Guild Wars 2

Some fun 3 ways today.

I guess its doable on a hourly basis.

Ojimaru.8970:

A few more key point’s on a Necro’s role in WvW I’d like to add.

When running in WvW, unless you’re flat out roaming, you should always have Greater Marks. This not only ensures that a Warrior rushing through your Marks with Block Stance will suffer everything, but also lets you place down extremely large red circles for enemies to rush through. Assuming you’re not the only Necro around, covering choke points and Entry Portals with Marks will usually give pause to most enemy guilds. Even in a Power build, Marks can still deal significant damage, as well as provide offensive support. Placed before hand, even if the enemies send a suicide elementalist to trigger your Marks, both Mark of Blood and Chillblains would have already got off cooldown, allowing you to reapply Bleeds, Poisons and Chill on the enemy guild.

The next most important support provided by Necros is AOE Blind. This is achieved through Blinding Darkness and Plague Form. The latter is by far the greatest source of Blindness in WvW because a) the AOE is mobile, and b) AOE Blindness is applied every second. Compound that with Chilling Darkness and the enemy guild won’t be having an enjoyable time missing crucial attacks and moving 66% slower.

Yes Greater Marks is very useful:

-For sieges. You can cast them on walls or at entrances.
-Cover your escape: Cast them while running away. Not many other skills can do this.
-Check for stealth thieves.

And yes those AoE blinds are great in wvw. Real game changers.

As happy as I am with any new players and guilds, I hope no one is coming to Kain just for T1. Sorry but we are not ready yet. We will need better coverage and our players need more training. Our players also need to be mentally ready for the stress, ruthlessness and toxicity of T1. I mean yes we will get to T1 for a short stun eventually, but we won’t last long there right now.

What we do offer is a hard working and friendly core, and new WvWers that are willing to learn and play hard. We also have a strict server wide no cheat policy. We don’t spy. We don’t waste enemy resources by building useless rams. Every win we get is legit and earned. And every lost we suffer was well fought.

Building on these foundations we hope that one day we will be T1 ready.

Dredlord.8076:

Kravick.4906:

Bhawb.7408:

Congrats, you gave the enemy team 10 extra seconds worth of points, plus the time you wasted in the first fight, and however long it takes you to actually finally kill them. If you count wasting a minute to take a single point that is going to be recapped pretty easily, a win, then I think we have different views of how to accomplish objectives.

No one is talking about sPvP. There is a reason very few people play sPvP any more.

yeah its sad the devs can’t see this and devote more time to areas where the players spend most of their time like WvW.

Apparently the devs egos are too big to admit spvp failed hard in this incarnation of GW and move on to improving WvW and class balance/bugs.

The “big” wvw update is coming in 2 days. Let’s see how that goes before concluding. ^^

Just do what we do: Spread misinformation.

Cmd: Ok we are going to going to skip Bay and go Sunnyhills.
(10 seconds later)
Cmd: Ok we are going back to Bay.
(10 seconds later)
Cmd: Ok moving east to Hills.

:D

1) Server with the highest population at opening hours takes over everything.
2) That server now with the highest point “quits” wvw to “force” the population cap to 5.
3) No one can take over anything now since the sever cap is at 5.
4) That server wins.

So bad idea.

Kravick.4906:

Bhawb.7408:

Yes, necromancers are terrible, that is why one of the best PvP teams in the game (Paradigm) has a necro. Makes complete sense, please go on.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. I guarantee you the other players are holding him up there. Not that this game has teams that mean anything. I mean there isn’t even a ranking system in this game. Its just teams going up against random PUGs most of the time. Of course a group of people in voice chat is going to win a lot vs people who are unorganized and unable to communicate. The Team vs Team play in GW2 is entirely based on the RNG.

I also never said they were terrible. Just mediocre. Please, Bhawb, show less fanboyism. This kind of behavior only serves to prove my point. Anyone who isn’t looking at this class with rose colored glasses will see that this class has its fair share of problems. Especially in the face of mechanics like dodge, teleport, leaps, and other mobility skills.

I don’t agree with necro being “carried”.

Think of the following situation. In a 20 vs 20 zerg fight, there are 2 necros on one side. Before the two zergs crush into each other, the necros casted Well of Corruption to covert enemy boons into conditions. And once the fight engaged, the 2 necros turns on Plague and blinded a bunch of foes. The side with 2 necros won.

So was the necros carried? Yes and no.

Yes if you are only looking at the damage. Neither Well of Corruption or Plague does much damage.

No if you are looking at what they did to the team. The enemies were not able to fight nearly as well because of the two necros.

I wont’ comment on spvp as that’ aren’t my strong suit.

Got d/ced. Now can’t log on.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

No, the big point is that ultimately they are an ineffective waste of space, even when used at the same time. The problem being you’re always taking damage “sometime”. The point is that gaining lifeforce is vastly inferior to evasion and blocking and controls as a defensive mechanic. Given the option to take damage and gain LF or not take damage, the latter will beat out the former. Every single time.

I also never said dagger. The weapon skills in general will outpace spectral skills when fighting against bunkers, and sure you can use those spectral skills to get a burst gain in LF, but you most likely don’t need a burst gain in life force when fighting against a bunker. You’re better off putting something else in those utilities. And the biggest problem with SW and SA is that, as utilities, they accomplish very little. SW is a stun breaker that grants swiftness, making it the most useless stun breaker a necro has. You can’t use it to grant yourself swiftness before the fight because then you’ve lost your stun breaker for the fight. SA is useful as a stun breaker because it grants protection, but is never around to do it. This makes the life force gain of SA at best a tertiary perk.

