Guild Wars 2

I did a full staff one: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Suggestion-Engie-Elite-Spec-The-Excavator/first#post6274541

Famine.7915:

Which game mode?

Sounds like PvE to me.

Silv.9207:

Dirame.8521:

Zelulose.8695:

Necro doesn’t stand a chance. Only the low skill thief playing high skill builds die to necro. Thief could play a dodge spam -no skill- build and win any day. necro is just a free burst eating punching bag.

These kinds of arguments could be flipped around so easily it’s really pointless to make them. I’m going to use your exact words whilst substituting thief for necro.

Thief doesn’t stand a chance. Only the low skill Necro playing high skill builds die to Thief. Necro could play a condi spam -no skill- build and win any day. Thief is just a free condi eating punching bag.

And on and on we’ll go all day until we agree to disagree. Certain builds are harder to fight, of course they are. Staff Thief for instance is harder but not impossible to beat (fyi, it’s all about timing). But you know, Necros are punching bags.

A Daredevil can clean a condition every second when he dodge a hit. That mean that a condi necro can spam a lot of condis against him and see his damaging conditions cleaned in 3 seconds, still if he can stack any kind of good damage on an always evading enemy.
Only a unskilled thief lose against a necro, and that necro need to be really skilled to kill a thief.

The thief for my old team is far from bad. He might be reading this right now (Hey Chocolate! o/) and I’ve kicked his heiney more times than you can count on core necro. On Reaper it’s more like he kicks my butt more times than not. Every time I play Core Necro he tells me to switch to the “Meta build” because “he wants to practice”.

The simple thing is, Core Necro has many things that can deal with the speed of thieves. The Meta Necro is too slow, and too evadable. And because more Necros play the Meta builds, more Thief players will say “Pff, I can beat necros. It’s easy!” and I will say “no you can’t”.

Zelulose.8695:

Necro doesn’t stand a chance. Only the low skill thief playing high skill builds die to necro. Thief could play a dodge spam -no skill- build and win any day. necro is just a free burst eating punching bag.

These kinds of arguments could be flipped around so easily it’s really pointless to make them. I’m going to use your exact words whilst substituting thief for necro.

Thief doesn’t stand a chance. Only the low skill Necro playing high skill builds die to Thief. Necro could play a condi spam -no skill- build and win any day. Thief is just a free condi eating punching bag.

And on and on we’ll go all day until we agree to disagree. Certain builds are harder to fight, of course they are. Staff Thief for instance is harder but not impossible to beat (fyi, it’s all about timing). But you know, Necros are punching bags.

NotASmurf.1725:

Dirame.8521:

Every time someone says “Elite specs are better than core.” I just have to come in and say, that’s not entirely true. It’s true in some cases but not for all professions. I still play my core necro just fine. 60% win ratio or thereabouts. Can still play my core guardian burst build, and my condi engie still kicks 80% kitten right now (weak against necros and dragonhunters) but you know, so weak and fragile those core specs are.

You can have some level of success with core specs that’s true, but everything’s better with an elite spec.

There hasn’t been a single non-elite build in the pro scene since HoT came out, except for 1 guy who at that time didn’t own HoT. Coincidence?

Not everything but in a lot of things, they do better. That said, certain match ups are better for base professions. Reapers will have a hard time beating thieves for instance but base necro has a 90% win rate against them.

Every time someone says “Elite specs are better than core.” I just have to come in and say, that’s not entirely true. It’s true in some cases but not for all professions. I still play my core necro just fine. 60% win ratio or thereabouts. Can still play my core guardian burst build, and my condi engie still kicks 80% kitten right now (weak against necros and dragonhunters) but you know, so weak and fragile those core specs are.

Sins.4782:

It is.

Say what what? My unwittingly keen eyes spawned a gif? You don’t say!!!

So after some testing here are my results:
- Viper’s is, as predicted, very powerful but extremely squish.
- Curses is good for the extra transfer and the lower cooldown on heal and poison cloud but cover condis are still quite needed, so I’d still pick Spite.
- Chilled to the bone is nice for the stab but outside of that, I’m not dropping bodies! I want to drop bodies dargnabbit!!!

Resolution: I may pick curses for certain scenarios. Like when there are lots of Dragonhunters on the other team because of the short cooldown of Corrosive. And Viper’s will be good if you have a healer in your team, and you can maintain, near 50% damage reduction (through, Rise, Putrid Defence, Weakness and Cold Shoulder) but it is nearly impossible to predict when you will get bursted down so, it’s very hard to use but fun nonetheless.

