Guild Wars 2

Haha, those realistic buffs are crazy. Let me help as to why

1. Necrotic Grasp – How can something be overly aggressive when it’s that slow. Staff is not meant to be an attack weapon it’s a support weapon the auto attack is there to hit something hard if you are dumb enough not to see it. It’s fine, though it’s annoying how slow it is at max range, but it does track your target.

2. Warhorn is fine – The problem here is you use it wrong. Couple Warhorn with Dagger, and you got one of the top damage setups in the game with wells. Putting our daze on a shorter cooldown coupled with the amount of immobilizes, fears, and slows we have. I can guarantee you, we could think of few ways to abuse that.

3. Haha, this would be hilarious overpowered in a multitude of situations, but wouldn’t solve the massive aoe wipe out that you are talking about. They would need close to the same health we have, and that would make them awesomely overpowered. Again this is because your perception of what the class is supposed to do is different than what reality dictates we do.

4. Your bug is not a bug we have channelling times that’s part of the class it won’t change.

5. This was done in beta 1 and there was a few necromancers who would simply point hold entire matches without being able to die.

6. Wells – They have traits that do this already (do you play the class). Plus 30 seconds less on well of suffering and an extended 10 second usage haha. no one would live through just the well. Besides getting someone to stay in it for 5 seconds is tough enough.

7. Signet of the Locust – Serious? that’s just stupid. you never lose the passive you just move faster than standard combat speed. Learn to play the game!

8. Siphon life – hahaa, so overpowered. Unkillable machines

9. Corrupt boon – No Idea why you want this.

10. Spectral Grasp – so you want the chill the pull the life force generation and weakness on one spell on a short cooldown. Why not have it be a blast finisher too, and do a 10k bleed while knocking the guy down?

Apparently realism is let’s make us overpowered so no one can kill us and we can do serious damage all the time.

spoj.9672:

I take Minions into every dungeon. The alpha issue has been fixed where they are not targeted. They don’t die instantly, they die 1 at a time, and while they are alive I have a constant source of healing. I run berzerker build, and The problem with wells is on any boss that moves you lose a significant portion of damage. Minions have no issues on 90 percent of the fights as long as you understand that they will die, when they do my damage is the same as yours while waiting for CD’s to come up.

Tips to Minions in Dungeons: Always Bring Flesh Wurm – 1200 range, stun break, top damage, and never pulls aggro. Stick him away from the fight at about 600 to 900 and he won’t get hit by aoe issues.

Tip 2: Never bring shadow fiend – melee weak is great in pvp but pretty awful in dungeons though he can tank anything up to the Gold circle guys without dieing.

Tip 3: Bone Minions – Explosion = Amazing use it reguarly.

Tip 4: Bone Fiend is ranged begin your attack at max range and allow him to start attacking at his max range this will keep him far from the attack and keep him alive longer. Do not summon Flesh Wurm next to him – Bone Fiend has an odd aggro table and can pull threat off anyone at any time.

Tip 5: Realize they will die, just as you will miss with wells, get an evade on your big burst, your minions will die so expect it, and use them as minions. I use them as meat shields to soak up big hits that may kill me than resummon them later.

PinCushion.7390:

In It To Win It.2315:

I am running a power+tough/vit build and I feel completely safe when fighting most classes. I have no much CC if I play it right I can 100% to dead most classes inside of my own CC chain and if I don’t kill them I put them on the defensive which they never recover from. The only thing that gives me trouble is a stance warrior who manages to charge and get a 1bazillion blades while burning stability and quickness. Yes I realize this is a very specific example; I was hoping someone could give me pointers on how to counter what appears to be a hardcounter for my spec.

I’d be interested in what build you’re running here? I’ve run the cookie cutter MM build, but wasn’t impressed at all.

My best guess is he is running pvt gear with a build more down the lines of 20/0/30/20/0 or 20/0/20/30/0. Though I did run into a MM the other day who was running 0/0/30/30/10. 30k health and 2800 toughness and was a pain in the neck to kill he didn’t do much damage though.

lettucemode.3789:

So for anyone who cares, I tried out a 10/0/30/30/0 point-holding build with wells, taking the three downed-state-enhancing traits. It worked out good, but in the end I felt like the downed traits were kind of a waste. I really didn’t spend that much time downed and the times I was downed I didn’t notice them helping too much.

So my verdict is to only use those traits as filler or if they benefit some other aspect of your build, too.