And that is a big problem with traits and utilities: whenever you pick one you must pick it over another one. If you put your traits into life draining and spectral abilities and choose utilities and weapons to life drain and gain LF, then in the end you aren’t doing much of anything at all. First because SW and SA are horrible as far as utilities go and are horrible with gaining LF, second because life draining heals for paltry amounts when it does work and most of the time it doesn’t work. LIfe siphon is weak because it takes 3.5 seconds to heal away 1.5 seconds worth of damage, and does about a third of the auto attacks damage in that time.

Again, the comparison between regen and vampiric traits isn’t that they are exclusive, but that it is far better to invest into something else and just use regen for healing, for investing in both requires requires a lot of resources to do not much more than just using regeneration.

Look, I’ve been down that road. I’ve tried running multiple spectral skills for stunbreakers, and I’ve tried using life siphoning skills to heal, and I’ve tried doing them both at the same time. It doesn’t work because, in the end, all you end up doing is chasing around an enemy trying to use the dagger’s auto attack while you get controlled and beaten down by another class who either fights at further range, simply has more damage per survivability, uses burst damage to bypass all that nonsense,, or has enough controls that those do-nothing stun breakers get used up then end up on cool down. You don’t have any combos that can do massive amounts of damage because your utilities are all used up for spectral skills, and your weapons clash because you’re running dagger and staff or something like that, or you use the scepter and staff and make Deathshroud utterly useless as anything but a sponge where you absorb hits and do nothing back in return and then not regenerate life force because the scepter sucks at it

One problem I do notice with the likes of DS, SA and SW is that once you turn them on the ball is no longer at your court.

For example you turn on DS. The enemy have the option to back away and simply wait for it to run out. Why? Because your LF drains itself when you are in DS. The enemy doesn’t have to attack you at all.

You turn on SA or SW. The enemy once again have the option to back away and simply wait for it to run out. Why? Because your SA and SW is on such a long cool down it aren’t sustainable. The enemy will gladly wait a few seconds to speed up killing you.

So with DS, SA and SW the ball is no longer in your court. You are no longer in control of your own survival. This I think is a huge problem. You are relying on your enemy being “dumb” and keep fighting you head on during those 8 seconds. If a “smart” enemy backs away and come back after your SA or SW runs out you are screwed. We are talking about a 90 sec and a 60 sec cool down here.

In WvW, I think we necros are blessed by the fact that the enemy are not used to fighting us. They have no idea that they should back off when the necro turns on SW, for example.

And that’s on top of our problems facing high blast and high mobility classes that I mention earlier.

neomccoy.2657:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaA_uKp3bE4

Why aren’t we on American Idols?

Andele.1306:

This is the first time since Nemesis that a transcript would have been useful…

Sometimes I do wish that I was born in North America.

If you need anything clarify feel free to ask me. ^^

Rennoko.5731:

Very skillful thieves with smart builds that don’t run full berzker gear are nearly impossible to kill… And it always irks me that the negatives on the forums are just as bad as the positives…. statements like a necro should NEVER lose to a thief are just as stupid as those that say we never have a chance.

If you don’t think thieves are a problem, it is because you have routinely ran into too many bad ones… and there are a LOT of bad thieves out there. As has been said many many times, the best thieves you will at best repel, and hopefully find cover before they can come back.

There is no honor among them (yuk yuk) and they have no problem breaking combat, healing up, and coming back. Smart thieves don’t get caught without blinding powder or SR down, in a burst combo from a necro. That is if you run a power build.

Can you beat a great thief? Maybe…. but at the very best our chances are 50/50 in a one on one fight in WvW. If they are honorable enough not to reset the fight, it is entirely possible to burst them down with a good fear combo and conditions, but only if you have managed to extend the fight long enough to get them to burn both blinding powder and SR. If they are specced hard for condition removal, your odds get even worse.

And all this assumes you actually knew the fight was coming, and saw them stroll into 1200 range. More often than not they show up unexpectedly, which changes the entire dynamic of the fight. Having your entire DS bar destroyed in 2 seconds is no fun, and eating 13-14k damage in RABID gear (which is very easy for a properly geared NON berzerker thief to do in 1.5-2 seconds) is also not enjoyable.

Its a troll to say the fight is anything other than an uphill battle in WvW. This is why they are getting nerfed hard next patch. Unfortunately that nerf (presumably will) hit only one of the three places it needed to, and it hit it way harder than it needed to.

Like I said get used to casting marks for no reason as you are moving in wvw. It helped me many times. Thieves often try to get that backstab first hit on you. If you are moving and keep casting marks, it is very hard for them to do that. You do not want to be down 0-3 in that soccer match right at the start.

Being a necro is never easy. But we adopt.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

So in short, DS is a one trick pony used once a fight that doesn’t really do much other than an AoE attack. This might be worth it if all of those missing controls, blocks, reflects, evades, condition cures, stability, and good stun breakers would amount to something useful in their place, but it doesn’t. Necros have slow and weak weapon skills alongside of utilities that are at best situational and at worst downright harmful, with the only two utilities that stand out enough to be considered good being Epidemic and Well of Darkness.

The saddest part is, almost all of this applies to PVE as well as PVP. Though cripples and chills are more useful in PVE. IMO Arenanet should abandon the idea of an attrition class with no active defenses. It is contradictory, and “This class is meant to take 100 blades to the face” is not a selling point.

