Guild Wars 2

As long as they make the hammer sufficiently necro-y within the bounds of what GW necros are, I will love it.

Lol, the amount of times I’ve had people yelling on teamspeak about DS…

0/30/0/0/30 putting the last 10 wherever (depends on build) is still a solid condition build, and 30/20/0/0/20 is also really strong. They are still the standard condition/hybrid builds that use staff and S/D

Give us more sustain related to how many opponents are nearby. We’re really getting to a good point for sustain against single targets in small fights, but in larger team-fights the Necromancer doesn’t have options to sustain through focus fire like others can.

Also, with new skills being added to the game, I want to see more play with our HP bars, something along the line of Orders, and a few new minions added (ones that represent things we don’t yet have access to, such as self-sustaining minions, super beefy but low damage, etc.). But really, Orders are such a good thing for us, make them activate on-hit, to reward us for being in the thick of fighting.

And then please add in abilities that have something to do with HP. Skills that sacrifice HP, more skills that siphon HP, more skills that play with conditions (like a self-epidemic), something that encourages us to have high risk/reward behavior with our HP bars.

I don’t have any math to support it, but 60% just feels wrong. With the build that I use in PvP, that is 12k HP, which is not much at all to go through when you consider that LF also degens and you aren’t healing yourself.

However, I’ll grab someone from my guild later to test it out.

djooceboxblast.9876:

This Sir, is not true! And tbh i think that going for foot in the grave is a way better replacement option for dhuumfire with most teams running a spirit ranger these days.

Yep, I’ll have to come back here and revise it. It is incredibly rare to consistently have 10 stacks of bleeds on your targets, unless you are running a condition comp (at least what I have seen). 10+ bleeds happen all the time due to spike, but I have never seen it maintained for anything more than a few seconds unless the person allowed it to happen (correct me if I am wrong).

Afya.5842:

[conspiracy]
They want to nerf it to 60%, so they tell you it’s 60%. Someone came out and said no, it shows 100%. Then they say, oh there’s a bug, let us make a hot fix for you.
[/conspiracy]

Regarding DS overflow nerf, I really don’t like how this gimmick nerf (which I’m ok with it, less fun but I can deal with it) affect the balance.

This would be such a genius idea.

But seriously, I am pretty confused, because LF very much appears to be significantly more meaningful than my HP bar when it comes to taking hits, I can’t imagine that it is anything less than 100% HP, 60% made so much more sense with the old DS.

Honestly I’d complain more about mass invisibility if I were a Mesmer. They have you a skill with that kind of CD that does the same thing as shadow refuge, except worse?

It is regularly used and lands on the highest tier of players. I’m sure it can be voided, but considering it is a 100% shutdown for a fairly long duration, that makes complete sense.

Compare that to Mass Invisibility, which is a bad Shadow Refuge. I could see it being arguable that Time Warp is better, yet I never see it used in competitive settings.

Now, I realize wvw is a completely different setting, as is PvE (where Time Warp is god), but from a PvP perspective alone, Moa is by far the most useful elite you have.

Gimmicky sure, but saying it is weak is just ignorant. Watch what they do with it in tPvP; you can completely destroy a bunker in seconds using Moa and burst.

If the curses 25 trait worked for conditions, it would be one of the best trait lines in the game as far as synergy. Its adept minor works for every build, if you aren’t condi it still adds some DPS over a fight, and even better it has a small chance of covering a meaningful condition (since every single Necro build uses conditions). Then it scales up as you go further into the tree, as it scales with precision and condition damage, which is what you get.

Then you hit Master minor, and that raises your crit chance by 20% for 5 seconds every time you go in DS, which not only synergizes in general as it works for every kind of build, but it makes your other Curse traits better.

If only the 25 trait raised condition damage, it would be perfect, but as it is it still gives you increased damage per condition on the target; and guess what your adept minor adds conditions all the time. It is a really well designed tree. The traits all have some synergy, the minors are all useful to all builds, even if some more than others.

Death Magic is the exact opposite.

S/D and Staff will probably always be a good build.

Wait seriously? I can’t think of any mesmer that’s like “you know what elite sucks, Moa. I hate free kills.”

Funnily enough, I’ve actually gotten quite a few kills on bad mesmers as an MM Necro, because they’ll get scared after a burst and Moa me when they only have like 1k HP, and I can peck them to death. Sweet, sweet payback.

Listen, I run MM all the time, its the only thing I do in PvP. There should not be a trait in the game that is essentially useless until you spend more trait points on it. Barbed Precision is a great trait because it is useful on its own (extra damage, and nice extra damage) but also because it scales perfectly with its own tree; the more you go into the tree the stronger the trait is.

Reanimator on the other hand is incredibly weak unless you spend at least 25 more trait points.

So as I said on the Podcast, if people would like to get a group together with myself and Tenderly to do a streamed dungeon run (at least 1-2 paths, if not all) per week, let me know.

I could potentially see some highly coordinated teams pull something off with seeing the secondary life bar, but it would be pretty rare if it ever happened, and not really worth it.

