Guild Wars 2

A1: Both, technically. You were probably reading old posts from when Bloodthirst was a 50% increase instead of the 20% increase it is now. When they nerfed Bloodthirst, they did increase the base values on the siphons at the same time.

A2: I think the wiki is off. It is definitely not a .2 coefficient. .02, perhaps.

EDIT: On answer 2, it’s a .2% coefficient, not .2 (or 20%). In other words, 2k power adds 4 damage, not 400.

Tadsoul.6951:

side note can you even interrupt the tornado?

Nope. Just like Plague in that regard.

Each fear would remove 1 Stability stack (as each is still 1CC). Fear duration from corrupting stability is the same as it was pre-patch, regardless of how many stacks were corrupted.

Kedarrian.2905:

Why would they change this

Probably because they once again forgot Death Shroud is not downed state. Apparently (I haven’t seen this yet) they changed the party UI to show when a Necro was in death shroud.

GhOst.4019:

This is complete BS Anet. All other elites AND even normal skills get multiple stacks (3 average) of stability. You give Lich 1? WTF?! Why do you hate us so much. You did fix a lot of downstate traits…95% of those are for MM’s and don’t matter….but thanks.

Tornado is only 1 stack/3 seconds as well.

jportell.2197:

Wait wat happened to necros? A bug in downed state?

No, fixed a bunch of bugs in down state where traits just weren’t working.

There were a number of undocumented QoL improvements for the class today, even among the nerfs. Here is what I have found/heard reported.

1. Necromancers now have their life force bar displayed on the party UI, as well as highlighting it when it is active. Now allies can tell when we are actually in danger.

2. Health and life force thresholds for traits got added as an actual number. This is presented after the percentage.

3. Life Force gains are also now shown in actual numbers after the percentage. For example, my Locust Swarm tooltip states that I get 207 life force per hit.

Or, maybe when they looked into why Flesh of the Master was killing our minions, they noticed that none of these traits were working in that situation and fixed them all.

Removal happens first. It checks to see if it removed Stability, then applies Fear. Same as it did before.

Perhaps now would be the time to ask ANet to make Necrotic Traversal a true teleport, since the Flesh Wurm cast check means you have to be able to walk to the location.

Skill fact change. Don’t mind that one as much, since the actual behavior of the skill didn’t change.

Removals always treat all stacks of a boon or condition the same, regardless of how many are on it.

It doesn’t matter of your corruption target has 1 Might or 25, the Weakness they get is identical. There is no reason to think Stability doesn’t work the same way.

Yup, path checking is done both on cast and sacrifice.

This patch was not kind to Necros at all.

tboneking.2531:

REALLY. thats fascinating, I had no idea they planned on completely retiring the old maps. Thats fascinating.

Well, Eternal Battlegrounds will remain the same.

They did say they were going to make objective defense more rewarding in order to emphasize that. We’ll have to see exactly how they do this, but it could be the change in rewards WvW needs.

With the amount of AoE cleanses flying around, any condition build in PvP basically has to go burst to get anything accomplished.

MandJ.8965:

Necro – Spectral Walk/Fleshworm 1200

Spectral Walk is technically unlimited range, but the Necro has 8/12 seconds to cover the distance they will teleport.

Think of that skill more like a shorter duration, personal only, single-use Portal on its teleport.

flow.6043:

Ragion.2831:

Furious demise trait, and maxing out dm gives perm fury.

So only with Near to Death and not using Death Shroud at all.

Even then, it’s still only 6.5 seconds of Fury on a 7 second cooldown. Necros getting 100% Fury duration means not only giving up defense from death shroud (which replaces all defense we would otherwise have), but also giving up runes for Fury duration.

In addition, any 0/4/6/0/4 build (necessary for what he proposes) would be spending a lot of time in death shroud to take advantage of Unholy Sanctuary (since you’re not running minions).

Sooo, yeah. No.

tboneking.2531:

Im trying to figure out where you people get these huge numbers from. Granted I dont use a bloodlust sigil because Im a n00b but still, most I can get up to is around 5k consistently on a LB hit, and I dont even want to talk about main hand dagger.

I also think that comparing our dagger auto attack to a warrior HB is actually valid, because thats pretty much the highest damage skill we have (unless its LB. Still not sure whats better, DS crit build or spoj’s dagger one, I’ve seen a lot of evidence for both)

For single hit to single hit, Life Blast is better, since within 600 range, it’s a 1.4 coefficient as opposed to 1.2 on Necrotic Bite. Plus, Life Blast can use higher weapon damage numbers than Necrotic Bite to open the gap further.

