Guild Wars 2

45 minutes and nothing :-/

I don’t mind the unplanned maintenance but I’m questioning the wisdom of doing it right in the middle of peak hours. There are only enough people online to get paid tourneys to pop for a couple of hours each day, so come back tomorrow I guess?

Loopy Larry.9486:

I also have experienced this also while playing as an ele using vapour form a few times, one thing I do notice (might just be a coincidence) is that I am often fighting a necro when this happens, and the first thing that comes to mind is I perhaps rallied from a minion of some sort dying. It is a very weird bug and I am not 100% sure what causes it, defo seems to have the possibility of game changing though.

That’s probably it. Like vengeance rallies off minion kills.

XiL.4318:

Come on now. That’s a leap.

Oh?

You’ve got a real problem if you think mark of blood comes up short compared to all those traits. The only one that’s better is deceptive evasion.

Manticore Five.9867:

So we are… not broken… we are just not working?

You’ve got to understand the language.
…

Can you break this one down for me?

The entire NA meta is all about necromancers right now.

The asura ‘tiny animations’ racial is pretty OP, but necros don’t have many huge obvious animations to dodge anyway.

I’m glad they don’t. They’d be so much less useful in tpvp.

I chuckled a bit at people telling Payne he is having L2P issues.

Here’s one for the thieves though:
Rank your favourite stolen abilities.

Don’t worry about x being better than y in z situation, just rank the ones that have the most effect most of the time.

Kardiamond.6952:

…

I got most of my QPs with the second build up there. Or you could take a look at Xelfers builds, he’s got a lot more QPs than me:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;0_-34;1IkI0p33JkJ0;9;6JJT;413-27-09AW-k6W;1jwmAjwmA9cp

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=;044Z;2IkI0p3-KkJ0;9;5TJJ;213A13-27;2KZV8;2hoHAhom92Vn

Attrition play clearly works reasonably well (harhar) on necros.

Very funny trait at clocktower.

nerva.7940:

thanks mammoth. the last one looks good. i played around with variations of the first one, and decided that anything with less than 25-26k health is no go. 20k health does not allow for a lot of mistakes, and after u pop all your cd’s on that one thief, youre dead when his buddy comes. that was my experience. it looked amazing on paper though…any tips?

I think the second one is actually going to be closer to what you’re looking for since it does a bit more damage.

The third one I only use on map 3 when I’m pugging frees without an ele, to kill the treb and help out in mid, and I usually use soldiers instead of clerics, but 300+ regen ticks for everyone are nice. The damage is quite low, you just take advantage of the golem charge mechanics to kill treb fast, and nothing can kill you while you’re at it.

The first one is basically a bunker. You can eventually kill something if neither of you gets backup for a long, long time, but you should have no trouble surviving against 2-3 guys for long enough that your team either comes and blows them up, or 2caps the other points. I never run it on sides because portal, and I never run it on mid because wards, so I never run it. Something like it could probably be run mid on map 2 though.

I think even if portal gets hit as hard as it needs to, engis and eles will still be better on sides, because they can kill roamers much faster in their bunker specs, and have more mobility, allowing them to support mid when needed.

Very tanky:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/d7gv3f8

Fairly tanky:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/buhj4ko

Power based:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/cxrlk85

Jimmy Graham.2851:

I logged on today and noticed the update that shows your real armor dye in games. I also noticed that I kept getting around 40 glory from a win bonus in hot-join. I never really pay attention to the top player awards at the end of the game, but i am pretty sure it used to be five?

Also, if this is true i think it will be great and encourage to
- play to win
-play less thieves / mesmers / any setup that helps you get the most kills

Win bonus is 20%

I hope you weren’t regularly getting 5 before

Kravick.4906:

hackks.3687:

They specially have a hard time with conditions.

Which makes me laugh when they say this because 6x runes of the soldier + any shout = warriors are basically immune to conditions. Lets not forget the trait that removes movement impairing effects on movement abilities.

Nerf those triple shout warriors fast!

Kardiamond.6952:

Are you talking about WvW or sPvP?

I personnally never run a build without CC breaker, so that’s why for me 4 well is out of question.

And I’m not a fan of Mass well, simply because higher level everyone will counter your well by just moving out of it and knocking you back.

Since DD Ele is the new flavor of the month, knock back are quit frequent.

