Guild Wars 2

The tooltip damage is done against a target with 2600 projected armor. By using the ratio of new/old armor (this is because armor is inversed in the damage equation), you can find how much damage the minion can do against, say, a 2000 armor target.

tooltip x (2600)/(2000) = 30% higher than tooltip.

Anyway, the interesting thing about the minions is that their effects are cumulative with each other. So if you run shadow fiend + bone fiend + flesh worm + flesh golem, you can consider their DPS as a total added to your own:

213 + 208 + 187 + 642 =1250 damage per second + player DPS.

Something else worth noting is the damage that bone minions do with their ability, putrid explosion. It has a tooltip of 1592 per explosion. Assuming that, with activation time of 1.5 seconds, and a 1 second delay between the explosions, the effective time to use putrid explosion is 22.5 seconds. Doing some math on this:

1592 damage x 2 / 22.5 seconds = 141.5 DPS

So it is worth considering detonating the bone minions instead of keeping them around, specially if in a group.

Another thing to consider is traits. If you have the trait Training of the Master, then their DPS is increased by 30%, giving the above minion total a nice boost to 1625 damage per second. If you have the recharge boost, this shaves 4 seconds off of the putrid explosion recharge, giving it a new DPS of 172.1, which makes them worthwhile when comparing them to the other minions.

1625 DPS… you have to wonder how many bleeds that is. You can play with the numbers however you want, but against a 2600 armor target, if you have 1,300 malice it is equivalent to 15 stacks of bleeding. Against something more frail like a 2000 armor target, it is 2113 DPS, or 20 stacks of bleeding. That’s pretty good, considering that it only takes 20 trait points to achieve that DPS.

Though if I may ask, can you get the timing on the Blood Fiend as well? I’ve never been good with timing myself.

sorrow.2364:

But would be the Knight gear more well suited for Necro since their base HP pool is that high?
I mean, if you have more toughness and less HP, it is more easy to outheal the damage you get.
Knight gear gives way more toughness compared to Soldier gear, without considering the fact that it scales pretty well with Critical Damage.
Also, the benefits that comes from increased HP to Death Shroud are overshadowed by 30% more life force from Soul Reaping (quite mandatory if you have Knight gear, useless if you have Soldier gear) and the increased toughness of the set (the armor values applies to DS too, right?).

So, overall, Knight gear is more suitable for Necros compared to Soldier..?

Something interesting with necromancers is that they get an alternative form of healing that scales with vitality: Life Force regeneration. Another interesting thing with necromancers is that they are the only class where toughness and vitality are nearly perfectly balanced when comparing toughness and vitality.

For an example, lets say that you are comparing 1000 toughness vs. 1000 vitality. The toughness gets added to the base armor of the necro (1836), and ultimately decreases their damage taken by 54.5%. That in vitality gives 10k HP to 18376 base HP, and ends up giving 54.4% more damage that they can take.

As you can see, if you had any less HP, as it is with anything that isn’t a warrior, then vitality would give more survivability. If you had any more armor, then vitality would give more survivability. This is because the necromancer is the only class that starts with a 1:1 ratio between HP and armor. Now, you can argue back and forth between which one is better, since they both have their pros an cons.

Vitality:
Pro: Scales better on every class other than necro
Pro: Works on all forms of damage
Con: Ablative. Once that extra HP is gone the advantage is gone.

Toughness:
Pro: Increases healing efficiency.
Pro: Cumulative effect from healing power.
Con: Does nothing for conditions
Con: Scales worse on every class other than necro.

So I suppose it is better to consider on a build by build basis. Regardless, the vitality increase from soldiers gives a 38% increase in HP, and likewise a 38% increase in the Life Force pool as well as a 38% increase in the efficiency of Soul Reaping’s Life Force bonus. Soul reaping caps out at 30% increase. Now, the toughness from Soldier’s gives a 38% in durability as well, and this can be considered a further increase to the health since Soldier’s has more of it, as well as an increase to life force. You can come up with a scaled HP form this called Effective HP. EHP is basically max HP multiplied by how much toughness improves survivability, or

25,356 × 1.38 = 34,991

And the Life Force being 70% of that is 24,494 in Life Force

Knight Gear gives a 51% increase in durability. With no HP bonus, this comes to

18376 × 1.51 = 27,748

And with life force being 70% of that, you’ll get 19,422. But, if we were to assume that knight gear put 300 points into Soul Reaping and Soldier’s didn’t put any points into either Soul Reaping, Blood Magic, or Death Magic, then you can say that the Life Force pool is 27,748, which is 3.2k more “HP” in LF than soldiers, but sacrifices 7.2k real HP to get this.

I don’t exclude people for their class. Due to all the different things a class can do, and different ways the class can do it, pretty much any class can work in any situation. It is all about competence.

Engineers have plenty of blast finishers. When the update to the healing elixir was made, I managed to make a rotation that made the best out of the 3 second water field. I could use 3 blast finishers inside of that field. First, from the off-hand shield. Second, from the Elixir Gun. Third, from the turret detonation. Not factoring in the regen that gave, that put out 3960 healing from the water fields with no healing power, plus the 2520 that came from the turret’s overcharge for a total of 6480 in healing in an instant. All without healing power.

In theory you could get more. If you use the thumper turret’s detonation + shockwave alongside of the detonation from the land mine, you could get 6 blast finishers off in that water field by yourself. Though the timing with the elixir gun is difficult, so it might be worth it to just time Big Ol’ Bomb instead if you wanted to go with a full healing spec. Probably wouldn’t even need healing power, since at 0 you’ll be healing 10k HP in an AoE.

Anyway, the Engineer and the Guardian play very differently from each other. There are a few things the engineer does that the guardian can’t, though. One of them is conditions. The guardian can burn, but the engineer is the only class with access to all damaging conditions, and can very easily maintain a permanent burn. Engineers can also stack a lot of vulnerability, and in more ways than once (from grenades and from Sitting Duck). I also believe that, with kit swapping triggering sigils, and the might on heal trait, engineers are better at stacking might than guardians. Though guardians do it in an AoE better, so it is less selfish.

The engineer also has some better controls. They have more access to immobilize and cripple, and grenades also have more access to chill than Glacial Heart gives. Though guardians do have quite a few stuns/knockdowns, I think engineers might have more. Especially if they’re running a turret build.

All in all, I think the guardian is better at direct support. The engineer’s skills are quite random, and you’ll never know what the elixir will give or what the engineer even has on their belt. They might be better at cleansing conditions for the group, since Fumigate from the elixir gun when used right is basically an entire team cleanse on a 12 second cooldown.

When looking at it, it is amazing how similarly these two classes fulfill these roles. They have a lot of the same tricks, like projectile reflection, blinds, vigor, healing, knockback, similar combo fields, plenty of finishers, might stacking, and team support. Considering that they play nothing like, this is an amazing feat. I’d say that the guardian is more reliable in their support, while having better boon support and higher damage (especially against single targets), whereas the engineer is more scattered while having more selfish boons and higher versatility in any single setup. All in all… I’d recommend taking both. If you have an engineer, great. If a guardian comes in, the engineer can just alter their spec to do something different really quickly. It’s not like having more boons or more reflection walls is a bad thing.

sorrow.2364:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

300 power is a (1216/916) = 33% increase in damage. 40% crit chance is a (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6) =20% increase in damage.

What exactly is the 0.6 part?
Anyway, there is something you forgot to mention (or I missed). With Knight gear, having just a little increase in crit damage boosts the damage quite a lot. For instance, spending 30 traitpoints into Soul Reaping gives a nice gap between Knight and Soldier in terms of damage.

The 0.6 is the chance to not crit. In non-reduced form, the formula is this:

Damage x Crit Damage x Crit Chance + Damage x Regular Hit Chance

And reducing that, you get

Damage x (Crit Damage x Crit Chance + Regular Hit chance)

With crit damage at 1.5, and a crit chance of 40%, you end up with a 60% chance to hit regularly.

Damage x (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6)

Increasing the crit damage does benefit knight gear more. As for how much more, I haven’t really checked. There’s no question that if you gave Knights just more crit damage, it wouldn’t beat out an equivalent investment into soldier’s power. However, I haven’t done a full on “try to maximize DPS” check with either of these, since I assume that if you are building defensively in the first place you wouldn’t do that. So, if you are going to forgo all of the defensive traits in a defensive build and go for maximum statistical offense,

Soldier’s gets 300 power and 300 precision
Knights gets 300 power and 300 crit damage

Then you get from Soldiers:

Damage from power: 2.42
Crit rate: 18%
Total damage: 2.42 x (1.5 × 0.18 + 0.82) = 2.63

And from Knights:

Damage from Power: 2.09
Crit Rate: 40%
Crit Damage: 30% (1.8)
Total damage: 2.09 x (1.8 × 0.4 + 0.6) = 2.76

Which is a bit surprising, actually, in that crit damage scales much better than I expected. This ought to teach me that I shouldn’t use the original base value (698) when doing a quick calc in my head. Though you would have to weigh build flexibility in the end, since if you go anywhere but full Spite and full Soul Reaping, Soldier’s will match or beat out knights, and even then if the 5% increase in overall damage will have to be weighed by the 26% decrease in overall survivability from using Knights, and the 35% increase in condition damage that the full curses line would give if you went for the full curses line in soldiers. I guess you would have to weigh that out in the end as far as the build goes: go straight up spite + reaping for raw power, or go for curses and more AoE damage via conditions.

