Guild Wars 2

The main danger is in letting them do their routine uninterrupted, this is what nets them the high damage due to the many synergies of the class. Good ele’s have it worked out to be very painful and allow a minimum of room to recover for their advesary.

Nothing worse on a dd elementalist that being immoblized. CC is very hard on them because of the rotations they need to follow for maximum impact and the muscle memory to do them. Throw out immobs, fears and chills and they will be really off their game. Strip their might every once in a while as it can stack fast and is a good chunk of their damage.

Always dodge “ride the lighting” to get things going on the right foot.

Cool, still not enough reason to take axe over dagger for me … awesome damage in melee, life siphon & immobilize.. too good. Still a step closer however

Slagburst.5304:

*DO NOT go for focus recharge and range of 20%. It is broken at the moment. Even though the tool tip says u go from 18s on #4 skill and shows 14s it is still an 18 second CD. I sent a bug report multiple times to anet and it has yet to be adressed. + it does not FLip when you change on and off the trait.

Doh! really?! Never noticed this…. pretty sure the increased range works at least, seemed to go up but didnt test.

Great read, could never go full beserkers. Must hit insane crit damage even without lich form

The % health reactives seem pretty hit or miss across the board. Sometimes they work, some times they dont. I use lots of them too, and just roll with whatever I get.

I notice people always seem to beeline for me as a necro. Gotta have good defences LOL. Active and passive.

I can see why people get discouraged playing a necro anyway, zergs seem to try to kill us first in a crowd. I think a part of it is just a caster with a staff is a big tell to people that youre an easy target.

Just needs a few bug fixes, I dont see us being UP at all. There are few changes I would like to see, but thats just me (looking at you reanimator).

Staff 4 is very easy to use, you need an enemy to trigger or any mob really. Between that and consume conditions I dont have a problem. Shroud can be used if you are in danger of dying to bleeds etc and you need to hold off a bit for your heal cooldown.

I used to use dagger offhand for transferring conditions but its got to successfully hit which can be problematic and even then it often only transfers 1 condition, I ended up shelving it for this purpose. Might work for you depending on playstyle. Staff 4 is extremely reliable.

Budchgon.2108:

Thanks… time to try the Build out :-)
What food would you recommend? Ommnom ghost and superior sharpening stones?

I’d take his advice with a grain of salt… DS is definately not all you need to survive in wvwvw unless you plan to not get attacked. Good luck with that – if you’re careful sure but its a pretty specific game play.

You just said you didnt like dying a lot and you already have DS… I’d go for knights gear. Obviously his advice isnt going to work for you.

spoj.9672:

The problem is your building tanky which will make you survive a thiefs initial burst but whats the point in that if you cant finish him off afterwards. I run a full beserker power necro for pve. But ive taken her into wvw and never lost a 1v1. Thiefs have attempted to kill me and failed because of my deathshroud to tank the initial burst. Then i proceed to absolutely melt their hp. Which results in them stealthing and running for their lives. If they try to attack me again my lifeforce is usually back up along with my heal. So i can repeat until they run out of escapes or they decide its not worth it.

My point is necro’s shouldnt need any survivability for almost any build. Their DS is all you need to stay alive in most situations. You should spec for full glass cannon damage. Either wells or hybrid condition damage. Unless your playing a support necro but thats more of a spvp build.

Your advice doesnt apply to all cases, some uber thiefs will remove your lifeforce in about 1-2 hits (mines maxed +30%) from stealth. You’ll need a lot of dodging, plague form and debuffs to keep alive in addition to shroud.

As far as melting them, how do you do that when you cant target them. As someone with 2400power 50crit (70 w/fury)/50damage (could be higher but up there is my point), the aoes will not kill them. Ive also had many thieves try and fail, but there is thief builds that stealth and drops target within a split second of rendering usually.

You find reapers precision gets you good returns at ~50% crit??

I’ve debated swapping it for weakening shroud, but I really like the aoe weakness on demand.

You can stay in death shroud if you want… life blast is pretty decent damage for a power/crit build. I love getting that cannon going and watching them drop. :p

Yea I was fighting a couple a few times last night. I could probably do ok if I could just target them longer than a split second or so. My aoe’s just arent enough. Very infruriating, not because of losing, but the nature of of it. Like swatting at mosquitos you can never hit. I notice lots of other people dying easy with no chance, glad I’m level 80 in exotics, they went down in about 2 seconds.

