Guild Wars 2

Phaeton.9582:

Seems like a nerf to me.. anything with more that 1 cc can cc a lich without running boon removal… That’s pretty big if you time it right….

It refreshes every 3 seconds. So if you hit it right as the first pops up, then you have a 3s window to try to chain CC before another stability comes up. It will be significantly harder to actually chain CC Lich for longer durations when every 3s you have to burn a CC just to remove stability. This is a buff against any team that has a way to remove boons, since that stability would have been gone right away regardless, it is only a nerf against teams that have no boon removal (read: fantasy land).

zapv.8051:

They should make this the 3 point minor in DM. That’s about what it’s worth now.

What is the revenant trait that gives the exact same stacks of stability on effectively the same CD (about 10s to get endurance for a dodge, less w/ vigor)? It should be there.

Lordrosicky.5813:

How long did it take to fix a huge bug like flesh of the master? 4 months? Whereas they hotfix the steal bug straight after the patch. What a joke.

Probably. Took us 4 months to be told Putrid Mark being gutted was a stealth nerf, took around 4 months for downed state to be fixed. In fact, 4 months seems to be the expected duration to wait for anything to be fixed for us.

We’ll see how people handle the Flesh Wurm changes, and if they can be adapted to. My guess is it’ll end up remaining on a lot of bars.

Overall I don’t think this patch will change much, although I do think Lich form got a reasonable buff in competitive play because it can no longer be rendered vulnerable to all CC with a single boon removal. Now it will require a coordinated effort to chain CC it, and even if that happens you will end up “wasting” an extra CC every 3s just to make Lich vulnerable to CC.

The problem would be a number of on-swap sigils would be absolutely wasted.

Its going to be short range.

BlackBeard.2873:

The positive change: Conditions now have partial-ticks at the end of their duration. Smaller ticks are your partial durations finishing up. Now a 1.9s burn is actually more powerful than a 1s burn and will give you 1 tick for full damage and a quicker (in theory) tick for 90% of that damage. However, it needs to be checked that the timing between ticks is actually being truncated too.

This is a questionable buff, honestly, because unless your only condition or boon on the target was the 1.9s burn that burn would get a second tick in the vast majority of situations. The only time it wouldn’t get the second tick is if you applied it within the 0-0.099s window of the “global” timer on that character.

It is a good change, because it makes these interactions much more obvious, but it actually works as a slight nerf to a lot of condition procs that were not full duration ticks, but were close enough that they still got the full second proc almost all the time.

Flesh Golem also gets a single stability instead of any meaningful amount, making him even less relevant as an elite skill. Which obviously was needed, since buggy AI and an active that has been nerfed in damage, CC, speed, and utility wasn’t enough to stop him from being totally broken.

Listen ANet, its really hard to feel like you just don’t pay attention to Necromancers when you let stuff like this fly. You already have nerfed Flesh Golem multiple times, did we really need this on top?

Its a buff to MM, especially in really close fights where your minions staying alive might mean the difference between losing and winning, but otherwise the majority of these traits are rarely/never taken and won’t make a difference.

I’ve been hearing of quite a few issues with Flesh Wurm’s teleport, mainly that you can no longer summon it somewhere where you couldn’t teleport to it, and if you are out of range it won’t teleport you (before you would just get 1200 distance, even if the wurm itself was further away). Can’t test it myself atm.

Rainshadow.4926:

It’s bugged. Please emergency fix!

You must be new to necro.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Perhaps now would be the time to ask ANet to make Necrotic Traversal a true teleport, since the Flesh Wurm cast check means you have to be able to walk to the location.

+1, this is a really good idea. Increase the range on the actual Traversal to 5,000 (portal range), keep the on-cast check at 1200, and decrease cast time to 1/2s or 3/4s

FitG went from really bad to just plain worthless. RIP

I honestly feel like Lich was buffed in most situations. 1 stack every 3 seconds is a buff against anyone who can’t strip the stability, and since Lich should really only be used in teamfights that is pretty much always a buff.

Basically, its a nerf against idiots and people who had no stability strips, and a buff everywhere else.

