Guild Wars 2

I’m only rank 23, but I’ve had decent success with a standard condition build: 0/30/20/20/0, staff + sceptre/dagger.

Utilities vary. Corrupt boon is pretty much a staple, epidemic usually a secondary, with the third being either Spectral Grasp, Blood is Power, Signet of Undeath or Plague Signet.

At least on Temple of the Silent Storm, you get a lot of mileage out of teamfights and can gear to counter a lot of the trap rangers you’ll see. Your weaknesses are full condition clear/bunker guardians and stealth-oriented thieves, which can have some matches leaving you feeling helpless. But everything else you can handle no problem.

Because its design has been awful since release. 80% of it is grinding through walls of Dredge, probably the worst NPCs to fight against since pre-nerf Risen. The remaining 20% of it is grinding against bosses with one-off mechanics with similar walls of HP.

Path 2 is almost criminal in how bad it is. Give me one reason why the Foreman miniboss exists save to waste the player’s time. He has no mechanics. He has no adds. He has no special abilities. He’s just a giant wall of health that heals. And the overseers you have to kill immediately after him? Regular mobs with champion stats, followed by a ‘defend against waves of boon-spamming jerks’ event to continue into a room of even more dredge.

Path 3 is ‘decent’ only in the sense that it causes less outright suffering than Path 2. Path 1 is probably the only ‘good’ one, but it’s so quick and easy with the right setup it borders on trivial speedrun territory.

Good grief, he complements what is probably the best guild on Fort Aspenwood and you still get your panties in a bunch?

HiSaZuL.2843:

See what I did there?

You proved his points about humility correct, making the thread more cringe-inducing than it already was?

Softspoken.2410:

I think we’re working on different definitions of accessible, but thank you for clarifying.

What you guys are calling ‘accessibility’ I just look at as as mechanical or technical skill – the need to press more buttons at a faster rate than another class.

Honestly, with that build you should be winning most 1v1 fights you run into in WvW. I speak from personal experience and am not trying to be hyperbolic about it. Only a few specific builds can genuinely outlast or nullify you, and there’s still a slight risk of being burst down. This is mostly because of the tenuous nature of conditions and condition clearing as a whole.

I can’t really say ‘l2p’ because it could be caused by any number of problems. Are you keeping your death shroud topped off by killing critters on the map? Are you using your Death Shroud appropriately? Are you aware of how the classes you’re fighting work so you can properly time your fears and corrupt boon? Is your gear all 80 exotic?

When you’re roaming you should probably swap out Epidemic for a utility you’d actually use in a 1v1 scenario, such as Blood is Power or Spectral Grasp. Both will give you a decent edge if you use them well.

If you get into a group situation that calls for epidemic, just swap it in. Speaking of group situations, my best advice is to practice situational awareness. As a Necromancer, once you’ve committed to a fight, there’s usually no escape until either side is dead. There is no Ride the Lightning or Stealth or other ‘get out of jail free’ card.

Score update from the land of No Oceanic Presence.

Hang in there, you beautiful, beautiful tower.

Your problem is that you’re a condition build. A necro will either heal off or turn your major source of damage against you without any effort.

If you were oriented more towards direct damage you’d have a better chance, but as it stands your Churning Earth is a giant, glaring ‘kill me’ signal.

Fear is at its best in PvP. A well-placed Doom and Reaper’s Mark can turn a fight around, assuming your enemy isn’t running with stability. The former in particular is a low-cooldown, zero-windup, no-animation interrupt. Making proper use of it is what puts condition necromancers ahead of most other condition-utilizing classes.

In PvE, though, it’s pretty lackluster. In my experience the damage from Terror will still trigger on Defiant enemies, but I may be wrong.

Not without its flaws but still, strong.

You run into these guys a lot in sPvP and duels, not sure there’s much a power necromancer can do short of heal/cleanse early and often to avoid triggering the confusion.

They’re pretty much fodder for a condition user, though.

Pinko.2076:

You don’t need to tell Mag/DB how to fight club~

I could also be doing it for those that are new, haven’t been to one, or have had no idea either way.

If I wanted to do smaller buffs/fixes, it would look something like this.

Class Mechanic
- Death Shroud UI fixed. You can now see what boons and conditions you are affected by.
- Life Force gained when in Death Shroud is equal to the amount gained when something is killed in regular form.

Spectral
- Spectral Armour cooldown reduced to 60 seconds.
- Spectral Grasp pathing tweaked. It’s now less likely to be obscured by smaller elevation changes and targets are more likely to be pulled the full distance.

Corruption
- Corrupt Boon now functions like Epidemic; it checks for LoS/targeting only at the beginning of its cast.
- Corrosive Poison Cloud now ticks every 1.5 seconds as opposed to every 3.
- Epidemic cast time reduced to 2/3rds of a second.