Interestingly, if you go with 300 power + precision in both Knight/Soldier, you get a damage increase of 2.65 out of knights, making them effectively the same again.

The only thing I’d like to improve on the tool kit is the box of nails. That is the only skill that kind of sucks.

The auto attack damage is decent. It ain’t the bomb kit, but it has its place. The Pry bar is really useful in both sPVP and WvW. Just whack them for a comparatively long duration confusion, and decent direct damage, too. The Gear Shield is a pretty awesome invulnerability, and the magnet is good for pulling people.

Ostricheggs.3742:

It’s arguably the best 1v1 elite in the entire game. Its effect becomes substantially reduced when used in larger fights or in fights with large amounts of AoE. Cleave down the turrets in small scale. If you can’t cleave down the turrets, run.

To nitpick a bit, the best 1v1 elite is Moa Morph.

Still, I do have to reflect the sentiment that everyone else has about the Supply Crate, but in list form. Cuz I’m weird like that.

*It’s a quick AoE stun and has good healing and control. In condition builds the burn is pretty good, too.
*It’s effect diminishes quickly if it is not a 1v1 scenario.
*They are vulnerable to AoEs.
*They don’t have the best AI. Mesmers and minion necros will mess you up.
*The supply crate gets a whole lot better with turret increasing traits.
*It is best in sPVP. In WvW people just run away, in PVE enemies are either too weak or they’re strong enough to bowl them over effortlessly.

So it has its place. In PVE and WvW on the engi I mostly use the Hounds of Balthazar as my elite. It’s similar in that it does burning damage, but the hounds chase people down and do more direct damage.

In sPVP I love it, though. I run a turret build, and for me the supply crate is useful as either a backup set when they’re all on cooldown, or if I’m fighting someone really good they’re basically round two for my opponents.

I haven’t played an elementalist in awhile, but there are two things I know when I’m in WvW:

I’m happy whenever I see a staff elementalist on my side.
I dread when I see one on the other side.

Seriously, those stun fields and meteor showers have messed up my tactics so many times, and whenever we have one I get so many more loot bags out of the ordeal. Maybe you just haven’t figured out how to make a staff elementalist you really like, because I’ve seen people that own with that staff.

Dredlord.8076:

here is a hint for you

don’t add back in 1 minus the crit chance…

And for today’s lesson in mathematics, we will be dealing with weighted averages. Now, a weighted average is basically the sum of all the different things that can happen, with each one multiplied by how frequently they happen. It is a useful shorthand for calculating averages when you don’t want to individually add each value together.

In GW2, whenever you launch an unhindered attack either one of two things will happen. Either it will be a critical hit, or it will not be a critical hit. Thus, to find the average damage output, you need to factor in how many times something crits, and how many times it doesn’t crit.

So lets take an example of Soldier’s Gear. You have only a 4% chance to get a critical hit, and those critical hits do 50% more damage. So, to find out the average damage, you would need to multiply the damage by how frequently it crits (4/100) and how much more damage it does (50% or 1.5), and add that with damage times how frequently it doesn’t crit (96/100). Now, what you are suggesting is we ignore the entire “doesn’t crit” section, and just multiply the damage only by how often it crits. This leaves a gigantic void in the numbers, and also violates a mathematical rule of probability: The sum of all probabilities must be equal to 100%.

Afya.5842:

…snip…

But it seems almost identical.
Now what should one choose between the two?

Depends on if you want more survivability or more damage. If you want damage, the mix between zerker and knight is better. If you want survivability, it is probably best to go mostly soldier. I have two sets of equipment on my own necro, one of them is full carrion specced for condition damage, the other is Knight Gear with ruby orbs and zerker trinkets. It actually works quite well as far as a setup goes, and it is useful if you have a bunch of procs firing off in the build.

spoj.9672:

Well i had a massive post explaining why knights is better than soldiers but it got deleted by a mod because apparently i was being inflammatory. Cannot be arsed to repost the points. His maths is wrong as dredlord said. Even with RNG based crits you still out damage soldiers by a huge margin in game. Running knights is very similar to running beserker, except your crits dont get quite so big and ur base attacks are slightly lower (300 power is nothing). There is no way 300 power is better than 40% crit chance otherwise you’d see all the optimum speed run groups running soldier anchor guardian which would be hilarious and stupid.

Lets think about it simply:

300 power is a (1216/916) = 33% increase in damage. 40% crit chance is a (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6) =20% increase in damage.

It’s pretty straightforward. These are mathematical principles. They aren’t something you can vote on or say must be wrong because “so and so does things such and such way” or hope that other people agree with you. You can sit there and type until you get carpal tunnel, but the math won’t change.

Last time I did an in-game test. soldier’s outdamaged knights. Here’s a few hints to help you get past the biases:

Max hit =/= DPS
Big Numbers =/= DPS
Overall damage / time = DPS

EDIT: One trial =/= proof.

Feel I have to include this one. Due to the RNG nature of critical hits, it is possible to both outdamage and underdamage soldiers if the RNG decides that every one of your attacks should be a critical hit, or that none of your attacks should be a critical hit.

Afya.5842:

Nice maths
I’m making power build for pve dungeon especially fractal and I’m a bit lost what to get. What EHP should necro aim for but not excessive?

I’m think of getting

Soldier | berserker accessories
or
Berserker | cavalier accessories

Don’t want that too tanky.

It’s really hard to say what EHP to go for. At high level fractals, things do so much damage that it is really hard to say when enough is enough. I could try running numbers on efficiency all day, but in general I would find that berserker/cavalier is the superior stat spread. Another option is also berserker/knight, which sacrifices the crit damag for crit chance. It really depends on the build (particularly if you are going into soul reaping). Since precision is tied to condition damage, it might be more efficient to get the precision from equipment, and the crit damage from traits.

First, my knight distribution is correct. It is a little known fact that emerald orbs have a 20 precision, 15 power, 15 toughness stat distribution while the rest of the gear is tough/power/precision. Because of this, a true set of full knight gear has the non-standard distribution I listed above.

There really isn’t other sources for stats other than trait lines. You can get maybe a further 120 points from orbs and up to a maximum of 300 in two stats, but the majority of statistical bulk lies in the equipment used. You are also arguing from ignorance here: You say that you have to factor in trait lines because they will improve things, but then don’t actually show this improvement. I’ll argue that the differences only get worse if you factor in traits, largely because power still scales better than precision in the vast majority of circumstances.

And to provide those circumstances, I’ll link to a few other threads where some of us explored this issue:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Finding-the-Diminishing-Returns-in-Stats/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Damage-Power-Precision-and-Golden-Ratios/

Using the formula of

Power > 2100 / (0.5 + Critdmg) + Precision – 832

for when precision becomes more valuable then power, investing in precision only increases damage higher than power when power is at 4284. Remember: Knight gear gives no critical damage, so you are stuck at 1.5 crit damage. Even assuming you have 30% critical damage from traits, you’ll end up needing 2709 power beforehand before precision becomes more valuable than power. Likewise, for standard knight gear to gain more from precision than power (assuming you have 1614 power), you would need 221% additional crit damage. This is largely because precision suffers from a diminishing return, much like power.

So looking at traits and what is provided by the equipment, the best thing you could do in either situation is invest in more power, and pretty much everything else is worthless. A single point of precision isn’t warranted until, assuming 30% crit damage increase, you have 2709 power.

I’ll cut it down in simpler terms, since you don’t understand the math: in damage, power is a basic multiple. Twice the power does twice the damage, half the power does half the damage, and so on. Since base power is 916 at level 80, you’ll have to add 916 more points of power to do twice damage. So, when I wrote down

(916 + 1003) / 916

This is basically finding out how much bigger the new number is to the old once. Since it came up 2.09, this means that with soldier’s gear you are doing 2.09 times the damage than if you had nothing at all. Now, precision mulitplies power by the total critical damage. Because if this, you need power first, then precision second.

But by how much? Well, the critical hit rate is Precision – 832, then all of that divided by 21. It takes 21 points of precision to increase critical hit rate by 1%. This calculation is a little complicated, since you have to take how much it increases by, and multiply this by how often it occurs. So if I had a 25% crit chance with 0% additional crit damage, we would get

Power x (1 × 75% + 1.5 × 25%)

Where I’ll do normal damage (1) 75% of the time, and I’ll do one and a half times damage 25% of the time.. You can take how much power increases your damage, and multiply that by how much precision increases your damage to get a total damage increase ratio, which is what i used to compare damage.

The problem with precision and why it is so worthless is encountered here: at 100% crit chance ( 2932 precision), you’ll only increase your damage by 50%. Or if you have crit damage, 50% + whatever that crit damage is. For comparison, a 50% increase in damage only needs 458 points in power.

So, now that I have explained what those numbers mean, you can run the numbers yourself. But no matter how you look at it, Soldier’s ends up being better than Knights because the raw power it provides is ultimately more useful than the precision Knights gives, and it does this while still giving plenty of toughness + vitality.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Just stop with the attrition stuff. I don’t care about things that were said eons ago in the development cycle. There is no reason why any profession should be forced into attrition style in this game. I agree that Necromancer can’t effectively play an attrition style right now, but if it could play any role effectively that would be a start in the right direction. Build diversity comes after viability. Where the viability comes first is based on fixing some of the deficiencies. After that diversity is more of a meta consideration than anything, so that’s on us.

I suppose the biggest issue is that the necro is pretty much designed for attrition at the moment by the developers. I would welcome a change from this, however.