Any number you see Nectoric Bite hit for, Life Blast in the same situation would hit for ~17% more damage (assuming still using dagger as active weapon).

Bug: The Flame Ram deployed by Commander Siegerazer during breakout events on the SE tower in borderlands does not have a functioning Flame Blast skill. The skill goes on cooldown, but without effect. It is unknown if this is true for everyone or just those with rank 3 Flame Ram Mastery (like myself).

Reproduction: Trigger a breakout event and build the flame ram, targeting the gate. Activating Flame Blast will do nothing (not even graphics) but send the skill into cooldown.

This has been a problem 100% of the time for me (over 5 attempts) on the SE Borderlands tower. I have not attempted it on any other breakout event yet.

NeXeD.3042:

also lately I’ve been putting 4 in spite in condi builds instead of dm.

Let me guess: Spiteful Spirit and Chill of Death.

I would not use Shrouded Removal on every build. I prefer it on Unholy Sanctuary builds over general condi builds, since US is typically on Power builds and as such doesn’t have the transfers condi builds do. It’s still better than people give it credit for, however.

Gyaddum.6145:

So my game must have bugged out because I had all the maps on 100% apart from Eternal Battlegrounds and now all of my maps show 100% even though it says I am missing 1 poi.

Might be the PoI in the Silverwastes jumping puzzle? I know I’m missing that one.

FinalPatriot.8034:

Thanks for the help folks! Is there any specific class that works better for this fight? I play a memser as my main but I have everything else other than a necro or ele.

Easily doable on any class. I recall seeing a video of a thief doing it naked and traitless without much trouble.

That does, of course, require knowing the fight first.

The home gathering nodes can drop chili peppers as well.

SilverRaven.8062:

Meteor Shower + Tornado (swapping attunements in cast)
Ah, … can you hear it? The sound of destruction?
Nice, right?
(Yeah, I’m fine, don’t look at me like I’m a … :P )

Tornado doesn’t boost Power anymore, though.

It is highly underrated. It seems to prioritize Immobilize and Fear, making it rather effective against the only conditions Necros actually care about being on them. If you find yourself dealing with Immobilize spam, I highly recommend trying it.

Locust Swarm (Necro warhorn 5). Probably the best designed Necro weapon skill, since it does basically everything a Necro wants: sustain, preventing escape, and decent damage.

First off, let me bring up the most common “Terrormancer” build.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNArYGjc0UebfNG3mIYoksFEtA4cpMJiCA-TpwXAAw+DWZAA
There are a few notable blank spots where people will argue for different things, so just fill those in with what you prefer.

Elite should be either Flesh Golem (charge is handy, and occasionally he actually fights) or Plague.

Curses Adept slot should be either Hemophilia or Weakening Shroud, depending on if you want more damage or more weakness. Generally speaking, Hemophilia should be your choice.

Death Magic Master should be either Greater Marks or Reaper’s Protection. Greater Marks gives you an unblockable Fear and condition transfer, which can both be very handy against Guardians (not many others use blocks that much). Reaper’s Protection means that once per minute, opponents can’t capitalize on stunning you.

Soul Reaping Master can also use Soul marks acceptably, but Master of Terror is generally the better one for a Terrormancer spec, especially if you have someone willing to help peel for you.

Now, you can use other skills besides Flesh Wurm and Spectral Walk, but those are our only two methods of getting out once the excrement hits the rotary blade, and you will not survive in PvP with no stunbreaks at all. Due to the Necro’s terrible ability to actually avoid getting CC’d in the first place, most choose to run double stunbreak. Triple would be used, except that precludes using Corrupt Boon, which is basically the entire reason to have a Necro on your team in PvP.

On to your questions:
1. As I explained above, people dedicate their utility skill slots to Corrupt Boon + 2 stunbreaks. Signet of Spite is a good skill, but Necros just don’t have the slots for it.

2. Corrupt Boon, and at least 1 stunbreak. Beyond that, you can experiment. Yes, Necros are rather limited in viable options.

3. Dagger or Warhorn. Dagger provides more damage and a more accessible condition transfer, Warhorn provides better survivability via life force generation and has an unblockable interrupt. Focus really doesn’t provide anything useful for condition builds. Corrupt Boon is unblockable and nearly 1/3 the cast time, making it far superior to casting Spinal Shivers. Most folks go dagger offhand.

