Guild Wars 2

Mixing teams and solo queues prevents blowouts. If your rating is x and you vs a team, their rating is going to be around x too. They have the edge in comms, coordination etc, but you’ve been making up the difference elsewhere.

Now if you split teams and solo queues, half the community goes to one side and half to the other, you have only half as many potential opponents. That means the rating difference between you and your potential opponents is twice as large. You’ll get a lot more games where you simply have no chance. 80% players matched up with top 10 players. Anyone who whines about matchmaking and lack of solo queue is a straight up moron.

I’m so glad this forum isn’t developing the game. Use your heads.

If you’re having trouble beating teams, get a team. Asking for the game to be changed for the worse because you’re a lazy antisocial piece of kitten is the definition of self entitlement.

I think it’s that self entitled attitude that is the main cause of most peoples problems in finding a team anyway. You think you’re better than you are and can’t figure out why the only people who want to queue with you have around the same rating. After all, your rating is only low because the system is rigged against you with all these premade teams you have to face, while their rating is low because they’re nabs. One day a group of top 50 players will realise this and pick you up.

Of course, the truth is that your rating is low because you’re too quick to blame external circumstances, like your teammates or facing premades, for your losses, and rarely, if ever, focus on what you could have done to change the result (aside from whining on the forums that is), because your delicate ego cannot handle criticism of any kind, even self criticism. No one wants to play with the guy who thinks he can do no wrong and it must be everyone elses fault when his team loses, and so here you are, asking for a solo queue.

TLDR: You’ll never be good until you change the mindset that makes you beg for solo queues in the first place. You’d still be getting smashed in solo queues.

Nice, glad that’s fixed. Good to know, thanks

There are too many variables for me to work out the fine details on the comparison. Stuff like TTW, do I assume 8%? How many might stacks does the DS build have on average? How much damage are the bleeds worth on each build?

It would be nice to know the final results but I don’t have the persistence, and some of them are highly variable in actual play too. It looks like ds1 has a slight edge on dagger1, but if all the variables fell in favour of one over the other, I could be off by a pretty significant margin. I’m ready to just estimate them at approximately the same nonetheless, with DS just edging out dagger. The most surprising thing was that adding a warrior with banner of discipline and FGJ doesn’t seem to significantly favour one build over the other, although the lifeblast build does gain a little bit more.

This is with both builds running runes of the scholar, and therefore assuming the DS build has close to 100% uptime on either DS1 or Axe2. If you’re not getting hit in melee range, you’re probably not getting hit at 600 range either. This doesn’t account for the odd hit that is cleaned up with your 6 skill, but then getting knocked out of DS doesn’t require you to spend 1-1.5s casting your 6 skill. That’s actually pretty significant if you’re having to, for example, use consume conditions on recharge, as it means you’re spending 5% of your time just healing, and that’s 5% less dps. Of course then you have potential party heals from someone else in the group, and so on and so forth.

Ugh jump pads. Those things are straight up abysmal if you have high latency, and that’s in pve. I will literally never be able to play this map. GG.

I actually don’t know how scholar works in DS. There used to be a bug that counted you as zero health, but it’s been fixed for siphoned power at least, haven’t tested the runes that trigger on certain health percentages.

Sorry you’re right. And the 30/25 build has 55 (65 average with self fury uptime assuming flawless ds flashing) so the actual equation would be:

(1*0.97*2.62+(1*.03))/(1.3*0.65*2.47+(1.3*0.35)) = 1.01

Targuil.3741:

Mammoth.1975:

The calculation shows 30% higher coefficient per second on dagger 1 (assuming axe mastery on the lifeblast necro).

30% more of your power is applied per second on dagger 1. That means in a composition where you can maintain 100% uptime on fury, dagger 1 will be better damage. In a 4 necro comp with no external fury source, the basic question becomes ‘is ~40% more crit (average over time) better than 30% more power?’. If it is, it’s worth working out the details. If it isn’t, dagger 1 will be better dps every time. Since as far as I can figure the optimal build for either has 47% crit without fury, the question is relevant, as you will always gain full benefit from deathly perception if you’re optimised for maximum dps.

Actually I just realised it’s more complicated than that due to the different trait distributions… the question is more like ‘is 30% more crit and 15% more crit damage worth more than 30% more power?’

I’m assuming you mean 60% crit rate versus 100% crit rate. In that case, with perfect berserker set without any food, your critical damage on DS build will be 112%, and your build would have 97%. The damage multiplier advantage from crits in DS build is: (1,00*2,62)/(0,60*2,47)=~1.77=77%. That’s HUGE. Not to mention if you go for more critical ratey build with stack sigils or foods, I can use power instead. You will however, in addition to basic damage have some from conditions but is it enough?