I ran a condition build last night and took all of the downed traits. I went with rampager stats and the fear damage heals. In small fights, where I got trapped and went down it was hilariously powerful. I actually downed three guys in one fight, after I went down, killed one guy, went down again, and downed the other two. Was rezzed while taking the other guys down significantly.

Outside of the occassional downed play it was kind of not necessary since I didn’t go down that often. It’s is really worthless against coordinated kills, but in 16/16 sPvP battles of pug zergs it’s hilariously funny to play.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I know this is kind of wandering off the original topic but is still in the DS subject so figured I’d ask, but just how much of our toughness is taken into account when we’re in DS because it sure seems to me like a large chunk of it disappears. Hits I could normally laugh at all day decimate my DS, or am I just getting personal perception illusions? Has anyone tested with numbers to see if our toughness is the same in and out of DS, and by numbers I don’t mean the attributes sheet, I mean combat log and/or physically watching the damage numbers in the air as you get hit (or have a friend record the damage they do to you).

Death Shroud works on a percentage basis. None of your stats except Vitality, power, crit, cond damage, and crit damage apply to DS. Essentially it takes the damage done and a percentage of that is applied to your ds removal. If your toughness moved over it could be extremely overpowered because it would take someone almost as long to take out DS as it would to kill you. This would lead to Beta 2 type PVT Necromancers.

CHIPS.6018:

Bas.7406:

Xynn.2748:

Hrouda is a content designer. PS it’s nice to know that necros rank somewhere lower than pets.

Maybe they don’t comment on necro’s because we have more clearheaded players (CHIPS exlcuded :P). I do wonder if we have ever had a moderater comment how often we would pepper him with questions.

Hmmm, what would be really cool is if I could get even a design guy onto the But of Corpse podcast haha!

Noooooo I am clear headed!!!! >_<

Trust me those bone minions didn’t attack, and it isn’t the first time. Sure there are cases where it would attack in a few seconds. But other times it would be like what I posted, just stand around and do nothing for 15 seconds+. It just seems random.

When I start my autoattack animation, the minions should already be attacking. There shouldn’t be any lag at all.

CHiPs I put the little tongue in cheek icon there for a reason.

We covered this in a recent podcast for But of Corpse

http://sittingonacouch.com/but-of-corpse-the-gw2-necro-podcast/

check it out , bookmark us, and let us know what’s up

I have a ranger at lvl 20, and played a ranger all through beta. They are in probably the worst place overall for any class. They are limited to 2 builds in pvp to be even remotely competitve, and a single build in pve. Their dps pets die faster than our minions, and everytime they use the f1/f3 button they lose dps.

They can’t really use the most iconic weapon they have in the LB because if you are closer than 1000 it’s damage is worse than everything that isn’t axe. I am glad they finally have someone helping them out.

Samhayn.2385:

I would like to point out that if you look at the three classes people consider the best for wvw all have one thing in common. They get precision an crit damage from the same line. Meaning if they want to build for straight damage It’s less points they need to spread out.

Except not a single good elementalist spends many points down that line. In fact it’s probably the worst tree in terms of traits they have. 30 Arcana or D/D 30 Water are the two most common builds with the other points spread out between Earth and Fire. You may put 10 or 20 in the Air line, but it’s one of the worst traits.

Same goes with Thieves their prec/crit tree is for pistols, and considered a 2nd tier tree that rarely is used. Deadly Arts or the stealth trees are more common.

Xynn.2748:

Hrouda is a content designer. PS it’s nice to know that necros rank somewhere lower than pets.

Maybe they don’t comment on necro’s because we have more clearheaded players (CHIPS exlcuded :P). I do wonder if we have ever had a moderater comment how often we would pepper him with questions.

Hmmm, what would be really cool is if I could get even a design guy onto the But of Corpse podcast haha!

75 percent are Asura’s? I don’t think that’s even close.

I would say a larger portion are Charr and Humans. The last BoC All-Necro event had 18 people and not one Asura.

BoC has some podcasts going on – http://sittingonacouch.com/category/gaming/

Rennoko.5731:

Thanks for the invite, it was fun to have a chance to talk out some of the basics of WvW. And to make things even better, I didn’t have to talk about the viability of minions in any way, since they are awful and should always be ignored.

Haha, I think we need questions from some Necro’s that we can go through so I don’t have to think of it all myself. It came out pretty well, and it was fun just hearing an opinion over reading it.

The best part about the podcast is that it’s setup so that you can play it and it won’t interfere with the game.

