Cool name right? This will be a build for general PvE but mostly Dungeon play (since that’s all I do these days anyways). It boasts great survival ability and support, but best of all it can easily be switch into another build all together for boss fights. This is primarily a Minion Master build, but can be switched into Staff Support on the fly.
Anyhow, this started as just another build my necromancer carried around in her backpack until I realized it is actually quite decent. The build uses a complete set of Soldier’s gear. The armor and weapons are easily obtainable by doing AC, HotW, SE, or a combination of the 42k sets. Trinkets are a bit harder, in the mean time I’ve settled for rare trinkets from WvW Invader’s. Alternatively if you are swimming in Karma you can get a whole set of rares from WvW, or just the rare dungeon set from HotW.
the build
weapons:
Specifically I go for Axe/Focus + Staff. Axe and Focus I like to run with superior sigil of peril, allowing your Axe1 to ramp up to 11 vulnerability on its own. Focus4 also adds another healthy dose of vulnerability, easily getting 20+ stacks. Unfortunately bosses have resistance to vulnerability, but that doesn’t make it worthless. Staff has a superior sigil of force.
traits:
This build runs with 20/0/20/30/0.
As a Minion Master you’re going to be utilizing most of the traits that buff minions. Now I know Minion AI seems to be lacking but honestly in a dungeon I never really have this problem. I’m not sure why, maybe the isolated instance has something to do with it.
Spite: Focus -20% cd (II), Minion +30% damage (IX). This actually makes minion damage quite respectable, especially wurm and golem as well as buffing putrid explosion (there’s talk about whether it affects putrid explosion or not, I think it does).
Death: Minion -20% cd (III), Minion +50% hp (X). Quite self explanatory here. IIRC Jagged horrors seem to have over 6k hp now.
Blood: Most of the adept major traits are decent to use here. Minion siphon (VII) and Minion draw conditions (XI) are my picks for the other two traits. Minion siphon and draw condition actually works when you’re downed, and quite noticeably too, just another feature to add to the build’s survival ability.
As to what Minions to bring, that’ll really depend on the situation. In general I like to have blood fiend, bone fiend, bone minions, and flesh golem out, with signet of the locust or plague signet or epidemic as my last utility. Flesh wurm works nicely in scenarios where you won’t need to move much.
Minions however, will often be undesirable in boss fights. Fights such as Lupi and Jade Maw will punish you for having minions out. That’s when I do a complete 180 with the build. I think Death and Blood magic trait lines have some of the best traits and makes the necromancer entirely versatile.
For instance, against Lupi I’d use:
Spite: Signet -20% cd (IV), Marks +10% damage (VII).
Death: Staff skills -20% cd (V), Greater Marks (II).
Blood: Transfusion heal (VI), Mark of blood on evasion (III), Well of blood on revive (IV).
For skills I’d take consume conditions, Signet of the Locust, Undeath, and Spite. Instantly you become a source of stable dps and can easily help out the rest of your team with regen boons, ranged rally, and small heals.
For runes, currently I’m just rocking Melandru. It could be anything tbh.
I have berserker builds and condition builds and while those builds have much greater dps potential they aren’t as flexible. There’s quite a lot of fun to be had in flexibility. Will update this build as I discover more things.
The two handed ones, like Staff, are doubly a rip off, since you only get 10% duration for a loss of 180 condition damage or whatever stat. Where as with a two weapon setup you could get 20% duration for the same 180 condition damage (losing 90 on main and off hand).
Still not very good.
This has been omitted by Arenanet for ages now. Same with magic find lol.
Its far from solid. Every content update introduces as many bugs as new content.
I love how Arenanet’s fixes makes things go backwards. You want TP preview? NO. You lose armor preview.
Its awful in the way that its just…completely boring. Other than that it does great damage.
Why did I even ave to explain this to you?
Because necromancers only have 2 sources of Blind(that actually proc Chilling Darkness) and that hardly makes the trait worth taking since it will only be a benefit to you once every 18+ seconds if you use Deathly Swarm on recharge and slot Well of Darkness.
