Guild Wars 2

Speaking as someone from SoS who has fought maguuma and sbi every week for months, this matchup with YB and CD is probably the most fun matchup I’ve been part of in a long time.

I enjoy bloodstone fen. It’s got constant action, good loot, and is genuinely fun to just cruise around along the updrafts and ley-lines. Ascended trinkets of any stat type are a welcome change, especially for a wvwer like myself.

But Blood Rubies are one more thing I have to keep in my inventory. I already have (-insert long list of trophies here, you know what they are-). Salvaging them can give unbound magic, but so can a vendor that trades 1 blood ruby for a bag that gives a random amount of unbound magic with the same upper and lower bounds.

Can we please have these converted to a currency? Many of us are already drowning in keys and trophies. I have a 20-slot bag mostly dedicated to them because you can’t even bank them, since another one is going to drop and end up in your inventory anyway.

After completing achievements, I have both unfinished and finished journals cluttering up my inventory and they don’t seem to do anything other than let me read something someone will post on the wiki at some point.

Can I destroy these or do they serve some other purpose?

There are 15 fractals not counting alternate paths for underground facility and aquatic ruins. If each fractal appeared once per tier that gives 8-10 fractals that could be introduced, depending on desire to have both paths of a fractal in each tier.

Your first build was better.

For the effort in acquiring sinister gear, unless you’ve already done it, just use rampager’s. It’s obtainable with karma or badges of honor and works just as well. Alternatively, dire works and gives both vitality and toughness.

You seem intent on using minions, focus #4 can apply regeneration to them. Blind and weakness on the dagger off-hand doesn’t work on the enemies you’d want to blind or weaken.

Minions don’t work in wvw if that was your intent (based on your infusion choice).

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vREQNArdWjM0QbN2VDO1A7NOCGqZUvDrbMpDgIQeCpQJA-ThSFAB++AAS+IK4kyPAOBAafoCeZ/B40wklSwDV/JO9BdGEAGkQSy22WTSSkCYRpRA-e

Dadnir.5038:

I think the most optimal build for the bloodstone fen’s story mechanisms

Any necro build should work just fine, the story is really easy.

Vydahr.4285:

Tobias.8632:

Provide one single justification for necro staff auto not doing as much damage as ele fire staff auto

Uh… Uh…. Lifeforce! It contributes to shroud! Yeah, that!

Pierce, 5 targets instead of 3, projectile finisher

Reduce the cooldown on well of corruption to 20 seconds
Make sigil of nullification AoE like sigil of fire, make it 2 boons
Add boon-to-condition to rune of the trooper

I think bloodstone fen is the best designed map in the game in terms of mobility. I have not played another map where it was so easy to move around. It’s actually at the point where it is fun to just cruise around the map.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Arenanet really must quickly gives us a way to convert badges of honor and/or proof of heroics into fractal relics. Currently there is way too few ways to use both.

We also need a fractal related reward track, which would give us:
fractal relics
vial of Condensed Mists
and maybe other fractal related rewards

I really don’t see the point why Arenanet keeps WvWvW rewards kitten. Are they afraid too many players flock to WvWvW if the rewards get upped near pve levels?

I would like to see this. I mostly want to play wvw (I probably spend 80% of my time there), but I also want to do T4 fractals at some point because they’re quick money. Fractal regulars would scream bloody murder about fractal weapon skins being in a rewards track, but… it would be nice.

I am quite pleased with the bloodstone fen rewards track, since it allows ascended trinkets of any stat type to be obtained via wvw.

I used my normal wvw base power necro build and had no issues with the story or map. Not sure I’ve even been downed on the map after spending several hours there.

I noticed the same thing. They doubled the HP of siege, so naturally ballistas would do half the damage.

I always felt ballistas did too much damage before, but now it feels like it’s not enough. A 50% boost in damage might be the sweet spot.

Mizu.4508:

You can blame anet for the decision of making a 4 headed hydra out of CD/BP/ET/Kain. There’s absolutely no reason to stack 4 servers together, I don’t know how they thought that was a good idea. It goes to show how much attention they pay to actually PLAYING WvW (not just looking at forum complaints) because if they had someone playing on BG for the 2 months ET was linked with them then they would know ET was being stacked with players before they were re-linked into this 4 headed beast.

The gap between T3 and T4 is enormous (exception of the hydra head) and unless they do another adjustment, its going to be extremely difficult to balance. My solution is to make T1/T2 servers all unlinked and the rest of the bottom servers be linked so that theres a T1/T2 (1v1v1 matchups) and T3/T4/T5 (2v2v2 matchups). Otherwise, balancing T4 is going to be difficult unless you know which servers are the best to match up together in a tier with 9 servers to split into teams of 3.

