Guild Wars 2

If you only care about the look, it shares a skin with another staff called “Gargoyle Scythe.”

I have noticed this too, but really only in sPvP. It definitely seems like it won’t connect sometimes, even though they have no boons, aren’t dodging and they are quite close to me. I don’t know, maybe it’s just in my head… I’ll do some testing tonight, maybe try to get it on video and see if I can disprove it.

Thieves and warriors don’t really come close to the group utility of the classes you mentioned that were so horrible. Guardians are quite good at point holding, but can be effectively countered by boon stripping mesmers / necros.

Mesmer: Unrivaled duelists, they are a headache to face in a random encounter especially if they are experienced. Shatter specced mesmers can do some serious damage. Plus, they have the best elites in the game that provide insane group utility, even in a somewhat unorganized zerg (minus Moa, which is still good 1 on 1).

Eles: They need some love for sure, and I don’t know enough about their builds to really comment.

Necros: Thief condition damage better than a necro? What? Maybe if the necro isn’t corruption specced at all. Necros do not stack bleeds the fastest, but they are one of the biggest threats in a group fight with their condition control + epidemic.

I’m fine with most of Necro’s non bug-related / trait related issues that other people have posted.

What I would really like to see is some darker / evil looking legendary weapon skins. I like the models they have, but on a necro with some pretty dark themed armors it looks quite jarring to have a weapon with swirling clouds, light, and rainbows.

Seriously, it makes me not want to work for any of them just because the look would clash so much.

Yes. Hated the change at first until I realized how much having that extra damage on bleeds really helps.

I’m not a thief, but as a condition necro I can tell you that all condition builds suffer when front loading tons of bleed stacks only to have them removed. It’s the difference between doing ~5k damage over like 3 seconds and 15k over 10. I would advise taking 2 different forms of condition removal.

CC also helps, as the more time they spend in the fight without conditions on you, the more damage they are taking while doing next to nothing. Don’t bother blowing any cooldowns while he is using LDB, as it will auto-evade.

Also, use conditions yourself. Thieves typically have fairly low condi-removal. Even if he has fairly high survivability the flat damage your bleeds / burns do will hurt bad if he can’t get rid of them.

I pretty much agree with OP on almost all points. I would like to point out though, that while you’re correct that Necros can’t compare to other professions in terms of condition stacking, no other profession can manipulate conditions / boons as well as we do: Epidemic, Corrupt Boon, Plague Signet, Putrid Mark, Deathly Swarm, Well of Corruption, Consume Conditions…

I personally like the idea of not necessarily being the fastest stacker, but being becoming increasingly dangerous the more conditions are flying around the battlefield, even if they are directed towards you.

Yeah, I think a few of these might be fixed now, but there is no denying that trait synergy for the necro is abysmal. I would actually remove most if not all of my minor traits completely in favor of just having one or two more solid choices in the way of major traits.

It’s my favorite utility on the Necro, and can easily wipe out a decent group of people if they have low / no condition removal. There doesn’t seem to be a limit as to what it can spread, but the bleeds are still capped at 25.

You won’t need more than that anyways, if you epidemic a target with 15+ bleeds prepare to see a lot of dead bodies.

Zerging is a problem, and I think until they give some sort of point incentive to defend the points after capping it, the randoms in hotjoins are going to continue to zerg all day.

But as others have said, it’s hard to blame them when if they try to sit on a point, their whole team will leave them, and then they’ll get rushed down by 3+ enemies.

They help rally your enemies in PvP. Once your enemies get back up, make sure and throw a well of blood on the ground to keep them going strong and heal em up too!

Katsumoto.9452:

It is odd that the class seemingly most designed to play with conditions, hasn’t got the better conditions.

Torch off-hand certainly has my vote

Agreed. Though I really doubt it will happen because I think aNet is working towards buffing power builds. Also, conditionmancers can be nasty with bleeds alone. I can see people starting to really complain if you throw burning and confusion in there.

It looks like you definitely are on the right track here. For Sigils I find that Geomancy is my personal favorite as it really helps in stacking bleeds quickly especially on targets that cleanse often. I also prefer Sigils of minor corruption, as it’s quite easy to hit 25 stacks in one round on PvP (5 per kill). Also note that if you run Sigil of Earth + Geomancy, triggering the Earth sigil will put your Geomancy sigil on cooldown too, which can make it less effective.

Abilities → I personally run Epidemic, Blood is Power, and Plague Signet. Corrupt Boon is great too, but if you are going to pvp with this build, you really need at least one stun break.

Traits → Curses looks perfect, but I wouldn’t bother with Reaper’s Might. Life blast just fires off so slow that even if you get 5 off, you’ll start losing your stacks of might and bleed anyways.

Also, Death magic is great, especially with 6x Undead runes. Here is what I would grab: Greater Marks, Shrouded Removal, Reaper’s Protection or Staff Mastery.

Lastly, try to grab Mark of Evasion in Blood Magic (10 points). Combined with Sigil of Geomancy, you can make your dodge roll + weapon swap instantly stack 5 bleeds on targets in range. Also works with Greater Marks.

Minor Corruption / Geomancy here. Corruption sigils actually gain 5 stacks on kill meaning you only need 5 kills to get to the full 25 stacks (+250 Condition Damage) which means with BiP I can tick 152 on my bleeds.

Geomancy is great as an offensive attack, and really promotes healthy weapon swapping. Also very nice when paired with the Blood Magic trait “Mark of Evasion.”

One thing to note however is that with any weapon swap sigils, if you trigger your on-crit sigils (Earth, Ice, etc.) then your weapon swap sigil will be put on cooldown as well.

I really don’t care about Moa that much, the only thing I hate as a Necro is that it can completely nullify my Plague form which almost certainly could turn the tide in a group fight.

If you don’t have much money, the Orrian daggers look cool. Also the Norn Dirks are the size of small sword if that’s your thing.

Chris – What profession + build are you playing?

Damage resistance only goes so far, even “tank” builds tend to get dropped pretty fast when focused or in some cases just bursted down. The key is damage avoidance (stun breaks, blocks, dodges, and in some cases positioning and team movement). Sorry if you already know this, but I didn’t at first and I was just as frustrated.

It sounds trivial but I stopped getting killed by thieves pretty much altogether when I really practiced breaking stuns, dodging, etc.

Necromancers are kind of a natural soft-counter to many of the bunker specs people are running these days.

Sceptre 1 spam means they constantly have to deal with bleeds from range, but then they also have Corrupt Boon (make sure not to cast this when aegis is up), Spinal Shivers, Wells, Plague, unblockable marks (when traited), and constant poison.

Anyone else notice a recent influx of Necros hanging around in the Mists and sPvP? I can’t tell if people are suddenly learning that they are more powerful than most say, but typically it was rare that I saw another necro in PvP and now I see them a lot more often.

They also seem to be scoring pretty well too. Yesterday, while playing maybe 10 separate games, if there was 1 – 2 necros on either team they tended to be in 1st or 2nd by quite a large margin.

Maybe it’s just me, but I think something is happening here…

So is a patch definitely confirmed for today sometime?

I used to run 3x Krait + 3x Afflicted but like others have stated, in PvP condition damage is more important as your bleeds will be constantly cleansed so I switched to 6x Undead.