Guild Wars 2

There was a massive stealth nerf to Necros, though. Fear no longer bypasses Defiant.

We may have the worst fears in the game (but we do have significantly more than anyone else), but this was something that let necros be awesome allies vs. Champs and Legendaries, especially those with channeled healing skills.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

Charr because the elites are awesome, battle cry (even though everyone calls foul on it) actually juices up my condition dmg a good bit, not to mention it does affect minions too (critting minions is nice ) and I can get 12 stacks of might and some fury by using blood to power in conjunction, the pistol gives necro a sorely needed combo finisher, plus they look way cooler than the other meat…err i mean races…as a necro.

Hidden Pistol also gives a very much needed dodge skill and it has a pretty short cooldown.

NecropsY.8649:

Could the activation of Locus be more ballenced

90 sec cool down for a 800 heal, is pathetic

it needs to be more like 60 sec cooldown and heal for 4k
and no that wouldnt be overpowered, many many many classes can heal 10k with just their heal skill

You do realize that it is a 60 second cooldown right now, right?

Try one of those “regenerate health each second” foods. There isn’t a single build out there that doesn’t find them useful.

Now, whether there are other foods they find more useful, that’s another story.

Alternatively, Omnomberry bars. 30% magic find and 40% increased gold from monsters is something everyone likes in dungeons, especially as they may not be running their magic find gear.

KirinDave.6451:

I sometimes wonder if the reason Necro pets go running off is that at one point in a fight we were spamming attacks and tab targetting and accidentally had one out-of-range attack on the remote mob.

I could reliably get my flesh golem to go running off by doing this on purpose, and I know in the heat of battle sometimes I mistarget… and if they remember that enemy was targeted they may run off to it after the more immediate threat is dead.

This definitely happens. I know I have had it occur. Luckily, I was farming and was going to kill that mob next anyway, but I’m pretty sure this is actually what happens when they go off on their own.

Fleshie, though, seems to have a bigger aggro radius than other minions.

If nothing else, I would REALLY like being able to see my endurance bar when in death shroud.

exelion.2369:

I think trying to conceptualize how the EDs reason is not very productive. Their mental capacities are far beyond most mortals. It’s like trying to reason with a tornado or volcanic eruption.

I tried to reason with a tornado once. I said “Mister tornado, why have you selected to remove just the central tree in that grove instead of uprooting them all?”

His reply came very swiftly. “Because potatoes are not blue.”

I honestly could not argue his point.

In all seriousness, though, we have no indication that the dragons aren’t concerned with the other dragons. While we don’t know for sure, there have been hints that the dragons don’t like each other. When you look at it that way, the ED’s all seem to be holding back and preparing themselves. It’s like a 5-way Cold War as none of them want to make the first move and draw the others down on them. They are all plotting and planning how best to take over without being destroyed.

Now that Zhaitan is down, however, it may be that the next story expansion has the other four being more aggressive (although Primordius and Bubbles may not know, as their minions wouldn’t know of Zhaitan’s death)

I didn’t start playing until the game was almost 2, so it’s not surprising I missed that.

Though it’s hilarious that I only remember one Warrior elite getting nerfed because Warriors were abusing it.

As a completely random note, does anyone have any idea as to why, a few nights ago, my guild-mate had the Outmanned buff and I didn’t, despite us escorting the same supply dolyak?

Druitt.7629:

So I posted this in case others had overlooked the option. Was this the way GW1 was? Are there other similar MMO/RPG games that work similarly?

In GW1, you did not have to pay to respec (although unlocking a secondary profession may require doing so). Any time you were in a town or outpost, you could move your attribute points and change your skills. However, once you left said town or outpost, your skills were set (unless you learned a new one, in which case you could swap that one in) and your attributes could not be decreased (however, you could throw more points in, usually done when leveling up). Even changing your secondary profession could be done freely in a town or outpost.

Excio.9153:

The problem is, although its not as useless as people make them out to be, its not quite useful either

• It usually dies before it attacks anything, and if it does attack, i believe it does a minimal amount of damage and inflicts a single stack of bleed. If the trait was reworded to something like – “30% chance to inflict bleeding after killing an enemy (30 second cooldown),” it would be more obvious as to how bad the trait is.
• In some situations – such as Arah explore, jagged horrors are worse than nothing – The jaggged horror runs up to Lupicus – which may give him a free grub requiring a reset.