Playing in T3, I’m not sure if they’re rusty from lack of challenge or not very good, but that 4-server team hasn’t been playing very well. What they do have going for them is coverage. For the past 12 hours they’ve been fielding a 50-person zerg in EBG, plus roamers, plus a little borderland action.

SoS’s coverage drops to 20 people in EBG with half of those roaming at times, it is going to make for an interesting match.

Really I’m just happy having CD/YB having had to fight maguuma and SBI nearly every match for three months. Finally different servers with different play styles. It’s so refreshing.

EremiteAngel.9765:

gavyne.6847:

Hesacon.8735:

The only two classes that really give me grief are engineer and condi warrior, and they give everyone grief.

How do you kill a good druid as baseline necro?

You can’t. Reapers/Necros got no chance in WvW against a good druid. Zero. no chance.

On flat ground you’re pretty hosed, but there are three ways to resolve the fight and not lose.

• Fear them off one of the many cliffs on alpine/desert borderlands to their death (win)
• Fear them off a wall somewhere they can’t climb back from and run away (draw)
• Compel them to fight you in the water where necros are quite good and druids not so much (win)

All 3 have more to do with utilizing terrain than classes, though.

Resetting the worlds could make them more competitive for wvw, but the server system is also used in other parts of the game. It could cause problems resetting. Any time you’re in an instance with a party (guild hall, fractals, etc), whoever opened the instance – their server hosts the instance.

I think there are technical reasons why rerolling the servers could be problematic.

A better method would be to incentivize players to go to lower servers. Right now the incentive is to move to higher servers to farm bags and/or karma.

I wish they were there sooner. It’s also an opportunity to get people into underutilized areas of the game, like dungeons. If anet were so inclined.

Brokensunday.4098:

Mea.5491:

Tbh, I would go back to my “vanilla” Necro build in a heartbeat if it had a leap… That’s literally the only thing I’d miss from Reaper, haha… I’m weird.

i would return if lb was faster, i forgot how slow that thing was

Per the wiki…

Life blast hits up to 5 targets with a damage multiplier of 1.4 every 1.4 seconds.

Life rend hits 3-3-5 targets with damage multipliers of 0.6-0.6-1.2 every 2.5 seconds (but can also recover up to 7.5% life force).

Life Blast: 5 targets * 1.4 damage / 1.4 seconds = 5
Life Rend: ( 3 targets * 0.6 damage + 3 * 0.6 + 5 * 1.2 ) / 2.5 seconds = 3.84

5/3.84 ~= 1.3, so if max targets are hit you would expect life blast to do 30% more damage.

For a single target…

Life Blast 1.4 / 1.4 = 1
Life Rend ( 0.6 + 0.6 + 1.2 ) / 2.5 = 0.96

1/0.96 = 1.04, so on a single target you would expect to do 4% more damage than life rend.

However life blast is a projectile that can be reflected. It’s telegraphed so it can be dodged. Life rend is likely to land something through a dodge, but it’s melee so you have to be close.

Reaper’s Onslaught adds 15% attack speed to the sequence. which makes multi-targets close (and probably better because getting 5 targets in a line is not a practical kitten in a pile) and puts it ahead for a single target.

Unless the numbers on the wiki for sequence time are wrong, which they very well may be.

tl;dr: damage is close either way, take personal preference on how you’re comfortable playing.

Ascended food – 50 gold to craft, tastes like a thousand butterflies are dancing on your tongue to the sound of a harp.

EremiteAngel.9765:

But one thing i found about vanilla necro is that it was much harder to build lifeforce compared to reaper. Reaper had 2 traits that helped immensely with lifeforce generation.

I opted for warhorn and traited staff mainly for lifeforce reasons but it still seemed lacklustre compared to reaper

In spvp you’re right, especially since you start the match at 0. I would never use base necro in spvp. Wvw is different though, if you’re part of a zerg then people are dying and you’re gaining life force. If you’re roaming, you can kill ambient mobs between targets and enter a camp or engagement with another roamer with a full bar.

The only two classes that really give me grief are engineer and condi warrior, and they give everyone grief.

gavyne.6847:

Are you roaming on base necro by choice or because you don’t have HoT? It’s just strange to forgo added mobility, personal stab, more cc options, and more chill by playing base necro. Even if they ever so slightly boosted axe and finally righted lifeblast, I just don’t know how you could compete with even necro’s own elite counterpart.

I do have HoT, marauder gear requires HoT to craft.

The thing with base necro and reaper is they are different play styles. The main thing I like about base necro is the range. I’ve played around with both and between the range and the underwhelming reaper trait line and utilities, I’d rather stick with base necro. It always feels like I take way more damage at close range and I hate dying.

There are times in wvw where I will drop base necro for reaper, for example when I need to solo a tower (gravedigger spam is a thing) or feel like playing condi that day, but most of reaper’s advantages are done better by other classes.

