Guild Wars 2

I want to know why they can’t use the jagged horror AI for the other melee minions. Those things are very responsive. Short-lived, but responsive.

Caveth.3268:

3) No way to escape enemy zergs (No mobility, no stealth, no stability, no invulnerability, no blocks, no evades (only dodge), slow movement speed even with 25% extra signet)

Full stop. For actual movement speed NOBODY can beat a necromancer. Permanent swiftness (and even if not permenant, very long duration) means you are always moving at the max possible speed.

Sticking to your target with a dagger? Try using a warhorn offhand. Locust Swarm is the ultimate in sticking tools.

Gap closing? Dark Path is available to every necro regardless of build. Unless they dodge it or block it (dang Guardians), it is very reliable now.

Escapes require more thought than on other classes, but they are definitely possible via spectral walk and flesh wurm. Or go cliff diving.

Softspoken.2410:

I think it needs line of sight: the only skill I can think of that doesn’t is epidemic and that’s Just Plain Weird.

Tides of Blood (necro trident auto-attack) doesn’t require LoS either.

Bhawb.7408:

What Shady said, you can also just pop DS and survive stupidly high falls too, although I would imagine OP’s method should theoretically work no matter the initial height, whereas DS does eventually not tank enough.

I’m not certain of this. I’ve fallen from the top of the Karka nest to the bottom and survived with death shroud. To my knowledge, there is no higher fall in the game.

Well, unless you count the one that kills you in midair outside Rata Sum.

Still, Necros in WvW should keep this capability in mind. Cliffs are your best friend: an easy kill with good positioning, or an easy escape that only another necro can chase you down.

Electro.4173:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Icarus Pherae.4680:

It is not nor has it ever been a second life bar, it is a second downed state. Think about it 4 skills, degens, pretty sure in early beta that WAS the necro downed state.

I thought it was well known that Death Shroud was originally the necro downed state.

If DS was originally the Necro downed state, what was Necro’s original profession mechanic? Or did they just originally not have a profession mechanic at all until dying?

Death Shroud. That has always been the class mechanic. You could activate it while you were still up, but then you didn’t have it if you got downed. It also had a built-in Spectral Walk effect originally.

They decided that a necro was just way too hard to kill that way (immune to stomps, for one) and changed it out from being our downed state, but they never changed the UI to reflect that.

CHIPS.6018:

In this analogy, a thief can both accelerate faster and tow more weight than a necromancer. Necromancers has the advantage of having a slightly better fuel economy but that aren’t nearly enough to make up for the differences.

What sports car have you seen that can out-tow a semi? I’m genuinely curious on this.

Icarus Pherae.4680:

It is not nor has it ever been a second life bar, it is a second downed state. Think about it 4 skills, degens, pretty sure in early beta that WAS the necro downed state.

I thought it was well known that Death Shroud was originally the necro downed state.

At the very least AR. There are traits to give your pet some of everything else, but not AR.

Iehova.9518:

Zumy.6318:

I dont force you to agree with me, buddy.

I just don’t understand your point of view, friend.

Let’s see if I can explain it better.

I had to put a ton of work into getting up to 30 gold (which mostly got spent on equipping myself with the runes and weapon types/stats I wanted). Asking me to save up 100 gold feels like a task I will never see the end of.

However, I’ve been buying icy runestones in groups of 5 and keeping them in my bank. It feels a lot more manageable to do so as I feel like I am making real, measurable progress. I know that I am putting in no less work (and probably some extra due to waypoint costs), but it feels far more manageable this way. I refuse to play the trading post, so that much money is a lot of work.

Mada.5319:

ddak.3150:

THuGaNoMiX.5036:

Seriously, just save your gold and buy one. It really isn’t that hard. I just farmed 60 gold in a week. It’s an MMO. Take your time and if you want it then work for it and stop complaining. You can farm 500 gold in Orr in 2 months with ease.

Ye, in 2 months someone will have 500 gold, but by then – precursors will be 2000 gold… Prices are going high every day…

False. The only precursors that have gone up in price the past month are those that got updated. Everything else has been relatively stable.

