Guild Wars 2

Classically, necromancer is a minion/death-based profession and the necromancer choice in most other games generally lets you summon or create lots of minions as a viable build.

Part of the problem with the GW2 version is that (aside from the atrocious minion AI) our minions all have a secondary skill, so we can’t just resummon them when they are low on HP. The only way around this i can think of is to allow our minions to work like a mesmers’ mantras- cast them first (skill goes on cooldown at this point) use the active skill on a separate bar and have a 3rd option to kill the current minion and resummon from the utility bar once the cooldown is up.

Personally, i have moved to just using flesh golem for the cripple and knockdown and bone minions for the blast finisher. Underwater i use a shadow fiend (our utility choices are restricted) and bone fiend (no access to fields).

Cempa, why did u choose signet mastery when you only have 1 signet on ur utility bar (which you probably won’t activate since you’re soloing)? Better to pick reapers might imo…Otherwise a solid build.

Hey Jayne, persist with ur mesmer- they really are a fun class to play.

For me, that moment when i realised that some mesmer weaps were meant to be used in the opposite way to their traditional use was an enlightenment. GS is a ranged weapon, staff is a close-combat weapon, sword/pistol/focus are close to mid-ranged.

With my GS, i always always auto-attack first. Why? To ensure that i have actual line-of-sight. If you don’t have LoS and you open with izerker or mirror blade, they won’t generate any illusions and will go on cooldown. As soon as that auto attack connects, it’s #4, #2 and #3 within a second or two, strafe whilst using #1 and shatter when mob is about 20% hp, 10% if u want to be sure.
If the mob starts heading for you, have #5 ready and immediately follow up with #4 for another high-dmg phantasm which cripples.

If you trait for ‘illusions inflict bleeding on critical hits’ and have decent crit chance, that’s some free damage right there (i used accuracy sigil to get + precision when i kill an enemy for some free crit rate).

For staff, i get in the mobs’ face, throw down chaos storm and iMage, pop #2 just before storm ends for free chaos armour and just circle the mob whilst bouncing dmg, boons and conditions. I’m not sure on the proper ratio of clones to iMages, but 2 clones to 1 mage seems to work for me due to the mages’ slow attack speed and reliance on variety of conditions.

Hope this helps, i’m starting to regain my feel for sword/pistol, but have neglected sceptre/anything for a while :/

@dredlord- i do hope you’re being sarcastic ^^
If not…
Ele’s have 5 weapon skills over 4 attunements= 20 skills. They can’t change weaps in combat but they can change attunements in a similar manner. Their weapon choices are dagger (main and/or offhand) staff, sceptre, focus- for underwater they only have a trident but again 20 skills due to 4 attunements+5 skill slots.

I’m actually considering rolling an ele alt, but that means i’ll have taken each mage-type class and i think i want a bit more playstyle variety…

@ acidicore- you’re partially right. If you stack 10 bleeds on a target and someone else adds another 3 (but has higher cond dmg than you) then the target gets 13 stacks at the 2nd user’s cond dmg; if you then add another 3 stacks, the target has 16 stacks but the cond dmg reverts back to yours, as you are now ‘the source’. I think that’s how it works anyway, would need to test a bit on my necro.

Masterpyro.4310:

Lions arch is already the main hub and makes more sense to be as it’s.. well.. the main hub. its where all the ships come in, people trade, and everything is within walking distance. Divinity’s Reach is a huge inconvenient circle.

^this.
/end thread.

@xavi: moa does work on champions at least, did it myself on champ devourer, champ giant shark, and a giant in a story quest.

@OP: i find builds are the hardest thing to nail down, as pvp, Spvp, WvW, pve and dungeons can all have different requirements; sometimes gear is enough to bridge the gap. Presently i’m running GS and sword/pistol, mostly because the sword stacks precision. I’m looking for a nice staff and i’m missing the speed from focus :/

I agree with the fear thing tovarren, it just so happens that our fears are actually worthless apart from interrupting. Considering that we have no launches or knockbacks, and only 1 knockdown on an elite active skill i believe if our fears lasted 3 secs it would not be OP.

