first things first. stealth has no disadvantages. not one. dont insult peoples intelligence by trying to sell the idea that stealth is a complex thought process for a thief. it isnt.
It isn’t a complex choice for thieves because the majority of the time nobody will punish thieves for utilizing stealth. When you use an ability and your opponent just stands there or wanders off (still the most common response to stealth), there isn’t a downside.
Stealth has the potential for a good combat meta, but it won’t happen unless the opponent actually makes an effort to effectively fight it.
Let’s take a counterexample to your claims, then.
Necromancers have a distinct advantage against the numerous projectile-hating skills of the Mesmer and Guardian because most of their skills are ranged, but no projectile.
Against stealth, however, they only have one real answer: swap to staff and drop marks. Once they have their four circles down, that’s it. If you get lucky you can locate a stealthed target, but by the time you can do anything to that location, the target is most likely already not there (as both mesmers and thieves have numerous mobility options, and a mesmer could trigger it with illusions).
When you’re a necromancer fighting a thief, you really don’t have much you can do other than hoping you timed death shroud properly to absorb their burst from stealth.
It is much more effective for a necro to drop a mark (or Well of Darkness with it’s minute-long cooldown) at his feet and wait for the thief to make a move because he simply does not have anything to attack a stealthed foe with.
For the Thief in the Citadel (sounds like a book title), it’s quite possible he got in there by stealthing. The Legendary Defenders don’t attack stealthed people and a properly set up thief can stealth for long enough to get into that location.
It’s also possible he hacked/exploited. Just figured I would throw out another possibility.
Umm, what I said still makes perfect sense. Elexus Shredskin sounds like a woman trying too hard to be a man. In all legions but Flame (Elexus is Blood), there is no reason for this as males and females are equal. The female Charr PC voice just sounds like a woman who is serious about her duties.
Elexus actually has the worst female charr voice in the game.
Actually, that’s the actress’s real voice. When they interviewed some of the voice actors live, I knew she was Elexus as soon as she spoke. It’s not a fake attempt at being masculine, the lady honestly has a very deep voice.
Also, while men and women are equal in the three united Legions, Elexus herself has good reason to be bitter and distrustful towards men. Her apparently all-male warband betrayed her for Flame Legion, and expected her to submit her equality and go along with them. This suggests there may have been some rare sexism in her warband even before they defected to Flame. If this is the case, it’s understandable why she tries hard to be assertive.
I did not know that about the actress, (though I shouldn’t have been surprised, take a look at Steve Bluum/Rytlock) but I still don’t think Elexus should be held as “the ideal voice” for female charr.
And she isn’t necessarily trying to be “assertive” but “masculine” (which is a very different thing). You are right in that, for her, at least, it makes some sense to try to sound more masculine due to her former warband likely not being the most equality-minded.
I’d prefer Ghastly Claws (Axe 2) to be a Whirl finisher. Since you’re spinning the axe super-fast, why not?
I disagree with Elexus Shredskin’s voice being right for female charr. It doesn’t sound like a female soldier, it sounds like a woman trying too hard to sound like a man.
i’d like you to think of the society charrs live in and reread what you said.
Umm, what I said still makes perfect sense. Elexus Shredskin sounds like a woman trying too hard to be a man. In all legions but Flame (Elexus is Blood), there is no reason for this as males and females are equal. The female Charr PC voice just sounds like a woman who is serious about her duties.
Elexus actually has the worst female charr voice in the game.
I disagree with Elexus Shredskin’s voice being right for female charr. It doesn’t sound like a female soldier, it sounds like a woman trying too hard to sound like a man.
I’m pretty sure you see Ele’s blocking Treb shots in Tier 4 at bare minimum (and I assume every server higher than that). I know I have been on both sides of that against Darkhaven and Northern Shiverpeaks (I’m Dragonbrand)
I’d personally rather have those 3 eles equip staves and burn down the trebuchet. It’s pretty rare I see one set up where I cannot hit it with meteor storm, and it’s usually in a bad enough spot I can hit it with lava font and eruption, too.
Asking people to sit around using an ability that earns them neither karma nor badges (nor xp) is silly, especially if it makes no forward progress.
