Guild Wars 2

This is why I wish that all minions (with the exception of jagged horrors) spawn via ground targeting.

Just wait till you meet Mr Stun Lock, in which with these new specializations, at least two classes can solo lock you and one of them can even get you through DS. You are correct though that there is a noticeable increase in survivability, in particular with my encounters with blood bond and siphons in DS, but only if you’re allowed to free cast.

As if you didn’t know that was going to happen. When they first previewed Reaper, did you not pay attention to Rubi and her reference to the off camera activities?

Is it strange that I actually don’t want to watch this? I know that “on paper” and “in practice” is two different things but…

The reaper build I’m leaning towards probably won’t be proccing blood bond very much, if at all, since I won’t be running minions w/rise. I will still however slot the trait over ritual of life and quickening thirst.

Foefaller.1082:

Zetsumei.4975:

Foefaller.1082:

Rym.1469:

Warlord of Chaos.7845:

Renny.6571:

Mesmers don’t have room for sufficient condi cleanse to deal with the aids coming on Tuesday imo.

If I spec into inspiration I can have every clone shattered remove 1 condition and heal me. Mesmers should be fine with condi removal now lol.

Nuuuuu T.T

Plus, now that Illusionary Persona is now innate, even if they have no active illusions, they can still remove at least one condi with a shatter skill. :P

As for the list, I think I’d swap Thieves and Necromancers with each other. Engineers being able to pop Thieves out of stealth with Lock On (which I believe many Engineers will run, because Kinetic Charge is insane and Lock On is IMO the best PvP skill of it’s tier) will probably kill D/P almost overnight, leaving Teefs scrambling to find a new meta build. While the change to Consume Conditions is a terrible blow to Necromancers, I think once people calm down about that, people will start to notice some of the new crazy combos like a signet build that could have as many as 8 different ways to corrupt boons, take Death Magic and Soul Reaping for a Shroud that you could pop in and out of for a 7 second stunbreak, 3 sec stab and protection with a 40% uptime, or denying stomps with Blood Magic’s Transfusion. Coupled with the buff to Parasitic Contagion (doubly so with the condition changes) and Blood magic traits healing through Shroud, I think we’ll start seeing some very durable condi Necromancers that will be at the very least give a long, hard fight to a lot of the builds people run today.

Why the hell does everyone call it a 7 second stunbreak and no that is not your protection uptime, unless you want to sacrifice your entire profession mechanic and damage mitigation. Also why are you mentioning healing in shroud in the same sentence as shroud flashing?

Well, I’m kinda rambling between 3 or 4 different builds there, not some crazy build that tries to do all of it a once. Obviously, flashing Shroud for Foot in the Grave/Beyond the Veil and staying in shroud and heal via Blood Magic siphons are pretty much mutually exclusive.

…and I guess you are right that 99% of people wouldn’t just flash Shroud all the time for constant stab and protection. Still, in my experience, if you’re playing a condition build, you’re probably not staying in Death Shroud for all of your lifeforce every time you pop it (and I’m not just talking about the fights that end before you run out of LF) so those two trait should still give you a fast stunbreak and decent protection uptime, at least compared to the Necromancer’s other options on those fronts.

Keep selling that hype. I wouldn’t stop it myself if I could continue to milk the devs for another 3 years. As long as the necro doesn’t get real active-scaling-mitigation, you have nothing to worry about. You may see some (if you can even call it that) cause for concern after the expansion hits.

Speaking of Resistance, I don’t remember if they mentioned if it would negate all condition effects or not. I do know know they said that you wouldn’t take damage from the damaging conditions, but lets say if you are blinded while also under resistance, will that next attack land anyway? Or if you are poisoned while under resistance, will you no longer suffer from the healing reduction? Things like this…

Lordrosicky.5813:

I dont think in pvp necros will run it anymore. I think we are locked in to a signet condition spec now.

The details are important though.

Plague Sending: When you have 3 or more conditions on you your next critical hit casts Plague Signet on your target. This trait benefits from the recharge bonus of Signets of Suffering.

This needs a short icd (no more than 30s). It seems like it will be 30s and reduced to 24s with the signet trait. WHich also converts boons? Seems amazing to me. Really amazing.

I guess (and I am to blame for this alot) we all need to forget about our old specs. They are dead now anyway. Just go with the flow and use something new.

We do need to watch out for our heals though. There are many utilities and traits so bad ones dont matter much. But having no good heal skill can kill an entire class

And I would probably be ok with that if signet passives continued to persist through shroud.

Bhawb.7408:

Twitch itself crashed due to heavy loads from E3, nothing ANet could have done about it. After it was taking a while to try to fix it they decided to just (I assume) record it locally and upload to youtube.

