Guild Wars 2

mikeew.8607:

Its funny that so many state we have nothing to offer in PVE, cause I stack vuln like a beast I have superior aoe burst dps, I am highly survivable compared to most other classes. I have been in pugs where almost full wipes occurred and me and maybe one other were left to down said boss and did. I stack bleeds which also helps other classes who benefit from the dmg % increase on conditions applied to enemy. I can pop in to lick and aoe cleanse an area. Not sure what necro you guys are playing and what 1 button super win = #yoloswagintantkillgodmode you are looking for. Maybe its not the class so much thats the issue as the players playing them. Ever hear the saying it’s not the car, its the driver (same same). Also there are interrupts and stability fields boon stripping. Not sure wtf else ppl want. Learn to play a bit more is all I can say.

1) You stack vuln worse than engineer while doing less DPS (this is a fact)
2) You only have good burst DPS for a tiny amount of time, after that a staff ele will completely destroy your AoE, and they can do it forever, also I have a feeling that FB 4 will out DPS a Necro.
3) My full zerker ele lives through dungeons in a full zerker pug group just fine, survivability only matters if you need it, and you shouldn’t need it
4) That isn’t proof of anything except that your pug group was awful. I’ve solo’d bosses before with my MM build, its still an awful build for any decent group
5) Literally any group should have conditions going around. We aren’t unique to getting bleed on crit
6) And when you see a Honda Civic win a major racing event, then we can talk about drivers being what matters. Until then, even the best driver in an awful car is going to lose. And that’s the issue with Necro, no matter what player you put on the profession (for PvE), they will underperform compared to every other profession.

Rising Dusk.2408:

The idea that there ever was a Terrormancer, regardless of if its fallen out of PvP meta or not, is indicative of its ability to define a build. Furthermore, it wouldn’t even necessarily constitute a nerf since they’d have to move a GM trait down to compensate, and could do that such to maintain the same build options as before.

It defined a build only because Nemesis made a video about it, and because there were no other traits at the time worth mentioning. Ever since Dhuumfire and PoC were introduced, Terror has taken a back seat because it isn’t strong enough to define builds anymore.

And yes, it would be a large nerf. Terror is not worth a GM slot anymore, nor could you compensate except for a single build, being PoC, which couldn’t move down because it is far more worthy of a GM slot than Terror is.

Emapudapus.1307:

Or they move terror as Blood Mgic grandmaster trait. Blood magic not so usless anymoe and they will say they listen to community for wanting to buff blood magic traitline.

That is a horrible idea.

A “heavy” doesn’t really specify much. A full glass DPS guardian with no additional armor except just the heavy armor isn’t all that tanky at all. Also was this PvP or WvW, did he have full might, how much vuln did you have, were you sub 50%, etc.

CPC having some projectile stuff would be nice, but the main reason it isn’t run is because its a support skill for a profession that can’t build support.

Spiteful Marks – Healing added to marks instead of a damage increase.

Do you mean you get a flat heal when marks hit an enemy? And could you explain the mechanics, does it work like Soul Marks or does it scale with people hit, do you need to actually “hit” the mark or does a mark always heal no matter how its proc’d? Love the idea in concept.

Parasitic Contagion – Scaling off of healing power instead of condition damage.

Why not both? It can heal for a base X% + (Y*Healing Power)% scaling

Chilling Darkness – Chill duration changed from 1s to 3s with 3s cooldown per foe.

Great idea

Weakening Shroud – Weakness and bleed inflicted are now 3s.

I don’t feel the bleeding needs to be nerfed for a 1s weakness increase. It should have been 3s always

Reaper’s Precision – Increased chance to gain life force from 33% to 50%.

Also solid idea

Master of Corruption – Corruption skills also grant 5% life force when used.

I feel like this doesn’t really fit. It’d be much cooler if it got rid of the drawback to using them, or maybe applied the self-detriment to the enemy.

Terror – Damage scaling changed per amount of conditions on foes. (Nerf & Buff)

I don’t think Terror needs this kind of change. It basically makes it weaker for general pressure (which we need more of), and it makes it even stronger for fear bombs (which are very strong already).

