Guild Wars 2

You forgot to factor in healing in regards to rabid vs carrion. At no point have I disputed that carrion does more damage than rabid. Its the survivability that I’m debating.

flow.6043:

Now, before you say that this is all theory and I should try for myself:
This principle underlines every real fight in game, there is no way around it.
If you get burst down with a carrion amu by a thief in one go, then you sure as hell wouldn’t have survived the same with rabid. Why? Because math!
If your experience tells you something else, then it’s not because of your armor or healthpool.

It was theory the minute you admitted they were rough calculations. No, I will not get burst down in one go with rabid. Why? Because I’ve already had this situation occur many, many times by fighting the same opponent using the same build multiple times per stat set. Your math is flawed, this much you yourself have already admitted. I cannot accept it as anything but theory.

Besides, actual in game evidence has already shown me all that I need to see. I don’t need theoretical numbers. With carrion, you’ll do slightly more damage, but you’re squishy. With rabid, you’ll do a little bit less damage, but you can eat bursts and still survive. Heals heal for a flat amount. Toughness increases the effectiveness of healing. Having a bigger HP pool but no increased healing means you’ll just have a bigger initial HP pool, but you’ll be unable to fill it back up because of fixed healing amounts. Each HP healed will be lost quicker without toughness as well. Condition damage is a wash thanks to condition transfers. Their weapon becomes my weapon.

flow.6043:

Kravick.4906:

Its not perception when I have 4 other people, people whom I play with on a daily basis, all seeing the same thing I am. Hell, I’ve had people that I play against notice the same thing. I got a whisper from someone I’ve played a few games against also noticing this difference.

Some people “seeing” or “noticing” the same as you do would be the definition of perception.

All we can tell you is that the math behind it favours carrion.
And that means that either the formula for damage calculation is wrong or that coming to a different conclusion empirically can only be due to circumstances other than your amulet prefix.

Like I said, its theorycraft. Theorycraft does not take into consideration even half of what actually goes on in a fight. So I’m inclined to believe that the math is flawed. I would suggest you actually try it yourself instead of come to a conclusion based on raw numbers. Mathmatically speaking, warriors and necromancers should survive a hell of a lot longer than guardians with their inflated HP, but we all know this to be untrue.

Your EHP also fails to consider damage sources. If you’ve ever played a game called EVE Online, you’d recognize how EHP can fluctuate wildly depending on what kind of damage you take, and raw numbers never allows you to anticipate what is really happening. Does carrion work better against condition users? Sure, I can see that, but there are a heck of a lot more power builds than there are condition builds being run.

Pendragon.8735:

I transfered over to carrion and don’t see any difference in survivability, that’s why I said its perception. And I do more damage consistently because cleansing removes less of my overall DPS. The top tourney necros run carrion. You take more damage yes, its easy to notice, but you also have 5-6k more health to absorb that damage.

It could very well be that having the bigger health pool fools people into playing more aggressively because they haven’t adjusted. They see 20k health left and mistake that it is worth the same as 20k with Rabid, so wade into risky situations.

Its not perception when I have 4 other people, people whom I play with on a daily basis, all seeing the same thing I am. Hell, I’ve had people that I play against notice the same thing. I got a whisper from someone I’ve played a few games against also noticing this difference.

I don’t really care what top tourney necros run. They’ve openly admitted that survivability isn’t why they run carrion. They run carrion because of the slightly increased damage because of all the condition clears that fly every which way. Its easy to burst down a carrion user with a power build. I do it all the time on my thief, and its immediately noticeable when they drop in no time at all. I can’t burst a rabid user. They eat the entire chain and still survive. At this point I’m just repeating myself.

Better survivability with Rabid? That’s an illusion, especially with the condition heavy meta in pvp atm.

Most of your post is theorycraft. I don’t like discussing theorycraft as it fails to take into consideration what actually happens in a fight. ANet used theorycraft to create this so called “attrition” that necromancers have (inflated HP doesn’t make us attrition. Look at warriors and guardians for proof of that). Look at how thats worked out so far.

