Guild Wars 2

@Dirame, I was more thinking of where (SPvP/TPvP/WvW), and if there are any other circumstances that should be mentioned, because as I said, it’s never happened to me, and I run with Greater Marks all the time in WvW. So, clearly there is some difference between our experiences, and I was trying to narrow down what causes it.

I’ve not had any Greater Marks blocked since the patch that (at least supposedly) fixed it. Under what circumstances does it happen?

@Swadow: Then why don’t you? If you want to keep playing your necro, then do that. If you don’t, then reroll something you do want to play. The fact remains: (support) necros are very much capable of handling all PvE content, which is what this thread is about (I feel useful enough in WvW as well, but we’ll save that for a different discussion).

As I said in my first post: there are some issues (that I expect to get fixed), but they’re not large enough to make it even remotely close to being undoable. You go play your far superior guardian, and I’ll play my necro, and enjoy the kitten out of playing, and successfully doing what I set out to do. Then, when they fix the bugs and heals, I’ll stop occasionally frowning about it, and live happily ever after in a land of eternal bliss and joy. Sounds good?

Support necros (who also duals as tanks, or as close to it as this game gets) don’t suffer from this problem. That is, of course we still don’t get vigor, but we are among the top survivable builds, while still offering strong support to our team mates. It’s enough to get you through any PvE content in the game as it is, and once they fix the bugs (and I’d like to see a “fix” to the glaring problem of our heals not scaling with healing power — Transfusion — or being so small I don’t see a point in even getting them — Deathly Invigoration). If they fix those things, I don’t see how a support necro has anything to complain about.

Of course, other necro builds should be able to run dungeons as well, and if they’re not, that’s a problem. However, I can’t really say anything more about that, since I’ve only run support. You could always try it out; maybe you’ll find it more enjoyable than you think.

I’m not sure which one of these is the bug, but logically, it would seem that one of them has to be:

• When you leave Lich Form you retain the stability boon, if it’s still on you when you leave.
• When you leave Plague, you lose the stability boon, even if it’s still on you when you leave.

Note that the human racial elite Avatar of Melandru functions the same way as Lich Form does.

Wee! \o/

Love me some bunker necro. Your first post made me take a proper look on the build I was using before (which was basically fully imported from WvW), and change it up to being a lot more similar to yours. I still have a hard time abandoning my cleric’s amulet for a shaman’s, but maybe that’s because I don’t play enough tournies. Keep it up.

Have you never noticed that if you sit on a certain non zero amount of LF, and increase SR, your LF percentage decreases? That would seem to imply to me that the maximum increases, as it is supposed to. Hence, I made the conclusion that it is working as intended.

I’ll have to disagree with the OP as well. The only reason I’m a little frustrated at times is because of the major bugs that affect us.

Weakness, however, is not a combo field. Though as a condition, it’s applied through certain finishers in a poison field.

Spectral Attunement does not seem to update any tooltips for me, though the effects apply properly — except for Spectral Walk, which doesn’t get a duration update (as already noted).

Ok, maybe I was wrong on the reapplication timer, but as Dibrom confirmed, removing the immobilize will allow you to move out of the roots, which will stop it from being reapplied to you.

You can also Putrid Mark to transfer your current immobilize away from you, and any allies you manage to place the mark on, which will allow you to move away from the roots (I’m not sure if not moving would cause the immobilize to be reapplied when it normally would, but since the immobilize is only applied every third second, it’s not particularly hard to move out of the way). I imagine pretty much any condition cleanse would work similarly.

Here I posted about a build that I run when I dabble in SPvP/TPvP, which is pretty much the same as what I run in WvW, which in turn is pretty much the same I run in dungeons (and I have cleared all explorables with it, so it should stand up to any PvE content). The only difference is that in WvW I use Spectral Walk instead of Spectral Armour, and in dungeons I use Signet of Undeath or Well of Power. Also, switching out Well of Darkness before certain boss fights (those not affected by blind, such as Giganticus Lupicus — in that particular case I swapped it against Summon Flesh Wurm to be able to escape the bubble during the third stage if I get caught in it) can be a good idea.

There are, of course, some differences between play styles in PvP and in PvE, but I’m sure you’ll get the hang of it.

Pretty sure this is not the case, as I also tend to pull focus from mobs pretty hard whenever I run dungeons — and I’m a support built necro and definitely am not getting aggro from my damage.

With my support necro, I play with my guild group if we have one, smashing enemy zergs and taking names. If we don’t have a group, I usually roam around alone and look for good fights against 1-3 enemies, and assist in supply camp fights, or possibly join up with an allied guild group.