I might also be bad with Wells, don’t like their stil. In WvW I use Well of suffering (not sure the name) and spectral Wall. That’s about it

I run 2 builds with no stunbreak actually. The ‘bring a stunbreak or lose’ rule is more of a guideline if you have deathshroud. If I fail to dodge something like bulls, I can afford to facetank 100b no sweat, even without DS. Thieves are pretty much laughable. And that’s with a balanced build, not a full tank.

Against better teams I run a glassier build, and for that I bring a stunbreak. Stats won’t save you from a coordinated spike. 100b sure. Time warped 100b+backstab+shatter while immobilized and dazed, probably not.

Kardiamond.6952:

Is there anyone really going with 4 well in spvp?

And what about your damage?

Like you said, the build prolly sucked, because everything was focused around having protection with wells.

Most other bunker build can do it without having to sacrifice all abilities. Elem, Guardian, Ranger just to name few.

Before going any further in that discution, I will test more bunker build for the necro.

But the original post was about siphon heal, and except well heal that can be good, other sipphon seems to be unreliable. Well in my experience.

Not usually, most builds with wells run 2 or 3. I run 3 on one build but switch in a fourth against double melee.

The build that is focused around having protection with wells is actually pretty strong, although largely pointless with portal in its current state. Oh, and don’t forget that ritual of protection affects allies, so it’s pretty strong even if you’re not building to bunker. The weak build was the spectral one.

I hope you’re not talking about running wells as some kind of ‘sacrifice’ btw.

Kardiamond.6952:

Care to show me the build for perma protection and regen? It’s not that I don’t trust you, I’m just not aware of it.

Thanks!

Edit : I checked a traits builder, and our only source of protection comes from Wells. 3 sec of protection on 45 traited traited wells.

Permanent regen is as simple as staff 2 with some boon duration, but it becomes more flexible and forgiving when combined with mark of evasion and focus offhand on second set.

Near permanent protection:
4 wells, 30 in death magic, ritual of protection, ritual mastery, 2 earth/4 grove or 2 grove/4 earth, last gasp.

Each well = 4.75s protection

4.75/32 + 4.75/36 + 4.75/48 + 4.75/48 = 47.8% uptime.

4 rune = 4.75s protection (6.5 before last patch)

4.75/30 = 15.8% uptime

15.8+47.8 = 63.6% uptime

Last gasp = 9.75s protection

9.75/60 = 16.3% uptime

63.6 + 16.3 = 79.9% uptime.

You can drop 5 from death magic and only lose 0.4% uptime if you want. If you’re not going to half health, you don’t need the extra 16.3% uptime to win btw. That doesn’t include vulnerability conversions from well of power either, but that’s probably counteracted by the 25% chance to proc once the ICD is up on the 4rune delaying it a few seconds. You could go higher using well of suffering instead of darkness if you wanted. You could go higher still by using the two spectral skills that give protection and spectral mastery instead, but you lose all the well utility. With the grove/earth procs of last patch, I think the highest I could figure out was 97-98% uptime, but the build sucked :P

Kardiamond.6952:

Sheobix, I know you playing a lot with necromancer. But you really think that a 38 hp par hit, is viable if you compare to a 120 hp/sec AUTOREGEN + a 100% up regen of about 100-200 hp? We have to hit something, not them.

It’s not an either/or proposition. Necros can get permanent regen too, and near permanent protection at the same time, while still siphoning health, with a much more effective 6 heal, plus death shroud.

Bunker engis are very strong though, but that’s largely due to a bug.

Not a potshot at all. I quite enjoyed wow arenas and had my UI heavily customized for it.

I just prefer that some information require interpreting rather than staring at the UI. Things like elementalists only being able to see 1/4 of their weapon cooldowns at a time provide a lot of scope for a good elementalist to distinguish themselves from an average one. You put that on the UI, and suddenly there’s less room for good players to stand out.

This is one reason GvG was so much better than WoW arenas. Good players were in fact keeping track of multiple enemy skill cooldowns with no UI assistance at all. To most observers it just seems like they always have the answer ready at the right time, but that’s because they started to conserve those answers when they knew the cooldown was coming up. They were doing this while doing all the things that wow players were doing, only positioning was even more crucial. Prot monks had to know which way the enemy team were facing at all times, not just where they were located, and one person being out of position at the wrong moment would often result in a match loss.

It took me a couple weeks of tpvp to figure out how to beat guard passives, despite how obvious it is when you think about it. I like that kind of learning curve, and I look forward to seeing what great players can do as time goes on. I doubt anyone has hit their full potential in this game yet.

