Guild Wars 2

I went with Blood Legion Charr. The thing to remember is that the charr don’t put much stock on how someone fights, just that they’re good at it. Their possible background paths are extremely neutral for profession (save Iron legion engineer, but that makes sense as the profession originated there).

Bhawb.7408:

->“Conditions are OP”
->The highest placing teams in ToL were heavily power based

→ the NA finals had one hybrid bunker build out of ten players and no other condition builds.

The main reason necros need stability so badly is because they can’t really avoid attacks. Damage they can soak up with high health and death shroud, but CC doesn’t work like that. If necros aren’t going to get avoidance methods, they need ways to be able to soak it up instead. Stability is pretty much the only way to do that for CC.

Since the defense mechanisms for necros are “suck it up like a man,” it would be nice if we had the tools to actually do that.

Parasitic Contagion I would say is edging worthy of the grandmaster status (I sure like it). What it actually does is pretty nice as supplementary healing.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Nearly a month after the patch, has anyone seen evidence of the contrary and found Unholy Sanctuary to be meaningful and useful?

Nope.

Hamster.4861:

this isn’t perfect but its a start.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;00;3kHkI0G4oJkJ0;9;4T9;0T56B5;625B;6H9dZH9dZKwFN7IZ7;34-8WCXIYM3U_BF-375B;0TsW6T;9;9;9;9;9;4V6s5z

Gear really needs to be changed from Rabid, since you have a power build there. Other than that, swapping Path of Midnight for Vital Persistence is a good move. Might be worth swapping from Well of Suffering to Well of Corruption. Less damage, but valuable boon conversion.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

Lopez.7369:

EverythingEnds.4261:

I wouldn’t be that hard with conditions.

The problem is not that condis are not good, it’s just the fact that most of the teams run a lot of bunkers / defensive set ups.
This means that there’s a new space for condi specs in a team and in addition, the opposing (euqually tanky) team will have a lot of condi remove and stuff.

If you have 4 bunkers / almost bunkers in your team and expect the same for the enemy team, a thief which brings some burst/stealth rezzes/decaps might be more usefull than a necro.

Condis still are strong, but not as strong as a team full of bunkers.

This could not be more wrong. The main role of conditions and necromancers in particular is to counter bunkers.

The bunker teams are actually so strong because they don’t have to worry about necromancers as much as they used to. Corrupt Boon and Well of Corruption don’t factor in when necromancers aren’t viable in the top levels of play.

^ Exactly. I eat bunker builds for breakfast because I have so many boon strips and condition transfers. I personally don’t understand why Necromancers aren’t needed when they can provide so many debuffs on point bunkers.

It’s not so much that they aren’t needed as they can’t justify two spots on a team. Because necros have so little in the way of avoiding CC and their defenseive mechanics don’t scale beyond one opponent, they basically need a person dedicated to peeling for them. When Dhuumfire first released, the damage output they had was enough to justify this, and rather easily so. When you can break down a bunker and capture the point before the opposing thief can get to you, you’re worth having around, even dedicating a second spot on the team to.

But necros can’t do that anymore (thankfully). They still need someone dedicated to peeling for them, but what they still bring to the table isn’t enough to justify two spots out of five.

For necro: No deal. Fear durations aren’t a problem, really. All that would happen from that change is that none of our fears would see their full duration because people would stunbreak out, and then necros get beaten to a bloody pulp by the nerfbat. Contrary to popular belief, Terror damage is not what people really fear from Terrormancers.

On Warriors? Hell yeah, deal! Almost nobody uses Fear Me anyway.

DonEllz.6312:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

So, because you lost a 1v2, condition necros are cheesy? Got news for you, anyone has a much tougher time against 2 opponents, regardless of builds.

And yes, most necros roaming do go conditions. Why does this surprise anyone? They don’t have the active defenses on power weapons and they don’t have good long range direct damage capabilities. How often do you see ranged thieves or Guardians roaming? Not very often, because their ranged weapons generally aren’t very good for it.

Well NA obviously haven’t met the thief pistol #1 spamming condi krait rune whatever they are running build.. and i see many guardians roam lol.. it’s not uncommon to see a guardian roaming running a meditation build, even i have one of them :/

Sorry I wasn’t clear, I meant “ranged Guardians”.

And yeah, those thieves are in NA too, they’re just not very popular.

So, because you lost a 1v2, condition necros are cheesy? Got news for you, anyone has a much tougher time against 2 opponents, regardless of builds.

And yes, most necros roaming do go conditions. Why does this surprise anyone? They don’t have the active defenses on power weapons and they don’t have good long range direct damage capabilities. How often do you see ranged thieves or Guardians roaming? Not very often, because their ranged weapons generally aren’t very good for it.