Also, full gameplay with commentary will be posted soon so you can see my suckage and my triumphs.

I play Necromancer for most of my ranked queue and I’m in diamond Tier 4 now. I don’t even play that often. Just over a over a 100 games played this season and last season I used Necro to get to Legendary with just about 150 or slightly more games played.

So whilst Necro always gets focused (because the top teams have conditioned people to do this), I’ve been able to circumvent that by careful rotation, positioning and timing.

Sing this jingle and denshee might appear to save you.

If we’re dropping our thoughts here about the map then here are mine;

POSITIVES
- The node circumference being smaller is cool. Skirmishes off point happen more often.
- The obstruction from seeing across the map is actually the best part of this map. Keep that. Makes the middle node tactically important. It also makes stealth plays way more viable.
NEGATIVES
- Don’t like the colour of the ramps and elevated floors, feels and looks displeasing to my eyes. I would prefer rock walls like in courtyard but that’s just my personal taste
- I don’t like the buffs as it stands because they don’t seem impactful to me. But to be honest, I’d love to play with them in ranked queue to get a better feel for it. That’s where I can tell if one thing is better or not. Unranked, doesn’t tell me how useful those buffs will be when every match is stomp or get stomped.

If we’re dropping our thoughts here about the map. Here are mine;

POSITIVES
- The node circumference being smaller is cool. Skirmishes off point happen more often.
- The obstruction from seeing across the map is actually the best part of this map. Keep that. Makes the middle node tactically important. It also makes stealth plays way more viable.

NEGATIVES
- Don’t like the colour of the ramps and elevated floors, feels and looks displeasing to my eyes. I would prefer rock walls like in courtyard but that’s just my personal taste
- I don’t like the buffs as it stands because they don’t seem impactful to me. But to be honest, I’d love to play with them in ranked queue to get a better feel for it. That’s where I can tell if one thing is better or not. Unranked, doesn’t tell me how useful those buffs will be when every match is stomp or get stomped.

This is what you call a mirror match-up.

Stiofan.6720:

A cocoon comes out of a butterfly and is the prettiest cocoon that ever lived.

http://i.imgur.com/QBxVAo2.jpg

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I see what you did there.

We don’t need PvEers in PvP, we need PvPers in PvP. The World Championships and other monetary events will do that.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-mistakes-every-gamer-makes-when-they-play-online/

READ THE ARTICLE. JUST READ IT. AND BECOME A COCOON AND COME OUT A BUTTERFLY!!

Some people genuinely have a hard time against DHs but if you’re a good player, you can run through most of the DHs.

There are fewer DHs as you climb higher on the ladder from what I’ve seen so therefore, more build variety (For me at least. For everyone else though, I’m not so sure).

duster.7013:

They expressed that they dont do much voice comms. I think you absolutly need them when running theif and necro. The last nos death on silent storm was caused by the thief not knowing he could help imo.

If not that, drop the thief, put wakkey back on guard and just hold two nodes. I dont feel like the mes is the entire meta.

Err… actually what they said was “We don’t clog up our voice comms with unnecessary information. We just say what’s happening and expect everyone to respond accordingly.”

So they do use voice comms, they just don’t spam voice comms. If you want to confirm my above words, you can check the GW2 twitch video for the Tournament at 4:40:29. The clip that plays from that time stamp onward is where they describe their voice comm use.

kdaddy.5431:

Dirame.8521:

LUST.7241:

Dirame.8521:

LUST.7241:

Denial would have won the same if they had a seasoned Engi. Easily.

Ele and Engi are very similar in what they can do supportively for the team. There are ways Engi is better and there are ways Ele is better. Denial is the better team because they have more practice playing with what an Ele can do.

R55 showed that Scrapper works…unfortunately their team (and others using Engi over Ele) aren’t practiced around having an Engi on the team as support. This hurts those teams hard.

Really? A team like Rank 55? Zan the man who has played Engie probably since launch is somehow less practiced than Denial? Are you sure you’re speaking with sincerity here?

I know why Rank 55 lost and it wasn’t because they were using Engie. I know that for a fact but for you to think that Rank 55 is less practiced than Denial, that’s just laughable mate.

Did you read what I even wrote? There is nothing wrong with them individually (I never questioned their individual abilities). As a team there was. That’s what I was getting at.

Denial is a better TEAM and that’s how they dominated and proved it.

Fact is: Throwing together the best individual players of a class on a team together isn’t going to make them a great TEAM. They need to practice and Denial clearly had more of that.