Because 3 eles can totally burn down that trebuchet on the enemy keep’s inner wall…
Or on the enemy tower’s top platform…
Or on the high cliff only accessible from within an enemy-controlled fort…
Or, well, any other place you will find a decently-placed treb.
I would hope they don’t play WvW. If you’re an ele in WvW and you don’t have a focus in your inventory for swirling winds, you’re wrong.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Swirling_Winds 6 seconds of projectile nullification is not enough to justify the weapon by itself.
From The Wiki Page You LinkedThis spell can be used to nullify catapult and trebuchet projectiles
IIRC it’s also the only skill that can do this.
So I post this huge pros and cons list and that’s all you see. Your insight is amazing. The best defense is to move out of the circle. Like I said before 6 seconds is not enough to justify the weapon alone but I guess you missed that part even though you managed to quote it.
The trebuchet blocking isn’t for you. It’s for your keep/tower.
One thing to note on Axe #2 is that the 2k damage is per-hit on a glass cannon build. I run virtually no power in PvE and regularly hit champs for 12-14k over the course of the channel. A glass cannon should easily be hitting 16-18k.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but you don’t need a thief or mesmer for Dredge fractal.
Please, teach me how to activate the panel with pugs without mesmer or thief? Starting from lvl 20.
Same as you do at lower levels. One person on each button, one person at the panel, and the other two beating everything back however they can. Is it more difficult? Yes, but that is to be expected at higher difficulties.
Spiteful Vigor is not as good as people make it out to be. It ONLY triggers off of Consume Conditions. This is probably a bug, but it does not trigger off of either of our other healing skills.
No, it’s supposed to be like that. It’s supposed to be like the Thief’s {III} Vigorous Recovery (gain vigor upon healing) in the Acrobatics trait line. That skill also only work with the slot 6 healing skill, even though I’m also specced to heal whenever I am in stealth. It does not give me vigor when the healing ticks in stealth.
No, I mean it doesn’t work with either Blood Fiend or Well of Blood (both slot 6 healing skills).
Spiteful Vigor is not as good as people make it out to be. It ONLY triggers off of Consume Conditions. This is probably a bug, but it does not trigger off of either of our other healing skills.
Perhaps I’m missing something, but you don’t need a thief or mesmer for Dredge fractal.
A mesmer in the swamp fractal makes it a ton easier due to being able to ignore those randomly spawning walls.
Volcanic fractal: while I have only done that one with a guardian in the party, I don’t think it’s necessary. Well of Power does a lot at the end portion (pulsing aegis is wonderful, even if it is on a 48 second cooldown traited) Condition removal and healing is good enough.
Necro is an extremely strong support class with the proper setup. They can do a lot to keep allies safe while simultaneously dishing out some decent (not amazing) DPS.
Pretty much anything in dungeons that doesn’t require projectile reflection/blocking, a Necro can do. Crucible of Eternity will be a pain if you lack a Mesmer, Guardian, or Ele, but other than that, any dungeon can be done pretty well with any group.
Well, the Sigil math is off because that has a 2 second cooldown while neither the traits nor food have any cooldown. How much of a factor that is depends entirely on what skills you are currently hitting with.
If I’m not mistaken, those became karma vendor items. That’s why you can’t gt them on the trading post for cheap (all that are on there are from before they became karma vendor ingredients, so the price is extremely high) and why you cannot find them by harvesting.
Omnomberry buff and Sigil of Blood both scale off of healing power, though. On average your Omnomberry Pie is stealing 97.5 health per hit before healing power kicks in. That is significantly more than your siphoning from traits.
One recommendation: use Carrion jewels in your accessories and jewelery. You end up netting more condition damage as well as some extra normal damage over Rabid crests (even after taking Rune of Undead into account). Carrion does have Exotic tier upgrade components and nets you more of what you’re looking for.
That comes at the cost of precision, though. Precision is a pretty huge deal. It ensures Superior Sigil of the Earth is essentially a free 6-second bleed every 2 seconds.
