Guild Wars 2

Bhawb.7408:

Thieves aren’t attrition classes. Saying they are is absolutely ridiculous; yes you can force them to somewhat fit that role, but they will never fit it like classes that are built specifically for it.

But a well played P/D is pure attrition play, as the OP states it is the best attrition PvP build/profession available in the game.
He outlasts you while whittling away your HP with condition damage.

Unlike certain professions, a thief can change his play style for very different approaches, mostly with the same goal of killing you.

I’m sorry but Necro is not built for attrition either, or if it was supposed to be someone really screwed up.
And yes, I’ve read ANets manifestos and class philosophies, I found them incredibly amusing.

So yeah, casting times on Necro are too long and should be decreased across the board.
Signet Cooldowns as well, except for Undeath which needs a passive buff instead.

Bas.7406:

Kiriakulos.1690:

So, how are we supposed to deal with this guy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHOpACoX4ic

Or better yet, how’s a Necro supposed to accomplish anything similar, because I was promised that every profession could be specced to accomplish the same thing but using different skills/styles/abilities and I have no idea how to 1v7 as a Necromancer…
Yes I am frustrated.

Doing the same thing and doing something the exact same way aren’t the same thing.

Bas, did you read what I posted? I actually asked how to do that with a Necro AFTER explicitly saying that ANet promised balance in all classes being able to accomplish the same with different approaches.

You just agreed with me by disagreeing we can’t?
What?

EDIT- I see you changed your answer and well… he isn’t abusing culling, he isn’t using P/D, he doesn’t even need to swap weapons really. The video just illustrates that mitigation/avoidance >>>> damage sponges and well, Necros only have notable damage sponging abilities.

Finally, I don’t diminish that player’s skill by saying the enemies are bad, did they make stupid moves yes, does the caster play thief to it’s best? Definitely.
Would the best Necromancer ever be able to do anything close that agains the same enemies? No way in hell.

So, how are we supposed to deal with this guy?

Or better yet, how’s a Necro supposed to accomplish anything similar, because I was promised that every profession could be specced to accomplish the same thing but using different skills/styles/abilities and I have no idea how to 1v7 as a Necromancer…
Yes I am frustrated.

Just to clear up the confusion about chillblains:

Using the traits greater marks doesn’t actually increase the AoE, but instead swaps the skill available for another one with the larger AoE.

On release, the marks only became unblockable when traited, after 2 months a patch came along that finally increased the area but didn’t increase the casting marker, however the broken greater marks chillblains skill was NOT swapped (shows how much effort bug fixing gets in ANet).
A month AFTER that chillblains greater mark skill was finally introduced for the trait. Besides actually having the increased AoE it also had the increased AoE targetting, BUT (since the bug fixes require so much attention from staff) the Greater Marks skill that substitutes chillblains has a 1/4 casting time as opposed to the 3/4 casting time that every single other, traited or not, mark the staff possesses.

And that’s why every patch since release that deals with Necros has been disappointing.

PS – Focused rituals well of corruption icon is still wrong.

Bhawb.7408:

If they are busy removing conditions, they aren’t doing damage.

If you’re too busy being dead you aren’t inflicting them.

davidhoughton.2104:

Its a latency problem I think, theres a lot of people reporting this in the technical support

No, latency makes absolutely no sense. I can clearly see my skills locked up, like when you swim on the surface of the water. Something like that had to be coded in.

I think the top mobility classes (burst movement which Swiftness and MS sigils are NOT) are Thief and Ele, like everyone says, after that probably comes Warriors, Rangers and Engineers, they have specific weapons with lot’s of mobility.
Guardians and Mesmers are the classes with least mobility from what I’ve seen.
Necros have 0, that’s probably the only part of the “design” that the devs wanted to implement for the Necro that they got right, too bad the “hard to get away from” part didn’t come out as good….

kidbs.8920:

You pretty much have to use staff for AoE situations. Even without the marks your auto-attack pierces and hits several targets. I personally run with a staff and dagger/(focus or warhorn).