DonEllz.6312:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

DonEllz.6312:

Condi necros though just need to get out of the game cos they are so cheesy and do not need stability cos they are too strong

If they’re so strong and cheesy, why do we see so few of them in tournaments? Those guys aren’t playing with some code of “honor”, they will do whatever it takes to win.

I don’t watch the tournaments, i’m coming from a more WvW roaming orientated view. Maybe because the users can’t use Dire in PvP XD lal!

Okay then, why do you not see more of them roaming in WvW? The vast majority of roamers are thieves, mesmers, and warriors. Necro roamers are few and far between, but those that do roam are quite confident in their abilities and frequently skilled enough to make up for the fact they can’t get themselves out of trouble. I’ve roamed both as power and condition necros with good success, not because it’s “cheesy,” but because I’m good enough to win against most opponents. When I get caught in a bad spot (say a small group finds me), I know I’m done for, but I can usually down one or get multiples close to it before I go down.

The fact is, WvW roaming is the place where condition necros are actually good, but they are by no means “cheesy”. They’re just effective and usually manned by people that are experienced with the class.

bigmonto.4215:

Once again, try that. My guess it you never try it.

They don’t call it a conditional bunker for nothing. Both a Knight’s gear Guardian and a Zerker/Assassin thief has no chance killing a good conditional bunker period.

I do it quite frequently. It’s not difficult. Easier now that Pin Down has an actual cast time and animation (yes, it was the only really problematic one).

“Condition removal” shouldn’t be on the list as every class has it anyway.

DonEllz.6312:

Condi necros though just need to get out of the game cos they are so cheesy and do not need stability cos they are too strong

If they’re so strong and cheesy, why do we see so few of them in tournaments? Those guys aren’t playing with some code of “honor”, they will do whatever it takes to win.

bigmonto.4215:

Tim.6450:

Cufufalating.8479:

bigmonto.4215:

While you are right about being able to negate a lot of condition damage, your conditional opponent will almost always be tougher and have more health than you do.

This is the amusing thing though.. We all know ignoring toughness is one of condition damages biggest strengths, but it can also become a weakness by the fact that a full berserker player is not nessesarily squishy.

You can go 100% full offensive stats vs a condi bunker with no side effects from poor defence, as long as you pack enough condi removal, and suddenly it means nothing that they are tankier than you.

In short – full zerker is harder to beat than full soliders on a condition build. Stop trying to “out tank” builds which are by design tanky and good vs other tanks because all you are doing is playing their game.

this +1. This is the true counter to condition damage go zerker since the condition user loses damage/second (on an average point of view) through the shorter fight.

Wait what? I doubt it. You should try that next time. Be a full zerker against a PU Mesmer, or Necro or Engineer or anyone, they will just put condition on you and kite you around until you die.

Works quite well when you avoid the snares, then kill them before they load you up with bleeds.

Let’s look at it from the condition-user’s point of view. Let’s say there are two opponents: a Knight’s gear Guardian and a Zerker/Assassin thief. Which is the easier kill?

It’s a trick question. Both opponents die equally fast to a condition build. However, the Thief has the very real capability of outright killing the condition build due to massively increased damage over the Guardian.

And 4k DPS on a condition warrior? I have to call bull. They literally cannot get that high. Necros and engies can reach that, but only if there are multiple opponents. Warriors lack the AoE application of anything but burning.

MercilessLemurs.7459:

Just checked, you are correct. However, someone said it wasn’t an instant stun breaker, it is.

It is a stunbreaker. It is not “instant”. It has a 1/4 second cast time.

Slim.3024:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

You are misinterpreting what I said. I said they don’t scale beyond one opponent, not that they don’t effect more than one opponent. Everyone else has defenses that scale to infinity. Necros do not. Necro defenses do not scale at all in most cases, due to being a flat number reduction (Death Shroud) or having an ICD (Spectral Armor/Walk) or both (Signet of Vampirism). Because of the non-scaling nature of necro defenses, they are not good at all against multiple opponents. It’s ironic that such an AoE heavy class is good at dueling and terrible with multiple opponents. They make the biggest impact in the teamfights where they can’t survive if the enemy has half a brain. Compare that to a Mesmer where their biggest impact is in duels where they are very well set up to survive.

I’d urge to you to be more precise then. You can’t remain vague and expect me to interpret your thoughts.

Hard to be more precise than saying “they don’t scale with numbers of opponents” when you mean to say “they don’t scale with numbers of opponents”.

What survival tools are we talking about for other classes that scale infinitely other than invulnerability and which necro has no access to?