Is 4% crit chance going to make or break it? That’s all you get from 6 Crests of the Rabid. Meanwhile, you get 25.8 more condition damage from Chrysocola jewels and harder hitting base damage and 900 hp from using the Chrysocola
One recommendation: use Carrion jewels in your accessories and jewelery. You end up netting more condition damage as well as some extra normal damage over Rabid crests (even after taking Rune of Undead into account). Carrion does have Exotic tier upgrade components and nets you more of what you’re looking for.
There are some points that are worth mentioning. Greater Marks applies to Mark of Evasion and Mark of Revival. Ritual of Protection also applies to Ritual of Life.
Other than that, I don’t have much to add.
One nitpick, both Well of Corruption and Well of Suffering have 45 second cooldowns (16 when traited). Well of Blood also has this cooldown. You incorrectly state that Suffering has a 1 minute cooldown.
Well, it’s pretty safe to say Giganticus lupicus and the Elder Dragons are both older than Charr. Other than that, no clue.
You ought to try it on a Norn who has the tallest setting possible. They’ve got it worse.
Charr are taller still. Not by much, but they are.
“It’s holler—hallow—it’s candy day!”
I’ve done pretty much all of the jumping puzzles with my charr. I have issues with my Ausra because I keep forgetting that I can make jumps that are twice my height with them.
That said, the camera issues causes massive troubles in places. The borderlands jumping puzzle is one such locale, causing me to walk off a rock because of the stupid hanging moss blocking my view.
The other day, I laughed a little when I got Obsidian Shards back. It was like Zommoros felt bad for just eating all of my karma.
I haven’t been having bad streaks with my luck. If I had to estimate, my return rate has been between 25 and 33%, but I’ve used the 10x recipe rather often.
I’d also like to suggest an ability that removes conditions; although we are capable of transferring conditions to our enemies the skills that do this have very long cooldowns and one often finds oneself after an encounter having killed everything but still getting downed because you have poison/bleed and no enemies to pass it on to.
Seriously your going to post that and expect me take you seriously, have you actually ever played a necro?
I sense troll
That signet should be renamed “deathwish”
…I have no idea why anyone would ever use it
Take condition from ally and Deathly Swarm it away. It has uses, but I feel the passive needs to pulse more often.
Could comment on a lot more, but just want to say I think wells are too much balanced around sPVP (like the whole game really) where there they can be good, because you are expected to fight on a small circle not much bigger than a well. In PVE they can also be good because mobs are dumb and come right at you.
The problem with them in PVE is that you are not supposed to stand your ground, but rather dance around the mobs because defensive measures are poor at keeping you alive. End result is that you are likely to pull the mob off the well.
Huh, I successfully face-tank mobs all the time when not in dungeons (unless it’s fractals, there I only need to kite bosses). It’s quite easy to do and not get low on health at all.
Note that I only suggested Carrion on the jewelery (which are typically comparatively low stats) and one-handed weapons (which also are). Carrion gear can be crafted, so it’s much easier to get your hands on. Rabid is still usually superior.
The link is bad.
However, if you want to go heavy condition damage, I would support going with Rabid (Primary condition damage, secondary precision and toughness) armor (available from Arah and Twilight Arbor) and Runes of the Undead. This maximizes your condition damage and also ups your effective health (maximum effective health is estimated to be where your armor is 1/10 your max HP). Jewelery should be Carrion (primary condition damage, secondary power and vitality) primarily due to ease of getting it (it’s craftable).
Condition damage builds pretty much necessitate Scepter/dagger and Staff as your weapon sets (how many builds don’t have staff?) For the staff, I would suggest an Apothecary’s staff (primary healing, secondary toughness and condition damage) to get the most out of Mark of Blood. For both the Scepter and dagger, Rabid or Carrion is again your best bet. Carrion will net you more raw damage at the cost of some condition damage here, but overall, it’s a pretty even tradeoff.
Also, for supporting in dungeons, I would recommend at least 10 in Death Magic for Greater Marks. Certain dungeons (like Arah explorable path 3) this should be swapped out (jagged horrors are usually fine, despite what people say on here, but in that particular path, melee-only is an ungodly massive detriment) You should be able to keep perma-regen on whoever is on the front lines with it.