I don’t feel that way, especially if you bring double wells in your utility slots.
DS 4 + Double wells is usually enough to deal with AoE mobs, sure the CD may be 40 – 60s, but I tend to take that long before needing ro AoE bomb anything in PvE.
I also use the piercing LifeBlast trait from the Soul Reaping adept, that helps as well.

dundle.2937:

What do you mean by items don’t come with jewels?

The upgrade slot, it comes empty from those karma items.

Oh… Balthazar. Event’s broken again in SoS, I also just checked and the items don’t come with jewels, which is a problem for me.

Because I never saw a karma vendor with Cavalier gear?
Where’d you find this?

Random.6734:

Hey SupahSpankeh, could you elaborate on your post above, especially fill in the words you use acronyms for? Thanks.
-Random

On the paragraph with weapon skills:
D → Dagger
F → Focus
W → Warhorn
SW → Spectral Walk

Latter on:
PVT → Power Vitality Toughness gear
WoC → Well of Corruption
WoS → Well of Suffering
SW → Spectral Walk

How much condition damage are you packing, because if it’s less then 400 I’d swap the staff for anything+focus.

lettucemode.3789:

Andele.1306:

lettucemode.3789:

So why are you here, commenting on the relative value of a trait if you don’t even play the class or read notes to see what’s been fixed?

Its nice that people get to know the perspectives from other classes, it makes you able to make a more objective judgement (i check thief, hunter and mesmer forums almost as often as necro despite thief just being my farm alt and not playing the other 2).

I agree with you on principle, however that’s not what he’s doing. He’s parroting things he read around the forum and giving his opinion on how well something works when he has no direct experience with it. That would be like me going into the mesmer forum and talking about how greatsword needs to be buffed, or something (I have never touched a mesmer). It would be totally out of place and inappropriate.

Not to mention that two of his complaints are out of date (rallying and Lupi).

You used Ad Hominem instead of actually disagreeing with anything he posted.
That’s just being rude.

Also, he’s right, Jagged Horrors were supposedly fixed originally back in October I think? How did that turno out?
Even if they finally stopped people from rallying with it, it’s still a pretty much undesired trait.

The best purpose I can give for the trait is that some Dev loved Protection of the Horde so much that he insisted in making it a minor, unfortunately someone pointed out that would be completely useless if the player didn’t use minion.
Guess how they fixed that?

I usually tap into DS for fury and whenever I do, this doesn’t happen.
Prolonged use of DS though will leave all my skills locked, literally, for about 1 second when I leave it.

Andele.1306:

How about this (all kinda based on other class traits):
5: Undead Conversion: Healing allies gives then 15 seconds of Protection (45 second cooldown – works on minions, only first tick of WoB, doesnt work on self)
15: Morbidial Armor: 5% Condition Damage to Toughness
25: Unholy Vigor: Gain Vigor and Regeneration for 3 seconds upon removing a condition from yourself pre condition removed

For the love of god change the 15 one to Morbid Armor.
What the hell were you thinking with Morbidial?!?!?

PS- I really liked the suggestions.

Ragion.2831:

thanks man, so damage increases by base damage * these numbers?

The values are averaged, so on average after say 100 attacks that is expected damage multiplier on your attacks.

Like the example states, “a character with 20% critical chance and 5 critical damage will deal approximately 11% more damage”, so the column has 1.110.

Of course there is the matter of high-damage attacks procing crits, such as LifeBlast, Bone minion detonation and Frozen Abyss. Such attacks have a high base damage which when multiplied by the crit damage can deal some really big numbers.

I suggest looking at your build and picking crit chance if you have high burst and crit damage if you have long sustained attacks.
I run 42% crit chance with 57% crit damage, but I also use the half DeathShroud cooldown trait with the 15 point curses minor for near-permanent fury, which bumps my crit chance to 62%.

Daecollo.9578:

5: Necrotic Grasp steals endurance and bounces to an additional target.
15: Armor is Disease: 5% of toughness is converted to condition damage.
25: Reanimator: Summon a temporary minion when you use a Mark.

25 doesn’t work, too specific… like the current Reanimator but for other reasons.