This is a buff in any situations where you would have lost stability, which was pretty much any time you would have used Lich against competent players. Yes new stability is relatively easy to get through, but to chain CC Lich you end up “wasting” a lot of extra CCs, whereas before you would have just removed stability and done it better.

10/10

I say that because that is how ANet thinks. They have brought up flashing DS as a theoretical maximum before with Weakening Shroud.

Roe.3679:

Still wondering what this means for flesh wurm. It’ll kill the whole skill if the stunbreak just doesn’t work.

Heard from someone that all of the TP locations still work.

Atherakhia.4086:

So it’s pretty much confirmed that Foot in the Grave grants only a single stack of stability?

Yes.

Godless.1857:

I’m really not sure how big of a difference this will make – possibly making us a bit more of a threat when downed if we’ve invested in the blood traitline?

For the majority of these traits it doesn’t make a huge deal right now. When/If siphoning is fixed it will make downed Necromancers (that have the traits) the hardest profession to kill without a stomp, pretty easily. It matters a lot for MM though, since Flesh of the Master was killing all minions when we were downed, which makes a big difference.

@spoj, its possible some of these issues weren’t a problem then. I know for sure that a number of the minion ones were introduced long after the downed HP problem.

According to the patch notes, we had 16 traits that were nonfunctional when a Necromancer was downed. And people wonder why this profession feels like a joke sometimes. Thanks for fixing the bugs, but what the hell how was this allowed to happen in the first place.

Because one condition removed every 10s is considered standard for an Adept see: Purity.

flow.6043:

Ragion.2831:

- easy access to vulnerabilty
- can easily hit over 100% crit without sacrificing survivabilty.
- long protection durations
- easy access to movment speed
-The most amount of boon rips

Are we still talking about the necro?

Unyielding Blast, Focus 4, WoS, Axe AA are all viable options in actual builds. We also have one or two other sources, but from stuff that I wouldn’t really ever suggest using.

100% crit with Deathly Perception, which is also in our best (arguably only working) defensive tree. It doesn’t take up a defensive trait either, since the other two traits there aren’t really defensive.

A build with Spectral Armor/Wall, and both spectral traits gives 43% protection uptime. 9s on SA 40s CD, 7.5s on SWall 36s CD, and then you also get Last Gasp with technically another 22.5% uptime. It might not be the highest of every profession, but it is really high.

We have 100% swiftness really easily, Signet of Locust is actually decent now, we have movement speed really easily.

Boon ripping he’s just wrong on though, Mesmer has it better, we’re probably a solid 2nd place though, and ours are more useful for PvP (namely CB).

Tman.6349:

Also, how balanced does this Hybrid need to be? Could you lean more towards one or the other instead of trying to go the 50/50 route? I personally think it’s better to, at least counter one type of build instead of being mediocre against them all.

If you go more into any one direction you might as well just finish the job and go full condi or power.

Turrets should be nerfed to be more like other AIs.

For SWs to be viable, the duration isn’t the problem. They need an elite SW (MM/Turret Engi both have elite AIs) and they need their traiting to be massively fixed up.

They listen to us on the forums. As proof, the Revenant has a lot of things that Necromancers have asked for in the past.

NeXeD.3042:

Yeah but why does axe even count as hybrid…. because it cause vuln on auto? Meh, feel like the dps, life force regen and immobilize make dagger win everytime… only time I take axe is on a pure glass dps build and I pretty much never press 1 since I time it out well enough I can just use 3 2 swap to ds lb lb lb axe 2 and back to d/h.

Dagger hits faster and harder probably proccing barbed precision more…. and even on a hybrid build are you really pressing one often enough for the vuln to be a reliable cover condi?

It is used because of Axe 2, and its AA, afaik, plus the range. Also now Axe finishes its AA faster than dagger will, you will get a tiny bit more attacks overall with Axe’s auto. And all of that is basically because you rely on on-crit condition procs to be “hybrid”.

I do really love the idea of layering our Lifeforce while still having our normal weapons. It is a really good idea, and there are quite a few ways they could implement it.

