Guild Wars 2

Any Grenth open in NA?

I wasn’t talking about all Temples though. It’d be nice for at least one to require a lot of planning and skill.

Eh, I kinda like the fact that you need a team of players that know what they’re doing to get it done. Makes it feel like more of a skill-needed challenge, and not another mindless event where there’s 20 players using their auto-attack. And they should definitely keep in the final cleansing event, because when it goes right it’s a heckuva lotta fun, and it gives more drops than the rest of the chain combined.

My wish is that they’d fixed the boss aggro to where they wouldn’t target Jonez unless all other players were downed or dead. That way they wouldn’t have to nerf or buff the bosses, how the event scales, or the amount of mobs thrown at you. It would still be challenging, (Those bosses can almost one-shot when it’s scaled up) but it would also make it more fair. This way players would have a chance to beat the event based on their own skill, (they would have to stay alive before Jonez would get aggro) and the game’s mechanics wouldn’t just decide when to have it fail.

Instead of putting it on a timer where all the NPC’s can just run off and die, then be left with only 25% morale, why not make it one of the events that could be started by talking to the NPC, kinda like Plinx.

This would allow for players to prepare for the event, and get a good group together. Having to revive them all only to watch them die again is not very fun.

So I’m in a team with two other people. We’ve gotten pretty good at beating the Grenth events just by ourselves. Killing Grenth has become pretty easy, but the event afterwards is what’s been giving us trouble lately. Usually we like to keep the event scaled down so Grenth doesn’t produce as many shades, then shout-out to the map when he’s about to die, so that we have more people for the final event.

However, we’ve run into the same problem three times today. It seems Jonez is a Spider magnet. Ya know, the Champion Risen Spider that spawns about two-minutes into the event? Yeah, well it loves him. Loves him so much in fact, that it completely bypasses 10 other players to go straight for him. With all our AoE heals and whatnot, he can only stay alive for 4-5 hits. What I don’t understand, is why this freakin’ thing is ignoring all the players and going straight for him. Even more annoying is that it doesn’t do it right away. It waits a little while, fighting other people, then it just randomly decides to kill Jonez. You can literally what the watch the expression on it’s face change as it turns around and thinks, “Hmm. I really don’t like that guy.”

I’ve watched Jonez, and he doesn’t really seem to do anything to warrant this kind of aggro, or at least nothing different than he’s usually doing. Another thing that’s annoying is how no amount of damage or CC can stop the Spider from completing it’s objective. There is literally nothing you can do, except try and heal him with AoE and then cry when you fail.

I really don’t agree with this for one main reason: It makes events like this feel that being lucky is better than having actual skill. You could take 10 of the best players in the game, and put them in that situation, and there wouldn’t be anything they could do when the Spider decides it hates Jonez. You just have to keep hitting it hard and pray that it doesn’t go for him. This doesn’t seem right to me. Anybody else agree?

Mesmer aren’t even in the same league with MM necros. Buff your clones all you want, but they can never be used to knockdown multiple foes at once, ranged immobilize, AoE blind, or heal you every time they attack. Also, when traited, they can have a lot more health and do a lot more damage, and even remove boons when they attack. Since they fixed the aggro bug, MM necros have become very viable in PVE, and are extremely hard to counter in duels. Keep dreaming, MM mesmers.

My runes are for bleed duration, but after Blood is Power my Condition Damage can get to 2250, and when fighting Risen Priest of Grenth last night I was seeing ticks of up to 182. I’m sure I could get it higher, but then I think I would would be sacrificing some of my 100% Bleed cap.

Also, forgot to mention, the 182 ticks weren’t only my doing. I had teammates also giving me might.

I take that as ugh. Just ugh.

I tried something like this on my own. It was hard deciding which skills to to replace with minions, but it seemed to do really good damage. Nice job on making this one though. Minion/Condition hybrids are really rare it seems, and I’d say mainly because the build is pretty hard to make. Too many options.

I’m gonna give this one a try later on. And again, nice job.

This is something I’ve never understood. When you’re fighting a single target boss, say in a dungeon or on the world map, why does the bleeding cap at 25? Say you run in, hoping to get in some damage and have a role, but the stacks of Bleed are already up to 25. If Bleeding is your main source of damage, you’ll be hitting like a girl in a pillow fight. Why have this cap?