If you acknowledge these flaws and build around them, you can make a decent necro. There’s only one problem, and that is the only way to do this is a Minion Master. I might as well put up the build I’m currently using for sPVP:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;04-8cFKlHkD0s3wI-K0g3gI-D0z3;6J-T4E48;229B;15;05wW0UN;0PcW5PcW56gM

The reason why the minion master works for the attrition aspect is largely because the necromancer’s direct action isn’t needed to sustain damage. Because of this, the lack of active defense doesn’t matter as much. This build happens to have plenty of controls and chase mechanics, letting the necromancer sustain plenty of damage. It is quite effective to chase someone around with locust swarm, crippling them while auto-attacking so the minions can run up and attack them. The setup also gives protection quite frequently, regenerates life force at a reasonable rate, has a high uptime on retaliation, and so much statistical bulk that the necromancer becomes a walking tank, making fighting the necro a long and arduous task. The minions also provide body blocking as a form of defense as well, and the bone minion provides a readily available and much needed burst AoE damage on a short cooldown. The minions can’t be cleansed away, are very difficult to disable, and provide a fairly reliable form of offense.

It does have its flaws, though. One is the pet AI, which causes problems when fighting multiple targets or fighting something with stealth. Two is that the pressure of 2 or more people fighting the necromancer will end up killing off the minions, leaving the necromancer defenseless. Two point five is that classes with a lot of AoE can end up killing the minions, again leaving them disabled for long amounts of time. So it is only a 1 vs. 1 build, however as a 1 vs. 1 build it is quite good akittens job.

Personally, I find the biggest flaw with necromancers are that all of their other flaws compound each other. I don’t know any other class that does this. I mean, take thief for example. The thief’s flaws are that they are incredibly squishy and they can’t grant/accumulate boons that well. These are mostly independent to each other: If the thief were more durable, they still wouldn’t have the ability to grant boons. If the thief had boons, they would be slightly less squishy in an indirect manner, but otherwise this doesn’t change much.

But the necromancer is expected to do something, and it isn’t given any of the tools to really do it. Lets look at the attrition aspect of necromancers with sustaining damage over time, and compare this to the flaws the necromancer has:

*No burst damage
*Light on hard controls
*Windups on control skills
*Little but costly stability
*No vigor
*No blocking skills
*No evading skills
*No reflecting skills
*No invulnerability or stealth
*Horrible stun breakers
*Few movement skills
*Lack of versatility in static builds
*Separated and fragmented traits
*Gimmicky class mechanic that is difficult to use and isn’t that rewarding
*Subpar heals

And now lets look at the various aspects of attrition: above average sustained damage, high survivability, and the ability to stay engaged.

Sustained Damage: The necromancer has no active defense skills, so the necromancer will itself be under constant damage. Without any active defense or stability, the necromancer will constantly be controlled, giving the opponent higher damage due to their bursts and lowering necromancer damage. The stun breakers do not alleviate this at all. Due to the fragmented traits, the necromancer has no alternative options should their main offense be shut down. The lack of hard controls means that the enemy will constantly avoid their attacks, lowering their sustained damage again. The opponent is always free to us whatever strategy they want to win the fight because the necromancer has no “counter” to anything, whereas half of necromancer damage can be avoided by condition cleanses and not staying in wells. The lack of burst means the necromancer has nothing to do with the few controls they have.

Survivability: The necromancer has plenty of HP and… maybe deathsrhoud? Unless you run a power necro with a dagger, then in sPVP you will not have life force to use Death Shroud. The necromancer has no hard controls to stop incoming damage, making them take more damage. The necromancer has no active defenses, making them take a lot more damage. The necromancer has poor stun breakers and nothing to counter burst, making them take a whole lot more damage. The necromancer’s heals are subpar, making them ineffective at dispelling damage. The necromancer has few movement skills that are awkward to use, meaning they can’t escape damage either.

Staying Engaged: The necromancer’s primary method of maintaining engagement is cripple and chill. These are easily cleansed away or blocked/dodged/avoided. Their two primary movement abilities, Spectral Grasp and Dark Path, are both slow moving and easily avoided/obstructed, making them work less than half the time. Without any movement skills they cannot give chase, and with limited access to swiftness opponents will outrun them. Without active defenses or good stun breakers, the necromancer doesn’t have anything to prevent their opponent from simply disabling the necro then running away.

So, literally, necromancers don’t have any of the tools they need to do what they are expected to due. It is for this reason that the only thing they can do in high end tPVP is a few gimmicks and it ends there. Now, many of these flaws aren’t as serious in WvW or PVE, however that is no excuse. The game should be balanced around making everything in sPVP viable, and then only buffing or nerfing things for PVE/WvW later. It could never be an e-sport if something else is done.

spoj.9672:

Andele.1306:

PvE – Soldier all the way (well i do have 2 ascended items that aint, but thats for lore reasons, i wish you could transmute them) since we have pretty bad power scailing overall, but nice base damage, also being able to facetank boss attacks and siphon up with dagger and staff 2, as for condi (hybrid actually) id say Rampager with Rabid amulets
PvP – Carrion with Rampager gem
PvP – 1v1 Rabid with Soldier/Carrion/Shammy gem

Soldier on any class in pve is just facepalm. The max defense you should ever go is knights gear. You are actually making dungeons harder by hindering your groups dps so much.

Soldier’s actually does the same damage as knights when looking at just the sets. To compare the two sets, you would get the following attribute bonuses:

Soldiers: 1003 Power, 698 Tough/Vit
Knight: 698 Power, 943 Tough, 757 Precision

For the ratio of damage increase:

Soldiers:

(916 + 1003)/916 = 2.09
4% Crit Chance
Adjusted Ratio: 2.09 x (1.5 × .04 + 0.96) = 2.13

Knights:

(916 + 698)/916 = 1.76
40% crit chance
Adjusted Ratio: 1.76 x (1.5 × 0.4 + 0.6) = 2.11

Which basically means that there is about a 1% difference between the two in damage. Comparing the durability, I’ll us the total effective HP, which is basically HP multiplied by armor value. Since this is highly class dependent, I’ll use the Necromancer as a base since we are, after all, talking about them.

Base HP: 18372
Base Armor: 1836

Effective HP 33,730,000

In Soldier gear we get:

New HP: 25353
New Armor: 2534

Effective HP (Soldiers): 64,240,000

In Knight Gear we get:

Base HP: 18376
New Armor: 2779

Effective HP (Knights) 51,070,000

So Soldier’s is superior to Knight in durability while having roughly equal damage outputs. There are only two times you’d ever want to go with knights: One if you are mixing it with something like Zerker gear or specific trait-dependent abilities so you can have more durability without sacrificing precision for the crits, and two in PVE if you plan on using attrition on champions mobs and want to be able to tank them indefinitely due to the increased healing efficiency gained from that toughness.

The latter will never be important for necromancers, since with Life Force scaling with vitality, they get a form of increased healing from LF gain in vitality. What soldiers will let you do, however, is plenty more face-tanking. This is really important for a necromancer, since they lack blocks, invulnerability, vigor, reflects, stealth, and some control effects. The only thing a necro can do is face tank, so maximizing this ability is important for the class. This creates a nice reinforcing loop for the necromancers, too:

First, they get the stats that let them face-tank better.
Then, they can use the dagger auto-attack at point blank longer, giving them more Life Force.
Finally, this extra LF lets them face tank for even longer.
Repeat.

This also lets the necromancer take point in encounters, drawing as much aggro as possible away from the zerkers so they can do more damage without leaping about like a circus monkey on red bull.

As a condition necro in WvW I do envy the burst that the zerker necro has. I run carrion so it isn’t all bad; I can do plenty of damage with wells and Life Transfer. It is for the burst that I run terror now. Although I would definitely recommend some changes to the build.

If the only weapon you’re using is the staff, I’d definitely recommend -10 from Soul Reaping and +10 into Death magic for the Staff Recharge rate. Since the big damage is in staff is from Putrid Mark and Chillblains, getting those as quickly as possible would be well worth losing the 5% loss in damage from high LF (not sure how often you use DS so it might not be worth losing Close to death). I’m figuring that the limited recharge on most DS skills is going to make it so the only thing lost from using Close to Death is the high retaliation uptime, but with the recent retaliation nerf that isn’t as useful as it was before.

Anyway, in tier 1 we do have some times when people will just stand in a well like that. If you have a big enough zerg and a small enough defending team, sometimes the people who sit at the flame rams on a gate will just try and facetank anything that comes in their way, assuming that the heals from the team will cover for them. If you have a couple of zerker ellies or siege behind the wall, these guys will be slaughtered quickly as well as their siege destroyed. Once in a well timed instance I managed to catch a zerg off-guard with a superior arrow cart from a hill behind them, and with supportive catapult siege from another direction we managed to kill… basically the whole zerg. I don’t know how many had died, but after the ordeal I had maxed out my sigil of corruption and made about a gold from the loot.

The stat distribution I default to first and foremost is Carrion. For three reasons:

#1: It has power, which gives higher damage overall than rabid and also works against environmental objects.

#2: It has plenty of condition damage. Just loads and loads of it.

#3: The vitality combines with Death Shroud well to give me a bulkier death shroud in fights, which makes vitality more useful on Necros than usual.

Though you lose the procs from crits, you gain more direct damage, so in the end carrion builds aren’t black and white as rabid builds are.

Of course, if you are going for tanky power necro, I’d recommend Soldiers. If going for pure direct damage, I’d recommend zerker. If going for pure damage hybrid, rampager’s mixed with carrion or celestial gear.