Also, a tip for those bosses that lay out a bunch of conditions: inform your party that when that happens to group up tight on the boss where you drop a Putrid Mark. Now your party is condition free and the boss has a large number of stacks.
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
I usually use dagger off-hand instead of warhorn. Really Warhorn works best with dagger or axe main-hand (axe, since it shares the range of 600, dagger because that’s the best way to use locust swarm). Dagger off-hand gives you another blind, condition transfer, and AoE weakness (not much help against high-precision builds, but everything else it has noticeable DPS mitigation)
Corrupt Boon, however, works well with Scepter as they share the same range. Using the scepter means you won’t be out of range for Corrupt Boon.
Flesh Golem is not as bad as everyone says it is. It usually does attack rather than not (seems to be the most aggressive minion, though Flesh Wurm lacks pathing problems). Still, the long range and rapid speed of Charge results in a successful blowout most of the time.
Attrition requires trait investments. I was not originally going to get into that part of the build. Skill-wise, you have numerous conditions doing damage, healing and damage mitigation, and a very strong healing skill in Consume Conditions, plus death shroud (the extra health bar does help significantly, especially with Life Transfer)
Besides, “Attrition” does not mean that you get stronger as time goes on, it means you are more likely to win the longer a battle goes on. There is a world of difference between the two. The approach the devs decided to take with necros is to have such a massive pool of resources that their opponents simply cannot out-last them. Yes, this was poorly executed, but it was their intent.
As I said before: it’s not that we don’t have the tools to fit the dev’s vision for us, it’s that every other class has multiple things that allow them to completely negate what we have.
(edited by Drarnor Kunoram.5180)
Scepter-Warhorn/Staff. Utilities being Consume Conditions, Spectral Grasp, Corrupt Boon, Plague Signet, Flesh Golem.
Warhorn gives us Locust Swarm which is probably the hardest skill to get away from without leaps (curing cripple means jack when it’s almost immediately re-applied, and the Swiftness means they can’t be moving faster than you), and surprisingly large AoE daze (for an interrupt, even on stealthed foes).
Scepter grants access to Grasping Dead for AoE cripple at decent range for a good duration. It is also our most reliable poison to limit healing and, once again, limits the effects of condition removal, since it can be re-applied quickly.
Staff, of course, is a sort of standard weapon for necros since it fulfills a variety of purposes, including poison and snare (Chillblains), Bleeding and healing (Mark of Blood) Condition transfer (Putrid Mark, also a blast finisher), interrupt (Reaper’s Mark), and life force generation.
Spectral Grasp, while buggy, is yet another interrupt, pulls the target toward you (undoing whatever escape they had accomplished so far) and chills preventing further escape. Also generates the most life force of any skill we have so far.
Corrupt Boon is just an all-around good one to have. They’re running with swiftness? Now they’re running with cripple. They used For Great Justice? Now they’re weakened and blind. Reatliation? Now confusion. You get the idea.
Plague Signet is more condition transfer and removal. Honestly, Spectral Walk is probably better here just because it is two stun breaks instead of one, but it has far fewer offensive applications.
Flesh Golem has more DPS and cripple, but nobody can out-run a Flesh Golem charge. If they kill it (which they can), they aren’t focusing you, so free damage.
Death Shroud gives us Life Blast (for damage), Dark Path (outrunning teleport doesn’t go over so well, plus it throws on a chill), Doom for another interrupt, and Life Transfer for decent AoE damage that hits stealthed people.
I’d say it’s possible to make a build that fits all of the criteria. The problem isn’t with the necro not having the tools, the problem is everyone else having leaps and teleports that let them get away anyway.
You are missing the fact that once you hit a certain point, an extra tick of a bleed deals more damage than the condition damage you can get from a rune/weapon.
The break even point is somewhere below 700 Malice. That is a very easy threshold to meet with traits and the rest of your gear.
Each condition has its own threshold, but most often, getting an extra tick deals more damage than the amount of condition damage you can get from the equivalent slot.
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.
Are you sure about that?
Find bats in those locations. Bats, harpies, and skelk usually drop Blood.
