Guild Wars 2

Well…. hitting people behind a gate with a AC isn’t very normal, now, is it?
Just because there is a “narrow” definition of hacking doesn’t mean that exploitation shouldn’t be considered as such and thus, should be reported (and banned ).

It’s still happening. Happened yesterday at Ogrewatch

Turns out… Sigil of Leeching does wonders

I don’t think you need a full rabid set for torment to be effective, depending on how much you invested into Curses. It’s 50% chance on crit, so even if you have lots of dire, it should work fine. Personally, I have around 35 – 40% crit chance, and it’s just fine (that’s with 30 points in Curses though…).

If you go to WvW where condi duration is pretty wild, it’s possible to keep 2 stacks of Torment on people with just the sigil, on top of Tainted Shackles (3 stacks) and the Heal skill (2 stacks). What you can do is start casting your heal skill, and press Escape. It will cause the Torment on all those around you without wasting your heal skill.
Torment, in my opinion is really strong (it’s also an additional condition, which covers up your other condis when the enemy cleanses). Mesmer scepter #2 is an excellent burst damage skill because it does 5 stacks of torment to a single target. Here, with a Necro, you’ll be able to do over 5 stacks in AoE. If you sprinkle in some Epidemic (if you like the skill), this can go pretty high

Just my thoughts

Cogbyrn.7283:

I use 40% condi duration food in WvW, so with 30 in Spite and Traveler runes, my condi duration is at roughly 80%. Even if my bleeds/burns/poison aren’t doing as much damage, that’s a lot of duration for the rest of the utility condis, which are often paramount to Power’s success (even though it’s Power-based damage). Plus, removing Protection and Stability are key to putting yourself at the advantage, which is why I’m pensive about removing Focus from my weapon set and trying Dagger/Dagger.

Nice, 80% condi duration is pretty insane… seems like it would work really well with Celestial as well.
With that duration, I’m sure the condis still hurt quite a bit if you are in a team that throws around might easily. I’m always tempted to make a power build but can’t seem to shake off the condi playstyle :P

Israel.7056:

I actually really enjoyed this video.

I’ve seen porting necro hijinks in spvp/tpvp but I rarely see people bring it into WvW.

Good stuff.

Thank you sir

Cogbyrn.7283:

Rennoko.5731:

The whole process feels like you are laying bread crumbs out to get the stupidest birds to move away from the flock so you can roast them. And sometimes those bread crumbs bring the blue taco too, and Alfred Hitchkitten descends from the heavens to command a feast of your bones. In those moments I would like to have worm port and spectral walk…

It was around this point that I had forgotten what you had written in the rest of your post and just started applauding. It’s like you dropped acid at some point this morning, then it hit you right at the end of that post.

Haha … I don’t know why but it made me think of
http://youtu.be/_yJCNNwHUOE?t=4s

Cogbyrn.7283:

Either way, I think it’s interesting to note how everyone has “that utility” that they absolutely cannot imagine playing without. Mine is Spectral Armor, and for the most part Corrupt Boon. I can’t imagine playing without those two on my Power Necro, and they basically never go away. I find them too useful, and if I get chased down by a zerg, I don’t have a group to call/run to to make it a real fight, so I just mess with them and /laugh until I die. No bigs.

Indeed. I think it all comes down to preference cuz really, there’s so many utilities out there. Different people master different ones. Now with the patch, I think it’ll be even better
It’s interesting that you take Corrupt Boon on a power spec :o Corrupt boon is pretty much the main skill I take when I don’t take wall, unless I’m 1v1-ing. It completely destroys guardians and eles even Engis.

Cogbyrn.7283:

EDIT – Oh my word. This thread got cleaned up something fierce, and I only received 1 infraction in the aftermath. Everything worked out better than expectation.

Haha… oh my…. I guess a lot happened. I dare not speculate :P

Rennoko.5731:

In 4 days we will see how the new changes make up for the better roles a necro may be able to fit (healer!)

-Yeah.. well.. the new healing life blast seems really weird to me… I don’t know how someone would go about aiming that, or what the radius would even be. I’m really interested in the new Blood Magic grandmaster though. Would be kinda fun having a bunch of Necros with it bouncing condis around while getting life force :P

Rennoko.5731:

There is no argument that the necro mobility skills confuse the hell out of people, because so rarely do they get used, especially a worm 1200 yards behind you while running forward. I just think they are “win more” skills. If I had the ability to pass up spectral armor and epidemic in a fight for mobility skills, chances are I could have easily won the same fight with the two mobility skills.

