No stability outside a grandmaster trait? DS.
Only 1 stunbreak that isn’t a total waste of a slot? DS.
Only class without an invincibility mechanic for WvW? DS.
Have any other legit complaints?
MASSSSSTER TEH DEATHSHROUD.
Sorry, that 30 trait is the only stability that Necro has. Period. End of story.
Spectral Walk is the only stunbreaker that isn’t worthless outside it’s stun break effect. The swiftness is long lasting and stays crunchy in milk.
Oh, and a screaming of lost souls when you swing it.
Hand Scythe for Axe, green spectral aura, drips liquid darkness that hit the ground, turning into pools of inky blackness with skulls floating in the pool.
Oh, and the “chomp” animation becomes a leering lich’s grin.
I already placed a comprehensive condition fix in the suggestions forum. It died quietly with no replies whatsoever. At this point people are just working around the problem by ignoring condition builds outside solo PvE.
The suggestions were:
- Make damaging conditions “burst” after the duration stacks to a certain length
- Make condition removers stack by duration just like the conditions themselves do: I.E. A single-condition remover can remove 6s of bleed, wheather that’s by removing 3 stacks of 2s bleed or 6s of a 10s bleed.
- Abolish removal of “all” conditions, instead making them remove many seconds/stacks, but not infinite seconds/stacks.
The effect would be to eliminate the condition scaling problem, make single-condition removers more effective against short-duration intensity stackers, and make “all” removals more balanced.
Does is strike anyone else as ironic that the class that’s supposed to be the master of fear instead has the least defense against it?
I’d support this change, but also make one of the fear-affecting traits also grant immunity to fear.
Actually, it’s not clear at all they’re ignoring minions. They’ve explicitly said that fixes to ranger pets was a priority, and since the problems with both minions and pets are in the NPC AI, it would be downright difficult to fix one but not the other. I’m not saying that anet couldn’t manage that if they tried, but…
No race looks cooler in DS than Charr. Choose your horns wisely, and you’ll look like a death lich warcat.
Also, necros can be a little weak at extreme range, and charzooka can help with that.
Also, build your necro for 1v1, since any group with a brain will focus-fire on the class that doesn’t have any form of invincibility at all. Get a retaliation skill so that you can at least do some damage before you die.
Of course, there’s plenty of groups that don’t have a brain, so you could hope to run into one of those.
“Hey, you can get a resser-kill as a necro if you find someone dumb enough to not notice that they’re bleeding!”
reminds me of:
“Hey, necros are great DPS’ers if you find someone dumb enough to just stand in the middle of a well!”
I’m beginning to notice a pattern…
No, definitely make one of your offhands a warhorn. Even if the other skills on horn were crap, the swiftness would be worth it in sheer time saved, but both the AoE daze and the AoE cripple/light damage are decent abilities as well.
Don’t use staff until a bit later when you can trait for it and can avoid mashing 2-5.
Mr Peters: Thank you for dropping by and letting us know about the upcoming fix. We’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out.
Siphoning will never be fixed. It can’t be, for the simple reason that there’s too many other abilities out there that regen generic health that aren’t bound to necros. Regens, instant heals… but also sigils and runes and boons.
A necro ability that did significant healing on top of that would potentially outheal damage if someone maxxed out the other options. Remove lifesteal sigils and runes, and there will be play-balance room to give necros a decent leech. But that won’t happen.
That’s why in my opinion DS exists. Designers are free to give you significant rates of LF regen only because they exercise such tight control over how it’s generated. No one else can help you, equipment doesn’t directly give LF, etc. It’s the only non-stacking regen.
Or they can make a bunch of nice looking skins and tie it to the weapon class you have. If you have a berzerker’s rifle, you’ll be seeing a berzerker’s elixir gun or a berzerker’s grenade pack when you swap.
My advice: The cooldown reduction and 10% bomb (but ONLY for bomb) damage isn’t worth 20 traits, especially when it sacrifices a invincibility-button like Self-RD.
You are already using BoB and Tool Kit. Do you know what their toolbelt skills have in common? They are relatively-low CD skills that reliably hit with static discharge… and that would bump your damage by a lot more than 10% more bomb.