Interesting that you bring up Lupicus. The grubs and locust swarms he spawns don’t seem to trigger the trait (I never saw a jagged horror during that fight and I was running 20 in death magic). Outside of those, the only thing you can kill is Lupicus himself, at which point it’s irrelevant if a grub spawns on it.

No, they do not cause a problem in Orr. That is the only place where it is conceivable they aggro anything beyond what you yourself aggroed. Why do they do it? Because they are melee minions. You would aggro the same mobs if you were using a dagger as your main-hand weapon. Rangers would have the exact same troubles with the majority of their pets and your party would aggro them if you have a melee guy for an ally.

The trait is useless at level 16 when you get it, I will freely admit that. It starts living long enough to get attacked at level 30, roughly.

As for “only eating AoE”, in s/tPvP, this is true. At least, if you opponent isn’t using any pets of their own. Pet AI is Pet AI and not the most easily controlled (save Ranger and Mesmer pets, as those can be locked on/have pre-defined targets) In PvE and dungeons, however, it is far from the case as mobs are fairly likely to target it as an “easy to kill” enemy. Yes, the Horror dies, but it prevented a number of attacks from landing on anything or anyone that actually matters.

And the AI problems with minions are a completely separate issue from this trait. Only running 1 or 2 minion skills and this trait, you will never see problems with the AI. Only the full blown minion army guys see issues, but whether they have this trait or not is irrelevant.

It’s worse in the Eternal Battlegrounds jumping puzzle. There is a point there where it starts hitting the rock that you are walking on (there is no health bar and it can’t be destroyed) which puts you into combat, more than negating the Swiftness.

Reanimator is quite possibly the most hated trait that we necros have. Still, I’m not sure how much of the haters have ever actually used it or if they’re just parroting older posts on these forums. There are reasons why I say this, but first, I would like to go over the major complaints I see about it and refute most of them.

1. The Jagged Horror is dead before it can do anything from its own bleedout. This is true at the lower levels where the horror is half dead before its summoning animation finishes. However, at level 80, it sticks around for a fairly decent time without any healing involved or the minion health trait.

2. The Jagged Horror doesn’t attack anything. Not true. Minions in general have buggy AI, but the only times that the problem shows are when the necro is currently controlling 4-7 minions. I have never had minions fail to attack when I am controlling 1-3, and I run minions with regular frequency (though with exception of underwater, it is never a focus of the build).

3. The Horror’s bleedout keeps you in combat. This is the biggest one I see that makes me certain that people are parroting things they have seen on the forums and have never actually used the trait. This used to be the case, but it got fixed back in September. The only way a Horror can keep you in combat is if you are actually still in combat (that is, you are dealing or receiving damage or you have not left combat range)

4. The Jagged Horror aggros mobs and pulls them to you, making sure you die. Slightly true. The only place where this conceivably happens is in Orr where the mob density is very high. Since the Horror is a melee minion, it typically has to run up to your target to attack them. This may put it in the aggro radius of mobs you are not currently fighting. This does not make the Horror an agent of patricide. You yourself would draw that aggro if you moved into melee range. Even so, unless those mobs aggroed are melee mobs themselves, they would not move into the range where they will then switch their targets to you.

The other real time this happens is when you are skirting the edge of a mob’s aggro radius and the horror passes through the edge. In this case, chances are it wasn’t the Horror that actually drew aggro, you just want to blame it. After all, it was sticking within 5 feet of you if you weren’t fighting.

In Dungeons, mobs are in groups with communal aggro. If any one part of a group has aggro on you, the whole group does (barring extreme circumstances like pulling with Spectral Grasp, Backdraft, or Scorpion Wire). Thus, the Jagged Horror cannot pull extra aggro. The one exception in dungeons is in Twilight Arbor where it can pop the Deadly Blossoms and those kill you, but those do not have aggro. Jagged Horrors stick very close to you when you are not in combat.

5. Jagged Horrors are a free rally. I have never seen this happen in WvW, but I will freely admit that I have never had a situation in PvP where it would have come up. Given that there have been multiple Red posts saying it has been fixed, my impression is that the people saying this are, once again, parroting old posts.

__
Overall, I see this as a useful trait. The Jagged Horror usually ends up dealing damage (not much, but some) and eating a hit or three before dying. Some people see this as a pathetic minion that isn’t worth the trait, but I see it as 1-3 Aegis on kill with a bit of damage thrown in on a random enemy. That is a very potent trait when you look at it that way.