EDIT: Completely forgot about weakness. Now weakness is probably the best thing a necro has for a defensive condition, except for the fact that high critical hit builds go right through it, condition curing removes the benefit completely, and it is unreliable in PVE because you never know if an enemy has a high crit chance or a low one.

I do agree that Necro lacks active defence and damage avoidance. I agree that they should be added. But I disagree that DS is “totally” useless as a survival mechanism.

The survival of the necro is based on a combination of these 4 things:

Health
Healing (life siphon)
Life force
Life force regen.

The original idea of skills like Spectral Armor and Spectral Walk is that they “replaced” our need for active defences and damage avoidance. We are supposed to get hit “many” times in a fight, and get 3% LF per hit.

Healing (life siphon) and LF regen was supposed to “replace” our need for active defences and damage avoidance. Those regens are supposed to be so high that we can literally “face tank” everything for a decent amount of time.

That’s why necro have such a great time fighting bunker builds. Bunker builds need to hit the necro many times to kill him/er. And from those hits we regenerate a lot of LF though SA and SW. And in a prolonged fights our life siphon and LF regen have a lot of time to help our survival rage.

The problem comes when we face high blast+high mobility (& stealth) classes. These guys often hit us for 4k-8k damage in one single hit. SA and SW cannot help us because we only get back 3% LF from that crazy high damage hit. Our life siphon and LF regen are very weak against high mobility classes because they keep disengaging, meaning we have a hard time hitting them for the needed extra survival.

So it isn’t the idea of “health+healing+LF+LF regen” for defense that is bad. It is the “disproportion” of those that we get when we faces high blast+high mobility classes that is the problem. The “time it takes before we die” and “window of opportunity to get back health and LF” are both often too short for us to survive properly.

It would be great if Anet can find a way to scale “health+healing+LF+LF regen” with the damage intake and output. For example, SA and SW should get back LF proportionally with the damage we take, instead of a flat 3% per hit. Life Siphon and LF should scale with the damage and condition damage we deal, instead of a flat % per hit.

If not, we would need some kind of active defence and damage avoidance. Or maybe even an overhaul.

Bhawb.7408:

I have hit people at long range with it pretty often, what you want to do is use Grasp early in the fight when people are at close range for an interrupt, or save it for when they run. Many players will turn tail and use a mobility move (like RTL), if you toss it off at the right time (takes some practice/getting used to) it will hit 99% of players right in the back, and fling them back to you. It surprises most people, and in that split second, and since they are usually only running from a fight they were already losing, that secures the kill quite nicely.

It isn’t an all-purpose skill, but in the right builds it has a few cool niche uses that really make it shine: such as pulling people right back into a well after a dodge (too close to dodge without pure luck), interrupting someone, or for that long range pull right back into combat, along with Dark Path, for the real feel that ANet promises of being inescapable.

Speaking of Grasp, I tested a build with Spectral Wall + Grasp + DS3. When successful it gives your foe 20 vulnerability by making him run though the wall twice.

If only Grasp is AoE, I could have used Spectral Wall + Grasp (AoE)+ Staff 5 to give 20 vulnerability to a bunch of enemies.

My opinion on grasp is that it misses or fails quite often unless you are very close to your enemy. It could be a bunch of reasons. Dodging, out of range, terrain problems stops the pull, etc.

Overall there are better utilities to take than Grasp. We rarely see thieves using Scorpion Wire for similar reasons.

I hope every necro learn something from this discussion. Feel free to comment and post questions. ^^

Condition damage is better if you are aiming for damage. Condition duration is more useful for conditions like cripple or fear.

Overall I would say condition damage for wvw.

In WvW, it is a good skill the use before your zerg charge at the enemy. There is no limit on the buffs so your whole zerg gets 33% protection.

PinCushion.7390:

CHIPS.6018:

Let me just say that when me and my zerg get to 600 range, and then I start using a 2 second cast time skill on a specific target:

Yes I often get interrupted or CC’ed, usually from random AoE. Not all the time of course.
Yes people do dodge away from our zerg. Not all the time of course.
Yes lag and culling is a huge issue. Not all the time of course.
Yes the immobilized is often gone before epidemic finishes, due to skill lag and condition cleansing. Not all the time of course.

I am not saying it never works. It did work for me here and there. But it is the lack of reliability that’s the biggest problem with it.

I group with an Engineer most of the time, and if they can get their double-tap immobilize to land (Net Shot and Net Turret toolbelt) it’s like 5 seconds of Immobilize that is awesome for Epidemic. IIRC Epidemic works on my stats and not the Engineer’s so my Condi Duration brings that 5 seconds (not accounting for lag) up to around 7-8ish AoE. Haven’t tested it, but it seems to work because that Immob lasts a while.

It helps that we play in the same room and can just talk to each other to set stuff like that up.

Yeah if you can team up with some dudes on TS or Vent Epidemic is a great skill.

War Mourner.5168:

Running away is exactly why you’re dying. If you don’t match a thief’s aggression with the same, you’re giving him a massive advantage and throwing away our own inherent advantages.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer
Also DS can take any combo in the game, stealth doesn’t.

Edit: here are all the thieves I could find solo today, + some messy ele kill. This is hardly proving something, but you asked, and this is all I have recorded.

A player must first learn how to survive against a thief before learning to kill a thief.

I can’t believe there is so much hate on the video. I think Talentless did very well in those fights. ^^

I got to say though you were lucky and didn’t get caught in the open by 2 or 3 guys at once. If you did it would be very hard to escape. That’s the only reason why I personally don’t like roaming in wvw. It is hard to disengage as a necro.

Ya I just joined.

