Guild Wars 2

And has nothing to do with them having to change how they play to account for the fact that conditions are now a part of the meta. I’ve been watching the stream too, and they all talk about how great necro sustain is while putting out TONS OF DAMAGE! When I mention the only sustain we have is high hp, no evades outside of dodge, no block, no invulnerability, very few stun breaks… That the current stunlock warrior can cheese through 90% of classes including condition based necro…

Seriously, take away a necros support and they are easy to kill before the conditions start rolling, or just walk at a brisk pace away and reset the fight.

I’’d just like to point out – not one of the streamers mains a necro.

So in light of

WvW news at the GW2 Anniversary Bash Panel.

Commence the wild speculation!

You could do it via annotations… or just text, if you can pause at the right spots etc. It’s not easy to do well, and probably very time consuming. I just think it’d be useful for new necros or necross just getting into WvW – as well as being something we can point at to say, yes Necro’s can indeed win in a 2 vs 5, but this is the skill level required to pull it off.

We have plenty of ways to get weakness on foes, I don’t think an 18second weakness from enfeebling blood (with 80% cond duration) has ever run its course….

I like the idea of a secondary condition being caused by maximum stacks. If the 26th bleed hits, the 25 stacks are dropped and a new condition say “Major Trauma” or something get’s stacked (and could be duration based rather than stacked – whatever). It could be massive damage, or some other effect.

Thizz.3970:

Where can I find the Celestial Exalted gear?

It needs to be crafted, as tailor. You also need 5 charged quartz per insignia (read piece of armour). This in turn requires 25 quartz crystals, which can be converted at the rate of one per day.

Awesome video, thank you for taking the time to do it. This is what we need more of, actual videos of people playing in real situations – People coming in complaining about necro being op can take a look at the video, and see what’s involved in pulling off some of the things we can do. They see a necro being almost unkillable without realising the support their ranger friend is providing.

It’d be a lot of work, but it’d be fantastic if someone were able to do annotated break downs of what’s going on in these fights (for example, if you are aware of tf2 and stabbystabby showing the break down of some of his matches as spy).

Also, because it’ll inevitably be asked, I think this is (one of) the builds you are using, yes?

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjMat7pbeb87JEoH7CuAiRKOmghSR5kOA-jUyAINBRqCAhIi5wioxWfLiGr6GTHTEVbuHWtNPRSBAxcA-w

Lopez.7369:

I don’t know. I really miss the communication we used to get. There’s not even a sign of State of the Game for this month.

Actually… State of the Game September Edition and New Host!

edit: Just saw you meant for August – I’d put that down to PAX fun.

Isn’t the telegraph for dark path the slow moving projectile? I don’t imagine many people can see the necromancers arms moving with the black fog surrounding them, but they sure can see the grasping hand coming for them. Even with instant cast it would still take time to travel to the target

Roe.3679:

If this is 1v1 we’re talking, I generally save my fears until I am in trouble, or until I think I can kill my opponent with it.

…

I actually feel that when the terror changes were made, and people started using fear aggressively rather than as a gap creator/panic button, is when people started to see what is a necro can be capable of.

In organised play, it seems the team composition revolves around setting up a particular strategy, be it supporting a necro so they can actually apply their massive aoe condi-pressure – or setting up the team to be very condition immune.

The soloQ is a microcosm of the larger high level tPvP play as individual play is more accentuated. In high level tpvp it’s not just individual skill that matters (and don’t get me wrong, it is important) – but team cohesiveness that makes the biggest difference. We end up seeing more extremes, where a stun locking condition immune warrior can absolutely wreck the majority of classes, and help win team fights, or heavy condipressure terrormancer can do the same thing with only minimal support. The fallout is kneejerk reactions, especially on the forums, of people complaining about this or that class being hugely over powered.

What I’m hoping to see is that teams pick up on the idea of some of the counter builds that are cropping up and succeeding in soloQ and work out a strategy to utilise that in the tpvp games. I would love to see less whining and more discussion about how to counter particular builds and strategies.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

He’s looking for a healing staff build. That sounds like a Guardian to me. Regardless, support Necromancers aren’t as useful for supporting as other classes. The only thing they’re good for in terms of support, is condition removal and Regen. Which our condition removal was nerfed, by the by.

Regardless of if a Necromancer can or cannot support as well as other classes, the OP was asking for a necro support build, not to be told that he cannot do it.