Evasion periods, block periods, immunity periods, invulnerability periods, extra dodges via Vigor/trait or skill boosted endurance regen. Necros have none of any of these, and they all scale to infinity.

Necromancers have access to protection, AoE blinds, teleports. You seem to be thinking that because death shroud somehow doesn’t scale with the amount of damage you take, that the necro is worse off, when others classes do not even have that mechanic.

Which is better as a defense: Shield Stance or Death Shroud?

Shield Stance will last its full duration outside of the very few unblockable interrupts in the game and will completely negate most attacks for 3 seconds, but still allow the Warrior to be healed and buffed as normal.

Death Shroud may last longer, or it may be gone in 2 seconds from a single foe. Yes, this does happen. You reduce the burst you took, but that only reduced (not negated entirely) the damage of a single person. In addition, using it to absorb burst means you lose access to the skills until you can build up enough life force again. If you try to protect yourself in a pressure situation, you can’t get healing from allies (or any healing you would otherwise have coming in from yourself). In addition, you can still be ping-ponged about, be immobilized, etc.

Shield Stance isn’t even the best of the infinite scaling defenses that other professions have access to.

It would probably take 3 heavy dps (something that as we have seen doesn’t even exist anymore in high-end tournaments) to remove death shroud in 3 seconds, which is as long as an invul for other classes.

Nowhere close. Death Shroud is balanced around 1v1, and one heavy damage build can easily burst it out in 3 seconds. This is assuming the necro even has 100% life force, which they very often do not. Usually, it doesn’t even take heavy DPS to make them drop out of shroud in 3 seconds due to only having a couple thousand “health”.

Defensive cooldowns usually have “long cooldowns”. That’s why we call them cooldowns. It’s been a long, long time since high damage classes were overpresent in a team comp, yet necromancers seem to complain about not being able to escape the excessive damage. This is an indicator for the issue not being the necro’s survivability, but rather how the necro is focused heavily, as it will obliterate the whole enemy team if it is left alone.

Here’s a hint: anyone who is left alone can obliterate the whole team. Necros get focused because their defensive options do not scale with numbers of opponents. They’re focused down because they are the easiest class to kill by doing that, and then you have a 5v4 until the necro can haul his slow butt back to the fight.

Slim.3024:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Slim.3024:

Let’s be honest here, how many necromancers run with 3 defensive utilities like many other classes?

Not many. Utilities are necessary for damage on necros. Even so, the defensive utilities they do get don’t scale beyond one opponent, which is why the “focus the necro” meta exists. It’s got nothing to do with “threat” and everything to do with “quick 5v4”.

That sounds very ominous. Are you saying that death shround, blind fields, teleports, AoE CC or protection even only affect one opponent? I think you are trying to say the necromancer has no invulnerability. The necromancer is not alone in that though.

You are misinterpreting what I said. I said they don’t scale beyond one opponent, not that they don’t effect more than one opponent. Everyone else has defenses that scale to infinity. Necros do not. Necro defenses do not scale at all in most cases, due to being a flat number reduction (Death Shroud) or having an ICD (Spectral Armor/Walk) or both (Signet of Vampirism). Because of the non-scaling nature of necro defenses, they are not good at all against multiple opponents. It’s ironic that such an AoE heavy class is good at dueling and terrible with multiple opponents. They make the biggest impact in the teamfights where they can’t survive if the enemy has half a brain. Compare that to a Mesmer where their biggest impact is in duels where they are very well set up to survive.

Necros have pretty poor access to Protection, and it is always on long cooldowns for just a few seconds and always on utilities. Gaining Protection means the loss of the necessary stunbreaks or boon conversion or our only Blind field (Well of Darkness, which also has a very long cooldown). The primary reason to bring a necro on a team is boon conversion, which locks one utility into Corrupt Boon or Well of Corruption.

It’s not a bug. You can get a similar effect by swapping weapons. I have a Shaman’s staff and Rabid Scepter/Dagger on my condi setup and use it all the time. Life Force is gained in % of maximum, but it’s still a set number.

Slim.3024:

Let’s be honest here, how many necromancers run with 3 defensive utilities like many other classes?

Not many. Utilities are necessary for damage on necros. Even so, the defensive utilities they do get don’t scale beyond one opponent, which is why the “focus the necro” meta exists. It’s got nothing to do with “threat” and everything to do with “quick 5v4”.

Necros simply can not be ignored. It takes just a few skills from range to load enough potential damage onto you that you know you are going to be dead in a few seconds.

And then one skill to completely negate that “potential damage”. It may take multiple skills, but they don’t have to be from the same person. This is a weakness with condition builds in general, not a necro-specific problem.

MercilessLemurs.7459:

Cripple and chill effect the range on gap closers. Hard ranged cc it does not help against, but, few classes have an abundance of that.