But for total damage you have to factor the 30% extra power per second being applied, and the noncrit damage, plus I think the optimal DS build only has 40% base crit or so.

So (1*0.9*2.62+1*(1-0.9))/(1.3*0.6*2.47+1.3*(1-0.6)) = 1.005. Half a percent difference, very close. All the little extra stuff like 3% extra damage from target the weak over strength of undeath, base attack values and so forth is going to come into play. These are theoretical maximums of course, and we could talk all day about the relative virtues of range, maximum deathshroud uptimes, group compositions with and without fury, etc, etc. I just think it’s probably best if we establish the dps difference, if any, between dagger 1 and ds 1 in a vaccuum before we move ahead with the rest. That makes it easier to apply different situational modifiers to the results.

It would be quite interesting if our ranged option does more dps than our melee option. Even if that doesn’t turn out to be the case, it’s a huge buff to to the build that the cof run was done on. If that means we can now start producing reasonably competitive times on such runs with a very resilient (compared to the meta) build, there’s no question that a necro would be a more than viable addition to any run on content that is expected to actually be challenging for a given group.

The calculation shows 30% higher coefficient per second on dagger 1 (assuming axe mastery on the lifeblast necro).

30% more of your power is applied per second on dagger 1. That means in a composition where you can maintain 100% uptime on fury, dagger 1 will be better damage. In a 4 necro comp with no external fury source, the basic question becomes ‘is ~40% more crit (average over time) better than 30% more power?’. If it is, it’s worth working out the details. If it isn’t, dagger 1 will be better dps every time. Since as far as I can figure the optimal build for either has 47% crit without fury, the question is relevant, as you will always gain full benefit from deathly perception if you’re optimised for maximum dps.

Actually I just realised it’s more complicated than that due to the different trait distributions… the question is more like ‘is 30% more crit and 15% more crit damage worth more than 30% more power?’

With +50% crit in death shroud plus lifeblast stacking vuln and might, we seem to have our bases largely covered, but a warrior for discipline and some extra might is still a huge increase. Running without banner of discipline when everyone has 100% crit seems sketchy.

Yeah I just ran through a bunch of possibilities, and edited the post you replied to sorry

I don’t think accuracy can ever be better than force without including procs. I guess it’s possible to work out the equation that shows this, but my math is weak, so I just ran through a bunch of different stat sets. To get your crit damage high enough, your crit chance will be too high unless you use valkyrie or cavalier, and even that may not work for the classes where prowess and precision are in the same trait line.

An elementalist in max valkyrie with arcane lightning, a banner of discipline nearby and food buff would still be better off with force over accuracy if he doesn’t have anything that procs on crits.

Force will be better dps for you.

You know what people should be whining about? Weakness. Turning 5k crits into 1k glances is no joke. I may give CPC another whirl. Also, I just tried to dodge through a spectral wall and bounced off running. I guess I was lagging either yesterday or today.

There is no difference between 1 and 5 seconds. You can cleanse backstab.

koolmutt.9827:

There’s alot of uncalled for backlash.

I’m not 100% certain you’ve read the whole thread. People like Xaragon started out by encouraging him to keep doing what he is doing but maybe turn it down a little on the ‘this build is awesome’ stuff, and he just lashed out. He was subject to some extremely generous and gentle criticism, and his responses were disparaging and aggressive. So people started to get a little more honest with him, and I’d say it’s fairly called for.

Whenever you post a build, you’re going to find someone who thinks they can improve it, someone who thinks it’s crap, someone who thinks theirs does the same thing better, someone who wants to know your level of experience, and someone else who wants to see a video of it in action. If your response to all those people is ‘whatever nab, you probably couldn’t use it properly even if I showed you how’, you better be ready for quite a bit of backlash.

Decrypter.1785:

Well , What exactly would you like them to promote ? you really think the pvp is interesting and diverse enough ?

No guild ladder/team ladder in game
No Decent rewards
And still lack of game modes/builds/skills

Sorry no esports here imo

Rewards like all the other esports? Game modes/builds/skills like all the other esports?

Some of you are so transparent it’s actually a little embarrassing to watch.

Iceflame.5024:

Mammoth.1975:

Is that a yes?

I guess it is.

Interesting. I wasn’t considering the protection, but there actually is a case. Not sure that it’s a good one though. You could always build a necro to be tougher than a guardian so the extra protection seems superfluous, but wards push guards over the top for bunkering. Being that spectral wall is a ward you can dodge, and they fixed jump dodging guardian wards, it seems significantly weaker.