A better question is why have other classes’ projectiles speed been buffed while ours hasn’t?
The only projectile on release that was slightly slower than ours was Guardian’s scepter. Since release it’s received at least a 30% speed bonus, while maintaining a higher then average homing.

gamefreak.5673:

Shedim,

The rallies have been fixed for vengeance, mist form, and illusion of life this last patch. Also lupi has been fixed as well. Its on the second page in the link below. It is still possible just not going to often since it will target players first or should.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Lupicus-using-grub-skill-on-necro-minions/first

As gamefreak pointed out, the trait is still kitten, it just doesn’t stink as bad anymore.

PS – Any “activates on death” traits are bad in PvP because they usually only activate after you win the fight.
It’s even worse since the devs are aware of this, it’s obvious with stacking sigils gaining 5 stacks per kill in sPvP. So why are the traits still gimped?

The closest thing to a viable PvP build with minions involves Well of Blood and blast finishers to grant Retaliation to all of them.
That’s how far you need to go to make a “competitive” minion build anything else can be accomplished with another build and requires less effort or is less dependent on broken AI.
For a build to be viable it doesn’t have to work on occasion it has to offer something that’s better then what you’re currently using or else there’s no point in even trying it.

leman.7682:

Teleporting to the Wurm (effectively killing it) does not trigger the poison cloud from the Death Magic grandmaster trait.

But it does grant lifeforce for some unknowable reason.

Bhawb.7408:

I don’t even care about packing up the wurm for less CD, I’d just like to be able to pop it without being teleported if I want. Otherwise you can end up in terrible positioning just to try to be able to use the minion again.

If you’re out of combat you can swap skills, that will put the wurm on cd without putting the skill you swapped into cd.

Solesaver.8764:

Yes, I compare it to Last Refuge because it is the same thing. It is a specific utility that, if it isn’t a part of your build, is minimally useful, slightly more useful if you do focus on building for it, and makes sense where it is because it is highly relevant to the trait line that it is in. Stealth is no more or less an inherent property of thieves than Minions are for necros. They are each class abilities that are available as a rather defining characteristic of their class but aren’t necessary for every build.

No, they are in no way, shape or form anywhere near similar.

Last Refuge is one of the most clutch life-saving traits in the game for PvP and I hate all thieves who have it.

Reanimator does less then nothing.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Kiriakulos.1690:

But still, this patch was a bunch of nothing for us

This patch was a bunch of nothing for every class (except guardians who got an entire build dicked). This wasn’t a “kitten the Necros!” issue. It just wasn’t a balancing patch. No big deal.

You read the patch notes?
Engineers got what might be the start of a big revamp on their kits with weapon stats being applied to them.
Elementalists got a fix on one of their skills and Rangers got a 25% life increase on spirits.
Sounds like something to me.

Arguably, the biggest buff we got is that condition duraiton and damage are applied on effects provoked by siege or other bundles.

Bas.7406:

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Axe in DS with Axe Training will still, and I can guarantee this, do less damage than staff with no training in DS.

Base stats and power coeffecient for Axe are garbage. It’s a kiting/superiority weapon, not a main DPS weapon. Use it as such and it’s axe-ceptable.

LOL

That’s the most ridiculous assumption out there. Staff is our single weakest weapon. It has great marks when traited, but is at all points not a main dps weapon. There isn’t a single knowledgeable necro that would claim that. Staff is great in specific situations. Axe is great all the time, and DS is our most powerful attack outside of Lich Form.

Actually, because Staff is a 2-handed weapon it has a higher base-damage which affects the amount of damage that LifeBlast deals.
You can test it yourself in the mists, equip a 1-handed weapon and staff and switch between the 2 in DS, Staff equipped damage will be higher.

Edit – Axe is also a horribly niche weapon while Staff is versatile as heck, just look at the amount of builds that use each weapon.

Who knows?
ANet fixes a bunch of stuff and doesn’t put any of it in the patch notes.
Remember how suddenly Spectral Walk teleport actually worked, or how Parasitic Bond suddenly started healing on December?
But still, this patch was a bunch of nothing for us, just poke around to see if anything started working, or worse broke.

Ninein.4782:

•Fixed a bug that allowed skills that steal or remove boons to manipulate effects that they were not intended to be able to affect.

