Guild Wars 2

Infect.2738:

It corrupts in an AOE? I didn’t notice that when i was testing. This does make it look like a pretty powerful choice. Definitely gonna play around with that more now. I was just finding that with spite landing AND corrupting to create an extra 2 condi, it was just too much damage for the target to deal with. I am just managing the movement speed with travelers still because it plays nice with terror too.

Yep, technically so would SoU if anyone used it, but the Signet boon corruption works on anyone who is affected by the signet, making SoL AoE boon corruption. Also worth noting that SoL had its base healing increased by 20% due to Bloodthirst being made baseline, so its a pretty nice secondary heal.

Mia Crazymike.1780:

I want to donate so much money to you. But you suck at Twitch.tv

8(

Roe.3679:

Bhawb you should stream more, that was fun to watch.

Planning on streaming more often, there is a good chance I’ll try to stream any time I’m planning on PvPing a bit that day, though it will generally be in the morning/afternoon PST so sorry to anyone who is outside those time zones (I play League at night with the SOAC guys).

Zin.6170:

I’m torn between staff vs. axe/dagger as my second weapon slot.

I’m used to the staff and like its longer range, but feel I can put out more single target pressure with the axe.

That’s pretty much the choice. Its mostly a preference deal, however I personally find that without axe there are a lot of fights I should have won that I didn’t, and honestly in my build I’m so tanky that its not like I ever need to fight at 1200 range.

In condi builds yes, but I’m playing MM and I’m tanky as balls.

Bravo to them for the fast follow up, that is the kind of consideration we’ve been wanting for a long time, and that kind of fast follow up will help immensely.

There are some definite balance issues, however the overall pace of the game is vastly more enjoyable. My mistakes are “bigger”, with people being able to blow you up so quickly you can’t afford to be careless like you used to, and I feel it really shows off the combat GW2 is great for. That, and a lot of the new traits are genuinely fun. I have to actually think about my traits and how everything interacts now, rather than just having my abilities all do X more damage on Y less CD.

0 defense was really noticeable for sure. I have to be really conscious to start the fight with life force generation.

And it isn’t that crazy to assume that we won’t see a balance patch until then, from past history (although I think ANet has stepped up the cadence game this time around).

I already called it. They won’t realize that the only reason Necromancers are destroying people with condis is because other condi builds are so stupidly powerful that even condi builds can’t deal with their own condis.

Necros are extremely strong against condi builds because condi builds literally kill themselves through transfers. The Necro doesn’t even need condi damage.

Its not that you are beating them though, its the transfers, its just that Engis are so OP even Engi can’t beat Engi.

The sheer joy of pulling an ally onto a ledge out of an enemy stomp that is otherwise impossible to stop and saving them is amazing. The new patch is a lot of fun to play with, though probably less so if you were really hoping to play condi.

I had a ton of fun on MM. Blood Bond and Transfusion are amazing traits to use. Condi Necro is still borked, power necro is better at using condis than condi is, plague is awful I literally killed other necros solely because they tried to use Plague, and Consume Conditions is so bad I am using SoV. Overall it was fun though, so long as I ignored the bad stuff.

http://www.twitch.tv/bhawb/b/671833885

VOD of my stream earlier, not sure of the times but I get a lot of saves off with it, the trait is insanely fun to use, places like Foefire you can pull people up onto ledges, same with Forest, a lot of areas where you can pull allies from stomps and into really safe spots.

Soldier Signet Necros are better condi builds than condi necros.

Not a big fan of the design of this trait because of how it works. Blood Bond on the other hand is one of the most enjoyable traits I’ve ever used. But its not that bad, very noticeable proc mechanic, really easy to force your enemy to blow it.

Tanky runes or might related runes are both good options. Condi damage/duration doesn’t matter since it doesn’t scale off that.

Welcome back bud, signet builds are definitely hilarious right now.

I’ve been updating metabattle with what I feel is the “standard” MM build post-patch. So head over there in a few hours and I’ll be finished with it.

Also, SoV is amazing now. It is legitimately really strong, and Blood Bond doesn’t interfere with it in any way, simply adds 5 stacks with separate durations to the stack like a condition would work.

Signet Necro with the condi transfers is. A soldier signet necro can literally 1v1 condi builds with the condi build’s own conditions killing them. Five Gauge died to Nos using it, and he took so much condi damage he thought Nos was a condi build.

It is really strong honestly. SoS is a massive burst again, PS with all the condi builds is a secondary SoS+stunbreak on 24s CD, plus the passive Plague Signet. Really fun to use, and SoV is a legitimate heal.

Transfusion heals for 6.3k with Clerics, closer to 7k with healing power runes and/or the extra HP from the minor trait. It is actually insane, and the new allied pull is amazing, in the 4 hours I was streaming earlier I probably saved at least one ally per game with it. It is one of the most fun traits I’ve ever played with.

Grandmaster Lee.9568:

Are you using staff with MM now? I think a while ago you told me it wasn’t worth using with MM. What made you change your mind?

I played staff at the beginning, assuming that the buffs to it and nerfs to Axe Auto were enough. However, I still hate staff, honestly even more after the changes. Regen on Staff 2 is meaningless with the new BM minor, we’ve got plenty of poison with death nova, condi transfer can be covered with dagger OH, dagger OH also supplies bleeds for Blood Bond, and Reaper’s Mark can be covered by Wail of Doom. Axe just deals better damage overall, has boon removal, stuff like that. So I’ve stopped using it.