Noctred.6732:

Mammoth.1975:

As a necro: spam 1 hard till conditions drop off without the guard doing anything, or doing something else, then apply all your stuff.

That’s kinda beside the point.

Not every fight is a clean, prolonged 1v1. Sometimes you need to spam 1 hard on a different target and then swap to a guardian momentarily for a quick fear or whatever. The lack of focus target frames in this game means you can’t monitor the buff/debuff activity of multiple players at the same time.

It also doesn’t address the situation from a defensive perspective – where you are the guardian and you just blew smite condition or w/e to cleanse something critical cause you didn’t know that purity would have auto-removed it a second later and couldn’t afford to wait.

Idk, I’m just not sure why anybody would argue against giving players more visibility into their actions.

A random necro fear has an 87-90% chance of lasting it’s full duration on a guard anyway unless you’re stacking fear duration stuff. 91% chance of lasting 90% of it’s duration, 92% chance of lasting 80% of it’s duration, etc etc.

It’s much simpler for guards. Use your cleanse when they apply a big stack, because they just saw your passive tick and you won’t have it again for 7-9s. If they applied it without seeing your passive tick, no big deal if you waste your cooldown, because the passive will keep you alive just fine against that kind of play.

I’m against most kinds of UI spoonfeeding. I’m bad but I prefer a game where people can differentiate themselves with skill.

Hypothetically, what’s the UI solution for plague signets passive?

Noctred.6732:

Mammoth.1975:

Guard passives have nothing to do with rng.

Technically, this is true.

Things like purity, the signet of resolve passive, and the virtue of courage passive are not based on RNG because the effect doesn’t happen randomly – it happens exactly every 10 or 40 seconds, respectively.

However, this timer is obfuscated from the player and there’s no reasonable way for the average player to track multiple internal clocks for the entirety of a match to know exactly when these effects are going to go off. The same goes for enemy players who are trying to work around these effects offensively.

So yeah, technically not RNG, but effectively it might as well be.

I agree with suggestion #2 – to have these timers visible on your own and your target’s buff frame.

As a necro: spam 1 hard till conditions drop off without the guard doing anything, or doing something else, then apply all your stuff.

Guard passives have nothing to do with rng.

Marduh.4603:

Caltrops deal double damage – bug.

Unless it’s a tooltip error, yeah. As strong as they are, I agree that it’s probably a bug rather than the tooltip.

QSpec.4298:

nerva.7940:

rocking spvp now, finishing first almost every game. tpvp QP ranks speak for themselves. plenty of good necros up there. sorry to disappoint u hater.

I do pretty well as a Necro in sPvP as a gasp MM build… but that hardly means that MM is fixed and ANet should not worry about minion AI.

And no one argues that Necros make a decent bunker which is why they are taken in 5s.

That doesn’t mean that our traits our great or our team utility is awesome (I am curious what utility you speak of actually).

It’s very rare to see a necro bunker in 5s. ATM they’re mostly taken for their utility and high sustained damage. Something like Powerrs build does probably ~1000 damage per scepter autoattack on a 3k armor bunker with protection if the conditions last their duration, and scepter ignores things like sanctuary (as an aside, when a guard blows sanc+stability and tries to book, if you corrupt boon, you probably just won the game). Combined with staff 5, big damage on staff 4, signet of undeath, and both damaging wells, his build also dominates down state contests, making it the highest priority target for the other team most of the time.

Khalifas necro will rock a teamfight when he uses lich of all things, unless you have a necro of your own to corrupt/remove his stability so he can be cced, or plague and spam blinds on him. You could moa him, but then you’d be running moa. Funny comment from a thief after his first time meeting Khalifa: “WTF is deathly claws and why did it twoshot me from over half health?”

Other fantastic utility besides the wells and signet include all the marks, focus 5, focus 4, dagger 5, dagger 4, dagger 3, DS 2, DS 3, scepter 2, scepter 1(3), plague signet, plague, flesh golem, and corrupt boon. That’s just off the top of my head, and deliberately excluding things like epidemic and spectral grasp because they’re a little more niche, despite how good they are in teams that can take advantage of them.

Necros have an abundance of utility, plenty of damage, and plenty of survivability. There are probably more necros being run than thieves in NA 5s right now.

30 points in soul reaping seems cheaper than a kingdom.

Hotjoin representation is about new players perceptions of balance, not actual balance.

