Guild Wars 2

Luke.4562:

I agree, that Soul Comprehension is just trash.
More, it lacks again synergy by the moment under DS you won’t gain LF from nearby deaths.

I don’t think this is actually the case. I just sat in the middle of SM for the entire duration of the fight and my DS was up about 95% of the fight, slooowly healing me up.
And I was always under the impression you got Life Force while in DS, as it rarely runs out in zergs.

Niko.8901:

WHY CANT WE GET STUNBREAKS or MOBILITY or STEALTH? WHY?

Because we are supposed to be an ‘attrition’ class, which in Anets words means: ‘Facetank till you drop.’ I think someone needs to send them a dictionary.

Niko.8901:

Give me a kitten death gate to let me walk in the spirit world for 3 seconds or something […]

The actual reason I’m posting is because I just wanted to express the joy I felt when I imagined how this skill would look/work.

Still won’t happen ever though.

There is a thread that might give you the information you need:

Necromancer are not really desirable in PvE/PvP/WvW…

Granted there is some QQ in there I feel it’s still an accurate representation on how the Necromancer performs and how he is perceived ingame.

ThCakeIsALie.5306:

this is a battle for the better necro build

Well it depends entirely on what you want to achieve.

In Open World PvE it doesn’t even matter much. In dungeons though Berserker will still be king.
WvW on the other hand is different again. If you want to solo/group roam dire will be more useful, as you will be the priority target. In zergs you won’t be focused that much and can get more leeway for offensive stats, but I wouldn’t recommend berserker if you aren’t experienced in positioning yourself against blobs/zergs.

I’ve seen both work in sPvP (rabid instead of dire) but for me personally barbarian is more attractive.

Additionally a build doesn’t consist of gear alone (duh) so this question is rather one dimensional.

And finally most answers will come down to a personal preference, as this is conditions vs. power essentially.

Eater of Peeps.9062:

OH I guess I just suck – you’ve all convinced me that Im the prob and necro is WONDERFUL. I guess when the next person kicks me or blasts me in wvw Ill just send them here. Ill spend another 500 g on another set of ascended armor and retool my build for the 40th time and see if I can achieve the awesomeness that you all describe. I must just be incredibly DUMB after 9 years playing pvp/wvw with advanced titles . I must not know wtf I’m doing or talking about. Sorry everyone. Ill just do a reset. Anet must have thought this out carefully, and obviously all of you have figured something else I didn’t.

I just read your first post in this thread again and I failed to get what you describe as ‘being ineffective’.
In a zerg you should use your staff, wells and DS to dish out massive AOE damage. From what I read you perceive marks to be useless. Granted they don’t scale well with power with enough crit rate and a Sigil of Fire I can do about 1-2k AOE dmg per mark.
Couple that with WoC and WoS + Focused Rituals and you have a decent ranged dmg build that should tag a lot of enemies. I personally use Charrzooka for that extra AOE dmg burst.
Tbh I played a dire/rabid condi necro the last few days and I still got a good amount of loot bags. It might have to do with your positioning.

This is strictly zerg fighting tho. Roaming/havoc is a whole ’nother beast.

Spoj The Second.7680:

CastIron.7364:

Dalanor.5387:

But we have a infinite amount of second health bar which synergyze well with life force generating Spectral skills and life siphon!

Every time I read the profession balance subforum someone brings that up and I roll my eyes.
If it’s so balanced to have ‘two lifebars’ then why am I asked to switch to my guard or sit out the fight?

That was sarcasm. >.>

I know.
That’s why I brought up the Profession Balance Forum because there are actually some players there that think DS is too powerful.

Dalanor.5387:

But we have a infinite amount of second health bar which synergyze well with life force generating Spectral skills and life siphon!

Every time I read the profession balance subforum someone brings that up and I roll my eyes.
If it’s so balanced to have ‘two lifebars’ then why am I asked to switch to my guard or sit out the fight?

1. Forum search is as useless as PotH.

2. Minions have always been hit or miss but a recent patch just bugged them out again, after they were somewhat reliable for a time. So you’re not the only one.

3.

Would a dev plz look into this and let me know.

Hahahahaha.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Bunmaster.9734:

Full clerics necro healers can now make legitimate claims of carrying dungeon groups, just like healshout wars, cleric staff camping guardians and bearbows!! Not only can they heal, they are now the last one standing as well.

Once Renewing Blast hits, necros will be able to make very potent group healers. We’re already fairly good at it, but people don’t like Well of Blood being a light field (never mind that its healing amount is so high that it usually out-heals Healing Spring, even with a couple blast finishers).

I just checked dulfys notes and noticed it says that Renewing Blast will heal for about 800 without healing power. With LBs cast time thats about 530hp/s for a single target!