Really the deciding factor is I find spite, soul reaping and death magic to all be better trait lines than reaper for general utility. I’ve played around swapping all 3 for reaper and I haven’t found a combination I like.

Zero Solstice.9754:

It’s also fun to kill people on something that has a public perception of being so subpar.

I’ve noticed a lot of people will rage-quit the game before I stomp them. It’s like they’re embarrassed they were downed to an axe-wielding base power necro. Recently I’d say around 1/5 of my 1v1 stomps have ended this way. I don’t get any wxp or bags, but I get this story I can tell.

Zero Solstice.9754:

Hesacon.8735:

I looked into agility sigils at one point for the quickness boon when entering shroud. It would double Life Blast’s damage output for the first second, but I decided sigils of air and force were better for average DPS. One second of quickness is hard to take advantage of.

One of the complaints for axe on another thread was that it’s ranged-but-not-really and people can run away. Focus #5 is a fantastic skill since it removes 3 boons and applies chill. With so many boon stacking classes in today’s meta, being able to strip them is very important. Having a shorter cooldown for focus #5 goes a long way, I find myself landing the skill about twice as often as before the patch.

The OP did address that with Corrupt Boon, but I find a utility slot to be more precious than a weapon slot.

You have a lot of valid points, and I fully agree with your Agility sentiment, I just find it more entertaining to play with to a point. The big thing with Corrupt Boon and Spinal Shivers is that the classes where a boon strip is important usually also have resistance these days, so you could argue that while Corrupt Boon has higher uptime, Spinal Shivers also dealing damage is worth more when facing the statistical chance that the opponent keeps resistance and Corrupt Boon does nothing in comparison to the Shivers.

Corrupt boon has half the cast time and between 1 and 5 seconds less cooldown depending on traits, so it’s a mixed bag. I take spinal shivers personally, but I could understand a reason to run corrupt boon. The wvw forum is awash with people complaining about boons.

Well of corruption is another option that works well with power necros, either base or reaper. Of course wells are hard to use 1v1 since the target will almost always dodge roll out of them unless they expect to drop you by continuing to pressure.

Depending on situation, it might not be wrong to run all 3, especially as a roamer. Other roamers are always eager to engage a necro I’ve found.

I looked into agility sigils at one point for the quickness boon when entering shroud. It would double Life Blast’s damage output for the first second, but I decided sigils of air and force were better for average DPS. One second of quickness is hard to take advantage of.

One of the complaints for axe on another thread was that it’s ranged-but-not-really and people can run away. Focus #5 is a fantastic skill since it removes 3 boons and applies chill. With so many boon stacking classes in today’s meta, being able to strip them is very important. Having a shorter cooldown for focus #5 goes a long way, I find myself landing the skill about twice as often as before the patch.

The OP did address that with Corrupt Boon, but I find a utility slot to be more precious than a weapon slot.

Happy to hear that! A little surprised you singled me out though, I think there are a couple others doing similar things.

Here is my current wvw build, I’ve had a lot of luck running it:

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vRUQNAW3djc0Oaqst22Sbsx3WaD/t/2RtQRHj5oahJQAMDyhYsDYA-TFDBQBQ4gIgGlg5R3QWUGUDNEaRpHAeAA8b/BFq+jEuAB+TDSAOCAbGGAGBhA8u7uzIy4CZAW3CA-w

It fairly seamlessly transitions between roaming and zergs, which allows me to act as a “detachment” and hit targets near the zerg that would not be a good use of the zerg’s time to attack.

Trinkets can be changed from soldier’s to berserker’s if DPS is more important than sustainability.

If a server drops from T3 to T4, will they gain/lose glicko points in T4 based on the “real” ratings of T4 servers or the “adjusted” ratings? If it’s based on the “real” ratings, whoever drops from T3 to T4 is going to be stuck there, just by virtue of how glicko works.

I was never going to max masteries because:

• Adventures are not all that much fun to me
• Replaying HoT quests to grind out achievements is not all that much fun to me

So this puts me closer to completing my masteries. It’s a nice change that doesn’t dilute the experience for people who do enjoy adventures or story quests.

Going from selling for 5 copper to 0 copper is not a drastic change in terms of absolute price.

I hope there’s some dialogue explaining who Lazarus is with episode 2. It’s like “here’s some dude, he’s bad,” -end of chapter-.

I’m more concerned about how a lump of metal can bleed.

I bet a second dragon wakes up, and the two awake at the same time don’t see eye to eye. Dragon Wars 2 is the next expansion.

I have done fractals for a couple months as quick dailies to earn some cash, but with the recent changes to the infusion system it is a lot easier to get the necessary agony resistance to do higher fractals.

The problem is that while doing T1 fractals is easy because so many people are at this level, once past it I’ve found myself sitting in LFG by myself waiting to do some daily fractals and raise my fractal level for long periods of time.

