3025:

I can has all necro dungeon runs yes? big kitty eyes

huh?

It’s too early and I still haven’t had coffee…. all necro dungeon runs sound fun haha

absolutely, last night was impromptu because I wanted to test some stuff out.

plus 1 to what bhwab said

Minions aren’t based on gear so you can wear zerker (what I do) or bunker (what bhwab does) or you can run a hybrid type.

For secondary set, I prefer staff, while many players prefer dagger/warhorn to deal with pesky melee players.

Zul.1506:

Right, forgot about that. Sigh only reason why Condition Builds power is limited

haha, because a 40 stack of Vulnerability with bleeds stacked to 40 and 1400 condition damage would wipe someone out in 3 seconds. You could legitamitely solo entire parties, without worry, and it would make having multiple condition removals mandatory for all pvp and wvwvw builds.

Takarazuka.3025:

So I played around with this build and the one I have up on GW2 Guru which is nearly identical. Here is the only thing I am really iffy on…

Target the Weak. It mostly comes down to how many conditions will consistently be up on the target. You can guarantee Vulnerability and Bleed at all times… our only blind would come from a well with a lengthy cooldown even traited so it is not consistent enough. Same goes for Chilled from Spinal Shivers or Grasp. So on our own we can guarantee a 4% increase in damage at all times. In a group, you are tossing the coin really as to what others might have up at all times besides those two. I am looking more at consistency rather than random bursts of conditions that throw your damage up higher for a few seconds.

So, while Target the Weak IS feasible and doable, I think going 25 in to Soul Reaping for Strength of Undead may be safer and more reliable. It is a damage increase that we can maintain ourselves and manage without relying on others. If you are in a dungeon and a player or two dies and you lose their extra conditions, then your damage boost plummets.

The only time the 25 point Soul Reaping wins is in the time between 50 and 100 with less than 3 conditions on someone. If you can keep more than 3 conditions or your Life force is below 50 percent (quite often considering most of us use it defensively). If this consistently happens in your groups that’s a problem with your teammates. I can personally keep three or more conditions up pretty reliably in dungeons.

Takarazuka.3025:

I can has all necro dungeon runs yes? big kitty eyes

huh?

I run two different builds because I do a lot of small groups and solo play. I am considering giving up minions for wvwvw since I tested The Zerker max damage build and it was hilariously fun.

I would recommend taking the basic, 20/0/20/20/0 build and putting ten points into whatever you want. Death Nova being the main addition though I like putting ten in spite for Axe Mastery or Close to death.

Carry axe/focus and Staff, use staff defensively and axe focus to get away. A few of us solo supply camps for our servers with the minions, if you are in a small 5-10 man team Minions are nice, but anything larger than that I would recommend droppign them.

In fact in a team WvWvW group, I would recommend carrying Bone Minions and then Flesh Wurm or any of the others and then carrying epidemic. After using epidemic in several fights with teammates there is no reason not to carry it. It is the single best tool we have to spread conditions. You can spread Vuln, Cripple, and Chill to 5 opponents and watch as your buddies aoe them down and you can focus on their bunkers with your minions.

Spectral Skills are nice for the Niche they play, but they aren’t as universally useful as Corruption, Minions, or Wells. They are great for specific purposes, but if you have them equipped you won’t use them as often as the other utilities.

Spectral Grasp – Amazing in DS builds, but pretty ridiculously wonky when trying to use effectively as it can be evaded, missed, obstructed, and in general goes so slow you could outrun it.

Spectral Wall – Great for WvWvW, check out our latest Podcast where talentless explains how much he likes and uses it, but it’s situational. We used it in our Necro run where it was dropped to protect our minions.

Spectral Armor – Put 15 points into Soul Reaping and you get a much better usage of it for no cooldown. It’s ridiculously long on the timer.

Spectral Walk – Perhaps the most fun, can be used as an escape or just to keep moving. I love the spring chicken move where you jump off a cliff after activating it than bungieing back up or as Talentless said in the last podcast running 15 seconds in one direction hitting it and laughing as you run away.

I ran an all-necro minion master run in the New AC and took my minions into a 15 minute full clear of CoF P1 with all necro’s we weren’t even trying for speed run. Unfortunately all the audio is gone, but the recording is going on youtube later today.

Minions are completely fine in dungeons, they rarely die, and when you have 5 MM single targeting any mob, the mob dies so fast it’s hilarious. We are not a hinderance to any dungeon, and in fact we can be a huge benefit thanks to minions tanking mobs and the ability to survive forever. Last night, 3 out of our party died to the fire boss (don’t ask me how) on the spider boss in AC, two of us MM continued to summon and kill a boss who makes being an MM a chore. In fact near the end it was our constant minion summoning poison and boom boom of bone minions that killed him off.

@kitteno.5698 (haha, they kittened your name) – I recorded a dungeon run yesterday testing your build in a dungeon, unfortunately all the audio while I was recording including talking about changes I think should be made to it to maximize damage never got recorded. However, it does work very effectively, and with green trinkets I was able to hit 9k on Ghastly claws in HoTW P1 a few times. It does require a bit of micromanaging to make sure you hit Ghastly Claws at the most opportune times, but it was a pretty easy and a build I will reuse with my advice on possible changes.

I will post the run later today on the but of corpse channel with background music, but unfortunately no audio.

So last night Nay and I did an impromptu Dungeon Run, I ended up with a total of Three with several new guildees, and even video taped basic guides on Minion Dungeon running, and tested sphixo’s Zerker build (which works really well). We even did an all-minion New AC Path 1 killing everything. The guys who took part in it were outstanding and made some great points in the recording.

Unfortunately, not a single recording was taken because I still had the add sound set to my old mic, and the same with the audio so we had no audio when the video was recorded. So I treated you guys to some classic Temptations music for our CoF P1 build. While xfire is very nice because it’s free it records in massive avi files, which is annoying and requires me to change them over to mp4 files. So I apologize for any video issues, and am looking for a better recorder.

Anways you can check out the recording: http://youtu.be/Zt2_ha2u44E

Thank you to Kharne, Green Tombs, Nay of the Ether, Del Onasi, and I completely forgot the other two who joined us along the runs.

Talentless takes some time to join us from some awesome WvWvW in tier 1. Bhawb and Bas try to get him to reveal the secrets to tier 1 WvWvWvW, but he doesn’t buckle. Instead we get treated to some great explanations of Necro tools and advantages of running hybrid builds and different ways to build your necro.
We had a great conversations, and hopefully we helped each of you learn a little more about the Necro and how it fits in team play.

http://sittingonacouch.com/guild-wars-2-but-of-corpse-episode-3/

We have Andele coming on Friday.

thanks wish, I am logging for the day, but will try to get to you tomorrow.