This is why if, and when, I do get excited enough to stream necro, I will be doing it on YouTube and not Twitch. I’m not holding my breath though with Arenanet’s track record on necro balance when stacked against not only the other classes, but the game mechanics as well.

Caedmon.6798:

Zefrost.3425:

This isn’t referring to the other bajillion power creep updates incoming.

Chill and cripple will no longer affect movement speed skills? What is the point of these conditions, then? NO ONE in the entire game is ever going to kill a greatsword/hammer warrior ever again. There are other problems as well.

This is a really stupid change.

No bad word about condi’s unlimited stacking,but this…this hurts you,just lol.

I know its lol, but when was the last time you’ve consistently seen 25 stacks of anything other than vulnerability?

Linnael.1069:

Vampiric Rituals is for midpoint bunker specs. Vampiric and the life force gain from dagger/horn and axe/focus will cover you against sustained damage from 1 or 2 foes but VRituals allows you to spike your sustain when you’re facing three or four and your team needs time to rotate. Against 5 targets, which is basically all the time given the amount of turret engies, rock dogs, rangers and mesmers running around, VRituals on 3 wells is healing you for 900 a tick. Add well of blood and that one trait is like having three healing signets at once.

And it could be 20 percent better if bloodthirst weren’t broken.

Do you truly believe what you just wrote? Serious question.

Lol @ this thread. The only reason people are mad is because they can’t continue their interrupt chain game if the necro is in the downed state.

MonkeyButtFace.4862:

Know what I think this game needs?

Something WoW and other games have done for a long time to help balance DoT classes.

A condition that, when cleansed, deals a spike of damage and is high on the cleanse priority. Hell, I’d make it a grandmaster trait for necros, just cause I think that it fits our ‘role’ as a condi class, in that we’re better at controlling them than we are at actually applying them.

Make it effect the cleanser, not necessarily the person the condi was on. Be able to apply it in an AoE. That way, big AoE-cleanse spammers might take massive damage spikes if they mindlessly press buttons. Meanwhile, classes that don’t use a whole lot of cleanse, and do so judiciously, take a much more comfortable amount and aren’t as put out by it.

I’ve recently suggested something similar of an initial necro-only concept. It wouldn’t be cleanse-able by the normal means but it’s intended to force continuing a battle and risk receiving sizable damage or flee in order to minimize it.

The moment that first interrupt preceding the chain starts, “OP” goes out the window.

I would like to see a minion that gives the necro a random boon on attacks icd 1 times within 10 seconds.

Muchacho.2390:

spoj.9672:

@Bhawb

My opinion is that Chilling Force is fine. But Blighters Boon is too strong under ideal situations. You could easily just remove the life force from Chilling force if the lifeforce synergy is too much. But im certain the might generation itself is fine as long as chill is sufficiently difficult to maintain on groups of enemies in PvP.

I agree, removing the life force gain, would be the best choice.

i think this would hit reaper’s sustain too hard.

another option-chilling force: grants might if struck foes are suffering from chill plus one other condition.

The problem will be timing reaper’s attack to land between thief’s evade frames, which is difficult to do even with auto attacks.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

100 games and already making unbased nerf claims…

…

ESPORTS! \o/

Took a lot less than 100 games to get the necro nerfed beyond recovery before the game even went live. People never would have learned how to play the other classes with a necro on the map.

Bhawb.7408:

Anyway, these are just my opinions. Any other changes you think could happen to make some of our GM traits a bit more build-defining? Do you think we are fine as is? Or do we need to scrap some of our current GMs in favor of new ones?

I had a trait idea myself, something that just feels necromancy imo, exclusive to only necromancers, but not sure if I would called it build defining. It feels like a condition based trait, but would preform like power. I haven’t worked out all the kinks yet with it but I will show you what I’ve come up with so far given the current status of the necromancer:

If Rising Bile and Rotting Flesh had a child, then I think it would probably look something like this in the form of a trait. I believe the radius and range figures are where it should be, but I’m still trying to tweak damage and duration numbers. But based on the concept alone, where in the tier should this trait fall or is it OP and needs scraping altogether?

Death Magic Trait
After using a healing skill in combat, your next attack skill causes an Infectious Disease:Deals damage at the end of duration. Spreads to nearby foes. Ends duration if you are downed or if a foe moves out of range.
Damage:2*(2.0) s
Duration:12 s (at Level 80)
Spread Radius:180
End Range:1800
When suffering from Infectious Diseased, your health bubble fills upward in yellow to show projected damage as the duration progresses.