On some gap closers, Cripple and Chill work. Mesmers, Guardians, Thieves, and Eles rarely use gap closers that are affected. Mesmers don’t even have any.

Reverence.6915:

Gloam Drifter.9158:

Reverence.6915:

… It’s a huge aid to warriors and necros mainly. Neither of those two classes have much condi clear and get wrecked quite easily by a condi bomb….].

Necro has a huge amount of condi clear, a lot of our core mechanics are based around clearing and transferring conditions. Lemongrass is a problem for us when an enemy zerg runs it though since we’re mostly just tagging everything with conditions with very little direct damage… so i definitely suggest you guys use compote, Lemongrass will just make you fat…

Necros have Well of Power (50 sec cooldown), Plague Signet (60 sec cooldown) and Consume Conditions (25 sec cooldown) with 1 condi removal when entering death shroud (6 seconds traited) and 3 condi removal on a kill. Compare this with Guardian and Ele condi removal, and you’ll see how limited this is, especially when necros rarely take Well of Power (Well of Corruption and Well of Darkness are way better) and Plague Signet (honestly, who takes that?). I also prefer taking Staff Mastery over condi removal on Death Shroud because well, 20% cooldown reduction is huge.

And what does Staff Mastery let you do more often? If you said “transfer conditions for a total self cleanse in ZvZ more often”, you’d be right!

Necros have 4 total cleanses available to them, and zerg builds run two usually (frequently 3). Two of said total clears depend on multiple enemies (4 hits with either Putrid Mark or Deathly Swarm is a total cleanse), yes, but in ZvZ, this is no problem.

And Warriors have Cleansing Ire/Dogged March. They usually have fewer condition issues than anyone else.

dancingmonkey.4902:

All of which are actively cast. Claiming we have no active negating abilities is untrue.

No, it is quite true. Death Shroud doesn’t negate anything. Weakness doesn’t negate anything. Chill doesn’t negate anything. Protection doesn’t negate anything. They mitigate, but not negate. The only “negation” necros can have is Blind, and it’s tied to long cooldowns (Well of Darkness, Plague), long cast/travel times (Deathly Swarm) or both (Signet of Spite).

Literally every other profession has access to infinite negations (evasion periods, block periods, invulnerability periods). Necros only have Blind, which negates one hit from that enemy.

Where are condition builds the meta? Certianly not in PvE. Not in WvW, either. The recent Tournament showed that it definitely is not there at high level PvP (one condition build between both finals, and never more than one per team).

Condition damage builds still trade off significant damage for that durability. Soldier’s necro axe out-damages Carrion necro scepter, and the former is tankier and direct damage (even against Soldier’s amulet Warriors). How does that figure into your “calculations?”

Well, some people would do that. Again, I don’t know how much may have gotten lost on Runes, but I doubt it was more than 3-4%.

I’m just not sure how your math is showing such a massive decrease in average damage when the maximum possible loss is that large.

spoj.9672:

30% lost from ascended gear. Some more from scholar. 10% lost from traits if you are using 30 in soul reaping. Banner of disc nerf, food etc.

And the dagger build did lose about 16%. I did the math to check. Most classes lost between 14-18% damage overall with the meta builds. Not the 10% the devs claimed.

I figured my numbers off of full zerker gear and max points in the crit damage trait line. Runes and food were not included.

Those folks went from 101% crit damage to 69% crit damage, a loss of 32%. Even factoring in food losses, you only lost 37% pre-runes and ~41% with. My rune values may be a bit shaky, as the old values are not on the wiki, but I do not believe they really lost that much.

With food before was 111% crit damage. With Ferocity, it’s 74% crit damage, a 37% loss. Assuming 100% crit chance, this is a 14.2% damage loss.

The more you push the crit damage up, the smaller the damage loss actually was.

Your miscalculations may be coming from looking at each piece of gear individually. You can’t do that anymore and come up with correct numbers.

spoj.9672:

Actually the DS build lost about 17% damage under normal conditions and the dagger build lost 16% damage under normal conditions. The ferocity change caused about a 50% crit damage loss.

I was going off of the “30%” loss and assuming that was referring to Crit damage. Going from 30% crit damage to 0% crit damage is a 16.7% damage loss at a 100% crit chance. Going from 50% crit damage to 20% crit damage is a 15% damage loss at 100% crit chance.

Regardless, it’s impossible to have lost 30% damage due to Ferocity changes. Even losing 50% crit damage (which I’m skeptical of, since full zerker Ascended gear only lost ~30% crit damage, most of which was from jewelry), going from 50% crit damage to 0% crit damage is only a 25% damage loss at 100% crit chance, and if you changed nothing about your gear or traits, going from any crit damge % to 0% is flat-out impossible.

