Guild Wars 2

No other class gains as much benefit out of switching chars before the fractal starts as necros. That’s something [/qq]

Chaos Archangel.5071:

@Rym: I know. =[ I’m so Necromancer-illiterate. What boons do Necros have easy access to?

None, and that’s not even a joke :|

I assume this guide is WvW centric, so I’ll answer from necro WvW p.o.v. (Wellmancer, Staff & Axe/Horn, transform elite):
*Stability: super low uptime outside of elites (standard in zergs, with very little deviation) unless traited for (rare). Desperately needed :P
*Vigor: zero uptime (I use stamina sigils and could still use more dodges). DESPERATELY needed.
*Regen: no meaningful way of applying regen that I’m aware of, doesn’t work in DS, is absurdly strong when used on Plague Form necro (not that we need it most of the time ^^). Doesn’t hurt I guess. Don’t go out of your way to give a necro regen though. The frontliners will use the blasted water fields during short regroups (burst heals while out of DS work well for us).
*Protection: not available to standard frontline wvw wellmancers, rare ‘support’ builds might have burst application during wells, zerker backliners will have a 6 second proc on a 60s CD. Always needed
*Swiftness: 50%~ uptime on their own with warhorn 5. More is always appreciated
*Fury: 50%~ uptime on their own (when we can use DS to DS-flash). Always appreciated
*Might: Unless battle/strength sigils are used (not too common), zero. Try to burst-stack it on us just before wells get dropped or Lich form is used (Lich = backliner elite, Plague = frontliner elite that does little to no damage)
*Retaliation: we get 3+ seconds per target (up to 3s+ x 5) on a 15s CD in Axe

YMMV depending on exact builds, but this is what you can expect the average midline zerg necro to bring.

Try the Veteran Oakhearts. They have two or three anymations that you have to look out for and attack slow as dolyak. Plus their tells are HUGE.

The important part about learning to dodge is memorizing when the hit occurs in relation to what is going on animation-wise. The animation ‘impact’ is not always 100% in line with the timing of the spell. So you just have to learn it on a mob-by-mob basis imo.

//edith: yeah, definitely uncheck double-tap and bind a dodge key. I use E

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Shrapnel adds quite a bit of damage when grenading. It’s easy to overlook bleed damage if you’ve got no gear stat investment in it but 25 might + 6 in Firearms = 1175 condition damage which puts you at around 100 damage per bleed tick. Shrapnel + Short Fuse gets you 15~ bleed stacks easily which is an extra 1500 DPS right there.

Yeah, that’s exactly what I’ve been using so far – same reasoning. Even zerker engi got everything that’s needed to make conditions worth it: high conditiondamage stat via traits and might, high condition duration, lots of ways to trigger bleeding via traits/skills and high crit chance.
I’ll stick with it until someone can prove me otherwise.
TBH I use celestial main set for now, so that pushes the advantage even further in the direction of those two traits.

Rozbuska.5263:

Basicly if you play power bombs you use only skill 1 so short fuse is useless

Basicly if I play power bombs I don’t open threads about Grenadier traits :/

robertul.3679:

Explosive powder is a guaranteed 10% dps boost. Short fuse is not. The less close to perfect your rotation gets the less you benefit from shortfuse.
Empowering adrenaline is theoretically nice because you are encouraged to dodge by the free bomb too. In practice it seems very bad though.

Then again, the less perfect my (pug :>) group or me myself play, the better it is to have more frequent blinds etc. More frequent access to Grenade#2#4 and Bomb#2 help make up the damage-loss.
My experiences with EA vs. Shrapnel are the same. Without doing the math, Shrapnel just seems more beneficial with the whole way engi works.

Taku.6352:

Short fuse and explosive powder are both solid choices.
Short fuse let’s you use shrapnel and frost grenades more often which increase dps over your autoattack and explosive powder makes those hit a bit harder. I usually prefer short fuse so the flash grenades have shorter CD to have a bit better blind uptime.

Pretty much this

nagr.1593:

Bawi.9541:

Warrior gets above average results in pretty much every game mode for below average input/skill/knowledge. Your statement that this is a player-issue is wrong. It is ANet that has given warriors the toolkit that made them what they are.

If I am PvE on glass ele I’m rarely downed anymore, even without a guard. Yes you will need to put more effort to stay alive (that’s why I prefer warrior most times) but its basically the same survivability on both.

