Guild Wars 2

I heard one that was something like “where did that come from?!?” after I got one-shot by a sniper in arah exp (57k crits hurt). Female asura btw.

Still waiting on pics from the Maguuma festivities at DR’s spawn in Maguuma BL last night. Very smart of you guys to make the alpha golem to carry your drinks.

Laiboch.4380:

Funny… I could say its a disgrace to watch people building siege in a glitched area at Citadel because the 20+ AR couldn’t drop the 2 thieves and 1 warrior defending the tower… People that live in a glass house should not be throwing stones.

Citadel is made of glass? :o
Bring out the earth ele’s! We’ve got walls to break!

Rustypipes.6238:

Maybe you should adjust your play style to the class instead of asking (demanding) for the class to be changed to fit your play style.

Also, you shouldn’t be expecting this game’s professions to be what other games did with similar professions, so comparing them is pointless.

This. A thousand times over.

I feel like a lot of people who hate playing necro’s are looking for 2 second burst kills and huge numbers or a minion master who’s pets stomp everything. This is not what necro is about.

Also, I feel that there are too many complaints about condition cleansing. Yes, it exists, yes it is annoying, but throwing up your hands and saying it’s useless to use conditions because of cleansing is like saying it’s useless to do damage because of heals.

Whomever that asura guardian commander was that I pulled off the cliff of HoD garrison and killed, I apologize :p

kreese.9461:

we know who we are and what we are and came to terms with it weeks ago please don’t worry we will rebuild we may not be many but we still have fight

I look forward to our future match with anticipation.

The MMO I played before GW2 had a ranking system based on a player’s “contribution” during the war. This was not just based on kills, but also heals, buffing, debuffing, taking objectives, etc. A player’s rank was a good notion of how well that player contributed to the wars.
Going along with the encouraging players bit, giving an outmanned buff to ranking points would help to get small groups some meaning to hit smaller objectives, as cuge had described.

To an extent, they already have this with guard patrols and increased guard levels. These are relatively difficult to obtain, as I believe they should be, but help to discourage casual assaults of towers.
The hyleks, etc. are a good way of doing this idea of mercenaries. The hyleks alone might be able to take a camp, but they’re main purpose is to support player assaults and pester enemies. As it is now, the breakout event is more players supporting the champ, rather than the other way around.

Personally, I don’t like the idea of WvE…

Tei.1704:

xXTattsXx.4361:

You speak as if we didn’t get pounded quite a bit before we were able to rise up. Get some Cajones.. pull some people together and push .. just think of how good of a morale boost it would be to take something that has steel walls… even if we do take it right back.

You DR people need stop comparing henge to your server. Your first sentence illustrates the reason very clearly. You were at the bottom and went up. We were at the top and came down. Your road to the prestigious tier of 7 was filled with morale boosting rallies and victories. Henge had to lose week after week against bigger and better servers than DR. Our situations couldn’t be more different. Drop from first tier before you act like DR is more tenacious than us.

The only people left doing WvW with any regularity are the people who have lost many times before. Don’t act like your server broke Henge’s morale. Anyone who gets discouraged easily is either not very interested in WvW or left the server already. As if we’re still on the server after all the previous defeats, but DR’s amazing tactics and insurmountable numbers are just crushing our spirits. The number of people you’re seeing has been the norm for a long time. Accounting for Wintersday and real world holidays, the lack of a large Henge presence has nothing to do with anything DR has done.

You forget that we were once subject to the endless hordes of Borlis Pass and the once mighty Ferguson’s Crossing. I remember waiting for weeks before we took the towers I needed to get world completion. These were not “morale boosting rallies and victories.” And you know what, we still fought back. We got beat up by BP and FC, but we didn’t give up. We still went out to WvW and did what we could.
Saying “look at our misfortune, there’s no hope for us!” isn’t going to get you anything but losses. I don’t care if it was DR or tier 1 that “broke your spirits.” On reset day, you guys brought an army to EB that stood toe to toe with DR and SF. Where is that army now?

As lettucemode suggested, it’s nice to have a trait or two that activates with DS. Personally I have Weakening Shroud and Deathly Invigoration. Blinking in and out of DS gives me the weakening shroud effect and a nice little heal In dungeons and PvP, Transfusion (healing allies with DS4) can give a nice AoE heal. You can even heal yourself if you run out of life force mid-channel.