ManaCraft.5630:

Again, assuming you do it as part of a large enough group, yes.

Possessing the tools isn’t necessarily dependent on having the team. Abilities such as laying down wells at sieges, putting up marks on tower walls, yanking people off of keep defense points, low maintenance travel speed with signets, good distance combat, those things exist with no one else needed. Sure, the capabilities of Spectral Wall and Plague Form and to a lesser extent Epidemic are dependent on having other players. You must hold this standard to other classes, though; what class would be capable of holding off a small army by themselves? I’ve never seen it done.

ManaCraft.5630:

I do this when appropriate as well, but it’s a double-edged sword, since if you hit a target you will be kept in combat for that much longer. Also, a few marks on the ground will hardly make chasing a necro “suicidal”…

That it is. I usually only employ the mark tactic when I’m already engaged or the enemy is right on top of me. However, I have found that running while placing marks is an extremely effective 1 vs. 1 strategy. Most people who charge a lone player by themselves tend to run right through the marks to get to that player, layering up their effects one by one. They’ll chase after me while running through marks with no idea that I intend to kill them. Then I turn around, lay down Death Shroud (Enfeebling blood + fury + 2 bleeds + weakness + retaliation) and proceed to stagger my stuns while hitting them with everything I’ve got. Despite being condition based, most opponents go down pretty quickly regardless, and this tactic has won me fights where I obviously would’ve lost had I not done this.

ManaCraft.5630:

…snip…
1) While there may be more viable builds in WvW, this does not at all speak to the viability of the attrition aspects (or lack thereof) of those builds. The issue is not the amount of builds, it is the amount of sustainability the necro gains (or, as I would argue, doesn’t gain) in each build.
2) In terms of what the ultimate goal is, yes. But in order to achieve your goal in WvW, skirmishing is required (and is nowhere near as rare an occurrence as you describe imho).
3) So the necromancers complete inability to function as an attrition class in WvW in any non-zerg XvX scenario is unimportant because those fights are largely not reflected as much on the scoreboard?
4) Yup. But that still does not speak to the viability (or lack thereof) of the necro as an attrition class. Assuming you were pitted against an enemy force of equal numbers, you would still suffer from the same deficiencies unless the people you joined up with constitute a large enough group that you can effectively hide in the crowd.
5) Agreed. The necro has excellent offensive potential in large scale fights.

Nowhere in the statement I quoted did you ever indicate that your criticisms were about the attrition aspect of the necromancer. Nowhere in this thread have you ever stated that the inability to attrition is what makes necros incapable of doing anything This whole focus on attrition aspects is coming out of left field when being applied to what I am talking about.

I am talking strictly about WvW performance, and not the attrition aspect. I do agree that necros aren’t the best at attrition (which is partly why I run Carrion and not Rabid). However, that is not what I was talking about. I am, of course, talking about the many differences there are between sPVP and WvW, and how the necromancer’s weaknesses in one aren’t carried over to another. So, with that in mind…

#1: The biggest boon the Necro’s get is with greatly increased condition duration, which makes all of their cripples and chills more potent while freeing up space for more important attributes and increasing the DPS of condition builds. The ability to engage at range and while retreating is also more important, since the wide open spaces encourage pole positioning, which the necro is good at. Also, in WvW with plenty of enemies and terrain objects it is much easier to gain Life Force, making the defensive aspect of Death Shroud more valuable. In WvW players will also run glass cannon builds that are much more fragile than in sPVP, which makes the statistical bulk of the Necromancer much more valuable when fighting back against these glass cannons.

#2: Local skirmishes play a role only in preventing/achieving one of the other goals. I’m referring to the futility of ambushing random roamers and aimless PVP, as well as how the terrain varies greatly between defending a tower and capturing a point in sPVP. Even when you have a 5 vs. 5 bout at a tower, that is still far different from a fight in sPVP.

#3: True: It does not matter. Also, keep in mind I was not referring to necromancer’s ability to be an attrition class. I was, again, referring to the difference between sPVP and WvW, and how a target retreating instead of being killed counts as a victory in WvW.

#4: The necromaner’s main strength in conditions is their ability to apply them in a large AoE, and multiply other player’s conditions as well. Because of this, a necromancer’s power is literally multiplied while in a group. The necromancer’s disabling abilities also hit in an AoE, providing more defense in team combat while also providing more opportunities to team players to burst damage onto enemies. The statistical bulk of the necromancer also comes into play in these teams, because dodging and blocking key attacks is much more difficult when they can come from 5 different directions, and so having high HP is much more valuable in these circumstances. The high HP also decreases the % of HP lost from conditions, which undoubtedly will be flying around from the enemy team as well, making the necromancer survive longer compared to the rest of the team. The condition transferring abilities are also amplified by having team members, and with many of the Necro’s better abilities being support abilities, having people to support makes the necro much more useful. One of my favorite tactics in small battles is to use plague form, spam blind and chase the enemy group, causing half of their attacks to miss everyone while my teammates lay the hurt on their poisoned and half-blind enemies. By itself, a necro spamming plague form’s blind to disable someone is just a nuisance, but when you have other people with you who now can’t be hit either, it is a very effective tactic for winning a battle.

flow.6043:

This is like saying: Gaining life force when something around you dies is useless because then you’ve won anyway.

Life force doesn’t auto-regen quickly to 100% when not in combat.

flow.6043:

You either have a very different play style than me or you just don’t notice it. Do you even use this trait?

This trait, unfortunately, is on every one of my builds. This is an unfortunate side effect of being the adept minor trait in the power/condition duration line.

flow.6043:

And I don’t know what kind of fights you are involved in, but not every PvE/WvW is as black and white as you describe it. In zerg fights all you need to do is tag people with your marks or wells or whatever… and as soon as this person dies you’ll get the heal. Irregardless of wether you’re on the losing or winning side.

But if your zerg is losing then that person you tagged doesn’t die. That’s the problem. The necromancer is the #1 class I use in WvW, and upon my days in the mists I have never seen parasitic bond make a difference. That is, it causing me to win a fight that I was going to lose previously. From the way pushes and retreats work (or at least in JQ/BG/SoR), players don’t break off into individual fights where some necromancer can benefit from the death of someone they tagged earlier. Either players get disabled + swarmed to death, or they do the swarming on the disabled players. It is a constant struggle of push vs. retreat. The pushing team has enough offense to heal their downed players because anyone who tries to finish those downed players will quickly get pummeled by the pusher’s superior offensive power.

Maybe on the lower ranking servers there are occasions where an elite team of few faces off against an incapable many, or something like that. But I have never personally witnessed it.

Andele.1306:

These guys save my kitten from time to time; invigoration is 600 aoe (so up to 1300 aoe heal pre 10 seconds) and balanced around the 50% shorter DS cd (like most on DS traits), Bond might be useless/needs different effect in pvp, but its nice on zerg fests in pve and really helpful in AC, TA, CM and CoF, as for Gluttony, it adds up, i just wikitten plain increased each LF gain by 1% since its useless on some minior LF generation from skills (but kinda strong with spiteful marks and life transfer since it gives the bonus pre hit rounding them up).

Deathly Invigoration’s AoE is far inferior to nearly every other support trait in that line: Ritual of Life, Transfusion, Mark of Evasion, and Ritual Mastery. The fact that 50 trait points are needed to make Invigoration useful should be an indicator that it isn’t very good. 60 trait points if you grab other things for support from that line. Transfusion, an adept trait can be improved with just 10 points in Soul Reaping instead of 30, doesn’t require healing power to be decent so it can work in many builds. Ritual of Life provides a large self heal and decent AoE Heal right when you need it, Mark of Evasion provides regeneration which always outpaces Deathly Invigoration, and Ritual Mastery makes all of the other wells up more frequently to be used. But I guess if someone invests 60 trait points, specs for healing, and uses a staff to grant permanent regeneration, then Deathly Invigoration just might match the healing given by default to elementalists and engineers.

The issue with gluttony is simple: Necromancer builds fit into one of two categories: Either they have LF generation, or they do not. Some examples: the standard scepter/dagger condition build for necromancers only has a 2% life force generation every 10 seconds, making generating LF on these builds woefully inefficient. Increasing that to 2.2% contributes nothing. Period. By comparison, a dagger mainhand generates 6% life force every 1.2 seconds or so, with the focus giving 15% every 18 seconds (or 15 seconds with the trait), comes to a total of roughly 6% life force every second. This means that the LF bar can go from half to full in about 8.3 seconds or so, and reducing this time by 10% does not meaningfully contribute to how quickly life force is gained. There are some varying degrees to this, such as the axe generating roughly 1% per second without the recharge trait, the staff generating up to 15% with the auto attack in rare circumstances, the LF gain from spectral skills with the traits, but largely the divide remains. In PVE it isn’t such a problem due to getting large amounts of LF from enemy kills, but in PVP is where this division is the widest. The other traits in Soul Reaping like Soul Marks or Last Gasp or Vital Persistence make so much larger of an impact on maintaining LF that people don’t always see how little gluttony does. Either they have LF or they don’t, and gluttony doesn’t change this at all.

flow.6043:

Parasitic Bond is one of the best minor traits we have, and it’s by far the best minor in the Spite line.
You are hugely undervaluing a 1k hp heal every 5 seconds. That’s almost the same amount as Consume Conditions (5k / 25s cd).
And if anything, it’s the least valuable in sPvP. But in WvW/PvE this will trigger all the time.
I can’t tell you how many times I stayed alive because of this trait.