Anyone know how this affects us? I recall being able to remove stealth with focus 5. Hope this didn’t nerfed it.

Ever seen a Necro use Putrid Mark to send back the 1-Hit K.O. debuff in the Temple of Balthazar fight?
That was fun.

It’s number of distinct conditions. It’s always been number, people would notice a 100% increase in damage from a party stacking 25 bleed and vulnerability.

Pendragon.8735:

What I would like to see have longer duration is Poison, to give us a second source of attrition damage that stays on the target more often so that if they remove bleed, we are still actually doing some damage.

I think more sources of poison would be a better fix, especially since most condition removal removes 1+ conditions, poison would go right out as well. Right now the only way I think is reliable to re-apply poison is the final attack in the Scepter 1-chain.
Chillblains is nice sure, but that isn’t sustainable.
The only utilities that directly apply poison to enemies is Corrupt Poison Cloud and Signet of Spite, both are considered quite bad.

Adding to the thread, wish we had Serpent’s touch or similar.

manveruppd.7601:

I assume warriors don’t have the ability to apply as many bleeds as necros, so their trait has to be more powerful to compensate.

It’s actually arguable that Warriors have better bleeds since they have 2 weapons that are good for it and much longer base durations.
If you look at the sword’s skills MH 1-chain and both OH skills apply bleeding and the burst skill can stack 12 bleeds with full adrenaline, besides immobilizing.

Also, although their minor has half the chance to bleed on hit compared to ours, the bleed has a 3 second base duration compared to our 1, so combining that to the adept Major, they can achieve 4.5 second bleed 33% of crits while we can achieve 1.2 second 66% of crits.

Sure, bleeds tend to get cleared pretty fast so applying more is generally better, but that takes me back to asking if you’ve seen the amount of stacks that sword skills inflict?

Here’s a link with all bleed related skills and traits > http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bleed

You want to talk about OP?
Forget losing conditions, how about:
15 – Entering DS converts a condition into a boon.
5 sec duration, same conversion table as Well of Power.

Ruufio.1496:

Yeah, that wouldn’t be OP at all…

No, that would just be equivalent to what warriors get in the same trait-line at the same level.

Only the Necromancer considers the presence of white NPCs a great tactical advantage.

Softspoken.2410:

I just want to make clear that I’m not certain the Necromancer has less of a defense than an Elementalist, just that I wish they had more of what I call Active Defense options. (Things to encourage dodge, for example.) Death Shroud alone is probably worth a full health bar, changing those 7,500~ life points to around a 25,900~ life point advantage.

Granted, health and dodges are incomparables. There are times that a dodge will do you more good than a solid chunk of health, (Incoming spike damage!) and times that more health is worth more than a dodge (Bleeding a lot, but I already used my cleanse!)

True, except that conditions can and are cleansed too frequently. I personally believe that the abundance of condition cleanses, worse AoE condition cleanses, was one of the bigger lapses in design that screwed Necromancers. We can deal alot of damage over-time with bleeds, BiP alone can stack up to over 2.5k+ damage without any condition damage, but does that ever happen against players? Almost never.

Unfortunately, the classes, PvP-wise, are balanced around sPvP, where small areas are constantly contested and arenas are smaller. I think that suggestion buffs Necro AoE way too much to ever be implemented.

Would Necrotic Traversal work though?

Arvid.3829:

Unless you want to specialise yourself in single target for some reason, I can’t see why anyone wouldn’t take staff.

Also, I love how people have proven since the first month after release that, even in a power build, scepter is our second most damaging single target weapon (after dagger). Yet 5 months after release, we still get to read all these awesome ‘Scepter on a power necro, you noob bro?’-opinions… At the same time, we can also enjoy the flood of ‘bug this, bug that… Anet you so slow, fix it already’-topics. Hooray!

Lot’s of people bought/received the game during Christmas. ANet has stated that number of players has actually been increasing lately.

I hope to god you’re wrong about this.
Edit- You’re right. Well, seems like we’re worse off then I thought.
Also explains alot about past siege experiences in WvW.

I personally like the clean look of the Soulshard, my favorite dagger actually.