False. I’ve been keeping track on Tooth of Frostfang’s price (Frostfang recieved no update) and it has risen in price by 100 gold in the last 2 weeks.

Well, last night I had an enemy running around with the “downed” marker above his head in Dragonbrand EB keep. I do mean running around. It was a light armor character too, so no Vengence.

I chased him around before he suddenly vanished when I took a screenshot, only to appear on the level above me where he dropped dead. Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. Should probably look at that screenshot again before I send the report off.

My lich Form Jagged Horrors tend to out-live whatever I’m fighting, so…

As far as AI goes, Jagged Horrors are the most reliable minions. I think I’ve only had one time when my jagged horror wasn’t attacking, and that was more because it was running around like zerglings do in starcraft when you have too many attacking the same target.

To expand on what Rennoko said above regarding WvW, it should be noted that the necromancer isn’t designed to win, it’s designed to make sure your opponents don’t win. It is full of ways to say “No, you don’t do that.” However, this playstyle is not as popular as the “I will melt your face” one. Hence, the opinions you get may be skewed.

Most of the people saying the necro is horrid try to use it for the “melt face” playstyle. Most that say it’s great (though could use some bug fixes and buffs to a couple of skills that currently never see use) are of the “no you don’t” playstyle.

By bug fixes, I mean improvements on minion AI, fixing the death shroud issues that popped up with this last patch, and making Corrupt Boon not fail for no reason whatsoever. A couple others, but these are the big ones right now. The skills that need to be buffed (in my mind) are Spectral Armor (needs something more to justify such a long cooldown) and Signet of Spite (ditto).

sorrow.2364:

You still did not addressed what I want to address.
Is having an huge HP pool enough to make a Necro an attrition class to survive long enough the fights? Has the Necro good amount of tools to avoid enemy to escape?
The answer is NO.
Despite what you want to say, having an huge HP pool doesn’t help to live enough to make the fight long as they should to unleash what the Necro potential should be. Why? Because we lack of any other defensive mechanism.

Yes and no. No because we are very vulnerable to stunlocking and thus dying because we really can’t do anything about it. All classes are susceptible to this, but some have better stability access than others (Guardians have at least 3 forms of AoE stability, though one requires traiting to achieve)

Yes, though, because both of those massive health pools (yes, I did say we have two) can recharge rather quickly. Anything that gives life force is effectively a heal that is % of your max health. Naturally, this will be a very significant amount as your max health is very large by default. Now consider how quickly you can build life force. Just by swapping to the easily replenishable health bar to absorb big hits, you can easily force an opponent to go through the equivalent of your normal health bar several times in a fight. Factor in the several sources of Regen, siphons, and other bits of healing we get (remember: we have the two best healing skills in the game, one in quality, the other in quantity healed) and we can stretch a fight our far longer than opponents are comfortable with. We may not go through their health bar quite as fast as some other classes, but it still depletes before ours does.

Sigil of Blood is a decent one if you have a good crit chance (you do). More damage+survivability never hurt anyone. It has a very short cooldown and a good effect.

Otherwise, I would say a Sigil of Accuracy would work. Rocking an 80% crit chance should be doable for a good portion of the time (25 stacks on your one sigil, Fury, and Accuracy, add in consumables to taste)

Daecollo.9578:

Actually, a guardian can get infinite vigor with 5 trait points. (tons of avoidance.) and also has access to moves that offer invulnerability, and the ability to clear 3 conditions every 10 seconds, or 2 conditions with 10 points.

Try 2 conditions every 10 seconds if they never use their heal and have traited for it. Guardians never get the ability to do a passive 3rd condition cleanse.

But, Guardians also rely heavily on boons. Guess which class is best for removing those boons and countering the heavy armor+ healing?

As a note to all of those who commented on Axe #2 granting 4% life force: The wiki was wrong. I just corrected it to match the in-game tooltip and the actual life force gain (8%).

If you think I’m wrong, I suggest equipping an axe to your necro and reading what it says.

BrockMcCleery.9562:

There’s a big difference between a ‘fun toy’ and a game breaking item.

Yup. And that difference is “cooldowns”. Novel concept, isn’t it? Good things break the game when you can use them as much as you want.