Actually recently with the influx of FotM rerollers a lot of people have gone away what was most commonly used by top tier Necros (almost all Carrion) and more towards Rabid.

You can activate a condition→ gives an example of a single condition that doesn’t favor necros → Necros are dead.

Wut?

Haley.2390:

Hey, Bhawb. When you say that Rabid is “very common” for PvP Necros, do you mean “most” or “majority” of PvP Necros go Rabid?

My take from your use of “very common” is that you did not necessarily mean “most” or the “majority” of PvP Necros choose Rabid.

But this Thief in the Thief forum believes you do.

Yes, leaving aside any debate about what is best, Rabid is the most common gear stat for condition Necros.

I’ve done speed running, and I’ve never been in a group that didn’t exploit when there was one available to speed things up. Your definitions of what “exploiting” is might differ, but they abuse the mechanics of a dungeon in such a way as to skip every single bit of “unnecessary” content, unnecessary defined as anything that is not required to be done to finish the dungeon in the fastest speed possible.

Is it casual? No, but that is taking casual content and making it “hardcore” simply by trying to finish it as fast as possible. You can speed run Pokemon, that does not make Pokemon a hardcore game; you’re simply turning a casual game into a challenge by setting harsh limits on your gameplay.

+1, every tPvPer ever has had a team screw something up because their necro was “low” because of that UI.

I’d love to see Orders come back into the game, either via Aura-type effects, or buffs like the Spirits. It fully fits within Aggression (more Aura procs by getting in the thick of the fight, or more “Spirit” procs by attacking as many people as you can), and can take on similar effects to the old Order skills we had.

spoj.9672:

He only knows about casual pve. Cant really call him an expert when he claims LoSing is an exploit and running full beserker is cheesing.

When you can do all PvE content outside fractals naked, there really isn’t anything but casual PvE.

Yes we’re still fine in s/tPvP.

Trident doesn’t tend to, it just flat out ignores LoS. There are multiple bosses in the game you can 100% cheese with it, and it is absolutely hilarious. If you are in range, Trident will hit (unless its changed since then, which is completely possible), and it is pretty funny to win boss fights AFK.

To my knowledge the only thing that has been released about weapons is that they are looking into giving us access to every weapon, as well as every class. Nothing about specifics are out yet, that I have seen. I would be very surprised though if we got greatsword/hammer without AoE to back it, so at the very least we can anticipate a few cleaving weapons.

Pelopidas.2140:

Yeah, most of this is nonsense. Way more reliable ? splash isnt effective if mob is huge ?
Andele pls.

One does not simply say Andele doesn’t know what he’s talking about in PvE.

On a more serious note, keep it pierce. Unless you made it a really big cleave, you are almost always better off with piercing.

It would be complete crap if it worked on things not affected by condition duration. Seriously, how many condition-based players actually run around without at least a tiny bit of added condition duration? It would make the skill 100% useless against almost every single Necromancer, and most condition builds all around.

Its like having an invulnerability that only works if the person has 0% crit chance.

Sentinel.5731:

The flesh golem is rather pitiful

I have to say, I love every minion design except Flesh Golem and Bone Fiend. The rest are appropriately disgusting, for creatures made of assorted accessible deceased organic material, and imo look the part quite well. Not to say that everyone loves them, or that I wouldn’t like new skins for them, but I am happy with them.

However, Bone Fiend just looks so meh compared to the other minions in my mind. He isn’t bad, I’m just not like “that’s pretty sweet”, like I am for the rest. Flesh Golem is just… sad. In his own right, he’s okay, he certainly looks menacing, but I remember GW1 Flesh Golem like you, and holy crap did he look monstrous.

Warriors used to be a 100% guaranteed kill unless you were really bad and got caught in a 100b, or they did that crap Eviscerate/Kill Shot glitch and you got caught off guard.

Is it possible for them to use this to murder you? Yes, but it requires intelligent play, because with a decent LF bar you can now tank through a lot of their damage. But without this Condi necros absolutely eat warriors for lunch.

Andele, I will never know how you figure this stuff out, but thanks for the info.

For the optimistic: ninja buffs. For the pessimistic: a bug they’ll fix tomorrow.

It is completely valid to say Rabid is popular. There is a lot of talk about Carrion being better, and I know that a lot of higher tier PvPers used Carrion, it isn’t remotely inaccurate to say that Rabid is still popular. Especially if you look at recent tournaments with people who just started playing Necro, a lot of them are using Rabid.

I actually like the core idea behind what I think they did with SA. When you combine SA and DS you can actually absorb pretty gigantic hits, and I think they are trying to convert it into a singular burst protection skill, which is fine so long as they continue buffing other things to cover for the lack of multiple-person generation.

Haley.2390:

Thread is leading to other discussions, that’s good, too.

But I want to ask one of the questions from my OP again.

Is Rabid a popular choice for Necros in PvP?

I see some Necros saying it is and others saying neither way, but I don’t see any Necros saying that Rabid is not a popular choice for Necros in PvP.