Weren’t you gonna prove your point? Because all you type argues in favor of my point. That same dude would have died 2500 times on an ele in the same run.

/edith: rofl, i just realized you main warrior, sorry for taking you seriously, won’t happen again :<

Brother Grimm.5176:

Bawi.9541:

If you are able to tie your own shoes, you’re probably better off playing ele.
just my 2 cents, i may be a cynic

The warrior hate just seems to drip off both of your guys, posts….I’ve never understood the need to disparage another class when the issue is with PLAYERS not the class itself.

Warrior gets above average results in pretty much every game mode for below average input/skill/knowledge. Your statement that this is a player-issue is wrong. It is ANet that has given warriors the toolkit that made them what they are.
I don’t know how to break it down further so you can maybe understand it, sorry mate :/

@1: You are taking yourself way too seriously. Most other people that aren’t as obsessed with these items don’t give a crap about it (source: pulled that fact out of my kitten.

When I see someone parading ugly gear that was behind a no-skill-zergwall I don’t respect him for his prestige and honor and whatever else may be in your head. I just think, ‘boy, THAT is ugly, and to think he spent hours on a task he hates, lol’
It’s a mechanism of making yourself look more important – in front of yourself xD

Oh and I laughed really hard at your use of the word entitlement. It’s funny how you wanna shove your point of view down everyone else’s throat while being totally ignorant towards the fact that you’re just a little fish in the big sea just like everyone else.

yours truly, a dude that has had BiS raid gear and piles of event gear before and still tries to keep a level head

If you are able to tie your own shoes, you’re probably better off playing ele.
just my 2 cents, i may be a cynic

EverythingEnds.4261:

If sb decides to run an AI build, he deserves to get moad.

xD

Rozbuska.5263:

If you use zerk gear its pointless to take condi traits and food.

Mostly using that for vulnerability. It doesn’t hurt that engi power ‘rotation’ tends to proc quite a few damaging conditions.
At least that’s my theory behind it, never done the math

Deniara Devious.3948:

Guardian Warrior Elementalist Necro = GWEN has always been the meta in zergs and that is still the case.
[…]
Most players select the easy mode. If you can achieve much more playing warrior and guardian than playing an engineer using the same effort, why to do the latter? The answer is challenge and fun.

I suggest WANG WENG, because .,.

And your last point is why I chose to play engi

lunyboy.8672:

Let’s all just have a sit down and talk about the state of the engineer in dungeons, before we pick sides, before we violently react, and just talk.

I have 2.5k hours on my engineer, 25k kills in wvw mostly with her, and I can tell you definitively, engineers are not terrible in dungeons, but they are not in the top 4 either.

I run my Phalanx Warrior, my DPS Guard, or my s/d Ele in dungeons, because there is always, ALWAYS someone looking for them in LFG, and they bring quite a bit to the entire party. I pug quite a bit, too, and I can tell you, there is nothing as frustrating as just casually running and killing along side a corruption-stacked, flamethrower engineer in the dungeon, that doesn’t even lay down a fire field for might stacking. Because I know what numbers he/she is getting, and I know what numbers I’m getting.

But it’s not a problem with the game, or the class, and it’s especially NOT a problem with the player. It’s an issue with communication and skill ceiling.

It’s been said dozens or hundreds of times already, but without a clear-cut trinity, people don’t understand what they should be doing in dungeons, and just “wing it,” which is fine when you are starting out, but when you dig into the game mechanics, you realize there are some very clear cut winners and losers in PvE.

I am not an elitist, or at least, I try not to be, I never offer advice, or give people a hard time, despite my frustration (because it’s my problem, not theirs). I was there once, not knowing what to do, what to use, how to build, how to run, how to dodge. And figuring out the synergy of a build, a set of skills and play style is something everyone has to do on their own largely, they have to want to know, to learn, to be willing to separate the not-very-nice people saying not-very-nice things from the actual advice, which is generally at least good in the general sense.

The general consensus is that Engineers aren’t high damage, and while that is not exactly true, as Gooz says above, they don’t compare to the group-might-and-fury crowd with war banners, permanent reflects, and permanent protection. Which is what I get when I run in a Ele, Guard, and Warrior party. I do pug with “all welcome” parties, and that’s fun, I meet nice people, help them out with positioning, or if they ask for specific advice, I am happy to guide new people, as long as everyone is friendly.

