Guild Wars 2

1. Yes they can, they aren’t treated any differently once they are applied.

Edit: actually I will have to test this, because I do have to wonder if you can spread conditions through two Epidemics like that; Epidemic target 1, conditions are applied to target 2, Epidemic target 2, and target 2’s conditions (which are all mirrors of target 1) should double in length if it works. Someone correct me if they have already tested this.

2-4 would obviously be where things get more difficult in practice. Even taking it out of ideal situations in theory, you should be able to get Epidemics off fairly often, if you have good coordination. With a Terrormancer, you would combo your CC with the Epidemic timing so they can’t dodge, and with 5x necromancers I think every guardian/ele combo is going to be hitting a wall with condition removal.

Obviously this would require a good amount of coordination, so at first I’m sure it would fail, but I think it would be possible to pull off.

5. Playing with such a team build, it would be in your best interest to keep at least 3 Necromancers together all the time (the 3 conditionmancers), since their real strength in this comp is the cumulative effect of their condition stacking and CC.

I agree completely with the team comp. And I am sure that there are plenty that could work, I just think stacking Necromancers largest strengths together ends up having a sum greater than its parts, instead of trying to play to the meta, just using Necro versions of the builds.

You mean locking an enemy down? Soldier MM with D/WH A/F has 2 second daze, 3 second immobilize, 1 second fear, 2 second immobilize (or 4? does Rigor Mortis stack itself since 2x attacks?), and a knockdown. You can assassinate any squishy that doesn’t immediately blow their stun breaks.

Powermancers likely wouldn’t be needed, it would also detract from our strongest synergy which is mass AoE condition, you’d be better off chaining CC together. Shaman support with Terror and condition mancer will have all the boon stripping you’ll need, and you should have pretty instant 25 bleed stacks all around all the time, you’d overwhelm the condition removal of any team.

Spirit watch would be difficult because of mobility issues, but you’d have such strong defensive orb control I think you could slow the game down enough to play at your speed, not theirs.

It could be figured out I’m sure, and at the very least we could just have Khalifa hard-carry us :P

A bunker, a soldier MM, terror build, shaman support, rabid condition build, all 3 could run epidemics, soldier can cover back point with wurm teleport and warhorn, bunker can generally spread some control. With the fears and corruptions, it shouldn’t be an issue to keep people off priority targets, soldier MMs can 1v1 pretty much anyone, and the condition removal, OH LAWDY the condition removal.

Not to say it’d work at super high levels, but with the right teamwork I’d imagine you would destroy a lot of teams with uncounterable condition spreading, and the strong AoE control we’d bring to points (you could basically make the point no-mans land with all the AoE).

That is why we are having either 5v5 or 8v8, we’d completely fill up the server ourselves.

We have tried tPvP before, but didn’t have 5 people who actually wanted to do it.

Or staff 4, or entering death shroud, or plague signet, or Well of Power, or Deathly Swarm, in addition to our heal and minions. We have the most condition cleansing of any class.

Defensive Death shroud skills with 10/15/0/0/0 as a base do well with PVT because of the high fury upkeep (gives you free 20% crit chance) and high damage from retaliation. Minions also do very well in a PVT build because you are going to retain decently high damage from your minions, while having super high defensive stats to stay alive while they do the killing.

Alternatively, Nemesis has a PVT build I think. There are certainly builds that use PVT in WvW to soak up damage while providing a good amount of control.

We wouldn’t be able to guarantee that both our groups would match up if we went into tournaments, sPvP however is fairly easy, you just count down and everyone joins the same server.

Whether or not you think you are getting kills with it or not, the only time you get stacks is when you are credited with a kill when the sigil-bearing weapon is active. It is pretty common that you will get credit for a kill after the fact, if you have done a bunch of damage to someone but it took them a while to be finished off by someone else.

Wail of Doom is a cone effect, so at most they are going to follow the same conical pattern in their running away (they run directly away from the inflictor of the fear), so with Wail of Doom + Reaper’s Mark you get your 5 second fear pretty easily before they spread out, since they will all be running in the same basic direction from Wail. Wait a few seconds for the fear to tick down to 2 seconds or so, Doom one of them, and now you’ve kept an entire tPvP team feared and ticking for 5k damage.

And that is still assuming that they would reduce the base duration, otherwise you get a very easy max duration fear every 26 seconds (I think over 20% uptime on the strongest DoT and CC in the game is a bit excessive).

Included is actual footage of a 100b warrior on a team with such a necro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzW727RY-ig

They would have to lower the base duration, otherwise you would have a 6 second AoE fear (traited gives base 3, plus 100% fear duration) on a 25.5s CD (traited), which would do upwards of 6k damage, pair that with the two other fears we get and you could have someone feared for 10 seconds, with damage over 10k, from fears alone.