Iceflame.5024:

Mammoth.1975:

So you’re saying spectral wall is stronger than line of warding?

Welllllll, line of warding doesn’t give protection and doesn’t deal damage(terror). I see those as quite a significant difference, especially the “dealing damage” part.

Is that a yes?

RaynStargaze.6510:

samo.1054:

RaynStargaze.6510:

MMOs will never be esports

If u want esports go SC2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdJM0xsbHhs

sou how much money did the esport gw1 pro scene make per event?

WoW had a massive playerbase and a lot more ppl pvping and didnt really make it – just sayin

not that i would mind though Event looks nice

100k, 113.5k adjusted for inflation. Starcraft? Biggest I could find this year was 60k, was there something I missed?

So you’re saying spectral wall is stronger than line of warding?

BadJas.5178:

And the loss of fear only applies when reacting to “Save yourselves” right? Most Stabilities can still be countered.

Nah, some key ones can though. Dagger storm, but that’s not a big deal. RAO, again, not a big deal. Plague, which is great. However, anything on an ele or guardian you’re only getting with concerted boonstrips unless they screw up, and those are the ones you really want. If a team really doesn’t want you to corrupt a stability now (like a necro plague), they can try to stop you by pumping trash boons, and I think that’s a good change. We really did lose a key play in corrupting SY though.

BadJas.5178:

How is the new spectral wall any different than the Guardian barrier? Just walk around ‘that BS’.

It takes a utility slot instead of being on a weapon, you can dodge through it, putting it under someone doesn’t have any extra effect, it has a longer cooldown, and it attracts much more QQ. That’s how.

I thought we gained an extra fear this patch because of this change, but then I remembered we lost one with the corrupt boon nerf.

This is what I used to use but I suspect there may be a spectral build that works better now. It did get a bit of a buff with the patch though.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjQah6daaa87JAJFPj9kivHn6h7sfOA-TsAg2CrIASBkDIDQSgsAN+Y9xuBA

Sorry, vital persistence is supposed to be path of midnight. WvW version would be settler’s gear where you can, apothecary where you can’t.

Yes, the vampire soldier, that’s pretty meta. I don’t actually have an issue with you posting builds for critique and concepts for discussion, I’d support that every time. I have an issue with you posting builds as though your own critique is enough.

If you don’t want me to point out that builds ranging from ‘pretty good’ to ‘trash’ aren’t amazing for competitive play, just stop claiming they are. Problem solved.

Question 5: Have you ever considered mastering the fundamentals before trying to innovate?

Actually, it’s not a fair question, because I think innovation attempts are fine whether or not you have a grasp on the fundamentals.

The better question would be: Have you ever considered mastering the fundamentals before trying to trash them?

Yeah, I enjoy playing with kittens, I’ll be there for sure o.0

I told you what the builds burning is worth in terms of dps. Why are you so upset about that?

You still didn’t grasp the concept of uptime? The difference between damage per second and damage per tick on a five second burn that is on a minimum ten second cooldown?

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Mammoth.1975:

Question #3 for example. If you were at least rank 200 or something, you’d get a lot less people disagreeing with you. Of course that’s mainly because you’d stop posting such crap if you’d played somewhat competitively, but that’s besides the point. Why not give it a shot? Should be easy for you since you know so much more about necro than those nasty elitist top players.

I’m not interested in putting together a team of semi-competent players to play consistently against bad pugs to get a few wins on a crappy leaderboard system where players that are inactive have higher ranks than you.

Also, you think burn hits for 275 with a Rabid Amulet (See above posts), so I stopped taking you seriously quite some time ago.

Because I’m inactive too. When I played seriously I was top 100, as you’d know if you weren’t so new it hurts. Lately I’ve been introducing myself to pve and wvw, and I freely admit I’m a total noob in those areas.

Question #3 for example. If you were at least rank 200 or something, you’d get a lot less people disagreeing with you. Of course that’s mainly because you’d stop posting such crap if you’d played somewhat competitively, but that’s besides the point. Why not give it a shot? Should be easy for you since you know so much more about necro than those nasty elitist top players.

You should seriously consider what your answers to those questions might be. For your own sake.

What does the fact that you usually solo join have to do with queuing a team into the 60% bracket and being surprised that you win?

Why do you think solo join is an excuse for 60%?

Why don’t you stop solo queueing and get some rating so you know what competitive tournament play looks like before sharing your opinions on competitive tournament play?

Why aren’t teams falling over themselves to get you to queue with them?