EDIT: Found my calculations from before the change hit. Not counting food or conditional traits (like increased crit damage with specific weapons), the maximum loss of crit damage was 32% crit damage (101% max pre-Ferocity, 69% post). I know for a fact food couldn’t make up an 18% difference on that. A 100% crit chance build with maxed Ferocity would lose ~17% damage. I find it highly unlikely that any dagger build would have lost 16% of their damage.

Yasi.9065:

The crit-dmg-nerf has hit necros in wvw so hard, I lost about 30% of my dmg. Now with a complete new build I regained about 20% of that, but Im totally depended on boons from others now.

No you didn’t. Nobody lost that much damage. You may have lost ~30% crit damage, which at maximum is “your crits now deal 17% less damage than before,” and more likely a lot less. Assuming a 100% crit chance, you at most lost 17% damage, and that’s assuming you somehow went to 0 Ferocity, which is impossible if your build and gear didn’t change at all otherwise.

spoj.9672:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Domzz.1260:

Ah you make good points — I set out that argument to kitten the validity of my claims you two make good points — I haven’t been in the game for many months.

@Drarnor — did you mean Necros are good spot for PvP? Or did you mean what I described is the ideal scenario but that the PvE environment shuts down that ideal environment?

I do still think Necros manage to provide some utility.

I also heard that Necros can output some of the most DPS through power builds.

I meant necros do very good things for PvE as well, the issue is that PvE is designed in such a way as to make that useless. They would be great, if it weren’t for current enemy design.

Not strictly true. Yes necro has good access to control conditions and if pve was better designed then this might be more desirable. But then you have to look at what control conditions other classes can bring and you realise the only advantage necro has is chill. But movement snares such as imob and cripple can be done permanently by other classes anyway and thats the most useful thing about chill seeing as many boss attacks arent effected much or at all by chills cooldown increase. With a different pve game necro could maybe be in a better spot but it would still need some more meaningful and unique utility to bring it up to par with the other classes.

TL;DR
PvE redesign wont happen and even if it did necro would still need some specialised utility or group buffing to put it on par with the other classes in pve.

There is more that necros bring than just snares. Enemies using lots of conditions would make necros far more attractive. Control builds actually working would make necros more attractive. Enemies that used boons but did not spam them would make necros more attractive.

What necros already have can be made extremely desirable, but that requires redesigned enemies (which people have been clamoring for for a while).

Form.8741:

Try avoiding all of the massive condition spam weapon skills and condispam utilities(think engineer, necro, etc.) and condispam runes and traits (think Mesmer, thief, engineer, etc.) and passives (guardian etc.).

Here’s a question: why are you bothering? Why are you trying to avoid auto-attacks (because those are the only “spam” abilities that actually exist)? They aren’t the heavy-hitting skills. Against a direct damage build, do you try to avoid the autos? No? Then why do you blow your dodges/blocks/cleanses on condition build autos that hurt even less? Other skills have reasons to avoid them. Auto-attacks are always an endless supply, regardless of your opponent’s build.

And if you’re seriously scared of a Guardian’s Virtue of Justice passive, you may want to just leave PvP altogether. It’s incidental damage at best, since condition damage guardians suck, so that burning never really hurts (oh no, his 5th attack did an additional 328 damage to me, I am so screwed…).

Form.8741:

It’s easier to avoid direct damage by dodging blocking invincibility evadeskills etc. than to dodge aoe/unblockable conditions that take skill activations (if not already on cooldown) to remove.

You can dodge/block/evade/invincibility condition skills too. Only unblockable ones are traited Necro marks (which rarely see use outside WvW where group cleansing is stupidly common to the point of rendering conditions nigh useless). Direct damage unblockable skills happen too.

You avoid the application, you don’t need to cleanse or heal. Just like if you avoid a direct hit, you don’t have to heal.

Form.8741:

This funny difference about condi damage…it’s a constant that doesn’t require you to be attacking once cast/inflicted, nor does it require that you continue to hit the enemy – which said hits are added to the effect of condi damage by being secondary physical damage. It’s basically guaranteed tick damage until removed, whereas melee/range/etc. can be dodged by being out of range or evades.

So why are people still defending undodgable per-second stacking damage?

Because there’s a funny thing about direct damage…it’s a one-time event that doesn’t require you to be attacking once cast/inflicted, nor does it require you to continue to hit the enemy. It’s basically garunteed damage because by the time your opponent can do anything about the hit they just took, you’re already done with it.

Direct damage already dealt that damage. You can’t avoid an Eviscerate after the fact, but you can negate most of the damage from Blood is Power after it already hit you. Get it, yet?