@OP: i like it but can i suggest a change to it’s unique part?

Each stack of necrosis consumes 1 condition-removal skill/effect.

This way, you’ll still have poison damage going on and targets will need to spam their removals (or whirl in a light combo field…) ^^

Hmm, or they could replace reanimator with either of these unique parts :p

I personally think that DS was only ever in tended to be dipped into, throw a skill or 2 (fear or shadowstep) and pop out again to regen it. Before going into DS make sure u equip ur staff for the highest dmg (assuming it’s not a shamans or clerics’ staff^^).

However i am noob at DS and use it as a panic button when the sht hits the fan and stay in it too long most times probably. This is probably because i can’t see what conditions i have and that i haven’t gotten used to using the skills properly. I guess i use DS as a proactive downed state, this will prob change when/if i start doing any form of pvp.

Sabo- if that was the case how come cond dmg is not recorded in the combat log? This is because cond dmg isn’t considered when it comes to dd vs reward. The guide says not to kill enemies over time, but to burst them down instead- conditions are the opposite of burst. It doesn’t say anything about other people or AoE’s- just to use fast, high-dmg attacks. Not all events require lots of people to complete. Seems pretty clear-cut to me.

On the other hand, if we got an official reply by those in the know, that would be great either way ^^

@ siliconhobbit: it’s in the official guide (which i bought with the game). Whilst it wasn’t the red box i was hoping for, on page 102 it says this-

“HOW TO GET THE BEST EVENT REWARDS

Kill enemies quickly with the most damaging weapons you have. Don’t try to kite or kill single enemies over time unless you can’t win without doing so. Take on multiple opponents at once and storm the area if you’re up to the challenge. This has the added benefit of giving you practice for more challenging PvE content, like dungeons. Learn how much your character can handle, and practice using your skills to their best advantage.

Also, push for higher level events whenever you can. Groups of skilled players slamming through content two or three levels above their characters often rake in the rewards."

Italics mine.

I’m surprised no-one has mentioned guardians and ele’s, who have easy access to burning. Anyway, going for a high cond dmg spec will reduce your loot from DE’s as DoT’s are not considered for damage done to mobs when it comes to level of event participation and loot. Your loot from chests will remain unaffected tho.

@Delofasht there are only 2 dev’s for all the (~500) skills in the game. One mains a warrior (Jon Peters) and the other a thief (idk who that is).

Mesmers can’t currently generate phantasms if they are blinded, or if the target is blocking or invulnerable. If you dodge while he’s casting a phantasm, there is no phantasm either. They were really screwed over with the nov 15th patch.

Fyi, phantasms are normally about 60% of a mesmers dmg output.

They should just make waypoints in general to be uncontestable, or make them much much easier to recapture (like having to kill a couple of regular mobs in a red-circled area around the wp).

It’s a real issue with the later maps if few people are on them, they can’t use the main travelling mechanic of the game without having to go right across the map and being out-of-pocket unnecessarily.

Thanks for the pics and info Emerahl though if you look again at my screenie, you can see that my torch is not drawn- it’s stowed away. Also, if it’s the case that other players cannot see the illumination, how come i can see the splash effect when other people use their (picked-up) torches to throw flames in jumping puzzles?

The event was epic in the sense that it had epic lag and epic zergs fighting each other and that was pretty much it.

I went in on my 59 mesmer just to see if i could handle it (mostly, yes as in not one-shotted apart from special attacks). That single fact shafted me a lot, as i couldn’t equip the tools to mine the orichalcum or ancient trees, got virtually no exp or loot at all (apart from killing normal mobs) and the exotics and rares i got were beneath my level (rare) and lvl62 (exo).

Yet i put in the same time and effort as Joe Bloggs next to me who got 2 Forge-only exo’s, or his friend who got a precursor. If i do the same thing as someone else, i expect the equivalent reward; the chest basically said ‘here, have something worth a couple of hundred gold’ to person A, and ‘here have something worth a couple of gold’ to person B. Precursors should not have been in the drop table at all.