And I’m telling you that it is my opinion, that you are wrong. Denial and Rank 55 are both good TEAMS. It all came down to the decisions that were made in the middle of the fights. You can argue that Denial is a better team “officially” because they won, but really, Rank 55 matches them in know-how and coordination.

Im sorry but if you guys ever played a active sport, all that matters is the win.

One of the best line ever is “you play to win the game” losing magnificently or winning dominantly doesnt really matter.

TCG (ED) is the best team with the best players in the game. Cant take that away from them with the history of there players and the amount of wins they have. Your like teh guy trying to say other players are better then Bill Russel just because you like them better or they put of better stats.

Oh my goodness. Here we go again with people making assumptions. I am just stating what I see. If you think I like Denial over Rank 55 or Rank 55 over Denial, you would be wrong either way. Rank 55 matches Denial in skill level and proficiency at the game. Just look at who got top seed in EU in the first place!!!!! Was it not Rank 55? Did they not beat Denial for the top seed???? Just because Denial won doesn’t mean they are necessarily better than R55 overall, it just means they were better THIS TIME. And you’ll see this in the next few match-ups where they go head to head.

apharma.3741:

Dirame.8521:

How do you deal with large groups of enemies as a mesmer? Simple! Play condi. Condi hits everything in the area, you apply 2 conditions that the enemy will always take full damage from and you’re not dependent on a phantasm to do damage.

Yeah, those mobs taking so much damage from confusion by spamming that auto attack while running round like newbs…

Confusion does ticking damage now so…. /shrug

LUST.7241:

Dirame.8521:

LUST.7241:

Denial would have won the same if they had a seasoned Engi. Easily.

Ele and Engi are very similar in what they can do supportively for the team. There are ways Engi is better and there are ways Ele is better. Denial is the better team because they have more practice playing with what an Ele can do.

R55 showed that Scrapper works…unfortunately their team (and others using Engi over Ele) aren’t practiced around having an Engi on the team as support. This hurts those teams hard.

Really? A team like Rank 55? Zan the man who has played Engie probably since launch is somehow less practiced than Denial? Are you sure you’re speaking with sincerity here?

I know why Rank 55 lost and it wasn’t because they were using Engie. I know that for a fact but for you to think that Rank 55 is less practiced than Denial, that’s just laughable mate.

Did you read what I even wrote? There is nothing wrong with them individually (I never questioned their individual abilities). As a team there was. That’s what I was getting at.

Denial is a better TEAM and that’s how they dominated and proved it.

Fact is: Throwing together the best individual players of a class on a team together isn’t going to make them a great TEAM. They need to practice and Denial clearly had more of that.

And I’m telling you that it is my opinion, that you are wrong. Denial and Rank 55 are both good TEAMS. It all came down to the decisions that were made in the middle of the fights. You can argue that Denial is a better team “officially” because they won, but really, Rank 55 matches them in know-how and coordination.

Supreme.3164:

Dirame.8521:

LUST.7241:

Denial would have won the same if they had a seasoned Engi. Easily.

Ele and Engi are very similar in what they can do supportively for the team. There are ways Engi is better and there are ways Ele is better. Denial is the better team because they have more practice playing with what an Ele can do.

R55 showed that Scrapper works…unfortunately their team (and others using Engi over Ele) aren’t practiced around having an Engi on the team as support. This hurts those teams hard.

Really? A team like Rank 55? Zan the man who has played Engie probably since launch is somehow less practiced than Denial? Are you sure you speaking with sincerity here?

I know why Rank 55 lost and it wasn’t because they were using Engie. I know that for a fact but for you to think that Rank 55 is less practiced than Denial, that’s just laughable mate.

Did you even watch the tournament?

Denshee was dead the second he was left alone and used obby flesh, he was basically in group 24/7, expecting the same level of cover in soloq or everyday pvp..it’s pure lunacy

To say that Denial won because they had an ele…it’s madness…the first match was between Vermillion(no ele) and TeamPZ(Zoose as ele), guess who won?..ha yes yes..Vermillion.

Denial won because they’re good player and best team atm…not because thy have an ele…xd

In my post you quoted, did the words “Denial won because they had an Ele” appear? Are you not just making assumptions? All I said was, Denial didn’t win because they practiced more. And I didn’t say the reason why they won. If you think I was implying that they won because they had an Ele then you would be wrong.

Also, my general point is, Ele is strong in team fights therefore, it is a better choice to go with Ele than Engie. This is because it is more risky to try saving someone when they go down, than to just heal them up so that they DON’T go down at all.

LUST.7241:

Denial would have won the same if they had a seasoned Engi. Easily.