Inscrutable.8347:

Well then bring a Mesmer with Null Field too.

Before people freak out and say LOL Necro / Mesmer can’t hold up to Warriors, consider what would happen if they had peels from a tanky Warrior / Engi combo or a double Warrior Hambow combo.

Classic front, mid, and back line.

Which would work, if you didn’t need two other people for objectives (typically a home point bunker and special objective control, Apex proved how necessary the latter is in the final match) That team comp requires six people to function properly, and you only get five.

Domzz.1260:

Ah you make good points — I set out that argument to kitten the validity of my claims you two make good points — I haven’t been in the game for many months.

@Drarnor — did you mean Necros are good spot for PvP? Or did you mean what I described is the ideal scenario but that the PvE environment shuts down that ideal environment?

I do still think Necros manage to provide some utility.

I also heard that Necros can output some of the most DPS through power builds.

I meant necros do very good things for PvE as well, the issue is that PvE is designed in such a way as to make that useless. They would be great, if it weren’t for current enemy design.

Domzz.1260:

So what I gather from all this are that warriors and guardians reign supreme ~~ necros can sometimes be helpful. Eles and Mesmers are the supports. Across most game modes.

Yes?

Pretty much. In WvW, it’s the GWEN meta (Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist, Necro) for zerg makeup (roaming, you get everyone, but more thieves than anything else). The only real change to PvE is that necro gets dropped (what necro is good at doesn’t matter in PvE) and sometimes Mesmer takes its place. PvP tends to be Warriors and Guardians with a mix of the other classes filling out the rest of the roster.

Domzz.1260:

Bhawb.7408:

The issue isn’t that you can’t run multiple Necro builds in PvE, or that X is bad. Minions can be run in PvE (although they scale events so…), power can be run, condi can be run. In fact, power necro has the highest DPS of any build I know of.

The issue is that Necros bring AWFUL group utility, and don’t have anything to make up for it.

Why?

Necros bring lots of condition control — draw conditions from allies — resend to enemies.

Lots of AoE Condition Spread — chill, fear, cripple, immobilize.

Boon stripping, vulnerability. Also regen for allies in AOE form.

I think necros bring utility to teams in an unorthodox way — through control. You know, AoE conditions brings a LOT of team utility-- for example when:
- The boss enemy or whomever takes 5% extra damage from all sources due to vulnerability stacks.
- A boss or whatever who relies on intense AoE conditions such as bleed or burning is suddenly not only rendered useless, but also fed his own conditions.
- Melee bosses are rendered useless through cripple, immobilize, and chill.
- All bosses rendered useless through fear chaining.
-Bosses who rely on boon stacking such as regeneration, protection, aegis are all of a sudden standing naked and neutered.

These all provide pretty good team support!!! I THINK YOU ARE WRONG!! Necros are pretty kitten kitten

The problem is…none of that works in PvE.

Fear chaining a boss is impossible, due to Defiant or unstrippable perma-stability. At best, you get one Fear on them, and Necro fears are short.

Boon stripping doesn’t work in PvE. On the rare occasions that enemies actually use boons, they will all be put right back on within three seconds of being removed (and I am not exaggerating, sadly).

Condition control doesn’t really work either. Frequently, if a boss spams a condition, he’s immune to the same condition. Destroyers/Effigies are a prime example, spamming Burning, but being immune to it. Alternatively, there are the stationary bosses that spam snares. There are also usually easy ways to avoid the conditions altogether, so the ability to remove them from allies only means anything if your allies are inexperienced. Finally, the conditions are low frequency and/or low stacks, so they aren’t even anything to care about to begin with.

Defiant doesn’t just hurt control builds, it castrates them and then beats them in the face with the removed body parts. Chill has no noticeable effect on NPC skill frequencies and most of the bosses that are even worth kiting teleport anyway. Plus, the “stack and smack” meta in PvE means snares are worthless.

Necros are in a very good spot right now for PvE. The issue is that PvE is in a terrible spot for Necros. The mechanics at work in PvE mean that everything a necro is actually good at and desirable for is worthless.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Hactid.6253:

LOL a necro complaining about not having enough condition, you seriously can’t be serious about this

Pretty much this. Don’t they have access to every condition in the game? Now that Fear Interrupts they could have Confusion as well. they have great access to conditions already, why do they think they need the BEST access to every condition that is in the game….

Perplexity isn’t even necessary for necros to get Confusion. Nor are transfers or boon corruption. Necros have been able to get Confusion on their own since day 1 without RNG or enemy dependance.

That said, we aren’t asking for "the best access to every condition in the game (even though necros are supposed to be “masters of conditions”)". We’re asking for better access to a condition that was designed for the profession to use. If getting better Torment access causes us to lose out on other conditions, fine. The condition was designed for Necro use, it would be nice if they could use it well.