I would mention that we do very much have sustain right now. It is just too difficult to get in many cases because it removes too much of other important things (usually damage), but it isn’t like it is nonexistent. I would also really prefer they give us self-healing through DS before something like this.

That said, I somewhat like your idea. The only problem I have with it is that you basically step all over the toes of Elementalists, which ANet isn’t likely to want to do, since every profession as of right now feels pretty unique. Not a bad idea though, I see it being much more likely as a specialization, since ANet seems to like the idea of doing some cross profession mixes there (our GS is going to be heavily based on Ranger’s I bet, seeing as Marj learned from a Ranger).

Its A/WH because that is what hybrids use. That said, I have never been a fan of hybrid necro, except when Dhuumfire was on crit.

I’d take SA to replace it. Nothing against WoP, but SA better replaces Wurm for a personal defense, since it brings damage taken to 33% when you pop it and go into DS, which allows you to get out of a bad situation. Plague signet and WoP don’t fit the “general” stun break/defensive CD nearly as well, unless you specifically need defense from conditions (in which case WoP > PS). Also WoP doesn’t work in quite as many situations, as having a cast time means there are some times where you are CCed but can’t cast it.

Deathshroud should show your 6-0 abilities greyed out. Not every weapon, but treat it more like the extended weapon-set part of your profession that it is, instead of making it feel so separate from the rest of the profession.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQFAWCt2koYQiMwCquC

Sorry for the late update. This is the basis of a chill build. You’ll notice something important, it takes less than half of your skill points, one weapon set, one utility skill, and your elite. With this, and 0% extra condition duration, you’re already looking at:
Spectral Grasp: 6s chill 24s CD, 25% uptime
Chillblains: 4s chill 20s CD, 25% uptime
Dark Path: 5s chill 15s CD, 33% uptime
And then Plague gives you a 20s chill effectively, and turns plague from pretty strong against melees to an absolute shutdown against melees

So with just 3 skills, maybe 1/3rd of your total build, and without taking traits that are too bad or barring you from much, you get 83% chill uptime. With just a tiny bit of condition duration (Sigil of Chilling is enough) you’re looking at 100% chill uptime. From this base, you generally choose a focus: spectral power bunker, wells support, or just a general tankier condition build.

They said that like 2 years ago, yeah. I remember being told recently that it isn’t a bug anymore, but now that I think back I’m not sure if I remember it right. But basically it was that no other professions lose their summons to transforms, we do because they decided to code it so that Lich/Plague kill them (not a bug).

In games like this I tend to agree, people who are at the “top” are there because they are the ones putting in the effort to make/be on teams. This isn’t like League where there is a huge professional scene and where the highest rated players are not only highly visible but their games are seen a lot.

That isn’t to say Nos is bad, he’s a great player better than 99% of Necromancers. But that top 1% still has a lot of players who aren’t lured in by the prospects of being semi-e-famous, and so they just chill around and play PvP a ton without joining a team and putting up with the legendary amount of BS lots of people do.

Yeah, it has a really high potential. I’ve done the math before and I cba to do it again (and its not like I’ll ever find it through the “search” function), but it is entirely possible to get a full heal’s worth of extra healing from these traits because of the ridiculous amount they can proc. The problem with the traits though is that they are held back by this fantasy scenario: getting that many procs is pretty much limited to PvE, you will never hit that in PvP and only in WvW when all the planets align. This means that 99% of the time, your traits aren’t procing that much, and they’re being outperformed by other options.

And those other options all have one thing in common: ICDs. Vampiric Master has an effective ICD through the minion attacks, and it doesn’t scale up. Sigils all have ICDs, same with the food. They are effectively gated through some mechanic, which means the best-case scenario is actually pretty common, and so their point of balance is close to what you actually get, unlike the other vampiric traits whose point of balance is out in Narnia.

manveruppd.7601:

Oh you’re basing it on that? I hope you’re right, but I wouldn’t put much faith in it. After all, Treahearne could summon 6 Flesh Golems… :p

Rytlock’s “story” gave us the new profession, Marjory was given an entirely unique new animation, and a whole set of story to set her up to teach other Necromancers, and when ANet announced it they specifically mentioned Marjory.