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

I doubt you could use a single build I listed up there effectively without my help. I bet you haven’t even tried, again, you’re looking at it from “oh those look awful” perspective, therefore your opinion is moot, and I’m going to ignore it until something constructive appears.

Yes, I need help from 60% players. ‘Constructive’ would be posting something useful, so you should get to work on that too.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Mammoth.1975:

The 60% bracket isn’t ‘competitive tpvp’.

So fighting against the players you worship makes me bad?

I’d love to know what you mean by this

The 60% bracket isn’t ‘competitive tpvp’.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Mammoth.1975:

BTW, if you’re new to necro, take a good look at this, because it’s much more effective than any of the builds in the first post. I really don’t want to be too critical because I appreciate people putting effort into helping out the community, and I appreciate theorists who try off the wall stuff even more, but this kind of misinformation isn’t helping anyone.

Don’t insult me, please, or if you are going to insult me, do it right and pull something better out. This is simply petty.

Little sensitive are we? I put it as tactfully as I could, and in fact I don’t see what’s so insulting about my post.

There’s nothing wrong with playing an alternative to 30/30/10, and in fact I did so pretty successfully when 30/30/10 was meta last year. There’s a problem with playing bad builds. Which is not to say that all the builds posted are bad. The ones that are ok look less effective on paper than 30/30/10, and you’d need some pretty solid evidence to change anyones mind about that. Anyone with a tiny bit of experience anyway.

If you really want to know what I think, it’s that you shouldn’t be posting builds when everything you post shows that you very clearly have zero experience in competitive tpvp, and no idea about the math behind maximising a builds potential. Get one or the other, and preferably both, before you start trying to ‘help’, because right now you’re not.

Clearer?

If you needed an amulet to kill hotjoiners before the patch, don’t whine about balance.

spoj.9672:

Mammoth.1975:

Encanis.4031:

Infect.2738:

This. Not to take away from your thread but my 30/30/10 build became meta in the high tier scene. and will probably put out the most pressure possible IF played right. I will say good job for offering up a list of builds people can try though.

Well, maybe stupid question, but what exactly is this super 30/30/10 build? I always have trouble if people only quote these numbers without further explanation on gear/traitchoice/playstyle (of course, obvious to them, but not for the readers)… some links would be great

You raise an interesting question. I’m curious what others are using on their new versions of 30/30/10. I can’t decide between 2 lyssa/4 nightmare, 6 nightmare, and 6 undead. Tier 1 spite feels like a wasted slot too.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMah7dbub87JEpCPD0jdBXAxoHHTwoMA-TsAAzCpI+S9l7LzXyvsfN8Y5xGBA

Cheers Spoj. Have you tried higher bleed duration but preferred this?

BTW, if you’re new to necro, take a good look at this, because it’s much more effective than any of the builds in the first post. I really don’t want to be too critical because I appreciate people putting effort into helping out the community, and I appreciate theorists who try off the wall stuff even more, but this kind of misinformation isn’t helping anyone.

I know, but I’d use dagger one one set for when you’re knocked out of shroud with axe2 and focus4 on cooldown. Switch for a few dagger chains, switch back for axe2/focus4, pop back into DS. Better LF generation when your shroud is out. Whether you’ll thus end up with the same shroud uptime, despite having to spend an extra couple seconds waiting out of shroud each time it drops really just depends how much damage you take. You do significantly more damage during the downtime though.

I heard fear counts as both a stun and a condition for melandru runes. Haven’t tested but I know condition duration and sigils of paralyzation both affect it, plus it can be both cleansed and stunbroken.

Encanis.4031:

Infect.2738:

This. Not to take away from your thread but my 30/30/10 build became meta in the high tier scene. and will probably put out the most pressure possible IF played right. I will say good job for offering up a list of builds people can try though.

Well, maybe stupid question, but what exactly is this super 30/30/10 build? I always have trouble if people only quote these numbers without further explanation on gear/traitchoice/playstyle (of course, obvious to them, but not for the readers)… some links would be great

You raise an interesting question. I’m curious what others are using on their new versions of 30/30/10. I can’t decide between 2 lyssa/4 nightmare, 6 nightmare, and 6 undead. Tier 1 spite feels like a wasted slot too.

Pretty sure I’d change a few things, beginning by swapping one axe for a dagger.

I think we got too much at once, but until people put at least a few days of effort into working on counters, the discussion is pointless.

Common mistake among better teams too, or was in GW1 at least. ’We’re the best so we already know. There are no counters, the meta is dead’. Interesting that people keep doing it after being proven wrong over and over again.