It’s rather similar to a Guardian wanting to use a hypothetical new boon that was designed for them (say, higher outgoing heals?) at least as well as an Engineer, who also got it (but has more frequent access and can get higher stacks).

I get that you have this unreasonable hatred to conditions, but this is primarily a matter of “it was meant for us, why are we the worst at it?”

It seems to me that the real reason necros are not used is because of our high weakness to CC and the fact our defense does not scale at all with more than one opponent. Because of this, necros need someone to peel for them. As such, the presence of a necro on the team is not only needing to justify its own spot, but also the spot of the person that peels for them. Nobody else needs to do this

When Dhuumfire was released, necros could put out so much damage to justify effectively taking two spots on the team. They were more than capable of busting even the most durable of bunkers fast enough to take the defended point before help could show up. Since then, the damage has been nerfed (shaved bleeds, Weakening Shroud’s effect nerf, weaker Terror) and they no longer are capable of breaking bunkers before their help arrives. Thus, necros can no longer justify two spots on teams.

Since the likelihood of damage returning is extremely low, defenses of necros must be brought up to the point where they don’t need someone to peel if they are going to return to being truly competitive..

Abrilete.1439:

My problem with conditions is the combat log.
Seriously, as I don’t know all the skills of every profession and what conditions they apply many times I don’t know what killed me.

The combat log is unfortunately rather unhelpful for a lot of things. I’d love to see improvements showing condition damage ticks, hits on stealthed targets, etc.

Jzaku.9765:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

we knew it would not be exclusive

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Torment was explicitly designed for necros.

??

>a player created thread with less than a page of player replies as your proof

???

There is literally no other condition attributed to a special snowflake class. In fact the only case that could possibly be seen that way is ironically, necromancers having the best access to chill.

It was created for Necros, not exclusively for them, however. I see you did not even bother to go to the SotG episode where John Chapman was pretty explicit in asking the necro community for ideas at 55:30, where he also was extremely explicit in saying that the new condition would first show up on the new Death Shroud 5.

Quit talking out of your kitten and follow all of the evidence. There were three or four threads on the topic in the necro subforum, and that one was nowhere near the longest. It was just the first one that popped up on a quick Google search.

And just to prove that, you say “There is literally no other condition attributed to a special snowflake class.” What do you think Fear is? Did you know Fear was originally intended to be Necro only? It’s functionality hasn’t changed at all, by the way, as it has always been a condition.

Wall of Reflection has no cast time, but can’t be completed under CC or performing another skill.

Corrupt Boon was buffed to be made unblockable.

So, two of your points are not accurate.

Jzaku.9765:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Probably because the condition was explicitly designed for necromancers. The Death Shroud 5 was stated to be the first skill in the game to have the new DoT condition (it was, too, the other skills that got had that functionality added later in development) and they specifically asked the Necro community for ideas as to the nature of this new condition.

So if any class should have high application of Torment, it really should be necros, since the condition was designed for them to use.

It was explicitly stated that the new condition was something to be proliferated across multiple professions. That’s why it was also explicitly stated to be a condition, following the same design principles as the other conditions right from the start. If it was a necromancer specific thing it’d have it’s own icon, like stances, elixir s, venoms, etc etc.

Also I seriously doubt when necromancers were asked what they wanted the new condition to be they said “bleed, but 50% stronger”. Obviously anet already had their plans with it.

If you’d like, I can go dig up the thread. It’s in the necro subforum, btw. When it was first announced that there would be a new condition, it was also stated that it would first be appearing on the new Death Shroud #5 skill and its exact nature was still up for debate, so they asked Necromancrs, the primary recipients of said condition (we knew it would not be exclusive, and there are other things that conditions interact with that would make an exclusive debuff not work the same), what it should be.

There were dozens of ideas (from siphoning endurance or health, to a burst if the condition was cleansed early), but the one thing most of us agreed on was that Death Shroud #5 needed to be a skill that prevented enemies from escaping us so easily, or at least punish them for it. The current functionality of Torment was one of the many ideas.

So thank you for proving your own ignorance. Torment was explicitly designed for necros.

EDIT: Here is one of the threads: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Suggestions-New-Condition-DS-5 State of the Game episode where the announcement was made is linked in the first post. Alternatively, fast-forward to 55:30 here: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/396007412

Liza.2758:

Lopez.7369:

Except for spirit ranger, no condition build is a bunker. I have no idea where that perception comes from. Condition builds are supposed to be tanky, because they’re about attrition, but they’re not anywhere close to being bunkers. (And usually that tankiness is there to make up for a distinct lack of mobility and susceptibility to focus fire.)

it’s not the build that make bunker. it’s amulet.

not like everyone uses carrion.