And with everyone claiming dps loss up to 25% this might even become an option for organized groups, as fights might get harder/longer and in more organized groups Deathly Perception loses its value and Foot in the Grave is generally not needed.
Plus Soul Reaping is more useful than Blood Magic and Renewing Blast even outheals Transfusion and Deathly Invigoriation.

It should be known by now that Anet likes to balance around SPvP and there MMs were a tad to damaging to their liking.
And as it’s supposed to be a nerf I guess the healing power scaling on Vampiric master will be horrible and not counteract the 5% nerf to Training of the Master.

So all in all nothing new in Necroville.

zapv.8051:

Unholy martyr is op as hell. 25% life force every 3 seconds in wvw. That along with unholy sanctuary will be really strong.

From what I understand it’s just 1 condition per 3 seconds, not 1 condition per ally every 3 seconds.
As you lose 4% per second that realization made me a sad necro. Still a buff to DS uptime.

I’m a bit let down with the Spite and Curses GMs. Parasitic Contagion seems as a good alternative to Dhuumfire, but Path of Corruption seems … underwhelming.
Even though that could mean that they increased the projectile speed.

DM seems better now as a traitline and I’ll be tinkering with DM and BM in order to create a zerg surfing build for WvW.

Renewing Blast seems like a nice buff to healing necros even though I never played one and therefore can’t say much about it.

Too bad there is no cool new GM for power necromancers.

Spite: Parasitic Contagion – A % of your condition damage heals you (5%, not affected by healing power)

Curses: Path of Corruption – Dark Path now additionally converts 2 boons into conditions.

Death Magic: Unholy Sanctuary - Regenerate health while you are in death shroud (this is the only method currently to physically regen your HP while in death shroud – it is same as healing from regen, will scale with your healing power)

Blood Magic: Unholy Martyr – Draw 1 condition from allies every 3 seconds while in death shroud. Each time you draw a condition, gain 5% life force.

Soul Reaping: Renewing Blast – Life Blast heal allies that it passes through.

Some of my fellow brethren need to chill out.

From studying the other profession forums I saw that nearly no profession liked their own revealed trait. May it be because it wasn’t in the present meta, felt UP next to the other GMs or simply was in an unpopular traitline (as is the case here).
For me that means that the new traits will most likely cater to niche builds and enable more diverse builds, which I’m a fan of. Plus in our case a rework of the DM traitline was announced so it minors may be more focused on healing, who knows?
I am actually thinking of reviving my old WvW Bunker Wellomancer and tinkering with the new GM, except another one of the new traits catches my eye.

Speaking of the other GMs: make sure to watch todays ‘Ready Up’ before anymore speculation, as all new traits will be presented there.

http://www.giyf.com/gw2+balance+patch+2014

Drakaer.8623:

Near to death is 7s not 6

Well that pretty much shatters any hope of perma stability on a necro.

Good stability and Necromancer does not compute.

Reason: “Near to Death” decreases DS recharge to 6 secs (not sure about that one) and “Foot in the Grave” gives Stability with 3 secs baseline.

This means you’d need at least 100% Boon duration in order to get perma stability. Using 2 Superior Water/Superior Monk/Superior Traveler Runes leaves you at 45% increased Boon Duration. Let’s say you get Platinum Doubloons on all your trinkets and weapons (even though that’s not possible in PvP but let’s continue for the sake of argument) giving you +32% Boon Duration.
You’d be at 77% increased boon Duration and only a 25 point investment in the horrible Death Magic traitline would get you to our desired +Boon Duration%. 102% (or 107 with full commitment to DM) is enough for perma stability but with 25/30 points in Soul reaping and Death Magic there is very little wiggling room for the build and you only get “Furious Demise” but no additional power.
Plus there is the problem of your DS running out and your whole setup being useless until you get it recharged again.

If I’m off with my calculations feel free to correct me. I still believe.

edit: I just realized you could shave off some points from Death Magic by wearing full Giver’s Armor giving you 6% Boon Duration and ‘of Winter’ Trinkets giving another 5% so 15 points in DM would reach the cap of 100% increased duration and you could happily spend another 10 points in another traitline.

Still the stats on that gear are pretty useless.

This might be decently useful as a zerg breaker in WvW (although I think Soldier might be more useful if you are adamant on using axe) but I’m not sure about it’s usefulness in sPvP. Wells and Plague and Foucs#5 are on a cooldown that’s too high to make it worth the while imo.
Plus Conditionmancer is still one of the best build to run in PvP.