So, take out 20 from explosives… you’ll still get heals from bombing, you’ll just lose 10% damage from them. Get your SRD with 10 points, and get Static with the other 10 points.
Then lose the shoes. You’ll make up for it with the selfRD. Get rifle turret for the 9 second toolkit skill. The rifle itself is only useful to drop on a fire field and immediately blow up for 3 free stacks of might and some trifling AoE damage.
Let us know how it works out! =)
With all the blocking that you do, do you think that 6 runes of the guardian would give you a second retaliation-like ability?
The only interactions between Cdmg and power/prec/critdam is that might affects both power and Cdmg, and crits can be traited to proc conditions on most professions. That’s it. Cdmg lacks synergy, but it also bypasses boons/toughness.
I’d imagine that chillomancer’s more valuable in a group than solo. If your buddies can use all their abilities and several enemies can only spam 1 from a distance, I’d call that a pretty lopsided fight.
Maybe there should be a shroud form that’s bound to F2, and shares cooldowns with the first shroud. This shroud could be more like plague, and it’s damage should be condition-based. The idea is that conditonmancers use this one instead because it complements their strengths.
I think that we’re missing boons on purpose as part of our character design. Maybe that’s why so many of our feats are mere percentage boosts… because we can’t generate our own boons.
Was that supposed to be some kind of logical argument or are you actually implying that warriors aren’t a better choice outside of 8v8 hotjoin?
> Drop 2 wells, morph to DS and use the ‘4’ skill. Massive damage, massive AoE, and massive bleed chance.
You forgot the part where you pray the targets don’t block or dodge because your “massive AoE” isn’t going to be recharging for a great deal of time.
But hey. that’s why they gave us locust swarm, right?
Here’s a build that might work, that I was planning to try when I get the supporting armor:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUIQRAsf7NlYgKCHHyvjiIXg1DAeQ/VVIe4MwI8B;TIAgzCoA
Basically the idea is to use Fiery Wrath, Radiant Power, Elusive power and Powerful Blades to get a total of 35% bonus damage as long as you keep the target burning and you keep dodging. Your high critical rate feeds your vigor, allowing (and requiring) you to dodge often for heals. The high attack rate of both main+offhand sets are meant to keep the burning going, with help from JI and torch. Be sure to use active justice on your next mob before killing the first one for a smooth transition.
It’s main weakness is lack of meaningful AoE.
1. Drop rifle turret to open fight, overcharge it instantly.
2. (a) If fighting one mob, net it, run up to it, blunderbuss and Overcharge shot to blow yourself back to the turret.
2. (b). If fighting multiple, close gap with Jump, then blunderbuss and overcharge to return to turret.
3. Switch to bomb kit as enemies close, drop BoB, then Fire Bomb. FB goes off with enemies in range, you blow the turret for damage+area might, BoB goes off for knockback, more AoE damage, and another 3 stacks of might.
4. Clean up anything that survived.
5. If you must flee, medkit→swift→bandage 123 to gain HP and a bit of distance. Drop smoke bomb then Leap finisher (Jump Shot) or blast finisher (BoB or blow turret), depending on which is on cooldown. Either path gives you stealth which drops aggro.
It’s been working for me. Will work better when I get SD to put into the rotation.
You clearly don’t understand the difference between a forum moderator and a developer.
More importantly, you don’t seem to be able to understand why it’d be counterproductive to have the devs doing forum moderation instead of… development and testing.
> You can be sure every Necromancer around the globe understood that screenshot
Not all people on this forum actually have necros. Strange, I know.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t get it after about 5 seconds of looking, though.
Get a trait that lets you build lifeforce with each condition inflicted so that conditionmancers can actually use DS?
I see. Thanks.
Oh, forgot to add one part:
For stacking duration conditions that aren’t damaging ones, the burst should be some special effect related to the condition.
For example, overstacking chill procs an immobilize.
Stacking weakness strips several stacks of might and/or removes unshakable stacks.
Stacking blindness gives a short-duration debuff that prevents the target from critically hitting.
66% less movement speed.
66% skill cooldown
Doesn’t that mean 66% less attack speed, and making it so those who want to kite, can?