I’m in the process of updating the metabattle build now that I’m done streaming, and I might be streaming around the same time tomorrow. So metabattle will have the most recent version of my build so you guys can see what I was using. I was also using a condi/signet build Rym made which was really interesting.

Spite – mid/top/top
Curse – mid/bot/mid
Blood – bot/bot/bot
Rabid/Settler, Undead Runes, Scepter/Dagger or WH, Staff, geomancy/energy sigils, SoV, SoS, Plague Signet, Flesh Wurm, Plague/Flesh Golem

Hey guys, I’m going to be streaming some MM gameplay with the new specializations while I work out builds and whatnot. Come join and watch my awful skills after having not really played in ages.

Its in the condition and crit chance tree. Curses has always had a tie to precision and crit chance, and it still does.

About to play, will update.

I’m in love with a lot of the icons.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I have failed you all. ;-;

I’ll try very hard to get a lot of visibility on this for the next set of fixes.

RIP, you tried man.

Yep. Not worth it to run on minion builds, imo, but it does work.

Currently testing our other heals, I very likely won’t be using CoCo anymore if they work out.

Rym was kind enough to make a video on the ultimate evolution of Necromancer builds.

In a 1v1, adding in how much condition removal he already had, and the fact that it got a decent buff by having Bloodthirst rolled in, SoV might be passable compared to CC now.

Gryph.8237:

Bhawb, honestly asking here, what were the indications that power necro could hang in that meta. I mean i saw a mesmer spike a bot in under 2 seconds, and i did not see power improved in any way dmg wise, or defensively. I really am asking for your opinion.

Power Necro got baseline:

Nerfs
Consume Conditions 5s increased CD, self applies 4s of 10 vuln
Lich form 5s duration nerf

Buffs
Bloodthirst now baseline
Siphons heal through shroud
Mark sized increased, Staff skills CD reduced by 20%, Mark damage increased by 10%
Lich form 15% LF gained on end
Well skills ranged by default

In all, power necros effectively got a full traitline worth of buffs, since the tiny bit we went into Curses (the only bit that mattered, as passive bleeds were mostly mediocre in PvP) is now baseline. In addition, we got 2 staff skills worth of free traits, and Bloodthirst for free. So effectively 4 free traits, with CoCo being the only loss, and this is baseline. Once we include the trait changes we also get:

20% CD on wells, which also siphon and apply protection on cast
Banshee’s Wail or Vampiric Presense
A free major adept trait in Spite (now that our downed trait was rolled into base)
Actual minor traits at the Adept and GM tier in Spite (previous ones were borderline worthless)
Whatever you take in the Adept BM spot
And then basically whatever you take in the Adept/Master spots in SR you are getting 2 for 1, as everything got merged together. So that is an extra 2 traits total, from before.

So those are all free, new additions we didn’t have before. It is a ton of power added.

Goldenrevolver.4371:

Gryph.8237:

alcohol probably.

youre not the only one. it was a bad day for necro

If only this patch hit later I could do a drunk stream when my parents were gone. They might ask questions if I get smashed at like noon on a Tuesday though.

Realistically the only bad parts of the patch were Corruption related. Everything else was arguably fine, some great maybe a little bit mediocre here and there, but if we could ignore everything related to corruptions we’d have a very different opinion.

The problem is Consume Conditions got wrapped up in that, as did Plague.

Not really up to Meta Battle’s admins, the speed that it updates depends more on the community figuring out what is working.

Its pulsing, hopefully they don’t change it so we can all make hilarious videos tomorrow.

I think he’s talking about the inevitable buffs we’ll have to receive after this crapshow.

On a side note Power Necro might be okay.

I mean the good news is that now that staff is buffed I can go back to using staff after like a one and a half year of boycotting it. RIP Unholy Feast, I won’t really miss you because I’m probably going to use the trait to pick up the only useful Axe skill.

I’d still take CF, the extra toughness/condi resistance scales better with healing power.

I just…

Plague can fairly easily kill you with a bit of effort, wouldn’t worry about it too much.

There are rumors that Karl is looking into the plague self-applied bleed, and making it one long duration application instead.

spoj.9672:

Did you test if its capped to 5. Ive always assumed those buffs were capped. But im wondering if thats true. Or if minions ignore the cap because they are linked to you.

I’ll test tomorrow just to be 100% on this, since it’d be pretty funny if your own minions surpass the cap, but most likely this is the case yes, because minions are considered part of the AoE cap in everything else, although many things (if not everything? not sure) prioritize players over minions for buffs.

Rym.1469:

If he used other runes than Nightmare, he’d maybe even kill himself.

With the poison/bleed duration runes, plus food in PvE I think it should be easy to kill yourself.

Cecilia.5179:

What’d he do?

Using Blood Is Power + Plague on a totally average condi build brought himself to 6k HP. With a bit of effort you should be able to kill yourself.

Downedstate traits got nerfed, so no.

Its here

Yeah I just checked it doesn’t heal you for self-inflicted condis. Good news is minion-inflicted condis do heal you.

Sagat.3285:

I think nostalgia is blinding them when it comes to balance.

They are about to share the experience with consume conditions.

kitten , y’all are hurtful, almost as hurtful as Plague will be to Necromancers post patch.