Ok, first off: I’m mainly a WvW player, and far from an expert at SPvP or TPvP. That said, when I dabble in such things, I have had good success and a lot of fun with a build that’s very much based on what I play in WvW. It’s a build where I rarely lose 1v1s (in fact, I’ve only ever lost a 1v1 if the enemy had 3 orbs and I had none, and never in SPvP or TPvP), where I’m not afraid of going 1v2 unless it’s something serious and I should play safe, and where I can manage to pull out a win from a 1v3 (such wins probably depends on the enemy being bad, of course). However, it’s a defensive build, so against any decent team in TPvP you’re not gonna be allowed to win such fights even if you could, since it would take too long, which leads up to the role — bunker/team fight support (again I remind you that I’m far from an expert, and I wouldn’t be surprised if people that actually do play these things regularly have multiple objections against my build).

• Gear: Clerics amulet and gem, 6 runes of the grove, staff with sigil of energy, D/F with sigil of life + sigil of hydromancy (alternatively D/D for somewhat better condition management and a more defensive weapon set).
• Traits: 0-20-30-20-0 [Chilling Darkness, Focused Rituals, Ritual of Protection, Staff Mastery, Greater Marks, Transfusion, Ritual Mastery]. NOTE: I would like to have Shrouded Removal, but it would have to replace Greater Marks, and I’m a fan of being able to keep regeneration up on a larger group of allies, and the condition transfer from Putrid Mark becomes so much more powerful with Greater Marks (and larger AoE fear doesn’t hurt either).
• Skills: Well of Blood, Well of Suffering, Well of Darkness, Spectral Armour, Plague.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that this build is all about knowing when to use your skills, and where to place them, but I thought I’d point it out, because it makes a huge difference. Anyway, the staff is used defensively and for support purposes, and you switch to dagger mainly when you go aggressive on a single target or to assist with locking someone down.

Your DS is very important. Use it to eat burst if you have to; use Doom to interrupt certain bursts, stomps, revives, and heals; use Life Transfer to stall, AoE heal, or deal some AoE damage, but remember that it’s on a long cooldown; use Dark Path to tackle, and sometimes you can manage to juke with it. Also, don’t be afraid to throw out a Life Blast or two (or maybe three) — it’s your best ranged dps if you’ve got high life force (it’s not mad by any standards, but you can kill people). As such, if you get into a fight that’s not lopsided to your advantage (and you’re not full on life force already), blowing Spectral Armour early if you eat focus is not a bad idea.

Some things to consider:

• Putrid Mark does clear conditions off your allies too, and as such is an excellent support tool, apart from all the other good stuff it brings (decent AoE damage, condition cleanse off yourself, and a blast finisher).
• Speaking of which: blast finishers in your Well of Blood grants AoE retaliation (and in your other two wells: AoE blind … and in Chillblains: AoE weakness).
• Well of Darkness can be used to zone out some ranged for a short while, but it’s there to counter close range bursts against you and/or your allies; it’s got a short cast time (and is ranged), and will usually completely demolish any attempt at burst from someone caught in it.
• Well of Blood scales very well with Healing Power. In my WvW gear it heals for ~700 per second for 10 seconds, and without sigil charges — and ~830 per second with a fully charged sigil (should be around the same in SPvP and TPvP, though slightly lower because of food and probably some other stuff too). If you use it when your allies can stand in it, it will not only grant them protection for more than 4 seconds, but it will also heal them for more than their own healing skill does.
• You have 100% uptime (or close to, depending on the amount of disables etc.) on regeneration in combat on the group of allies fighting in your Marks of Blood.
• Don’t forget that you can strip boons with Spinal Shivers, though it’s got a fairly long cast.

There’s (as you probably can tell) not much of a rotation — you use your stuff situationally, except if you’re gonna try to “burst” someone down, which is done with: Dark Pact > Well of Suffering > Reaper’s Touch > dagger auto attack (very advanced stuff).

Peace.

5 second CD is if you spend 2 traits on it, though — one t2 in blood and one t3 in soul reaping. Otherwise it sits at 10sec cd (but will be longer if you want to do something in DS), which is exactly the cooldown of Cleansing Wave on dodge, which heals for ~3k with similar healing power and cures a condition.

However, you’re right in that it shouldn’t be buffed to such amounts — there are many other differences between the ele and the necro that also influences balance. I’d say around 1.5k — 2k sounds reasonable as well.

Does anyone have any insight into why the Deathly Invigoration trait is so weak? I mean, even with full clerics exotics it heals for ~50% of what the elementalist cleansing wave does with no healing power, and they can trait for that to be cast when they dodge in water attunement. Ok, it’s a bad idea to compare skills/traits directly between different professions, but it also heals less than what one tick of Well of Blood does. Why would anyone waste a trait on something like that?

