Guild Wars 2

Why does staff stink without greater marks?

Maybe its my style but I land it right on top of people so they dont get a chance to block through them, and the aoe is large enough to hit 5…it is much larger than the mark size. The trait I find I cant live without is staff mastery.

reedju.5786:

I They never mentioned necro specifically, but seeing as ele and warrior are the only classes that use signets less than we do (we have rez) and we have no signet synergy it would make sense that they would look at how ours function (Please move plague signet stun break, it defeats the purpose of a condi removal utility if we blow it to avoid burst).

Not that I disagree with the gyst of what you are saying, but you can build some massive synergy builds on an elementalist using signets so they are very used. Think of fire’s embrace —> powerful auras --> zephyrs boon, and signets can keep you and everyone around you buffed with fire aura, swiftness and fury pretty much nonstop. This is how I rolled as a ele anyway, and it works very well. Keep a cantrip for stun break obviously.

Bas.7406:

That has more to do with Guardians/Ele’s spreading the Stability boon than it has to do with everyone having access to it. Corrupt boon Stability than you will see fun.

True that, Ive been thinking about it but I’d have to dump well of corruption which really does a lot more for me in large scale wvwvw.

(actually what I usually do is buff strip first with focus and hope stability is one of the two stripped)

I dont know about our lack of stability but the stability on other classes is a little ridiculous. Finding targets to fear or pull can be slim pickings.

Speed up the projectile for dark path would be nice, can run almost as fast as it travels making it a very questionable teleport.

Main thing I would like is a fix for spiteful talisman finally to work as described… though my hopes arent high after all this time lol.

Warrior one kitten es me off the most for downed fights, have it in the bag then they get up and do 100b on you.

Lots of aoes (marks/wells) take care of most of the illusions and hurt them too, save your condition transferal for confusion stacks if you can, and use some hard cc when they go on the defensive (instant fear and things like spectral grasp). This is my usual method of fighting them.

I dont know if they are built to counter our class, but moa bird certainly counters our elite. Fortunately they rarely slot it since they have much better options, in wvwvw anyway.

Doesnt this mean we also heal up to full faster with our life drain?

Honestly never noticed this bug lol. Not much we can do to avoid a stomp anyway (more than 1 person).

Different classes entirely, but I feel far more useful in large scale wvwvw on my necro.

As you’ve mentioned dark path is way too slow, I can almost run the same distance by the time it hits a target. So yea, I agree probably something can be done here. The only time I find the teleport effect helpful is if I am immob or crippled and otherwise lacking movement. The chill effect is always good however.

One thing necros lack is a good leap, could just skip the whole projectile thing and make it one.

Its not that we need a buff imo, but this skill just doesnt seem to do what its needed for.

Panhauramix.2784:

You also need to have vision (literaly, you need to see it in your screen) for Y-axis teleport.

I’ve tested it a lot on my preferred playground, the archway north of Greenwater Lowlands. You can put it on top, watch your skill bar (if it’s the red indicator for out of range it normally doesn’t work) and look at the wurm. You’ll be teleported up correctly. If you stand at the same spot but look down, you’ll teleport under the archway instead.

Do you mean z-axis? I use it in spvp and it will take me around corners if in range.

Swamurabi.7890:

I’ve been wanting to try this. In WvW. You’re by a cliff high enough to kill from fall damage. An enemy comes to attack you. You hit Spectral Grasp, dodge, run or jump over the edge before Grasp hits, double tap Spectral Walk before hitting. Does the enemy hit with Grasp follow you or are they stopped by the pebble (cliff edge)?

Pretty sure they’d be stopped, but what does work is to grasp them, roll past them, then fear them off the edge.

It messes will our elite transformations too. Glad not many mesmers use it since their other elites do more for them.

The moral is you cant have your cake and eat it too. Easy stability is not in the cards for us, which allows us to be overpowered in other ways like ranged aoe damage.

No matter what I do with my spec its always 30 soul reaping. Its agonizing but it should be. That burst of stability is that important to me. It may not be a lot but its there instantly when I want it.

The zergs are awesome on T1, loads of fun! Bring on the bags!!

I just like the greater variables in large conflicts. Though I enjoy spvp too, just doesnt hold my interest as long.

It is almost an entirely different way of gaming though, so wvwvw just might not be for everybody.

I used it for a while. Pretty sure it suffers from the same thing as death shroud, where you get knocked out by damage that takes a while to catch up. In this case however you may get to mist form but it still hasnt calculated in a few hits, so you die even though its on.

Pretty sure they reduced the mistform duration on it a while back too. It used to be I could get a heal off in the time which made it very useful, and overnight it was just a little too short so I could never heal. Used to save my bacon quite a bit. I’ve discarded it.