Hexin.5603:

When I get on after work, I’ll buy a round for LA karaoke rockstars

Server has a lot of character, and whether in a large guild or not, try to make sure everyone gets a props for a gj. Have fun while being competitive, very good balance.

If your ever interested in connecting with us, or want to get a feel, come on over and guest … and be ready for some fun. Or contact us, don’t be shy … that’s my job (was too chicken to sing last week)

We actually do have a Karaoke party for real? I thought it was a joke. >_>

Sylvari is not boring at all. The elder tree can be thought of as a computer AI programmed to avoid harming other races if possible. In a twisted logic it can very well turn against everyone, because the elder dragons posts the greatest threat. The only way to “protect” other races is by “uniting” all races under one single banner (elder tree’s) and producing an unstoppable Nightmare army.

Treb is boring.

Before you start winning against thieves, you have to learn how to survive against thieves.

1) Do not get ambushed: Often times the necro will lose over half of his health, or even dead, before he realize what was going on. This is the #1 reason for most defeats. Once you lose half of your health, it is very hard to recover from. It is like starting a soccer match down 0-3 right from the beginning. No matter what you do after won’t help much.

Pay attention to your surroundings. And as you are running you should randomly cast Mark of Blood under your feet. When a thief sees that you are prepared he will be more hesitant to engage you.

Get back on your zerg as soon as you can. Necros are not good roamers. Rely on your zerg to give you some protection.

2) Plague 2 and run: This is the most basic of all necro skill. You literally just turn on Plague, use skill 2, and run. There is no way the thief can kill you for 20 seconds.

3) Mark on yourself and dodge: When you fight a thief, always have a mark under your feet. So when the thief gets into your radius, your marks would let you know and you can evade his attacks.

4) Learn to NOT dodge: Never randomly dodge. Save all your dodge for that opening few hits. When the opening few hits fails, the thief would usually stealth away. If not that auto attack from the thief barely hurts. You can face tank most of it.

5) Defensive snares: Use your snares defensively to help you keep your distance.

6) LF and hp regen: Make sure your build have enough LF and hp regen to allow you to survive.

7) Run to an objective while you fight: Do not go around in a circle with a thief. He loves that. Thief has the highest mobility and stealth, so they will win that circle battle.

Instead as you are fighting, you should continue to run to a safe zone. That means either a friendly zerg or a tower. Do this while doing all the above recommendations should keep you alive against thieves.

After you get the defensive part of it down, then work on the offensive side.

Bhawb.7408:

1) I don’t know what zergs you are in, I don’t get interrupted every 2 seconds
2) People can’t dodge forever
3) When lag becomes a real issue is when all skills start becoming unresponsive, meaning every ability will be hard to do anything with. Same with culling, you are just throwing out things hoping someone gets hit.
4) I have never run into a zerg that can cleanse that fast, it only takes 1 second to get your Epidemic off

Let me just say that when me and my zerg get to 600 range, and then I start using a 2 second cast time skill on a specific target:

Yes I often get interrupted or CC’ed, usually from random AoE. Not all the time of course.
Yes people do dodge away from our zerg. Not all the time of course.
Yes lag and culling is a huge issue. Not all the time of course.
Yes the immobilized is often gone before epidemic finishes, due to skill lag and condition cleansing. Not all the time of course.

I am not saying it never works. It did work for me here and there. But it is the lack of reliability that’s the biggest problem with it.

Bhawb.7408:

Epidemic + any immobilize = AoE snare.

I tried Dark Pact + Epidemic. Not reliable at all in a wvw fight.

Firstly Dark Pact + Epidemic have a 2 second cast time in total. So any sort of interrupt skills would randomly break your combo.

Secondly Dark Pact only have 600 range. The target often would dodge away from your zerg at that distance (natural instincts), so your Dark Pact misses.

Thirdly it is hard to use single target skills in all that lag and culling.

Fourthly that single target immobilize sometimes gets removed before your Epidemic lands. The benefit of an AoE immobilize is that some of those foes won’t be able to remove them fast enough.

At the end that Dark Pact + Epidemic combo is more trouble than it is worth. Its reliability is questionable. So I dropped it for something else.

Bhawb.7408:

Barring Eles, Thieves, and Mesmers, who can obviously leave combat in a much easier way than other classes due to long range near-instant movement abilities and/or stealth, no other class is going to get away from a necro by running.

With a Scepter you can have 50% cripple uptime. Axe/Focus gives you 33% cripple uptime, 25% chill uptime. Dagger/Warhorn not only gives you swiftness to chase, but cripple to keep them slowed, plus daze/immobilize for very hard lockdown, with 33% cripple uptime. Staff is the weakest in this area, with only 20% chill uptime. All of these are with no +duration for conditions, and aren’t including the fact that you can switch weapons easily for longer lockdown. You also have access to DS 2, which will take you to the enemy at 900 range, and has 33% chill uptime.

Even an ele is a bit hard-pressed to get away from you, only managing it if they cleanse off any chill/cripple on them, and RTL away. Thieves and Mesmers have a slightly better chance if they can blink+stealth to make it difficult for you to know where to follow.

I will clarify. My personal opinion is that Necros are not great at roaming in wvw. So necros should stay with their zerg. As such, my focus in wvw is in group fights and group fight support. So to me group snares are very important.

Yes there are cases where our zerg caught a few stranglers in the open, and my individual snares help my zerg kill them faster. But those doesn’t really help our zerg, since we would have won anyways.

Instead, the game changers are group snare skills like Shockwave, Glue Shot, Flurry, and Zealot’s Embrace. All of these gives aoe immobilize.