LegoTechnic.5910:

I don’t want to discount SF and HoD because that first day after reset was incredibly interesting. You had each server immediately take and defend their towers, and everyone was active everywhere; 30-man zergs in what felt like all maps from all three servers. Then the game went down for the Wintersday’s patch (all booted from WvW) and suddenly it felt like everything was smaller. Even on DR the queue times completely dissipated, as the queue for EB and DR bl is what led me into SF’s bl immediately after reset but completely vanished after Wv3 was reopened.

But from what I saw in the bl that first day both SF and HoD have a lot to offer. I won’t forget SF’s attempt to recapture Bay in the borderlands with its speedy and organized placement of balista and catapults to take out all my recently constructed defenses (I did a lot of supply running for those!). They both have used noticeably different tactics from what I’m accustomed to seeing, and I like that. And I hope to see more as the weeks go on and the holidays taper down.

First day of reset on EB was the best fighting I’ve seen in awhile. I know that DR was full and queued (dunno about you two), and still it was tough fight that day. My guild was the one that claimed Stonemist for Devona’s on reset, and my goodness, both you servers brought the pain that day. HoD trebbing from Durios and then pouring through the walls, SF smashing the southwest gate and cutting our supplies up north. I wish every day were like that reset day, as it was a good fight. I think both HoD and SF have the potential to become a lot stronger, with a little motivation.

“Updated Corrosive Poison Cloud’s skill fact to display the proper duration of the applied conditions.”
Rather than ticking 5 seconds of poison every 5 seconds, it’s ticking 3 seconds of poison every 3 seconds. The weakness duration was cut, as was the duration of the field (15s to 12s).
Still…lol, who actually uses this?

Necro’s one the best attrition classes if you build it to be that way. An attacking based necro may have trouble with burst, but a tanky necro can laugh it off any day.

“Our passive healing is a joke, you can’t refill death shroud enough to make it as good at absorbing burst dmg like evasion/invulnerability/mobility skills on other classes do, especially since it is a flat hp bar, it won’t be as good against higher levels of burst dmg.”
I like to think of spectral walk as my DS heal, as the buff it gives makes my LF skyrocket. Better yet, all LF gain skills are percent based, so it does not hurt my high vit DS. Even without SW, staff1 grants a modest amount of LF.

“Necromancers are the worst attrition fighters, even their condition builds. Seriously have they ever fought another attrition class as a necromancer?

Almost everything noted in that thoughtless philosophy, other classes can do better than the necro. GG anet."
Fought and won (sometimes). Tanky Guardian v. Tanky Necro is usually a draw. Tanky Warrior and Mesmer is about 50/50. Everything else just can’t compare. This is not to say a Necro can win against anyone. I’ve been beaten up my fair share by well-played Ele’s, Warriors, etc., but I’ve yet to face a build that can burst me down in seconds.

However, this would seem to be a build issue rather than class. It is unreasonable to have to build to be an attrition fighter when the class overall is supposed to be that way. So while Necro can make an excellent attrition class, it is not always that way.

For all those that answered 1 or 2,
Which of the following do you find Necros underwhelming in:

a. PvE (dungeons, world bosses, etc.)
b. WvW
c. sPvP/tPvP (not just with random groups, but as organized teams)

The reason I ask is that I play Necro a lot in WvW and run a fair amount of dungeons as well. In my opinion, Necro excels at 1vMany combat. Between staff weapon skills, epidemic, and wells, Necro can really dish out the damage and conditions to large groups of enemies. This is fine for dungeons or WvW, where you are often fighting 20+ enemies as a team. Likewise, Necro’s more attrition based design compliments the survivability needed in these two modes. For running around solo in WvW, there are better classes, but in large group combat, I’ll take my Necro over other classes any day.

I am no expert at s/tPvP, as it’s not really my cup of tea, but it seems that Necro’s style of slowly breaking down opponents would be ill-suiting for the faster kind of play found in sPvP. Where some other classes can easily obtain a burst damage build, Necros is not suited for this role. Before people respond with “you nub, look at my leet burst dmg necro build!”, I’m not saying that it’s not possible, but it is not what the class is generally focused on. That leaves Necro with support and bunker, which obviously does not appeal to everyone.

Ferg’s Bay walls almost down…
Army amassing outside to rush in…
aaaaand WvW update T_T

Here’s my tanky support build for dungeons and WvW:
0/10/30/30/0
Curses: III or IV (situational)
Death Magic: II, IV, V
Blood Magic: VI, VII, IX
I usually run around with Well of Blood, Well of Power, SW, and Epidemic. Elite skill varies on what I’m doing. I use a staff for the perma-regen, long range, and overall decency of the skills.