Lopez.7369:

Whether I’m “spoiled” or not, the point is that in many of the game’s challenging fights, AOE takes a secondary role. There’s really no reason to sacrifice a bunch of great single-target damage just because AOE can kind of make up for it, especially when the sacrifice is being made for a bunch of self-healing that’s completely unnecessary unless the necromancer is playing poorly.

OR – they don’t want to play the same power DPS as EVERY OTHER CLASS, and want to play an interesting / different playstyle that involves massive AOE condition damage with and for group support and sufficient self-healing to make soloing dynamic and fun.

Xom.9264:

I love trying to figure out stuff like this…. Dont know exactly how he did it but this is one way to fast stack bleeds.

Blood is Power = 2x bleeds
Mark of Blood = 3x bleeds = 5
Putrid Mark = transfer 2 self bleeds from PiB = 7
Dodge roll trait into Mark of Blood = 2x bleeds = 9
Weapon Swap = Grasping Dead = 3x bleeds = 12
Enfeebling Blood = 2x Bleeds = 14

With some crit procs you can get 20. Another possibility is Weaking shroud when going DS for more bleeds. More like 6-7 seconds then 5.

That’s pretty much the number I got to as well – and as a side note, wouldn’t this take like 6-7 seconds to cast the full rotation? 6-7 seconds of no cleanse and t jsut standing there taking it?

@Lopez.7369
900 dps is not a lot, when from that one condition alone being applied by someone else, epidemic can turn it into 4500 dps in total across 5 different targets, instead of 5400 across 6. And that’s just ONE condition, never mind a perplexity warrior / engineer stacking 20 confusion for you to spread around as well.

The self healing is not useless, it plays on the fact that you are spreading conditions everywhere – and procs from multiple targets over and over, increasing your ability to tank. I’ve tried it, it works fantastically well. Not in theory, but in practice.

As stated previously in the thread, during clockwork chaos event, I can stack conditions, blow SoS and Epidemic, get the numbers rolling – run into the thick of things and start reviving while getting hit from multiple mobs and get back out with almost full health again ready to start rotating skills again.

The point of taking quickening thirst is you are carrying daggers anyway, may as well get the mobility, without giving up a utility slot for locust – which has a crappy active.

In almost every pvp game I’ve ever played, more often than not – mobility is king.

Weird, the build setup is pretty similar really to the one I was messing around theory crafting in this thread – Dagger Necromancers

Seemed like an idea to get to and stay in dagger range, generating lf for shroud dancing. Might actually have to give it a go now :P

@yski.7642

Thanks for the input! It wasn’t a serious attempt at a build per se – I just wanted to see what I could come up with that used daggers as the main weapon. I wanted it to be able to get you to melee range, and either keep the target close with chill/cripple or close the gap with grasp or dark path. Then as you are in their face, toughness and some healing along with good LF regen for either shroud dancing, or finishing them off with some nice big life blast crits.

I was also trying to avoid wells, so that if combat is “on the run” you don’t blow a well and have it only tick once or twice usefully.

@Stx.4857

Looks interesting. I wanted to avoid using axe in the one I threw together, for no real reason, other than I wanted to try and come up with something pure dagger based. It does sound like your build would be fun to play.

I see a lot of build arguments about not being optimal, and while building to be optimal can be interesting to some, I’m liking the idea of trying out some strange seeming builds to see if I can come up with an odd way of doing something that makes an interesting or fun playstyle.

Just for funsies I thought I’d try throwing a simple dagger build together. It is single target focused – trys to give you what gap closers we have with grasp and dark path, a few chills to slow them down. It also has strong DS generation for being more tanky and getting in as often as possible so you can finish them off as they run away with 100% crit LB.

I’m not putting serious stock in this, and it’s just an idea for a dagger build that could work – I’m sure veterans can vastly improve on it.

Build

@Panhauramix.2784

We may get the videos from PAX. We’ll see.

I’ve made the point before in other threads – the problem with the whining on the forums that we see, with lack of proof to back it up is because of the difficulty in getting the proof.

If we had tools to replay matches, see what skills were used and where mistakes were made, it would cut down on the whining and subsequent CJ.

Without the ability to analyze performance, or what happened in the heat of battle, the players come away with a sense that the other side had an unfair advantage.

Look at the evolution of the meta over the last little while. Necro’s got two additional conditions so players tried it out. They found that very few people were building to counter conditions so it wrecked them across the board – forums blow up. Then people started building to counter conditions with stunlock warriors that can move fast, hit reasonably hard and can avoid initial condition pressure long enough to kill first. They then realised that build actually works really well against almost all classes and builds.