I must be one of the only folks here that thinks the trait is mostly fine. Yes, I would like to see it buffed (either removing or reducing the cooldown or upping the surviability), but the minion itself I think is fine for the following reasons:

1. The bleeding out doesn’t keep you in combat. It used to, but that got fixed back in either September or October.

2. It does not run off and aggro things. If it draws any additional aggro, it’s because you dragged it through the enemy’s aggro radius or because the enemy you are attacking is in their aggro radius (and you would draw that aggro yourself if you’re using Dagger/X)

3. It absorbs a hit or two. Yeah, it’s like an Aegis on killing something. Not 100% effective, but it’s pretty nice and sometimes can absorb multiple hits.

In dungeons, groups are very clustered. If the minion is drawing any aggro, you already have that mob’s attention.

Yeah, but Sprawl doesn’t care about things like “that is still 2/3 win-rate with a profession that supposedly stands no chance in PvP”.

Even if he was fighting pugs, that most likely means he was in a pug himself. What makes his somewhat skilled and the others all pathetic? Yeah, I’m not buying it.

Yeah, I end up doing a ton of supporting in dungeons. I have 30 in curses instead of blood magic, but I still manage a very good support style while keeping up condition DPS.

That said, there should be someone else doing some of the support to supplement your own. You provide excellent support with this build, but your cooldowns do limit what you can accomplish.

I strongly suggest going 0/20/20/30/0 for your traits if you want full support. Reanimator doesn’t hurt you in dungeons (it sticks close to you if you’re not in combat. If you are, the extra damage-soak and damage are always helpful, even as small as it is). Using Greater Marks and Ritual of Protection as your Death Magic traits (3.6 seconds of protection on every well cast is nice). Using Mark of Blood, you can keep regen permanently on whoever is on the front lines (6 second regen duration on a 5 second recharge). Curses lets you grab Focused Rituals, because you aren’t always where the damage/enemy is. Enfeebling Blood on Death Shroud lets you throw Weakness on enemies with instant speed that can be used while stunned. Alternatively, Blindess causing Chill makes your Well of Darkness significantly more potent.

For Blood Magic, I would suggest one of three traits for your Adept: Well of Blood on Revive (because more wells is a very good thing and procs the protection from the death magic trait, giving your revived ally a very good situation as he gets up), Life Transfer healing allies, or Mark of Blood on dodge. Ritual Master lets you use wells more often, and the “Wells siphon health” trait makes a good Grandmaster, especially since even your non-damaging wells deal some damage with it.

Finally, these traits give you pretty good durability, as you’re getting 200 armor, 3k health, and significant healing (plus all boons you apply last 20% longer, including your Fury, Regeneration, and Protection from traits).

If I’m not mistaken, Swiftness stacks for movement speed, but no other movement speed buffs stack.

Don’t forget that the Fractals are not only from past and future Tyria, but also Tyrias from alternate timelines and realities. Any Fractal should only be looked at as canon as that they are accessible, not that they are history or future.

Well, Zhaitan I think is actually dead. You see something that looks like his body in the cutscene background for Arah explorables.

Likewise, we do have it confrimed from the devs that Abaddon is dead. It’s almost certain that the reason Abbadon is dead and Dhuum isn’t is because Grenth wasn’t mortal, so could not take away Dhuum’s divinity.

Cooking is most difficult, but cheapest. You can get from 0-80 for less than 2 gold.

Artificier is second cheapest, since you basically only need wood and the fine materials. Eventually you will need mithril to finish the last 10 levels.

I’ve never seen a Guardian be very successful with spamming whirl finshers. Come to think of it, I’ve only rarely seen them running around with greatswords.

I agree that the removal of orbs probably removed the demand to nab keeps on each borderlands. That said, I do think that removing the orbs in their current form was a good idea, as it just made the server who was already ahead even more unstoppable.

If they reintroduce the orbs, the action on the borderlands would once again pick up. However, they need to assign different benefits to orb control.

I prefer Omnomberry Ghosts over pie. Same effect, 15 minutes longer duration.

Trebs and Catapults are some of the very few instances in the game where having the high ground really is an advantage because of the parabolic projectile paths. I can’t tell you how often I have been frustrated because my siege was being hit, but I couldn’t hit back, even with the same type of seige. The shots just landed too low. Likewise, I have had times when my seige was pretty safe from retaliation because the enemy couldn’t hit it with their own.