This. If I dropped a staff3 with my wells I’d get the same effect, and scepter2 can snare too. I don’t need to bring well of darkness and its entirely long cd. And I’m not saying WoD is a bad skill, its a great skill, I just don’t think Chilling Darkness does all that much in the grand scheme of things.
(edited by Derk.3189)
Actually, fearing people back into a well is a decent use of fear, particularly on dagger builds. Terror is still a bit gimmicky though, I agree.
Fear always makes the target run directly away from your current position, so it’s hard for me to see how you fear people back into a well, especially if you drop the well at your feet or even if you have Focused Rituals , it will run them out of the center. Imagine a vector line that went from your character straight to your foe, then continued through their body to infinity. That’s the path that fear will always send them on until its duration ends. So if you dropped a well at your feet and wanted to fear your foe into it, you’d have to run/flesh wurm teleport, or dodge roll past them out of your well, then fear them back into it. This is fine and all, but there’s just many other practical decisions you can make to kill someone more effectively than this circus move.
Chilling them before the fear, on the other hand, would serve to better keep someone in a well, but you must realize that dropping a Chilblains mark(3/4s cast) on them, then shrouding and hitting Doom will take ~1 second to accomplish, so that’s the foe’s window to use a travel ability or dodge to get out of the well. Actually, you mentioned Dagger mainhand, so Dark Pact would suffice to immobilize them in a well, however its cast time is rather hefty @ 1s and once again, most people dodge out before that cast would go off and the dodge roll would make that cast fizzle.
Some fights, not all, just some, have a certain pace set into them. If you are attacking someone who is likely to retreat, you can be ahead of them and fear them back to your well. Happens in WvW all the time (at least I do it quite a lot)
We mustn’t presume that every fight involves a sparse open area that is without obstacles. Quite a lot of the time you can anticipate where the enemy is likely to go next. That said, I am by no means saying fear is the end all method to synergize with wells.
Hmm, I’ve always been very on the fence about chilling darkness. Persuade me on why its good, go on!
Our one hits harder and has another second of immobilize.
whats with people making new mechanics for necromancers these days?
um, fear IS affected by condition duration.
-Snip-
I was mainly thinking for WvW.
When fighting against players I tend to assume they have condition removal so the way I see it is that it’s good to put a large amount of bleeds, and then use any form of disruption to keep them distracted while the bleeds do their job, and then repeat on recharge.
Something like Scepter 2, Dagger 5, Scepter 1 a few times and BiP, DS fear and DS2, switch to staff and 2-5 on top of them.
Scepter 1 has 4s of bleed so I would only need 25% more duration for an extra tic. But what about lingering curses? That kind of changes the formula.
I am quite certain Lingering Curse multiplies after all the gear durations are added together. That said, in the grand scheme of things just forget about it. There are a billion and one reasons where your duration might be shortened and what not, and going for that maximum 100% is a bit of a waste of time IMO. 50% or even 25% is good enough already.
Sigh, I should test if sigil of generosity actually works…
Well… Someone posed the question: Is 10% Condition Duration worth 100 of your primary stat?
The answer is harder than it seems. We’ll look at two very different skills to see when and if it is worth it.
The only time more duration is worth ANYTHING for a Bleed, is if it creates 1 more second of bleeding. Otherwise it won’t tick again.
First, the worst bleed in the game. Engineer Pistol 1. (Provides 1 Stack of 2 seconds.)
Needs 50% Bleed duration to hit the next tick. 2 (Working) Giver’s weapons and 2 Afflicted, and 2 Krait sigils will grant that 50%. This makes our bleed 3 seconds long.
Bleed damage, by the by, is:
2.5 + (0.5 * Level) + (0.05 * Condition Damage) per stackSo at level 80, you just got yourself……. 42.5+(0.05*Malice) damage over the normal shot. This is why people scoff at Pistol 1’s bleed and just build for Power/Crit.
Now let’s look at Necromancer’s longest bleed: Enfeebling blood. (2 Stacks, 10 Seconds each)
With even 10% Condition duration, we get that needed extra tick. With the same setup as the engineer above? We get 10 more total seconds of bleed out of the two stacks. So we just got 425+(.5*Malice) more damage from that setup.
Worth it yet? Still, depends. Are we PvP, WvW, or PvE? Does the target have cleansing? Will the fight last long enough for the 5 extra seconds to mean something? It’s hard to say.