I think toughness and power should both have their impact on the damage equation reduced in order to normalise the extremes slightly. Base health difference between classes might need to be reassessed though as health would get a small increase in effectiveness. On the other hand, eles, thieves, and guards are not exactly struggling right now.

I don’t really have a problem with someone who specs into all damage stats hitting someone who specs into only one defensive stat hard, but instagibs are a little over the top in such a situation.

Hopefully they do matchmaking right. A regular ELO ladder won’t do anything to address the concern Jon raised about new players getting stomped in their first game, or in fact their first thirty to forty games. I’m pretty sure anet knows that from the GW1 GvG ladder though.

Soul reaping is fantastic. III, VII, X, XI, XII are all strong traits, and last gasp is better than most majors.

Seeing more and more necros these last few days. Guard/mes/ele/necro and either thief or warrior accounts for more than half the teams you face.

Here’s a scepter/focus build that a couple of people have asked about in game:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/BraveBomber

Mark of blood, dodge in, weapon swap, grasping dead for about 10k aoe bleed damage every 10s. Make life hard for guards with spinal shivers, well of corruption, and corrupt boon.

I know golem sucks but it has its upsides. Golem charge people who are backed against obstacles for huge damage and blowouts, or golem charge people who are getting knocked already to send them flying. Charge also does big damage to trebuchet if needed. Once you get a fair condition stack going, charge is another cc to chain on them to prevent them using removals for a few seconds. Plus mark of revival, reaper’s mark, and golem charge gives you a few ccs against body bashers and stompers. If their stability is down you can solo revive some classes against 3-4 guys. On top of all that, he hits pretty hard and spams cripple (when he feels like attacking at all of course).

Easy 1v1s especially against thieves and warriors, good teamfighting, durable enough to hold a side if you have to.

The main problems I have-
Rangers will kitten you up.
Standard glass necros with all the condition defense stuff like consume and dagger offhand will kitten you up unless they have to fight on point.
Clocktower sucks when you’re not a ranged guy (and you’re not).
No signet of undeath.

Pillow.3296:

that wont work so well. boon – cond is 45s cd. elem can easily remove the cond and stack new boons.

It works pretty well, he usually gets kittened on before he can do anything. Not always of course.

Pillow.3296:

that wont work so well. boon – cond is 45s cd. elem can easily remove the cond and stack new boons.

It works pretty well, he usually gets kittened on before he can do anything if he has stability up.

Quickness 100b doesn’t do anything without a stun/knockdown/immobilize. Quickness pistol whip is only strong because of the stun. There’s another pattern here.

Kisses.1054:

Worst mainhand weapon in the game?
Can anyone think of anything on a different class which is as pathetic?
Ranger weapons?

In terms of pure autoattack damage (i.e autos without conditions), necro axe is actually one of the stronger ranged options, but the range is 300 too short to really count, since you effectively have to stay on point to hit anything anyway. For comparison, ranger longbow only competes at 1000+ range (which is like trying to hit someone with staff 1 btw), and doesn’t stack vuln.

Asking for a damage buff on the autoattack is probably a waste of time. The damage is already on par with other weapons. The only non condition dealing ranged autos that do more are guardian scepter, which has it’s own drawbacks, ranger axe (and shortbow does more even without the bleed), and engi rifle. If you want to count kits, grenades also do more. Axe does more dps than trick shot, which should hopefully give a bit of perspective, although bouncing is a much stronger effect than 2 stacks of vuln.

The range is a problem though, everything else is 900-1500. I guess it would be fair to say that a damage buff wouldn’t be totally out of line, since it’s very close to a melee weapon as it is.

NevirSayDie.6235:

Casual teams can’t defend it, and good teams avoid the mechanic completely.

Good teams don’t avoid the mechanic completely, quite the opposite. They understand the mechanic and include it in their planning, playing in a way that makes it much harder to steal the kill. I think you’re confusing ‘good’ with ‘basically competent’ btw. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to get your boss kills while minimising the chance of steals, and it certainly doesn’t take any great skill.

Which data? Link goes to a blank page for me. I told you already why mes/guard/thief/ele are the top 4. Double guard and/or double thief are bad ideas btw, again, as I said before.

Aga.8641:

Mammoth.1975:

Someone has to kill the treb. Eles and necros do it best, but eles have better mobility.