What I would give if they removed the cooldown on jagged horrors through death nova. I believe they’ve stated that you can only have 8 of them up at a time anyway so the the cooldown seems redundant. Just thinking about the potential synergy gives me a sugar rush, even with no other minions equipped.

I’ve mentioned the same thing before about plague blast, and so, I agree as well. Should be able to trait for it and I have no problem with it being tied to blood magic. I do however believe that it should deal at least half the damage as its underwater counterpart while keeping the same attack rate.

Just one minor correction there Mad, Spiteful Spirit was probably the second most powerful skill due to the fact that it didn’t cause the mobs to scatter. Mark of Pain was actually the strongest skill in gw1. You’re pretty much spot on with the life stealing though.

nekretaal.6485:

There is no special reason why 1 utility skill type deserves an entire trait line. Maybe minions as a skill type should get one trait, but Definately not one trait line.

I strongly agree with this viewpoint. From Oct last year:

Jayce.5632:

Merging traits would be better. There is no one should select more than two traits at any tier to max out a single weapon and three traits to max out a single utility skill group. I mean really, 4 traits just for staff, 6 for minions. I could perhaps see spending more than three just on DS, but it would still be a hard sell.

Bhawb.7408:

Internal CD came along a massive buff to allowing them to work in DS and a pretty large increase in SA LF gain per hit. Not that ICD is the greatest, but it came hand in hand with the strongest buff SA’s ever seen.

8% is more than 3%, so it’s a massive buff right? For the people that don’t know any better, yes it would be a buff. But for people like you, me, ronpierce here do know better, because it’s gated behind a icd. Arenanet could have increased the spectral skills cooldowns, they could have shaved a percentage point, or they could have allowed only one active spectral while in DS at a time and reevaluated any of those changes. Any one of those would not have killed scaling.

Bhawb.7408:

Only Spectral Wall scales with number of enemies, the rest don’t.

Exactly. When people started mastering DS, back when you could survive a focus fire (as long as your cooldowns were up), arenanet nuked it from orbit by cancelling active spectral skills when you entered DS, making necros the easiest class to kill overnight. But they didn’t stop there. After removing the necro’s ability to hold out against focus fire, arenanet killed any future scaling with fire in the form of internal cooldowns. Lately though, even they must have realized how easy it was to blow up necros. They think they fixed it by allowing spectral skills to remain active in DS once again.

ronpierce.2760:

Sublimatio.6981:

i dont like the idea. necro needs buffs, not redesigns imo

That’s debatable. The reason being, everything with necromancer scales directly against how many people it is fighting. It’s defenses are numerical absorbs. For instance:

Necromancer absorbs 10,000 damage in a fight. Against 1 player, he absorbed 10000 damage.
Against 2 he absorbed 10000 damage as well (assuming he lives long enough to do so).

By contrast an evasive player with blocks/alternative defenses
Evades ~7000 damage against a single player in a given fight.
It evades ~14,000 against 2 players.

The issue escalates from there. Life force also requires build up find which isn’t easy on front loaded fights.

Okay so you want to buff Necromancer to be good in teams so enough to absorb about the equivence of 2 people attacking you. (14,000 damage to equal other classes), then it becomes way too powerful against 1 person.

That’s the issue with necromancer. Necromancer is a number sponge and doesn’t scale correctly with number of enemies, where as blocks/evades/protection does. You really… Can’t balance around that very well. Not to mention, the initial issue of stsrting with essentially 0 defense that needs to be “charged up” before you can do it.

That’s why I feel the way it is now will never work. It’ll either frustrate people 1v1, or not be good enough in rising numbers.

DS doesn’t need to scale to the number of enemies. That’s what the spectral skills are suppose to do.

Roe.3679:

I always thought wall increased the protection from 6 to 8 seconds, and since wall lasts 9 with this trait, you can get 2 procs of protection. Could be wrong but I always thought it worked this way.

The wall doesn’t last 9 seconds, only 7.5 when traited. Because the boon’s duration is not increased like it should, you are able to run back through it for a 2nd
boon application.

The only spectral skill that is working as it should is Spectral Armor. When equipping the Spectral Attunement trait, you gain 5% life force on spectral skill use plus, it increases the duration of both Armor and the protection boon, just like what the trait says it should do.

What needs adjusting:

Spectral Grasp is still the only spectral skill that doesn’t grant life force on use. You should gain the 5% life force on cast, then the additional 15% if you land this skill. It does however increases the chill duration. (imo, this skill should be unblockable)

Spectral Walk swiftness boon duration is not increased when traited with attunement. Should increase swiftness duration from 30 seconds to 45 seconds. It does however increases Walk’s duration.