Its also no illusion. I can see it plainly with my own eyes. So can other people. I fight with a thief, a very good thief, on a regular basis. I’ve never been able to beat him with the build he uses. With carrion, he beats me in under a minute, every single time. Its kind of silly how much he chunks my health when using carrion. Yes, I know what stun breaks are. Its unlikely that he ever gets to finish his opening combo, but I simply cannot sustain a prolonged fight against him using a carrion amulet. With rabid, I last 4-5 minutes against him easily. Still haven’t beaten him, come close a couple of times, but like I said, he is very good. His build is based around healing in stealth, so every 7 seconds he basically comes out with a near full HP bar. He wins by attrition. Based on experience, actual combat, not theorycraft, rabid has shown to be superior against burst DPS. Most of the threats I face in PvP are from burst builds, not condition builds. Conditions do nothing to me. They end up working in my favor, actually.

As far as condition being the meta? When was the last time you played tPvP? The only classes that ever run condition damage are bunker rangers (most of their damage comes from the pet, not conditions), HGH engineers (seeing a lot less of this build type these days), and of course other necromancers. Everyone else runs power based builds.

As far a carrion doing more damage, I’ll concede to that, but that was never my point anyway. You also don’t do any damage when dead, and you’re certainly not in any position to help your team while dead either.

Blurred frenzy damage is moderate in any build with passive defence – I do not understand the complaints about this skill.

Its not the damage people complain about. Its the fact that with this one skill alone, you have invulnerability 20% (25% when traited) of the time in any fight.

There is nothing more to it. The Gladium storyline was rushed and really poorly written over all and we never find out what really happened. Spoilers below.

Pendragon.8735:

Playing the game generates a lot of perceptions but the mechanics are based on hard math.

Rabid requires lots and lots of healing to start noticing a big difference from carrion. Your initial health pool will handle the exact same amount of direct damage between carrion and rabid, with the extra health exactly balancing out the extra mitigation, but obviously the bigger health pool eats conditions better.

Lets say you heal a total of 7500 in a fight, one main heal a few regens, the mitigation difference in favor of rabid is only about 1500 effective health. Yet if you have taken your healing amount in condition damage over your entire pool in that time (so 7.5k condition out of say 30k total), the extra mitigation will be entirely negated out.

It’s easy to move most long bleeds out, but stuff like confusion, burning, terror, even first few ticks of poison, and indeed even bleeds that other profs can stack in big bursts (say 5 or 10 at a time) will still tick some on you, its just impossible to think you aren’t still taking a fair good bit of condi damage in a big fight with conditions flying all over.

If you are in some prolonged zerg fight with a coordinated team blasting healing water fields all over, as well as quickly cleansing conditions, then the difference would start adding up meaningfully.

Healing scales better with toughness. I also think someone screwed up the math some where in regards to carrion. EHP means nothing when you don’t have anything to compare it too. Even my friends notice a huge difference in survivability and longevity in team fights when I use rabid instead of carrion. I also notice the difference immediately rather than over time like you’re suggesting.

Long story short, I’ve tested both carrion and rabid extensively in actual fights (not controlled circumstances or through theorycrafting math), and found that rabid allows me to live much, much, longer. You are also so much more susceptible to burst with carrion. As I said before, conditions are not a problem considering I have so many ways to transfer them.

Login.5102:

Sigh

Carrion is better then rabid in tpvp.

The current meta is condi, toughness does not protect you from condi DMG.

Necros get more out of health then any other class do to life force.

Sigil of geomancy is better than earth.

There’s a reason ALL top necros use carrion over rabid in tpvp.

Good day

I still find this to be debatable. Personal experience has shown me that carrion just gets you killed faster. I cannot sustain in group fights using carrion, and a thief will break me in half when using carrion, where as using rabid I can live a hell of a lot longer in a group fight, and even survive and beat thieves if I get jumped by them using rabid. When I play other classes, and run into necromancers using carrion, I just wreck them in a matter of seconds. They’re so easy to kill. The rabid users actually survive long enough to give me trouble, and live a hell of a lot longer than carrion users.

Yeah, vitality scales well with life force, but it still degenerates at the same rate, and still gets two shot by power builds since you have no toughness. Honestly, with carrion, it feels like my life force pool disappears faster when being attacked despite having more of it. I have enough condition clears that I don’t need to worry about boosting my HP against other condition builds. Without toughness to go with vitality, your still getting hit for obscene damage, and having 6k extra HP only means you can survive 1, maybe 2 extra auto attacks.

Top teams are more about coordination than they are about builds. Builds help, yes, but having the best builds in the isn’t going to do you any good against a team with the best coordination, but using suboptimal builds.

I agree with you on geomancy. Even using rabid I still use geomancy. Nothing beats the on demand bleed stacks.