The heal only seems nice on paper. But now matter how you play out any realistic condition it is almost never worth anything.

In sPVP, this only activates after you have won the fight. You auto regen quickly after that, so this trait boils down to “after a fight, auto regen to maximum a fraction quicker”. If you assume that you can get the heal off of every death before the last one, then it is an extremely delayed heal that happens only once or twice before becoming meaningless, and you have to already be winning the fight in order for it to work. It does nothing to help a player win a fight, and once the player has won the fight it again does nothing.

In WvW, the same problem arises as in sPVP: only good if you are already winning. The only time it can be meaningful in a fight is when the zergs are roughly evenly matched, and both sides are suffering frequent and heavy casualties, and the necromancer is in a place where they receive damage but do not die themselves. If one zerg is overpowering the other, then this trait will either trigger when it is not needed (winning) or never trigger when it is needed (losing).

In dungeons, enemies have tons of HP and do tons of damage with their attacks, again giving this ability an extremely slow heal that only rarely triggers when you are already winning in a fight. This heal is prolonged even more due to how long it takes to kill the enemis. After that group of enemies is down, the necromancer heals to full HP again so it is useless.

In overworld PVE, it is only useful against large swarms of weak enemies that die easily. If the enemies don’t die easily, or there isn’t a lot of them, then this trait again falls into the useless category.

So basically parasitic bond is only useful for temple events. Otherwise, there is no need for a trait that activates only after I’ve already won.

ManaCraft.5630:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

SPVP is where necromancers have the most problems. In PVE they are fine, and in WvW is where they shine.

To be precise, necromancers do not shine in WvW. They shine in zergs. Once you move outside of the Babysitter Blob™ the exact same dynamics that you see in PvP begin to apply across the board.

Although most WvW is zergs, you are neglecting to mention that sPVP and fighting in WvW are completely different, even if it is 1 vs. 1. For one, in WvW there are more builds to choose from. Second, sPVP is about level skirmishes at points where WvW is more about assaulting/defending keeps and towers and choke points. Third, individual kills and the ability to “pwn noobs” means almost nothing in the long run of WvW whereas in sPVP that ability is quite important. Fourth, in WvW is it a lot easier to group up, even with just 3 or so people, whereas in sPVP the multiple objectives makes soloing an important skill to have. Fifth, in large scale fights the situational tools are far more useful since the chances of that “situation” arising approaches 100%. All in all, even away from the zerg WvW is almost nothing like sPVP.

Sure, in sPVP the inability to kill your target means less team points, both from the lack of kill and the lack of control on that point. In sPVP the ability to escape is important since you can quickly run to support another fight, where you’ll be far more useful than in a stalemate. Sure, in sPVP the ability to fight off more than one player at a time is important due to how the chaos of the field leads to players ganging up on each other more often. But none of that is true in WvW.

I hear about thieves who run zerker builds who try to burst someone down. Either they fail to kill their opponent and run away, or they manage to kill their foe and maybe get a loot bag. Either way, that thief has accomplished very little in WvW. If a thief attacks you and then gets away, that is a victory. Your goal is not to pwn n00bs. The goal is to capture outposts and defend towers, and the necromancer’s tools are excellent at that. Those are where all the points are acquired, so doing something other than that is an exercise in futility. In the zerg, the necromancer’s unavoidable AoE damage and support abilities are great, and net way more loot than if they ran around by themselves trying to burst down random lone players.

The odd thing is that I usually do pwn n00bs in WvW on the rare occasions I am attacked while by myself. The only time I’m ever solo’d is when I’m trying to capture outposts by myself, and someone manages to attack me from behind. The best way to get anything other than a thief is to use the chills from chillblains, dark path, spectral grasp, chill of death, and spinal shivers. In all probability, the necromancer is running multiple forms of those, and also has cripple from grasping dead or locust swarm or unholy feast. Even against a thief these are quite useful, since thieves rarely have an answer for chill and cripple. Using DS at strategic points is important, since if used correctly the combination of things like the chill, the fear, the high direct damage of the auto attack, retaliation, and instant enfeebling blood can down something quickly, being both and offensive and defensive maneuver. On offensive it can counter-attack and down zerker thieves quickly, and on defensive it can waste the mesmer’s shatter and apply conditions to them at the same time. Doing things like using epidemic on the nearby NPC that you’re fighting can sometimes drop multiple players in one go, giving them 20 stacks of bleed in an instant.

I also don’t have problems escaping fights. This might be from my tendency to main the staff in WvW, but should a situation arise that I don’t want to be in I just run away while laying down marks and wells behind me, making chasing me suicidal. The chill from Chillblains and the condition transfer form putrid mark really help, since any disability they throw on me gets sent right back at them. I really don’t know what the complaint is. Even against thieves who pop in and out of stealth a lot, you can just lay down marks for protection or use unholy feast to escape + grant retaliation, depending on what set you use. Heck, shadow refuge basically paints a gigantic target that says “Marks and Wells here!”.

I hate the change made to flanking strike. I’m used to the one-click evade thing, so there are times when I’ll click it twice and not use the second attack for some reason, then there are times where I’ll have to click it 3 times and go right into the second dodge, again leaving me open.

I would’ve preferred it if it stayed just one skill, one button press. Now it just adds more ways that the skill can mess up.

I watched the video, and frankly I just wasn’t amused. I’ve taken that group down much more effectively than that on my own thief, let alone on other classes. You couldn’t even see the damage because half the time was spent running away while another portion was also being downed over and over again.

IMO, thieves in PVE do have their problems. Though I think they have more problems in PVP.

In PVE I figured out something that lets me do a lot of damage on a thief while still supporting the team and not dying every 5 seconds. Basically it involves spamming black powder and smoke screen while auto attacking with the sword. The problem being that unless you run zerker, thief damage feels lackluster. You need to invest a lot just to become as durable as other classes in their zerkr gear, so overall the thief loses out in this.

Definitely not a beginner class. If you can shuck and dive with the best of them the thief is great, but if you can’t you’ll just die quickly or die a little less quickly while doing crap damage.

I find a lot of necro traits to be lackluster.

In Spite Minor:

Adept: Parasitic Bond. I have seriously never seen this thing matter in any way. If they’re dead, I’ve already won and healing is useless. If I’m losing, then they’re not dying and this doesn’t come into play. The heal is for so little that even in massive zerg battles and temple events it rarely matters. I thought this just gave Life Force for the longest time.

Major: Death Into Life. Healing power is the worst scaling stat in the game, so 5% of my power being converted = 100 or so healing power on most of my builds = basically nothing at all. Regeneration gives 12 more HP a second; no one cares.

Grandmaster: Siphoned Power. At 25%, an opponent is about to kill you. In PVE you’ll get 1 stack of might if you are lucky before going down. In PVP they’ll burst you to death at this point. The might doesn’t last long enough to heal up and use either, since the heal will eat up a third of the might’s duration.

Spite Major:

Adept: Spiteful Removal. In PVP you have to win to use this trait, making it nigh useless except in large zerg vs. zerg battles, where you’re probably winning and don’t need it again anyway. In PVE you’ll be much better off just transferring or curing conditions in some manner that doesn’t involve killing the veteran first.

Master: Signet of Power. This trait seems fine until you realize that necromancers only have one signet where it’ll be worth anything (signet of spite), with everything else being defensive or utility usage.

In Curses Major:

Reaper’s precision: a 1/3 chance to get 1% life force on a critical hit. If you have, say, a 50% crit chance, then you have a 16.6% chance to gain life force with each attack. The problem here is that this trait is only useful if you are running a pure Scepter/Dagger build, which as an extremely slow attack rate. There’s so many better ways to invest points to get lifeforce that this trait will always be on the bottom of the totem poll.

Death Magic minor:

Adept: Reanimator. The jagged horror summoned by this trait is nigh useless. It never distracts anyone, dies to AoE and itself really quickly, requires you to have already won the fight to summon, and does pitiful damage easily avoided by walking. The only time this trait is any good is when combined with a grandmaster trait that causes a death nova when it inevitably dies.

Master: Protection of the Horde. To anyone who isn’t a minion master this trait is completely useless. Toughness already scales horribly, and such paltry amounts of the stat mean very little in the grand scheme of things. Even with a minion master, the most you get 120 (presuming that jagged horror lives longer than 0 seconds), which isn’t turning any heads or really changing the outcome of the battle.

Blood Magic Major:

Master: Deathly Invigoration. The amount this heals for is so low that it isn’t noticeable. 260 points every 10 seconds makes it far inferior to… pretty much everything, really. I think this trait wins the award for worst healing trait ever, since parasitic bond has at least some use when fighting endless hordes of enemies: not wasting 2 seconds on a healing skill.

Soul Reaping Minor:

Adept: Gluttony. Life force generation works in such paltry amounts that a 10% increase doesn’t do anything for a player’s offense or survivability. Either they have a build that generates life force, or they do not. This trait will not tip the scale in any direction, and the effect even in long term is negligible. When, in any fight, has any necromancer ever thought “Gee, I wish I had 10% more life force, because then I could win” and not already been at maximum? Never.

I think the annoying thing is that all of the worst traits of the necromancer are the minor traits that you have to take in that line. If you want more power, you have to get the useless heal and the useless haling power increase and the useless might-when-already-dead traits. As for improvements, I’m not nearly creative enough for those. I can just plainly says what works.

But in general, if you make things do more of what they do, they become more useful. I.E. gluttony increasing by 25% instead of 10%.

As for where necros have problems, well that comes in two forms.