Engies CAN provide a lot of things, there are builds that can spec for most of what I have mentioned, but not easily, and the trade-offs are deep and wide across the board. I can camp greatsword on my Warrior and provide 18+ stacks of might to the entire party WITH fury, WITH banners, WITH trait-based DPS increases, and all while just standing their popping buttons as they come off cool down.

Not only is it an easy spec, it’s mostly passive and compared to what I have to do for 12+ might on an engineer, it’s a cakewalk. Not to mention over half of all blast finishers are knockbacks, negating the melee stack, which say what you will, makes most dungeon encounters neophyte-friendly.

The frustration I see from the engie community comes from this passive inequity. A profession with a high skill ceiling (and high skill floor, let’s be honest) should have a higher pay-off than a profession with a low skill ceiling. And getting kicked from dungeons, simply because the warriors in the party don’t consider Engineers to have “high damage” is Infuriating in the extreme, simply because the engies do more to get less, and are punished for it.

I am part of the problem—unlike my amazing guildmate who runs his engineer in dungeons, stacks might for the party, provide group buffs, and back up heals in high-level fractals—I have caved to the pressure of the community and run these other professions which are also fun, thus not showing pugs a (semi) competent engineer holding their own and being productive in the group. Why? Because I see the difference between the classes, and it goes beyond being personally capable of soloing the dungeon, or at least dodging at the right time. When one member of the party can provide 18+ stacks of might and fury, or do a guaranteed 90% of the DPS with a Fiery Greatsword, or a wall of reflection at the right time, they aren’t just being a great pug, they are in part, carrying every member of the party that doesn’t have these skills, traits, and mechanics.

And it’s time for everyone to recognize that, so we can address the obvious imbalance.

amen

Which trait do you use in the master trait slot (tier 2) and why? I’m wearing mostly zerker gear, with Koi Cake buff food.

Adept would be Shrapnel vs Empowering Adrenaline. I picked Shrapnel because gut feeling and i like the numbers spam.
Master trait could be Explosive Powder (increases power-based dmg for grenades and bombs), Short Fuse (shorter CD = more utility, more might), Incendiary Powder (which I tend to count out because of the ICD not being per-target) or the Adept trait that hasn’t been picked before (I don’t think they can live up to the Master traits though).
Grandmaster Grenadier is an obvious choice.

thomasgjkgwdn.4760:

Bawi.9541:

A stopwatch will tell you why there are no up-to-date builds for the FT :P

are the only viable builds necessarily the ones with highest dps? i mean, surely there are other considerations than damage.

Use FT#1 to tag as much crap as possible in zerg event. You can use FT#4 to lay down a fire field that only you will blast.

^Exhaustive ft pve guide right there. You can thank me later

• What’s your WvW playstyle – zerg, small scale roaming, soloing, etc.?
• Which of the two do you prefer; offensive with damage increase against guards or defensive with less damage taken from guards?
• Do you take different prefix rings/earrings to focus on one kind of infusion (e.g. 1 zerker ring and one knight ring to be able to infuse both with offensive infusions)?

Does it even matter to you or do you just take whatever?

Sigil of Frailty should be way better than Sigil of Force in dungeons, right?
That is assuming you are not the only DPS (:D ), and you can keep up more than 1 single stack of vulnerability (keep up as in, having enough crit and staying at <25 stacks without the sigil).

Base duration 10 seconds, so effectively 13+ seconds. 6.5+ against bosses
ICD of two seconds.
Critting all the time with multi-hit aoe attacks.
=> 3+ stacks

So you lose 5% of personal dps. Assuming everyone in the group does even remotely similar damage, you’d get 5*~3% or more extra physical damage. Even taking into account how vulnerability stacks with itself (additively), it should be better.

Q: Did I miss or miscalculate something? Is Frailty being outclassed by another sigil?

Same here. I started playing engi with short fuse / celestial – because I’m a fancy basterd – and was completely disappointed with how bad it (when I say it I mean ‘I’ :<) performed. Then I switched to IP / rabid and saw a lot more success.
I think rabid is easier for newcomers who can’t make use of the options that a more elaborate setup offers. Anyone can burn things to the ground with full condi + IP
[Point of view from a noob, P/S, 60062]

A stopwatch will tell you why there are no up-to-date builds for the FT :P

From what I’ve learned about Engi so far, FT is used for pve zerg tagging (‘endgame’), for breaking through blocks/blinds due to its high rate of fire (pvp) and for killing yourself to retaliation (wvw)

penatbater.4710:

my cruise-control leveling engi build.