4. The passive is a bit unreliable. It likes to prioritize cripple, chill, and immobilize which frequently end up hurting you more than your ally (who can move faster than you or throw up some defense when immobilized). It can work all right, and it is acceptable to use, but generally speaking, it adds more of what you already have plenty of: condition transfers. For what you are asking about, Well of Power is better, since it actually gets rid of conditions entirely and is on a lower cooldown than Plague Signet.

bssbruno.1487:

Roe.3679:

bssbruno.1487:

Is it really that bad?

I wanted to play a Terrormancer, but from what I’m reading, it would suck. A lot.
It’s weird how Necros are supposed to give up their Defensive Utility to perform their role well (using Signets, for example).
I favour Necromancer over Elem, for example, because of CC/debuffing. I like that concept, but unfortunatly we need to give up on Utility as well for it. We can’t help teammates, we can’t move around capturing places.

And then I ask again: Is it really that bad?

If you play casually, no, it’s not that bad. You’ll still be focused but most of the time you should be able to kite and use your ports effectively… but you do need to mind your positioning. If you run into a coordinated team or want to be seriously competitive at all, then it’s not good.

First of all: thanks for answering!
What do you mean with “use your ports effectively”? I don’t know what is a port, sorry :/
Also, i don’t want to play professionaly, but i have friends to play 3v3 and 5v5, so i want to be, at least, useful for them.
Weird thing is that i’ve always read that Necromancers were bad at PvE because they were really good at PvP. When that changed?

That makes me sad, because I was REALLY looking forward to use a heavily condition based character on GW2

Nothing, really. Outside of a 2 month period when the Dhuumfire trait was released (was identical to the Engineer’s Incindiary Powder then), Necros have only been decent for PvP at best. Necros are also decent at PvE.

The offense capability for the class is fine all around. The issues holding it back are things on the defense and team-support sides. If you’re not playing at a professional level, though, you probably won’t notice that Necro isn’t the top dog. It is viable as long as you pack Corrupt Boon. That is the primary thing it has over condition engineers. A bit less damage, but can mass strip boons and turn a D/D ele into a puddle of goo. Necros are also much more resiliant to conditions than condition engineers and have the upper hand against any other condition build due to transfers.

bssbruno.1487:

I wanted to play Necromancer as a condition damage + CC (Fear), but everyone is saying that It’s not really viable right now.

Actually, that’s still the most viable Necro (outside of PvE and zerg fight WvW), primarily due to range and how much easier that makes positioning. Necros also have a wide variety of conditions they can apply (every Necro build has 5 conditions before accounting for weapon, skill, or trait choices, so chew on that for a bit). In fact, Necros are capable of applying every condition in the game without RNG or equipment being a factor in a single build (S/D, Dhuumfire, Spectral Wall, Bone Fiend/Flesh Wurm, and your choice of axe, focus, well of suffering, signet of spite, or death shiver).

In any case, since our condition damage sets have better range, which makes positioning much easier, that is the more viable build.

zone.1073:

NeXeD.3042:

zone.1073:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

However, speaking of inconsistencies, it is possible to dodge during your cast of Life Blast and not interrupt it.

May I ask how?

Hit dodge right in last 1/4th of the lb cast.

Thanks. That’s actually more like the last 1/6th of the bar. Not a lot of room for error and requires good timing. Feels fine.

It’s not easy, and it’s certainly no reason to dodge at a time you wouldn’t anyway, but sometimes you can eke out a bit of extra damage. Not something to aim for, but rather a “hey, that’s cool.”

Rezzet.3614:

for the most part i dont see whats wrong, lol if a player form any profession gets focused and jumped by 3-4-5 players and killed its ok but if it happens to a necro clearly the necro is underpowered?

It’s fine to die in those situations. What’s not fine is that Necros fail in 3v3’s, for example. There ends up being a break point where Necros stop failing in mass combat to being incredibly strong, but that break point is higher than 5v5.

What’s not fine is the fact Necros have no tools to deal with those situations. They can’t escape and they can’t survive.

There is a reason why the strategy is “focus the Necro” and not “Focus the Ele.” Even if the Ele is capable of dealing a lot more damage, they have the tools to get out of harms way or survive.