First is that necromancers have little to no active defense. Active defense being the ability to block, reflect, dodge, move away from, or otherwise nullify incoming attacks or to disable/interrupt opponents so they can’t attack. Most necromancer controls are scattered about different weapons, and most controls are soft controls like cripple or chill that do not actually stop opposing players. Because of this, the necromancer will find themselves frequently disabled or incapable of avoiding the big and dangerous attacks that other classes can easily deal with. Their answer to this is Death Shroud, but it isn’t nearly as effective as it should be. When used for offense, Death Shroud isn’t around to be used defensively. When on condition builds, Death Shroud is never around to be used at all. Ultimately, Death Shroud doesn’t stop the incoming attacks, but instead puts them onto a temporary HP bar that quickly depletes into the real HP bar. In PVE it isn’t as bad since there are almost always enemies around dying that give life force, but in PVP unless you run a power necro you’ll find yourself constantly wishing you had lifeforce to defend yourself with. A good opponent will know not to waste all their big skills on your Death Shroud, making it nigh useless defensively in competition.

Second is that necromancers don’t have good stun breakers. The Flesh Wurm can be interrupted, Spectral Walk just gives swiftness, Plague Signet is just begging to be used at another point in the fight and not be available, and Spectral Armor is on a long recharge and doesn’t prevent the Necro from just getting stunned again. Ultimately you have to choose between Flesh Wurm and Spectral Wall: Either something that can be interrupted, or something that is rarely around to ever be used.

Third is that necromancers don’t have any bursts, sans Bone Minion. All of their attacks are about doing damage over time, and while necros are good at damage over time (for example, the dagger auto attack is 24% more damaging than the dagger auto attack of the thief), in the end the necromancer lacks the ability to seal the deal against most opponents.

These three flaws compound themselves. The necro’s sustained damage is decreased because they’re constantly being disabled with no good counter to this disability,, and they lack the ability to do anything serious with the few controls that they have available to them. Their conditions can be cleansed away, players cans imply walk right out of their wells, and their best source of augmented damage (minions) is killed off quickly in anything that isn’t a 1 vs. 1 fight. The necromancer is best at doing sustained AoE damage over time, and any situation that doesn’t reward this is where necromancers flounder.

Fourth is that necromancers don’t have versatility in their builds. While elementalists and engineers can readily switch tactics with their trait point investments, Necromancers are stuck with what they went with. They can’t switch to healing or support on the fly, and they can’t suddenly become tanky in an offensive build. If you need to do something else than what you’re currently specced in, then you have visit a trainer and get them flipped. This really limits the versatility of the Necro as a whole.

SPVP is where necromancers have the most problems. In PVE they are fine, and in WvW is where they shine.

Sure you don’t see many of them around, but you have to think about what most people were aiming for when they make a necro: I’ve seen so many people just try to make something like a condition + well necro with a spectral armor in PVE, then lose interest when it doesn’t work out too well. Or, they’ll go for pure conditions at low levels, and when they get very little return due to how conditions scale at low levels they lose interest. I get the feeling that, like with many classes, the issue with the necro is that people haven’t really figured out the OP builds and tactics for it yet, and because of this not many people play it.

Regardless, there are some really big tricks that set the necro apart from other classes.

#1: Epidemic. This does just insane amounts of AoE condition damage while in dungeons or large overworld events when by yourself. It can do literally 100k damage every 12 seconds in the right conditions, which are surprisingly more common than you’d think.

#2: Plague Form. This skill can let the necro face tank pretty much anything while dealing about bleeds in an AoE around them. A more defensive-minded necro can create a constant blind + chill effect around them, disabling any enemies within range.

#3: Signet of Undeath. If traited properly, it is one of the best instant-rez in the game, affecting 3 targets in an area and reviving them with no caveats whatsoever. The only rez that could arguably be better than this is Glyph of Renewal, but the Glyph doesn’t have a passive effect to it.

#4: Condition transferring. Though mesmers can do some of this, Necromancers are the master at it. With Plague Signet the party will have a constant cleric effect, and Putrid Mark can cleanse the entire team and throw it on the enemy for everyone who is in range of the mark. This is better than normal cleansing since it rebounds damage to the enemy. Also, well of Power converts conditions into boons when used.

#5: Necromancers are really good at stacking vulnerability. Ghastly Claws and Reaper’s Touch are great for single targets, while Spectral Wall, Well of Suffering, Death Shiver, and Unyielding Blast are good at doing it in AoE. Lure an enemy through spectral wall twice, and they’ll practically be capped already.

#6: Bone Minions. High AoE damage roaming/targetable blast finishers on up to a 16 second recharge, viable regardless of build.

And moving on to WvW:

#1: Marks + Wells. When traited up, marks are incredibly powerful in WvW, providing an instantaneous and unavoidable form of AoE damage, condition transference, and stun at 1200 range. The auto attack leaves much to be desired, but to be fair in zerg vs. zerg that hand hits more than you’d expect. Wells are really good for laying down damage (suffering), disabling (darkness + chilling darkness), or mass boon stripping (corruption) in an area. With choke points in mind and with a decent team (note: elementalist with static field completes this combo), the necromancer can lay down a damage patch that strips stability while blinding, chilling, damaging, and causing vulnerability so the necro can slam mark after mark at that location. It goes through gates and is great for defense and offense. It also lets necromancers escape, putting marks and wells behind them as they run, making any pursuit futile.

#1.1: Terror. I’ve recently discovered how awesome this ability is on a condition necro in WvW. In other places it is kind of Meh, but hitting 5 guys for 3000 damage while running them off of siege is priceless.

#2: Spectral Wall. This ability has a very unique function in WvW, most notably that if you are in a group that is rushing any point, putting down this wall will give the entire zerg protection (effectively increasing proportionate strength of zerg by 33%) when they run through it, and when clustered together it can give the zerg protection in an area for a sustained amount of time. Spectral wall can mean success or failure in a rush.

#3: Spectral Grasp. This is arguably the best pull in the game. It has 1200 range, pulls the entire distance, chills its target so they can’t get away, and gives 10% life force. It is excellent when chasing down runners or pulling players off of walls, since it can spell certain doom once it hits.

Fourth, Stuns. Now, necromancer stuns are scattered and a bit hard to use, however there is something unusual about them. Something that Flesh Golem Charge, Wail of Doom, Reaper’s Mark, Wave of Terror, and Chilling wind have in common is that they disable in an AoE. While this normally isn’t that impressive, in small skirmishes disabling multiple enemies at once is incredibly useful.

And most of the above stuff in PVE also works in WvW.

I third protection fueled injection. Without any stunbreakers in that build, the ability to get protection on a missed dodge would be nearly priceless.

I hear skill players can rotate their camera so they throw grenades behind themselves while kiting and running, letting them kite and do decent DPS while doing so. The auto attack would ruin that.

There is a lot of discussion on the issue. Apparently some champions mobs aren’t scaling right, and they become way too hard. As mobs in orr keep getting buffed, the events NPCs remain the same, causing the events to become much more difficult.

Grenth and Balthazar are the two hardest events due to one thing in particular: The event has a fail condition based on NPC defense. Whereas in other events you simply just rez th NPCs and continue on your merry way, in these events the NPCs have a limited number of deaths or they can’t die at all. This leads to a need for sophisticated cooperation, which is something players lack in this game for the large part. There are any number of ways in which these events can go wrong, and often times it takes one person to mess it up.

For Grenth, the hardest part is the champion and defense event. For the champion, players need to walk into the portals on the sides to get a buff that lets them attack shades. The room is shaped like an up-side down T. The vast majority of players should be concentrating on the adds, and the champion should only be engaged once the adds are dead. He will spawn more adds at 75%, 50% and 25% HP. The shades themselves are immune to damage, and don’t do any damage themselves. The shade’s attacks will stack corruption on the player, and the player downs instantly once corruption reaches 25. The priestess has only 3 attacks: one where makes miniature ice elementals that explode , one where he drops ice shards on everyone within range, and one where he causes vortexes to appear on the ground that drop players from the roof. The first two attacks aren’t too dangerous, but that vortex attack has a large area, very little warning, and bypasses the downed state. He will raise and twirl his staff while using this attack. Once he hits 25% health, the number of shades he’ll spawn is innumerable, so all players should focus on DPSing down the priest at that point. It is important that anyone who has the priest’s aggro should never run back to get the buff to fight shades or try and heal deadrun or anything like that. The priest is obsessive and will chase one player until he gets to deadrun, and WILL kill deadrun quite easily. The priest will glare at the player who he is aggroing on. Rezzing the defeated is too dangerous, so the defeated should use a WP then run back; it really is quicker that way.

In neither of the events should players crowd around deadrun. Veteran wraiths will spawn frequently, and their well can kill deadrun very quickly.

For the defense event, it is important to know that at certain intervals enemies will spawn, regardless if you cleared out the prior spawn or not. The champion spider will spawn at around the 4:30 mark; DPS him down as quickly as possible, since at around the 3:00 mark spiders will spawn right on top of deadrun. At 1:30 a champion wraith will spawn on the stairs, and at around 1:00 another spider swarm will hit deadrun. It is important to pull the aggro off of deadrun while maintaining some distance, since veteran wraiths spawn throughout the fight The Risen spider can be killed if focused on, but the Champion Wraith will be nearly impossible to kill in his timeframe. Instead, focus on bringing down his stacks of defiant, and stunning him when he slowly raises his arms up to use life transfer. It is adviseable to have someone stand very far away near the stairs to distract the wrath, since a sustained life transfer will kill deadrun. The sheer number of mobs in this event is astounding, so AoE damage is highly recommended.