To my understanding, Bleeding damage is supposed to be like Critical Damage, just used in different situations. Precision and Critical Damage determines hard hitting, and then Condition Damage and Duration determines lots of bleeding. Critical Damage is for bursting, while Bleeding is for damage over time. Critical Damage is affected by a targets armor, while Bleeding is not but can be removed or cleansed. Both do not affect structures, but both are good for multiple targets. The biggest problem is see with this though, is the fact that Crits do not cap, while bleeding does. If you have 5 Crit Damaging builds fighting, and 5 Bleeders, the Crit aren’t going to suffer a damage negation while fighting. They can keep on swinging and hitting their 5-9k’s. The bleeders won’t be able to do this, because the stacking cap, and will only be able to pump out around 5k per second between all of them. So in a big boss fight, 5 bleeders is the equivalent to one hard hitter. Why do these builds suffer this much? Even worse still, why even make the cap so low that it would only take one person to fill it? My necro can easily stack 25 bleeds in only one rotation of both weapons. This is amazing for soloing, but sucks when I’m in a group of people like me. So why are bleeding builds forever meant to be away from each other to be effective, while the Crit guys do so much damage while they’re in a group with their own? I don’t really see any trade-off that Bleeding has over Crits to make it worth capping And if the cap was lifted, would it be so bad? I don’t really think so. It would just allow for people to do the damage that their intended to do.

Does anyone else agree with this?

@OP

Anyways, to answer your question, most people don’t like necros because they don’t have access to many boons, can’t dodge as well as other classes, can’t cleave, and can’t excape combat very well. Most people would rather play classes that access to all of that.

IMO playing Necromancer is kinda like playing the Hard Difficulty of the game. True, they don’t have the best utility, but they have their strengths believe me. It’s just that most of the other classes are easier to be good at.

Still kinda new to the warrior, but I’m looking for the best possible DPS that doesn’t use Bleeds. I usually run dungeons with a group of others that stack a lot of bleeding themselves, so I don’t want my damage to be kitten by this. It was a major problem for my Bleeding Necromancer and that’s why I’m here now.

Can someone please help?

I would absolutely love to be a part of this if you guys need an extra condition bunker. This is an awesome idea. Good luck guys!

This is freakin’ awesome. Best Necromancer footage I’ve seen to date. I don’t know whether to congratulate you, or tell you how jealous I am. I’ve been working very hard on soloing Arah. This video provides me with so much more strategy. I honestly did not know that you could dodge the grubs by watching his right hand, and I never thought about using Dark Path to avoid the bubbles.

Absolutely incredible. Necromancer is now the second class I’ve seen do this on video. You’ve shut down a lot of naysayers, and given hope to a misunderstood class. I now have a big goal to work towards. Thanks man, really!

Flesh Golem really only works when the structure is big enough for him to charge and not go right through. Otherwise, he doesn’t do that much damage. It feels like unless you’re a dagger-wielding power build of some sort that you aren’t going to ever do much to structures.

To be honest though, I wasn’t really thinking of WvW too much when I thought this up. Yeah, it would speed up damage output to the gates, but 90-95% of it comes from the siege. My biggest problem is when you’re alone or with a small group. In regards to the AC Explorable paths where you have to kill burrows, I’m useless. If we have an Elementalist in the group I usually ask for an ice bow, but without that, I’m better off killing mobs meaninglessly. When running CoF 1st path, if they want me to kill the Gate Controller, the entire group is gonna die trying to survive that wait time. There’s many other instances in dungeons where you’re required to destroy structures, and like stated above, you just have to wait for someone else to come along and do damage.

It just sucks that we’ve been given this amazing class with this awesome build, and it has such an apparent and undoinganythingaboutitable weakness. Some might argue that every build should be bad at something, but it doesn’t seem like other builds have this big of a flaw.

As for the above poster, that’s why Bleeding would convert to Erosion, and Poison would convert to Acid. These things make more sense to structures, since they can’t be inflicted with disease.

This is something I’m not proud to post, but if enough people look at it, I feel it can eventually (maybe) lead to some new strategies for not just necros, but any class that is dependent upon conditions.

I have spent a long time on my necro. I’ve tried many different builds, almost all of them I’d say, but I always came back to the bleeding build. It is by far the most fun to play for me, because it feels like the perfect blend of survivability and damage. It can tank a lot of damage and put out even more. I’ve managed to do a lot with this build, some incredible things for any class, but I keep running into some problems. One is nothing that I can really do about, which is facing a Champion with other players that stack bleeds. Only 25-50% of my bleeds ever get through, and if it’s a world map Champion it can sometimes feel like none. But this is oh well. There’s really nothing that can be done, except bleeds be tracked by individual players, which would kinda be OP.