Ratphink.4751:

The idea behind Corruptions is that Necros boast some of the highest amounts of Condition Manipulation in the game.

From being able to transfer those conditions you applied on yourself (dagger 4), to changing them to boons (well of power), or noming them and increasing how much you’re healed by with Consume Conditions (a freakin’ awesome heal skill). You can then taken those conditions you just spread to an opponent and spread them via epidemic.

I still don’t think it’s worth the detriment. Against other players there’s already enough conditions coming at you for you to have your hands full in dealing with them, no reason to freaking help your enemies.

Edit- Know what other classes get in exchange for self-inflicted detriments? Quickness.

I think that the major issue with Corrupt poison cloud is that weakness is counter-intuitive in PvP.
Weakness is supposed to decrease physical damage, but doesn’t affect critical hits.
Physical damage builds focus Critical chance and Crit damage so CPC is actually less effective against it.

I love Flesh Wurm for WvW and sPvP, the damage it deals can pile up quite fast and if you place it correctly can be used as a great escape mechanism.
PvE though? Having to put it on cd only after a fight and having it on cd between fights kills this utility.

I agree with most people that too many of our utilities are too niche, or are only desirable on very specific scenarios.

@striker.3704 Signet of Spite inflicts 5 seconds of each condition, except blind which is 3 seconds. Just goes to show that piling a bunch of different conditions doesn’t actually make for a good strategy, especially if they’re the weakest conditions in the game. Also what’s the use is in a single stack of bleed and vulnerability?

Healing power in soulreaping is about as useless.

Could someone enumerate our skills that actually scale with healing power? I’m having a tough time, all I can come up with is Regen from mark of blood and the 3 healing skills.

The only utility I’d change is spectral wall for epidemic, you have alot of conditions going might as well make the best of it.

Traits are a bit weird though.
30 in death magic seems like a waste, especially since spiteful vigor only triggers off our 6 skill. You picked that to maximize BiP’s might I think? I’d swap 10 from it into curses and pick Master of corruption, you have 2 ways to transfer conditions and the good heal so corruption skills are as useful as they get.

I personally dislike blood magic so I’d also take those 10 and put them into curses, this allows you to get Lingering Curse and increases your overall precision for quite a bit, making the 20 in Soul Reaping alot more useful.

Item stats are really up to you, but since you have so much condition focus I suggest looking into stuff with condition damage.

DragonXavier.3964:

Kiriakulos.1690:

Axe/Focus can be used as a setup weapon for direct damage builds that utilize DS, outside of that niche axe is generally a worse choice then any other weapons we have.

I dont know about that. Run a build that focuses on vulnerability, power and precision and you can do a decent amount of damage. Run something like this and you can get around 3-5k damage from one ax 2. It also has a lot more survivability than one might think. Dont quote me on this build build I just threw it together a few days ago.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQEQNAndWjMaV6xbGb87JAoH5ubtxMOuY6DuD;ToAg0U1YqRUjtGXNyaWUMIYmA

Swap the points in Power with the DS trait line and you’ll get the build I was talking about. Also, Signet of Spite gives too little for what it does and with that long a cooldown, yes even with target the weak. Try out what you’re using with Blood is Power instead, even if the enemy removes the bleeding you still keep the stacks of might for a rending claws → DS life blasts.

Somoe.3621:

I’m not saying the Necromancer is perfectly balanced but yall are being complete drama queens about this. Conveniently ignoring what the class has going for it and exaggerating its weaknesses wont make buffs come any sooner. Oh, and pretending that everyone outside of the “Necromancer-Main Master Race” is too ignorant to comprehend your “plight” doesn’t help you either.

Please, get over yourselves.

When you have 4 distinct people pointing out how your arguments are bad you should re-evaluate what you’re saying before making an even bigger fool out of yourself.

On the other hand you do bring to light the biggest issue with this profession, everything seems much better in theory/paper doesn’t it?

NVM that 5 of the finishers are underwater or that most of the land blast/finishers compete for the same 3 utility slots, with 5 of the combos requiring a 20 point major trait for a measly 900 range, something incredibly important in WvW.