That is a lot to remember for the two events… I can’t even begin on Balthazar since I run that one so rarely. But for Balthazar, the strategy is fairly simple but difficult: Heal the NPCs like mad while having players intercept the enemy groups as they spawn.

Personally I like the down state. It adds tactics to the game and provides leniency for mistakes.

There is a point where things can trade off. It just requires a bit of out-of-the-box thinking.

Basically mix ’n match sets. While it is easiest to go either full zerker or full cavalier or full knight, something else that can be done is changing out pieces of equipment for others once stats become redundant.

Take, for example, critical chance. A very untested threshold I’ve always held for crit chance is 50%. The idea goes like this: technically your chance of getting a critical hit doubles ever so frequently with more and more precision, but at 50% chance that growth is slowed to a crawl. Once you crit on half the hits, no more significant gains can really be made, since if you fully dedicate yourself to getting critical hits the most you could ever do is double your current crit chance. With no crit damage, that is equivalent roughly to going from 1.25 damage boost to 1.5 damage boost, or a further 20% increase from the previous investment of stats. So, once that 50% mark is reached, it is more worthwhile to invest in other stats.

So, if a player has something like full Rampager gear and ends up with an absurd crit chance (the highest I managed to get, boons and traits included, was 96% crit chance on my engineer), then you start swapping out pieces of Rampager gear for either Celestial, Carrion, Cavalier, or something like that. This makes an all-around more efficient build, sacrificing very little strength for much greater utility on return. Though something like a 96% crit chance isn’t readily achievable to every class, I imagine there are many situations where a character’s crit rate grows quite rapidly due to trait abilities and fury uptime.

Very nice. I suppose what bothers me are the things that weren’t listed, such as

#1: The stat total that was used in the calculation
#2: The specific equation for the Y axis, or how it was solved to show a Damage decrease or increase when exchanging power for precision. This is a big one, since I just received help on another thread solving this issue, and I came here to check the numbers and our numbers aren’t the same.

For example, using the formula from the other thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Finding-the-Diminishing-Returns-in-Stats/first#post2040924), I would find for a crit damage of 100%…

Pow – Prec + 832 > 2100 / 1.5
Pow – Prec > 568
Power > 568 + Prec

So, at the threshold where adding to power and precision are equal, that would be when Power is 568 more than precision, or starting at 1484 Power and going from there. The problem is that 1484 Power / 916 Precision = 1.620 in the Power:Precision ratio. The ratio you have listed is 1.397.

I suppose the biggest issue between our numbers is that the derivations I have show a static difference between the numbers: As long as the difference between power and precision for 100% crit damage is 568, then that value is maintained no matter how high the numbers get. Because of this, I can get a ratio of 1.397 if I assume that there is 1431 Precision and 1999 Power. Your numbers show a dynamic difference between the numbers, where once the ratio is achieved the two stats do not have the same growth rate as each other.

One of us messed up somewhere, and it bugs the crap out of me.

It is funny how the solution becomes so simple once it is found. Now I know my mistake of trying to deriving power to precision instead of deriving damage to power then damage to precision. Still, I was close, even if it only counts in horseshoes.

I do like how precision is represented as a base line where 4% precision is acquired from base stats. Although I do think this represents a slight problem in implementation, though. Base precision is truly 916 with a 4% crit chance, and precision cannot be taken out of this and placed into power instead. Attribute investment must exist above these values, so technically that base 4% critical chance is an additional factor added on to power investment. It is here that things become a bit more complicated… but criticism is worthless if I don’t contribute:

Essentially the damage function would have to be changed to

=K x Power x (1 + (0.04 + (Precision – 916)/2100) x (0.5 + Crit dmg))

Where Power is distributed to the 0.04% crit rate independently of precision, as it is in the game. From here, we can differentiate those two functions to get

d(Dmg)/d(Pow) = K x (1 + (0.04 + (Prec – 916)/2100)(0.5 + Critdmg)

d(Dmg)/d(Prec) = K x Pow x 1/2100 x (0.5 + Critdmg)

And the new ratio is…

Power – Prec + 916 – 84 > 2100 /(0.5 + Critdmg)

Power – Prec + 832 > 2100 / (0.5 + Critdmg)

which is Ironic because it is the exact same ratio, and I just ran a mile in a circle. I guess you can work out that precision part ahead of time and it comes to just the same number. But at least I now proved that it works out.

Anyway, the things like procs and conditions is that they can be factored as a series of uptimes and probabilities that, for any particular build, can be added as an addition to DPS that is based upon precision. It is tedious and has to be done on a build by build basis, but it doesn’t require any calculus. Just some ambiguous terms (I like to set the proc rate at 90% certainty of occurring before then as a baseline).

After spending an hour playing with the numbers, I have found myself way too out of practice to come to a solution to a problem.

This problem, of course, is exactly when it is that overall damage output would be better increased by investing into precision than into power, and then at what point precision becomes inefficient against power once again. Much similar calculations can be used to come up with a most efficient survivability by comparing offensive and defensive stats, which only share the relationship that one multiplies the other in the end.

In short, basically it is this: When you add 916 power, you double your damage output. When you add 916 more, you increase your damage output by another 50%. When you add 916 more, you increase your damage output by 33%. Add 916 more for 25% and so on and so fourth. There will come a point where, investing points into precision will give more offensive output than investing into power. This can also be true for survivability, where eventually investing into more HP and/or toughness will result in the player living longer than if they just made the enemy die faster.

But alas, it seems that every turn I have taken has lead me to a dead end. I’m fairly certain that the problem can’t just be solved algebraically, since that method can’t break the limit of a linear interpretation of the data. Logarithms and exponents being used to express similar behavior, but alas the critical points aren’t exponents. I’ve tried basic derivation (infinitesimal change in power vs. infinitesimal change in precision), but I keep hitting methodological blocks with that operation. Considering I haven’t had to derive any function in years, I’ve found myself out of practice and unable to remember all of the tricks of the trade, let alone remember what can be compared to something else without being total nonsense.

I’ve heard of the existence of a chart somewhere that has already solved this issu e.. However, I cannot find hide nor hair of this chart other than mention of its existence. Of course, I would have to check my math against it and use basic logic to see if it makes sense.

Right now, I’ve found myself lost at the moment. I’m sure there is some handy equation somewhere that can solve this problem in five minutes, but hell if I know what it is. Does anyone have any idea what the solution to this problem might be? As much as I’d love to continue on with this problem, it has devolved into me wandering around aimlessly while playing with numbers, not sure if they mean what I think they mean.

EDIT: Forgot to put up what I had done so far. So using some basic logic, I came up with the following:

Power: increases by 1/916% for every point.

Precision: grants an amount of power equal to

Power x (0.5 + Crit Damage) (1/2100)

So divide that by 916 to get the total percentage increase. Note, the critical damage given as a function of the original 4% crit rate is not factored in since that is not a function of precision (this makes things a bit more complicated, but I’ll get there once I solve the bloody thing). So, it should be simple to solve where

1/916 < Power / 916 x (0.5 + Crit Damage) x (1/2100)

Reduced down simply, it comes to

2100 / (0.5 + Crit Damage) < Power

Which comes to the threshold precision would outpace power. With no additional crit damage, it would take 4200 Power before precision would become more potent. With 100% crit damage, it would take 1400 Power for Precision to become more potent.

But all that… just doesn’t seem right. Mostly because it also doesn’t factor in the same diminishing return system that power is being subject to. Eventually (I assume around the 50% mark), crit rate will cease being valuable and then power will become the default investing stat.

There’s a lot of tricks that can be done to maximize might stacking. One of them is to use Enhanced Performance + HGH + 2 Superior Runes of Altruism. That gives you 8 stacks of might each time Elixir H is used.

Superior Sigil of Battle will give players 3 stacks of might each time they swap kits (cooldown of 10 seconds). If an offhand is used, Sigil of Superior Strength grants might 1/3rd of the time on crits. The grenade kit hits a lot, so that Sigil triggers nearly every time it isn’t on cooldown.

Another thing some players do is use Juggernaut to stack 8 or 9 stacks of might, then once they enter the fight they switch to another weapon. Some people will also use the med kit to get the altruism bonus and the battle bonus at the same time, which is useable every 10 seconds. All in all, when combining pretty much everything above, an Engineer can get ridiculous amounts of might.

Ruby trinkets are power/precision/crit.

…Thank you for this. This explains why it is sometimes the run would “bug out” and then I would be able to solo complete it.

Now if I can just get enough people to help me with that champion at anchorage… so far that is the hardest part since I’ll spend over half of the time limit broadcasting in-zone and on guild trying to get someone to show up with no one coming.

I agree that thieves need a nerf: as of right now they are way too much of a profit in WvW. WvW is supposed to be a money sink, but with thieves being so easy to kill it makes WvW an excellent money making spot.

The whole “staff is essential” thing is a holdover from when condition necromancers were the only viable ones in PVP. The problem with the other weapons is that they didn’t contribute anything to conditions while the Staff did.

The staff itself isn’t essential, unless running a pure condition spec. Then, there really isn’t an alternative weapon set to go with. The biggest problem with the staff is that it requires quite a bit of traits to make it good, but it is quite good once it gets there. It adds some pretty useful utility.

I wish I had fingers and a mouse like that…

But yeah, enemy competence in WvWvW is really variable. There’s been times where I’ve taken out 1 vs. 3, and there’s been times where I’ve lost 3 vs. 1. It’s really weird like that. Still, though, solid gameplay on that engi. By flipping those kits through you essentially had endless utility.