My fractal level is (I think) about 35, and 40 more levels of nobody participating doesn’t seem like fun. Any advice for getting through these levels?

I like well of power, but find it situationally useful. What would be interesting is if the Reaper’s Protection trait dropped a well of power instead of fear. Would finally give necros a break from the cc hate.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Reaper's_Protection

I was using axe before the patch for wvw and it worked fine, but the change certainly made it better. It would still be nice if Axe #3 was a blast finisher, but baby steps in the right direction are nice.

That said, axe works fine in wvw, I would never dream of using it in spvp since I can’t get the same stat distribution as in wvw.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Gentle-Reminder-NO-Spoilers-please

If you’re willing to put in some fractal time, you can now get rings with up to 3 wvw infusions, 3*2-1 = 5, or +25 additional stats you didn’t have before.

Or a badges or honor / proof of heroics to fractal relic exchange could be added and avoid doing fractals altogether, since you could then buy the items you need to infuse/attune rings instead.

Torwin.7305:

Hesacon.8735:

As a base power necro who uses an axe, power necro got a very sizable and noticeable boost, not a nerf.

How so?

• Life Blast now does 40% more damage at ranges between 600 and 1200
• Ghastly Claws (Axe #2) channels in 1.75 seconds instead of 2.25, about a 22% boost in DPS on this skill
• Spinal Shivers casts in 1.0 seconds instead of 1.25 seconds, and I am landing it in wvw a lot more frequently than before on fleeing foes because of this

As a base power necro who uses an axe, power necro got a very sizable and noticeable boost, not a nerf.

TheArtOfMouts.7468:

Rashy.4165:

If you don’t cash in your +7 infusions for Fractal relics, 12x +9 and 6x +7 (combo B ) would be roughly equivalent in cost to the above combination (6x +9 and 12x +8, which is equivalent to 6x +9 and 24x +7 for comparison). Combo B works out to about 137g if using only Agony infusions, the combination in the OP, if my math is roughly correct, is about 117g (will double check tomorrow).

Which one is better for someone who transfert alot rings/accessories between characters ?

2 attuned/infused rings, 2 accessories and an infused back piece is 10 infusion slots. +15 in each is 150 and you don’t have to worry about armor pieces. 5 trinkets in 5 shared inventory slots would save a lot of trouble in transferring.

If you already have +7’s in each of your toon’s ascended armor infusion slots… 150-(7*6) = 108, 108/10 = 10.8, or +11’s in each trinket slot.

If convenience is more important to you than gold.

There’s a lot of vocal complaining about the infusion changes, but the changes really clean up the system and make obtaining agony resistance easier. Slots that were capped at +7 from from versatile infusion can now go up to +20 (realistically +11). As someone trying to break into higher level fractals, this is a very welcome change!

On top of that, it is now also possible to get up to +15 stats (say power or vitality) in rings that are both attuned and infused. This is a great benefit to pve players who don’t do fractals, wvw players, and raids.

The removal of defensive/offensive slots also makes things a lot easier. If I want 6 power infusions in my armor I can do it now.

Thanks for the great update!

Non-wvw laurel merchant.

That is a weird graphical bug I noticed a couple months ago, Green keep on EBG does the same thing from a distance.

This would really help me finish my collections. Dyes could work the same way.

Ringojim.3108:

So I lose my +4 Condi damage and can now have a buff from 4 things which have no value to me at all.
Adding insult to injury, I get back the infusion, not the laurels it cost me.
Strangely the joy of this is lost on me entirely.
Not one of the better changes thank you.

No, you gain up to 12 condi damage because you can now put them in attuned and infused rings. Before you could only get 2 +4/5 infusions. Now you can do up to 3 in each ring. Your stats go up, not down.

There is nothing about AB in the patch notes, has anything been changed in-game?

koopatroopa.5360:

Mea.5491:

Hesacon.8735:

As a base power necro who runs axe/focus, the changes are nice to life blast, ghastly claws, and spinal shivers. But I might be the only one in the game who is going to see those as a practical boost.

-high five- I also thought I was the only one.

Now there’s 3

We should start a club. I don’t think people know how to react when they engage me 1v1 in wvw and see what I’m using.

Recipes unlocked through consumables are now unlocked account-wide. Logging in with a character will add their known recipes to the account.

As someone who constantly uses a recipe on the wrong toon, I thank you!

As a base power necro who runs axe/focus, the changes are nice to life blast, ghastly claws, and spinal shivers. But I might be the only one in the game who is going to see those as a practical boost.

On the bright side for your enemy, it would take all day to march them to the garrison.

My weapons use Ascalonian Catacombs skins, which glow blue at night. So I always know based on that.

The only thing that matches the range of a treb is another treb. You can knock out a wall or door out of balista and arrow cart range.