I digress, but the point stands, if we had more tools to analyze battles, meta would shift quicker, balance changes would take effect faster meaning less time in the limbo of a meta players seem to dislike.

Sadly, only when using your actual healing skill I believe, otherwise it would be amazing and a staple in a lot of builds, being only 10 points in.

themenaceofseventhdimension.2075:

OK Nemesis. I love your vids and the fact that you spend a lot of time looking into these builds. I also love the fact that you put the math statistics into a build.

-snip-

I just thought that this build was a mistake. You win some you lose some i guess.

Just curious if you’ve actually tried the build out? So far you haven’t even tried your own builds out as far as we’ve been able to tell.

One small point, you talk about solo roaming, but this build is for PvE. Nemesis has said he’s working on a newer version of his WvW build, which will probably state if it’s for solo-roaming, small group, etc.

I’ve been trying out a build based on this one (very few minor changes for my own preference/available gear) during the current event, and the healing it provides for me personally is very welcome. I’ve been able to take on and kill 4-5 event veterans fairly easily by myself, before the zerg shows up. When the zerg does show up, I can do tons of aoe damage while keeping weakness up on most of the horde. And with the dots ticking and healing coming in, I can tank nicely while reviving all the zerker players that get downed.

Wow, this thread has turned really toxic. Who’d have thunk.

Honestly, I don’t think anyone here is really in a position to label anything. Until there is the ability to look at replays of matches, so that particular things can be looked at in detail, without someone saying “It feels like that necro managed to kill me with 0 effort, I’d better report it to the forums”. Giving players the ability to analyse what they did wrong in a fight will be the first step in stopping a lot of the balance whine that’s getting bandied around.

We really don’t need personal attacks on here, all it’s going to do is generate more toxicity, hostility and ill will.

This now has an official response in the bug forum. Yay!

Josh Davis.6015:

Thanks for the report. I’ll send this along to get looked at.

Awesome, thank you for the acknowledgement – looking forward to the response.

spoj.9672:

Already have, aoe control (blind), kiting (cripple or blind + chill with trait) and damage. Not sure what other roles they could provide. I guess vuln could be good, but id imagine it would be really weak just like the bleeds on plague. Not sure mobility skills would really fit and they might make it op. Im not against adding new skills but I cant think of anything it needs or should have.

I would actually argue that as an elite skill, with an elite skill cool down, it should be somewhat OP compared to regular skills. The point of elites is they are “game changes” in a fight. I do like the idea of having plague’s extra skills be pure utility. In the end, it’s unlikely you’ll down anyone in plague form without someone else actually doing the damage.

Hope the ideas help, but take them with a pinch of salt. I’ve yet to beat her, as I’ve said – every time I get close a boss spawns below me and the zerg turning up to smakitten lags me out.

I’m pretty sure the staff is considered our AoE weapon….

I’m not saying I wouldn’t want a hammer – but right now they are having enough trouble making all the weapon skills we’ve got actually work and synergise well, without adding more weapons in the mix.

As a stop gap, I’d love to get some more amazing looking necro-style skins for weapons. Right now it seems like all the really awesome looking stuff is reserved for guardian/warrior two handers.

@Zerroth.2401

It’s possible you are too far away from the center – for the most part the aoe zones are pie shaped – the close you are to the center the less you have to walk to get out of the zone.

Plague form is actually really really useful here – you can blind and cripple a whole bunch of clones, once blinded the clones can do no damage.

I also find taking spectral grasp is handy, so you are not waiting around for a clone to get to light pool, you can pick one and bring it over. Just puts it on your terms, rather than letting the fight dictate to you.

I’ve only managed to get her to around 50%. A few things to note -

• The first few sets of AoE and light pools are always in the same places (I’m going to guess the rest are too?).

• Blind works wonders against the clones, and if you get a good blind and tag them, they can be used to rally off, as long as you keep them moving.

• Avoiding her projectile is purely timing, and keeping an eye on her animations. I think this is what lets me down, I get too involved keeping an eye on other things and let me health get too low.

For me personally, I need to work out how to generate some more hp from the clones to keep me topped up for stage 2. I need my movement to become more automatic for stage 2 so I can focus on keeping my distance from Liadri while stacking conditions.

I wonder if they keep statistics on the usage of skills. Maybe one day they’ll review the skills that are barely used to work out why, and start improving them. I would think they’d need to do this before designing additional new skills as they open up more weapons to more classes.