15 downloads and plays in the first two days. Don’t miss out!

Dagger/wh is the single best for pure damage. Dagger/Focus for more variety and D/D for removal of conditions.

Ah, bunker builds – Nothing beats the minion master – Axe/Focus plus staff > Dagger/WH plus wells. When I run MM bunker in a dungeon I never die even when the minions die (which all of them dieing is a rarity) I can still truck on. Minions siphon health is amazingly strong

CHIPS, I will run minions with you in a pve event and teach you how easy it is. 30 seconds of non-attack is virtually impossible unless you only use aoe abilites, never use your auto attack twice in a row and absolutely never use their abilities.

The longest I have ever had a minion not named Flesh Golem wait to attack is 4 seconds. and that is the shadow fiend. BTW, in your pictures your Blood fiend is attacking.

It largely depends on what you are trying to accomplish. For open world pve nothing beats minions. For dungeons, it’s largely dependent on group makeup and fight. To break it down to the simplest method.

Wells – Better Burst and AoE damage
Minions – Better single target and more consistent damage if you set your minions correctly.

Minions actually require more work to setup than any other necro build. There are a lot of people who hate minions because they misunderstand their AI table.

In our first ever BoC – All-Necro Podcast, we were able to sitdown and talk with Rennoko (he who hates minions) and talk about the state of the Necromancer in WvWvW. Rennoko is one of our best forum commentors on the Conditionmancer and his place in WvWvW on the gw2forums. This week he met with us to answer a few concerns that many players have about the Necromancer.

You can check it out: http://sittingonacouch.com/but-of-corpse-the-gw2-necro-podcast/

I appreciate any input comments or questions. Any feedback at all is appreciated.

Fraeg.9837:

One of my biggest gripes with the Necro. Our condition removing heal takes forever and a day to get off compared to some other classes. Etc etc etc…..

Negative, the elementalist one is a 2.5 second cast and is interrupted repeatedly which is why they don’t use it haha. Engineers either have to go turrent drop now click or swap to medkit quickly hit the right button now go pick it up.

I could list a few others, but you get the idea.

Zinwrath.2049:

Versatile at what? Ways of doing damage? Pretty sure if we’re going for how versatile a profession can be at combo field/finishers…necromancer comes dead last.

If you read my statement, than that’s what I was talking about. There are a few classes that have really bad field/Finishers. I think there is one build out there for either engineer or another class that has zero finishers and fields.

I am talking about the fact that I can run a multitude of different damage specs (this is why I mentioned specific class builds) and see no drop off. Almost every other class sees a noticeable drop in damage if they spec out of the premium build.

HannaDeFreitas.4236:

Minions are getting agony resist, yay!

Hopefully we can get them to dodge boss oneshots too (i.e. trait that gives minions aegis when you dodge).

I would not bank on aegis. As a MM, I would abuse that so often against other players in pvp. Remember Minions can be used as shields. So someone targets me I run behind minion minion gets hit I don’t. Add aegis to that and it’s a block so no one takes damage.

Not saying it isn’t a good idea just that it could be easily abused.

CHIPS.6018:

lettucemode.3789:

Necromancers can actually trait to get the best downed state. You have the +50% damage (which everyone does), but you also have Bloodthirst which will improve your siphoning and Dark Armor which will give you an extra 400 toughness. You are as hard to damage down as a guardian who used his #3 skill if not more. Of course if someone stomps you they bypass all that but that is true of any class. If you are down on a point and the other team is unable to stomp because of team support, you will last a long time.

And to my knowledge you can cancel the cast of #1 by pressing Escape, just like with other spells.

That takes away 3 of your trait slots. That means you are not as effective in normal wvw fighting. That’s unless your build happens to use channelling skills of course.

His point was to do it to see how effective it was, not to make an actual build around it. Would you lose some abilities sure, but the 50 percent downed ability is in a spot that pretty much is interchangeable same with Blood thirst. The only one that poses a negative is the 400 channel you would lose the spot normally used for Greater marks. But you could go 20 in Death (not preferred) and pick it up anyways.

The key is that regardless of what you go with, the Necro is the most versatile class we have. There is no premium damage build such as with warriors, theives, guardians, mesmers, elementalist, engineer, or ranger. We have the ability to change our builds from power to conditions to hybrid to crit condition to minions without seeing a drop in our damage output.