Adding a bit of toughness and retaliation to my build because of it.

Hopefully they dont buff necros, I was in a zerg a couple nights ago and every other player was one. The landscape was literally a web of marks in every direction! It was glorious but I liked being a bit unique!

If they do, I hope its more in the form of fixes to a few buggy abilities and getting rid of reanimator, hate that minor trait.

Snowy.9580:

Like the rest have said, Warrior is the pve way to go, if its wvw, then go for a culling thief, they kill everything and walk away!

Yea this is the most annoying thing about wvwvw right now, if thats your thing. Thieves that stealth so often the culling effect rarely renders them making it lucky to even get one targetted attack off on them while they land massive bombs on you. grrr!!

Its probably the main unbalanced thing right now, but its not intended, its an engine problem that they having been working on fixing for some time (and have some new fixes coming). Just this class and setup exploits it to the maximum.

I will usually outlast the rest of my group, mostly knights gear and plague ftw. Jumping into shroud at the right times to absorb spikes and also buff/debuff (with traits) is key.

Senryi.4897:

The obvious choice would be to go elementalist, use a staff, and spec into water magic.

Yep very consistent heals. Add in a glyph of renewal utility trait and dwayna runes and you have a decent semblance of a traditional healer.

Most classes do well, I’ve played mesmer, elementalist, and necro to 80 and enjoy them all differently. You’d be better off to go with your playstyle. The balance isnt perfect (how could it be with the number of variables) but its quite reasonable, especially if you pick a class YOU play well.

As a necro whos played a mesmer and elementalist I’ll say the necro is least likely to recover from downed state but I dont believe they all need to be balanced either.

The necro downed #3 puzzles me, havent figured out what I’m supposed to do with it. A great alternative would be an AOE life leech like shroud #3 to get us on our feet faster, that could hit theives in stealth too.

I find the duel request message very annoying too, just to chime in. I always feel obliged to duel (I’m no chicken!) so it gets grating fast.

Maybe a dueling zone even to seperate the chat from the rest.

There are many “on crit” conditions that fire off crits, thats where the crit percentage helps conditions. In fact its essential to a lot of condition builds to have good crit chance.

Its already beneficial enough, why build in more? They balanced around there being no crits on dots, and thats how it is. If they had crit dots they would just lower the normal dot damage to compensate, do you want that?

Its a great game. They did it right this time imo, and are managing to keep it on track with a consistent vision. I do the same thing btw, at work right now :p

Breaks are fine, I was on holidays for over a week and came back and still enjoy it the same.

Could use something more to spend skill points on, would make all those extra dings past 80 worth something. Not talking about mystic forge or crafting related spending, stuff that makes your character more diverse like picking abilites from another class (at much higher cost and have longer cooldown or something) or advanced class… something along that line. Titles perhaps. Fluff or horizontal growth stuff.

Rewards come with time. Why the math lesson? 60 days for a relatively simple task (with other benefits) doesnt seem like a big deal to me. Exotics are virtually as good.

^^^

Probably what it amounts to. Bad first class, great for a second/third class that you can appreciate its odd… flavor.

Why a necro? I have an elementalist and a mesmer, but people say they are overpowered so I prefer to melt faces with necro instead, just feels better somehow.

Necros have corrupt boon and spectral grasp, very cool abilities. I find I have more area control with necros, where the others have higher mobility. Many chills. Its a matter of playing the class for what it is and not trying to play it as something else.

It would be cool for sure, but overpowered.

The only things that seem to be against the flavor of the elite are the abilities to strip our stability and immobolize. I proposed it before, add the npc trait unstoppable and make it not strippable. This guarantees we can use the elite properly at least.

Or even make “unstoppable” the 4th button option…

edit: making plague do more damage the more conditions you have on you would be cool too though, kind of a neat compromise.

Plague is an awesome zerg tanking tool, even though the effects are a bit meh. Love it when I just want to wander through an enemy zerg to get somewhere, like inside a keep under siege.

I agree with spectral grasp and at least main hand dagger, great combo, use it a lot. When I didnt play necro it was the most noticeable thing they did that I had to respect, so of course I had to slot it too.