For example, Staff ele will out-damage any Necro build not currently using Lich Form. But when facing a Necro and an Ele, the Necro is the one that gets focused. Why? Because he can’t protect himself. Staff ele is very good at protecting itself between chills, stuns, knockbacks, knockdowns, and even an evade+retreat skill in the highest damage attunement.

EremiteAngel.9765:

JUST CURIOUS

if necros are so bad, why arn’t the developers doing anything to balance things out and make us more viable?

I can only think of two answers

1) the developers dont want a balanced game

2) necros dont suck. you guys just dont know how to use them well enough.

I love how you completely missed the third, and most likely option: The developers don’t know how.

This is not a competence complaint, far from it. The Necromancer, as it is designed, is the most difficult profession to balance because to make it hold up well in teamfights, it becomes bonkers OP in 1v1’s. Make it balanced for 1v1 and it’s pathetic in teamfights.

This is what happens when the only defense a class is given is pure health. The fact it does see competitive play is frankly a heck of a feat in and of itself for the balance team.

Crapgame.6519:

Puck.9612:

Forget about hunters call, look how much ricochet is hitting for in that pic! That rabbit never stood a chance.

Yeah. OP, you may be receiving a call from P.E.T.A.

They generally don’t enjoying us treating the ambient creatures that way. Seriously, you may be on a time out later

They’re too busy calling the Necros that slaughter them wholesale for life force to bother with Rangers occasionally hitting them with an axe.

zone.1073:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Immobilize and hard CC work wonders against these builds, since Death Shroud has 0 defense against them, meaning they will be forced to leave to cleanse.

Immobilize does not prevent turning. Visually it may glitch and not show the character model turning, but certain abilities that have facing requirement will automatically rotate the character to meet that requirement upon skill use. Life Blast is one of these abilities.

Only if the player isn’t trying to rotate the camera, and even then effectiveness varies.

However, speaking of inconsistencies, it is possible to dodge during your cast of Life Blast and not interrupt it. Yesterday, I found out the same thing was true with Rending Claws (axe auto).

If you’re getting “condi spammed,” you probably needn’t worry about “crit necros.” The two have about as much synergy in one build as bananas and chicken soup. Or you needn’t worry about the conditions because they’re weak.

Life Blast is a projectile, so any blocks work quite well against it. Try to keep moving around the Necro, as Life Blast does require facing. Immobilize and hard CC work wonders against these builds, since Death Shroud has 0 defense against them, meaning they will be forced to leave to cleanse.

How you deal with them outside of death shroud is vital as well. Check their mainhand weapon. If it’s dagger, kite to the best of your ability. This is the more sustained damage output and harder to prevent the life force gain, but the life blasts also hurt less. If it’s axe, dodge the #2. This makes up pretty much the entirety of the damage outside of death shroud and also is the primary life force gain. You can effectively starve them out.

Ark Bladesteele.2943:

I can make that work. Although I am a bit worried about terrormancers who just throw fear after fear at you — stab could be gone almost instantly.

You won’t see a difference against most Terrormancers, because they’ve been trained to corrupt Stability anyway. This change won’t affect how that particular matchup goes for pretty much anyone.

I would say it was this past 30 days. Ended up making ~550 gold.

However, that involved:
Selling 170 laurels worth of crafting mats
Selling all of the crafting mats I had in my bank aside from T5 and T7
Selling a ghost pepper node I got from a lucky BLC
Selling a Chaos Staff skin
Lots of lucky envelopes when they were available

So yeah, not sustainable in the slightest, but I got my precursor for it. Finally finished Frostfang.

CynicalFred.9135:

I like it, but quite honestly i can’t reason why the hell necros need heavy armor on top of another bar of health (death shroud) and some of the best passive healing out there (siphons, i don’t care what you say a siphon necro in zerker gear with wells can get some pretty crazy sustain).

If by “crazy sustain” you mean “can be out-done by a number of traits or signet passives,” then sure. Siphons are currently only passable sustain in the perfect scenario. Otherwise, the Regeneration boon even out-does them.

Regardless, the Necro profession is underrepresented in a meta that should be it’s wet dream: tons of boons ripe for corruption with conditions just begging to be transferred back.

The place for Necros is there, so why aren’t the Necros filling it? That was a rhetorical question by the way, since the answer is “lack of defense.”

Realistically, any stats work, but you want to try and focus between either Power or Condition damage. Find out which you like the idea of more, then work toward that.

Bhawb.7408:

Afaik Plague and Lich had the “kill minions” added as a feature, and is no longer a “bug” in the true sense of it. It is intended, though that is incredibly stupid.