Ele and Engi are very similar in what they can do supportively for the team. There are ways Engi is better and there are ways Ele is better. Denial is the better team because they have more practice playing with what an Ele can do.

R55 showed that Scrapper works…unfortunately their team (and others using Engi over Ele) aren’t practiced around having an Engi on the team as support. This hurts those teams hard.

Really? A team like Rank 55? Zan the man who has played Engie probably since launch is somehow less practiced than Denial? Are you sure you’re speaking with sincerity here?

I know why Rank 55 lost and it wasn’t because they were using Engie. I know that for a fact but for you to think that Rank 55 is less practiced than Denial, that’s just laughable mate.

Pregnantman.8259:

If I may, I would suggest you drop Spite and go for Curses. I understand the reasons you go with Spite (namely cover condis, signet trait and some damage) but you can get those from Curses as well.

With Curses you have a free condi transfer which is by all means is still useful; you may not be in your staff, you may be in Shroud, you may not want to blow your single stun break etc. (Plague Sending). You may have more corruption for more cover condis and pressure (Path of Corruption), or better access to your heal and poison cloud as well which results in more poison and weakness uptime (Master of Corruption). On Grandmaster line, you may have even more weakness uptime (Weakening Shroud) or longer duration for your poison (Lingering Curses), both of them enhance what you want to do as a poisonmancer. You also get some hefty condition damage, bleed duration, precision and bleed on crit to go with that and your amulet. Since you don’t have Soul Reaping, you wouldn’t be staying in Shroud for too long anyway, which means Furious Demise has a big effect on your Shroud rotations. Lastly, you may use Sigil of Fraility and even Suffer instead of Plague Signet if you miss the cover condis you get from Spite (namely Vulnurability and single target Chill from Chill of Death).

I will give your suggestions a try. I actually didn’t consider trying Chilled to the Bone at all because I couldn’t find any benefit to it but now I think there is, so I’ll give it a try. Alongside, giving Viper’s a try even though I said it’s a crazy man’s choice. I realized, I am a crazy man so…. VIPER’S WOOP!

How do you deal with large groups of enemies as a mesmer? Simple! Play condi. Condi hits everything in the area, you apply 2 conditions that the enemy will always take full damage from and you’re not dependent on a phantasm to do damage.

Mr Godlike.6098:

Dirame.8521:

Hehehe, it’s funny how you guys come out of the woodwork after you watch the WTS. Really, Warrior is fine. I believe it was some of you here who said Ele is bad because no team is playing it and all of a sudden Eles were being used in every team in this WTS. Wow, I wonder why… cos they certainly weren’t buffed in any of the recent patches.

So if YOU guys are the ones saying Warrior is bad and needs a buff… yea, I wouldn’t believe you even if you gave me a million pounds.

Thieves don’t need buffing, Warriors don’t need buffing. In fact, if you don’t see a Warrior replace Necros in the next WTSs, I’d be very surprised.

Ekhem 2/3 teams with ele’s where hard stomped (PZ, ASTRAL….I don’t know what had Never Lucky)

DENIAL used ele only to counter specific combo and players…not because it’s good.

WTS proved that this is the worst season for ele that is on bring of extinction thanks to druid/scrapper duo, nerfs, 0 build variety and no amulets havig both toughness and healing power (ele don’t have hard damage migration and almost every healing skill is garbage without stats).

Yeap bring that Scrapper. The one that is only useful when people go down. Do you not realize that a class that is only useful when other players go down is not one to be favoured? If Denial favoured the scrapper, do you think they’d be able to pull off such crazy heals for Helseth with Scrapper? Please, go and watch the match again and see how in-built Denshee is to the team. If not for Denshee and Rom, Denial would have been dead several times to Rank 55 considering how many times they downed Drazeh.

Ele doesn’t need hard damage to be a force in the team fights. If you can keep yourself and your teammates alive. Timing stuns and reflects at the right time (which Denshee did in SPADES) then no, he doesn’t need to do hard damage.

Hehehe, it’s funny how you guys come out of the woodwork after you watch the WTS. Really, Warrior is fine. I believe it was some of you here who said Ele is bad because no team is playing it and all of a sudden Eles were being used in every team in this WTS. Wow, I wonder why… cos they certainly weren’t buffed in any of the recent patches.

So if YOU guys are the ones saying Warrior is bad and needs a buff… yea, I wouldn’t believe you even if you gave me a million pounds.

Thieves don’t need buffing, Warriors don’t need buffing. In fact, if you don’t see a Warrior replace Necros in the next WTSs, I’d be very surprised.