Other skills like Sanctuary can be used to trap foes inside.

They are really game changers in a big zerg fight. You trap some of the enemy zergs, before your zerg charge in and AoE them all to death. They cannot dodge and so you can easily kill them, and then later deal with the rest of the survivors.

The lack of any sort of AoE immobilize really bugs me. We are supposed to be the KING of snares.

Yes we do have AoE chill and cripple. But in those you can stilll evade. Immobilize and skills like Sanctuary are the real game changers, because it is certain death. High tier wvw guilds uses these to very deadly effects.

PinCushion.7390:

I think the biggest problem here is that, no matter what some ANet Dev said in some poorly worded forum post, our class isn’t supposed to be hard to run away from. Our class is evidently designed to be one people are supposed to run away from. It’s designed to get stronger the longer a fight drags on.

Chills delay our opponents cooldowns. Poison makes their heals less efficient. Vulnerability gradually builds up, causing allies to do more and more damage. Weakness takes its toll, reducing their damage output and ability to dodge. Their conditions make us heal more, or get transferred back to them. Fear interrupts key abilities at (hopefully) critical moments, which puts them further behind the curve. Death Shroud allows us to soak burst damage, and puts them even further behind the curve. Even the simple act of fighting and killing things gives us more fake hitpoints to waste our opponents attacks.

Our class is designed around keeping our opponents behind the curve so we gradually make their victory more and more unlikely. We aren’t supposed to keep people from running away. We’re supposed to make them want to.

The primary issue I see with this is the same issue most “nudge” classes in most MMOs have. If your core function is to nudge the odds in your favor over time, what use are you in fights that last 5 seconds. In other words, we aren’t going to be good at ganking/roaming no matter what. We excel in pitched battles, where both sides are committed to fight to the death, and where running away means losing something of value. Like many have said already, balanced for sPvP node fighting and not roaming around in WvW.

As for what’s to be done, I can’t say. Currently the primary problems are that encounters are too easy and fast in most PvE for “attrition” to matter, too chaotic and mobile in WvW for it to be effective, and too contrived and controlled in sPvP to allow many changes to the other two areas.

Well said. I think having the “worst mobility” together with the “worst snares”, and alongside of “mediocre damage” is a bad bad design.

1) Worst mobility + Worst snares = enemies can engage and disengage any time they want.
2) Mediocre damage = the necro aren’t that effective in the short interval they got to fight.

What makes the slow moving battleship scary? It is those huge cannons. If we remove those cannons the battleship becomes a slow moving oil tanker, which doesn’t scare anyone. Even a small patrol boat can sink an defensiveness oil tanker.

I think Anet meant it when they said the necros will be the best snaring class in the game. However they were working on something else and left necro to the very end, and so they forgot about the snaring part.

The game is half a year old. I think we deserved to move pass beta stage. Give us the true version of the class please: Attrition and Snares.

Further on the topic of snares:

Necro have far less snaring options than many other classes. Specially immobilize, where we literally have only ONE skill on ONE of our weapons(dagger). That’s it. We are also very weak in crippling and chilling. We are a far cry from being the KING of snares as promised by Anet.

Many other classes have AoE immobilize, which is very useful in wvw zerg vs zerg fights. Other classes have immobilize on a utility and traits. Yet necro only got 1 single immobilize skill, single target, 600 range on a 25 second cool down. Seriously?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Immobilized

Eles have more chilling options than necros do. Seriously? Necros should be the MASTER of cold and chill. Grenth is the only guy we worship. Why does he love eles who worship every single gods more than us?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilled

Other than engineers, pretty much every single other classes have better cripple than us.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crippled

Keep in mind that necros are supposed to be the BEST snaring class in the game, to make up for a lack of mobility. We are supposed to be able to keep foes in our “kill zone” 24/7, even with massive condition removals. When we fight 1v1, the enemy should have a very hard time running away from us. When we are a part of a zerg, all the enemies should have a very hard time moving or running away.

Thanks Bas! I will be more than happy to answer questions on the podcast. I play a lot of WvW on my necro. I used to be with SBI in T1. After that server “imploded” I moved to Kaineng, and we are now at T2. I had faced many tough servers along the way. JQ, SoS in their prime, SoR, TC, FA and the new BG.

If you have any questions about necro, specially for wvw, feel free to ask. ^^

BTW, my name is CHIPS all caps. Not CHiPs. :P

We don’t have nearly as many build choices as eles, that’s for sure. I don’t even play an ele, but right off the top of my head.

-Meteor Shower+AoEs
-Swirling Winds
-Mist Form
-D/D Ride the Lightning+Updraft
-Lightning Flash
-Healer
-Summons
-Forms and conjures
-Signets with longest recharge of 30 seconds.

Jeknar.6184:

The team with most Elementalist always win… As they can destroy siege on the walls with gigantic AoE zones, or protect their sieges from enemy sieges.

They are also one of the best 1v1 classes and have very high mobility. They are the Mary Sue of GW2.

Replace the totally useless Reanimator with Greater Marks. It still costs 5 pts but at least it frees up a trait slot.

Gryph.8237:

Really like the ideas you have all laid out here. I agree, that our class has mobility/disengagement issues, but unforuntately, here is why anet will do NOTHING to increase our skills as we have suggested above.