Withering Precision – Life blast inflicts 3s of weakness on critical hits. (No cooldown)

Not sure about the duration, that’s a ton of weaknesss with some +duration, otherwise I like it.

Ritual of Protection – Changed to pulse 1s of protection rather than 3s when cast.

Solid.

Unholy Sanctuary – Healing increase or 3s of protection when entering death shroud.

Healing increase (base) would be nice, otherwise the trait itself isn’t the issue, its issue is the builds that want to take it aren’t good for totally different reasons.

Necromantic Corruption – Tainted shackles turns all might stacks into torment stacks if immobilize lands at the end of the channel.

Is this just a completely changed trait? Because this doesn’t make sense for this tree anymore if it is. This trait in its current form would serve very nicely to be able to make builds that keep minions alive, contrary to DN.

Vampiric – Moved from major to minor baseline.

Interesting. Not sure if good or not but certainly a buff

Full of Life – Moved from minor to major. 5% of vitality is converted into toughness.

Not sure that this would really be taken.

Deathly Invigoration – Moved from master to minor.

I don’t think this really makes sense. The trait is pretty niche, making it a minor means a lot of builds get a trait that they get fairly low usage out of.

Bloodthirst – Moved from adept to major baseline.

?

Transfusion – Moved from adept to master.

Pls no.

Quickening Thirst – Changed to be 33% movement speed when wielding a dagger.

Nice change.

Unholy Martyr – Revamp. Life Transfer draws conditions from allies. (Underwater version changed to no longer do this as untraited effect)

Good change.

Speed of Shadows – Changed to grant 3s of swiftness when entering death shroud.
Also solid.

Overall a lot of good ideas. Some I don’t agree with, but mostly on point.

Tormod the Fox.2368:

In PvE I love how i cap Vulnerability AoE, in a way its a form of offensive support.
I know it’s not as good as reflect and party wide buffs, but in a way we do have support.
We do not have many options for support in PvE because vulnerability and conditions are all we have.

If you want to deal any kind of reasonable DPS you won’t stack vuln well. An engi will out damage you while stacking a lot of vuln.

Which leads to the issue: everything Necro can do someone else can do better (PvE).

Rising Dusk.2408:

Terror is such a build-defining trait that it should be grandmaster already, and I say that as someone who has mained a Necromancer since the very first beta event.

It isn’t build defining, its literally just something to give us pressure because we lack pressure so much already. We don’t truly have Terror-mancers anymore that are defined by taking the maximum fears they can, we have either tanky-PoC necros which are defined by their difficult to kill in small fights and their corruptions, and Dhuumfire which is defined by its higher offensive output.

Also no, Necromancers really don’t have anything that needs direct nerfing anymore. Nightmare rune procs need to be hit, we need some clarity/counterplay changes (things like marks not having an indicator before they are cast), but otherwise we aren’t at all too strong. At this point ANet’s best bet is very gradual but small buffs to the things you don’t see, alongside additions to the class to fill in the holes. And judging by what they changed in the last patch, they understand at least the fact that we don’t need many nerfs, just counterplay changes.

Narkodx.1472:

6/6/0/0/4 Necromancer

Dhuumfire – Path of Corruption – Terror – Master of Terror

GG

I just died a little inside thinking of that.

And if you played any profession but Necromancer your AC run would be more efficient.

You can run dungeons naked, “viable” in PvE in this game is determined by how useful you are to your team, not by whether you are able to finish the content or not. So Necromancers being bad in PvE doesn’t mean we can’t complete PvE content, but replacing us with someone else will always be better.

We are amazing in WvW and we’re fine in PvP. And unless you are doing group PvE content the game is so easy it doesn’t matter (not that group is hard, but I prefer to not hold my team back).

Because minion AI is tied to all AI in the game, and its not an easy fix.

Still bugged. I wouldn’t count on it being fixed in a hotfix. Anything that doesn’t totally break the game (like 50k damage chaos storms, or major bugs to profession mechanics) tends to wait for regular patches to be fit in.

Oh cool another post about how conditions are OP even though we haven’t actually been in a condi meta for ages.

Muchacho.2390:

If necromancer are so op in 2v2, why dont they dominate the 2v2 tournemants (e.g. esl weekly 2v2)?