At level 80 I’m finding myself very tough. I dont worry about thieves ganking me at all anymore.. maybe I just havent met a good one recently, but the damage is very sustainable.

Main disadvantage over my other two 80’s (mesmer and ele) is less mobility, but if you can be more brute force about moving around (plague as mentioned and also shroud) when you need to. Theres nothing else I really feel lacking in, and for the most part better!

Gotta say, I like the lack of aggro management. The mobs smarts are limited enough without taking away their ability to determine threat. Always hated that in other games, it seemed very contrived. Another way GW2 does things right imo

Bhawb.7408:

Kilger.5490:

I hate how they die when I use my plague or lich elite, I’ve entirely removed them from my bar because of this

If you are using minions as a minion-heavy build (3+ minions with minion traits), why would you not take the undeniably best one, Flesh Golem? Especially when you shouldn’t have the stats to take advantage of Plague/Lich when building as an MM

That’s part of my point. I’m not running a minion heavy build, so its all or nothing when you get down to it. Already was to min/max things, but I got some utility out of flesh wurm that makes it worthwhile if it wasnt for it dying everytime I used plague form. My impression is the game encourages hybrids where this mechanic discourages it heavily.

waka.9826:

alamore.1974:

Who still thinks swiftness is useful…poor guy you need to discover perma swiftness.

swiftness + ride the lightning = GG

corrupt + immob. lmao.

Funny… after reading this I used spectral walk to dodge a zerg. Used up plague and shroud to get a bit away from pack and start up hill, with only a few bothering to follow (easy kill). Almost dead at top, hit my SW for kicks and jump into the rest of their zerg below, hitting again before landing. Voila, they all followed me like lemmings and I had an easy run to safety

Thing is, you can use the focus #4 with a dagger in the main hand too.. its good for either. The real benefit is when other people are attacking the target you’ve “debuffed”; but I’d rather be doing more damage.

Drainbamaged.1062:

Since when does plague chill? Maybe you meant cripple but if it chilled I might use it more.

Curses III trait “chilling darkness” chills on blind. Start using it more!

I’m pretty sure its not working as intended, it seems since we lose condition removal the stability was there to make sure we can move around at least.

Maybe take something from the pve side “unstoppable” and have it as an unstrippable buff (ie trait) attached with the spell would be the best idea.

Fix reanimator and its a non-issue imo. Shrouded removal is excellent, but that pesky rat keeps me from considering anything in that line.

Mister Mustard.7203:

So do most of the other classes. Thief and Ele are perhaps the only two who can consistently escape bad situations. It’s apparent this class isn’t supposed to be able to escape, so if that’s what you’re trying to do you’re probably not utilizing your tools to their utmost potential.

Now, if you wish to argue that Necro doesn’t gain enough survival-oriented tricks and cooldowns to compensate for that lack of effective escape mechanisms, I think you may be on to something.

Mesmers can be really really slippery too, multiple stealths, clones, teleport and even portal. I’ve left fights behind where they didnt even know I was gone for a while.

Panhauramix.2784:

I think more crit % equal more damage in the long run. Of course when you crit you’re gonna be more bursty than someone equipped with Knights for example, but you only crit 20% of the time.

You can see in this table : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit#Table that having crit % is better than stacking crit damage with low crit change, in the long run.

Not saying it can’t work, but that’s why more peoples tend to stack crit % first.

According to that table, increases in crit % averages TWICE as good as increases in crit damage. Crit damage only equals out as a good alternative when crit % is already at 50%.

So its pretty safe to say always take crit % over crit damage. You also get more procs to boot as mentioned previously.

Alternately, drop your warhorn for focus and slot spectral walk for swiftness like me. Focus is very good both at close and long range, giving you some reach even when you have your dagger (melee) set out. I cant do without staff, even though I usually just take it long enough to spam all the marks, or to charge up my lifeforce from range, its indispensible to me.

Spectral walk is great for swiftness!

Its a good escape in spvp however in wvwvw the zerg usually is too spread out to make porting back a good idea. I much prefer shroud or plague, anything with stability and extra health.

I wouldnt bother with any condition damage if you arent focussing on it. Condition duration on the other hand still does a lot for us (chill/weakness/vulnerability).