I think my favourite comment in the game is male asura minion summoning.

‘Up on your uhhh…. feet!’

Less than 360 dps. Q kittening Q.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Mammoth.1975:

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Mammoth.1975:

Jabberwock.9014:

Yobculture.5786:

At least Necros aren’t going to be killed last anymore.

We’ll get the honours of being killed first.

Which is horrible balance… being forced to kill a tank first is just bad. Glass cannon nukers are supposed to be top priority to kill in any game, but condition necros put out so much pressure even with tank stats that they need to be dealt with immediately.

A tank necro doesn’t have dhuumfire.

Man this is awkward. I think the buffs were too much, but everyone who else who does seems to be a kittening idiot.

You do realize that you don’t have to spec for Curses to be effective at conditions anymore, right? 30/10/20/10/0, Rabid Amulet, Undead Runes, and defensive utilities. The burn does most of the work, you don’t need terror with our already massive access to other conditions. You can simply play a more effective Engineer.

Yeah, that looks pretty tanky. Against bunkers. Plus, dhuumfire on that build is worth about 275 dps, so I sure hope it’s not doing most of the work, because a real tank necro outheals that with staff 2.

Let’s keep the build discussion to your build thread.

275 DPS?… I don’t even know how to get a burn to do that little damage on a pure power build.

Way to lie and show your lack of knowledge of Necro.

Sorry I forgot you have 100% uptime with your 30% condition duration.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Mammoth.1975:

Jabberwock.9014:

Yobculture.5786:

At least Necros aren’t going to be killed last anymore.

We’ll get the honours of being killed first.

Which is horrible balance… being forced to kill a tank first is just bad. Glass cannon nukers are supposed to be top priority to kill in any game, but condition necros put out so much pressure even with tank stats that they need to be dealt with immediately.

A tank necro doesn’t have dhuumfire.

Man this is awkward. I think the buffs were too much, but everyone who else who does seems to be a kittening idiot.

You do realize that you don’t have to spec for Curses to be effective at conditions anymore, right? 30/10/20/10/0, Rabid Amulet, Undead Runes, and defensive utilities. The burn does most of the work, you don’t need terror with our already massive access to other conditions. You can simply play a more effective Engineer.

Yeah, that looks pretty tanky. Against bunkers. Plus, dhuumfire on that build is worth about 275 dps, so I sure hope it’s not doing most of the work, because a real tank necro outheals that with staff 2.

Let’s keep the build discussion to your build thread.

Jabberwock.9014:

Yobculture.5786:

At least Necros aren’t going to be killed last anymore.

We’ll get the honours of being killed first.

Which is horrible balance… being forced to kill a tank first is just bad. Glass cannon nukers are supposed to be top priority to kill in any game, but condition necros put out so much pressure even with tank stats that they need to be dealt with immediately.

A tank necro doesn’t have dhuumfire.

Man this is awkward. I think the buffs were too much, but everyone else who does seems to be a kittening idiot.

Zenyoga.6910:

Mammoth.1975:

You made a math error. Over a 30s fight you’ll get 3 procs. You could get 4 in 30.5s if you had 100% crit and were super awesome (lucky) with your attack timing, but it will take another 6 seconds for the burning to tick.

Dhuumfire is a very big increase though, you’re right. It increases my auto by about 18%, and scepter auto was already very good.

At 1’sec for 6 sec. Fire, At 10’sec 6 sec, at 20 sec for 6 sec, at 30’s for 6’s = 4 seperate operations of Fire stackingx24 ticks

Did you not read what I posted?

If you want real figures, assume 50% crit for fast dhuumfire procs.

On average, ~1.2s for first proc.
Second at 12.7s.
Third at 24.2s.
Fourth at 35.7s.
6 seconds to tick.

41.7 seconds to get your 14.4k damage. You get 3 procs in 30s, and the damage from them has ticked out. 18s of burning, not 24. About 360 dps.

You made a math error. Over a 30s fight you’ll get 3 procs. You could get 4 in 30.5s if you had 100% crit and were super awesome (lucky) with your attack timing, but it will take another 6 seconds for the burning to tick.

Dhuumfire is a very big increase though, you’re right. It increases my auto by about 18%, and scepter auto was already very good.

1. If you’re getting focused down, work on your positioning and communication. Stats won’t save you from real spikes.
2. GC thieves don’t suck in pvp.

Harbinger.8637:

Ofc it’s possible, highest person is 70 I believe. Most people won’t get to it just because the requirement is so steep. I mean look how long it took in GW1, so I really don’t have a problem with only a few people reaching it.

So he’s halfway there.