Just give all of the consumeable bundle weapons cooldowns and you are set. Better yet, make it a global cooldown across all items like that. That way people can’t cheese it by using multiple types of consumeable bundles.

I think the necro is more or less built on the premise of “you don’t have to do things well, you just have to do them better than your opponent.”

We lack mobility (well, we really don’t, ours is just more complex than “I go there”), but if your enemy is crippled, chilled, and/or immobilized and thus can’t catch you/escape you anyway, who cares?

We lack burst, but if your enemy can’t burst you (blinds, death shroud), who cares?

We lack vigor and dodges, but if your enemy can’t dodge (weakness, immobilize), who cares?

I’m not saying these are great premises to build upon (or well implemented), but it seems that’s how the class was designed. Some things have to be changed on other classes (like Shadow Stepping ignoring Immobilize) to make this philosophy actually work.

How a necro performs is very much tied in to player skill. On paper, the necro looks to be well underpowered. We could use a couple of minor buffs, but we have all of the tools we need at the strength they need to be at (save a couple skills like spectral armor and Signet of Spite). People just need to figure out how to use them, I.E., player skill.

If you are a necro and having issues surviving, it is very much a “L2P” issue. Either you aren’t utilizing the tools you have, or you got in over your head.

Softspoken.2410:

Mostly it’s visual changes for me. EDIT- Actually I should come clean on this. It’s visual changes as well as allowing for utilities and elites to still be available, and the hope of healing going to your regular life bar. I’ve seen enough remakes of Death Shroud that I’m burned out on the idea of trying to re-imagine its skills. Frankly at this point of the game’s life, I don’t think I’d change its actual functionality much as a dev.

Hitting DS now alters your skillbar, instead of replacing it with a Downed-style UI. You could possibly add ghostly green effects, as inspired by how a guardian’s virtue of justice causes those blue fire effects.

• Since everything else is in place, all boons / buffs / debuffs / conditions / control effects are still visible in the standard places.
• Functionality change: You can receive healing while in Death Shroud. This is a strict buff, but I’m tired of feeling like Regeneration and other constant heal effects are wasted on me.
• Instead of the single long bar for life force, your health circle is covered in a translucent green coating that fills / empties similarly to regular health. It also shows a static life force total. Your regular health level would still be visible behind it, (possibly darkened) but the exact total is then hidden for the sake of UI space.
• When not activated, your life force total would still be shown as a bar above your 1-5 skills. It fits with the general location of class mechanics, and keeps it easy to read.
• Your first five skills are replaced with the current death shroud skills. You could add a fifth, I guess, but frankly I don’t want to go there.
• Your heal skill is visible, and usable, whether or not you are able to regain health. If the skill won’t regain health, the 6 skill should have a heavy, obscuring green/black border while in Death Shroud. The timer should still be visible though.
• Functionality change: Utility skills and elite skills are visible and usable. Any skill that would normally be cancelled by entering death shroud (Spirit Walk, Lich Form, etc) will now cancel death shroud on use, placing death shroud on full recharge. These skills might also get a unique UI effect to symbolize that they’d cancel it, but this doesn’t seem as necessary as for the heal skill.

My major worry is that these changes would make it too much like an Elementalist attunement visually, and personally I’d like to distance it from that comparison a bit.

Definitely the best suggestion on these boards. I’m unsure about having skills 6-0 available for use, but they should definitely be visible.

Nuka Cola.8520:

don’t try to make it sound like GS is good on ranger because it only has one useful skill, skill 5.

All I can say is that you must not use ranger Greatsword ever.

Swoop is fantastic for mobility. Being able to close to melee range from max range for most classes (1200) so rapidly really turns the tide of battle. #4 is like a Warrior’s shield stance, but better (you can still move) if you keep moving. Standing still, it’s a great interrupt.

And yeah, #5 is fairly good. More for the pet damage boost regardless of if you hit with it or not, though.

Utem.8392:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

While necros can’t maintain massive bleed stacks constantly, what we do put on is very quickly replaced at full power if it gets cleansed. Really, Necro is the best for condition damage due to this fact. Their kit is tuned exceptionally well to deal with removal, although a lot of people whine and complain about other classes supposedly being better than us.