Go tanky, and get the “you heal when you use bombs” trait. then grab aggro, and spam away. Literally did that from the level I got the trait until I got 80. No ragrets.

NO RUGRATS

a t s e.9614:

WvW is PvE as far as I’m concerned. Even in EB or BL’s you still fight doors and NPC’s.

It’s funny how the whole WvW/EotM debate can be condensed into this short statement, once you take away all the hypocrisy and kittens’ ‘input’.

OT?:
The developer team seems to have realized that their end-game only lasts for so long and what’s left of the (non-tpvp) playerbase is mostly unskilled farmers that have no interest in fair, fun pvp competition. So carrot-on-a-stick it is. Quite revolutionary; that is only the first concept MMOs were based on. [/cynism]

I’m just dropping by to denunciate the inflationary (mis)use of the term toxic.

Dire & Rabid. Mix and match to your liking, it really doesn’t matter all that much – even less so now that Dhuumfire is on-hit (life blast) instead of on-crit. Dire gear with rabid trinkets works like a charm, so you can use your pve trinkets (loligotrabidtrinketsforpve) and just get a set of dire gear with your choice of pvp runes.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

I’m hoping someone will give me some tips. I tried out flamethrower, and that was fun for a few levels. The downside is that apparently there are tons of bugs with it. For example I was trying to kill some maggots, but even though they were right in front of me my guy aimed at the ground and wouldn’t deal any damage.

Try messing with the target options in the options menu (like promote target etc); I read that a few days ago here. I never had problems with it so dunno if it actually helps.
As for elevations, what works for me with FT#3 is press 3 and instantly jump afterwards, to make it fire while mid-air.
Not saying FT doesn’t have its ‘moments’

/edith: oh, and kit-switching to break the monotony helps. Try to get your best skills on cooldown, e.g. toolkit#3 hits like a mofo, damage feels oddly high.

insanemaniac.2456:

Bawi.9541:

Yeah, engi doesn’t really have a cruise-control leveling build imo. It’s only my second character and I’m already experiencing what you described. What worked for me:

what
rocket boots, bomb kit, and speedy kits is as cruise control as it gets
its never fun levelling your 2nd toon…… thats the problem, not that its an engi

You’re right, bad wording on my part.
Gamemechanic-wise bomb kit + speedy kits is enough to level to level 80 easily. I was thinking about fighting the urge to quit the game over how mindnumbingly boring it is to level your second character; which probably is the game’s fault, not the engi.

bump, still horrible

Yeah, engi doesn’t really have a cruise-control leveling build imo. It’s only my second character and I’m already experiencing what you described. What worked for me:

• Get the kits as early as possible, plus Elixir B (the lavender one, iirc it was ‘B’ as in Buffs). I find the engineer can pass a lot of time (and exp) by just discovering how kits interact; e.g. trying to get as high might stacks as possible, trying to get the highest burst between the kits, etc
• Grenades plus WvW zergs: you are kittening useless – even moreso since you can’t spec for Grenadier trait for a very long time – but it’s a lot of fun, okayish exp, gooood loot.
• For spvp I find them harder to pick up then necro (i only have necro 80, guardian 30~ and now this engineer). Then again I’m trying to learn the classes by myself before I look up the cheese fotm no-skill setups, so ymmv. Plus you’re more experienced with the game so it might be easier to you. The fast-paced kit-switching is a lot of fun to me, because it keeps me on my toes. Memorizing which kit has which skill/condis on which button so i can use them as fast as possible without looking at the bars is what keeps me entertained atm.
• Healing Turret + Bomb 1/4 YaaaaaaaAAAaaaAAaaAaaaaaAaaaawn, but disgustingly effective in pve.
• I’ve had much success going for champions solo, so champion hunting might gain you another level or two.
• Have you tried making a new char and just going for all the traits? Maybe as a brute-force last attempt to keep your mind off the leveling process :P

Good luck!

If you want a sound answer, spreadsheet it, or at least put it into an online char calc.
If you just want opinions; go Knight for on-crit effects or Cavalier for higher spike damage.

oO
what’s with sanctum of ral and tarnished coast. are they not supposed to meet in wvw?

Stillmoon.6894:

so its time to make ascended armor

._____________.