Well… they generally do, at least in NA. Pretty sure Outplayed by Children’s Engi/Necro comp has been very successful forever, and even the Zombicoc 2 necro comp was basically undefeated for a while until the eles on the other team swapped to DS (and IIRC they were watching the stream and there was a bunch of BS build swapping due to stream sniping).

So yeah, actually Necro has done very well in 2v2s. ESL would be less likely because Necro has never been popular in EU, and people tend to just play their main class.

Note: this isn’t at all to say Necromancer is remotely OP. But they are strong in small fights. They have issues completely unrelated to that, though, that make it very difficult to actually use them in high tier competitive play when teams are playing well together.

Kuldebar.1897:

I don’t think pretending a broken Trait is “alright” or acceptable is the way to go. Bringing it up, berating and calling attention to the issue seems far more practical from the standpoint of Official Forum Posting.

Sure, in game, why use a broken Trait if it will cause you grief? But sticking one’s head in the sands when it comes to communication with ANet is not helpful.

The game already forces its players to play the margins of “fun” far too often, everyone has a limit to what they can ignore or shrug off.

Not like ANet has a very good track record of putting players at ease with simple acknowledgement and validation.

I was the first person to report it in the bug section as bugged the exact same day the patch hit. So yeah, I’m totally hiding my head in the sand here.

I posted because people were using ridiculous exaggerations of how badly the trait is bugged and making assertions about priorities that make absolutely no sense, and then acting like they are forced to take the trait and have absolutely no option other than to deal with minions being desummoned constantly.

It is good advice. You can either have minions constantly despawn because you demand to use a bugged trait, or you unequip the trait until its fixed.

I haven’t once said it shouldn’t be fixed. But you are not forced to use that trait as an MM, I am fully aware of what you do and don’t need for the build, and in PvE you don’t even need to go deeper than 2 points in DM for general roaming. So if you want to keep equipping a trait that is killing your minions, feel free. But there is a difference between continuously walking into a wall and complaining that it shouldn’t be there, and walking around the wall, pointing out it shouldn’t be there, and going about your day.

It’ll be fixed when its fixed. Until then, you know the consequences of using the trait.

Feel free to equip the trait, but don’t complain when the trait functions in a known manner and you can fix the problem yourself by just not equipping a completely unnecessary trait.

It is not nearly as core of an issue as the thief steal was. Imagine if Death Shroud just didn’t activate and went on CD if you used it while doing another action, and that’s similar to what we’re talking about.

Just don’t equip flesh of the master in open PvE (it isn’t remotely necessary, minions have very high base HP there anyway), and in PvP just don’t expect them to carry you in a downed fight. It is an issue, to be sure, but overstating its impact doesn’t help.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Make it work like shadowstep with same range or bound by ground pathing.
problems solved.

It does follow shadowstep rules.

Also swapping places would suck. It ends up artificially increasing the CD significantly, for no real benefit except maybe a few extra AAs. There really is no general scenario where the wurm lives long enough for a second swap, just maybe a few very niche situations.

It turns fear into a damaging condition, its damage will function similar to burning, only it gets a bonus if at least one other condition is on the target.

Ogre, Pack, Vampirism are the best for a power focused MM.

SWalk isn’t worth it in MM builds. Wurm is strictly better for the kind of things that you should be doing in a PvP match, namely roaming between side nodes (or wherever the teamfight isn’t), and in WvW if you don’t want/need Wurm you should take an extra minion. The issue with walk is it isn’t a true mobility, unlike wurm which allows you to instantly move somewhere once you have it down, Walk is a very limited thing that lets you juke or jump in and out of fights if you want to do some weird tricks.

But overall an MM build should basically always have 3 minions on the utility bar (only exception is condi, where you can take CB).

Ogre, Melandru (only if you are using the -condi duration food and aren’t using staff/dagger OH), Dwayna/Water (if you are using Cleric), Pack, Vamp, maybe a few others if you are doing an off-build.

Also you want Consume Conditions.

drtoszi.2967:

Even better if you’re good enough to watch them and let them get in some hits before they’re hit by AoE to maximize damage.

