Guild Wars 2

As promised, GTFO on the 4th of October:

There’s a couple of ganks and a couple of decent fights as we held the camp for 40 minutes (cut to 13). However, the best bit of the video starts near the end at 12:40. Check it out.

Dagger/dagger theives should be really easy to beat. If you stay still, you’ll die. If you don’t know how to dodge, you’ll die. But they’re so squishy you’ll have them down in no time. Those who spam Heartseeker are terribad PvPers and you should smasht them with relative ease. Backstabbers are harder, but stealth is easy to predict. They’ll be chasing you at all times to land that back stab, so yo should have no trouble at all in knowing where they really are and dropping all your AoE circles down as you move to catch them in. Kiting is key and I find the Blind Well (Well of Darkness) and/or Plague( when spamming the 2 key) really, really effecting against Thieves and all melee really.

A good sword/pistol Thief should be more trouble for a Necro in my opinion. Root poison+Quickness Pistolwhips are going to wreck you or anyone else for that matter. The same tactics really, just be ready for the inevitable rooting and have your DS Fear, that works regardless if way you’re facing and being stunnned, to interrupt them. Whilst quickness remains up, run. If they lack a root and/or quickness you should be okayish, just keep kiting.

Pistol/pistol has fairly high damage for a ranged class, but they’re an absolute glass cannon. You don’t see many of these though, I haven’t – I can only say range them back and try to outlast them until they go melee or flee.

Shortbow Thief is annoying to fight due to all the escapes, but they lack for damage compared to all other Thief weapons. Pressure them and they’ll have to flee or go melee if done right.

Just keep it in mind Thief is a stronger profession overall, particularly in 1 vs 1s.

Don’t forget Initiative is also a Thief only thing along with Steal, and the two combined are definitely more powerful than Death Shroud when combined. Chaining Pistol Whips and Heartseekers due to no cooldowns is immense.

Some of our PvP from the weekend can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOlUI4Wx2fU

I should also have a vid up tonight with yesterday’s shenanigans.

Thief stealing is actually very easy to use, it’s not random. If you steal from a Mesmer, you get a ton of buffs. If you steal from a Warrior, you get Whirling Axe. If you steal from a Necromancer, you get an AoE Fear. It’s pretty easy to tell what’s what and pick who you Steal from. For example, you never see any Thief intentionally steal from a Ranger.

Anyway, it’s a great shame Necro, the profession that was sold as the only one to have Fear, to have the worst fears in the game. Compare our 1 second fears to Warrior’s and Thief’s, both of which have a bigger AoE range and last longer, and… meh. I#m glad we have Fear, but I wish it could turn the tide of a battle as well as Thief and Warrior’s.

Yeah, Vampire Necro never has been viable and unless changed, never will be viable. I stack full Healing Power as the main stat in all my gear and didn’t even know it affected Life Siphon at all.

It’s amazing for Well of Blood and regen (such as from Staff’s 2) though. It can make you really tanky and really good at healing allies.

Just ignore all those siphon traits. If you are taking 20 pts in Blood for something else, you get the free super small siphon per attack and aside from that the dagger’s 2 button heals a couple of k damage, but beyond that it’s an absolute waste.

Well, it depends if Gluttony means 5% more of how much is gained, or an actual 5% more of your whole Life Force bar (since it goes by %). Either way is easy to assume.

Wow, so many tears over what is, in my opinion, such a great ability. The cripple is not for running away, it’s for preventing others from running away by hugging them – great with the dagger. The Swiftness is also our only Swiftness aside from Spectral Walk which takes up a utility slot.

I have a video of some WvW and PvP I put up recently mainly for my guildies (until I sort my PC out to record in better quality), but I think many people will benefit from it for this thread – there’s a few good warhorn/Locust Swarm uses in there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOlUI4Wx2fU

Possante, first of all Chillblains does work, yes, if you manage to hit them directly with the smaller circle. If you hit them with the bigger one, or they run into the bigger one when it’s placed already, it will do nothing to them whatsoever and waste the entire cooldown.