Afaik Plague and Lich had the “kill minions” added as a feature, and is no longer a “bug” in the true sense of it. It is intended, though that is incredibly stupid.

Big streamers streaming is a good deal for us, even if you don’t like them. By teaching sodapoppin for a while, Phanta managed to more than triple the size of his stream, if just for a while.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The real problem with the passive in its current state is that you’re going to need your converts/transfers for conditions your enemies are already applying to you. If you are also picking up allies’ conditions, you will actually be overwhelming your own ability to deal with them, and you will end up converting or transfering conditions you’d rather just tank. Since it’s just transferring conditions and isn’t actually doing anything to reduce the duration or ameliorate the condition, it hardly can even be considered a beneficial passive.

There is absolutely no reason a condi Necromancer should ever be overwhelmed by conditions. Dagger 4, Staff 4, and Consume Conditions alone should be good enough, plus if at any point you feel overwhelmed you just active Plague Signet and you’ve effectively hit the enemy team with a SoS (or worse), and no more passive to worry about. You can put Well of Power on top to use the passive as a way to give yourself boons.

manveruppd.7601:

Do you have any inside info on that? Cause if you’re right, it would be awesome, but if you’re just guessing it’s really cruel to tease us dude!

Inside? No, but we know it has nearly 50% chill uptime just from auto attacking.

Just to prove the point, engi/necro went undefeated for ages in the 2v2 weekly tournaments.

manveruppd.7601:

I also think that the passive is interesting, but badly implemented. You’re not helping your teammates by pulling 1 condi every 10" randomly.

Its once every 3s according to the wiki, although I can’t say I’ve tested it. This makes it 3 times stronger (from the perspective of your allies) than any of the other signets that remove conditions, with the “downside” being that they are pulled to you instead of removed fully (“downside” since we have 3 ways to transfer and 1 to turn into boons).

I’ll try to throw up the old build we used back in the profession tournaments, because one dude ran the most aggravating chill/spectral bunker build that had massive protection and chill uptime. Its fun, not optimal but fun.

Also worth noting, once the expansion hits greatsword will do wonders for chill builds.

Engineer isn’t complicated, if you really have no idea what you are doing you can honestly press all the buttons in order and do a pretty decent job. Remember that it only has 14 skills total without kits equipped, and eat kit adds 4 skills, this is compared to other professions which have 16-19 skills (10 weapon, 5 utility, 1-4 profession), Elementalist which has 25+attunements, and Necromancer which has 20+Death Shroud entry/exit. Overall, unless you are running a full kit Engineer, they will be average to slightly higher than average as far as number of skills to remember, and due to the low CD of kit swapping a “bad” swap into a kit only puts you behind by 1s, so unlike other professions messing up a swap isn’t that big of a deal.

People just tend to think kits = tons of extra skills and that they won’t be able to keep up, but the reality is unless you are running a 100% kit build (which doesn’t happen, you rarely have more than 2), you don’t have much more than average.

Engineer

You can see it when you’re in it, but yeah there isn’t like an easy preview of it.

Go on the wiki

Generally speaking Necro bunker (besides MM to a degree) doesn’t work. It isn’t an issue with dying, the right build (spectral) has massive protection uptime, which while in DS reduces the damage you take to 33%, which is a massive amount of reduction and its up a lot. You can also pick up a good bit of healing with the right sigil/rune setup and casting dagger 2 a lot.

The problem tends to be that you can’t be tanky and deal enough consistent damage at the same time. Also non-MM bunkers are forced into really weird options if they want to have consistent weakness/poison uptime, which is really important for us.

Basically, you’d need to re-create everything that MM does well on another build, but using different skills/traits to accomplish it, and that just ends up not happening. MM brings so much defensive conditions, sustained and light burst damage, tankiness and sustain, and CC, and it can do so in a way that other builds can’t replicate.

I’m honestly not sure why 2s would be too much. By making it 3 they make it so that anyone with a secured stomp will be able to stomp the person you are trying to res before you even finish casting.