Actually you lose DPS every second they are not blown up after the CD is up, especially with traiting. So optimizing them is actually making sure they die as quickly as possible after they come off CD.

Flesh Wurm is fine, the only thing I’d do is lower its cast time, make the poison/blast where you are, and maybe increase its teleport distance. Although if they ever do what I want them to and rework Training of the Master, teleport distance increase + AA range increase would be perfect.

Its pathing. It is highly tied to their AI, but pathing issues tend to be what messes them up.

Imo Vital Persistence is a great trait for any power build planning to shoot LBs a lot. In a spectral build, I think unyielding blast is better, although VP would be good too.

Condition duration only matters if you are playing condi MM, otherwise it is entirely unimportant. Minions don’t apply damaging conditions except via fields (and we only get poison) and Jagged Horrors. Also power doesn’t affect damage either.

You should be looking to go either Soldier, Cleric, or if condi, Dire or Shaman (or whichever is toughness/condi/healing). Generally the healing setups will give you much better sustain over the course of longer fights, whereas the other two will give you stronger up-front potential, but if you don’t win early you probably won’t do as well.

Blood is Power is often used in power builds because of the might it gives, which affects power builds just as well (if not better) than condition builds. And corrupt boon is very strong not just because of the damage of the conditions it causes, but because of the instant flip from having a bunch of boons, to suddenly having a bunch of (damage and non damage) conditions.

So neither really need to have condition damage to work very well.

Don’t assume GvG will ever be a thing, a few years down the road when you’re happy and doing something else instead of drowning your tears at some dive bar with cheap booze you’ll thank me.

I don’t understand why the speed was nerfed. The issue with counterplay was it has no pre-cast on the golem, just the Necro, and it isn’t that noticeable of an animation (just a point).

They should have changed it to work like the rest of the non-heal minions. Make the activation instant cast, but give the golem his own post-cast animation delay where he winds up. Keep the speed the same, but have him maybe glow a bit or something. As it is now, he still has the same lack of counterplay at close proximity, but will never hit somebody.

Roe.3679:

I keep hearing that assassin is more DPS, but doesn’t it have less overall stats? Zerker has that nice extra vitality.

Yes/no. Assassin has less overall stats, this is correct, its somewhat like how celestial has bonus stats because it is mixed. However two things are important.
1) Crit chance is better than power in most situations, as far as DPS goes
2) Assassin has 100% of its stats as offensive stats. Berserker has 2033 offensive stats, whereas Assassin has 2232 offensive stats

The first is true up until you hit 100% crit chance. This means if you are able to hit 100% crit chance on the important attacks (warrior with proper traiting, backstab thief with trait, DP necro) without Assassin’s precision, then it is wasted. However if you’re just looking at DPS over time, Assassin will out DPS Berserker, because it has more raw offensive stats, and those stats scale better in the circumstances we are talking about. On a side note, the reason Berserker is preferred in PvE is because you generally want to hit exactly 100% crit chance with no wasted stats, and Berserker gives you the most flexibility without wasting stats.

The second is due to Berserker’s vitality. It means for raw offensive Assassin ends up better. However, if you don’t need to squeeze that tiny bit of extra offense, zerker ends up being better in PvP because it gives you some survivability, and the damage loss often isn’t worth dying faster.

Also something to note is that Assassin matters more with more attacks. The more chances you take advantage of its extra crit chance/ferocity the better it makes itself. If you focus all your burst into one attack (say, BS thief) then it might not be worth it due to RNG.

TL;DR Zerker has slightly higher overall stats, and is often in practice due to it having some vitality at no huge loss of offense, however Assassin has more pure offensive stats, and so has higher DPS.

The only issues I have with this trait is that its conditional regen that can’t stack with other healing, and also requires high healing power to make a big difference, yet healing power with spectral builds tends to not work very well.

If we had the self-traited heals + regen working through DS, this trait might be great. If it healed for a bit more, also might be great. But as it is it doesn’t do a ton in a build that already isn’t that amazing imo.

lorndarken.3702:

this thread is entirely based on pvp / wvw metrics , pve talking points need not apply for debate .