The other option is to give the bosses the same kind of skills as players, including condition cleansing etc. Rather than relying on a “hacky” solution of stacks of defiant, how about some boss skills that allow them to stun break when feared on a fairly fast rotation.

It is technically a ground targeted well – without having to take the trait. The only difference being it lasts 12 seconds and pulses every 2 (For a total of 5 pulses it seems), and being a poison field instead of dark or light.

I was thinking about using CPC as an aoe condi cover after an epidemic. It has a dual purpose as well of creating another red ring that players almost always move out of.

I guess it comes down to using CPC after epi to cover bleed/confusion/whatever key stacks you want – or using SoS before the epi to do the same…

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493

I fully agree with your sentiments here and in your posts during the sPVP necro threads. I think the most telling aspect of the threads in the sPVP forums was the call from the developers for actual video evidence of what is being claimed.

I think the biggest problem is the lack of replay/proper game recording and spectating. Many many people get ideas and get better at playing by watching how other people react in particular situations. As it stands right now, one person get’s fear-chained because they brought 0 stun breakers because it lowers their overall dps – and suddenly this is what every necro is doing to every profession and they are complaining that they now HAVE to take cleansing and stunbreaks just to survive.

hmm, I wonder if a mechanic where any LF gained once your bar is full granted healing instead would work.

Coupled with the traits of doing more damage with high levels of LF in reserve, it would give the enemy a choice of stopping to focus on the necromancer so he’s forced to use DS to survive – reducing the damage he’s doing and stopping the additional healing he was getting.

Of course this might make is even more the focus of being trained down quickly – but if the heal was significant enough, aggressive necros would get constant healing making them sustain considerably longer.

potentially we could have a spot if spreading weakness and blinds around meant the rest of the group could be even more glassy… but right now they can go full zerk glass and just kill everything before they become a threat.

Monoman.2068:

Dietzen.6127:

Monoman.2068:

How would you balance it though? With necromancer’s sheer access to conditions (especially terror) it might just blow this confusion out of proportion and nerfs to the runes will ruin a rune that is otherwise alright on other classes.

I think fear is fine the way it is. I would give necromancers confusion in a way that won’t bleed out into other classes.

You can’t and shouldn’t base this around a rune set. The fear is clearly stated as an interrupt on the wiki, and it should indeed be counted as an interrupt, because, well it interrupts! Just because Anet suddenly made a godly rune set, does NOT mean fear shouldn’t be counted as an interrupt, it is however, up to Anet to put an ICD on the runes.
On a side note, I just read a post where a warrior explained he can put up 21 stacks of confusion on a whim. So, you think it might be best not to change fear into a pure interrupt, because there’s suddenly a rune set out there? Just wait till you start to meet these warriors.

I own said warrior and I’ve watched an elementalist melt with 21 stacks of confusion on him, so it’s due for a nerf. Although even in a nerfed state, having confusion tacked on top of something necromancers are already good at will impact the game in such a terrible way. It doesn’t help that this being an all class rune will affect AN’s ability to balance it properly.

I hear you guys and I agree somewhat, but if I had to choose between fear being an interrupt with this rune existing or fear being an interrupt without this rune existing, I would choose the latter. But as I’ve stated, we already crossed that bridge and I have little faith in AN’s ability to balance this rune with all the classes in mind. It just feels like some of you want a new OP toy to try out, but I will never hope for fear to be an interrupt for as long as this rune exists.

Even without the fear being an interrupt, the 4th stat on this rune allows the necro to get confusion anyway. So we are already able to stack it in there for I believe 3×4second stacks (plus any condition duration you have).

Monoman.2068:

Godless.1857:

Monoman.2068:

How would you balance it though? With necromancer’s sheer access to conditions (especially terror) it might just blow this confusion out of proportion and nerfs to the runes will ruin a rune that is otherwise alright on other classes.

I think fear is fine the way it is.

Yeah, you are right. Best not ruin a perfectly good rune that can be used to considerable affect on necros (who have some of the longest cast times on skills) by making it useful for said necros.

Don’t want to step on the toes of the “core” classes like guardians and mesmers.

I should have made it clear. I don’t mind necromancer’s getting confusion, but with necromancer’s conditions being as powerful as they are, it has to be controlled imo. Hell AN could make two seperate runes, one for the other classes and one for necromancers, they both start off with the same stats and I wouldn’t have any problem.

Last thing I want to see is the flood gates being opened on some new OP build. I don’t pick favourites but since my main is a necro, I will comment.

fair enough – didn’t mean to come across as snippy as I did (I’m not an asura!). To be honest, I’m not too bothered about the rune working with fear either, it just feels weird that fear isn’t an interrupt.