If they reduced the base to 1 second, then I still see a problem with it being a 1.5 second base traited, meaning 3 second with 100% fear duration, giving you a 3 second AoE fear, still allowing chain fearing of 5 seconds (on five people) and 7 seconds on single target (not including fears from corrupting).

Mesmers can abuse retaliation with certain Phantasm builds. In general though, retaliation is a way for an otherwise very tanky build to have some decent extra damage output to punish offensive builds.

Rennoko.5731:

Bhawb.7408:

In every other part of life, you need to demonstrate expertise in a subject before anyone will take you seriously, it lends credence to your argument.

Is this wise words from Bhawb’s corner? I have always been more of a fan of perception trumping reality. It isn’t so much what you know, but how much people believe you know.

Which is what happens on forums. You don’t need to use reality or facts to convince people, you just need to convince them. Which is where there are arguments based purely off speculation and semantics, and the person who wins the debate is merely the one who is best at arguing.

Another game I played called the forums PnP (politics and propaganda), because everyone knew the forums had little to do with factual statements and more with how good you were at manipulating public opinion. You see this all the time here (its why a lot of skilled players never come here), public opinion trumps facts or empirical evidence in nearly every argument unless it happens to be an area you can prove via video (like the soloing video, which many people thought was impossible).

@Pincushion, few people are honestly here for factual evidence, mostly they are here to get their point across.

In every other part of life, you need to demonstrate expertise in a subject before anyone will take you seriously, it lends credence to your argument.

You can’t drop damage and go for Necromatic Corruption, the only thing you can drop is Death Nova, period. It is the other Grandmaster Death Magic trait http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Necromatic_Corruption

::cough:: its Orochi ::cough::

Corruption is a straight substitute for Death Nova, those are the only 2 traits a minion build will ever be putting in the 30 Death Magic slot (the damage is in spite, and is never affected). Death Nova’s only true advantage is the weakness from blast finishers, whereas Corruption will take out boons. If you are going to be against boon stacking builds, use Corruption (they coincide with the builds that have condition removal on heals, thus poison is ineffective, and the weakness won’t be around long), if not, use Death Nova.

Kravick.4906:

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number of well traits in Blood Magic: 3
number of well traits in every other tree combined: 1
Wells are in Blood Magic

Whether you think they don’t synergize with the stats you get, that has nothing to do with it. The current meta is using WoS as a nuke, congrats, that is why you have 70 trait points, not 30, and can go into another tree.

number of signet traits in Spite: 2
number of signet traits in every other tree combined: 0
Signets are in Spite

Refer above. Stats aside, signet traits reside in spite, and as such are a theme of the tree.

Blood magic siphoning traits on hit, dagger has (by far) our fastest # of hits per second, and thus is the strongest synergy with life stealing. It also synergizes best with wells, which, crazily enough, are also in Blood Magic.

number of minion traits in Death Magic: 6
number of minion traits in every other tree combined: 3

Want some crit chance that will have absolutely 0 effect on minion damage? What about boosting my crit damage that will matter a whole nothing for my minions? Hey, what if I went condition damage, so my minions that only cause conditions via combo finishers and dying can get that nice boost, as well as having terrible synergy with condition weapons.

If you are traiting fully for minions, then go all in for minions, don’t half kitten it by using scepter (single worst minion synergy of all our weapons), going condition damage (people have shown why condition damage is bad for the standard minion build), and boosting my person stats that have no effect. This is why Soldier MMs are so strong, their minions do the exact same damage as a Berkzerker MM’s, with some of the highest defensive stat values of most builds, while retaining the ability to burst most glass builds with the proper CC chains (dark pact, doom, wail of doom, charge, rigor mortis just to list the hard CC, not including the 4 cripples and 2 chills available).

If you aren’t traiting fully for minions, there is no problem, the minion traits themselves are all in the relevant tree (damage in the damage tree, siphoning in the siphoning tree, defense/main minion traits in the minion/defense tree).

Condition builds are popular because they are easy to use, strong, accepted by everyone, and easy to figure out.

Spectrals are Soul Reaping, with that one trait off in Curses, I considered them as part of the DS/life force generating side of things. I will totally agree its in a weird spot, it would make more sense to be in Death Magic, seeing as 3/4 spectrals are mainly defensive.

Staff I’d consider similar to Minions. It has 4 traits overall, with the “main” ones being in Death Magic (its home tree), and the other two being in relevant trees (soul marks in the LF generating tree, damage in the damage tree).