Just thought i’d throw my tuppence in. As a necro, i used DS to absorb the karka’s projectile and can usually manage to finish them off (using well of suffering, blood and bone minions for combos) with a staff as main weap. Those reef drakes, i cannot do. Once putrid mark has transferred the confusion i get another 4 or 5 stacks almost instantly. NP i thought, swap to scepter/dagger and swarm them away, except that it pulled, i was on my kitten and those 3K ticks not only finished me off, but persisted through the downed state so i couldn’t kill the mob before the ticks wiped me.

Necros have no reflects or shields of any sort (apart from well of darkness and blasting in a dark field which aren’t shields per se but have a similar effect) and we have 3 blasts. This translates to avoiding the drakes completely. I saw some skelks there which i had some fun with, but one actually ran away from me (not feared) out of LOS, became invulnerable and ran back; at which point the invulnerability faded and i could kill it. I saw the veteran skelk and thought it would stomp me, but no, it was an enjoyable (if tense) fight.

The biggest problem i had (and a guildie had the same) was that once you came down off the raised parts, you could not get back up without using a wp. At this point, the deadliness of the mobs was really putting me off further exploring so i just went back to LA.

I did manage to get some greens from the jumping puzzle chest tho, and after 50 karka have maybe 1 shell…no other drops that i can remember.

@ lamefox- i completely agree abt the phant appearing inside the wall, but they could have just made it spawn beside teh player instead of the target. I might actually roll a warr to see how it plays (generally not my style tho) or maybe a guardy. When i compare the warr’s traitlines to necro, warriors makes a lot of sense- decent numbers, durations, traits in useful, synergistic lines, a bit jelly tbh ^^

This is a problem for the class, as loot triggers on direct damage, not damage over time which is where a lot of necro dps comes from. If you try to make a power build, use an axe as it’s slightly ranged (meaning u don’t have to run/port into melee range with a dagger main hand) and maybe try charging ur flesh golem in for some straight-up dmg. You could try to gap close with DS#2 then pop out, see how it works for you. Just bear in mind that once ur in melee range of a champ mob, it will obey Sod’s law and AoE 1/3 of ur HP away ^^

Warriors weren’t nerfed because they were too busy nerfing mesmers because lazy noobs in siege towers cba to kill a phantasm. Have a look over at the mesmer forum- it’s like an exodus of that class.

I’ll give my mes another shot. I don’t pvp at all but these changes really are hurting the class a lot. i expect to remain on my necro main for the forseeable future.

Hi Emerahl- wht did they change on the torch? I noticed when i equipped a Charr Torch Of Force (or in fact, anything you transmute that skin onto) that my char had a noticeable blue glow on the ground, and (conveniently enough) in an area all around as far as i could jump- helped me quite a bit with jumps. My char is the one in the middle of the pic- can u see the blue glow around his feet? Also look at the uplighting under his chin and on his wrists under the sleeves; it’s also on the face of the mage to the right.

So most of the old advice and build variety is suddenly obsolete because our core mechanic is too easily thwarted by literally every other class in the game. I admit, if ur facing a mes they telegraph their summons quite obviously so if a simple dodge eliminates it, gg. Ofc clones don’t seem to be affected as much (thinking staff here) but they do no dmg anyway. Hindsight is the best foresight…

I haven’t pvp’d at all on my mes but even in pve i felt the effects of this nerf whilst using GS. It’s like having the rug pulled from under your feet.

My typical GS rotation is #3>>#4>>#2>>#1 until mob is too close for spatial surge then #5 and shatter as the mob makes it’s way back (sometimes i swap #4 and #2 if i know the mob will 1-shot the Izerker). If the mob happens to cross a tree, rock, log, or i happen to strafe too much or cross an obstacle the #2 does nothing (i’m too far away for the bounce back) and that’s 1/2 my shatter dmg gone, which makes the fight last longer. I won’t even go into our more-or-less total lack of AoE dmg outside staff use, as there is nothing to shatter (which is our main source of aoe dmg).