As for Gluttony, I think you’re mistaken in how it should be done. Adding 5% more to each attack’s current percentage, regardless of whether it’s the staff or something else, is stupidly powerful – it would more than double every weapon’s Life Force gain. There would never be a spec without that box in it because it would be that good. The point of traits is that they’re bonuses you can choose rather than must haves for every single Necromancer.

Spiteful Spirit is also a problem, I agree – I used to use it a couple of weeks ago and know how nice an instant Retaliation can be.

I really enjoy Necromancer, but I can’t deny it has so many major bugs and is, in general, much weaker than most other professions except Engineer, which is equally in need of some love.

I also like that we’re the underdog profession rather than Flavour of the Month, such as Guardian or Thief.

It’s a Swiftness and a Cripple. Great for when you need to catch someone up and stay in range of them, and forget the damage – just use it for the snare when you hit something with it. Combining the warhorn in the offhand with a dagger makes for some easy melee hits for one example.

I love my Locust Swarm.

Is the opposite, our Dark Path, still slow or was that updated too?

All professions except Ranger are still very much welcome, Guardians and Elementalists especially so.

We’ve also got our guild upgrades back to where they were before we decided upon a name change, meaning we have the guild bank, guild armour and guild weapons unlocked among other level ups.

How is Gluttony meant to work? 5% more of your whole Life Force bar per Life Force gaining attack? So 3% gained becomes 8%? That seems very overpowered, especially for a 5 pt trait. I always assumed it was 5% more of what you already do, but ofcourse that value is too low to do anything.

There’s also Plague Signet I just remembered. The whole support element of it means nothing when it doesn’t actually remove anything from allies. Very poor.

…It has to be the Greater Marks trait in the Death Magic line. The trait and how it destroys half the use of Chillblains (the snare/poison circle).

After two Necromancer fixes we’ve been waiting for since beta, I’m actually quite shocked they’ve not addressed this. Am I the only one that feels this way?

I really hope they give it some attention soon, as far as I know there’s no way around it and in my opinion it puts every staff using Necromancers at a severe disadvantage.

Just to add my opinion in, although I don’t mean to turn this into yet another power vs condition thread, is that although you can move out of wells you can just easily have someone throw out an aoe condition cure and remove everything your epidemic is doing. Also a note about dodging wells means that you have high control over where people stand – they either get smashed, or move where you want them to move.

You also have two damaging wells. One has lower damage by about 1k, but it removes buffs and turns them into conditions each hit – that’s pretty tasty. As for weapons, you’d use a staff for ranged. I have never used power myself in WvW due to lack of gear, but I imagine sieges would be a cycle between charging Life Force with fairly low staff damage, Death Shroud, Wells and Lich Form. It will be very bursty rather than sustained like Epidemic, and less reliant on others and it doesn’t suffer from the condition cures that everyone has. Each has a strength and weakness.

I would have to agree condition build are better than power/crit builds for a Necromancer in WvW overall, but by that line of thought I could simply say that Elementalists are better than Necromancers for a player in WvW.

I agree Epidemic is a must for any kind of offensive and quite a few more defensive WvW Necro builds, even those builds with Wells, but I do think Well’s themselves are underrated. The numbers you state there are actually from sPvP I believe, because in full exotic gear in the real game you can pull much higher critical numbers, upwards of 90% crit damage and perhaps 60% crit chance with it. Unfortunately you’re right, people can move out of them fairly easily, but when dropped by a group at a ram or at a choke point they can be deadly. You can also add a snare element (Chilled) to the blinding circle to keep people within your Wells more effectively.

In the case of the crit siphoning, I wonder if you have considered putting those ten points into Spite? That’s an additional 10% Condition duration and bigger heal than siphoning when something dies – the actual box traits you can select are a bit weak in general, but the Retaliation one from Death Shroud is nice considering when you pop Death Shroud you’re usually under attack to grant a lot of reflection, and you only have a 5 sec CD on your Death Shroud.