Personally, I’m just glad the colors shifted. Makes map completion a lot easier.

Kardiamond.6952:

@Drarnor

I used that for a short time, it was a really useful to escape zerg.

But over time, having 2 escape mecanism was too much on my utilities bar.

Hence why I do it for scouting. When you’re doing that, “too much mobility” is something you simply cannot have. Fights you get into while scouting would very rarely go in your favor anyway since you are some distance away from your allies.

Druitt.7629:

One small bug that I feel knocks Spectral Walk down a notch is that often times your green outline remains behind as a green trail, pointing directly to where you will recall if you use Spectral Recall. Seems like that would make it a lot less useful in PvP.

Not a bug, but it does allow for fun in WvW. When I’m scouting and have to run from a zerg that spotted me, I pop Spectral Walk. If they’re smart, they split the zerg to be sure that they get me. While this has uses on its own, I usually pop out of there with the Flesh Wurm I had placed long before and leave both groups confused.

It is well known that the Charr do not see the Six as beings worth being worshiped. Heck, if they had their way, they would kill the gods just to show that they weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

However, we also know from GW1 what it takes to actually kill a god.

There are two recorded instances of a god being replaced: Grenth replacing Dhuum, and Kormir replacing Abbadon. However, Dhuum still lives while Abaddon is dead. So what was different?

During the Nightfall campaign, the five gods tell Kormir that there is a choice ahead that only a mortal can make. Soon this becomes apparent that the choice is to take the mantle of divinity on herself.

Grenth, however, could not make this choice. Hidden away in the tomes in GW2 is an interesting tidbit: Grenth was the half-mortal son of Dwayna (and most likely Malchor). Since he was the son of a goddess, he was immortal. When he overthrew Dhuum, he could not make the same choice that Kormir did many years later, so Dhuum retained his power and still lives.

Now, we get to the point where the Charr come in with their goal. If they were to succeed, six of them would have to become gods themselves (possibly 7, as Dhuum would need to be brought down as well for a total wipe). How do you think this would affect Charr society and, overall, Tyria?

Shadowscamp.8065:

Rob.7624:

Just wanted to post this.
Our siege is dropp’in siege

Siegeception.

I was unaware golems could do that. o.o

I suppose I’m not surprised, since you can still access your inventory when in a siege golem.

Still, pretty funny. At least we don’t have people launching golems out of trebuchets or flame rams from catapults.

If I’m not mistaken, every Legendary has a Superior Sigil in their recipe. That’s why some show up in the Mystic Forge panel.

In my experience, minions respond better to combat if you don’t have a bunch out. I only have issues with minions standing around if I have 4+ out.

While this doesn’t help full minion masters much, they really aren’t useless if you are running other skills. Bone Minions and Flesh Golem are my favorites to have as my only minion skills because they are dead useful when they do something in combat (and if they’re your only ones, they probably always will fight)

Truthfully, I think some of that was left over from GW1 where people weren’t sure what a Mesmer was really supposed to be doing. They did get a big revamp later in the game’s life, but I think this time around they wanted to make them fairly obvious about what they could do.

Mark of Blood can be used offensively, but due to the Regen portion of it being overall stronger than the bleeding, it still promotes defensive use as opposed to offensive. Plus, Mark of Evasion has a 10 second cooldown and we don’t have any dodges built into skills. Necros are much more inclined to use their dodges as defense, even with Mark of Evasion because we have a lot more need to use them for such.

Clone on Dodge means you have more fodder for shatters more rapidly, even when your illusion skills aren’t off cooldown. It drastically improves the power of the class.

It’s like if we got a free mark of our choice when we dodged. We avoid all attacks that would be hitting us and get a good effect at the same time. Mark of Blood is still a good effect, but Mesmers get fodder for one of 4 different skills.

Cheapest max magic find gear right now is Rare Explorer armor, Explorer main + Off Hand, Superior Sigil of Luck on one weapon (other can slot an exotic opal jewel), and mithril opal jewelery with the Exotic Opal jewels. Get 5 Superior Runes of the Pirate and 1 Superior Rune of the Noble with a Major Rune of the Traveler (this does not result in max magic find, you’re off by 3%, but the Major Traveler is stupidly cheap compared to the Superior) This nets you 130%-145% magic find (depending on stacks) for about 3 gold. It’s a pretty good farming set, since Power+ Precision leads to the best tagging in group events.