Runes of the Undead – Use these for high bleed ticks. Useful in PvP since condition clears get thrown every which way which makes duration pointless.

Runes of the Necromancer/Nightmare – Useful for terror builds. You can get 100% fear duration with these, the 50% fear duration trait, and condition duration food.

2x Krait, 2x Centaur, 2x Afflicted – Bleed duration set. Use this in dungeons. Enemies live long enough for duration to actually mean something. With duration you do more damage over time than with just pure condition damage.

This can sometimes happen with any utility if you switch them while signet of undeath is on CD. I don’t know specifically what causes it since it doesn’t happen every time.

War Mourner.5168:

They still have to use HS to get stealth out of black powder, that gives you more then enough time to CC them after dropping the blind.

You’re blind. You’re not getting any CC off on them.

Zenith.7301:

The best roaming classes happen to be your 1v1 counters. D/P thieves with shadow arts or S/D thieves with shadow arts. Phantasm mesmers. BM rangers, Engineers.

To be fair, these builds pretty much counter everyone 1v1, with Phantasm mesmers being the god of 1v1.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Kravick, I started this thread because I’d like to generate a conversation. Every single time I see you post, not just in this thread but in others, it’s with a profoundly hostile attitude. You wield your opinions like weapons, apparently seeking to end the discussion with a single brutal slice.

Really? Because this is exactly how you present yourself to me and others on these boards. Every time you reply to me its always with a condescending attitude. Frankly, all of your posts are like this. The only thing I’ve done is be direct and upfront with my feelings. If you take offense to that, I can’t do anything about it. Its not as if they’re even my feelings any way. The general consensus among the majority of necromancers is that staff is pretty bad without greater marks. However, I simply explained WHY staff without greater marks is bad. If you’ve taken to offense to that, so be it. I can’t change how you feel and I’m not even going to try. We wouldn’t have so many people complaining about staff being useless without greater marks if it wasn’t such a problem.

If you started this conversation to generate conversation, then don’t go around and snap at people who answer. This happens quite a bit with you.

Blaine Tog.8304:

No, I’m talking about PvE and WvW. If Kravick would like to explicitly restrict his viewpoint to sPvP, then I wouldn’t disagree with him since I rarely play sPvP. But I play WvW all the time and am finding the smaller mark sizes to be a relatively minor problem considering AoE spells have a 5-target limit anyway and zergs can get packed pretty tight.

I’m talking about WvW and sPvP. PvE is a non issue. You can litterally face roll in PvE with 0 trait points spent and still win.

Saying you do fine doesn’t really tell me anything. Unless you’re willing to make a video of your game play, I can’t even take anything you say at face value. I could tell everyone that I’m the best necro in the game all day every day, but no one would believe me unless I showed proof.

Honestly, I don’t believe for one second you are doing fine in WvW without greater marks. You telling me you’re doing fine suggests to me that all you’ve done thus far is mindlessly run around following a commander icon without much forethought into why greater marks makes staff a viable weapon. Any class on any build can do this and then pat themselves on the back at the end of the day. They can say they did fine, but it doesn’t mean anything when you’ve got a bunch of other people who have a clue and are actually carrying you.

The way you describe yourself and the way you play, you honestly sound exactly like a random zergling. Zerglings don’t really know much beyond following a blue icon. They don’t understand what makes them successful.

You don’t seem to have put much thought into what you, as a necromancer, can bring to your group, or what your role as a necromancer is during a tower/keep siege. Without greater marks, you’re not hitting anyone on walls with those tiny marks. Since you can’t hit them up there, you’re incapable of applying pressure to force people to back off. Without forcing people to back off, your flame ram operators are going to get wrecked. You’re also incapable of blocking a choke with those tiny marks. Outside of hitting cannons and oil, staff without greater marks IS useless, because you sure as hell aren’t hitting players with it. Especially on walls, considering the projectile will just get obstructed or sidestepped.

By not running greater marks, you’re actually doing more harm than good. Its like thieves trying to roam with pistol/pistol. Sure, you can hit people, might even be able to kill the occasional bad player, but its not like you’re actually doing anything useful. More often than not, though, you end up flailing your arms about, while someone with an actual clue drives a spike through your chest. In your case, however, you’re hiding behind a zerg so you don’t actually know how bad running without greater marks is. Chances are, every other necromancer in your group is running greater marks and will do your job for you, so you probably don’t even notice. If your zerg wipes, you just tell yourself its because they had more numbers, rather than asking yourself why you lost, and what you could have done to change it.