I’m pretty sure you can’t move away from the roots even if you cure the actual immobilize effect, Daiva – that’s the whole point of it. The unbreakable root.

Hm, actually I take back the comments of the 20% Bleed and 33% longer scepter conditions not stacking, it seems I was mistaken. For some reason I can’t edit the above post either.

A nice effort, however for future videos I noticed some mistakes you should take into account. I hope you don’t find this too rude.

Firstly you claim Wells are no good as you have to be outside walls to use them. In actual fact, anyone with a serious offensive Well spec in WvW will have the ability that gives them a range of 900 (equal to the scepter). That’s long enough to throw down at foes, or up at attackers from below.

Next I notice you claim Epidemic spreads conditions to all foes within a 1,200 radius. It’s actually all foes within a 600 radius, but you can trigger it from a target up to 1,200. A bit of a mix up there.

Also, currently the traits of 20% longer bleeding ad 33% longer conditions from scepter doesn’t stack, it’s bugged for now.

Also on your traits you take siphoning health on crits – I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but each crit will net you a grand total of 33 health stolen, which is next to nothing when you have 20k+ health. Ten crits and you’ve healed about 1.5% of your total health. In short, very low healing over a long time.

If you want something from the first box of Blood Magic, particularly in a build focused on helping defend towers with others, the Transfusion box (Life Transfer heals around 2.6k in a 600 radius) is far better. You could also have taken Death Magic for larger AoE circles with the staff – something it seems this spec so focused around Fear could use – on that note, in the same Death Magic first box is a trait to lower the cooldown of Reaper’s Mark giving your AoE fear a 32 second cooldown rather than 40, which is more beneficial than a 2 second cooldown to Death Shroud’s Fear that you took in another box.

Overall it’s helpful to new players, even if I disagree with some points. Hope this helps.

It does look hot, just a shame it looks so daft on asura x)

You can find it at the dungeon merchants in Lion’s Arch, south of the asura gates – its from grinding the explorable mode of Arah.

You can’t heal them conventionally through a shared 6 button, nor do they regenerate health out of combat. Yet you can heal them the normal way through abilities such as a traited Life Transfer, Well of Blood and Mark of Blood.

Minions are generally there to be sacrificed, with half of their commanded abilities blowing them up to harm the enemy or heal you and the like.

Minion Master is viable as a leveling build and can put out okay damage when combined with your own. I can’t comment on how useful it is in instances at high level as I’ve never tried it there, however in PvP I’d not recommend it. The AI is too daft and half of the other professions can AoE all of them down in half a seconds worth of burst and that’s the end of all your non-weapon skills.

Just a quick update, we’ve had an influx of Rangers join us and so are limiting further recruitment of them. If your Ranger is your main character you want to WvW on with us you’re still welcome to apply, only note we will require a higher standard of play than we usually accept.

It’s business as usual for all the other professions.

You slash with a sword, its going to cover an area. You stab with a small dagger, its going to hit one thing.

A bit of a shame, yet it would be fine if the damage was balanced accordingly – however, despite what above posters may have said the dagger really does pale in DPS comparison to any Warrior, Guardian or Thief melee weapon.

Rhelex the Bromancer

The roots are a pain if they get you in a bad situation, moreso than most professions – I can’t think of a profession with less direct damage available than condition Necro. However I play support necro mostly and my damage is absolutely awful, yet I’ve noticed even a few hits will break it soon enough. The problem is focusing them down effectively stops you from fighting, but it is their elite skill.

On a side note, I’ve noticed if I get Binding Rooted with Spectral Walk up you can activate the teleport and pull yourself out of the roots that way. Pretty much impossible to time on purpose, but I thought I’d mention it here for those times it does happen.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=PvP_Masquerade_armor&oldid=376589

I’d like to use this, in particular the helmet, yet I can’t find it outside of sPvP. Any ideas guys? Cheers.