Yes, you do have 7 Rune Slots. Your aqua breather also has a slot and counts for rune benefits. The Noble rune does involve a few runs through Caudecus Manor explorable, but you get some decent cash from those runs.

Truly max magic find gear involves 2 Rings of Yakkington and one of the backpieces with magic find, plus the Superior Traveler rune. This ups the total to 144-159% from equipment.

Huh, Darkhaven did better than I expected last night, managing to close the gap through Dragonbrand Prime Time.

Very impressive.

1. Stomp isn’t free. If I see a necro shroud-stomping me, I wait 3 seconds before firing off my downed CC. Easy to do. Of course, I play a Necro mainly, so I start my CC at 2.5 seconds.

2. 100% Fury Uptime is mutually exclusive with shroud stomps, since it requires the other Grandmaster trait in Soul Reaping.

3. Our fears can at max last 4 seconds (downed and traited vs disable only). Warriors and Thieves can get theirs to 4 1/2 seconds with less effort. The damage dealt by fear (if we have that trait) is equal to 3 stacks of Bleeding, which I’m pretty sure cannot get up to 6k damage in that time frame. Even fear-chaining is only possible to do up to 4 seconds total time.

Sometime I think there should be a guide put together for successful minion mastery. Things like using a staff with Mark of Blood and using Well of Blood as your healing skill to aid in minion longevity.

Well of Blood also gives a nice Light combo field which, when combined with a Blast finisher, is retaliation to all of your minions. AoE is a lot of fun then. Swapping a minion out for Spectral Wall lets you give your minions Chaos Armor instead, which also makes the AoE-using mobs hilarious.

Ectos are currently going for 32 silver a piece. You can get anywhere from 0-3 from a single item.

Making the item costs about 20 silver in materials if you’re smart with your TP buys.

Well of Darkness ticks blind every second.

Ekove.4586:

Asura: Gives you access to confusion which as a necro you dont have access to normally. Necros have several ways to benefit from having unique conditions on a target and as far as I know burn and confusion are the only 2 they themselves can’t inflict.

You can inflict Confusion. You have to combo with Spectral Wall to do so, but you can do it.

Great story, Rob. It is people like you that make this game fun and worth playing.

As much as I would like to see my server (DB) move up a tier, I am rather content with being where we are. The matchups are compettitive and pretty fair. People log on and try hard, even in a losing situation, and the large amounts of siege on each side make it feel like an all-out war.

It’s exactly what WvW should be.

How exactly it works is unclear, but being in a party definitely increases your volume of loot. From there, it’s about the usual percentages of each kind of loot, but due to the massively increased volume, you will be getting more good stuff.

It seems to me that the Clovers should be the first thing you go for, since the Tier 6 materials you get as “junk” still help you toward completing the weapon. If you do everything else first, then yeah, it’s not helpful.

Plus, when you get unneeded Lodestones, you can sell them on the TP for a pretty good profit.

Spectal Wall should be used in any MM build with either Bone Minions or Putrid Mark. Laugh at those throwing AoE onto your minions when they all have Chaos Armor.

nerva.7940:

lol there was a patch to fix siphoning? that was…unnoticeable. im kinda worried now.

The fix was to prevent reverse scaling from being downleveled to heal enemies instead of harm them. It was not a buff to make it worthwhile.

hackks.3687:

AFAIK there are no stability granting stun breaks in the game on a CD shorter than 90 sec. And definitely none that include building a mechanic. Leaving Spectral Armor as is and merely adding 5-8s of stability would be within balance. Reducing the CD requires a trait, just like all others do. You’d also have to remember there’s a trait for gaining SA at 50% health as well giving the option to have 2x SAs within the 90 sec CD duration. This is all on par with Ele’s Armor of Earth though we don’t have near the mobility or near their healing and boon production they do, so I really feel like leaving the LF gain would still be appropriate and within balance. Causing fears on hit, or 25 sec CDs or that stuff would likely be waaaaayyy OP

The fears on hit and 25 second cooldown were not meant to be combined with stability.

I would almost prefer it generating a 1 second fear on those hitting us and a cooldown reduction. Make it the “kitten you, chain CC!” skill.