Dragon’s Tooth needs to be given a line of sight mechanic. Epidemic was apparently deemed OP with no LOS (it wasn’t). I see no reason to for DT not to be treated the same.

War Mourner.5168:

The only build that can reliably break off from a necro if you build for it is a sword thief with shadow step (withdraw works as well actually). Nothing else can safely disengage, but you do have to build with this in mind.

I disengage reliably from necros on my dagger/dagger thief. In fact, I can’t remember a single instance of a necro being able to keep me in a fight, ever.

In It To Win It.2315:

Kravick.4906:

Blaine Tog.8304:

I would encourage you guys to try giving up GM for a while

Like I said, I’ve tried. Staff is completely useless without greater marks. People just walk around them otherwise. Trying to use staff auto in any situation in PVP is also a waste of time. There are a hundred different things you could be doing that would bring more to your team.

People walking around your marks means you aren’t aiming them properly and greater marks is a band-aid.

If you say so. Doesn’t change the fact that necro staff is a completely useless weapon without that trait. There is no other weapon in this game that is so disabled by not taking its associated trait.

Blaine Tog.8304:

I would encourage you guys to try giving up GM for a while

Like I said, I’ve tried. Staff is completely useless without greater marks. People just walk around them otherwise. Trying to use staff auto in any situation in PVP is also a waste of time. There are a hundred different things you could be doing that would bring more to your team.

Necro is the worst roaming class. Can you roam? Sure, but more often then not, you will fail, and fail often.

You know how i said that necromancer can’t compete straight up for damage with some of the other classes… but !… if a necromancer’s damage = 80% of a warrior’s damage AND can amplify the warriors damage by 20% then they are equal ?
Amplify the warrior’s damage not only in terms of higher numbers, but also DPS up time and positioning…

Warriors apply vulnerability on criticals and on GS auto attack, so they’re going to have 25 stacks of vuln anyway.

I have no idea who or what this is.

Is Robert Hrouda no longer at ANet, or did he just get assigned to a different department or something?

spoj.9672:

Ive switched back to 30/30/0/0/10 and it does do noticeably more dps. Having condition damage in curses is not an arguement to avoid it. The highest dps warrior builds use atleast 25 pts in arms which is precision and condition damage, just like the necro lines. The traits + minor traits and precision are too important to give up.

What would this build look like trait wise?

Bweaty.9187:

Guess this is what Anet meant about necro’s getting CC’ed then ‘Trained’.
Dev’s also said that, if we had stability we’d just be guardians.
Hope we get more/shorter CD ‘Brakes Stun’

There’s also little bits, like. They moa you and your pets are gone.

They can be one of the most annoying class’s to catch, especially if they know what glowy hands to look for.

Oh and as for actually finishing them off… It’s not quite like our 1 person fear.

Its extremely flawed logic on ANets part. Warriors have access to a ton of stability, but they’re not even close to being like guardians. Engineers have stabilty, nothing like guardians. Rangers have a 20 second long stability and don’t even remotely play or function like guardians. Giving stability to necromancers wouldn’t make us guardians even in the slightest. We still wouldn’t be able to tank like a guardian. Just be able to get some of our abilities off without getting knocked around like a bowling pin.

youlostthegame.8102:

Kravick.4906:

Were you guys using that 30/0/0/10/30 build?

Similar variations of that build, we were all either 30/10/0/0/30 or 30/0/10/0/30. I’m not 100% on that but to who I spoke to those are the builds.

The trait you take in 10 curses is fairly obvious, but what trait would you take if you go 10 points into death magic?

I’ve tried using staff without Greater Marks a few times before. I mean seriously tried. I’ve come to the personal conclusion that without Greater Marks, this weapon set is completely useless. The auto attack is to slow for me to even consider this weapon even having one, as it will never hit anything, so the only reason I ever switch to staff is for the marks. With smaller marks you have to lead your target, but more often than not, I’ve had people just simply walk around them.

The day I gave up trying to use staff without Greater Marks is the day I had a thief on the ropes. He had a sliver of HP left. All I had to do was land one mark on him. Chillblains so I could catch up, or Mark of Blood to finish him off, or Reaper’s Mark to drop him with terror. What ended up happening was quite aggravating. He just zig zagged around two of the marks right as I dropped them right in front of him, and dodge rolled (fair enough) through the third, completely avoiding all of them. Seeing as he was a thief, he obviously got away.