What on earth are you talking about? Necros aren’t the WORST at killing trebs, there’s 1 viable spec for a necro to run in PvP, that’s conditions….condition specs do not kill trebs. If you’re running any other spec as a necro you’re completely useless to your team, so it doesn’t matter if you can kill the treb of not.

Sorry, that’s not correct. You can fill in for an ele just fine, providing just as much benefit to your team in fights, downing the treb almost as fast and more reliably. The problem is that it takes you so much longer to get there, and that means more shots fired, which is why people use eles instead.

Xom.9264:

I dont think many of the paid teams run necros at this point in the game.

This is not correct either, which kind of turns the rest of your post on it’s head. Necromancer players may even be slightly over represented on the leaderboard.

Yes and yes.

Here’s the issue:
Bunkers are almost required. Guards are the best bunkers. Good mobility is required. Thieves and mesmers have the best mobility. Someone has to kill the treb. Eles and necros do it best, but eles have better mobility.

Result: You want guard/thief/mesmer/ele +1.

Necro is a fine +1, but you’re competing with 5 other classes (2 thief or 2 guard isn’t great, 2 mes or 2 ele is fine).

None of this is necessary of course, but it helps.

It heals you. For a bit more than 30% of what regeneration heals you for in the same timeframe. 60% if you go 30 in SR for the 5s deathshroud recharge. It feels weak to me, but could be fine for dungeons, I don’t know. Staff 2 does more assuming you take greater marks, but if you already have that or regen from another teammate I guess this would be able to provide a bit extra still.

I’d prefer to just blast off water fields. Oh wait.

Rythgar.2896:

This is nothing new, atleast my team always makes sure to give long stomps when ever it is possible (exceptions being if they are on a neutral point, or getting ressed etc).
I’d say that the only real difference is that less skilled teams/players will give people the same ress timers as a skilled can now, without any kind of effort.

One more key difference is when you stomp a warrior because you want to prevent vengeance for whatever reason, he always gets max timer. Also, thieves/eles/mesmers always used to be able to shave a few seconds off if they wanted to, but now it’s counterproductive for them to use their downed state 2+3 abilities half the time.

The main one is what you mentioned though. Even if you didn’t successfully revive an ally before, the attempt itself would force an early stomp, giving him a shorter timer. Now revives are all or nothing.

So college drop outs qualifies for the monthly, gets their faces stomped in round 1, and goes back to getting farmed by good teams? Problem?

Glad it’s easy. More people with tickets is a good thing.

Yep Xelfer’s build is the best bunker. I used to use reaper’s protection instead of foot in the grave but that was a mistake. I use double energy instead of hydromancy, life offhand, and runes of the grove, but otherwise it’s exactly the same build.

shaolin.9716:

Being good involves yourself only.

Being good involves teamwork.

shaolin.9716:

Mammoth.1975:

Spvp seems like the answer.

Absolutely not. sPvP is not taken seriously and people don’t care if they win or lose. Solo players want tPvP where people care and try their hardest to win but in a competitive environment where pugs are matched against pugs.

See post above yours.

OdinSon.8439:

Mammoth.1975:

Spvp seems like the answer.

No, no it is not. Even Spvp you have level 47 players farming glory. I myself jump in to farm in sPvP just for the fact that I know I will run into noobs and it will be 3 second kills as they spam 1, 1, 1, and 5, 5, 5.

L2P? That’s my point. In no game should you have to be potentially matched up with pros as a beginner. What is the point? No one likes to be completely stomped everytime they play a game. That is just bad form.

So increase the bonus for winning. Funny enough, I used to think you got more personal glory by running with the zerg too, but then I realised that’s only on a game by game basis. When you add 20% for winning most of your games, it already averages out to better glory gain than the guys who zerg around and only win 50% due to the law of averages. But yeah, make the difference even more pronounced, problem solved. Also solves bunker issues with low glory, since they’ll actually get reinforced if people are trying to win, allowing them to get some kills instead of steamrolled, although they could still use a tiny boost.

Spvp seems like the answer.

If LF degenerated as points instead of %, very few builds would be viable. Toughness/Vitality already scale very well on necros, this would make them must have stats. Being that the only pvp amulet with good toughness and vit is soldiers, that also shoves condition builds out. You would also be expected to take 30 in SR. I run a build like this on map 3 when we don’t have an ele sometimes, and it’s already very strong. I’ll happily kill the treb with 2 or 3 guys on me.

Yes it would be nice in one way, but then every other build would need a buff to keep them on par, and then every other class would need a buff to keep them on par.