3 points.
Deadly Strength is a very nice buff to my wellmancer setup. Banshee’s Wail is not even worth mentioning but as I use it in my berserk setup I’m not gonna complain.

Still undecided if I like the new Enfeeble. 2 seconds is just a hint too short imo, but I love how it doesn’t have an ICD anymore. Time will tell.

As for the rest… yeah…

the only ones i have faith in when it comes to anet is the art team

Bhawb.7408:

What logical sense is there in investing the most work in the least played class? They have decided to give roughly equal time to every class (regardless of what that results in) that needs fixes (all of them).

What do you think:
a) it is the least played class (source?) because that’s just how it is, that’s god-given, obviously!
b) or is it the least played class because it underperforms in pve and uses cheese setups in pvp

If only this question was easy to answer, eh? Sooooo not obvious which one it is

Ah, which good pvp game doesn’t need a bit of hardcountering

Yes, necros NEED more work on the mechanics – and class concept if you ask me. What does it say about a company’s short/mid-term plans and/or financial/staff capabilities to completely ‘ignore’ part of the problems though. That is my point.

Phenn.5167:

good ol’ Jon saying, “With 100% ConD duration and Near to Death, this is a 57% uptime on AoE Weakness, which is borderline OP.”

So there you have it: A trait balanced around an incredibly specific situation (I’m unaware of any build that has both 100% ConD duration AND NtD), and then called OP in that incredibly specific situation.

Anetards assumption: 57% uptime
Realistic max. uptime for condition necros: 35% uptime
Realistic max. uptime for power necro: 20~40% uptime

2.x seconds… there’s quite the huge chance that none of the attacks in that window will even be affected by the weakness.

Bhawb.7408:

Bawi.9541:

It’s actually frightening (for the future of the game) to see them allocating funds so heavily towards the classes that are getting played a lot.
Call me paranoid, but that leaves the impression that they are in a fd up financial situation and wanna milk the game for what it’s worth, just barely satisfying the biggest share of players with the lowest investments possible :/

I wouldn’t say this is true at all. Necromancers have gotten a ton of bug fixes and changes over time. The problem is not with the amount of attention we get, which in completely honesty is roughly equal (averaged over the whole game, regardless of buffs or nerfs). The problem is that we need far more work than the other classes.

ANet is here to make money, first and foremost. Why would they spend 2x the resources on one of the least played classes in the game, to get less out of it than if they spent that time on anyone else? We had the most bugs of anyone at launch. We then had more bugs introduced (it happens) as those first bugs were fixed. Things like Dhuumfire have almost been steps backward overall for the class. All those things take resources that would have gone towards things like fixing Death magic minors.

The game is hardly in a bad financial situation. I’d be very surprised if they aren’t making quite a bit of money off the game (PvE in this game is amazing for casual players, and PvE makes the money). Btw, the reason they haven’t done an expansion is because they don’t want to repeat the massive balance issues their GW1 expansion schedule brought on them. They want to fix what they have right now more, while doing the 2 week thing to keep content flowing, before they screw it all up by doubling the balance work.

Ahahaha, a little delusional, aren’t we.
I’m not even gonna bother making fun of your premises that classes that need differing amounts of maintenance should get the same attention (I’d be happy if necro even got that – which I can’t see happening atm).

Rennoko.5731:

Gonna make the heal work… I don’t care if I have to build a team around it…. I want it to work bad enough that I was even eye-balling magi stats…. yes… MAGI stats…

No really I won’t use magi, but I am at least holding out hoping the scaling isn’t awful on the passive.

sit down, breathe, can you hear us? are you okay? what happened just now? you scared me for a moment

It’s actually frightening (for the future of the game) to see them allocating funds so heavily towards the classes that are getting played a lot.
Call me paranoid, but that leaves the impression that they are in a fd up financial situation and wanna milk the game for what it’s worth, just barely satisfying the biggest share of players with the lowest investments possible :/

not like exotic → ascended is such a huge stat gain on a back piece item.
please dont encourage more farmers to join wvw

just like season 1; no. there’s some achievements in the meta i’d have to do that are so little fun, that no amount of rewards could make me do it.
but i guess there’s loads of people whose standards are lower. they’d go as far as to transfer servers for 3 green items and a few skill points xD
GJ anet. on so many levels. honestly

… for the encounters at Obsidian Sanctum. It was a lot of fun to fight an average sized group of players that is actually trying to hold the platform across from the three spawn points (compared to all the spawn camp crap or 30+ zergs in there). Pity you were gone after i went afk for a bit.