For a sustained fight, I’d say it’s worth it. For regular 1v1 mob-smashing, probably not. Basically, the longer the fight goes, the more valuable condition duration is. It’s not quantifiable due to all the variables involved. But can it be good? Certainly.
The necromancer’s longest bleed is Blood is Power facepalm.
The point of the Giver weapons is to hit 80% condition duration (100% for bleed) without points in Spite. That’s what I will be using them for. I will keep my Rabid scepter for times when condition removal is a factor.
Giver’s weapons are better for burn, which favors duration over condition damage. Condition duration is terrible if you have to sacrifice condition damage for it when used for bleed.
Btw, I think specific traits that increase duration, like lingering curse and hemo work multiplicatively, but i’m sure runes and sigils work additively.
Yeah GW2 defined 2012 alright, as probably the most buggy triple A title in recent history.
Are you sure about that?
Yep.
I tested this on my guardian extensively, its easier to run conclusive tests on that.
Had wells that lasted for 8 seconds, but only pulsed every 3? Great laugh right there. Ah how far we’ve come!
I simply don’t understand how these things get through testing. Surely they are tested before released right? I just ran similar tests with my Guardian, and yes, Giver’s Weapons are still broken.
Giver’s weapons are bugged and have no effect at all. That’s pretty awesome if you ask me.
Tested this on my necromancer with 1 giver’s weapon in main hand and used blood is power. Still only got 30 seconds of bleeding, not 33. Not even 32 or 31.
Well. Its not a major event without major bugs. Happy Wintersday Arenanet!
I can see where the OP is coming from. After my first two dungeon runs and trying to read defiant’s tooltip mid battle I just gave up; I never really needed to use stuns on bosses and even when I did it felt like it was just a random chance of happening.
More options will probably be added soon.
To the gem shop.
Dude they want you to spend your money to get new bank slots.
No its not optional. Can I choose to update my game and remove every existence of Ascended gear on it? No. Even if I don’t choose to use ascended gear, the exist of it has implications in the world I play the game in. Whether it is that I have to wvw against ascended opponents or simply be accepted in a group that requires you to have ascended gear.
Ignorance isn’t bliss.
No no no. The original papaya was perfect for you. You enjoyed it for MONTHS. If it was rotten you would have never enjoyed it in the first place and taken it back immediately for a refund.
Yeah but now the papaya has given you AIDS. Whether or not you choose to acknowledge it, its there.
This is the correct analogy.
Fine, lets go with this silliness.
It’s your choice to partake of the AIDS. You can still eat the papaya without getting AIDS if you so choose.
No one is making you get the AIDS. That’s an option available to you however if you would like.
YOU ATE THE KITTEN PAPAYA ALREADY. We already bought Guild Wars 2. Now they’ve shoved AIDS in our face. We can ignore it all we like, its still THERE.
Exotic gear was better than rare before ascended gear came along. Rare was better than masterwork, masterwork better than fine, fine better than normal. Nothing has changed.
Except that you can’t get ascended gear from the trading post, or with karma. Nope, nothing at all.
No no no. The original papaya was perfect for you. You enjoyed it for MONTHS. If it was rotten you would have never enjoyed it in the first place and taken it back immediately for a refund.
Yeah but now the papaya has given you AIDS. Whether or not you choose to acknowledge it, its there.
This is the correct analogy.
Progression != Grind
No progression=bored at endgame, move on to another game, which is what casuals tend to do anyway.
Oh, but almighty GW2 is ALL endgame, right from the get go. You love adhering to what the company says SO much so you better believe this too.
I have been playing and enjoying MMO’s that play this way for almost 2 decades. Nobody tells me how to feel what to like. I play what I like, and don’t play what I don’t like. It’s simple.
Point is, I have seen this dog and pony show many times before, and you guys and all your complaints, will never change the fact that this game will always have some form of progression, where the guy with the uber stuff has an advantage on those who don’t. So go get your uber stuff so you can be viable, or be like me and don’t bother, just play how you want, and when you do beat someone who out gears you, you can then know the bliss that I play for.
Go underdogs. Down with bland arcade predictable variable-less mindless gameplay.