Warriors see significant drops if they don’t spec for GS. Mesmers see huge drops of damage outside of Shatter builds, and we can continue on.

lettucemode.3789:

Haha, nice one! I just spit up some of my water all over my keyboard

One could probably work the traits into a bunker, point-holding build with wells. I want to try this now.

I was actually thinking of this, though I would do it more as a damage build since you are going down more often, but if you run a dagger bunker build, you could pick up every trait and not hurt yourself.

Rennoko.5731:

Possibly one of my bigger gripes. They could have scaled back the effects to find a balance, (50% effectiveness, 20% effectiveness, etc). Same with killing a mob while in DS. I can understand why you don’t get the full life force back while in DS, but they could have scaled it back to a managable level.

As it stands right now, if a mob is about to die, you want to drop out of DS before it dies to make sure you actually get life-force for it dying.

I thought killing something in DS did return LF to you. Wow, I didn’t realize that didn’t happen. I am rarely in DS past 50 percent unless I am trying to absorb damage.

Kravick.4906:

Draco Aurum.7520:

You should check out Nemesis.8593 ‘s power build thread .
If you take the time to watch his videos you’ll see he really knows his stuff, maybe PM him, he might be able to help you out, he clearly has necro working right for him in PvE and PvP.
Hope this helps you out.

I’ve never seen Nemesis talk about PVP. Does he even PVP?

Nemesis actually talked about his pvp and pve experiences in the podcast we did with him recently. He has a weekly podcast with several of us. We are trying to work out a time where he gets more time to talk about different avenues.

REgeneration is really the only boon that fails to benefit you while in DS. The same goes for life siphoning and ds. Essentially anything that can heal you doesn’t while you are in DS.

DayLight.9603:

On a slightly different note – Minionmancers really do have a viable role in sPvP! I tried it once, a long time ago and was completely ineffective. After that i switched to a hybrid well’omancer build with which I have had a lot of success in sPvP.

About three nights ago I encountered (for the first time after the update) a Minionmancer in the enemy team. Piece of cake pinning him down and wiping the floor with him, right? WRONG! This tiny Assura Necro, along with his horde of minions had me constantly on the defense – so much so that I could barely pull myself together to counter him and when i did manage to counter one of his minions will take the brunt of my rage.

It was a frustrating and demanding match-up! That Asura Necro made me feel proud of our class. Sure we may have a lot of things that don’t gel well together, but if you know your class well you can be overpowered. In fact, the entire team was complaining about the Asura Necro and his minions.

Point is, MM’s are viable in sPvP.
Now if only I had more time to figure out the perfect counter…

Lay down all the aoe you can, and stack conditions on him. It’s really the only way to work. Force him to use Consume conditions early than stack them on him quickly, and use epidemic to spread it to his minions. Most MM, prefer kiting around while using Minions to kill you off.

Get in close, so that all the minions, you and the MM are stacked together and drop your wells. It’s the only way I am beaten by other necro’s aoe conditions mixed with stacking my minions in melee.

I will toss you an invite shortly

@andele, I was already to type when I ran into you got a Dota2 key and I can’t remember the rest. I saw the visual’s and was unimpressed, but apparently it’s pretty big. I got a Firefall key :P and I am going to do a test on that with my brother, but I don’t think anything will pull me from gw2 except for testing purposes.

What is on your main weapon? Remember anything that’s an on-proc ability shares a cooldown. That means weapon swap and crit proc sigils share a CD.

Dhogoth.1856:

I really liked this podcast!

Just a suggestion, upload the audio file on youtube, the new automatic caption will be helpful for some guys from another countries, like me, that don’t listen English very well.

I can do that. Thanks for the tip I will be putting it on itunes a little later as well.

We don’t have a guild site, I haven’t even thought about it. The website is my own personal column haha. Sorry if it came out differently. It’s a fun conversational blog that I run.

Gaming is a portion of what the website hosts, and we give tips, tricks, gamers of the month for GW2 currently since I don’t really play another game. I will shoot you an invite to the guild in game, and most of the necro’s represent other guilds a majority of the time.

Though Andele, myself, and nay are pretty full time on there.

Any feedback, thoughts, and suggestions would be appreciated. We will have a Q and A time in future podcasts. You can email us and we will read a few answers and cover them on Fridays.

lettuce your link is bad!! it won’t let me go see the build. Btw, I haven’t seen you around to harrass you in game in a few weeks. We need to do another all-Necro pve and dungeon events coming soon. I am almost done with the website which should free me up to start hosting again.

Have you tried using these terror builds in pve? Fear is a great control tool, and it works on bosses.