The other is structural damage. This is where my build falls face flat. Since I’m Rabid, I’m traited into Condition Damage and Precision, and nothing into power. The problem is, THAT NEITHER OF THESE MATTER. Since you cannot apply Conditions nor crit on a structure, I can barely damage them. Best best choice is DS auto-attack. Seriously, my kitten Flesh Golem hits harder than me.

This being said, I thought up some ideas to improve the damage that Conditions do to structures. These ideas have not been inspired by anything else, I just thought them up at work. If this has already been suggested, I promise you I’m not trying to steal any credit. With that out of the way, I present with you the Damaging Condition Conversion.

It’s a simple idea, you take conditions that do damage, and convert them to different conditions that do damage to structures upon application. Since a Reinforced Gate can’t bleed, be poisoned, or confused we come up with new ones to substitute. I spent some time thinking about this, but I’m still open to ideas. Please let me know if you come up with anything better.

Bleeding (does damage per second, stacks in intensity) could be converted to something like Erosion (does damage per second, stack in intensity and ends on 25 stacks).

Poison (Does damage per second, 33% heal reduction, stacks in duration) could be converted to Acid (Does damage per second, %5 increase in incoming damage, stacks in duration).

I feel Burn could almost be left the same, cause ya know, it makes sense.

Confusion is something I’m still working on, because it’s mental, and structures don’t have minds. I was kinda thinking something like Empower (grants a random boon and cures a random condition upon attack. Cool-down is 30 seconds, stacks in duration.

Like I said, I’m still thinking about this, and I feel it would level out the game a little bit more. Also, if there’s a better way for me to damage structures within the confines of my build, please let me know.

The range is kinda good for me. I usually roll in with Mark of Evasion or chain it with Dark Path then roll backwards whenever I switch. Assuming no crits, I believe that’s a 9 bleed combo.

This sounds like an amazing idea. Is it possible for me to get an invite to this guild?

I don’t have any problem with the class. I love it. I would never say that it’s OP, but it’s definitely NOT under powered. It does have some weaknesses, but it has some amazing strengths, too. Learning what those were and how to capitalize was the most fun thing about playing a Necro. This isn’t a class you can expect. Warriors, most of the time, are expected to have high DPS. Guardians are expected to to tank a little. Thieves are most of the time expected to wield DD/PP. Rangers are expected to use bows. All these are expected when you see that class. When you face a necro, you really can’t know what he’s gonna do until he starts. Necros have so many different builds. So many different viable builds. Is this guy gonna stack bleeds? Is this guy gonna summon mobs? Is this guy gonna teleport to me and shred me with a dagger? This is what makes necros such a great class. They have so many options, even without blocks or vigor. We’re talking about a class that doesn’t have access to boons or invulnerability, regenerating endurance, or good escapes. It’s finding out how to be good without those buffs is what makes a good player. You put someone whose mastered a warrior vs. someone whose mastered necro and see who is the more skillful player. This is why this class isn’t played as often as the others. People can’t take the learning curve. They can’t take something that starts out a little worse off and make it good. The want to be good with a good class.
My point? Take two players. One is a necro and the other is a class that’s expected to be better. They both solo a champion with relative ease. What would you want to say? That you beat it with a Mesmer? That you beat it with a Guardian? Maybe a warrior?
I don’t know about you, but I’d want to be the guy saying he killed it with a NECROMANCER.

Ya know, I read all this crap about necromancers and how bad they are, and it just makes me even more proud to play the class. I’ve played my necro for almost 700 hours, but I’ve tried other classes and always went back. It’s the only level 80 I have. When people complain and whip out our giant list of reasons why they think necros are bad, I just have to sit back and laugh. I can solo some dungeons, go toe to toe with some champions all over the map, I can go Zergvzerg and walk away with 10-15 kills, I can tank more hits then anyone in my groups most of the time, I can maintain 20-25 stacks of bleeding to SEVERAL targets at once, I can apply 25 stacks of vurn to 6 targets in a matter of seconds, I walk away almost every match of sPvP with 15 kills and having died very few times, and I win MOST of my 1v1 duels, no matter the build or spec of the other player. I can do all this with no vigor, no blocks, broken mechanics, messed up pet AI, and the “worst class in the game.”
So yeah, I wish people would complain more, cause it makes me feel like a better player. Also, if you ask me, it’s not a bad class at all. I don’t people are realizing what they have.

I am a Rabid build traited fully into Precision. I think my Critical Chance is 43%. Would Earth get me to 25 stacks faster than Geomancy? After taking the advice on Agony, I started running a Geomancy and Geomancy/Corruption combo. Right now I can peak at 25 and maintain 20 stacks of bleed. Sigil of Earth is a 60% chance to stack a bleed, right? Do you know how long it lasts?