Or that teleporting back to where you were is in no way a gap-closer.

Or that we actually lack the 2 highest damage conditions in the game: confusion and burning.

Or that neither Axe nor scepter are 1200 range weapons… neither is staff actually, but it’s only a matter of time before that gets fixed like shroud-stomping.

My final point is that THIS profession has issues. WE play it and have been clamoring for bloody fixes and balance since week 1 of the game. THIS forum was the first to devote any effort into a bug list, creating a very well organized and cataloged one , which ANET has never actually bothered to make any feedback upon about what was a bug or working as intended. Saying that 2 of what are considered the better and more well off professions in the game have any serious flaws compared to Necromancer IN THIS kitten FORUM is akin to asking to create the Drama you end up saying that we should stop.

Additionally, search the forums first and post the thread AFTER you don’t find your answer, this has been asked at least twice before.

I haven’t used Plague form since October when I got a Mad King rune set.
Those runes have turned my Flesh Golem from ok to actually Elite.

The birds are triggered on Golem charge and add a 2k+- AoE untargeted damage to my golem charge, also since each bird hits 16x times I can regularly stack 5+ bleeds with barbed precision.
Also Golem Charge for me is around 1.6k damage + KnockDown.
Unlimited targets Knockdown, ever used it in melee against a zerg in WvW? It’s kinda like bowling.

All of this with a 45 second cd (bird activation actually has a longer cd than the Golem Charge), so yeah Plague got out-classed.

Axe/Focus can be used as a setup weapon for direct damage builds that utilize DS, outside of that niche axe is generally a worse choice then any other weapons we have.

Staff is incredibly reliable and versatile, that’s why it’s our most popular weapon.
Staff is also one our few weapons with only good traits. The only build I know of that doesn’t use it is the exact one that uses Axe/Focus + Dagger/WH, a single target DD build.

Dagger has our highest DPS with it’s auto-attack, which is also our singular melee skill out of the water.
Dagger 2 is unreliable in PvP but ok in PvE.
Dagger 3, when it hits, is an incredibly long immobilize.

Scepter has a very good sustained damage with a condition build and a very useful 2 skill since it cripples+bleeds in AoE, scepter 3 is generally a waste of time. Scepter also has one of our best weapon traits as a GM trait in the curses tree.

WH is best when combined with dagger since 5 is pretty much a melee skill and the 4 daze is hard to hit from longer ranges.

Focus can be combined easily enough with most MH weapons, but it’s most useful with a DD or Hybrid build.

OH dagger is better with condition builds since it has a condition transfer and an AoE bleed+ weakness, all of this adds up into OH dagger being good in ranged builds, a bit odd since MH dagger is pretty much melee centered.

@Somoe.3621

Oh wow, it’s opposite day! Guardians and Mesmers are worse off then Necros.

Now to refute you:

Guardian scepter is bad? Dunno never seen one use it. Might be I guess, good thing they have staff huh?

You do realize we have some of the worst power scaling in the game don’t you? Just check out the direct damage from axe and staff marks or compare our weapon DPS with a warrior longbow or rifle or… anything really. Hell throw in Mesmer GS, Thief Dagger, Elem dagger into the mix, the difference is absurd. We only have 2 good power scaling attacks, dagger auto (our only melee skill, ever notice that?) and DS lifeblast at 50%< LF.

Of those combo fields, 5 are Utilities which must be traited for ranged casting, 1 is an underwater dash and only 1 is on a weapon skill, not so great now is it?

For the finishers, 5 are underwater added on the December patch, 4 are tied to minions( good god I can’t remember the last time I triggered a blast finisher with Necrotic Traversal) which are utility skills so you can’t bring finishers + more combo fields.
The only weapon finishers outside of underwater are in Staff.

Suddenly the lapse in design and synergy comes to light doesn’t it?

Swiftness is not a burst movement skill it’s sustained just like Locust’s passive.
Dark Path has an on-hit requirement with a slow homing projectile which won’t work if it hits an enemy beyond 900 range, tell me of other teleports all these requirements.
The worm has a long casting time, if you cast in front of you within range you are already there by the time you can trigger the port.