Were you guys using that 30/0/0/10/30 build?

Zenith.7301:

emikochan.8504:

Zenith.7301:

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Zenith.7301:

Yeah….and you will definitely land that dark path on a non-braindead guy? And he wouldn’t cleanse/teleport out of the root?

Are you serious?

I land Dark Path atleast 94% of the time. Also, if he does cleanse/teleport out of it, then I can simply capture a point or he’ll still be in my wells with one less cleanse. Oh, you’re probably thinking of WvW, the place that balance doesn’t exist in.

Yeah, because spvp is so balanced by unnaturally forcing people to sit over points, artificially inflating the value of specs like grenade engineers and bunkers where in WvW those specs are made moot because people can MOVE.

But the game is balanced around point play, not free movement. spvp is way more balanced (if only because you can’t get ridiculously high stats + food + items)

Bullcrap. You can’t say a game format where lonbgow rangers and staff eles and hammer warriors don’t exist to be anymore “balanced” than the format in which they DO exist.

And quite frankly I see a lot more variety in group configurations in WvW, whereas every kitten time I queue for tpvp I happen to bump into a team with a mesmer and 2 eles.

And those “very high” stats are what allow my tough/vit/condi damage necro to thrive in wvw whereas I’m screwed in tpvp because I have to choose between toughness or vitality, instead of both as a class that gets trained 24/7.

I know the Tough/vit/condi stats exist on ascended items, but I haven’t seen armor with those stats. What stats are you using on your armor?

Jon, since we’re talking about marks in this thread, I want to bring this up.

Staff #2 skill Mark of Blood gives 3 stacks of bleeding. The Mark of Evasion trait in the Blood Magic tree that drops a Mark of Blood on dodge roll only gives 2 stacks of bleeding. Is this intentional or is this a bug? We’ve never been given confirmation of this.

I want this armor for my necromancer. ANet, give us this armor!

Yes, they definitely play the game. A lot of the time you won’t know they’re from ANet, however. We have one in our guild that does WvW with us a lot. He joined some time back because he got sick of everyone constantly going straight for him when he had his tag up. Kinda cool having someone from ANet in our guild, but really hes just like everyone else.

daimasei.4091:

Kravick.4906:

I wonder why only the norn and humans got them. I didn’t see any of the other races with swimsuits. Perhaps thats why we haven’t seen them in the gem store yet? They haven’t finished modeling them on the other races?

^this

I would love to have the first and the last 2 for my char but I think that’s not going to happens.

Besides, southsun is over so, what’s the point?

Also, many people with ridiculous morals values have strong feelings against anything more revealing than a nun habit (I’m still shocking those people don’t complain about females chars being able to do anything besides cooking) so Anet must be careful not to insult those people.

I don’t think ANet is really worried about offending these kinds of people TBH.

Charr wear nothing but a loin cloth when you take off their armor. A charr in a swimsuit would be less revealing than if they just took off their armor currently. Everyone else are just as revealing when you take off their armor. Humans, norn and asura both wear underwear/panties and a bra. Sylvari have a little leaf that covers them. So I don’t think ANet is really too worried about that.

I wonder how a female Charr would even fit in a bikini? o.O

It would have to be a really big one, obviously. :p

TyPin.9860:

I think atm I profit from the lack of knowledge of the necromancer abilities. I yesterday fought 3 ppl, (2 of them upleveled though) in WvW, where the lvl 80 guy was a guardian. And I destroyed them. Unfortunatly their Zerg arrived, and I had to flee. Sadly I didn’t hit the record button, before the fight started.

You won that fight because up levels do not put out enough DPS pressure for them to be considered dangerous. They also die extremely fast. The one level 80 that was there was a guardian. Necromancers eat guardians. You had a fight that was very much in your favor.

I don’t have problems fighting multiple up levels, in fact most necros don’t, but up levels are not an even fight and most of us do not count them since they’re just fodder. Try a 1vX with all of your opponents being level 80, and in equivalent gear as you are, and that fight would have gone completely different. Necromancers are not equipped to handle 1vX fights like mesmers, guardians, elementalists, engineers, rangers (the non bow rangers anyway) and thieves are. Every class has a bunker spec that is capable of 1vXing, or at least holding out long enough for help to arrive. In the case of thieves and mesmers, they can actually go full berserker with enough skill and win out because of invisibility and distortion effects. This is why you never see serious bunker necros in sPvP. Yeah, they can hold a point against one person, but when 2 or more people show up, that necromancer is as dead as their minions.