Monoman.2068:

How would you balance it though? With necromancer’s sheer access to conditions (especially terror) it might just blow this confusion out of proportion and nerfs to the runes will ruin a rune that is otherwise alright on other classes.

I think fear is fine the way it is.

Yeah, you are right. Best not ruin a perfectly good rune that can be used to considerable affect on necros (who have some of the longest cast times on skills) by making it useful for said necros.

Don’t want to step on the toes of the “core” classes like guardians and mesmers.

I’ve also added comment to the bug report, and did some +1’ing – hopefully the post will get seen by a dev.

I’m astonished that this wasn’t noticed before.

I could have sworn I’ve used fear in the daily achievements to interrupt – but it’s definitely not the case now!

@Drarnor Kunoram.5180 & @SupahSpankeh.8452

Excellent idea. I might have to see what I can put together – something that has 50% crit (for 100% with DS +50% crit chance, when traited) – and a good chunk of toughness.

Thanks all.

@Poxheart.2845
Ah great thank you, that was the analysis I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do myself

Looks like it add’s a good chunk of toughness for powermancer builds of pure ’zerker without dropping too much.

@Batlav.6318 & HiSaZuL.2843
Thanks also, it does look like it could work, but is probably losing just a little too much in the main stats for me to remain actually useful.

Overall I think it’s maybe a little telling of necro as a whole that we don’t benefit from a fair chunk of stats some armor provides.

OK, thanks for your opinions all. I was just wondering if it would be worth having as cheaper alternative to getting high level gear for all of the different specs I may move between – still using ‘zerker trinkets etc for example if I’m power heavy. It was also with consideration to the cost of the storage space for all of the gear as well.

Celestial Light Armor (thanks Dulfy, you are awesome!)

@LastDay.3524 I might not have need for -all- of the stats, but the ones I might use, the armor sets seem to have a fair bit of, not max by any means.

@Streets.2705 They aren’t going to be as good as ‘zerker gear for a glass cannon obviously, I’m just wonder if what they provide is enough.

I’m thinking overall it might be a good set to make, and then pairing with trinkets etc that do match the stats I want to emphasize, along with the traited bonuses I’d get for whichever spec I’m in.

It should mean I only have to cart around one set of armor for most of the things I want to do…. maybe several sets of trinkets for specific specs.

So looking at the celestial armor, does it have a use on the Necro? Obviously it’s not specialising on very specific attributes, but overall does it provide enough to support multiple play styles?

Could it do fairly well in various situations, depending on spec, rather than having multiple sets that specialise for one specific spec at a time?

The issue is, the necro forums will argue to buff necros, the warrior forums will argue to buff warriors, etc.

There are probably not enough people to monitor all the threads in all the class forums, and none of the threads will be objective.

The sPvP forums will also not be objective at all as everyone wants their own class to be the most needed, most powerful etc, and they only ever think about how they are going to be attacked by, for example, necros with condition pressure and hard CC. They rarely think about how good it’d be for their own team to have someone able to do that, and how they could take best advantage of it.

It’s also entirely focused on small team PvP. So discussions dismiss where the necro fits in dungeon and PvE content, or how it works in large scale WvW.

This issue seems to me to come down to the way the forums are separated out. A general balance forum might be a good idea, but it would need fairly strong moderation and a mature player base to keep the threads positive instead of ending up as further accusations, petty name calling, and calls for L2P.

As it stands we can’t have one set of skills for all three areas of the game, and then have three or four different places with different parts of the community in each place discussing this same set of skills, how to use them and how to balance them between all eight classes.

@Ascii.9726

I think that’s part of the problem, the sPvP forums are full of people making sure noone gets the upper hand on their chosen class – too negative/adversarial. If they thought for a few seconds that they could have a better team for themselves with necro being able to excel in some area, instead of assuming that necro has 120 trait points to spend and a double sized utility bar allowing them to do all things at all times.

With the dual necro, I was thinking something along the lines of two necros, one using your build or similar, the other setup to lay down well of blood, darkness and maybe spectral wall. So both plague through, one doing most of the damage, the other to support escape at the end.

Just wanted to say thank you too Ascii, I’m sure the thread didn’t quite go how you hoped, but there’s some excellent discussion towards the end here. Very useful.

I’m wondering how much synergy there could be with another necro built specifically to help you when you do the plague rush, or would two necro’s running this build together do even better either diving simultaneously, or even concurrently?