I’m sure this has been reiterated a billion times already, but having high HP does not make the boss a challenge.
Mr Hrouda; do you know why people find this boss tedious? It is because it is without challenge. Setting back players for half an hour does not make this boss challenging simply because this boss can be defeated using bottom feeder tactics, standing at the top with 1500 range to pew pew pew his life away.
You’d get less complaints about the boredom and his hp if in fact, there was a mechanic that restored his during his shield mode. That would actually cause players to develop better organizational skills to defeat it rather than fall asleep using the easiest method.
Thats the problem with most bosses in this game; you’ve given people the opportunity to use bottom feeder tactics to beat a boss, and as such, most people will do that. Its ridiculous to say “oh you want this boss to be fun? L2play”. Bosses require a basic level of difficulty that weeds out bottom feeder tactics, and this will aid player satisfaction (feeling rewarded for defeating a difficult boss) and weed out issues of boredom and auto attack ad nauseum.
Guys guys guys, chill out. Once they fix the disconnect bug, someone just has to disconnect during the agony attacks to be safe, then return and rez everyone else. Heck, only the poor leader has to stay and ‘eat it’ tbh.
All the group needs to do is to spread out, so his circles do not overlap.
You have to learn the thing with either the inner or the outer circle being a safe spot and how to see which one is which.
Each player should have one defense skill to survive being in the crystal.
No player should approach the person in the crystal (overlapping aoe and all)
Nine times out of ten, nothing really happens to the person in the crystal.
Alpha is essentially one giant bluff. Except for when he uses earth spikes on path 3, for that to properly understand, players should expect a learning curve. But on all other paths, you are hardly required to move at all, you just panic because you misinterpret the circles.
I highly disagree with this method. Whenever I run paths 2 and 3 with a semi organized team, the priority is to free the person in the crystal. GS warriors are great for this because Alpha usually walks towards the person in the crystal, and the GS swings can break both the crystal and alpha’s kneecaps.
Secondly, it doesn’t matter too much if the AoE circles overlap; it is still easily dodged out of if you are unsure whether to stay still or move.
I do agree that each person should use a skill that lets them survive longer in the crystal though. If this cannot be done and the person downs, it is up to that person to target the nearest tendril and have the team focus fire it down to rally.
Hi,
please explain the reason behind choosing Spite -> Master -> Signet Power.
This gives might for 10s every 60s, if you use signet of the locust.
Is that worth it?
No. I think it may have been a mistake. You should never use signet of the locust. Ever. The passive beats the active everywhere. I suggest you pick Spiteful Marks or Chill of Death. I personally picked Spiteful marks because having 10% extra damage on such a useful weapon never hurts.
I highly disagree. Especially for dungeon runs it can act as a good heal since you’re gonna get slowed down when you get into combat anyways. 48 seconds isn’t too bad as a recharge either, especially if you’re gonna be using wells that have 60 recharge untraited. Lowish damage, decent heal.
I had a revelation and I don’t know if anyone else has brought this up.
All you have to do is have everyone in the party save an interrupt for the big attack you want to interrupt. Then all 5 players attempt to interrupt it. It doesn’t matter how many stacks are on the boss at that time. One of the interrupts will go through.
Tada! Easy counter to defiant. That’s also as intuitive as it comes. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that instantly when I first learned of the mechanic, seriously.
The only problem is when a player does not listen, or consistently lacks the presence of mind to save their interrupt. However, the fact is that each person on the team only needs one interrupt for your team to be able to interrupt bosses. Any character can bring 2 or more so you can make up for “that guy” anyway.
And no matter what the mechanics are, in any team game, there’s always gonna be “that guy” in pugs. So it shouldn’t be changed just because it’s not favorable for bad groups. Bad groups are bad either way.
Its not something bad groups can’t get around, its no even necessary to get around, thats why defiant is bad. People just ignore it anyways.
Corrupt boon sucks for PvE: enemies that buff themselves either can do it constantly or die too quickly for your corrupt boon to matter.
Plague signet is OK (if its working atm) but in situations where you can strip conditions from allies they probably can remove it easily already, not very necessary in PVE. Take spectral walk for a stun breaker + swiftness.