Actually, Nemesis stated in several of his builds, he quickly got to the cap of bleeds, so he actually had to choose other things then insane bleeds. Basically, his build is based opon scepter and crits who in 60% also gets bleed, longer bleed duration and such.

IIRC, Nemesis stated that he had bleed cap issues when other players were involved that were stacking bleeds, whether purposefully or incidentally. He was not hitting the cap on his own and definitely not maintaining it at that level.

Well, your downed 1 is your typical life drain. Some builds can actually heal them selves up to rally with only this skill, assuming they’re not taking much damage. The #2 is a 2 second fear. #3 is a surprisingly strong AoE poison and damage. People really underestimate this one.

4 is for getting yourself up. No other use.

No food, just a booster and the WvW bonuses. All food but ice cream gives bonus experience on kills, but not for anything else. Ice cream gives bonus karma instead.

You don’t replace your HP with death shroud, you use them together. Good play means niether one goes down to zero unless you are hopelessly overwhelmed (in number of opponents, not “OMG, he hit HB”).

Don’t enter death shroud and stay in it until it’s depleted. Use it to absorb some hits (and hit hard, Life Blast is quite good) and jump back out. Likewise, don’t enter it if you don’t need to. If you’re not getting attacked, stay in your normal state and conserve your life force and HP both. Also, don’t be afraid to enter death shroud even if you’re low on life force. Even with condition builds, it’s fairly easy to build it back up to a point where it will greatly increase your survivability. That 2%+2% per condition nets you a lot of effective health.

For anyone besides condition builds, they shouldn’t have any issues at all maintaining a high amount of life force between death shrouds.

Axe 2 gives 1% life force per hit and has 8 hits.
Scepter 3 does indeed give 2% life force base and 2% per condition.
Dagger 1 (#2 in chain) is 2% life force, #3 in chain is 4%.
Focus is 3% per bounce, whether enemy or ally.
Locust Swarm is 1% per hit (AoE, lasts 10 seconds base, more traited)

Just as a small note, but somebody with lower condition damage than you can’t overwrite your Burning or Poison. Whichever stack has the highest condition damage for those two is moved to the start of the que, ensuring the highest damaging stack is the one that is currently ticking.

I think people aren’t considering life force generation as “healing” because it doesn’t increase your actual HP level. The thing is, for a necro, life force gain is indeed healing. By constantly swapping health bars and building them both up, you can maintain an extremely large health pool.

With Gluttony, your Focus 4 alone effectively heals you for 17.325% of your maximum HP before counting the regen boon or anything more than the minimum trait points in Soul Reaping. For a health pool of 20k, that is a heal of 3465 off of a weapon skill, not counting regen (which may have gone to an ally instead). Keep in mind you just threw vulnerability and damage foes, so you did more than just heal.

However, for the Leap skills we have (such as Swoop), it doesn’t increase the speed we move, it just halves the cast time. QZ+Swoop is not a good distance move.

While necros can’t maintain massive bleed stacks constantly, what we do put on is very quickly replaced at full power if it gets cleansed. Really, Necro is the best for condition damage due to this fact. Their kit is tuned exceptionally well to deal with removal, although a lot of people whine and complain about other classes supposedly being better than us.

Eurantien.4632:

Empathic bond removes every condition every ten seconds. Signet of renewal removes every condition and is also a stun break (if you’re pet is alive and in range). What more do you need?

One that doesn’t screw over my pet completely?

I did not notice the condition removal on dodge before, thank you for pointing that out. Also, the active skill for the bear just shot it up in my book. I’ll have to try using it more often.

Honestly, I don’t think they need to be removed so much as given a longer cooldown. Perfect stunlocking multiple people for minutes is completely overpowered, even if you did spend something like 70 silver.

Give it like a ten second cooldown. Still very strong, but you can’t solo groups with impunity.

Honestly, I feel Golem in a Box should be re-allowed into WvW since it got nerfed with a very significant cooldown. The consumeables’ effects aren’t gamebreaking, it’s their spammability that is.