In this context of this thread, yes PvP/WvW are all that matter. Not that it matters, because we are no more or less awful in PvE, and the nerfs we got (lich/CB/golem/WoB) were all fairly non-impact in WvW too. We are, at worst, in the same spot we were pre-patch, and at best, we’re slightly better because of changes to others.

Necros didn’t get hit by this patch, I have no idea why people act like that. None of the nerfs we got actually mattered to PvP, and while the buffs were extremely minor, they helped a tiny bit. But overall, Necromancers stayed the same, while some of the most dominant builds that threatened us were hit hard. That’s not all that bad.

I assume its PvP, in which assassin is a significant DPS boost. Its something like 14% crit chance added, plus some extra ferocity. So you crit more often for bigger crits.

I had reported it the day it happened.

It takes time to fix. They might not know what part of the code is causing it, how to fix it, etc. and its unlikely that they can just roll back the change.

They tried deathmatch with courtyard, and as far as I was concerned it was immensely boring. Smaller skirmishes on the map (1v1/2v2/3v3 at most) are fun, but I’d never want to play a 5v5 deathmatch map. And since they essentially have versions of both modes in the game already, plus they (according to Colin) have quite a lot of polling as well, I’d assume this was based off actual data.

Death Nova’s addition of direct damage
Rework of Death Magic Minor traits
Transfusion becoming what it is now

The build is considered one of the strongest 1v1 specs in the game by many high level PvPers. It was basically the sole thing that kept us in the highest tier meta.

And yes, I was using the wrong condition duration, I was using a dhuum build which wouldn’t have those traits.

Each proc is a 3.6s fear with traiting. That means up to 4 procs of terror damage, plus a lot of time for you to load them up with condis. And since you’re essentially guaranteed to get both procs within the first few times they hit you, if they stun break they are left with little else to stop a doom/corrupted stab fear chain. Even with the stun, by the time you are un-stunned they are still running into a corner somewhere halfway across the map.

If you want regen run dwayna runes, it doesn’t leave you with an awful weapon (for MM). Your minions shouldn’t be dying much except in big AoE fights if you’ve built right.

A white circle would actually be nice.

CratZ.6270:

do we have a place anymore in PvP?

You have both nightmare and reaper’s protection procs. The first time the Ranger tries to pinball you, he’s running in the wrong direction for 3 seconds.

I think realistically Necromancers are slightly better post patch. Nothing really changed on our side (although spectral builds are seeing a bit of play in yoloQ), but some annoying builds were nerfed.

The focus should only be picked over dagger for off-hands, WH is just too important. The 5 skill is generally fine, because as MM you don’t tend to need to cast things as often as other specs (half your skills at any time are already cast, and most minion actives are instant), and the 4 is an amazing amount of vuln + burst. It gives you a stronger debuffing for 1v1s, and realistically if someone tries to dodge it you can self-cancel it. Plus LF generation, which is important to sustain yourself.

The only big thing I hold against dagger is that the 5 skill feels unnecessary, you already get a lot of weakness uptime if you just land Putrid Explosion anyway, so its really just there for condi transfer/blind.

Neither are bad, I just find focus tends to give more if I can afford the loss in removal.

MMs being viable at high tier has little to do with mobility; a lot of teams right now run pretty immobile specs.

The issue is multi-fold.
1) High tier players simply don’t like the build
2) Following from 1, a lot of them simply don’t know how to play it
3) (all of these are similar) People don’t build it properly
4) Up until recently, the build had a huge counter in the meta: hambow. There really wasn’t anything you could do against hambow and expect to win

The only thing that really needs to be changed to make MM viable right now is for the common specs it would have to 1v1/2v2 to be at least neutral mathups. After that, its possible to do just fine. Right now its possible that the build could do well, I haven’t had enough time to see what the meta is going towards. But basically as long as the builds don’t have too much AoE it should be okay. It won’t really ever be meta unless it becomes broken OP though.

They are cheap because they drop like candy.

Necros definitely do not have the best support in PvP. We’re good, but in a damage role.

All of the non-corruption fears can be stopped with anything that will negate a normal skill effect (block, dodge, etc.), plus affected by anything that stops CC or conditions. The ones that corrupt stability are unblockable though, and can’t be stopped by stability (since that is what causes it).

So you “can” stop it, but it can be hard in some cases.