LUST.7241:

I have a question. I played over 100 ranked games this season…and maintained roughly a 60-70% win-rate. Fantastic! I breezed through divisions and got a tier or two nightly, was nice and on-track.

However, today, I hit a big wall. That win-rate has significantly dropped to 55% (and dropping) and it’s not fun. At all. Solo or partial-group…doesn’t matter. I’m (or we) are either getting stuck dancing between a single pip with no actual gain. Like literally, almost 24 hours of just sitting at a single pip.

About to hit the 200 ranked games mark this season…and likely hit a 50% win-rate.
Is that by design? Is that why I’m/we are being put into 10m+ queues? Is the “system” trying to find a place for me this LATE? Did it really take over 100 games for the “system” to realize I might not be in the right division…but then realize it screwed up and needs to keep me hovering at one pip?

Depends on the day you play. Weekends are the worst time for whatever reason for me. You ask yourself…. the other side is winning… why can’t I be on that side? Why isn’t my side like that side? But yea, play during the week, it has worked out statistically better for me.

hm, what? People need the specializations to win you say? Well, I guess i should go delete all my Base Necro gameplay videos then….

messiah.1908:

i use to play with this concept long ago and its nice especially the CPC utility
death magic line offer you only 10% dmg reduction mainly combine with another 10% if chill. but other trait are subpar as you got no minions out side of elite and 1 utility which you cant command to explode on the right moment . so they can be juke around like disengage and they follow the enemy who teleport to you till they come.

you dont have much condi cleanse only with 1 signet and healing skill which is easy to cc
thus i would drop spite and take curses for another condi cleanse and more bleed stacks or soul for more defense with protection and life force abilities

also you marks are now blockable so no 1v1 for you pretty much

watch you video and you hardly did that much poison stacking versus other necro builds so why to focus only on 1 condition where necro got almost all of them to stack around …..

I understand all that, but, it’s funny cos I just deleted a video that shows me fighting a 2v2 against a necro and because of the way I timed my skills, I was able to win that 2v2 which could have become a 2v3. The necro even condi bursted me once and my 10 minions took ALL my conditions.

And I’m not just stacking one condition. This build can stack and does stack other conditions. Understand that this build is basically just a basic condi necro with poison stacking raised to the power of 10. If you play it like it only stacks 1 condition then you’ll definitely lose, but if you play it like any other condi build, with the ability to burst down targets with large stacks of poison (I’ve actually gone over 25 stacks of poison on someone once and I was like… “I thought that wasn’t possible!”), then you would almost always win. I even specifically use Spite so that a player can generate more cover conditions.

You are wrong about condi removals. You actually have 5 condi removals, Staff #4, Plague Signet, Shrouded Removal (Death magic Adept), Necromantic Corruption (death magic Master trait) when you have minions and Consume conditions. All the necro heal skills can be easily interrupted, if I based my choice on whether or not a necro heal can be easily interrupted, I’d be strangled for choice. Just go look at the necro heal cast times and tell me if any of them cast faster than an interrupt.

And yes, not having unblockable marks can be a problem in 1v1s, that’s why I try to stick to 1v1s I can win. And tend to favour teams fights more than anything else.

I was trying to play recently and I kept getting lag. So as of right now, i can’t record because of lag. I would have put out a video by now explaining the good things the build can do.

mordran.4750:

Really a pity that it seems not possible to have a constructive discussion about builds these days. People coming and saying “Ey your build sucks kitten but because i am such a smart boy i am not telling you why”. I can´t take them seriously and the OP should also not to, smells like trolling.

Thanks, all you can do is try to encourage people to discuss what they think is right so you can look for things you may not have thought of. But if people want to be smug then, that’s their cup of tea. I don’t really care, I’m just here to help and increase knowledge.

Bierzgal.2341:

Aaaaand that’s pretty much why I did not really want to elaborate before. You must understand that if anyone that has atleast a decent idea of how Necromancer works in sPvP mechanic/build-wise it would be very obvious why the build is subpar. For me also, the grass is green and the sky is blue. I don’t really feel like discussing the obvious. It’s nice that you want to uphold this conversation but I don’t feel the need to continue. I stated the obvious, if you really did not understand the points I made then you will not understand any further ones too. When it comes to class builds there are users and there are, in addition, builders. Not everyone needs to be the latter. Hell, you want me to explain why Curses would be better with the Wanderer Amulet? Like… really, you want me to explain the absolute only and sole reason why a Necro would ever slot this amulet in sPvP? That itself literally proves in my eyes that further conversation is pointless.