Easy first attack damage boost
Signet of the Hunt applies a 16 minute buff to your active pet when used. Yes, 16 minute. Activate it, wait for the relatively short cooldown, then swap it or keep it for the passive. The buff stays until your pet attacks or you swap pets (or dies, but the likelyhood of that before the pet gets an attack off is low).

First off, I should mention that I main a necromancer, so I’ve been rather spoiled in the condition control department.

Even so, it seems like Rangers just lack decent removal options. Skill wise, there is Healing Spring (which is amazing in an of itself) and the signet. The problem is that these remove conditions too slowly for my taste. I could activate the signet to remove all of mine, but that screws over my pet.

Can anyone give me tips to deal with conditions? I really feel like I’m missing something.

Just remember that that 20 condition damage only boosts the damage of each bleed stack by 1 per second and poison by 2.

Yes, it is a 400:1 ratio for Toughness to Bleed damage off of Runes of the Undead.

As an aside, have you considered Shrouded Removal as an alternative? Sometimes you just have to cleanse that fear or immobilize and your other skills are on cooldown.

What I can say is that it definitely is not a necromancer. A necro is a devestating addition to a team in WvW, but that is mainly due to their ability to act as force multipliers. This requires paying tons of attention to who is being hit and with what so you can use the appropriate skills to greatly increase your team’s damage output.

With culling, this gets really difficult in larger fights.

Chopps.5047:

Also, note that this is difficult to do without custom keybindings-including a binding for ‘about face’.

“X” is default key for about face.

Compare it to the Warrior with his one combo field (Longbow burst skill).

Yup. You’re doing quite well on that front just by being a ranger.

In general, the spellcaster classes have more fields and the martial classes have more finishers.

I would try and shift another 10 points into Curses for 5 seconds of Fury when you enter death shroud. Right before you do Ghastly Claws, hit F1 twice rapidly (if you’re good, hit 3 in between the two) and enjoy your massively increased crit chance. For lack of a better major trait to use, pick Terror (does decent damage even with only 150 condition damage, you should always be getting the damage boost from an additional condition) or Weakening Shroud.

The reason for the fear is to prevent your target from doing things like dodging or interrupting your channel.

Now, the trick is that you will have to probably give up the well recharge. This is actually okay as the whole point of a burst is to get them down before you need to re-cast abilities. You won’t usually be using the wells twice in a fight anyway unless you’re talking bosses. The higher crit chance means those bursts hit harder and trigger your on-crit effects to make them hit harder still.

I would consider swapping Well of Power and Well of Darkness for utilities with either shorter cooldowns or for Signet of the Locust (that movement speed is really handy). For condition removal, you have Putrid Mark on staff and Consume Conditions when you need more, both of which have much shorter cooldowns than well of power. Consider instead Blood is Power. That additional 350 power really helps and the condition damage boost isn’t going to waste either. Alternatively, Spectral Wall, which is another vulnerability stacking skill (good placement and fear timing makes it so this stacks up 25 vulnerability on its own) would work nicely. The protection it gives should not be underestimated.

After further testing in the Mists on the golems, it appears that what I saw earlier was a fluke or bug. Since my buddy came in with Banner of Discipline (increased precisions) and For Great Justice, I was getting an okay stream of crits on the Flesh Golem. Despite testing both double Sigils of Earth and Fire, neither one procced.

Bas.7406:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I just saw something today in Heart of the Mists that surprised me. Apparently minions can proc on-crit sigils.

To be clear, I was running Flesh Golem as my elite and have a Sigil of Flame on my main-hand dagger. I was just seeing if Shroudstomping became possible again (not with the normal timing, at least. No idea if it is at all) since the last patch. I was testing on the NPC’s of the different professions. While I was stomping one, my flesh golem kept attacking.

I was mid-stomp animation when I saw the flame blast. There were no other players around.

Testing to confirm what I saw will be difficult due to the small crit chance of minions (assuming they have the same base 4% crit chance as most other NPC’s). Has anyone else noticed this?

Are you sure it didn’t proc on Life Blast?