If I had to make a guess about fear, it would be because it is associated as being part of our mechanic, and seeing as Soul Reaping is highly tied to our mechanics that might have been their reasoning. I don’t disagree that from a gameplay standpoint it is a bit silly (the only time you would want it is for Terror, a condition damage build, that wouldn’t be wanting DS traits otherwise).

I think the problem is that its assumed that a tree must synergize its statistical gains with everything therein, which is just not possible. This isn’t exclusive across Necromancer, however, other classes have similar types of allocations.

Kravick.4906:

So why are the traits for other classes not spread out among 3 tiers like that then? They all have a focus or a theme attached to them. If I want to specialize axe on my warrior I go down the strength tree. If I want to focus on greatsword, I go down both strength and arms, which both have synergy with one another. Focus on sword? Go down Arms. Want to hit things with a hammer or mace? Defense tree has all of those traits. Tactics is the warhorn, shouts, banner, and longbow tree. Discipline has a lot of support traits that benefit all weapons to some extent.

The other classes trait trees have a theme and a weapon associated with them. Necromancers have crap spread out all over the place and in very bad locations.

Spite – direct damage: axe, focus, signets.
Curses – conditions, critical hits: scepter, warhorn, on-crit effects, conditions, corruption skills.
Death Magic – defense, minions: staff, minions, general defensive stuff.
Blood Magic – life regen: dagger, life siphoning, life regen, wells.
Soul Reaping – death shroud: death shroud, life force generating, fear.

They all have definite themes involved, and basically speaking a weapon. The exception is staff, which is kind of spread out. I also tend to agree that things are spread out, but I just don’t feel like it is as much of an issue as many people take with it, we just don’t have the very obvious choices like many other classes do (how many classes have actually tried the huge variety of builds that necromancers do, when they can just copy the big 1-2 builds and be solid).

As for why other classes don’t feel that way, I couldn’t tell you, maybe it just happened out that way, or that because of the lack of need to innovate it just isn’t a big deal right now.

The reason for trait spread is due to the fact that traits were originally not tiered. Then when they were tiered, they ended up getting put in weird places sometimes.

Winter.4608:

So how does a dastardly necro such as myself join this guild? i would gladly flaunt its banner all across sorrows furnace

All you have to do is accept the invite

They read and are aware of what happens in the forums.

1) It is impossible to have more than 12 minions at once in GW1, 10 is the general limit (18 Death Magic is the highest you will have under normal conditions). I realize they were summoned from corpses, but from a non-gameplay standpoint they are still the same; just in GW2 necromancers summon them from the dead material already in the area (instead of needing to kill someone to use).

Yes it was incredible when you were in PvE, AB, or FA and you just got steamrolling people with a full batch of minions, because you became near unstoppable. However, for every time that that happened, you were just as likely to have 1 time where you faced a mesmer that completely shutdown your summoning while the enemy team killed you, or you just never got off the ground. PvE they were amazing in group situations just from Death Nova and other crazy micro managing (which, btw, was usually done via Heroes because they were kitten good at microing things that were humanly impossible).

As for the difference, our summoned builds aren’t complete trash. Guardian Spirit weapons suck, Ranger spirits aren’t more than a niche build, Elementalist summons are time-constrained (and they only have access to 2), Engineer summons are stationary turrets (again, a niche build, though less niche than ranger), Mesmer summons work on a completely different level, warriors have no summons, and Thief summons are based off an Elite alone. Racial summons fall into an above category.

2) Yes we are close, but it doesn’t mean they had to keep that part of the game. They totally axed most of the Dervish playstyle (enchantment managing), shutdown builds, and a lot of the more niche playstyles.

4) Wells do allow for AoE life stealing, as does Locust Signet.

5) We can AoE immobilize via Epidemic and any single target immobilize. Whether you like it or feel our ability to shut people down is opinion, we have the highest access to debilitating conditions in the game, bar none.

6) Yep.

Your guildie was thinking of an older iteration of Epidemic; it did not always have an AoE limit.

It is very strong for 1v1s or similarly small fights. Soldier MMs with Necromantic Corruption and the standard 20/0/30/20/0 build are completely immovable in 1v1s. You can’t be burst down by 1 person, you’ll be dropping their boons left and right (bring Focus to synergize), and you’ll be healing with every personal hit and every minion hit.