I read that it bypasses Unshakable (but not Unstoppable).
You can spread it like butter with epidemic.
So in a game where healing is limited, why isn’t this the biggest mechanic ever?
Sorry for the noob question, but I can’t find the answer in a wiki page.
Maybe make it a display OPTION, not a requirement. Sometimes knowing what’s contributing to your total regen is useful. Did that Elixir stop proccing? Better get the gun out again.
- deposit screen in personal bank doesn’t tell you how much your character has available to deposit.
- Right-click both moves screen and designates targets, making for random mistargets.
Anet did a great job keeping ingredients out of your hair, maybe it’s time for the same thoughtfulness towards some other items…
You’re right! Because making gold in this game isn’t hard at all!
Proposal 3: “Pulse” > 5 stacks of duration.
Now that duration is considered a stack, we have another trick available – one that solves the scaling problem. When you apply a 8th stack of a duration-based condition, 5 stacks get consumed and you apply a special effect. Now having 5 mages burning the same target is actually useful, since the duration converts to a burst of damage if the duration gets high enough.
Assume we use 2s burning for a stack. You get burning on a boss up to 16s. When you cast the spell that pushes it over the top, 10s of that gets applied instantly (perhaps with a 25% penalty to total damage?), and now you have 6s of burning left.
The penalty to burst damage, along with the high duration requirement (for non-elementalists, anyway) before it triggers is intended for balance purposes so that condition damage doesn’t become the new burst damage.
Take all 3 proposals together, tweak it with testing and experience, and I think condition damage becomes viable again… and more importantly, it’ll be easier to STAY fixed because the mechanics once again support scaling on both the application and the removal sides.
Conditions, as they exist now, have problems, especially with scaling to accommodate more than a few conditions users and with the ease with which they can be wiped clean. The move to duration-based conditions alleviated some problems, but also caused massive wastage of damage when you have more than a few condition users. Except for proposal 3 later on, this post doesn’t fix the problem… but it introduces fundamental balance that you can build a solution on top of.
The ease of wiping conditions currently varies wildly: a 15 second burn can be removed with the least and lowliest condition remover, but 7 stacks of bleeding might not even notice. That’s a wild and unbalanced variation in power. Currently players “armor” a stack we want to keep with other conditions that must be removed first, but that’s a workaround of the core problem.
Proposal 1: Duration-stacked conditions are considered “stacked” by duration.
Example: make all current one-condition removers instead remove 3 stacks of conditions, 2s burning is a stack, 3s bleed is a stack. Now a cleansing bolt will nail 2-3 stacks of low-duration bleed or 6 seconds of burning… now it’s twice as effective against bleeds but won’t completely kill a 10s burning stack. The numbers can be tweaked but the goal is to even out removal of duration stacking conditions versus instance-stacked ones.
Proposal 2: Ban the use of the word all with regards to conditions.
You are much more careful with the word all elsewhere in the game: Blocks, invulnerabilities and protection have severe duration and often cooldown limitations, weakness excludes both crits and condition damage, and although “reflect all projectiles” abilities exist, one only has to step into WvW to experience the vast power of the word all. Immunity to all crits doesn’t even exist for players in this game AFAIK.
Yet, “remove all conditions” is found in quite a lot of places in this game. Some are even AoE. There are indeed very few AoEs to shut down power and crit builds.
Because of proposal 1, we now have an alternative: make “all” mean 15 stacks for personal removal, and 10 stacks for AoE removal. That’s still a lot of condition removal… but it’s not infinite like before.
This approach will help greatly with your scaling issues, because “all” becomes exponentially more powerful in massive fights. Again, see reflect wall for details.
That’s a really great insight on how to close on a minizerg and do some nice burst damage during a brief invincible period. I was wondering how to make my build survive long enough to get in range for the bombs, and using rifle/Self-regulating defenses seems to be the answer.
In your experience, would Protective Shield or Cloaking Device be better in small-group combat?
If you feel you need to justify being a warrior, you could focus on being a bleed warrior or a crit warrior or a gun warrior.
With wars, you have many specs to choose from that don’t need a norn’s might.