Gear: Full Shaman’s
CM dungeon armor, Shaman amulet, Shaman rings, Ashes of the Effigy, and Wraithlord Chains. All the accessories have Crests of the Shaman in them and the armor has Vit based runes.

Total base stats are roughly:
33k base health
2.1k armor
2.2k attack
700 condition damage
1k healing power

From my experience in WvW and in dungeons, I find it more useful to regenerate health though healing and life force gain than to mitigate the damage a little more with higher armor. So although the armor value is rather low, I can gain that health/life force back easier than some other builds.

I like the Shaman’s stat setup particularly for my Necro because all three of the stats contribute well to my build.
The Vit as main skyrockets my health and also boosts the size of my life force pool. With Staff1 and SW, I can fairly easily gain back life force. A large health pool also helps to deal with conditions.
Condition Damage I personally find more useful than power. With epidemic, I can spread my allies’ DoT’s to enemies based on my own cond dmg.
The Healing helps to keep my normal health up (obviously). Well of Blood heals for about 11k for the full duration. With Staff2, I can have perma regen provided there is an enemy near me.

This build does not do that much damage, but you will usually outlast your opponents because of the health and life force regeneration.

CHIPS.6018:

3) Total inability to solo.

I have to disagree with this one. I run a tanky support build with full shaman’s gear, and I rarely lose a 1v1 in WvW. My damage is pathetic and my bleeds mediocre, but with DS, decent heals, and 35k+ health (with WvW buffs), most enemies can’t put enough damage out to down me before I grind their health down. Against a bunker guardian or a well built tanky warrior, it’s usually a draw with both of us outhealing the other’s damage. Sure, I’m not bursting people down in 3 seconds, but that’s not what necro is about.

As for chasing, every necro has DS2, which, if it connects, is a teleport to your target as well as a slow with the chill. Not 100% reliable, but a good start.

Current score and map update

I thought that confusion converted to retaliation, can someone confirm or deny this?

Full of Life’s tooltip is not quite accurate. It should read as:
“Gain 5 seconds of regeneration when you are hit with under 90% health (30-second cooldown)”
Gaining 5 seconds of regeneration every 30 seconds can be quite nice in extended fights.

Blinking in and out of DS every 10 secs with the Deathly Invigoration trait and Life Transfer with Transfusion gives moderate healing to your allies.
For chasing people, I like to Dark Path, dodge forward to get ahead of my enemy and Doom them back into my party. While Doom’s 1 sec fear does not always push them all the way back, the 5 sec chill from Dark Path is usually enough to slow the enemy down to where the rest of my party can jump them.

I suppose it depends on your build, but a lot of the necro’s skill tend to favor group play.
I play as a support/tank necro with lots of healing and lots of health. In 1v1s I tend to grind my enemies down slowly while their damage is mitigated by my health, armor, and life force. I’ve only met a few thieves that can burn through all my health before i can get all my heals off, for example. For my build at least, I have trouble finishing enemies as my damage is not that high (codewords for “completely pitiful”). The only things I have to chase are DS2 and chillblains. Spectral grasp, although nice, is rather unreliable against moving targets. So for me and my build, most 1v1s end in a draw, with one or the other of us getting away.
I tried out power D/D necro for a bit, and found a combo that was pretty nice for 1v1s. You send out DS2, then drop DS and start casting dagger3 while out of range. DS2 hits and blinks you to your target, immobilizing them with dagger3, then you drop Well of Suffering and start slashing. This way you have a gap closer that is hard to find with D/D and the target is immobilized within the well the entire time. I can’t say I have much experience with power or cond dmg necros, so you’d have to ask an expert on those. ^^

For the greater marks question:
Up until the Oct. 7th patch, Chillblains was bugged and was not hitting a larger area even with the greater marks trait. In fixing this bug, they made the target circle larger for this skill. The other marks still hit a larger area with the trait, but you just get the regular targeting circle. Hopefully this will be standardized in a future patch.

Pain Inverter and Epidemic make for a nice duo as 6 stacks of confusion on a group of enemies can really spread the pain. That said, its use is really situational. If you are standing in the middle of a bunch of enemies as a condition build, you’re generally doing it wrong.

Zabatakis.3571:

I feel our tree attribute parings are just terrible for this class. It was like they purposefully paired things you would not want together.

I don’t know about you but I love the Blood Magic tree for this reason. Healing and Vit together? Yes, please.