Spectral Wall protection boon duration or the fear condition duration is not increased when traited with attunement. Should increase protection duration from 5 seconds to 7.5 seconds and increase the fear duration from 1 second to 1.5 seconds. It does however increases Wall’s duration.

Rattex.3467:

Sc/d and staff offhand
66020 or 46040 full conditions build
Sinister armor with krait runes

Makes mordrem and pretty much everything in SW melt.

very similar to what i run there as well. staff-scepter/dagger, full sinister+krait runes, instead i go 62060 full ranged sphioned wells+parasitic contagion with epidemic. green numbers out the wazoo.

Only in a world where stuns are far and few in between.

Still a believer in stealth ending when using an attack skill, even if there are no enemies or objects in range. Stealth gained via finishes should have their durations increased to compensate.

Zenith.7301:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Zenith.7301:

I don’t see why it’d be broken for a power build, it’s basically a choice with whether to use DS offensively or defensively.

If you’re referring to my post, I didn’t claim it was broken. I said it’d be broken if there were some way to get both FitG and DP in one build, but since they’re both GM traits it’s fine. I think it’s fairly elegant.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a change where a trait is at least made attractive.

But let’s not forget: THIS WAS A CORE FUNCTIONALITY of death shroud in beta that was removed, and only recently returned as a grandmaster trait.

Now, if they would revert the garbage Dark Path to the blink it used to be, it would help the necromancer a lot.

+1

It appears that we may end up coming full circle after all. And imo, if they swapped life with plague blast that deals about 60% less damage, then they wouldn’t even have to touch DS anymore.

I’m about to return to WvW after almost a two and a half year hiatus. I’ve started and maxed out tailor crafting in one day, and already at 400 on artificer on the second crafting day. All of this just to craft Ascended Sinister, and I was never was interested in gear beyond exotics. I think the set will really be worth it, and a reason why it isn’t in PvP. Sinister is condition. For a Necro, it is the glass equivalent to zerker/power. It has the power of Carrion with the precision of Rabid. There will be a noticeable difference in damage output over the previous two, as I can tell already with just the trinkets alone. The only reason Sinister hasn’t flat out replaced Carrion or Rabid, is because most of the gear can only be crafted, not bought. And if you’re going to craft it, then why not craft it right the first time. If you choose power, then zerker is still the way to go. If you choose condition, then zerker is also the way to go as long as the prefix includes Sinister.

Stand The Wall.6987:

I would much rather have stab when exiting ds to cover our long cast times and most obvious heal. Having stab when entering ds makes sense because its meant to absorb damage, but cc is the main counterplay element against ds. It would suck to not have it easy when ds-stomping people but the tradeoff is so worth it imo.

+1 This guy gets it.

@Jekkt – Necros are focused because they have the worse defense. Every time a necro is interrupted, you’ve just removed on average, over 65% of their defensive capabilities, that requires hitting a target to function.

I like to see the the other 7 classes spend just one day going into battle with nothing but 2 dodges every 10 seconds.

ronpierce.2760:

Aomine.5012:

Bhawb.7408:

The Gates Assassin.9827:

The f….

Can someone break this down for me? Is this extra damage while downed + chill of death?

The trait gives +50% damage while downed. This not only increases the damage of your 1 skill (which ticks 20 times in 6.25s, so more than 3x per second), but increases any damage you deal, including Chill of Death proc, wells that were already placed before you kicked the bucket, and maybe sigils though I haven’t checked that out yet.

Basically, remember old Lich form, and how it was crazy strong because it would super-charge Chill of Death? Well now downed state can do the same thing.

I think this provide necro’s strategic of being in down state to dps the foe.
It’s a pretty fun but risky tactic, so it should be reserved.

Yeah I mean, what about that whole “risk versus reward” stuff? This is SUPER risk v reward to the max! Fighting on the brink of death, and it fits nothing better than necro!

Not sure if Sarcasm or Trolling, even with the smiley at the end, so I’m just gonna call it TrollCasm.

Edit: nm,

Anet looks to the guardian, thief, warrior and engineer communities for the necromancer balance ques. No one on the balance team mains a necromancer, especially in any kind of serious PvP. One needs to look no further than the change-log history for the last 2.5 years. Considering the circumstance, I think the community has been taking it rather well.

Asbrandr.6324:

It’s pretty pathetic that we’re so far at wit’s end now that we’re considering downed state builds as potentially viable.

Grenth, if dead, must be turning in his grave.

Bhawb.7408:

Rainshadow.4926:

It’s bugged. Please emergency fix!