Necros don’t do so well in 1vX because we have no skills that evade, dodge, or block for us. We cannot attrition like we’re supposed to. ANet knows this and are (hopefully) working on solutions to this problem.

I wonder why only the norn and humans got them. I didn’t see any of the other races with swimsuits. Perhaps thats why we haven’t seen them in the gem store yet? They haven’t finished modeling them on the other races?

Necromancers never had problems 1v1. Its fighting multiple opponents and sustaining in long fights, while being labeled an “attrition class”, where necromancers have problems. Then there is the bleed cap in dungeons. Bring any other condition built person and your DPS gets cut in half. Death Shroud is also ill-conceived and has more synergy with power than it does any other build.

No one ever said necromancers can’t do PVP or PVE. Its just when you’ve played other classes in the same environment, you’ll start to see how and why necromancers fall apart. Especially based on their class description. Right now, nothing from our class description is reality. People can easily run from us, of all the classes that have access to poison we have the least, our attrition is atrocious, and our “hybrid” capability is really only effective in PVE.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

You can get 110% fear duration, but is it worth it?

20% Necromancer runes
10% Sigil
30% 30 in Spite
50% from Master of Terror

Personally Fear would probably be the only thing worth speccing for duration on in tPvP, since almost everyone is practically oozing condition cleanses. Otherwise, go for quantity.

All conditions, and boons, cap at 100% duration. The only reason Lingering Curse goes over is because it modifies the base duration of the skill rather than act as a bleed duration statistic.

Disastro.4086:

Lolicia.6502:

How are we terrible at stacking bleeds? Staff 2 + mark of evasion + weakening shroud + geomancy is a quick 10 aoe stacks that can turn into 20 stacks on surrounding targets after epidemic. Add in scepter 2/dagger 5 and you can get even more.

We’re not terrible at stacking bleeds I don’t think any one said that. The point is that has little to do with true attrition based combat which involves outlasting your opponent and ANet claims we’re “defined/designed” around that kind of attrition they’ve stated it directly on more than one ocassion.

Oh and your 20+ stacks get instantly removed with one skill and then you get lolburst into oblivion while most of your goodies are on cooldown.. in PvE its not an issue aside from the stacking caps.

I did, actually, but its all relative. Can a necromancer achieve 15+ stacks of bleeds? Yes. Like Lolicia said, 3-5 seconds, sure. 25 stacks? Only on secondary targets via epidemic, and only if we manage to hit two targets with our abilities. This won’t happen if they’re spread apart farther than 600 range. However, by comparison to the other classes ability to stack bleeds, our stacking is rather meh. They can do it faster, but only because its a cast time issue. If we had half the cast times we do now, I’d take everything back. Even engineers can get some pretty wicked AoE bleed stacks going. The only thing that sets us apart from the others is that we have epidemic, which is why our stacking isn’t as good. Balancing a class around one skill like that is a bad way to balance a class. Especially when you look at the alternatives.

That being said, if there is only one target, as with 90% of the boss encounters in the game, our bleed stacking is terrible. Also what you said. Since bleed is our primary source of damage, it all gets wiped clean by a single condition clear.

roamzero.9486:

Kravick.4906:

Most necros who have played this class for a while have already come to this conclusion and come to terms with it. Yes, we are pretty bad at attrition. REALLY bad at it, in fact. We’re also pretty bad at stacking bleeds, our primary source of condition damage. ANet did not have time to give this class a final balance pass before it was shoved out the door. What is really strange to me is why it has taken them so long just to even look at this class for rebalancing.

There was a final balance pass, Necro was nerfed to the ground because it was OP during the early stages. DS #2 used to be a ground targeted shadowstep for example.

That said it is pretty sad that a D/D ele can easily out-bunker a Necro, it seems like Necro was supposed to be the tanky mage class but that never materialized.

I know how necros were in beta. I played one in all three BWEs. I also wouldn’t call that a balance pass. It was an across the board nerf. They didn’t do any testing after the changes and its very obvious, especially when you look at how our traits are spread every where. A lot of the utilities are also in pretty bad shape.

Mine. Nothing scary or intimidating I’m afraid. I just like the colors..

flow.6043:

I guess it works like when you are dazed by one of those raptor mobs. You see each second ticking down seperately, not the full duration in one go.