OP, please insert some paragraphs, tough to read wall of text.

Aside from that, on the discussion, I believe the game is built around hybridism as opposed to having hard spec lines to get everything. This encourages experimentation and finding synergies rather than simply selecting a specline that is “best”. Though necro may be a bit more scattered than most, it is a common theme in all classes I have played.

So base your observations around this, there is no one best spec. I like that I can change around my spec and tap into different aspects of my playstyle without having it all. It makes for tough choices, and tough choices are good. Easy choices encourage the “one spec to rule them all” which is boring.

I’ve always resented mmo’s like swtor that present everything in one spec line so you cant be clever at all, it seems very dumbed down. That game practically forces you to max out a spec line before even looking at another one. Very generic and very boring.

OK, I was hoping there was another fear I could dig out somewhere heh.

Bas.7406:

As for Greater Marks it’s not necessary at all in pve. Regardless of what some players think it has limited usage in pve, but is pretty close to mandatory in sPvP and WvWvW.

I disagree, I have no problem getting my marks to trigger, and the blast radius is plenty big (bigger than the mark size) to encompass the 5 person aoe cap. 20% staff recharge is far superior, esp for putrid mark (and fear!)

I swear I’ve been knocked out a full second or two after shrouding, after I’ve even begun my life siphon, with lots of lifeforce in the tank. I think there may be other errors present, or some things just take a heck of a long time to catch up.

Bas.7406:

I think Oscicat pointed out in the recent mesmer podcast that it’s frustrating because Necro’s have 3 ways to do it on short CD’s, and that because it’s only for 1 to 2 seconds that stun breaking it is not always smart because you may need it again.

Hmmm 3 ways?? Maybe its because I didnt sleep well but I can only think of staff 5 and shroud 3, aside from the reactive traits of course. What am I missing?

Bas.7406:

Ah, the trolls are strong in this one. I opened it up expected complaints was met with it, when Andele attempts to help, the Dredlord raises his sarcastic head from the grave to help his minions :P.

I am going to make one comment and the disappear from this den of horrors.

Fear is the Number one most complained about Condition in the entire game by every class not named Necromancer. We want it stronger, every other class wants it gone. Take a listen to the Mesmer Podcast coming out on Monday. The top Mesmers, hate fear, they absolutely despise it almost as much as we despise thief invisibility.

/runs off to figure out how to put more fear on build >:D

But yea, the damage isnt the reason I use fear, on a power mancer anyway.

Its already slowed down, and detrimental by taking people away from their war effort, to rez in combat.

Personally I like people rezzing in combat, lets me kill more of them.

so.. no! :p

Yep, I’ve acutely noticed our lack of fire condition damage. It rocks my dd elementalists world. This is why I simply wouldnt want to try a condition necro, pretty sure I’d feel wanting.

Kardiamond.6952:

Coming back from playing my engineer for 2+ month, without logging on my necromancer, I just started back playing it 2 weeks ago, stopped because of patch, then this week I’m back on it.

So my point of view come from 2+month of undernumbered roaming in WvW. Like litteraly charging in zerg and spanking them. I die a lot.

Right now, and it’s my personal opinion, I feel like my engineer is better then my necromancer in nearly every aspect.

Note : Take into consideration that I’m not used to my necromancer yet, so it add weight into my preference.

With my engineer, I feel like I can do most thing my necro can do, but better. Let’s just take a HGH build with toolkit and a Master of terror build.

Damage ->
Necromancer damage from condition have a long build up. You need to stack and stack and stack bleed/fear. Fear is a short lasting heavy damage condition. With engineer, you can immob, blow torch, bleed, poison, confusion all in the same combo. Perma stack of burning does a lot more damage over time then 2 fear. And the confusion stack in WvW hit like a truck. Add to this about 20-25 stack of might from HGH, and direct damage from it, I kill a lot faster on my engineer, and I can apply condition a lot faster.

Mobility/Survivability ->
Necromancer have to ether sacrifice an utility for swiftness, use a warhorn or use the signet for 25%. In combat mobility, they have about none : dark patch, spectral walk, Worm(which is awesome). Other then worm, other are really situational and won’t save you if you have to release pressure.

During a team fight, if 2-3 player focus you(and it happens a lot since necrmancer are seen as no escape target and condition dispenser which are annoying) you have nothing except Worm to take a breathing. Sure you can chill them, but most class can ether leap to you, cleans themselve or CC you. Try to chill an elementalist.

Engineer has multiple escape tools. Want an easy way to release pressure? Just use slick shoes, nobody can follow you. Use Elixir S, elixir S toolbelt for 50% chance of stealth. Use AoE immobilize. Stack confusion on them, they won’t pressure anymore.