GTFO may be what you’re looking for, we’re 12 people with maybe 8 online on average per night, although we are aiming for that to be 15 eventually. However, I do have concerns about five joining us at once together – if you like what you read, talk to me and we’ll talk it through.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/guilds/Piken-Square-WvW-Time-To-Leave-GTFO/

No Necromancer will solo in WvW, the profession is too weak alone. Only Thief can successfully roam solo and pick off randoms in WvW due the ability to spike someone down in the middle of a group before anyone knows what’s going and infinite escapes.

I run in a group with my Necro, leading my guild around various objectives. We’re a small scale guild (8 on average per night), so we begin by taking sentries, camps and unupgraded towers, pretty much fighting against superior numbers the entire time. Often we pick up a fan club of randoms to help us with enemy zergs and upgraded or simply well defended towers. We also help out the bigger guilds attack keeps and the like when they call for it, or when we’re nearby. Quite often we take a tower with a big group and defend it with our own smaller one for them.

I pretty much play it as a support/tank necro, I lead the charge dealing next to no damage but CCing, healing, curing and soaking up damage whilst I coordinate the group through teamspeak. Much like Buff Jesus posts above me, with a lot of life Death Shroud and Plague I can survive almost anything.

Kazim.2043:

And why this love again Piken Square? We (Underworld) haven’t face them for a long time, though I’m 100% sure we have beat them on primetime. Do we need to loose a lot to face and prove it again?

We usually do pretty well in prime time actually, we just suck the rest of the day. In all fairness I think Underworld is half decent and has offered our primetime PvP guilds a fair challenge over the several times we’ve fought, but I’m certain we’ve beaten you in primetime as well.

At the moment, against the two bad servers we’re against, I can understand why we’re ranked so highly. Personally I think we’re a bit lower, since we only have a handful of guilds I’d consider good.

Hey Nofe, I run a guild called Time To Leave [GTFO] that sounds about right for you. We’re over on the Piken Square server which has a decent amount of PvP guilds, despite being fairly low ranked overall in WvW. However, WvW is our guild’s main focus.

We operate as a small group rather than a zerg, a tight knit group you could say. You’ll need a mic and Teamspeak 3, and I’d also be interested to hear your profession although currently we accept all professions.

You can read more at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/guilds/Piken-Square-WvW-Time-To-Leave-GTFO/

You can find me, or any of our recruiters, ingame or through Private Messages here.

Good luck wherever you end up.

Lo Valendra, over on Piken Square I run a guild called Time To Leave [GTFO] that may be to your taste. We only do a little spvp and even less PvE, however WvW is our main focus which we participate in every evening. We’re a smaller guild avoiding becoming a zerg, focusing on a lot of team work and coordination.

You can read more at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/guilds/guilds/Piken-Square-WvW-Time-To-Leave-GTFO/ – get in touch, whether by posting, PMing or finding me ingame, if you’re interested.

Good luck either way.

I’d like to add our main playing time is in the evening, although sometimes we run with a smaller group earlier in the day if we have enough people online. But as said, usually we begin our WvW in the evenings – roughly starting between 19:00 to 21:00, in the time zones of GMT, BST, CET or CEST.

Hey hey, just wondering what weapons for taking a pure DPS role in a group people recommend for Warrior? My friend argues two axes, whilst I like the idea of two swords. We both agree on a rifle as our secondary set. The thing is, neither of us actually play Warrior. But I’m interested to know what others think.

Thoughts?

I learnt to play, yeah.

With Plague form, yes. But no CD, not for Death Shroud, cheers.

I’m pretty sure Conditions is even more single target damage too when you get the stacks up, although you have less burst.

However, take an axe and focus or axe and warhorn. Then take Well of Suffering and Well of Corruption. That’s where your damage will come from mainly – the focus is more damage focused with conditions whilst the warhorn is more about mobility and crowd control.