You must be new to necro.

wtf, just happened? RKO

flow.6043:

Jayce.5632:

manveruppd.7601:

But with Plague Signet that isn’t the case: you’re disabled when you use it, you can’t set it up properly, you can’t even control your facing! The active NEEDS to be changed to make it a more reliable transfer.

This is where you are wrong. Your character does not need to face the target. Your camera, however, does. the only way to make it more reliable is to make it unblockable, which ironically would remove the only setup required for using the skill. Personally, in my opinion, plague signet could use a 35-40 second cooldown.

Just tested this. Turns out neither my character nor my camera need to face the target for the transfer to work.

Looks like I was wrong too. I haven’t checked the camera facing since the old blind fail fiasco. It’s even better now then, although I still probably will continue to at least look at my target to make sure they aren’t doing a random dodge or blocking before transferring. This is also why I couldn’t really understand why so many people were getting such a high fail rate when using this signet.

manveruppd.7601:

But with Plague Signet that isn’t the case: you’re disabled when you use it, you can’t set it up properly, you can’t even control your facing! The active NEEDS to be changed to make it a more reliable transfer.

This is where you are wrong. Your character does not need to face the target. Your camera, however, does. the only way to make it more reliable is to make it unblockable, which ironically would remove the only setup required for using the skill. Personally, in my opinion, plague signet could use a 35-40 second cooldown.

More people really need to embrace the rearward facing camera. I would say that nearly a third of my corrupt boons and plague signet transfers occur when I’m running completely away from some opponents. It’s a solid signet. Just stop casting it on blocking enemies if you’re trying to land the transfers.

100% necro only character since launch, and I must say yes, this interrupting DS (on cast/entry and not simply double tapping) is new issue. I’m not ready to throw my hat into the exploit arena because it is very difficult to reproduce or to lock down the actual cause. This is not related to the getting knocked out of DS bug, which is even more rare of an occurrence. This interrupting DS started within the last two weeks, and my best guess at the moment is leaning towards a server sync/client connection issue.

when a gate is destroyed, adds 3:00 to game timer.

WOP is the only well that you do not have to stay inside of to get the full duration effect. And the last time I checked it, if you use it as ground targetable, then your allies can reap the same benefit at the expense of your own. Now that the cat’s out of the bag: incoming nerf

Leave the wall alone for now. You have no idea how fun it is to put someone in “time out” mode by making them go stand in the corner like the bad little kids do in school.

Holl.3109:

This is just a spectral necromancer build, but with worse sigil/weapon/rune choices :/
I know many spectral power necro’s, it isn’t as meta as 6/2/0/0/6 but it’s known.

Weapons: drop scepter, it’s low-decent dmg and worse LF regen. Use dagger/WH with staff. LF regen on AUTO ATTACK is the best LF regen. Plus, spectral necro’s have more then enough LF already.

Sigils: where are your energy sigils? Necro’s almost always need these. I haven’t learned this until recently but it helps a ton. If reccomend fire/air on dagger/WH and energy/hydro on staff.

Runes: I’d just reccomend pack. They are veryyyy strong and everything is useful

Just some tips, this build can work (like most builds) but can be better.

-Hollts

Not almost, the only thing a necro always needs more than anything is quality teammates. Unfortunately, this limits necro’s build options, when there is a high chance that necro’s will end up trying too much to carry their team. I understand your recommendation choice(s), but if your team is efficient in dealing with enemies, then necro’s wouldn’t have to run the ‘usual suspect’ builds.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Jayce.5632:

Blind will always be the first condition to transfer when using transfer skills no matter how many conditions are on you, provided that targets are in range and did not block, los, dodge, evade or otherwise go invulnerable. This is one of the things Anet actually did fix as transfer skills used to always fail if you were blinded.

Deathly Swarm does not have Blind in its top 3 for transfer priority(somewhere close to the bottom), so if you have Blind and 3 other conditions on you, you likely fail to transfer anything at all with it. I have actually never transferred Blind with Deathly Swarm (it’s always missed). I recall patch notes clearly for Plague Signet and Putrid Mark to do so, but never any for Deathly Swarm.

I have also used Blind to cause other Necros to miss their Deathly Swarm, so it definitely does not always transfer Blind.

Bugged projectile path falls under los as you will not get the obstructed message. Short of the exceptions I mentioned above, I honestly do not remember the last time deathly swarm failed to transfer conditions while blinded. Tonight hopefully, I’m going to grab another necro and preform 3 different tests to make sure its not bugged again.

Blind will always be the first condition to transfer when using transfer skills no matter how many conditions are on you, provided that targets are in range and did not block, los, dodge, evade or otherwise go invulnerable. This is one of the things Anet actually did fix as transfer skills used to always fail if you were blinded.