This game is balanced around 5 v 5 spvp. What does that mean? It means ikittenv5 situation, in their pitiful small pvp maps where people are FORCED into confrontation over points (you have to engage to take/keep the point) the necro has a slight advantage, because we can drop good aoe/light cc in the kill zone (as they referred to it in the state of the game vid, and it works well in spvp because people HAVE to get into your kill zone). Who cares if the class disengages, you cap/keep the point. The mobility/disengagement issues are not evident in spvp, which is why you will see spvp’r say that our class is perfectly fine. IT is, in spvp (5v5). It is a great class and they chose to balance the classes around it, vice the WvW. If you want my honest opinion, they will lose players hands down if they continue with that mentality when ESO and camelot unchained come out and true RvR (which keeps players longtime) comes out.

If WvW (RvR) mobility and stability are the kings (two things the necro has limted to no access to). A class like the mesmer, with HIGH burst, Stealth, and HUGE amounts of low cooldown evade skills, will rule. Classes with burst like the thief, come in handy as well, in small confrontations, and can get out with shadowstep/stealth. Disengaging in a WvW fight is important, if you get overwhelmed. Let’s face it, a necro, once it engages, it cannot disengage (unless you wasted a slot for the wurm). On the other side of the coin, if you want to disengage when fighting a necro its easy. Ele – RTL; Warrior- Greatsword 3, deselect target – greatsword 5, switch weapons – sword – 3; thief – shadowstep – invis (lets call it invis, because its not stealth, its invis), run away; etc. etc. Necro has none of these options to disengage..

With regard to stability, you either have to trait it, and i dont know many builds I like where I go 30 points into a trait line to get a skill that is mediocre. Well, you can also switch to lich form.. hmmm, HUGE target (LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME, IM A GLOWING kitten) with NO access to heal skills, and you can still get immobilized. Plague form… in a lage confrontation plague can make you tough, hard to hit, and can blind/slow the surround mob. it may allow you to get out of the front lines and retreat back a bit. not a bad option and likely the one MOST of us run in wvw for that reason. BUT, it slows you, and people can just move to range and hit you while you slowly try to run away.

It is clear, simly, evident, that the devs had NO idea what they were doing with necro when it comes to WvW, nor do they care. I am of the camp that says necro is perfectly fine in Spvp, but disadvantaged in wvw confrontations. Perhaps not in large scale because you have some survivability when the zergs clash you can likely stay alive enough to get out of the aoe-mid zone. But, you get rooted (without the consume condition/dodge combo) you are D.E.D dead. You get caught out in the middle by a few people, you’re done. you engage, more come, your done. you engage, people want out, simple, they run away.

But back to my point… anet does not care, nor will they add anything to help the necro in wvw, because it will reflect in spvp (where we are fine) and make everyone cry OP! Meanwhile they basically fawn all over their lovely op creation which they call the mesmer, and to which i refer to kitten the jumping evading kitten cannon of frustration.

While necro might be “fine” in spvp, they are still not fulfilling the original class vision, which is “hard to get away from”. It is the game design of spvp that’s forcing the enemies to stay in an area, not the abilities of the necro itself. So while “game balance” in spvp is fine, the “class design” is not fine.

Bas.7406:

vicious.5683:

Bhawb.7408:

I’ve played minions in PvP almost exclusively since beta. The melee minions sometimes screw up, but it is incredibly rare.

no, is not that rare.

here is another one: In downed state, sometimes the flesh golem hits your target, sometimes not, this happen half the time (it’s so good when it actually attack).

No one target the flesh golem, cause it’s not a problem in terms of damage or condition. They just have to run a little to avoid golem’s attacks, until the minion lose target.

Really, you should pay more attention.

You should pay attention. He is correct. Their ai is tied to you attacks. Two single target attacks will change their target. Their ai is very simple to grasp once you pick up the method. Unfortunately, that is tough for many of us to do. My minions are reliable 95 percent of the time. Bone minions can get wonky, and flesh golem sometimes bugs, but usually when he does its my fault.

I think the minion AI should react upon the start of your attack, not upon you hitting the enemy twice. Hitting the enemy twice is very conditional. The necro should be the one controlling the minions, not the enemies.

For wvw it is a must trait. I don’t see how any necro can be without it in wvw.

Andele.1306:

Bhawb.7408:

While that would be incredibly entertaining, I don’t see them doing that when we already have Grasp, I find it more likely that they would make Grasp more reliable before giving us a new skill that has almost the exact same utility.

Or just make grasp a forced shadowstep to you instead of projectile drag, we would lose our krait RP power, but it would still be one of the best things they could do with it.

It would be cool if they switch Grasp into a forced shadowstep. It would be even better if they add a part 2 into it. Part 1 cast Grasp on target. If it hits you can use part 2, which shadowstep target foe to you.

What does that mean? That mean you can now combo. For example Grasp 1 + Run back a bit + Summon Bone Minions + Grasp 2 + Putrid Explosion.

Ojimaru.8970:

However the damage is based on condition damage. At the same time the condition duration is based on Spite and Soul Reaping. What does that mean? That means if you want to max the fear damage by making it 2 ticks, you would need to invest into condition duration. However when you do that, you losses on condition damage itself, which would hurt your bleeding and poison damage.

You need exactly 0 points in Spite to reach +100% Fear duration.

Master of Terror (50% Fear duration) + 2x Superior Rune of Lyssa (10% condition duration) + Rare Veggie Pizza (+40% condition duration) = +100% Fear duration

But you still need 20 point into Soul Reaping, which doesn’t increase your fear damage.

Your runes are part of your build. In wvw condition damage is nearly always better than condition duration. While your terror now ticks twice, your bleeding and poison now deals less damage than they could have been. You sacrificed them for the fear damage.