I could have sworn they said they were changing the tooltip to reflect reality as a warning while they worked out the bug.

Then never bothered working out the bug.

I’d much rather the Vampiric trait balancing being around the expected situation and let them be downright crazy when the planets align for their perfect situation. There are a lot of cases where they do balance this way, even a couple being on the Necromancer (i.e. Spectral Wall)!

Iavra.8510:

Mischief probably because it spawns snowballs, which can be picked up and thrown, which is not something they want in sPvP.

No it doesn’t. It fires up to 4 projectiles that do (miniscule) damage and blind. Only fires one projectile per foe within range (in front of you, 600 range), but it is possible to be hit by multiple projectiles.

#9: There is a population cap of 500 people in guilds. In a recent interview with AngryJoe, Colin Johanson did say that they were looking into ways of having multiple guilds be able to work together more closely, so although there is nothing definite yet, it is something they are looking at working on. They did say the cap of 500 is a hard cap, however, that they will not be expanding.

Dawdler.8521:

I thought stability would just stack and function like a boon otherwise (ie last as long as now, but can be removed by CC in addition to boon removal)

If they make it pulsing, ie refresh, its a huuuuuge buff to skills with long stability and an equally huge nerf to boon removal. Sounds like GWEN will be replaced by GGEG (still need those eles for walls).

Only elites and skills that already pulsed sstability (Hallowed Ground) will pulse stability post-patch. Stand your Ground won’t, balanced stance won’t.

Looks like they might be fixing Flesh of the Master finally. I think from your translations that the following traits are getting looked at:

Flesh of the Master (gives flesh and blood)
Death Nova (death star)
Necrotic Corruption (death decay)
Blood to Power (deadly force blood)
Bloodthirst (bloodthirsty siphon) (which honestly is fine the way it is, unless it’s getting merged with something else)
Vampiric Precision (vampire accurate)
Vampiric Rituals (vampire ritual)
Vampiric Master (vampire master)
Parasitic Contagion (curse of vampire attack)
Withering Precision (withering accurate)
Barbed Precision (barb precision)
Training of the Master (master’s training)
Master of Terror (masters of horror grudge)
Chill of Death (death’s cold)
Close to Death (impending death)

I really hope some of these are untouched. Specifically Chill of Death, Close to Death, and Death Nova.

Zenith.7301:

I wish they made DS not remove your spectral skills, so when you’re getting zerged by a team your DS scales with the amount of people training you by triggering more spectral armor procs of life force.

It hasn’t for like a year and a half now… There is an ICD on the life force gain for both Spectral Armor and Spectral Walk, though.

Also lich and plague need to not destroy minions or remove spectral effects.

It’s confirmed to be a bug that Plague and Lich Form destroy minions, but they don’t remove Spectral effects either.

Plague just needs to be made a more useful elite for pve.

High level Fractals outside of Dredge.

Wells should have cd’s no longer than 25 seconds. Well of Power only seems weak because classes like ele/warrior/guardian can already fart boons with ease. Might stacking from fire fields needs a nerf anyways it’s way too strong relative to the other fields.

I’d disagree on this Well of Suffering and Well of Corruption are fine where they are. Well of Power I could argue for a 5 second cooldown reduction (to 45 seconds). Well of Darkness should get cut to probably 35 seconds, though.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Substance E.4852:

This is fiction. Everything’s as possible as Anet wants it to be. If suddenly every Charrs’ legs fell off and they sprouted squid tentacles and wiggled around because of “reasons” that would be the reality of the game world no matter how absurd it would seem.

Except that charr standing up straight actually exist in the lore. Charr with squid tentacles do not. Big difference.

Substance E.4852:

I do enjoy the “science says it can/can’t work” arguments in a game with sentient, thinking plants, undead, and lava monsters though…

Don’t tell that to me, I wasn’t the one who brought “science” into this argument, that was Drarnor Kunoram. I merely stated that charr standing up straight are part of the lore and are therefore possible to exist in gw2, that is all.

I never denied they could, either. It just wouldn’t be very comfortable, pretty similar to a human craning their neck.

The Flame Legion did it for dominance reasons, but none of the others did hold that posture for extended periods of time.

Substance E.4852:

I do enjoy the “science says it can/can’t work” arguments in a game with sentient, thinking plants, undead, and lava monsters though…

Sad thing is, zombies do exist in reality. Some parasites do very, very strange things to their hosts.