I don’t feel like Death Shroud is really a life saver. People will just DPS tru it.

If you pressure an Elementalist, and he use myst form, teleport, updraft, RTL etc.. you won’t have the choice but to switch target. Even if you 5 man him at the same time, he will be pretty hard to spike down. He can mitigate a lot of damage with invul skill and mobility.

If you pressure a necromancer, he don’t have much option. Especially on his weapon set. He’s gonna use death shroud. If you are spiking a necromancer and he death shroud, DS will hold for abotu 1-2 sec. Then the necro is dead.

DS is a poor man defence mecanism. You still receive damage and conditions tru it. Not like other invul mecanism or block. I hate not having any vigor, any block, any invul, any escape mecanism (other then worm).

Not sure my post make any kind of sense since I wrote it while being interrupted every two minutes.

And remember, it’s not coming from a hardcore necromancer player.I used to play it a lot, but I stopped for quit a long time. I’m sure once I will be used to the class, it will go smoother then right now. And also it’s coming from a roamer perspective, roaming with 2-3 other guys each night.

Plague form is your answer, especially if you hit it while still healthy. It can take a hell of a beating. If the zerg is on you it will only prolong your life but quite often thats all I need to get to safety. Or while they focus on me my side is tearing them to pieces while I walk them where ever I want, so they either let go or die.

The beauty of necro is that you dont have to be close up to do massive damage, so you can stand back at a safe range of retreat (comparatively) and bomb away with wells and marks. If anyone wants to extend out and attack you there are a lot of control and debuff options to make them regret that decision.

You should be able to play just about anything, but a main hand dagger will solve a lot of problems. Its not your typical mmo if this is your first character, dodging and retreating are required, facetanking ftl.

I use aoe lots and I completely understand why it would be overpowered hitting more than 5 people. I would, singly and with others, devastate massively at every chokepoint, more than already. I cant see why anyone would think otherwise except blatent self interest.

As far as saying zergs own fault if they dont spread out more, commanders have a hard enough time getting them together oftentimes, it would be counter to the whole system. There are still well enough reasons to spread out without making it standard formation since AOE spam will still hurt plenty when cast by another zerg.

A few tweaks in the traits (reanimator swiched to chosen trait, foot in the grave longer stability, for instance) would be nice, but its a very good class. Its not the best 1-1 class but for the most part who cares, it does everything else on par or better than any other class.

Axe is for debuffing for your team (including minions). Dagger is better if you want dps.

Zorion.7504:

fear needs to be changed from condition to crowd controll skill, like daze, stun etc etc.
That is the reason why fear is hard to balance, to have it be affected by condition duration is just wrong.

If you change it do a CC skill, only necros could change the duration by trait choice, and then you could change independent fears duration.

Base fear could be, 1,25 sec duration.
Necro trait +50% duration, 1.875 sec fear.
Do a rune combo like the mesmers set, ie fear duration is increased 33%
Necro fear with runes, 2,288 sec fear.
Others fear with runes, 1.663 sec fear

I think this i balanced.

It is actually somewhere between a condition and a control already, since its negated by stability.

Kind of surprised +duration works on it really. Is it cured as a condition also, never noticed?

Try playing in spvp for a bit to see what works for you. Both methods are viable from what I understand. I’m happy with a power/prec build and still pretty tanky.

Synda Raines.1836:

“CrimsonNeonite.1048
Yea I’ve seen groups of people chasing 1 guy for WXP the way you can get it is not quite right, but looking at the abilities they seem to cater towards smaller groups and scouts the hype will die down eventually.”

Lol what i’ve been doing yesterday evening is find a zerg get myself killed a couple of times (Outmaned so no armor repair) then run back and take some shots at the zerg. There’s bound to be at least 10-15 break off and chase you, get as far away as possible staying in range so they keep following and get yourself killed again. LOL 1 wxp for a 2 to 5 minute chase, . Run back repeat. They are to stupid to recognize what’s going on rofl and free game for any small scale group while they try to get back to their zerg.

Maybe they dont care about the wxp points, I’d rather play to have fun and points are just bonus. However there are better reasons not to chase one guy, thats just dumb.

Why are you saying “everybody is saying Necromancers are so bad”?

I think they’re fine, some think they are awesome and some think they are bad. All the stuff you’ve written there is very superficial however, like saying +15% axe damage is good, not knowing that axe damage is terrible and +15% is still no where near dagger in dps. But whatever, I dont use axe, and there are other reasons to like axe.

I dont get the complaint. There were large zergs before the patch, at least on JQ, whats changed???