It’s nice that you made your own build and having fun with it. Belive it or not, this fact hold actual value. It won’t change that the build is mediocre at best tho. It’s just how things are. Necro is not in the greatest spot in sPvP right now even with meta builds. Diamond or not (let’s assume for a second that’s something hard to achieve in this game) I’m pretty sure you did not carry the team with that build.

Plus, I never said that ths build is unplayable. It’s just far worse in comparson to those that are actually good at the moment.

Over and out.

It’s sad that you would not want to explain why curses would be better than Death Magic because it is not just me that would benefit from you explaining it but everyone else who decides to come and read why this build is any good. And I cannot make this build better if you’re not willing to play devil’s advocate to try and prove your points.
I personally know for a fact how good Curses is. I’ve used it in other builds where in I also use Wanderer’s amulet (you can check out my other recent video on the necro to see this), I’ve used it even when people said “curses sucks”, and the build I use it in, I think is better than this one but, this Poison build is this Poison build and that build is THAT build.

I tend to be very fair with myself when it comes to how good a build is. I know for a fact that this build isn’t good in all 1v1s, I have other builds that can do that, I know for a fact that this build can’t fight off point, I have shown other builds that can do that also. This build isn’t trying to be the best build ever, it’s just trying to be A BUILD that’s pretty good at what it does. And I can assure you that it is pretty good at what it does.

And yea, this build has the potential to carry if played well. You may think not, but I actually know it can.

Bierzgal.2341:

Huh, the theme costs the build it’s quality. The choices made are borderline terrible at times.

What would be your version of the build that would improve it’s quality then? Because what I have done, I have done through testing in practical situations. I am in Diamond at the moment and most of that was whilst I was playing this build. A bit of it was me playing my Rifle Engie (yea, you heard me right, RIFLE ENGIE) so you might think I made this build in a day and I’m trying to cash in on dumb people, but I actually put a lot of thought and time dying over and over again, to make this build.

Bierzgal.2341:

- Wanderers Amulet without Curses line is pretty much garbage. The build does not utilise the precision, which with Curses, turns into condition damage.

Precision isn’t the only stat on the Wanderer’s amulet you know, there’s toughness, condition damage, and the most important one of all, Expertise. Expertise is the main reason why I’m using Wanderer’s. But then you might say, use Viper’s and at that I’ll point you back to the toughness on Wanderer’s. You are EXTREMELY squishy with Viper’s, taking it against the current meta is just asking for it.
That said, if you’re able to rotate and position yourself so that you don’t get curb stomped 9 times out of 10 then you can probably make Viper’s work.

Bierzgal.2341:

- The Rata Sum rune is an atrocious waste of slot. Useless precisios just to fit the poison theme.

Lol, you keep sounding like you think I didn’t put any thought into this.

I was using Rune of Thorns initially, but then I thought, “isn’t there a rune set that gives me another poison cloud” and then I found it and used it and saw the situations where it shined. In general, having multiple sources that allow you to do what you want to do, makes it harder for people to counter you. By simply having Rune of Rata Sum, I increase my uptime/chance of poison cloud and point control (if I’m standing on a point when it procs) and reduce the effectiveness of classes with good cleansing.

Bierzgal.2341:

- Death Magic is a bad choice and is not worth slotting over Soul Reaping/Curses just so the minions from Rise can go “boom, poison, haha”.

Tell us why Soul Reaping and/or Curses would be better compared to Death Magic. Because I’ve tried Soul Reaping, and I’ve tried Curses, there’s nothing in there that benefits what I’m trying to do in a significant enough way that would make me choose it over Death Magic. So if you would, tell me your opinion on why Soul Reaping or Curses would be better.

Bierzgal.2341:

- Taking the signet trait just for one signet is a waste.

What else should I put there then if I have a signet then? I think it is better to enhance what you have for the situations where they may be useful than to operate with the notion that you have to have ALL THE SIGNETS in order to use the signet trait. I don’t believe in that.

Bierzgal.2341:

- Taking the shout trait for only one shout is a waste (again, just to support the poison theme).

I wasn’t using the shout trait initially. But then I noticed it’s usefulness for increasing the uptime on my minions because they (1) keeping me alive because the minions take 33% of the damage dealt to me and they take my conditions from me (Death Magic trait btw) and (2) they can explode more often.

Bierzgal.2341:

- Sigil of Rage… another wasted slot. And yes the reason you gave in the video is terrible.