This isn’t touching weapon skills, bigger/more idealistic buffs, traits, or the abilities of other classes.

Pinko.2076:

Is there an official fight club scheduled for tonight? Some TC told me they usually do one on thursdays.

Usually in the usual spot in TCBL, after the conclusion of the regular Dolyak Parade, which should be a few hours from now.

That said, I want to remind folks of some commonly-overlooked things:

1. You can /point @, /bow @, /yes @ and otherwise target emotes with "@" to make it less ambiguous as to who you’re challenging to a duel. Looking at your target or jumping around/in them will also help in case they were tabbed out, as ‘Tarnished Coast Defender’ could mean any number of people nearby.

2. If you don’t want to duel, just /no @ and leave it at that.

3. If you’re waiting around to be challenged, consider temporarily equipping a Signet to help identify your class to any enemy that clicks on you. If you’re an Engineer, a kit works just as well.

4. Give duels a respectful berth. It’s easy to cheat and interfere with a match without intending to.

As far as I know, it goes to neither.

OreoWolf.9564:

Conditionmancers are very strong counters to the current meta elementalists if played right, and our power well builds melt mesmers (Can be hard to keep them in one spot tho). Your welcome

While totally true, I find there’s a small subpopulation of the D/D Elementalists that can beat condition necromancers. Maybe it’s just a nuance thing on my part, but with all their cleansing they eventually outpace my condition damage with their regular combos.

Yeah, we’re okay, that doesn’t stop us from having a dozen unexplained bugs/limitations on just about everything. That just puts us at ‘mediocre’ assuming we aren’t dueling.

P.S: How to shroudstomp?

“Waypoint up in five seconds.”
“Oh sweet, now I won’t need to walk over there on my stubby little-”

It was fun while it lasted.

Lifesteal is alright.

The fear would be good if its cast time was dramatically reduced. As it stands, the long cast and hugely telegraphed animation/graphic doesn’t help anyone. It’s on the low end of the spectrum by far.

The third skill is OK, but would be better if it actually hit half the time. Sometimes it casts on my cursor as it should, sometimes it instead casts at the feet of my targeted enemy, sometimes on my corpse, sometimes somewhere unrelated entirely.

Six runes of the Undead because they’re as cheap as I am.

I was considering getting the 4 + 2 Afflicted runes but the toughness + condition damage boost from Undead is so cozy I’ve been seriously reconsidering that plan.

Necromancers are probably one of the strongest 1v1 professions in the game, capable of taking on multiple people solo with a combination of skill and luck. I can think of maybe two or three builds that can take them on and win.

That said, some of the major problems I’ve run into:

Death Shroud. Doom and the second lifebar are both great. Everything else about this mechanic, from the remaining skills to traits to visuals and UI-blocking, is awful.

Utility. Some of the worst in the game outside of 1v1 situations. If the skill isn’t useless, it’s mediocre, with a couple exceptions – but I guess you could say this about every other class!

WvWvW Presence. Again, outside of 1v1 or small-scale situations. When it comes to zerg vs. zerg combat, a condition-specced necromancer is often searching for something to do. As it stands, you usually just drop your wells, go into plague form and float around a bit. Powermancers fare no better. This brings me to another point…

Boon/Condition Dilemma. In the current meta, boon application and condition cleansing heavily outpaces boon removal and condition application. Sort of like how it worked in GW1. Or wait, maybe it was the other way around, but the imbalance is there. This is a very delicate thing to address.

Death of ‘Gimmick’ Builds. Remember the GW1 Necro? I’m not even talking the late-game N/Rt autopilot crap. I’m talking about consume conditions/plague sending/plague signet Condition Sponges that took conditions from allies and became stronger for it. I’m talking about the minionmancers that, despite having several staple skills, saw more variety in their builds than we see in the entire class in GW2. The widespread hex/debuff Curse-based builds. The lifetap Blood Magic health/energy batteries. These builds were extremely fun to play, and the skill system in GW2 just throws those all away. The traits ignore them and the utilities that try to remake them are subpar, and the class suffers for it.

I could throw out a wealth of ideas on how to address these, but given the general lack of comment (as far as I know) on the Necromancer class as a whole, it would serve no point save receiving a couple pats on the back and/or criticism.

Silh.3279:

Furienify.5738:

You join up with a WvW guild, pick a borderland, organize a specific day for your guild night and go take your third of the map and then some. Take no prisoners.

You realize we were having the exact same problems not a week ago, right? It was those guild pushes that got us a lot of our points. But it wasn’t the points that got us going out there to begin with; it was the opportunity to butt heads with the guilds of Kaineng and Blackgate. The fights were great and kept us coming back every day or so, even if we’d wake up to find everything we’d taken back in the hands of its original owners.

i.e. Play only when you can get a zerg, and go PvE or camp JP’s in the meantime.