I use DS quite rarely in PVE, where I find it to be the most lacking. DS is the best in 1 vs 1 PVP, Where that sudden burst of health and extra time on cooldowns can easily make the fight. Against multiple enemies or against enemies that’ll wipe the whole bar in one hit… not so much.

When I use DS, I use it for two things. First, I use it for the abilities that activate once you go into DS. For my specs, this includes retaliation, fury, and a point-blank Enfeebling Blood (bleeding + weakness). Second, I use it to pop the more useful skills whenever I need them, which ends up being life transfer and doom and on rarer occasion Dark Path. This makes DS act ultimately as a burst skill and a sudden defense skill. I almost never use DS underwater.

I encounter many problems with DS as a whole. First, its underwater skills are less than stellar. Second, in PVE it has absolutely no sustainability, dropping in mere moments whenever it is used in a jam. I basically use it to bomb the area with Life Transfer and then Dark Path one enemy if I"m on a condition spec. Third, in sPVP it is never around when I need it, since you start the fight with no Life Force and on conditions builds it is really hard to build Life Force up. This is one of the reasons why I run a power necro in sPVP; the survivability added by the greater life force gaining abilities more than compensates for doing less damage than conditions. Fourth, in WvW it is instantly overwhelmed in a zerg. This makes the defensive utility of Death Shroud useless, and again it is only good for bombing the area with life transfer.

And on to the skills: Life Blast is nigh useless. It is a decent single target ranged damage attack IF and only IF you are using it from a safe area while having a full Life Force bar. If you are engaging in close combat, it’s effectiveness gets cut in half at a moments notice. The slow wind-up makes the skill incredibly painful to use, and it is also not worth the time on a condition spec. If you don’t have a full life force bar, then life blast isn’t even worth considering. Its small bullet size makes the piercing trait ineffective, and it is too slow to meaningfully build up vulnerability and might. All in all, Life Blast is way too inconvenient.

Dark Path is good in theory, but in practice I’ve found it to be lacking. It is the only move that grants conditions, however it’s other abilities make it extremely dangerous to use. On a condition spec necromancers are going to try and maintain distance, but this move instantly pulls the necromancer into melee range while also removing all utilities, making them highly vulnerable. It is because of this that the chill might as well not be on the ability, since its defensive utility is wasted in being a gap closer. Necromancers don’t really have burst damage to take advantage of that gap closer, either. This is true for both PVP and PVE, since pulling yourself into melee range in PVE means that champion is now going to two-shot the necro, or that swarm of enemies is going to aggro and devour the necro. I suppose it’s intended use is to be a chase move, but every single time I’ve ever used it in WvW to try and chase someone, it has never worked. Not a single time. It always misses or is dodged or is reflected or hits a tree or something like that.

Doom is pretty good as a control, but I do wish it was a bit more potent. I’m captain fumble fingers, so I’ve never been able to use it as an interrupt in PVP effectively. The act of having to pop into DS then use Doom just takes up too much time. The cool thing about doom is that it can be used as a counter-stun.

Life Transfer is by far the best move. It hits in a large AoE, can be traited to AoE Heal, and the life force gaining ability makes it good for both stalling and damage.

With so many things tied to DS in this class, I just wish it would be better. I feel like a lot of our traits are being wasted on DS, whereas other classes can get their abilities in more useful places.

Junkpile.7439:

How can he be invisible whole time? Looks op to me. Can’t figure out how some noob thiefs even manage lose 5 vs 1 fights.

It’s unfortunate no one has answered this yet. The trick is that the revealed debuff is only applied if you attack out of stealth.

What that guy was doing was really solid gameplay. He was using shadowsteps and evasion to back out, then kiting in wobbly figure-8 patterns around, timing his backstab to go off the moment he lost stealth.

The risk vs. reward thing is actually about the stats needed to burst, and not necessarily the tactic used. Yes, thieves can ambush players with backstab and mug and heartseeker, but should that fail with 11k HP they’l end up kissing the dirt just as quickly as their opponent. Mesmers can blow their clones and lay down blurred frenzy, but should that fail their only defense is their clones. The fact is that the burst IS there defense, and upon its failure they lack the statistical fortitude to wait for them to recharge.

Not getting into that whole kit debate, I do have to agree with the OP that the way devs are acting around the classes, it makes it so there isn’t nearly as much build diversity.

You’ve got to see the opposite side, too: if they gave every class everything, then in the end there wouldn’t be any diversity. It’s a catch 22.

I have always had mixed feelings about farming. I’ve had games where there was nothing but farming (runescape), I’ve had games that were full of content but people only farmed (PSU), I’ve had games where the top of the top was pretty easy to get and farming wasn’t an issue (City of Heroes), and I’ve played games where people farm for some things but it is largely a singleplayer game (adventurequest).

I can kind see both the pros and the cons of farming and making materials that require you to farm for them. I myself do farm on occasion. I don’t go chasing after legendaries, but I have plenty of alts an I want at least 2 exotic sets on each of these alts because then they play differently and I have no idea what will be nerfed and buffed in the future. I’ve also had to change some equipment after doing some math and finding one is superior, and also I’ve had to get gold to get fine transmutation stones if the item I want and its stats don’t necessarily line up. The problem with this, of course, is that all of these different items aren’t cheap. To get a full exotic set, sometimes it costs 30 gold for the whole thing, maybe even more. Then to get the transmutation stones, you need to dump an ever changing amount of gold into the gem store. Then, you have get of a second set of armor/weapons (another 15-20 gold down the drain) that has the appearances you want, and transmute those over. All in all, any single “setup” on any of the characters of mine will take oodles of cash to get.

And I do not always have that cash on hand. As for people saying that they get several gold a day just doing casual play, I’d have to say that I am not one of those people. My luck is quite horrible so I rarely get rare drops, and in the end I would say that I get less than a gold an hour while playing the game regularly (not including hopping chest events and gathering ori). What I get are bits of junk that sell for a pittance of copper, and on occasion I’ll receive mats that are worth anything. This is all while doing events and running dungeons, btw, and not just standing around killing random mobs that cross my path like some blood hungry maniac. The latter nets me even less, so I don’t do that anymore.

The farming wasn’t too bad, either. Usually I would just go to cursed shore, find a group of people, and we’d walk around doing chest events and defense events. Since I didn’t have to do that much farming, I never got tired of this. I loved testing out new tactics and tricks on the hordes of enemies, figuring out what works and what doesn’t. And once you figure out what does work, oh boy do things get interesting. Then I can lay waste to all the enemies before me, doing incredible damage while staying alive. It gives this great feeling of power and accomplishment when you do this. But in the end I am really doing it for the gold, so I can get exotic equipment on an alt, and this equipment lets me repeat the “learn what works” process all over again.

And because of this, I hate nerfs to it. Sure, we have a bunch of people who only gather in one spot because it gives superior rewards and is fun to play, but getting rid of those spots doesn’t solve the issue. You still have a ton of players who will congregate to another spot, so they still aren’t playing the rest of the game’s content. Instead, you’ve just removed some way that a player has to make money and have fun at the same time, and every new grind and exploit that rears its head may not be.

There is a much better solution to this system. An old tactic used in other games was not to nerf the content people were playing, but to buff the content that people weren’t. If there’s an area that is empty, find out why and then improve that area. It might require a bit more work than just chopping off yet another head of the grinding Hydra, but in the end you don’t disappoint players. You just give them more options, more things to do, more places where they can have fun and get better rewards, and more entertainment overall. And that, my friends, is what appeals to casual players.

Having used a Necro in WvW, I can easily say that a necro would’ve contributed meaningfully to either of those situations. For Necros have a lot of tools on hand that can really add up to the fight.

I myself use a 20/30/20 staff/scepter+dagger carrion necro, and my utilities constantly switch from wells to spectrals to corruptions. And depending on whatever I have, I can always contribute to a situation like that. Firstly, since I main the staff, I can lay down marks, one that gives regeneration and 15 (3 × 5) 16 second bleeds every 4.8 seconds. One that creates a poison field and chills. One that is a blast finisher, and one that flees. The marks, being plainly visible, creates a denial area that no one person wants to cross, so without coordination they’ll get the timid effect and won’t run forward. If we’re retreating, I can lay down marks right at my feet to discourage anyone chasing me.

If I’m running wells, I can throw down multiple wells onto one location, creating a pulsing high damage patch. With chilling darkness, well of darkness blinds and chills, nearly fully disabling anyone inside. Well of corruption is the big one, though, since it can remove stability and let other stun fields work their magic. Well of suffering is pretty good for damage as well. These wells also have that defensive aspect to them that marks do.

Alongside of marks is plague form, which can tank a lot for a long duration.

If I’m running spectrals, I can lay down spectral wall on any location to give my entire group protection. This is good for rushing, but in a defensive situation like that it is useful at point blank to give constant protection and also an ethereal field to combo off of. Also there is spectral grasp, which can be used to grab any stragglers from the opposing group and take them out one at a time.

If I’m running corruptions, it is a bit harder, but I can use BiP + Epidemic to do some high long-term damage. If any of the runners during the push happen to be loaded with a ton of conditions, then I can use epidemic to spread those conditions, killing and disabling enemies very quickly.

Now, the necromancer doesn’t have any super high damaging over the top AoEs like Meteor Storm. But, with all of their skills, the necromancer can lay down great long term damage and sustained AoE damage.