You know, I also did say you can swap it for anything you’d like right? That choice is just my personal choice. I mention the benefits of having it but it’s still a choice you can change if you play the build. I just advice trying Sigil of Rage first before you shove it to one side. There have been several situations where I used my cooldowns, having nothing left and the target cleanses everything only for my Sigil of Rage procs and I go into a blitz, applying 9 stacks of bleed, 2 stacks of poison, cripple and slap 5 torment on there, in the span of those 3 seconds. And because the target has used their cooldowns to cleanse, I just won the fight by virtue of that sigil alone.

Bierzgal.2341:

And that’s like… half of it. This build is just overall bad, sorry. But as I said, if it’s a theme-build that someone is having for fun then who cares if it’s good or bad untill one is having fun with it.

You think it’s bad but it’s not as bad as you think. It has it’s flaws, yes, but they aren’t the things that you mention. In fact, I’ve already mentioned it’s flaws in the video.
Check the Pros and Cons section if you haven’t already.

Bierzgal.2341:

It pretty much looks like Corruptionmancer made bad on purpose. It’s a fun-build so who cares, unless you are having fun then that’s all that matters. But if one would actually point out what is wrong in this builds, it would be a loooong list.

Go ahead, let’s point out what’s wrong with the build so I can see if they are correct or not.

TheDevice.2751:

These are the changes I would make to your build. (Rabid or Carrion actually)

I’ve always liked the idea of a poisonmancer but its hard to choose putrid defense over flesh of the master. The changes I made I think add better burst damage overall.

Carrion would definitely work but in PvP, you need a stun breaker, you need condi cleanse, you need cover condis (so your poison isn’t always the first to get stripped) and you need your condis to last longer than a few seconds to put pressure on anyone. In PvE and maybe even WvW you might be able to get away with running bone minions in a Raid party but for PvP, you need that slot for stun break, not to mention the cast time is just ripe for interruption. Not that I wouldn’t use it, I’m just saying I’ve kind of gone through the numbers and this is, so far, the best combination I have found.

I’ll definitely do a build update video if I find a better one though.

The Guide: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78orUhc5i54

Build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBLhZ6kjGo5GsbTwzGgDHsgLYQXtAwCIuK2FHjSftdwNA-TZxHABE8AAYZ/hZPDAdXGAgDBAA

“So many wonderful poisons!”

Wow, it has been a while since I posted a guide on these forums. Goes to show, new builds are hard to come by these days. In any case, I made a new build for the fun of it and had quite a laugh playing it. Ruining Dragonhunter combos and messing up teams by playing with their perception of what they think is “safe”. And how do I do this? Poison cloud! Tons and tons of poison cloud!

Of course the odd Ranger/Shout Ele can ruin your combo but for the most part, just have fun and give out free poisons.

Check out the build and let me know what you think.

Cynz.9437:

Dirame.8521:

Cynz.9437:

Dirame.8521:

Cynz.9437:

Dirame.8521:

Cynz.9437:

Pretty sure it is because enemy is not affected by spells when they go in downed state. It has nothing to do with mine field.

The dude wasn’t in downed state. He was just knocked down.

Are you talking about war or thief?

edit: nvm, you meant the thief. He did get hit once for 921 dmg.

Yea…. that still proves my point about the unreliability of mine field.

You think this is only spell in game that reliably doesn’t land in most cases, when it should lol?

….Sooo what does that have to do with anything? Are you trying to say that I shouldn’t complain about mine field because some other skill that I haven’t mentioned is also broken? Is this another “all the houses are burning so don’t complain” argument?

No, but judging by devs actions so far, the mine field is good enough, if it hits even once.

Prime example: scorpion wire, fails 90% of the time, but 10 % is good enough to leave it untouched for years.

I’ve used Scorpion wire quite a lot. It’s literally part of the only build I run on thief in PvP and I personally do not experience the 90% failure rate you speak of. I’ve never felt the amusement of “Wow that didn’t hit at all” while using it like I have when using Mine field.

Don’t get me wrong, Mine field does hit sometimes, but when it doesn’t hit….. I’m putting myself in arms way, my own skill shouldn’t be working against me. That’s all I’m saying.

Cynz.9437:

Dirame.8521:

Cynz.9437:

Dirame.8521:

Cynz.9437:

Pretty sure it is because enemy is not affected by spells when they go in downed state. It has nothing to do with mine field.

The dude wasn’t in downed state. He was just knocked down.

Are you talking about war or thief?

edit: nvm, you meant the thief. He did get hit once for 921 dmg.

Yea…. that still proves my point about the unreliability of mine field.

You think this is only spell in game that reliably doesn’t land in most cases, when it should lol?