You love gear grinds, why did you buy this game again? Or am I to believe you bought this game last week?
and LMFAO. Ascended gear does NOTHING to change the gameplay. It ticks your numbers up a notch. NO new effects. Agony is a simple on off switch. At least WoW’s gear treadmill was actually GOOD.
Anyhow, its quite clear now you have no idea what you’re on about anyways, as most people in this topic have pointed out already.
(edited by Derk.3189)
Progression != Grind
No progression=bored at endgame, move on to another game, which is what casuals tend to do anyway.
Oh, but almighty GW2 is ALL endgame, right from the get go. You love adhering to what the company says SO much so you better believe this too.
Progression != Grind
lol, although basic, not many will understand that symbol. not everybody is in IT
ive seen it as <> too.
Basically they like the idea of MMO’s but don’t like the grind. So they want a more arcade type game.
I think they should play games more suited for them, ie: league of legends, and fighter beat em ups, where there is no gear.
They forget, if we all had the same gear out the gate, what’s the point of even having gear? Cosmetics? Yea we’ll see how long that holds your average MMO player.
Last I heard, 7 years+. Guild Wars 1 says it all.
But guild wars 1 is NOT an MMO, it’s not even marketed as one.
Playing guild wars 1 hardly means you’re an MMO player. lol.Define MMO.
MMO stands for MASSIVE MULTIPLAYER ONLINE. Game but we all know it goes much deeper than that.
GW1 was heavily instanced coRPG, and the guys who made it marketed it as such.
And the point is, Name one successful REAL MMO, that has no stat progression. And I will stop telling players that they are looking for their casual game in the wrong genre.
Hahaha keep telling yourself that. They marketed the game that way so they don’t need to directly be confrontational to WoW. Did Blizzard see GW1 as an MMO? Yes. Did Arenanet want to compete for the same audience as WoW? Yes. Did unjaded GW1 players know they were playing an MMO? Yes.
You’re exactly the type of customer Arenanet wants. Easily convinced through PR and uninformed.
(edited by Derk.3189)
Have you checked out the tome of rubicon? It looks completely different to the tome of rubicon on GW1 wiki. Lmao.
Basically they like the idea of MMO’s but don’t like the grind. So they want a more arcade type game.
I think they should play games more suited for them, ie: league of legends, and fighter beat em ups, where there is no gear.
They forget, if we all had the same gear out the gate, what’s the point of even having gear? Cosmetics? Yea we’ll see how long that holds your average MMO player.
Last I heard, 7 years+. Guild Wars 1 says it all.
Welcome to Guild Wars 2 2.0. New game direction taking place.
interesting topic on the WoW forums:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7004697373?page=1
Seems like that whole ‘bridging the gap’ bs got to some people there. I suggest posting in that topic to tell the people the truth about ascended gear. You can use your battlenet account, you don’t need to have purchased wow in order to post there.
A-Net didn’t introduce a gear grind. They released unreleased content that didn’t ship with the game, that’s why you didn’t pay for it via expansion pack. Almost all of the content being released was preconceived. If you don’t like it stop posting about it on the forum your QQ threads won’t change it.
AhAHhAHAHHAhAhAh, you’re one of those people that believe day one DLCs were made ‘for the fans’ right?
Got disconnected at the Ancient Karka, twice. Phase 1 lagged worse than when I played games with a 56k modem. Phase 2 was snoringly boring.
On the left sidebar for amazon is a feature to search only products that are 4 star and up. Oops, guess what happens if you don’t have 4 stars.
The amount of people that use this let alone know that it exists is extremely tiny. The vast majority of people use a website at it’s most basic form.
Sometimes they find the search function and use that. Sometimes just browsing.
To use filters? That’s a different breed of computer user entirely.
Not saying it doesn’t get used as that would be silly, but to expect it to have any actual significant impact is equally silly.
You know what’s silly? Making generalizations you have absolutely no evidence to back up. Did you do a survey on ‘Do you click the 4 stars and above button’?
And your evidence is what exactly? What’s your Amazon.com employee number? Yeah. Didn’t think so. Opinions go both ways bud.