Thanks for the advice.

No problem. When all else fails, most will resort to being passive-aggressive forum warriors, which just wastes a very good opportunity.

The clever ones will take advantage of the sheer number of fair weather players to practice fighting against superior numbers.

You join up with a WvW guild, pick a borderland, organize a specific day for your guild night and go take your third of the map and then some. Take no prisoners.

You realize we were having the exact same problems not a week ago, right? It was those guild pushes that got us a lot of our points. But it wasn’t the points that got us going out there to begin with; it was the opportunity to butt heads with the guilds of Kaineng and Blackgate. The fights were great and kept us coming back every day or so, even if we’d wake up to find everything we’d taken back in the hands of its original owners.

Not quite the spot I’m used to, but thanks for all the fun duels!

Pinko.2076:

I think maybe you quoted the wrong person, because I don’t see how that related to my post except the duel stuff. :p

The duels I’ve seen were at DB south south, and I usually check there.

I half-responded to both of you since I was posting to Paralda about the whole ‘militia’ thing at the time, which also had a similar ‘Never Give Up’ tag on it.

Pinko.2076:

I don’t even know where the Don’t Give Up stuff is coming from. I logged in right now at prime time sunday… and this is our usual prime time sunday numbers. We are just having to put every single body into one map to get anything against the waves of TC sitting in 100% BL’s.

TC has easily 2-3x our active WvW pop every day, and when you’re combining that with a massive defender’s advantage, +100 ppt is totally normal.

It’s coming from our time in T2 and pretty much our entire WvW history. Just because we’re in first place doesn’t mean their accomplishments are invalid, nor has anyone said your militia is bad.

When it comes down to it, neither side is going to be satisfied. Everyone keeps talking about how ‘oh I just wiped the floor with X and Y’ and I can respond in turn easily, but it serves no purpose because:

A. Organized guilds that aren’t just out of their primetime/taking a week off can’t get their guild together on a map if their life depended on it.

B. Every map is jam-packed full of PvErs seeking map completion, Fairweather Greens and equally green Commanders, causing the matchup to boil down to ‘Massive Zerg vs. Defenders’ on most maps.

C. Even if (A) could occur, the Defenders would probably deploy subpar numbers due to morale.

In short, it’s basically a crummy situation for either side that cares.

If you or Paralda wants to organize a dueling/fight club later tonight for fun (!) you’ll probably have people show up, though I don’t know if the usual etiquette between our two servers is the same.

ParaldaWind.4523:

Furienify.5738:

ParaldaWind.4523:

Yeah, I don’t understand the whole “militia” thing. Our players rarely have more than 5 from one particular guild together… If you guys don’t train every player, how are you going to win when there’s no guild events going on?

We call our players that keep showing up and fighting back despite not being in a big, organized guild our ‘militia’. They find it a bit more gratifying than just being called ‘pubs’.

Why differentiate at all? A 30 man of Maguuma players is just as good as a 30 man of any organized guild we have on the server, I think.

Last night in eternal, I had 5 PYRO, 5 ME, and 25+ randoms. We destroyed in the open field… it doesn’t matter who we have. We don’t treat any of our players like second class citizens.

We don’t treat any of ours like second class citizens, either. Or generally speaking, most don’t or try not to. I guess you could say it’s more of an organizational tool? A lot of the militia that don’t focus exclusively on home borderlands defense will usually tag along for some given guild’s event night, to the point that they become recognized faces or pseudo-members.

Their experience may vary wildly, but everyone can contribute and is welcome to do so.

ParaldaWind.4523:

Yeah, I don’t understand the whole “militia” thing. Our players rarely have more than 5 from one particular guild together… If you guys don’t train every player, how are you going to win when there’s no guild events going on?

We call our players that keep showing up and fighting back despite not being in a big, organized guild our ‘militia’. They find it a bit more gratifying than just being called ‘pubs’.

Pinkus.2860:

I miss TC already

The feeling is mutual. Keep fighting the good fight.

R.I.P. Cliffside Dancy Party
March 2nd, 2013
9:30 – 9:33 PM

You were beautiful
But you ended in a massacre ;_;
(props to SM, that hurt like hell)

Kaineng/Blackgate are invited to Dueling Club in the usual spot on Kaineng Borderlands! Already a fair bit of opponents here from TC, unless there’s another fighting spot going on in another map I don’t know about.

Come wish your long-time rivals best wishes in the next matchup by running them through with your sword!

Edit: Well, people seem to’ve dispersed. I’ll hang out here to fight whomever, and if a sizable force from either shows up I can probably call my guild to join.

Pinko.2076:

A significant portion of Mag did. Kaineng is being as open about it as we were in our t3 thread. There’s no need for all of a server to throw for it to work.

Why d’you care so much?