Shame, cos i was rather enjoying my made-of-paper tricksy mes, but maybe i’ll leave it at 55 and work on my necro more, or perhaps roll a class with some combo finishers…(i’m looking at you, rangers and warriors).

i like the ideas OP but conditions are on the necro for such a short time (cos we transfer them to the enemy) that i dont think conditional might would have any impact. Tbh, if they doubled our fears’ duration i still would only use them as a last resort or to buy myself some time.

Why beat about the bush? Is there anything wrong with asking for a 3/4/5 sec fear with a 1 min cd?

Think about it- if ur launched/knocked back (unless ur using/have a staff) it has the same effect as fear, it even resets your cd’s and just think about how many launches that lots of classes have access to. Give us decent fear, is it too much to ask?

really? so how is that at all useful? what is the point if you’re already dead? fears need a serious duration extension to make them even viable as a form of cc; we have no launches or knockbacks and only 1 40s cd knockdown on an elite slot.

This has to be one of the more entertaining threads on the forums atm. One person complains because he is too lazy to kill an illusion and all of a sudden pretty much the only damage a mesmer can bring to sieges is gone. He has obviously never heard of co-ordinated attacks or focussed-fire. Mesmer is BY FAR the weakest AoE class in the game having the smallest variety of fields and only 3 1/5 combo finishers if we time it right. What will it take to get Izerker restored, idk…

Cool idea in concept, translates poorly to the game tho. Phantasms die far too easily as it is to be any sort of threat if they only have 1 target (normal pve mobs can 2-shot them with basic attacks). Currently we have limitations on phant’s anyway due to the 3-illusion cap and the shatter mechanic being non-discriminate.

Actually i just thought of something- we have more combo fields than any other class (light, dark, poison, ethereal) but lack in combo finishers :/

While i see where you’re coming from Savan, it’s the plain truth that there is nothing a necromancer can do that another class can do better/faster/easier.

Not only does our class mechanic reduce us to 4 skills but it’s also timed even when taking no dmg, has reduced availability until we actually fight something and the traitline which is supposed to work off it nerfs it instead- does any other profession suffer from this bs with their class mechanic?

Name one thing which a necro is better at than any other class. The only thing i can think of is spreading conditions around, but we all know how easy they are to remove which sets us back to square 1 with skills on cd having done zero dmg.

When i read over the warrior traits i almost spat out my coffee. That class is so obviously OP that actually choosing a necro seems stupid- a simple comparison of traitlines is like night and day with warrior and necro. It almost looks like they gave the necro profession to a part-timer to design; it needs to go back to the drawing board imo.

tl;dr: while most classes are better at one or two aspects of the game than others, anything a necro tries to do is sub-par with every other class.

What if said foe is stunned/dazed/knocked down? hmm…

Wait a minute- are you saying that we can trait our way out of bugs to our class? yipee!…but what if we didn’t have those bugs…?

Hi all, i noticed this last night on my flesh golem whilst fighting marsh drakes.

The golem gets poisoned by the drakes’ AoE and the icon comes up as expected with a white edge which decreases with duration of the DoT. However, when the white edge had gone the golem was still losing HP to the poison DoT- the effect persisted after it should have expired.

In addition, despite not being in combat, the golem did not regen HP at all while poisoned.

Also, in some cases the poison debuff continued until the golem died and I counted between 14 and 22 ticks after the white edge had gone (the golem died at these points so i am unable to say whether the poison would have lasted longer).

The DoT seemed to vary also, even with the same (respawned) mob, in one case being 42 HP per tick, 72 in another and 77 in a third- the DoT ticks did not change in amount of HP loss once applied; the golem did not lose 77 HP per tick if it started with 42 HP loss per tick and there were no ‘critical’ messages.

In another case, the poison DoT persisted after its duration but the golem was able to regen through it.

Needless to say that this same poison DoT killed the blood fiend as it cannot regenerate HP.

When i exposed my char to the same marsh drakes’ poison AoE, the timer counted down normally and stopped yet it continued on the golem with the variable results as above.

Please can this be tested and verified/disproved as i doubt i’m the only necromancer to have experienced this problem.