Secondly, now that PB is fixed, can we remove it? Its a bit pointless isn’t it? If you kill a mob in PvE you’re likely going to be out of combat. If you are fighting several mobs the 1k hp hardly matters especially when there is a cooldown, you can’t even ‘spike heal’ from killing a group of enemies. At least give us a weaker version of ‘lose a condition when killing an enemy’
I’d take Parasitic Bond’s 1k heal over Reanimator’s jagged kitten any day.
I’d like to bring to your attention major bugs that come with content releases; in November we had event chain issues with the Lost Shores events, in December, it is widely known the new Giver’s items’ +duration have no effect. How rigorous are the development team’s testing and are there plans to step up the testing? Are there repercussions for the development staff when errors of great severity are found by the community?
yes both Chill and Cripple work on enemy charge/leap abilities.
and is something you should avoid when fighting Bjarl because you want him to be charging you.
Well, I’m not sure if thats a good thing or not, but it’d sure be nice if there were more instances where a cripple could be the difference of life or death.
A proper support Guardian will give your whole group most of the time 12-15 Stacks of Might which is a darn good damage up for everybody.
A long time -33% damage with protection and can stop spikes with Aegis.
Permanent speedboost and very long regeneration.
Regeneration on top of alot of heals.
Also tons of crowd controle abilities. The Staff has this amazing line which makes mass pulls alot easier.
Endless reflects and long stability which is essential in a good amount of encounters.
Condition Remove for the whole group.
So far Staff/Hammer or Staff/Scepter/Torch are great for me. Gives alot of utility, controle and endless buffs for my team.
Also a 4 sec combo blast finnisher on the hammer. People don’t utilize combo fields all that well most of the time. Area might (3 might) for the whole team every 4 seconds, 1.5k heals in water fields make a big difference in fights.
Usually its for me “not another warrior” wish I had a necro or ele
Wow, I never knew about the might stack thing, that does sound pretty good! Thanks for the info. However, I always found the defensive capacity of guardians a bit unnecessary; I often run with a group of experienced people all using glass cannon builds and dodge suffices for almost all defensive purposes, such that prot, regen and aegis are rarely needed. I will look into this might stacking build though! thanks again! Btw what is the general skills this build uses for this might stacking?
We’re always reading the forums, even if we don’t have the time to respond.
Chap (Jonathan Sharp) and I play every profession in PvP. We have multiple of each profession type and play each of them regularly. My necromancers do have several hundred games since launch.
Two things:
As an xmas gift can you show us your sPvP games played per profession pie chart? just out of curiosity.
Secondly, now that PB is fixed, can we remove it? Its a bit pointless isn’t it? If you kill a mob in PvE you’re likely going to be out of combat. If you are fighting several mobs the 1k hp hardly matters especially when there is a cooldown, you can’t even ‘spike heal’ from killing a group of enemies. At least give us a weaker version of ‘lose a condition when killing an enemy’
Seriously, its not about the class but the ability of the player to play well.
Best example, Dungeon group where 3 couldnt dodge for kitten, ran around like headless chicken and had absolutely 0 situational awareness. Quit at the 3rd fractal before the boss which was easy swamp (because they simply couldnt survive mossmann)
Next was a group of 5 players that were very skilled and 1 disconnected. We finnished 2 fractals and the boss with just 4 players and it was much better than the run with the 5 players where 3 were idiots.
So choose a class that you like visually and think you want to play and learn it well. There are so many different abilities and things you can do with a class you will be surprised. Those elitist players think they are better but usually only know their class and only their preferred dps spec.
Why guardians are awesome? You probably have encountered the 90% of guardians that are terrible and mostly use 2h GS exclusively and dont know what weapon swamp or support abilities are, or better yet use spirit weapons offensively.
You will have a moment of “oh god thats awesome” when you encounter one of those few Guardians that know what they are doing (same for pretty much every class tough, bad players that have no clue about other classes)
Well can you clarify why guardians are awesome other than just saying ’they’re awesome and you’ll know it when they are awesome’. There’s nothing wrong with guardians using GS. The weapon is actually pretty kitten good and like I said, binding blade is great and just speeds up the whole trash mob process. Incidentally I’ve never had a moment where I thought ‘ kitten I wish I had a guardian’. I’ve had moments where I wanted a mesmer though.