Shout-healers just need a big mouth… and I think we can all agree Asura has that >;)
Good race for the couple of professions who got totally robbed on their elite… necro, elementalist, etc.
Didn’t read the post.
Argument by namecalling.
No rational person… ?
Hey, I fancy myself a rational person and you know what? I think OP’s post has more information density than you can mentally handle.
Even a total narcissist who’s uninterested in the part that suggests that the changes HE WANTS, RIGHT NOW might be slightly harder than he expects might find profit in the part where OP explains how facts might work better than righteous raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaage in getting attention from the devs.
Invalid reasoning.
Just because warriors whine just as much as the rangers doesn’t mean the rangers don’t have a point.
I’m guessing that the reason they don’t have stats (yet) is because:
1. Unlike ele weaps, most kits can’t be picked up by someone else. Therefore the damage that kits do can be addressed by simply scaling up or down the damage.
2. There’s probably some shared code with other things that are considered bundles, and it’s either problematic to give them all stats for reasons like (1), or it’s something they plan to do but since it’ll affect all bundles it will be a major balancing change that they haven’t gotten to. You don’t want a bug where a downscaled level 80 picking up a ghostbuster gun from level 10 charr area breaks his stats, do you?
I see this as being like the promised upcoming pet fix. Since it affects BOTH rangers and necros AND because it’s a balancing issue as well as a fix, this means that it takes more effort than a narrow inspection of the surface issues might reveal.
It might even partially be intentional because they want kits to help P/S users just as much as it helps rifle users!
Hello, I’m new to the game with no character over 25 yet, so I wanted to adapt a static charge build for PvE but ofc could be making rookie mistakes. Could some people look over my idea and tell me if I’m overlooking something important?
It takes healbomber and gives it SD for more offense, since bombers have an acceptable toolbelt skill that’s also a blast finisher. Since we have to have rifle turret anyway, why not blow it up too?
Key ideas:
- The permaswift/vigor combo
- Heal Bombing/Static D
- Heal/Tough add some power
- Combo: 4 blast finishers, 3 projectile finishers (1 AoE, 2 are static discharge skills), 1 fire and 1 smoke field.
- Defense: 2 shield blocks, 1 projectile reflect, nails and glue bomb, daze, launch, blowback.
- Can be adapted to elixir gun/kit refinement instead of toolkit if more support is desired.
Perceived weaknesses:
- Low condition removal, middling HP.
- No stun breakers (not as important in PvE?)
- Few boons
- No weapon perks
- Crit damage locked behind low-precision build (hey, do SD and bombs even crit?)
P.S. Might Field Combo:
Turret, Surprise, (nails magnet if needed), Pistol Blind, BoB, Fire Bomb, Det Turret in between Fire Bomb and BoB dets, Surprise (was reset by det turret), Throw Wrench.
That gives you 4 discharges(2 with 6 stacks of might), 2 explosions and a launch. I’ve tested it without SD or toolkit because I just hit 20 today.
I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t work, which probably means it’s totally borked somewhere. Could someone more familiar with the game tell me if it’s sound?
You know, it might make more sense and be better balanced if warrior and engineer rifle range was reversed.
More sense because accuracy over distance is precisely what you’d expect the mechanical expert’s advantage to be… and having to be slightly closer to the enemy isn’t going to exactly kill the warrior.
Well, the question was actually under what circumstances the multipliers kicked in at all.
If they don’t kick in, they obviously don’t count. But that’s fourth grade math, we’ll cover that next year.
The armor. I play a female Charr guardian, and I’m not looking forward to the comical sword-length spikes that make me look like a hedgehog with inferiority issues.
It’s like the only idea the devs had was “Hey, lets make them all dwarven battleragers!”
Fire Legion Build: —- PvE only b/c Renewed Justice >:\
Note: This is mostly theory because I’m planning out my journey, but I’ve tried to avoid Stupid Newbie Mistakes in creating this. If you find any, please point them out to me.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fUIQNAsfRlYgiDXGyIEsNFRuArHA8g+rqQ8wZUR4D
Hey, what’s the big idea?