Either way none of the above are deal breakers. What really broke the deal for me is that it changed your precious fear skills into DPS skills. In wvw your fears can potentially be game changers. It might be the difference between interrupting that ele, or your rams getting destroyed. It might be the difference between fearing those 2 foes off their ballista, or your zerg gets wiped. My fear skills are too valuable to be spammed for DPS.

Like I said I have no problem of using terror as a support damage. But I won’t design my build around it.

Ojimaru.8970:

Thanks for the great episode. That tip on Epidemic is a real game changer for me.

On the topic of Fear and Terror, Fear is the only “hard” CC that is affected by Condition Duration and is actually a Condition itself (whereas others like Blowout, Pull, Knockdown, Stun and Daze are not). When used on a Defiant Champion or Legendary mob, unless they are outright immune, the Fear Condition will still be applied, hence dealing damage from Terror. On a Condition Damage build, it’s not hard to slip into Death Shroud, insta-cast Doom, slip out of Death Shroud and continue your regular rotation. With Master of Terror, you only need +10% Condition duration and Rare Veggie Pizza to get an extra second of Fear.

Overall I think Takaruza has some good points, but his absolute lack of input regarding a Power Necro is dungeons other than COF P1 really bugged me. Yes, I get that Power Necros can do well in the easiest and most brain-dead dungeon in the game, but what about places like CM, SE, Arah or even Fractals? COF P1 is just a silly DPS run, while there are many dungeons that greatly benefit with the correct utilities; what can a Necro bring to a party in such cases? It would have been really great if he could have provided some insights in those. Unfortunately, as he admits, he doesn’t do anything other than COF P1…

Terror’s damage is good. However I don’t like how it is build.

2 + (level * 4.5) + 30% of Condition Damage damage per second.

At around 1,500 condition damage (reasonably high), the fear does around 2+360+0.3*1500=812 damage at the end of that second. You should have another condition on the foe, so that damage becomes 812*1.5=1218. If you got fear duration 100% boost, you can deal that twice. So damage is decent. In wvw your allies can stack buff your might to 25, so you deal even more damage.

However the damage is based on condition damage. At the same time the condition duration is based on Spite and Soul Reaping. What does that mean? That means if you want to max the fear damage by making it 2 ticks, you would need to invest into condition duration. However when you do that, you losses on condition damage itself, which would hurt your bleeding and poison damage.

This is a common theme of “conflict of interest” on many necro builds.

I have tested this build in the Mist. I has not tested this in wvw. But I can already tell that it won’t work there. My staff 5 and DS 3 are too valuable to be “thrown away” for 1,200 damage. That timely interrupt could save your whole zerg or yourself in certain situation.

Fear should be used for interrupting foes in a timely manner. It should not be used for DPS.

Now don’t get me wrong. I think that trait is very helpful as a support damage. But I personally won’t build my whole build around it, specially not for wvw. Not with the way I play anyways.

Pendragon.8735:

Dark Path back to a teleport, let it aoe bleed and chill on landing to keep its current offensive utility. This change would actually make Jon Peters salesmanship about Death Shroud a little less humorous.

A while back in an interview discussing Mesmer Portal, and how it made the Mesmer too unique in that utility in WvW, they discussed perhaps giving other classes similar skills to balance it out. Imagine if we got some kind of party based spectral transport skill.

It makes more sense if they give us an offensive portal. That means portal-ing enemies to the necro at any time the necro wants. That way we would truly be “hard to get away from”.

New elite skill: Seal

For 60 seconds, this skill does nothing. When you use the alternative skill to the seal, the target enemy is portal-ed to you regardless of where he is.

So let’s say you put a Seal on an enemy just outside of a tower. He runs into the tower to hide. You use the alternative skill of the Seal, and YAHOO he is forced back to where you are.

Yeah. You need to turn on DS, and like 1/4 sec later press “F” for stomp.

Some epic fights in the past few days from both servers. ^^

-he is boring.
-he is weak. My bone horror does more damage than he does.
-he is dumb.
-he stole all my glory.

If he just stayed in the back ground, like Evennia did, he would have been fine. But he had to come into the spot light, steal all the attention, while we did all the work.

digiowl.9620:

What is the point of attrition in a game where a PVP fight can be over in seconds thanks to rampaging spikers? The only ones that can possibly the taken down by attrition are bunkers, and ANet are nerfing them left and right.

There is attrition in this game. The problem is they are reserved for classes with damage avoidance. For example look at Yishis’ thief vs ele fight. Both side got damage avoidance. So the fight lasted pretty long.

If you have to face tank all the blast damage, like the necro, you won’t survive for long. There is no way your healing can make up for your losses. So it doesn’t really matter how much hp+LF you got. You still die eventually, while the enemy with less health but avoiding all your attacks would survive.

Other than defence we can also talk about offence. Against these high mobility or stealthy classes, unless you snare them, you only have a few seconds to land 5k of damage. If you cannot do that, you can never kill them.

Necro obviously cannot land 5k of damage in a few seconds, at least not on a consistent basis. So to balance we are supposed to be the BEST snaring class, to keep these high mobility/stealthy classes nearby. We are supposed to be able to force the enemy into close quarter combat, where even our dagger can hit on a consistent basis. But as shown, it is far from the case.

Engels.8537:

Kravick.4906:

Who solo caps camps? I get the impression you’ve lost what we’re talking about some where.