Why are guardians considered ‘awesome’ for dungeons anyways? I’m a necromancer and to me guardians are just my binding blade bots, outside of that skill and the occasional wall of reflection they arent all that great. Necromancers have insanely higher aoe potential and are equally good with team support.
IMO; dagger offhand sucks for a dagger necro in PvE because:
Enemies and their conditions come in great supply, often if you are in a situation where you need/want to transfer conditions, its just going to get reapplied to you soon after. Blind, whilst useful, isn’t effective against bosses, and against trash mobs well, you rarely need to blind 1 out of their many many attacks.
Enfeebling blood is good, but not when it has casting time. A dagger necro most likely will go crit, and up the curses line to 15 for the minor master trait. That gives you 1 adept major trait slot which coincidentally can be weakening shroud, which lets you cast enfeebling blood faster, and more frequently.
.’. dagger offhand sucks, especially for a dagger necro.
No stun break?Seriously?
I believe u should always have at least one stun breaker in PVE~Unless they make entering DS as a new stun break method~
The only time I use stun break is…maybe…Lupi phase 2. And even then I don’t always take it because I can just dodge. Btw OP, great guide, I’d disagree on somethings though; I absolutely worship weakening shroud and mark of evasion. Rolling into group of mobs, hitting DS, then doing DS2, come out and epidemic is just too awesome.
I got my guardian to 80 and was shocked how much of a snore it became to play. The thief feels like my dagger necromancer on moderately-more-difficult-mode. which is great!
Does anyone what build uses d/d with wells? I remember running AC with a necro who had d/d and using wells. Needless to say, that was the FASTEST run I’ve ever done, even faster than having elementalists. A friend of mine once said “d/d wells crit” but…I have no idea how to even approach that
EDIT: I should mention that I only do PvE
Anything that does direct damage in the game can crit. Just bump up your precision.
From my reading of the forums, it appears that most Necromancers who use daggers either use it as a mainhand or an off-hand, but not both. Furthermore, this trait’s cooldown reduction of 15% only applies to two of the three weapon skills when wielded mainhand; it has no effect on skill #1. So – for the vast majority of Necromancers – Dagger Mastery will only benefit the cooldown of two weapon skills at any one time. This isn’t a very attractive option and thus I would hazard a guess that this trait doesn’t see much use.
My suggestion for improving this trait is one of the following:
1) Increase dagger mainhand’s Necrotic Slash > Necrotic Stab > Necrotic Bite attack speed by 15% consistent with its current cooldown decrease of 15% for the other dagger skills.
2) All dagger skills generate X% life force (small amount; maybe 1% or 2%).
3) All dagger skills steal life. As dagger is tied to the Blood Magic line, this maintains a certain continuity. The life steal would not be extreme; just a few points perhaps, but would stack on top of any other life stealing modifiers such as consumables or would be increased 50% by the Bloodthirst trait, for example.
4) An additional effect is added to the Necrotic Slash > Necrotic Stab > Necrotic Bite attack. Perhaps on a successful completion of the entire chain, it causes one condition such as bleeding, cripple, vulnerability, or weakness or steals some life.
As much as I’d love to see necromancer love and all, your suggestions are completely broken.
1) So an adept major trait is going to give the best dps weapon for the necro, 15% more dps, and 15% more LF generation? Not happening.
2) I think its actually intentional that you need to go into melee range for easy LF generation, dagger2,3 serve completely different purposes and lose the LF as a trade off. As in, the devs specifically don’t want you getting LF with a dagger UNLESS you’re in melee range.
3) 37 a hit is already pretty good. Thats not to say life stealing is supposed to keep you super healthy throughout the battle, i doubt the gw1 blood necromancers are gonna make a return anytime soon. Anything on top of what you can leech would be pretty OP.
4) Necrotic slash chain is already super awesome, theres no need to buff it more.
Been playing around with Terror and traiting. You can get 2 ticks of terror with just the 50% trait and 10% in Lyssa, no need to go into spite. You can get 100% with traiting lysaa, necromancer and putting a +15% stun duration sigil on your weapon and go 20 into spite. It seems that randomly you can get 2 ticks with just the 50% trait or as Pendragon saw, without… not sure why.
I just got hit with 25 stacks of confusion, right there.