No, the amulet makes them durable. The build very much so makes them a bunker. Bunkers that can’t mitigate beyond armor, avoid being moved off-point, and replenish their health fail miserably as “bunkers.”

And the final team comps? 2X Hambow Warrior, 1X Guardian, 1X Ele for both teams, and then one Spirit Ranger bunker and one Thief on opposite teams.

Jzaku.9765:

I don’t get it

What exactly makes you think necromancers are the special snowflakes that “deserve” more torment than other classes? That’s exactly like a warrior complaining he has no access to chill and poison.

Probably because the condition was explicitly designed for necromancers. The Death Shroud 5 was stated to be the first skill in the game to have the new DoT condition (it was, too, the other skills that got had that functionality added later in development) and they specifically asked the Necro community for ideas as to the nature of this new condition.

So if any class should have high application of Torment, it really should be necros, since the condition was designed for them to use.

Necros having shorter Fear durations I can live with, since no other profession has Terror or the sheer breadth of Fear applications.

Now, seeing Grasping Dead get its bleeds replaced with Torment? I could get behind that. Axe is a Power weapon, so it would be a poor fit there.

Mickk.6875:

zapv.8051:

Far and away the worst is the Grandmaster Spite minor Siphoned Power. One stack of might for dropping below 25% health. Literally 1 stack of might, that’s 35 power for falling below 25% health. To me it is quite possibly the worst trait in the game because it has such a minimal impact and you invest 25 points for it.

The description of Siphoned Power reads (emphasis mine):

Gain might when struck while your health is below the threshold.

As far as I can tell, that description is accurate. If you get hit five times and you are under 25% health, you get five stacks of might (each lasting 5s). If there is an internal cooldown, it is a short-ish one.

One can certainly say many things about this minor (e.g. not every build or playstyle can or will benefit from might when you have little health left), but probably not that ‘it is quite possibly the worst trait in the game’.

That title definitely belongs to either Hard to Catch or Last Refuge, both of which are thief traits.

Siphoned Power is weak, yes, but there is no ICD on it and if you go into death shroud, you can get hit quite a bit without dying, stacking up some decent (if very short-lived) Might. Honestly, I feel they should up the Might duration, but that would probably be enough.

It’s much better for yanking defenders off the walls in WvW than any sort of combo play. If you’re not assaulting an objective, don’t bother with it.

Brando.1374:

hooma.9642:

dancingmonkey.4902:

hooma.9642:

im getting tired from such nonsense argumentation.. how about stop demanding prove from every post u see against conditions and deliver evidence that proves your point.. so far i only see u demanding.. esp since you for yourself claim stuff without any evidence and your claimed proven facts with vids are also false, cause u refuse to compare the reality!

I agree, it is absolute nonsense to request that you offer any evidence to a claim that has already been dis-proven, what are we thinking…………Oh wait, silly me, that is a perfectly reasonable request.

Evidence for our argument? You mean like youtube video damage comparison posted on the last 7 thread on this topic? If the same 10 posters would stop spamming the forums repeatedly with this same thread you may have seen them. Perhaps had you looked at all, I don’t know. As well, previous threads have comparative damage out put break down. …

see thats your total mistake that i mentioned. i talked about reality that every spvp/tpvp match tells you.. not some stupid dps compares against a target golem or your calculations based on numbers… there is to many u cant cover.. u seem not to understand that.

u can compare your dmg as long as u want. it doesnt matter. u and all your companions seems not to understand this. as long condis can BURST its broken. simple is that. the rate of application on necro and engi is broken, cause thats the only both classes that can condi-BURST… thats not a problem of condis or power and has nothing to do with dmg that different dmg-types or build do. its just a matter of possible negating and counterplay.

and to repeat there is absolut no counter*PLAY* involved against condi-builds. either you BUILD to counter or not. there is no middle way. either u have enough condi-cleanse to complete negate his build or not. its the way like diamond skin work just in a different scale. u seems not to understand it.

it doesnt matter if u cant apply any condi or i just have always more cleanse than u can apply and can outheal the remaining dmg. the fact that my BUILD simple counters yours, without any possible way u could turn that outcome, with more a less passive, is a counter BUILD that should not be in GW2. in the most cases its simply the other way around. hard to understand or what?

did you happen to look at those 2 warrior duels I put up?
1 know how to counter conditions and is a wvw roamer
the other well is like many who post complaints.

And both seemed to be running the same build. So much for “no counterplay, only counterbuild”

Makes perfect sense to me. Torment is not “burning, poison, or bleeding.”