Don’t bother with answers referring to a certain post by Jon Peters. I’m just wondering if anyone actually can conceive a reason for it.

As we all know, there are plenty of bugs that pests the necro community, but which of them affects you (and your build) the most?

For me, it’s easily:

• Chillblains and Greater Marks not working well together.
• Transfusion not scaling with Healing Power. To be honest, I’m a bit iffy about this one; if it’s truly a bug, then how can it not be fixed? Every heal for every other class (as far as I’m aware) works fine. If it’s not a bug, but intended, I sincerely urge reconsideration — maybe it would have to be balanced by lower start amount, but not gaining anything on one of the bigger necro support skills (read: heals) by investing into the attribute dedicated to improve it just doesn’t make sense.
• Chilling Darkness not working with Plague of Darkness. This is a big deal, but I mind less than about the others. Probably mostly because I’m not a fan of the elite — it’s boring to not be able to do anything other than moving and spamming one of three abilities for 20 seconds, but none of the others are any better for a support necro (at least not in WvW, where the flesh golem gets instantly nuked in fights).

I use 6 Grove runes. I liked Dwayna as well, but I found it kind of superfluous since I didn’t need help keeping regeneration up anyway; Grove on the other hand helps with protection up time (also applied to allies via the Ritual of Protection trait). The 6 rune bonus is sweet when it procs at the right time (it’s the same root as the ranger elite Entangle), though it definitely procs off enemies hitting you, not you hitting them.

Monk seems decent enough, but protection when hit will result in more effective HP than a small heal whenever it’s truly needed, and I prefer Grove’s 6 rune bonus over Monk’s. Obviously +15% boon duration is better than +15% protection duration, but since the only boons I apply are protection, regeneration, and swiftness, it’s of little consideration.

I’m not a fan of the condition removal when hit from Water, since it’s randomly with a 30sec cooldown, though the 6 rune bonus seems pretty sweet.

Ritual of Protection works fine for me — it applies protection flawlessly to allies affected by the well when it’s cast.

I’m not sure what you’re trying to say, but as I said before: “… nearby foes fear you” is an accurate description of the effect. I suppose fear can be used as you suggest, but I’ve never seen it; instead I would use scare, or frighten if I wanted to describe that the nearby foes “applied fear” to me.

“… nearby foes fear you” is an accurate description of the effect. David fears Joe means that David harbors fear towards Joe, not that David scares Joe, which is what you seem to think.

Reaper’s Protection applies fear to enemies in a small area of effect around yourself when you’re disabled.

Normally I don’t use the signet, but it’s a part of my underwater skill set, and my warrior friend was adamant that it did indeed transfer his conditions to me; he said he watched them disappear from him before the timer ran out. Maybe it just works underwater, though.

’twas a good match, with a lot of enjoyable PvP action. Cheers for the game, and good luck in the future to the rest of you!

My observation regarding Greater Marks:

Mark of Blood updates the effect properly (i.e when it’s triggered, and how large of an area it affects), but not the graphical display of the mark. Chillblains updates the graphical display of the mark, but not the actual area of effect. Putrid Mark and Reaper’s Mark updates correctly in both regards.

As for the tooltips, I haven’t really looked at them, but that’s easily checked by anyone actually online.

I play heal/support necro for my guild and I get more badges than I know what to do with, — I’m just stocking up on more and more siege weapons as time passes, despite dropping them pretty much whenever needed and we have supply.

I run full Cleric gear (Major: Healing Power, Minor: Power and Toughness). Too bad all the dungeon gear as well as the Orr gear has a different stat setup than crafts and random drops. Oh well, I can still get kitten for the skin if I want it.

This thread does not reflect my opinion at all. I like downed state, and feel that it benefits our group more the more coordinated we are, because we then get better at responding quickly and protecting resses/stomps.

Both me and the other main necro in our guild whose build I know (CIR — Gunnar’s Hold) use power and not condition damage. We also run two very different builds, and we’re both happy with what we do.

I refrain from posting in threads about necros in TPvP because I don’t play tournaments (my personal opinion is close to that of Jon Peters — i.e people cry foul because they don’t see further than their dps, but the class still needs some work nonetheless — but it’s based on conjectures and pug experiences), but we definitely have options in WvW. Me, I love my anchor-support necro, but I leveled using a tackle build that I also had a lot of fun with, and at no point did I feel that I could not perform on par with those around me (though of course I was more limited at lower levels).

The healing from the trait Transfusion does not scale with Healing Power. That has to be a bug, right?