Taril.8619:

Lucas.9162:

By using Agony instead of it, you lose 246 damage, but you don’t have to ever charge the stacks, so I think you would do more damage in general.

It depends, the 20% duration is amazing for Blood is Power (Due to the small percentage of a large base duration still provides a significant increase in duration, at least enough to provide multiple extra ticks of damage)

But for other, shorter duration abilities it can be less effective (20% on top of a shorter duration bleed such as Barbed Precision will provide no additional ticks of damage unless already at 80% duration)

25 stacks of Corruption (250 Condition Damage) will increase the damage that bleeds do by 12.5 per tick.

20% duration will only provide more damage if the skill gets another tick of damage off (Conditions tick once per second, if the increase doesn’t bump the duration by at least 1 second it provides significantly less benefit)

That said, it’s entirely possible to get 100% (133% with Sceptre) bleed duration without the use of Agony Sigils (20% from Hemophillia trait, 15% from 2 Krait Runes, 15% from 2 Afflicted Runes, 10% from 2 Lyssa runes, 40% from Rare Veggie Pizza) which would vastly increase the effectiveness of Geomancy/Earth + Corruption Sigils and negate the usefulness of Agony sigils.

But does it cap at that number? If it doesn’t then wouldn’t you want to increase Bleeding Duration as much as possible for maximum damage?

Next question for me is, would scrapping Geomancy in favor for three Sigils of Agony do more damage?

Since when using Geomancy I always put it on my dagger, we can figure out how much damage we gain/lose if we duel wield Agony sigils instead.
With Geomancy, if we swap to S/D we can get an automatic 2486 damage over 11 seconds to 5 targets. So using my build, Sigil of Geomancy has a potential of 12430 damage. This is without using any skills whatsoever, just switching weapons. This means that I get an extra 12430 damage added on top of using my normal Scepter Rotation. So what skills would I have to activate and how many times would I have to use them to make taking another Agony over Geomancy do more damage?

We’re going to use my normal Scepter Bleeding rotation as the example, which is: Blood is Power, Dark Path, Evade(Mark of Evasion), Grasping Dead, Enfeebling Blood, and the first two swings of the Auto-attack combo.
So now we add up all the bleeding damage from these attacks and compare Agony/Geomany vs. Agony/Agony. Also, I know that Blood is Power does 2 stacks of self-bleeding that could easily be transferred, but the damage and duration is too hard to calculate, so we won’t be including it in the rotation.

Anways, the results.
Agony/Geomancy does 32996 damage over 52 seconds to a single target with 4 seconds of casting time, or 96276 with the rotation’s maximum AoE potential.
Agony/Agony does 33561 to a single target over 57 seconds to a single target with 4 seconds of casting time, or 92231 with maximum AoE potential.

The verdict?. Geomancy does provide 12430 damage, but once you swap the weapons, you can’t do it again for another 16 seconds. During that time, you could pop another Grasping Dead, Dark Path, or switch to your Staff and hit them with a Mark of Blood. If we do all three of these using dual Agony we see that we gain an extra 4396 damage, and combine it with the extra damage in the original rotation, the calculated total is 12781. This is 12781 damage that we get just from using the rotation and the 3 above mentioned skills with an 10% extra Bleed duration. So using a second Agony gets us 12781 damage on a normal rotation and the three skills, and using Geomancy would get us an extra 12430 if we used at the start of the rotation, and another 12430 if we switched weapons as soon as we could. So Geomancy gets us 24860 in 16 seconds, And a second Agony gets us an extra 12781 over the same amount of time. So if it hit 5 targets or was used in Epidemic, Geomancy sounds like the way to go. Most targets will die before their bleeds are completed, so stacking more bleeds faster would probably be more efficient. Also, if you’re in a group with others that can stack bleeds as well, then you’ll want to stack as fast as possible to get in the most damage before it caps. In any case, I will keep testing these two combos to see which is more efficient in PVE combat.

Turns out I did my numbers a little wrong. Using Blood is Power as the testing bleed, the new numbers are:
With 25 stacks of Corruption – 48 seconds resulting in 12000 damage.
With Agony – 52 seconds resulting in 11752 damage.

Also, In regards to Superior Sigil Geomancy, paired up with Agony it does 2486 damage over 11 seconds. Paired up with a fully stack Sigil of Corruption it did 2500 damage over 10 seconds.

If you scrapped Geomancy and went with a fully stacked Corruption and Agony combo, Blood is Power would then do 13,000 damage, but you lose the 3 stacks of extra Bleeding that switching Weapons would give.