….Sooo what does that have to do with anything? Are you trying to say that I shouldn’t complain about mine field because some other skill that I haven’t mentioned is also broken? Is this another “all the houses are burning so don’t complain” argument?

Cynz.9437:

Dirame.8521:

Cynz.9437:

Pretty sure it is because enemy is not affected by spells when they go in downed state. It has nothing to do with mine field.

The dude wasn’t in downed state. He was just knocked down.

Are you talking about war or thief?

edit: nvm, you meant the thief. He did get hit once for 921 dmg.

Yea…. that still proves my point about the unreliability of mine field.

Cynz.9437:

Pretty sure it is because enemy is not affected by spells when they go in downed state. It has nothing to do with mine field.

The dude wasn’t in downed state. He was just knocked down.

Mine field seriously needs to hit more definitively. I mean come on! I run into melee, where I could easily get cleaved or nuked or 4 ways from rekt and there’s still a chance that my skill could miss because reasons?! Come on guys PLEASE!!!!

Ray Patrick.7843:

It should work for you now Dirame.8521.

Thanks!

Bless your soul Mr Patrick!

For whatever reason, the screenshot below is happening to me… Can’t get queue for PvP cos it says I’m queued, can’t form a party cos it says I’m in a match etc etc… And I’m not sure why….. Any dev available to help a guy out?

Josh Davis.6015:

Hi there,

First, here’s the a recent post on the topic:

Gaile Gray.6029:

With the start of Season 4, we’ll be returning to Season 1’s style of matchmaking which focuses on creating the most balanced teams from the players queueing within your pip range. This change may widen the skill range of players in each division, but we feel that increased match quality is worth the trade-off of reduced prestige for this season. During Season 2 and 3 we added two league features that greatly impacted your ability to climb: start-of-season division placement based on previous season performance and win/lose streak pips, and both of these features will remain enabled for Season 4.

Season 4 matchmaking is already using MMR to create the most balanced teams possible. Teams are no longer “stacked” as they were in Season 2 and 3.

The problem (that we’re solving for S5) is that we’re currently searching for players close to your division to match you against. This means that the pool of players that we can pull from to create a match is much smaller than if we were using the entire pool of players. A player may have a high-enough MMR to put them in the top 100, but if they’re in Sapphire they’re only going to get matched with players that are in or around Sapphire. Season 5 will use the entire pool of players for creating matches – this should help the system create more balanced matches and improve queue times.

As for the “forced 50/50”, there’s nothing on the backend that forces a certain win-rate. This is a byproduct of your MMR settling.

I guess you’re prepared for the Posts that look like sthis: “WHY AM I FIGHTING ZAN AND TEXBI?” “Why is my team fighting legend players when I’m in Ruby?” “This matchmaking is stupid!!??!!!”

Evilek.5690:

And let me tell you a secret, Thief hard conter every single guardian in sPvP =)

Not really. One ring of warding at the right time and your dodging won’t count for anything.

Things I dislike:

Decree mechanic. I think it’s boring. You could leave it out and just the new virtues alone would make this idea amazing.

Conqueror stance. Would be very annoying to play against.

Things I like:

Your virtues. Great stuff there.

Divine speed. Great for solo PvE.

Nothing else really sparks the imagination though.

If it was that this is the only season where someone has complained about the matchmaking then I think Anet would be more inclined to listen to you but really…. EVERY. SINGLE. SEASON. has the worst matchmanking. It really is funny.

If you fight anything with too much sustain or boons, play a necro or condi mes.

I recently made a new necro build that makes me crack up when I fight anything with sustain.

I haven’t been having a harder time on Necro than any other class really. I could even argue that I’ve had more of a tough time playing Engie these days.

The reality is though, the meta build sucks. I always knew that but I was always willing to believe that I might be wrong. In any case, if you feel you’re not doing very well in PvP with the current meta build, try this one: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBLhZakjGqpxybwzG4vxBuQF36J4DopRZ8FwrOAWAA-TZhHABBcGAA+BA4dZAAOEABt/AA

You can swap out Soul Reaping for Reaper shroud if you feel that you like Reaper a bit better.

You can watch me play the build here during Season 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDZEZBRelMU

Silv.9207:

I want my necro corruption skills to focus on strip stability before every other boons, so I’m able to fear them easy! (joke)

The engi have already so much CC that there’s no need for a stability strip. Also, that will be OP as hell.

Oh I meant strip a BOON first. I said stab because it was what I encountered and I was like… “that doesn’t make any sense”. Why would a thing that strips a boon and knocks back, not strip the boon first AND THEN knock back.

Please make throw mine strip stability before it applies the knockback. That would be great! Thanks!