If its a complaint about lots of new people out in wvw having fun I dont get it.

This is my “basic” build too; I dont have greater marks, I went spite with those 10 points for spiteful talisman.

The shroud uptime is tempting, but its very nice to have stability when you want to let loose with your life siphon in a crowd (wvwvw) where you’re sure to get knocked around otherwise. Like I say I’m tempted to try it out though.

It can still be built tanky, just add some soldier with some berserker.

oh ya, and sigils of fire with a sigil of force in offhand. I like pack runes, and the spectral walk traits, gives me near 100% swiftness. Swap it out with another well if you plan on staying in an area (siege).

I’m talking wvwvw though of course.

Yep, I was a bit overwhelmed last night seeing all the folks, it put me off my game. Even though they were there all along its a lot less daunting when you can only see 20 or so. Maybe tonight I can actually stop staring and play

Ubi.4136:

It does give the larger radius, but the green circle showing placement is the smaller size, which can be confusing.

My understanding is the mark radius is just the trigger, the blast itself was consistent regardless emanating from the center of the mark. Fair chance I’m wrong.

Culling patch and wvw ranks patch is huge. I dont get the complaining. Cant please everybody I guess the saying goes. Maybe if they used more lines in the patch notes that would impress people more heh.

Could always have a monthly leaderboard as well as lifetime.

Its always been in the game aka “corrupt boon”. Play with boons you might get burned! Its a chance you take for running that hot.

I think its really just to help out those classes too disadvantaged against boon heavy classes already, as opposed to “punishing” people for having boons.

CHIPS.6018:

I know it sucks that “easy” bugs like Greater Marks aren’t fixed. But no need to be too negative. Engineers got fixed. Next up will be rangers or us necros.

Whats wrong with greater marks? Was thinking of taking it but cant see a point since I usually plant right on groups anyway. Is it supposed to give a larger blast radius?

I’m taking spiteful talisman now. I burns me but the extra range on spinal shivers is too valuable, and now at least it does the extra damage for boon ripping so its not actually gimping me for taking it.

But I curse every time I notice #4 not in range at the same time and its cooldown timer as long as #5 now.

Arenanet why do you do this to me!?

Stone.6751:

The one thing about the Necromancer that I can never seem to fit into my build is the Boon Duration under the Death Magic trait line. Nothing I find to be an interesting build for me really includes much in the way of boons. How many of our skills and weapons give boons?

Probably better off starting a new thread, but swiftness, fury and might are boons we can have up a lot. We are definately a “boon-lite” class imo.

Bas.7406:

We will never get a regular use of Vigor or Stability. I think Anet realizes how badly those two were implemented into the game, that they may actually bring some classes usage of it down (this is all supposition on my part). I don’t like it, no one likes it, but getting up every morning to hit the forums to complain about it won’t get results.

If they upped foot in the grave to 5 seconds, that would be a nice compromise. I take it now because its all we’ve got, but at 3 seconds you have to be very tight on your timing to make it useful.

I dont even care about the range on #4, its best used close up for a bounce anyway, but cool down reduction would be nice.

Seriously did not think epidemic would continue as it is, everything needs LOS and arenanet has been steadily fixing all the exceptions (such as mesmers berserker). It hurts but its consistent, and feels like a big nerf. Glad I never expected any different, but must hurt those who relied on it working that way.

My feelings on spiteful talisman are, at least they fixed the damage part of #5. I’m trying not to get dramatic about #4 being unaffected by the trait in spite of how its worded. #5 is the main thing anyway you need ranged anyway.

Cool about the shroud UI fixed, always annoying not to know exactly what boons/cons are on me

Oglaf.1074:

I’m crossing every body part that could possibly be crossed and hoping for a fix for Spiteful Talisman.

So much this!

It would fit my build nicely but I just cant bear to take it in its crippled state.

A mesmer is way easier to 1-1 than a necro – thats a given, I’ve played both a fair amount in wvwvw. A a necro can still solo, its just not our particular strength. However, portal aside, you can do a lot more stuff than a mesmer can, with conditions and aoe damage in large scale pvp. Necro is about ruling zergs not individuals.

I dont worry about 1-1 in wvwvw, it is like 1% of the action I see if that. You can easily build to survive long enough to turn it into a 2-1, 3-1 or whatever you want, or just hit plague form and just mosey on down to wherever you were going.

Loved DAOC but GW2 improves on it in almost every way (needs realm ranks though). Maybe some rose tinted glasses there. I look forward to my fix of “rvr” pretty much every night, just like the good ol’ days! Cant please everybody all the time. It may get boring eventually but that hasnt happened yet, and they keep introducing new stuff.