Also, running two Sigils of Agony does stack, giving you 20% more Bleed duration. Blood is Power last for 57 seconds and did 12882 damage during these tests.

In my personal opinion Sigil of Corruption is not worth it to my build. Getting 25 stacks for it can be harder when running a Dungeon or another instance that the chances of going down are increased in. By using Agony instead of it, you lose 246 damage, but you don’t have to ever charge the stacks, so I think you would do more damage in general.

I was just wondering about this during some tests I did with Blood is Power on my Bleeding Necro build. Using a Superior Sigil of Corruption at full stacks, the bleeding lasts for 52 seconds and does 13,000 on the spot after the full duration. If I were to swap out Corruption for a second Sigil of Agony, (One on my scepter and another on my Staff) then the duration would be increased by 5.2 seconds, making it 57 seconds of bleeding. Then end result damage would be 12882. This is just a couple hundred shy of the damage that a full stacked Corruption sigil does. So then, in areas of the game like dungeons where you can do down often and lose your stacks, wouldn’t a second Agony be better for me? The general damage would be higher, but Corruption has a higher peak. Getting 25 stacks for the Sigil though is quite a challenge in most aspects of the game. I’m also assuming that the sigil of Agony on my Staff is still in affect even though I’m using my Scepter. Can someone clarify this for me?

Been having some lag issues lately. Doesn’t seem like performance issues, cause I always seem to be around 100 FPS. Anyways, I’ll be playing normally, then everything on the screen will go into suspended animation, but still be moving. It’s hard to explain. I can still walk around during this, but anytime I activate skills they won’t do anything and the icons will just blink. The smaller ones will last about 3 seconds until everything “jumps” back to normal, but the worst ones will take up 10-15 seconds and sometimes disconnect me. I read about the diagnostics test on Guru, and here are my results. Hoping someone can tell me what the problem is.
It also may be worth noting that I live in an apartment with a couple other people who play the game, and none have reported any kind of issues like this. It’s just me.

I ran Fractals with a hybrid warrior once. She also claimed that 25 stacks on a target was easy, but I only saw 22 at the highest, and only on one target. This is what makes necromancer a such a powerful condition class. My necro can easily stack 18-20 stacks in a short amount of time, then all you gotta do is wait for others to stack the remaining five, then Epidemic and become a god. Bleeding was hitting 146 a tick, 25 times a second, on 6 targets. Do the math. All this and only with one stat dedicated to damage, so the remaining stats could be set in toughness and vit.
IMO, anyone says that the necro is useless in any situation doesn’t know how to play it. Blind, Well builds in WvW are terrifying, Conditionmancers in PVE devistate, and Dagger DPS builds can destroy in quick dungeon runs. Just cause we have the highest learning curve of any class, doesn’t mean we’re the worst.

LOL. Very like me to get hyped over something I didn’t know anything about. Thanks guys.

So ever since I heard that doing Daily and Monthly achievements would earn you laurels that you could trade in for Ascended gear, I was super stoked. I’ve been completing the Daily ones without hardly any hassle, and have been inching my way to the Monthly. The last thing on my list was getting 50 WvW Invader kills. Sounded easy enough, and it turns out that it was. Ran with my commander friend around the map, watched as a loose zerg formed, and then picked off anyone we could find. I was in the middle of defending a keep when I finally completed my Monthly. I went to a safe place, then opened my chest. 20 Mystic Coins, 20 Jugs of Liquid Karma, and some amount of silver. ABSOLUTELY NO LAURELS. I would like an answer this asap, and hear the stories of anyone else this has happened to. I checked my inventory over and over again, but it still says my funds are at 3. I’m really disappointed.

Something I just wanted to say, the 11-week beating we took from DR has not been forgotten. Though Kaineng has gained new members and new guilds, a lot of the tried-and-true members are still here, and we want our revenge. Don’t believe me? Go to the middle of LA in the middle of the day and read the chat. People know what’s coming, and people are ready. I’ll see you on the field, DR.

Just ran through Southsun with the sickle mentioned above. Granted, it was only one run, but I didn’t find any flowers. I’m gonna keep running through daily to see by how much it helps our chances, if at all.

I always try to go through the area at least once a day. I’ve only ever found four in my entire time doing it, and I’ve been doing it since I found out they were needed for the level 80 exotic apothecary trinkets. They’re extremely rare. My hopes in ever completing my build are diminishing, as well as for the chance that anything will be done about the drop rate or the recipe. I’ve already made new characters, seeing as how I might be able to level them to 80 and complete their armor and weapons, before ever getting one piece of the apothecary set. Plus, it wouldn’t hurt to have a few more toons to run though Southsun everyday.