Just wanted to chime in and give my Powermancer alternative:http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQIQNBHhZakRrTPeTcjeTBIVwaoC7GpA5jpesO6nD-jEDBYfDREBEjiAksAiuAgAJZZnFRjtYqIasabYaYAqYLq2auIa1SBkywI-w

I change out my WH after 25 stacks for one with Superior Sigil of Accuracy. Before I start roaming I swap in Banshee’s Wail and Spectral Mastery to get some nice Swiftness Duration going. Other than that the build is pretty straight foward. Use DS to get in some nice crits/take some hits and kite melee opponents with axe.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.

p.s.
I have Applied Strength as well as Applied Fortitude unlocked. That extra 250 vit and 100 power/condi dmg certainly don’t hurt.

Lalangamena.3694:

if you are trying to roam as a powermancer and clash ZvZ as conditionmancer, then yes the class is weak.

I’m playing a roaming powermancer right now and I win about 3/4 fights (solo) so I’d say that Powermancer specs are viable for roaming.

Conditionmancers on the other hand have two weaknesses in Zerg fights:

1. not able to tag that much (way less loot and rallys)
2. too much passive condi removal from guards/immune warrs

Therefore the potential of conditions is severely kitten in zergs even though you can still use conditions in organized group fighting within the zerg.

@OP: Funny that you mention one of the slower classes that you perceive to be faster than the necro: mesmer. You should be able to run away from them just fine.

Other than that try to use Spectral Wall against thiefs in 1v1. It seriously annoys their kitten.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,

For our upcoming CDI projects, we would like to collect your ideas for professions that need balancing. Since there are 8 professions, we would like to do one at a time and would like you to vote on which one comes first.

When I counted the votes about 10hrs ago necro was third with engi following close and warrior/guardian with the least amount of votes.
Somehow the ranking will get considered as well, but eventually necros will get their turn to be balanced.

Avigrus.2871:

CastIron.7364:

Tbh I think necro mobility isn’t too shabby (strictly speaking from WvW experience here). There are many ways to increase swiftness uptime (Death trait line, traited Warhorn/Spectral Walk and more) and with my build right now I maintain about 95% Swiftness Uptime.
All I need right now would be a leap or ground-targeted teleport.

Run speed is fine, but by mobility people are referring to in combat mobility – teleports, blinks, leaps, whirls etc…

We have solid run speed up time with the signet, war horn and s-walk.

I actually use traveller runes so i can free up a utility slot and don’t need to run that crappy signet.

The only times I wanted a leap etc. is when chasing a thief/ele or when I got ambushed by some gankers. But generally those skills are not needed if you watch out. Sometimes Spectral Walk and a corner/cliff is all you need (funny how many players aren’t used to a necro porting around). That said I wouldn’t mind some mobility skills, but I feel like there are more pressing issues right now.
Again this is from the perspective of roaming, if you are zerging you better not stay behind.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/wvw-spring-2014-tournament/

So the league is now a tournament and there will be a new method to match up servers that promises to be more competitive even though I am afraid the difference between T1/T2/T3 is too big (if I understood correctly that winning servers will be matched against another).
But the new reward system sounds awesome. I am excited for the weapon skins.
Also the way they associate you with a specific world seems interesting.
All in all I’m quite thrilled by these news even though that means we will have another huge influx of PvE Overlords.

Tbh I think necro mobility isn’t too shabby (strictly speaking from WvW experience here). There are many ways to increase swiftness uptime (Death trait line, traited Warhorn/Spectral Walk and more) and with my build right now I maintain about 95% Swiftness Uptime.
All I need right now would be a leap or ground-targeted teleport.

Ben K.6238:

Out of interest I decided to collate votes from pages 1-7.
Second or third votes for a class were ignored. Only one top 3 per poster, so where more than one was provided I chose buff lists where available. PvP/PvE/WvW posts I had to skip.

Class / Rank——1—-2—-3 -Total
Ranger_____150__87__39__276
Elementalist__74__78__68__220
Necromancer_43__49__56__148
Engineer_____17__47__55__119
Mesmer_____24__22__28___74
Thief _______15__23__27___65
Warrior______3__11 __13___27
Guardian_____3___2___7___12

Good Job!
I was about to do the same with my data but seeing as we don’t differ too much you just lightend my workload.

I took the liberty and counted ALL votes till svracak.9671. You guys are just too fast for me.
As it stands the results are now:
Elementalist: 230 Votes (22.66%)
Necromancer: 162 Votes (15.96%)
Engineer: 132 Votes (13.00%)
Guardian: 13 Votes (1.28%)
Warrior: 29 Votes (2.86%)
Thief: 74 Votes (7.29%)
Ranger: 299 Votes (29.46%)
Mesmer: 76 Votes (7.49%)
Total: 1015 Votes (100%)

If there is any interest I could give numbers on how often a profession was ranked 1. etc.