I hate how they die when I use my plague or lich elite, I’ve entirely removed them from my bar because of this

Shame to give up “Foot in the grave” but I have to agree if you’re really into maximizing your shroud bonuses “near to death” is the way to go.

Its the only stability we get outside of a form change, so you have to time your ds right going the foot in the grave route.

lettucemode.3789:

Second, since it doesn’t home in, it’s possible for an enemy to change directions after you cast it, causing the grasp projectile to miss (again, because it doesn’t home in). At this point you will see the “Obstructed” error. It really should say “Missed” because the target moved out of the way, but all projectile skills in the game have this problem so whatever.

Interesting about the leading thing, kind of registered that on a level but never really thought too hard about it, usually just know to fire it off when the target is moving more or less predictably to maximize the chance for it to work. I just wanted to say I have seen “missed” quite a few times.

I wouldnt break my hump for an extra 20-30% duration, food (40) + spite (30) gets you far enough imo since fractions count with non-damage conditions. Food is by far the best way to get duration, since it takes away massively from any other source (except spite) to get each %, just not worth it.

blurps.2340:

I generally wouldn’t recommend dagger main hand in WvW btw. Its main asset is the superiour damage on the auto attack chain and for that to land you have to be standing pretty much inside your target. In any realistic scenario other than a 1vs1 you’ll be out of range a fair amount of time, cutting down on your dps substantially. The other main hand options aren’t great for a power build either unfortunately.

Good comments generally but I have to say I really enjoy dagger main hand. Pair it with spectral grasp and immob (#3 on dagger) and you can get some good facetime even in a zerg range situation. Start out with corruption and its great for taking down that guardian that is in godmode.

You can get some range out of the weapon with offhand for a few attacks also, then just switch to staff which is really our premier range weapon anyway.

Its a minion, says so. Havent tested personally but its my understanding it benefits from all applicable traits.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Also, I’m not sure where exactly people got the idea that Dagger doesn’t cleave. It does. It is a very small area, but it does indeed cleave.

Yea I figured, even if I dont have a target and swing it will still hit what ever is in front.

Solesaver.8764:

Even if you have don’t have dedicated minion build you can get some value out of your jagged horrors. Therefore it is at least a little relevant to any build. In the same way that a thief who wants toughness traits might go in to the Shadow Arts trait line, even if they don’t have a stealth based build, so too can a necromancer choose to constantly whine about the Death Magic minor traits, ignore their effect, or learn to maximize the effectiveness of what they are given.

All I can recommend to you is that you actually pay attention to how your jagged minions interact with you and the environment, then cease spreading myths about it.

How can I get value out of it? It does pitiful damage and attacks things on its own that I never wanted to fight. Its pure detriment. Seriously, where is the value??

I think the siphons are best used as a part of your strategy and not your main device. This is the way I use them anyway. They wont do sufficient healing to enable you to sustain a dps class, but they will add a few extra 1000hp to your total if you play smart.

JaironKalach.4938:

People complain primarily because they come from an open-world PvP background that favored combat between smaller groups. It’s something that they’ve enjoyed in other (now dead?) games, and they’re looking to scratch that itch again. It is their perspective on WvWvW. On top of that, the way the game is currently designed, a sufficiently large group cannot even be dented by a smaller group. This leads to a lot of frustration. Additionally, it is easier for people to feel that they have made a significant contribution and earned their reward, when they are part of a small group, rather than part of a much larger group. Finally, larger groups have a (mostly deserved) reputation of being mindless and skill-less, mostly winning fights by large numbers.

If you mix all these things together, you get a segment of the player base that is very frustrated.

Fair enough, but there is no reason to revert back to some antiquated norms when this game has just finished smashing them. Small groups with impenetrable meshes of buffs and escapes frustrate a much larger segment of the population than making everyone having to play on the same level.

If anything I just read an idea for a geographic approach might work with having a new city zone with numerous streets that would split people in many different directions. More routes = more divisions = smaller groups in general.

Altering game mechanics to favor small groups = NO!

1. One choke point !
2. Spawns where enemy can camp it!
3. More Lag !
4. Farm structures worth more than enemy players!

Oh wait, they did that already in swtor.

Just some food for thought, how much better this game is!