The idea of this build is to grab most of the big damage multipliers, which are 10% but conditional on circumstances, and ensuring they’re always happening. Also, synergy: many guardian traits support each other in a chain that are extremely powerful when you put them together.
The big 3:
- Fiery Wrath: Increases damage by 10% against burning foes.
- Radiant Power: Deal 10% more damage to foes inflicted with any conditions. Burning, blind, and vulnerability will be passed out like candy.
- Elusive Power: Damage is increased by 10% if endurance bar is not full.
So, if your enemy is burning and you dodged anytime recently, you’re going to be dealing 30% more normal damage. Crits use this enhanced base amount. Oh, and they’re burning. Keeping the Big 3 true is the fundamental goal here.
The Healing power of “go roll in the dirt, you wimp!”
Your main healing chain is going to be Vigorous Precision->Selfless Daring. Crits give more dodges which you muse use for regular heals and because Elusive Power. Your slot 6 of choice and traited VoR are still always available too, of course.
Doc, it’s like a faint Burning sensation all over
Keeping burning up is just as important as the freight-train damage. Your burning sources are Torch 4, Judge’s Intervention, and triple finishing a Purging Flames fire field.
Oh, and we’ll be abusing Virtue of Justice: Justice is Blind, Renewed Justice, Blind Exposure gives you a classic guardian combo of fire, blind and vulnerability.
And Might makes it righter
Finally, we’re going to try and keep several stacks of might up with Empowering Might. Might=both power AND cond damage, and this build loves them both.
It’s Critical you remember EM has a 1s cooldown anyway
Crits feed both Empowering Might and Vigorous Precision, but we’ll mostly rely on rate of attack. Also, full radiance tree + RH Strength on sword.
And if roasting them doesn’t work, hit them with big pointy objects.
As for weapons, after examining them I realized I didn’t have much choice after all. Obviously, you need a torch to help keep burning up. That means a 1h weapon and since the build needs blinds both for active defense and to keep vulnerability up that means sword is the mainhander.
On the other hand, fantasies of stacking 10s of burning, then switching to staff and pumping might to make those 10s a mob’s worst nightmare had to yield to reality: first you’ll need to HAVE 10s of burning. And while you’re waiting for your focus, VoJ, and JI to become available, what’s a burning guardian to do?
That’s right, we:
- Create a fire field with Purging Flames
- Whip out a greatsword and proceed to whirl finisher(GS5)
- pull them back in (GS5 again)
- Whirl finisher(GS2)
- Leap finisher (GS3)
…for 2 blossoms of fire bolts followed by fire armor for all kinds of burn duration.
Oh did I mention that the GS3 blind=>vuln just procced and the double-dipping might stacks from (GS1->3) and Empowering Might are right around the corner as we wait to go back to torch?
9 meters… 7… 6!
That can’t be; that’s right inside the room.
Another fun move I found in the forums is to leap then JI just before you arrive to give you really sick range. 1800 (1200+600) range jump with free fire, blind and vuln party favors as you arrive at your destination. Alternately, since you have two swords, you can leap/swap/leap as a getaway.
What does slot 6, a protection charm, and a kitty bazooka have in common? Nothing!
We’ve already specified the uses of Judge’s Intervention and Purging Flames, the third slot is dependant on what challenges you face, but I’d go with Signet of Judgement for 10% less incoming damage, making it easier on your healing skills… speaking of which, I’d go with the signet, so that you’re not burning your purging flame on something minor. For the elite, I’m going with the Charrzooka. Because I can. Oh, and 4 of the 5 skills cause burning… heh heh heh. Guess what’s going to happen to the next person who points at a guardian 1200 units away and laughs?
Statistically, we should all be dead right now
- Power
- Heal&Vit
- Crit%&Cond Damage&Boon Duration
- Cond Duration
- Crit damage and toughness.
Y? Ask the message limit.
Yes, I’m already aware that this is about as selfish as a Guardian build can possibly get, and that does concern me, but I’m frigging Flame Legion. That’s my (personal) story, and I’m sticking to it.
Thanks everyone. I now have a plan (assuming a Fire Whirl gives any kind of significant duration). I’ll post it in the builds section when I register with a calculator site.