Like I said, I was mid-stomp animation when it happened. Life Blast couldn’t have been the culprit. You still go through the entire cast and animation when attempting to shroud stomp, but the actual kill never happens.

If anyone would like to test this, please do. I’m planning on getting one of my friends to help me out on testing this tonight (double sigil to maximize chance per crit of proccing, Fury from my buddy, should see some definites).

I just saw something today in Heart of the Mists that surprised me. Apparently minions can proc on-crit sigils.

To be clear, I was running Flesh Golem as my elite and have a Sigil of Flame on my main-hand dagger. I was just seeing if Shroudstomping became possible again (not with the normal timing, at least. No idea if it is at all) since the last patch. I was testing on the NPC’s of the different professions. While I was stomping one, my flesh golem kept attacking.

I was mid-stomp animation when I saw the flame blast. There were no other players around.

Testing to confirm what I saw will be difficult due to the small crit chance of minions (assuming they have the same base 4% crit chance as most other NPC’s). Has anyone else noticed this?

Backstab thieves I pretty much never have issues with in WvW. The difficult ones are the ones that spam the crap out of stealth and have the “Remove conditions on stealth” trait. They don’t really do much, but they are annoying as hell to deal with.

Kaysyn.6203:

Were do you get “Rabid gear”?

You can get it off the trading post (really expensive) from multiple dungeons (Twilight Arbor, Honor the Waves, Arah, and I think Citadel of Flame), or from the Orr temple karma vendors (boots and chest-piece are not available from karma vendors). Ascended amulet and rings are available just from doing monthly/dailies and the rings can be obtained from Fractals 10+. Ascended backpiece can be crafted in the mystic forge, and exotic backpiece and accessories can be gotten from I believe the Grenth temble vendor.

Oh, and don’t forget to grab the Graveborn Breather from Cursed Shore. Only level 80 water breather for light armor right now is rabid.

Corrupt Boon never has a cast time, but it’s suspected that it works better underwater due to terrain issues being nonexistant there (not that those should matter on land). We’re not sure why it doesn’t work too reliably on land.

Strippling.3524:

I thought DB said their asian crew would beat Kainengs asian crew? I’m not from Kaineng, but I remember reading some posts from DB saying they would crush Kaineng, which I assumed they were claiming because they had done it before? Not trolling, just wandering why DB asian crew is getting rolled by Kainengs, is it population wise or does Kaineng have better tactics?

No, but we did say that Kaineng would get a run for their money. Reset night, that wasn’t true as our oceanics apparently didn’t show up, but since then, Kaineng has never had the domination at night. They held the PPT lead (primarily due to things they didn’t lose from opening night), but they never dominated.

ReMortis.4287:

Scarran.9845:

I have also noticed that a good few times I have actually got pulled to the enemy rather than pull them to me and normally I would think Guardian but its happened against Ele’s with no Guardian around and Mesmer’s again with no-one around them.

Just as a note, if your pull gets reflected, then you will be pulled to them. Mesmers have reflect. Besides that, I too have randomly experienced a random pull to my enemy instead of them to me without any reflects going on. Might be something I missed or another glitch in the skill.

Eles have projectile reflection as well on one of their earth attunement skills.

In fact, the only class with no projectile reflection is necros. Thieves have it on Dagger Storm, Engineers have it on shield 4, rangers on axe 5, and warriors have a “reflect projectiles while blocking” trait.

It is, however, quite fun to yank defenders off of walls with it. I’ve actually killed a couple with falling damage that way.

If you only have one utility slot, I would say using Epidemic is your best bet (note: I have not looked at the actual tiers of skills in a long time, so this may not be available yet).

Softspoken.2410:

Dredlord.8076:

You must have missed it the first time so I bolded it for you…

Other half of the post. The one directed at the new thread.

Dredlord.8076:

The new bug list thread is pathetically incomplete. The first one was ignored for so long that no one with half a brain feels it is worth it to contribute to a new one…

That. That is what I take issue with.

It’s Dredlord. He’ll kitten and moan all day, but if you ask him to contribute something, he runs away and hides after insulting you.

My guess is that even though he knows its incomplete, he doesn’t know exactly what is missing.