But Corruption just isn’t worth it unless you are running at least 3 minion slots with minions fully traited. Otherwise Death Nova does better (or the points are better put somewhere else entirely).

http://www.gw2build.com/builds/simulator.php#1.5.1.7.21.0.22.22.4.0.106.120.123.109.130.3.3.36.305.0.0.319.325.0.336.0.0.0.0.0.364.370.372.10.20.10.0.30

I use Weakening Shroud to give about 60% weakness uptime (assuming no cleanses), Flashing in and out of DS gives me retaliation (about 60% uptime), fury (100% uptime), and removes one condition, which paired with the LF generation gives me a lot of pseudo tankiness (from death shroud, and lots of it). It also lets me run around with close to 80% Crit chance. I still switch things around a lot depending on what I am expecting to do/face, but that is my generic build.

@CHIPS
1) Necromancers in GW don’t summon undead, it is forbidden by Grenth (who only allows us to create minions via dead material).
2) Again, does not fit the lore of GW
3) I’ll agree this one was lost pretty significantly in the transition, sadly
4) You can get very significant life stealing in the right set, and it ignores armor, meaning you can laugh away at guardians.
5) Weakness, poison, blind, fear, cripple, chill are all easily accessible in our builds, compared to Mesmer confusion that requires specific builds to really abuse.
6) You can run full Rampager gear in dungeons because as long as you are killing things you will have so much LF and HP coming in you will never die except to huge spike damage.

People dislike our signets in general. I think it usually falls out compared to other utility skills, however I always use it underwater (synergizes really well with DS).

Sorry, not cross server but cross region. I can’t PvP with Nemesis, for example, because he is EU and I am NA.

We could also do a 5v5 if needed, they have 10 person servers.

Re the condition cleansing, he’d be procing a lot of conditions, which either don’t warrant cleanses (Barbed Precision has max of 2 second duration I believe) or would probably be a welcome wasted cleanse (weakness isn’t usually a priority cleanse, and would probably be a welcome “cover” condition).

Speed is necessary because mobility is an absolute requirement in PvP, although I don’t think you should ever bring the signet and spectral walk in the same build (swiftness overrides the signet speed).

And idk about the damage, I run a build with similar stats, and it has strong sustained DPS, but I wonder if you have enough defensive stats to stay in the fight long enough to do the damage you need to.

Legendaries are the only thing we are really lacking in. There are two staves with skulls, two scythes, The Crossing, a few fire/ice ones that fit, and there are similar situations in all of the weapons that we can use.

The only thing that we really lack is Legendaries that fit a dark theme, but they have already said they are working on that.

Nightmare runes were fixed I believe. And you can get 2 ticks on Terror quite easily, most PvP Terror builds sit on 70% fear duration and they tick twice often enough.

manveruppd.7601:

That sounds like fun! Sadly I’m on EU so not sure I can join. Can you use the guesting feature cross-continent? Or can you only guest on servers in the same datacentre?

Alternatively, I know that chat is global and you can chat and mail people on any server in the world, so maybe you can invite them to group up as well? If we’re in the same group then the group leader can talk to the tournament NPC and sign us up and we’ll all get the invite even if we’re not on the same map.

Nope, tournaments can’t be done cross server, I would assume that sPvP is the same.

Admired.7461:

Bull Zooker.1672:

thats not true admired I have had 70% fear duration and got 2 ticks on fear. its just not reliable. the closer to 100% fear duration you get the more reliable your second tick of dmg will be.

Are you using Doom to Fear?
Doom will do damage, but it’s not a tick.

If you watch carefully, Doom will hit (1), and then it will tick (2).
If you have 2 seconds: Doom hit (1), Tick (2), Tick (3)

Any damage with a Fear duration of 1.1-1.9 is just the same as 1 second.
2 seconds is the only one that matters for damage.

Again, this is why I said that only happens if you are only using Doom, or any other 1 second (base) fear. Here is how conditions work: when you apply the first condition, it starts a timer. On each full second, that timer “ticks”. All conditions added after that first one use the exact same timing, meaning if you cast a 10 second bleed, then .6 seconds later apply a 1.5 second bleed, that 1.5 second will tick twice.

Because Terror gives a 50% damage bonus if you already have a condition on the target when they are feared, you should always keep a condition on the target first. This means unless you hit it in the 0.1 second window, a 1.9 second fear will tick twice. This has been shown before.

Also, Doom’s damage (when traited via Terror) is done in a tick just like every other DoT condition.

The only time a 1.9 second fear cannot tick twice is if it is applied first. Since you should never use Fear alone with the way Terror works, it has a very high chance of ticking twice.

1.9 seconds of fear should nearly always proc twice if you are using the Terror trait properly (ie: having another condition already applied).

It isn’t. /15char

Few is also relative, we are somewhere in the middle (tied with mesmers, below guardians, warriors, and rangers, but above everyone else) when it comes to weapon sets (I think we are just behind mesmers when it comes to # of total weapons).