All Major Traits should be left as-is (with exception of Foot in the Grave, that really needs to be brought down to Master or have the duration increased). If you don’t like them, don’t select them!
Minor Traits, however, do almost all need an overhaul.
Using Putrid Explosion (Bone Minion-> Putrid Explosion) underwater creates a very short-lived poison combo field as of the last patch. I only have 20 points in Death Magic, so this is not the Death Nova trait triggering. You can check on this by triggering Putrid Explosion while using a whirl combo finisher from the spear. You will get the combo message of “poison bolts”. It may or may not also trigger with the blast finisher on trident 5. I haven’t checked with blast finishers.
#4. Although I didn’t like the Defiant change relating to Fear, everything else was a buff for necros. Underwater combat was dull before and the introduction of a lot more combo fields and finishers makes it more interesting. Necros were already some of the top in underwater combat (I’ve soloed a Guardian, the quaggan he just recruited, and 6 or so Krait all simultaneously in WvW. Killed every last one of them too). The buff to Signet of the Locust was nice for running/farming. Terror damage buff and Gluttony buff made things nice as well. Yes, Gluttony is small, but it is at least doing something now.
Finally, Giver weapons are awesome for my conditionmancer-build. Getting 100% bonus Bleed and Fear duration (+80% with everything else) with no points in Spite? Sure!
On the other hand, Necros looove the Giver weapons. 10% condition duration? Yes please.
Heck, a lot of folks like that one.
A-net customer service is second to every other company… ever, ie last.
This is flat-out wrong. Their customer service is superb and quite likely second to none.
Their PR team, on the other hand…
The main place the Defiant nerf hurts us in against bosses with powerful self heals, especially like the Dredge fractal mining suit boss. Without a necro or a very CC heavy team, that fight could take an extremely long time due to its powerful heal.
Now that necros have been taken out of the picture, you need a CC heavy team to defeat him quickly.
i agree with ascii, he rounded this up very well.
I too defended this class before the patch (it was still good)
but now warhorn is a piece of junk. fears are junk vs. bosses and champs. and we STILL are lacking major fixes to the class.
not to mention gluttony is still junk! 10%? you do know our LF gain is percentage-based and we won’t feel a boost at all until we get at least a 20-25% bonus to LF gain?
perma swifting is now no longer worth it because warhorn is reduced to junk.
You say Warhorn has been “reduced to junk”, but there are absolutely 0 notes mentioning Warhorns. I don’t think you even read the patch.
I think an easy way to make this trait useful is to make it add 3% LF gain on every skill. Staff already has 3%? It gets bumped to 6%. All abilities that don’t normally give LF should give 3%
Too powerful.
I think the trait would have been fine at 20-25%.
To elaborate on this, consider skills like Axe 2 or Locust Swarm. Both of them generate 1% life force per hit. With a bonus like you are talking about, Axe 2 now generates 32% life force. Locust Swarm generates 4% per target per second. With just this (and no other traits), you could literally fill your life force bar twice over during its duration (assuming 5 enemies were within range for 20% gain per second over 10 seconds, quite possible in PvE).
Crusader Angaria in Cursed Shore. She is supposed to be lighting beacons. She ends up having an extreme case of ADD and breaks off to attack the Risen before they even spawn.
I have never seen this event succeed.
Fun fact I found yesterday while getting dailies in Frostgorge Sound: Reaper’s Protection can be triggered on purpose using Dark Spear (Spear 5). When it pulls you to your target, it is an actual pull, thus triggering Reaper’s Protection and fearing everything near your target.
How you use this knowledge is up to you, but it should be noted.
Carrion jewelry is probably fine to use. The Vitality boost increases your life force pool and the power boost helps you out when condition damage just isn’t the way to go.
Disappointing, per usual. Though, I already felt Terror was nice — should be very interesting how that buff works.
Gluttony buff was laughable. 10% just is too small an amount.
Hooray! We get 1% bonus life force from Spectral Grasp and nothing else!
Unless, of course, they really did fix the “rounding error”. Would be better if they made it so Life Force wasn’t measured in pure percentages.