I didn’t make an opinion. I said that if you don’t have 4 stars, you will be excluded from the 4 stars search result, this is fact. I even agreed with you that uninformed people will do that to decide on buying a game, but that doesn’t mean that’s a small amount of people.
On the left sidebar for amazon is a feature to search only products that are 4 star and up. Oops, guess what happens if you don’t have 4 stars.
The amount of people that use this let alone know that it exists is extremely tiny. The vast majority of people use a website at it’s most basic form.
Sometimes they find the search function and use that. Sometimes just browsing.
To use filters? That’s a different breed of computer user entirely.
Not saying it doesn’t get used as that would be silly, but to expect it to have any actual significant impact is equally silly.
You know what’s silly? Making generalizations you have absolutely no evidence to back up. Did you do a survey on ‘Do you click the 4 stars and above button’?
+1
This is what they said they would do. Make games fun to keep people playing. I would assume they also had cash shop figures from GW1. So they had to have known that people enjoying themselves will spend money. And to your point about gear grind. GW1 had max stat gear. If you did grind, it was only for the better looking stuff with same stats. Until the 11/15 patch, they had the similar approach.
So now, I still would like someone to provide me with proof that people who prefer gear stat progression spend more money in cash shops than people who like horizontal progression and playing just for the fun of it.
People pay for WoW, don’t they?
Just sayin’. :P
Though I agree I’d rather not see them go down THAT particular model. XD
Incorrect comparison. All WoW players pay the same amount for the same vertical progression system. Dalendria asked for proof that shows a player would pay MORE for vertical progression rather than horizontal.
….exaggerating much? The Amazon rating is still pretty good despite the pathetic attempts to review-bomb it.
And frankly, basing your purchases on user reviews these days is a questionable decision, since most people are very bad at giving even remotely objective reviews of anything.
who cares? enough people will read it and be affected. that’s all we need to do. YOu can no longer get away with treating customers like this, shoving things down their throat. Social media makes these stories spread like wild fire. Viva la revolution!
God I hope you’re joking, otherwise this post is the most hilarious thing I’ve read yet.
Yes, dropping GW2 down from a 4.5 star game all the way to a 3.5 star game with review bombs, that will CLEARLY stop people from buying it!
How’d that review-bomb strategy work out for Diablo 3, again? Oh, right, 3.5 million copies sold within 24 hours of the game’s release. And THEIR review-bomb got the rating a hell of a lot lower than you guys have. But yes, please, keep fighting the good fight, there, comrade. >_>
On the left sidebar for amazon is a feature to search only products that are 4 star and up. Oops, guess what happens if you don’t have 4 stars?
See the thing is, now you’ll proceed to counter this argument by saying only uninformed consumers will do that. Whilst that may be true, much of the world relies on uninformed consumers, Arenanet is no different. Lets be GW2 centric about how many uninformed people are in the game. Go look at the trading post in game. Look at how many people sell items for 1 copper more than vendor price. I rest my case.
Those people are actually correct; they were pointing out the dungeon vendors who do sell max gear.
But they won’t be max anymore soon, Ascended gear is a new tier of gear that is better than exotic gear. You can only get it in the FotM dungeon.
Bones are easy to get, I’ve kept my character at a certain story quest just to farm bones.
You’ve described 98% of the bosses in this game. All doable with the 1 key.
Funny thing about this whole affair is that ANet are damaging their own business model. With no subscription they rely on Gem Store and expansion purchases for their revenue. If Joe Average drifts away (which the no subscription model allows him to feel at ease about), then returns, then he finds in his absence that he’s been gated out of any hope of community participation then guess what. He doesn’t buy the expansion and he sure as hell doesn’t spend money on the gem store.
In the meantime ANet hasn’t been able to monetise that guy due to no subscription. Hmmmm, the more I think about it the more I realise ANet should introduce subscriptions …
Yeah, I think with the year finishing off January will be a great time to start.
Gear grind is bad MMO design. Gear is the result of time spent playing and little else. There’s no compelling reason to reward players who have more time to spend with numerical superiority. They have more time to practice as an advantage already.
I know right. And I thought this game was made for people who don’t want to devote their lives to a game.
Looking to do some turtle/phalanx formations tonight. Anyone gonna be on 8pm PST?