Lol, 2 ticks of terror with 50% increase terror trait and Lyssa’s 10% duration increase, no need to go into spite which was a false said requirement. And you can get 100% terror buff with out food or making over stretches like was previously thought through, lyssa, 50% terror trait, 25 spite and a sigil that gives 15% stun duration increase.
Hmm, before the patch, I’m certain that Lyssa, Nightmare, 20 in spite, and the 50% trait can give 2 ticks of terror. I think the 50% trait multiplies, while the rest add. Sigil of Paralyzation adds 10% not 15% doesn’t it?
Tried this with 30 in death magic. Death nova is an OK trait, in the way that its fun (which is what this build is all about!) and can stack a billion seconds of poison on enemies, if poison was any useful in PVE it’d actually be great! Lacks a bit on the condition removal side though.
Been playing around with Terror and traiting. You can get 2 ticks of terror with just the 50% trait and 10% in Lyssa, no need to go into spite. You can get 100% with traiting lysaa, necromancer and putting a +15% stun duration sigil on your weapon and go 20 into spite. It seems that randomly you can get 2 ticks with just the 50% trait or as Pendragon saw, without… not sure why.
I just got hit with 25 stacks of confusion, right there.
Ok, ok, before you go screaming BUT THEY ARE USEFUL; some conditions are indeed very useful, such as bleed, burn, cripple. Some others; not so much.
Now I realize almost every condition has their purpose in PvP (though I always think cripple could do with a buff compared to chill). So actually changing the conditions won’t work. So how about we get enemies that are more susceptible to certain conditions? I’m posting this in the dungeons subforum because I’ve given up expecting any challenge in PvE in the regular world map anyways; enemy diversity there is appalling and most can be defeated with the same tactic; auto attack.
So here are some suggestions:
Chill – does the slower recharge matter in PvE? It sure doesn’t feel like it.
Cripple – does this affect charge and leap attacks? It’d be pretty cool if it could shorten charge attacks on bosses, etc.
Poison – damage sucks compared to burn and bleed, can we have enemies that heal a lot so that poison can become a valid strategy?
Confusion/retaliation – more so for retaliation, what happened to all the fast hitting small damage enemies?
Immobilize – its a good skill and all, but what if we had enemies with teleport attacks that can only be stopped by immobilize?
Hmm, I like that greater marks idea! thanks! The minion recharge primarily favors bone minions and blood fiend most I guess. But hey, versatility! Can always change it around. I usually use my axe when my minions are out though, giving them more damage output thanks to vulnerability.
Heres a fun fact though: not sure if intended or not, but when minions draw conditions, they completely consume it. i.e. they don’t end up getting affected. However, bone minions can’t seem to draw any conditions at all.
Here are some things I’m exploring. Originally I thought of doing 20/0/30/20/0. The last 10 points for the grandmaster death trait would be for Minion boon stripping or death nova. I thought this would be a suitable build for dungeons where enemies favor boons rather than condition spreading, i.e. dredge enemies. If the 30 was on blood, then the build would favor condition removal, with the focus5 used as the boon stripper.
Check again, since despite 90% bonus cond duration (pizza, lyssa, mad king, spite) it still says 1 3/4 and fears for a bit over second and half and a doom on a enemy with melandu rune set will still run for a full second~ (well used to dont know now past change on how it works with defiant and such stuff).
Condition duration is rounded down to the nearest 1/4 of a second. Secondly, I’m not sure how ‘food’ works when stacking BUT: spite and runes will add, whilst the trait for +50% will multiply.
You can get 2 seconds of fear by doing 20 in spite, 20 from lyssa and mad kings, and the 50% trait. You can check this by using terror. technically that is 90% if you add, yet, you will get 2 seconds because its 1.4 × 1.5.
Necromancers are one of the easiest classes to PvE with. Absurd survivability, great aoe skills, and pretty easy to play IMO.
People have different opinions on whether necromancers are great or not. They certainly require a little bit more ‘effort’ to ‘win’ with but I’d say they are quite powerful. They do lack a easy access to stability and they don’t have vigor buffs – DS is supposed to be our ‘3rd dodge + weapon swap’.
TBH, necromancer quality of life has been increasing, less bugs than when it started.
Well, its sorta like earning cash to get exotic gear, then running dungeons to get ascended gear. Then you upgrade the dungeon…so you can run the same dungeon further.
just out of curiosity.
And he really is very versatile!