WANTED: GUY PICTURED BELOW
THIEF
BLACKGATE
[FoE] TAG
LAST SPOTTED ON KAINENG BORDERLAND FIVE MINUTES AGO

PLEASE CAPTURE
INTERROGATE HIM UNTIL HE REVEALS WHAT OUTFIT HE’S WEARING
PICTURES OPTIONAL IF IT’S NOT TOO CREEPY
RETURN THIS INFORMATION TO ME
RECEIVE BOUNTY
THANK YOU

With all due respect, this is a horrible change.

Spotting/sentrying/scouting has no reward. You get nothing from doing these activities beyond the goodwill of your teammates, yet you’re elbowing people to do them even more. Same goes for dolyak escorting, or playing support specs in group fights or blocking treb shots. At the end of the day, goodwill doesn’t pay the bills as you’re falling thousands, if not tens of thousands, of kills behind your friends that started WvWing at the same time you did.

All this does is make the roles of those that actually support more difficult because … well, why? I don’t know. It’s a disincentive against other people pitching in, on top of the drawbacks that already exist, thus promoting selfish play in what is fundamentally a team-based format.

Please consider tweaking this change or doing something to help support players out.

These are all good changes, but they’re not that significant. A few are, but they’re not going to be as impacting as, say, a death shroud fix/overhaul would have been. Band-aids for better or for worse.

The buff to axe is good, but it’s still a mediocre weapon. You might roll people with it in sPvP or small-scale combat, but that’s not something to write home about since it’s largely single-target.

The buff (read: bugfixes) to minions are good, but minion masters will continue to be a fringe role so long as minions have their current AI, cooldowns and mediocre active abilities.

Probably the most significant change was to Spinal Shivers and its associated trait, helping bring out an otherwise-unused offhand weapon. Now, if Spinal Shivers corrupted the boons rather than removed them, I’d explode with joy.

Wouldn’t that be something? I don’t see it happening, though, without a significant rehaul of the Necromancer’s utilities. Mesmers are good at portaling in large part due to their burst mobility (Blink) and invisibility, two things Necromancers just don’t have.

It probably won’t be Elementalists, as they have more than enough roles.

You can just jump through the center of the door and clip through it since it probably doesn’t have a navmesh, or whatever they call it. The back is a mess of weird terrain placements. You can jump through/over/around the broken terrain and phase all over the place, it’s trippy as hell.

There’s a bunch of mining nodes inside and a sort of vault door, not much else.

Is this supposed to be here? I don’t remember it, and the terrain is buggy as heck.

More attachments coming. You can find it east of the Bramble Pass Waypoint.

War Machine trying to crash our party

late night dueling
Kaineng Borderland
be here

Miiaah.5416:

Then let SoR and SoS flip a coin on which server to load up to equal coverage and the left over moves down to T2, then you have 6 equal servers, good fights and such

then you have 6 equal servers, good fights and such

Not if you’re Tarnished Coast.

jwburks.9735:

Well, I’ve only been WvWing for the past 3 or 4 days, but it does seem to me that my server (Tarnished Coast) just doesn’t have enough people interested in participating in WvW. We try anyway, and usually fail, but I’m also seeing commanders in map chat getting bitter towards each other, as if there is some sort of power struggle or something. I’m new, so I don’t know the history. But shouldn’t they be working together? Or is it just an inside joke? Trolling, maybe? -shrug-

Have you tried joining a WvW guild or avoiding TCBL? At least, that’s where I assume you’re going based on the description.

If you’re done parading, we’re still dueling in TCBL!

More victims – er, participants – always welcome.

Lanimal.6541:

TCBL Dueling event. Windmill @ Southern Camp. We are waiting there lets get it started BG and Kaineng.

Yeah, change of plans, go here
Can’t let hippie dolyak walkers take all the fun, you know?

Dueling seems to be going in the usual place if dolyak parades aren’t your thing
Kaineng BL
Be there or be square

To the Kaineng Defender that /laughed at me while I struggled to defend TC’s spawn tower in KBL to the last breath with a measly crew of three people.

It is Valentine’s Day.
I have a full bottle of merlot on my desk that is gradually decreasing in volume.
My guild’s Mumble is deliberately provoking me into drinking more.
There is a chip on my shoulder that’s growing heavier at an inverse proportion to the contents of my bottle.

And you, sir?
You have made yourself an enemy.

why are we team lohan

Am I like your human babes? Uguu~

Pinkus.2860:

Wish TC had more coverage so Tier 2 could be even more epic!

Yeeeep. That’s pretty much a universal sentiment at this point, though it’s beyond most people’s control.

Are we really talking about this?

Fun fights in FABL on reset, while we’re at it.

My first time ever coming down to one of these little dueling hideaways, was pretty nervous about it, but ended up having a blast.

Thanks for all the fun fights, [TDA], [Choo], [LOD] and others!