A staff or dagger+offhand will do fine for your second set. Spectral Armour or Spectral Walk may be good other utility skills for the last one , but it’s really up to you what you take. Consume Conditions msut be your heal. Lich Form for your elite – properly power stacking here will make your Lich Form do really great damage – and if you run with a Mesmer, their group quickness bubble+Lich Form is really quite spectacular.

We have buffs of a sort, but it’s true not as many as other professions.

Water, Monk and Dwayna are the best options, you’ve heard right. Personally I use Dwayna for the extra Regenerations and Regeneration duration, since the main boon I apply by far is Mark of Blood’s Regeneration – this now heals for me for 1,840 over 6.5 secs and has a 4.75 second cooldown and an increased mark size.

Monk and Dwanya give 5% less Regeneration duratio in order to give all your other boons 15% duration too. However, our only other boons are either applied from self-only skills (Spectral Armor’s Protection, Spectral Walk, the warhorn’s swiftness ability) or from Spectral Wall and Well of Power.

Spectral Wall seems quite popular on these forums, although I’ve yet to see another necromancer actually use it ingame – the protection is obviously nice, but you have to run out of it and back in a fair way to pick up another lot of it once the first wears off, and you’ll only ever get the one hit of protection from it in any moving fight too. All in all, I’m not a fan – it pales when you compare it to say… any of a Guardian’s group protection. The duration also makes the 15% boost hard to notice.

As for Well of Power, this is a very useful skill in my opinion but I’m unsure if it increases the duration of these boons. What Well of Power does, if you don’t know, is turn conditions on you and allies into boons. I’m not sure if it carries the duration of them over when converted, or caluclates it seperately. If it is a seperate calculation with our boon duration taken into account, Monk or Water could be useful for it.

Anyway, as said I prefer Dwayna because of how often I have Regeneration on myself (90% of most fights) but any of them are a good choice. One final thing to note is Necromancers also get boons through certain traits, in particular ones from entering Deathshroud – but these are so short the 15% isn’t even worth noting.

Rogues in WoW get perma stealth. They don’t here.

Maybe it’s just blocked by the Aegis boon. That procs on them roughly every 40 seconds.

My boon purging on them works fine, make sure you’re in range and facing them properly too.

They also reapply buffs quickly at times.

Quite simply, the best way I’ve found to deal with theives is don’t let them get the first strike – be prepared. If any burst profession catches you offguard, or you’ve got your back to them running, they’re going to abosolutely wreck you. Use your CC and slap them, they’ll go down easily. High damage comes at low survivability.

Ascii has a good point, that’s something I also discovered. A bit of a shame really.

I take it you’re fairly new to the profession, but the fear skill on 3, called Doom, is an instant cast. I don’t understand how it’s not worth the cast time. Especially when you can use it when stunned, knocked down, or whilst facing away from your target and still affect them. It breaks Hundred Blades as just one example, saving your whole DS meter.

Just another health bar is actually really useful and a lot more than many professions get on their F keys. I love it.

DS is nice to absorb falling damage in certain situations, very true.

Time To Leave [GTFO] - Get The Frogs Out (honestly)

Time To Leave (GTFO) is a guild on the EU Piken Square server dedicated to small scale PvP with our main focus on WvW, fighting as a tight knit group rather than swarming or zerging.

The guild was created during the game’s headstart, formed by several players who have known each other and PvPed together for a long time in various other MMOs including SWG, WoW and TOR. Now we’ve settled in we’re opening the guild doors to everyone looking for a challenge.

Our take on things is that we want quality rather than quantity. Our goal is to achieve a stable ‘core’ of 10-15 active members we can reliably have online each evening for World Vs World. Whilst some larger guilds rely on superior numbers, we’re generally seeking smaller skirmishes where more elements of teamplay and strategy come into the equation. However with that said, we still end up involved in many sieges.