Greetings from SFR, keep it up guys!

Nagato no Kami.4980:

Bawi.9541:

Just try to maximize effective power:
effective power = power * (critchance * (1.5+critdamage) + (1-critchance))
with critchance and critdamage as decimals (e.g. 54% would be 0.54)

Armor class does not matter, it scales the same for every level of armor.
And Ascii has done a good job in that regard

If you’re talking about Ascii’s build’s armor, I completely agree. It’s a damage sponge.

If you’re talking about its damage efficiency, I have to disagree It’s actually unbalanced with an extreme bias toward precision that far outpaces power. I think the reason it succeeds so well is because it leverages this high crit chance into sustain from Vampiric Precision and Sigils of Blood.

Oops, I mistook the link posted above as asciis setup because it had ‘his’ trait setup. You’re right, ascii uses power=precision… Either you’re right and/or he’s calculating with 20+ might stacks in mind at all times anyway (or I’m giving him too much credit and the gear setup sucks big time :>)

Just try to maximize effective power:
effective power = power * (critchance * (1.5+critdamage) + (1-critchance))
with critchance and critdamage as decimals (e.g. 54% would be 0.54)

Armor class does not matter, it scales the same for every level of armor.
And Ascii has done a good job in that regard

Lich does hit surprisingly hard in condi spec because it adds loads of power/prec, reducing the gap to power Lich forms.
I default to plague and use it as an oh kitten button (pirate bosses in fractals when your mates decide they wanna see how many cannon barrages they can stack on top of each other xD)

hybrid necro is so far from useful that it really doesn’t matter how you eradicate your last hints of viability. i’d probably choose the ones whose names sound best to me, or maybe the ones where i like the icon.

Let’s try and calm down, everyone. The arguments are out there for everyone to think about and evaluate. My take on the last posts is: everything you choose to implement into your build is a tradeoff. There are choices that are easy to dismiss (rampager zerg wellmancer), choices that are harder to figure out (minmaxing crit damage modifier – as crit damage doesn’t have a fixed stat value), and choices that come down to personal playstyle and interpretation of the game’s situation and possibilities. I’m far from agreeing with everyone on their opinions, but I’d like to keep this as a platform for everyone to offer their views. There’s been suggestions that I can’t take seriously in the least so I don’t get into discussions with the posters. There’s just nothing to gain for anyone; no insight for me, no basis for a fruitful discussion and I don’t want to ‘educate’ people into following what I think is right.
So yeah, let’s get back to the topic. I like how it went so far, there has been a lot of valuable input and food for thought.

I was switching my sigils around yesterday night to see which ones go best with my gear/build setup :
Stamina (complete energy refill, no icd as far as I can tell)
Restoration (heal on kill)
Blood (heal on crit, 2s icd)

I logged off with Stamina in both mainhands and as far as I remember Blood in my warhorn. I’d prefer Restoration on offhand, but the two on-kill ones seem to block each other. And surprisingly enough I liked stamina refill sooo much better than health gain.
One thing I’m gonna try is Restoration&Blood on axe/warhorn to dive in and gain as much health as possible from doing what necros do, and Stamina on staff for DS – where healing doesn’t work anyway and which has a better damage modifier untalented – to make an escape and make use of the DS skills.

Stamina is incredible if you frontline and push into/through the head of the zerg. It offers mobility that I didn’t know was available to necromancers – as long as your midline/backline can finish some targets off. And it allowed me to be much more reckless than usually (or much more alive even with my balls to the wall playstyle).

What are your sigils of choice and what do you like about them?

Lorelei.3918:

I get those things for free from traits.

One day I will find a way to become rich from exploiting peoples’ inability to understand the concept of getting something for free.

Could be interesting in wvw zergs. I like how it scales with the number of attackers and the necro’s toughness, I dislike how it’s completely useless in DS (surprisingly enough). Hope it tags people getting hit
Then again, it’s a siphon so ‘by definition’ it’s going to have abysmal scaling and base values.