Nah, thats because the raptors screech applies daze every second that you stand in their cone of fire. It functions similar to wells. It pulses. If you step out of it or dodge roll, the daze will only last 1 second.

flow.6043:

I might agree on faster, but higher? Necros can hit the 25 cap even though it takes them an hour.

And transferring: their bleeds are yours to throw back at them, in a way this is a more effective stacking method than any other class is capable of.

I don’t know about that. I find that simply clearing the conditions is more efficient and effective. Transfers can be dodged/blocked. Cleansing cannot.

And yes, higher AND faster.

I can’t locate a suitable video but warriors do something similar with frenzy every 10 seconds. Though the reason you don’t see condition warriors is simply because axe/greatsword is so much more powerful that you’re actually nerfing your damage potential by using a sword.

Necromancers are balanced around having epidemic, which is why our bleed application is so slow and not as high.

flow.6043:

It’s not nothing.
Also, other bleeding classes don’t have something like Deathly Swarm or Putrid Mark.
So in a battle of the bleeders the necro will always have the upper hand.

Thats not the point. The point was that there are classes that can stack bleeds faster, and to a higher number. Transferring has nothing to do with it.

ReMortis.4287:

It’s faster because the cast time is 1/2s with trait and 3/4 without it. Much smoother at the 1/2s speed but should be the same across both versions. I’m slightly concerned anet is going to “fix” this by just making both traited and untraited 3/4s cast time.

They did say that they were looking at reducing some of our cast times. This could be one of them. Though I have a feeling that this might have been an accident. I’ll be looking to see if this gets changed back to 3/4 in the next patch.

Wow, I never knew this. This is really interesting.

What needs to be tested now is if the same bug that affects daze also affects fear. Sigil of Paralyzation causes a rounding error with daze and increases daze effects by a full second. A 2 second daze becomes a 3 second daze with just the paralyzation signet. I wonder if fear is affected the same way.

EDIT: Just tested it. It does not cause the rounding error on fear as it does on daze effects.

Lolicia.6502:

How are we terrible at stacking bleeds? Staff 2 + mark of evasion + weakening shroud + geomancy is a quick 10 aoe stacks that can turn into 20 stacks on surrounding targets after epidemic. Add in scepter 2/dagger 5 and you can get even more.

I have multiple 80s. Trust me, thats nothing.

Most necros who have played this class for a while have already come to this conclusion and come to terms with it. Yes, we are pretty bad at attrition. REALLY bad at it, in fact. We’re also pretty bad at stacking bleeds, our primary source of condition damage. ANet did not have time to give this class a final balance pass before it was shoved out the door. What is really strange to me is why it has taken them so long just to even look at this class for rebalancing.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Guns and Giblets.9308:

You’ve put your finger on a significant issue with the reward system in GW2.

Much of the lack of challenge came from rushing this game to beat Mists of Pandaria (or whatever it’s called). You can see that traits and skills were hastily designed, and that dungeon bosses had to be given the Defiant band aid because there really wasn’t enough time to design meaningful encounters.

ArenaNet announced the release date of Guild Wars 2 before Blizzard announced the release date for Mists of Pandaria.

MOP was rushed out to compete with GWII, not the other way around.

That said, it is fairly easy to see that GWII was rushed out as well. It just wasn’t rushed out in order to compete with anything.

It was rushed to save NCSofts massively failing stock prices. If the rumors were true, GW2 box sales, plus the massive 600 million dollar bailout from Nexon, basically saved NCSoft from having to declare bankruptcy. They had been in the toilet for over a year at that point and NCSoft was getting pretty desperate. So yeah, they made ANet release the game before it was ready.

darickkowalski.8906:

Kravick.4906:

Like all thief builds, just spam 1 button til victory. In this case, its spear #5. You’ll be invulnerable 95% of the time.

I guess this kind of works, spamming the “3” button (block/retaliate) is also pretty strong but without a power/precision build it takes a long time to wear down an enemy. Not to mention that spamming a single skill is the least fun way to play.

Its the way the thief class was designed. It might not have been intentional, but when you create a combat system where you have 0 cool downs, its really the most efficient way to play. Find the most powerful skill at your disposal and just spam it until everything is dead.

Like all thief builds, just spam 1 button til victory. In this case, its spear #5. You’ll be invulnerable 95% of the time.

TheKillerAngel.3596:

I am currently researching whether this sort of practice violates consumer protection/business law.

For NA, it will vary by state/province I’m sure.