Dagger4 can be invaluable when some condition damage enemy is hitting you with stacks of bleeds, burns, and so on. You just send those conditions right back at them and watch them melt.
The tooltip is a bit misleading regarding this. It says “Transfer three conditions to your target on a successful attack.” Actually, the skill transfers one of your conditions to every target it hits, so it takes off a total of four conditions.
The blind is applied on every bounce, which means with the Chilling Darkness trait from curses, you can apply chill to every target it bounces to. If it bounces back to a previous target, the blind and chill are reapplied.
It is nice to have condition removal without using up a utility slot on Plague Signet or Well of Power.

When you are fighting a single enemy with no pets or other targets, then Deathly Swarm would only transfer one condition as it has nowhere to bounce to. In this situation, focus4 might be better because you can bounce it off of yourself.

Both dagger and focus have great skills and I think it is really up to your playstyle which you prefer.

My goal for armor sets is the HotW exotic. Looks nice and tanky, just like my little asura, and the stats happen to be just what i want as well. Also, Legionnaire axe and pact dagger (whenever that is out).

The Arah helm looks quite ridiculous on asura imo.

It is 4% total life force gain, assuming all of the hits connect.

I checked out what Enerjak was saying and here are the stats I came up with:
I have bloodthirst and vampiric rituals, and of course regular old vampiric. I do not have vampiric precision as my current 9% crit rate does not make it worthwhile.
With my current equips, I have roughly 1.2k healing power. Not the best, but enough to prove this point.

My well of blood heals about 6.4k as well as 630 a second over 10 seconds. That makes the healing part:
6400 + 630*10 = 12700 hp

Each regular hit and well damage returned 39 hp, and the vampiric rituals returned 43 hp every pulse. Assuming you threw down all 3 utility wells and your well of blood and each one hit 5 mobs on every pulse, your net health gain would be:

(39+43)3 utility wells * 5 pulses each *5 mobs hit + (39+43)1 well of blood * 10 pulses * 5 mobs hit = 10250 hp

Totaled up this gives:
12700+ 10250 = 22950 hp

Granted, you do not often want to throw down all 4 wells as you will be without utilities for 30 seconds, but the theory holds true in practice.

I am a tank build and I love the retaliation on my axe3. Greater attack power doesn’t necessarily mean better skills for everyone hehe.

I agree with the wells underwater though. Having my main skill type completely nullified underwater greatly discourages me from underwater combat.
Also, has anyone gotten Signet of Undeath’s active to work underwater? It seems to target the ground and never resses anyone for me :/

I run a tank/healing necromancer that has worked pretty well. It does well in PvE and makes for a decent enough point defender in PvP. Here’s my build, take it or leave it:

Weapon: Axe/Dagger
Skills:
Rending Claws – vulnerability makes up for your pathetic damage a little and helps teammates
Ghastly Claws – I only really use this when i am low on life force as vuln is generally better
Unholy Feast – the reason I use axes. AoE cripple, decent damage and 3s retaliation for every foe you hit. When you’re fighting a big group, that retaliation can really add up
Deathly Swarm – Gets those conditions off you, blinds and also chills with the Chilling Darkness trait
Enfeebling Blood – nice little DoT and weakness

Well of Blood – with my traits this gives a big heal, HoT, protection, retaliation, has shorter cooldown, and steals life every tick. Also, a lot of healing runes affect healing skills. For example, Rune of Dwayna gives this regeneration to boot.

Well of Suffering – Keeps that vuln up, does some nice damage and steals life (with trait)
Well of Darkness – Blinds every second for 5 secs, nice for tanks. Also chills with traits
Well of Power – I love this skill. “Oh you put 15 stacks of bleed and immobilize on me? That’s vigor and swiftness now!”

Flesh Golem – this one is really up to you. Plague is good too, though I prefer the golem for the knockdown

Traits:
10 curses:
Chilling Darkness
30 Death magic:
Dark Armor (axe2 is channeled)
Ritual of Protection
Spiteful Vigor
30 Blood Magic:
Bloodthirst
Ritual Mastery
Vampiric Rituals

Gearwise, I stack full healing, with vitality on the side when I can. Also, I use DS when I am either running low on health and/or when Well of Blood is still on CD. DS4 is also a nice AoE. For Dungeons, Signet of Undeath is nice for kiting and getting party members back up.

Overall:
Pros:
Tanky, with big heals
Can stack up some vuln to help teammates
AoEs are always good
Lifesteal
Condition removal – Deathly Swarm and Well of Power
High base health

Cons:
Damage, or lack thereof – you are a tank, you grind people/mobs down little by little, no 10k crits here
Escape skills – you can’t stealth and run away like a thief say
Range – Wells are placed around you, so you need to be in the middle of the fight for them to work.