I was able this weekend to get together with some of our favorite posters, Bhawb, Nemesis, Symbolic (oblivion), and Jin Drake (okay he isn’t a poster). We had a great time putting together a podcast where we talked about GW2, what they did right and what they did wrong.

Next week we will cover a bit more on playstyles and class specifics, but we just wanted to get a good start and give people an outlook on how we think. Please forgive certain mic issues you will hear on my end I guess I need a new mic.

We will be having a necro podcast where we talk about the state of the Necromancer, bring in various Necromancer forum posters and players we have played with, and discuss the various issues that currently face us. If CHIPS would ever reply to me in game, I might try to get him on since he is a very vocal opponent to specific builds that we favor.

You can find that conversation here: http://sittingonacouch.com/game-of-the-month-guild-wars-2-podcast/

The BOC All-Necro Podcast will be hosted by Myself and Bhawb with special Necro guests coming in all the time. The All-necro version we will try to keep shorter in length haha.

Please forgive the website, you guys are the first people to visit it before launch, but I wanted to make sure the podcasting system is working.

Andele.1306:

Warriors are probably the strongest thing for 1v1, just because people like to spam the god kitten broken 100b setup that abuses the fact that stances dont overwrite eachother doesnt mean thats the only setup, there is also Longbow & Sword/Axe spin2wing in flames solo 66% of the time immobilize setup, Hammer cc knockaround and not to forget Maxe/Shield that can block all important burst Necro can put out.
Seriously, i wanna see a Necro beat a Warrior (with both on same skill level and starting with everything off cooldown), even if starting with 100% LF and high chill uptime you wouldnt be able to do that unless the Warrior does some major screw ups.

For Guardians, while being truly able to kill us, they can outlast us since they can heal up faster, so even if you make a build designed to counter the boon spam with their own class mechanics and pretty short cooldown condition removals thus the depending on build.

Um, Andele, usually you are on the right track, but every single tournament necro is shaking their head vigorously no here. The only way a warrior with skill kills you is if you make a huge mistake or he has a buddy to hold you down. Warriors with all CD’s avaialable are still laughably easy to kill. There is a reason they are bumped from almost every single high end tournament team.

Hammer builds are fancy little niche builds, that do have some fun in knocking you around, but in the end they can’t kill you. I don’t care if I am slowed, crippled, immobilized 66 percent of the time because I am not a thief or elementalist. That Longbow build is hilariously bad in anything that isn’t WvWvW zerging or pve. Actually know there is a great video of 5 warriors running that build and having a hilarious time just wrecking people. What they don’t show is how when they ran into a coordinated team who figured them out how fast they got wrecked?

Warriors are in a very very bad place currently in tournament play, but in a very very good place in pve and wvwvw.

If you are having trouble with a guardian as a necro, which I hope you aren’t, than we need to talk about how easy they are to farm kill.

My opinion from my 100 minutes of WvWvW is that the answer to all problems is bring more MINIONS!!!

Actually the 100B is the easiest class to kill once you know what to do.

1). If you have Death Shroud when he charges, wait for frenzy and hit DS to eat the 100b.
2). Carry Flesh Wurm, and if you see the warrior drop the Wurm when he charges wait till 100b starts hit the portal and disappear.
3). Option 3 – hit shadow fiend’s button as soon as he charges and by the time fiend hits it will blind one of his hits haha. Okay that was a bad one, actually use Flesh golem to run him down.

Once you use either of these, use Bone Fiend to stop him in place or chill to slow him down and kill him off.

The hard counter for MM is Grenade engineers and Trap rangers.

wow gone for a weekend and we are way back here haha

I don’t feel left out. I recommend you try other classes and find one that better fits your playstye. I never thought the Necromancer would be my class, but the playstyle fits me better than any other class does.

I have played all 8 professions, and I can honestly say I think the Necro is the most balanced. You can handle various tasks without having to do an exhaustive rebuilding. You commented that we are missing all these tasks, but you are comparing specific builds to an entire class. If I were to take every single thing the Necromancer can do and compare it solely to a bunker elementalist you would think the bunker ele is horrible.

It’s about perspective and playstyle.

Podcast 1 was recorded. My goal is to have it on the website this week. I don’t want to send people to the website yet because it’s still not ready, but i am doing the editing on the written version tonight as well as setting it up. We had a great time, though it went over an hour for our first session and then another hour after we stopped recording. Hopefully as time goes by we will be able to bring in guest’s when we approach certain topics. The first part is just on Guild Wars 2: What went right and what went wrong.