As stated, WvW is our main focus but that’s not to say we won’t explore other areas of the game. In particular structured/instanced PvP interests many of us with a tournament team planned. Still, be aware we plan to keep WvW as our priority and spend 90% of our time there.

- – - – - – - – - – -

Recruitment

If you like what you’ve read and are interested in joining, there are a few requirements and ‘guidelines’ to be aware of:

First of all, everyone needs a mic. If you don’t own a headset or other viable microphone and have Teamspeak 3 installed, you will need to get them to be considered for membership. Communication is a key part of any coordinated effort.

Currently we accept every profession, although this may be subject to change. However with that said, be aware you could be asked to just tweak your spec to work better as a team with us.

We ask that regardless of what you think your skill level is, that you be willing to learn and willing play together as a team. People who want to lone wolf it, split up from the team and those who fail to follow direction will not be accepted. We may sound somewhat harsh or critical, but we’re simply trying to help you do better – those who do not welcome constructive critiscism will be better off in a different guild.

Activity is required. We’re not an alt guild, we’re a main guild. If you join, we expect to see you flying our colours for the vast majority of the time you’re online.

Finally, you will need to be respectful. We are a long way from being ‘serious’, we have a lot of laughs and enjoy a bit of banter – but we do not go around upsetting fellow guildies or any other players.

If you wish to apply, contact either myself (by the name of Rhelex), Kodyn or Kaspar Ryn.

Epidemic is also incredibly funny on Guild Claimant or Tower/Keep Lord NPCs within WvW. Really turns the tide of a battle when a whole group practically puts 25 stacks of bleed, vulnerability and a hude stack of every other condition known to Tyria on themselves. Then try two Necromancers both hitting Epidemic on the same target.

There are no magic top three stats for any profession, it all depends on your build, team composition and playstyle.

As for the OP, chill. I’m going to be blunt, I’m getting somewhat tired of all the negative threads.

The combat log says you were in melee range for each of his big attacks. The teleport and stealth makes it difficult of course, but nothing stops you dropping a fear circle, dropping your snare on 2, rolling away or popping DS.

Furthermore I can see your armour is broken there, now was that before or after you were killed? It seems to me, to be fully broken, it would atleast have had to have been really damaged before. Maybe that’s why he was hitting you for such silly damage.

Stack more defense, go ahead. Otherwise offensive burst professions will be tricky. You could always go for Vitality+Condition damage at first, or wear Prec+Con Dmg gear mixed with some Vita/toughness jewellery. Don’t put all your eggs into one basket. WvW is large scale, be glad it was only the one Thief and no mass AoE or gank, but because of such massive nature going in as a glass cannon is alwasy going to be a very high risk play style.

As said, WvW is large scale group based. If you’re rage quitting over a 1 vs 1 with a Thief there you may need to rethink things.

The Life Transfer heal of Death Shroud works nicely out of combat, try something like this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQEQNBmQDbkQrWvVzUjePBIpIaqne0N4hDp4WpB;T0Ag1CqoGzMmYM7Yuxkjt+YUxJgXAzFA

Remember that you can kill your minions to manually triger their summoning CD by simply swapping the skill on the toolbar out for another before switching back to a minion.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: These forums keep telling me it’s a bad link, but you can copy and paste it and it works fine.

I agree, our Fears leave much to be desired. You can extend them with traits although you have to sacrifice too much for it. I still like my Fears, the ranged aspect of them in contrast to Thief and Warrior is great, but we still lack the duration that allows those other professions to get so many extra hits on us.

Also to correct an above poster, our fears are only 1 second long. Any longer is due to your stat boosts from traits or runes.

Necromancers can represent what they want, there’s no need to restrict them to three themes. Necromancer could use some help in some areas, bug fixes in most areas and I find the animations lacking at times but overall.

Yet overall it remains my favourite class by a long way. It is definitely a dark-themed caster, I do believe they pulled that off.