I solo camps with my condition necro in a tier 1 server, (jade quarry), it’s not a big deal,

Back on topic…

50% of the classes in this game have no chance to escape from me, and I mean “no chance at all”, (warriors // guardians // necros and engineers),

25% are able to escape sometimes, (rangers with leaps or entangle and mesmers with teleport),

The last 25%, (thief and d/d ele), will likely be able to scape,

All that we need to be a great attrition class is a reliable dark path,

Sounds good, but not good enough for the BEST snaring class in the game. ^^

Kravick.4906:

Talentless.5708:

This is not an kitten contest. Play a necro right and you will be fine. Even talentless noobs can play this class and make walmart special videos from just an hour or two WvW this afternoon:

I’m really not sure what you’re trying to prove linking this. These are very poor examples of good PVP. This was nothing but a montage of you 2v1ing people and killing up levels.

Meanwhile…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XubClqLgJnY

Finally got the time to watch that video. At 12:10 ish he was saying “When you take a big blast like that, you have to realize and shadow step away.”

LMAO. Wish we can do something like that.

Throughout that video, only that single ele provide him with any sort of 1v1 challenge. All other fights are so outclassed it aren’t funny. Without numbers on their side, none of those other fights would be worth mentioning.

Bhawb.7408:

Note about how Necros should be able to lock down even RTL eles: the problem is that for some classes, they are balanced around using things like stealth and blinks for survivability, namely thieves and mesmers. While it would be nice to lock down an RTL ele, it is somewhat problematic to introduce that ability without really hurting how thieves and mesmers can perform against necros.

I was actually really concerned by what they said in the SotG though, about dodging while immobilized.

But snaring skills are useless if they do not do their job. We are talking about 3/8 classes (ele, thief, mes) here. That’s roughly 40% of all enemies that a necro would face.

At the same time those other classes that are “weak” against snares rarely roams. Very rarely in wvw do you see a warrior or ranger roaming by himself. And they can usually remove conditions so quickly it aren’t funny. They also have awesome healing skills and buffs to keep them alive. And the long cool downs of our snares prevents us from catching them neither. So at the end necro catch almost no one.

So we have the usual roamers “immune” to snares. And the other classes rarely roam. So what good are snares? They are nearly useless in zerg vs zerg fights. The KING of snares, when snares in the game is useless, is still useless. It is like being the king of the Vikings, when Vikings no longer exist.

To simplify, anti-snares in this game is much stronger than snaring skills. And that’s the problem.

I think here is where the pro-buff camp and anti-buff camp of the necro comes full circle. It came down to something like this:

P: Buff snares.
A: No. Certain classes relies on those anti-snares for survival.
P: Fine. Buff our mobility so we can keep up.
A: No. Necro is not supposed to be highly mobile. They are attrition.
P: Fine. Buff our damage avoidance.
A: No. Necro is supposed to take every hit head on. Its their class design.
P: But without damage avoidance how can we be attrition?
A: Because we got DS which is awesome.
P: No it isn’t!
A: Yes it is!
P: No it isn’t!
A: Yes it is!
P: No it isn’t!
A: Yes it is!

:D

Rennoko.5731:

CHIPS.6018:

Kravick.4906:

Bhawb.7408:

Kravick.4906:

No one is talking about sPvP. There is a reason very few people play sPvP any more.

I already said why leaving fights was stupid in WvW objectives. You give the enemy team free supply, free siege, free keeps, etc. So to change it; congrats, you left the fight so now you have to siege your own tower, or congrats, you left a supply camp so the enemy team has a brand new golem that they didn’t have to do anything for. Its worse in WvW than sPvP because a flip takes a hell of a lot more time to reverse, whereas in sPvP it is just a few points.

Yeah you don’t play WvW very much. This isn’t how WvW works at all. At least not in the top 3 tiers.

Seriously, since when do people solo cap keeps and towers? Who solo caps camps? I get the impression you’ve lost what we’re talking about some where.

Many other classes can solo and roam no problem. Thieves and eles have no problem doing that. All classes can solo a camp, including necro. I mean come on they are just a bunch of AI controlled NPCs.

Of course, soloing a camp AND then building a golem on the spot by yourself is a bit far fetched… >_>

Anyways the problem happens when your necro gets discovered by an enemy or enemies. Thieves and eles in your shoes have a good chance of getting away. Your necro can’t.

Also some food for though (not to go too negative):

Ask yourself who would be better at defending a supply camp against 3 people attacking it. A thief of a necro?

The class that can burst 15k and then go invisible/untargettable back behind the NPCs? Or the guy that gets rushed and bursted down while the NPC’s kitten around?

The very definition of necro suggests that we would be the best bet in that scenario. I would be willing to wager that most of you would have a harder time taking that camp from a thief than a necro, playing as any class.

EDIT: My goodness…. the word D to the ERP is censored? I wasn’t aware that was offensive.

I said previously that necro can solo a camp of NPC guards. That’s all I was claiming. I don’t think anyone would disagree with me on this.

Now to your point (not sure how it is related to my previous point). Necro have a very hard time beating multiple foes because they got no damage avoidance. Every single attack and spells from those foes would hit. Thieves and eles got damage avoidance so they have a better chance of winning against multiple foes.

I am not sure a necro should be better in a 1 vs 3 situation than a thief. However being the BEST attrition class, a necro should be the best in DELAYING DEFEAT in a 1 vs 3 situation, so help can arrive. Necro should be the BEST class at “waiting for help”. This aren’t the case currently. Thieves can delay defeat just fine, while the necro would die pretty quickly against multiple foes at once.

It is hard to comment on this since your necro is only level 17. Your experience is not complete. I will say you should level the necro to at least 40 before getting an opinion on it.

Anyways if you find Necro minion AI frustrating, do not play ranger neither. It is the same thing over there.