Regardless of whether or not you go full Rabid or whether or not you believe it is optimal, do you guys believe it is a popular choice for Necros in PvP?

I frequent this forum a lot, and even though I don’t go Rabid, my take from this forum is that I believe Rabid is a popular choice for Necros in PvP. I have no opinion on what most or the majority of Necros use, just that Rabid is popular. And I do not believe there is any way to know with absolute certainy—just wondering in the context of what can be gathered from the Necro forum.

Is there any compelling evidence from this forum to suggest I should not hold this belief?

Sorry if this discussion has been misleading. Rabid has always been, and probably always will be a very common gear stat for Necromancers.

For WvW I think Rabid is more common, and better than its s/tPvP brother, as there exists a much higher stat ceiling, and toughness/condition damage synergy gives much more meaning there (whereas in sPvP its like 1 damage per tick of bleeds).

Honestly I don’t mind that we can’t disengage. Going back to the lore that drives the profession (at least to a degree) we are the school of Aggression. It seems a bit silly that we’d handle fights by running away. I much prefer where they are going (and admittedly have not reached yet) that we should be able to wade into the thick of combat, and get proportionately stronger because of it.

Offensively we do have this ability, with a ridiculous amount of potential AoE, and the singularly unique ability to turn even single target utilities into AoE. It is defensively that we need real work, and I think they need to accomplish this by upping our life stealing and making it a more significant mechanic (life stealing essentially scales AoE), and giving us more LF generation that depends on per-hit mechanics, and can be AoE.

Thank you Blaine, that was a great read.

A little “trick” – Flesh Wurm ignores stealth.

We already have tons of weakness, I think that is just fine. The only thing I could see is something like an Order/Aura that steals endurance per hit, when they start introducing skills (I demand Orders/Auras anet!).

@spoj, because we aren’t getting boons. we have regen/retal and some other limited boon access, and that is all fitting within our flavor, but otherwise giving us lots of vigor just goes against the idea of the class being a debuffer, instead of just being an emo guardian.

My drawing skills are terrible, however BoC has thrown tons of ideas out there.

My favorite remains adorable animal/cartoony skins. Blood Fiend could be a balloon with a smiley face, bone minions are bunnies, flesh golem a huge teddy bear, etc.

Gasp, you mean warriors can actually fight me now? Nerf warriors!

Go take a Necro into a tournament against a coordinated team, and see what happens when they focus you.

Or don’t, and I’ll save you the time. You die. The only time you don’t die is when you have lots of LF, or Flesh Wurm is sitting around way outside the fight (rarely used), have an amazing team to peel for you, or you have perfect positioning, and your team can capitilize on the overextension.

Now compare to other classes. Mesmers, eles, thieves, and warriors all have ways to get the hell out of the way, and also ways to avoid damage while doing so (blocks, stealth, blinks, etc.). Then there are Guardians and Rangers. Both have twice as many dodges as we do, one has blocks up the kitten , the other has evades. What do we get to compare? Two dodges and DS.

I’ve played this class since beta, and I even play some of the tankiest specs possible. We just don’t have the innate ability to live through focus, and that is what people complain about.

It makes you immune to new conditions for 8 seconds, 10 with the trait. Lets all be honest here, Warriors were absolute trash tier PvP (and still aren’t in the best place, although hell they at least see some play time now), and a big reason was they get stomped by conditions. They still do, except now at least he’s got a decent chance to do something about it in small bursts.

Softspoken.2410:

I won’t lie: I don’t mind the change to 3 conditions per target. It puts greater reward on using the skill on multiple targets than before.

However, the loss of allied condition transfer is positively infuriating.

It is arguable that a full condi cleanse on that kind of CD, when paired with the other condition removal that we have is too much, so I agree there. But they need to say it, or acknowledge the bug (I don’t care if its on the forums, but this needs fixing, tired of stuff like downed HP bugs screwing us for months).

They do stack. /15 char

+9001. This was a gigantic nerf to staff.

WAIT, they ninja buffed Barbed Precision?

It will be difficult with balance, but nothing says they are going to get this all done in one patch. More likely they are going to introduce a single weapon every few patches, and while balance might suffer for a while, its a good move overall to introduce variety.

They still have a lot of things they could add for Necromancers on weapons, and I am interested to see it.

Necromancers, with the right builds, are amazing duelists, the biggest weakness we have is that if you aren’t really on your feet (or you aren’t in PvP), people can disengage and you have a very small window to keep them in the fight or they are gone. Besides that, and just bad matchups, we’re great at 1v1.

Anelyn.4593:

Regarding burning – while the damage is nice for sure, it only takes ~6 stacks of bleed to equal the damage from burning with same condi power. Am sure most of you can self sustain 10+ stacks easily in pvp. (and even aoe).

You will never, ever see 10 stacks of bleeds sustained on any decent player in PvP unless they are 100% out of condition cleanses; and it just will never happen in team play. That is why burning is so strong.