I would suggest still keeping consume conditions, it will be more reliable, in practice it is going to heal more, and it is going to proc your 4-set rune (the steal after healing).

I’ve played around with builds like this, with very high crit chance you can proc a lot of life stealing with dagger/warhorn, and it does deal extra damage that ignores armor, which is nice. You are also, life Softspoken said, going to need more to your build, which is fine since full life stealing still leaves room for other things.

Edit: Also, Blood fiend steals every 4 seconds, so that is more like 250/s

They are scared of DS because of the absolute insanity it was during closed beta. Think of it this way, every build you’ve ever complained about (d/d eles, burst thieves, w/e) being able to 1v5 easily, and then give the build invincibility. It was ridiculous, and it lead to a lot of what we see now (death shroud being so weak and impossible to maintain).

Dredlord.8076:

a couple of good ele’s can make you feel this way too though

Ele’s don’t have CC, they can just heal a lot. They actually have counters, there is no counter to permanent, constantly reapplied, hard CC like this.

They read the forums, they just don’t post, so him posting here is getting his ideas (even if you don’t like them).

flow.6043:

I don’t think that it’s a problem that you could spec into it so you would get a 1k hit sometimes

It would be a direct buff to already existing builds (terror), requiring nothing extra to them, and giving (let’s just assume he is talking about a .25 base duration) something over 50% uptime on the single strongest CC in the entire game, in addition to applying the single highest damage condition (by a huge margin).

Imagine a zerg of 20 Necromancers, just pressing 1, all with terror builds, and you’ll see why this is an issue. Frankly, hard CC of any kind would be an issue for similar reasons (such as if it gave a tiny knockback just to interrupt), you could never cast anything with an actual cast time, you’d just sit there eating damage until you gave up and logged out.

I almost never see my mouse in fights (except when I’m targeting), I just keep it near the middle of the screen and that’s good enough.

The problem with it fearing, even a tiny duration, is that even with such a small duration, it is possible for it to tick damage. That means your auto attack on staff has the potential to proc Terror, which can hit for 1k easily (a significant DPS boost), plus you can double fear duration via traits/runes/condition duration food.

There is already a spammable AoE bleed on staff 2, and any condition damage build is already going to have the a 66% and 60% chance to proc bleeds with crits. You already get poison on staff 3 as well, and it isn’t hard to keep up 100% poison once you get past very small fights in PvP.

Dagger OH synergizes, and that is 3/7 weapons.

RashanDale.3609:

did you just post exactly the same stuff twice? >.<

Pretty much. I forget what I post/don’t post sometimes.

Talk to Khalifa and Zombify, they both run very hard hitting power builds, pretty similar to the way thieves are played. Basically speaking, if you can get someone to stand in WoS, they are going to die.

Conditions have their place, and are very strong, even people who use power builds agree, they just think its way more fun to play power :P

Ichor.9360:

But how is that fair, to funnel DPS builds into having to use minions? Why can’t we achieve a satisfying level of DPS with our weapons and traits and gear – like every other profession is able to – without having to devote utilities to it. I’d rather choose utilities for utility (not saying minions don’t have utility) than to supplement lackluster DPS.

Because that just isn’t how we are played. Necromancers don’t necessarily cause high DPS, the goal is that we have relatively high DPS. Meaning sure a warrior vs warrior, those warriors are going to have really high DPS. But when a warrior faces a necromancer, they are going to be chilled, crippled, weakened, feared out of their gap closers/bursts, and are going to have significantly lower DPS than they would against pretty much any other class. Now, you can certainly argue about our effectiveness in doing that, but it is plain to see our theme in our weapon skills/utilities: tons of control, with some damage mixed in.

It depends on what you are planning to bunker. I believe the Juggermancer (or w/e they are called) are bunker builds, Nemesis has a video guide if I remember correctly.

The main types I can think of right now are vitality-DS builds, the above mentioned type of builds, minion based bunkers, and then healing ones. I can’t say if they would work for zergs in WvW, but I have successfully bunkered in PvP, and in PvE its actually possible to bunker with rampager gear (power/precision/condition damage) using a lot of siphoning.

Lore aside, it doesn’t really fit in with the kind of conditions we apply. Burning is a short duration (most burns are 2-3 seconds) condition. Necromancer conditions are quite heavily towards long duration things (look at our bleeds, we have relatively low stacks of really long duration), so burning wouldn’t really fit with what we do in that sense.

But if you really need to apply burning, play MM with an elementalist buddy, and have your bone fiend and flesh wurm fire through a fire field for 3 duration stacks of w/e duration it is every 4 seconds.