We went for an hour on that, granted their were five people, and my goal is to sit down with 1 or 2 more often and cover specifics, but the same five will appear weekly and cover various topics.

The goal of But of Corpse is to help fellow necromancers keep a more positive outlook on GW2 and the Necromancer itself. Though we do have many fellow necromancers who actually main other classes.

It’s humorous that warriors are considered so great for pve and dungeon encounters, and considered virtually worthless in tournaments. While elementalist disappear in high end dungeons, but are everywhere in tournaments and wvwvw.

On a side note, the ability to solo a boss is not considered to be anything I would worry about when considering our viability. In terms of can a Necro do it, I am sure with enough practice and the right gear he could. How long is another story?

In the end, he said exactly what I would have said. Conceivably with the right build and gear any class has the potential to do it. What does this prove? Does it prove warriors are more viable? No, it proves that getting everything perfect a warrior can do something you can’t do in that amount of time, but you can still do it.

THE WORD IS SOLOING. PLEASE CHANGE THE TOPIC!

Necro bump for this baby

Axe/Focus with Berzerker, Knight, or Soldier gear = best MM.

As a regular MM player it largely depends on situations and grouping.

In pve, I always run blood fiend it’s so good now, and it does such a great job of staying alive that you can last forever.

In sPvP and tPvP, if you aren’t running Minions take conditions or with a buddy who removes conditions than don’t take him. Consume conditions is amazing for survival.

In wvwvw, same holds true if you are roaming solo consume conditions, if you are in a group with a guardian or shout soldier healing warrior or even an elementalist than roll with your Blood Fiend.

Staff never wins in a power build unless you need the range or control. Staff is great as a secondary weapon or safety net. In every other case Dagger wins.

Life Blast = single greatest damage we have on a regular basis, and wins only if LF is greater than 50 and traited at least 25 points in Soul Reaping. If traited LB stacks might, pierces and stacks Vuln so it will usually win.

Softspoken.2410:

Kiriakulos.1690:

Softspoken.2410:

Kiriakulos.1690:

I think you’re confusing viable with mediocre. I’d rather use a single weapon that was extremely good instead of having my choices of kinda ok.

Could you please explain how this doesn’t create the “You have to use X weapon or you’re playing your class wrong” problem?

That’s a problem? You would be playing the class wrong.

Well, you’ve then created a lot of false options for players, and narrowed build variety to the point that people know exactly what to expect the moment they identify someone as a particular class.

That may not be a problem for you, but I like profession choices to be a starting point for what a character can do, rather than limiting them to one specific build if they want to be effective.

I read his comment and stopped at Warriors have great synergy.

The problem is they only have great synergy with GS. They are the absolute worst class at every other facet in the game, but hey 100b!!!!!!!!!

100BBBBBBLLLLLLLLLAAAADDDDDDESSSSS!

Anyone who things warriors have great synergy and multiple builds is playing a different game. Essentially if you are in a group with a warrior who isn’t carrying GS and claims to be dps he is not viable.

Why would I ever take a single warrior who wasnt 100BBBBBBBBBLLLLLAAAADDDEEESSS!!!!

You should have given up hope on convincing him once he said the warrior and theif are the two most synergized classes, when every single tournament player and regular dungeon runner says they are the two bottom of the rung only one way to play.

Example Top Tournament teams – Zero Warriors unless you are really really good, and the whole team is built around making that warrior effeective. Zero Thieves because they have the least effect on a game, unless the theif is extremely good, and even then they are easily ignored or killed by a good player.

Elementalist, Necromancers, and Guardians on the other hand can completely change a game or map.

Power builds actually work really well against guardians if you get the right abilities.

1) Get the sigil that rips boons 60 percent chance on crit :P.

2) have staff or axe/focus for secondary when you need to get away or can’t do damage. Drop the marks under them if carrying staff.

3) When they drop their symbol (can be really powerful) swap to ds fear them out of it than use DS 2 to close the gapp and slow them proceed to pound them. Swap to dagger and whack a mole.

4) when they drop the next symbol (only dps guardians can really hurt with these) roll out swap to ds and blow him up.

5) If he uses GS 5 dodge the recall and keep hitting with staff, when ds is full jump to ds and hit him.

6) when you are out of ds at 50 percent (Never stay in ds past 50 percent unless you have to eat damage) swap to dagger and hammer away.