Balekai.6083:

Edit 2: Didn’t have time last post to figure out the Runes/Sigils, but this is what I came up with for an optimal version of your build (switched the rares/exotic trinkets to ascended and used ascended weapons), focusing on damage, vitality and toughness:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmQDbkRrSvTTTjfTBIz46nnew94iDLIqwwA-j0xAofBZCCMJKQZvioxWGLiGryGT9SEVLFwFLjA-w

I tried the trait setup today with my gear and I gotta say, I think I found my favorite wellmancer build right there. kittening love it! Parasitic Bond + Omnomberry Compote makes for a veeeery fun experience in Plague Form :O
Without Chilling Darkness I find myself using Plague#3 more than Plague#2, which has its own benefits I guess.

Scarran.9845:

Must have traits is dependent on what well’s you plan running with. If you are going to run with Well of Darkness then Chilling Darkness is a must. At the same time Chilling Darkness becomes less worthwhile without it as it really only gets used after that in Plague form or Dagger 4.
> Yeah, I’m starting to feel the same way. Chilling Darkness Plague looks so boss on paper, but feels increasingly lackluster. Your mindset of ‘linking’ WoD and Chilling Darkness might be spot on!

From the Curses line I find for myself I can live without Focused Rituals, but then im more like a Bull in a China shop and just charge right in, so its easier for me to cast my wells whilst im in the thick of it rather than micro manage them. As I said earlier Chilling Darkness is more dependent if im taking Well of Darkness so both the curses traits I find optional for me.
> WoC alone is reason for me to take Focused Rituals. Sometimes you have to retreat to stay with your zerg (aka alive), and ranged WoC can MAJORLY kitten up the enemy zerg’s regroup. Maybe I’m weird but FR is not even up for discussion to me. Other opinions on the necessity of FR?

[…] so in the end I swapped to transfusion.
> I’m trying hard not to like transfusion I could see myself taking it in a FitG build for uninteruptable aoe healing, as going into DS for DS#4 would provide you with the stability you need. I would argue it comes down to personal survivability, team survivability and your chances of getting a full channel off. Anyone disagree completely?

Balekai.6083:

Focused Rituals – This gives your wells invaluable flexibility in WvW and allows “well bombing” either allies or enemies within 900 range. Not using this you will always find yourself in a situation where you’re not where you should be for allies/enemies to get the full “benefit” of your wells.
> word

Ritual of Protection – […]
> Food for thought. The decision might come down to team setup, and your personal goal (offensive, support) as the two main decision criteria.

Vampiric Rituals – [Math says it owns]
> Yup, pretty much the conclusion I came to.

Well of Blood – [healing power as the decision criterion]
> I will add it, and keep it up for discussion as I have never tried it myself. I don’t have the gear for it and I’m ‘afraid’ I will be caught in a situation where I need a heal and can’t put down a light field.

Well of Corruption – In very large zergs it’s usefulness deteriorates
> I’d argue it’s down to boon application rate in the enemy zerg vs. number of wellmancers in your zerg, but I definitely see your point! Adding that.

Aphix.9846:

[…] transfusion […] path of midnight.

>Transfusion really seems to shine in SR heavy builds. Interesting

jalmari.3906:

Bawi.9541

wall of text

You can play what fits your playstyle though By all means. It’s just that toughness stat, considering all variables, is maybe not the best thing ever.

>A desperate attempt at throwing a punch back, and a suggestion that goes against math, experience and common sense. I would insult you properly but there’s only so many hours in a day.

Balekai.6083:

-Damage reduction from pure toughness improves the effectiveness of healing on a player, since source damage is reduced and the gap between damage received and damage healed closes.
-Extra health from pure vitality does not improve healing effectivess. The damage dealt to you will always be same, but it just has to eat through more health. Healing won’t sustain you anywhere close to toughness synergy as the damage dealt will far out weight any reasonable access to heals.

> That’s another way of saying what this mathy post of mine was about. Once you’re out of the danger zone of getting overwhelmed by burst the benefits of vitality start to diminish. 100% agree!

Balekai.6083:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNBmQDbkRrSvTTTjfTBIz46nnew94iDLIqwwA-j0xAofBZCCMJKQZvioxWGLiGryGT9SEVLFwFLjA-w

> That build wasn’t even on my radar. Gets put on the list of builds to try. Looks really good.

/edit: Due to the abysmal forum software, I’m keeping an up-to-date version on my laptop. Every once in a while I will update the OP with the ongoing discussion. I like the input so far; lots of good points and I can see structure where I couldn’t make sense of traits before