Wait wait wait… they don’t JUST confuse the hell out of people, they do a ton more. Confusion is only one (psychological) aspect that the skills provide. They provide mobility, survivalbility, and can be a good distraction. If you can survive longer, you can definitely put out more damage than if you die as soon as you get focused, especially in outnumebred fights. A majority of good fights for me comes either from small scale GvGs, 1v1s or outnumebred fights. Wurm + SW both shine in those areas. Also, while the value of a distraction might not be as apparent at first, dragging a high damage enemy threat, or just a bunch of enemies’ focus away from your group is invaluable – you lost one utility skill while you dealt damage and indirectly protected the whole group.
-I suppose we just have a different idea of a Necro, stemming from our different styles :P

Rennoko.5731:

The exception being the zerg-surfing stuff, but again I don’t enjoying gobbling the least attentive players in a zerg who decide tunnel vision on a small group is better than staying with their commander and the rest of their sever. Those are the guys who cause your server to lose the big engagement because they went out after a highly organized group they have no hope of handling.

I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. We come from a server who knew nothing but being outnumebred… (until recently with free transfers), and fighting people with more numbers than you isn’t nearly as easy as fighting equal numbers. Unless you fight a guild group, equal numbers aren’t a challenge, at least to me.
- I’d say that a nice portion of players who we drag out have seen us. Not all are “mindless” … maybe they wanna have a good time . Calling them “least attentive” devalues the whole encounter, imo. Most of the time people who are pulled out of the zerg outnumber us quite a bit, and outnumbered fights are a fun challenge – not easy by any means. And if a small group can take out a larger group (like in the Hylek clip – we didn’t drag them from a zerg but were outnumebred 2 to 1, I think), that’s excellent if you ask me, no matter the “skill” of the people you drag out. And to be honest, in those clips, the enemy player skill wasn’t bad at all. I wouldn’t post a clip of fighting tree-stumps that stand there auto attacking. Many of the players there were pretty decent.

Rennoko.5731:

The situational nature of our mobility skills is why I don’t care for them. Pulling people away by jumping around can save the day if enough people are baited to you, but if they don’t it leaves the rest of your party down a man. If they do chase you, and they have far superior mobility (warrior or thief), you might find your limited two situational mobility skills are not enough to get you back to your party or out of combat.

The skills seem situational at first, sure: A wurm that stands in the back.. that you have to teleport to, SW which you have to move for, but in reality, in practice, when you know the 2 skills like the back of your hand, they are really not that situational. It just requires a different mindset.
-Anyway, with those 2 skills, you should never engage a situation unless you know you can port back, and as you saw in the vid, it’s not like the enemies catch up immediately when you port back. Not only do they waste time thinking “what happened?” but we also have a lot of slows. I faced my friends who used those skills on me, and even I am stuck there thinking “where did he go?”. Most of the time when I SW into groups, I go in with Dark Path for a nice gap-close and chill. I also often have locust swarm, which cripples them. Tainted Shackles is also at disposal, and so are Staff #3 and Scepter #2. So where they can use their leaps, if they even have them, it won’t get them far with so many slows.

Not having stealth (the ulimate equalizer), or any other mobility skill on a shorter cooldown means if you have burned the two you have, you are out of steam.

Also, although I sometimes do it, it’s not good practice to burn both the ports at once (even tho sometimes it’s necessary). If the fight is back and forth, a good strategy is to space the ports out. Summon Wurm, Spectral Walk in, SW back. Take time to cast from afar, heal up, whatever. Go in, wurm back, cast from afar again. Once wurm is burnt, SW had time to recharge a bit, but there’s still a ton of survivability in there – Locust Swarm tanking, Tainted Shackles to buy time, Dark Pathing to mobs or far-away enemy, Spectral Wall tanking, kiting with chills/slows, daze, Reaper’s Protection and finally Plague. If you don’t engage in melee as often as I do and tend to stick in the back, you should have no problem maintaining those ports. When the time comes and you are hit with a sudden hammer train, or thief, you will have a way out.

Tricare.2946:

You didn’t do anything to the thief, he stealthed and you can see him 2 towards you when you plague.

The thief was glassy. When I charged her, she had her eye on me, and not any of my other allies. She had to waste initiative and whatever else to break free. Again, I easily teleported back to my group, otherwise I never would have charged her. I followed with plague, and even if she did 2-2 to me, there was nothing she could have done. She was aggrivated, wanted me (likely) but was blinded.

The guardian didn’t die, he was revived instantly.

The point stands, he downed in the middle of his allies. Most of the damage dealt was coming from me. If that’s not damage, I don’t know what is. Your epidemic would do nothing there.

Yes, you distracted the up-level and one other person. It was the 5 green dots that came and saved your group.

Actually, two people downed. I had a glassy warrior on me (the one who took off like 50% of my hp with an Eviscerate, as well as a 2 Mesmers and an uplevel ele. So no, it wasn’t “two uplevels”. The 2 uplvls were only the ones who downed. there was the glass warrior and 2 Mesmers, 1 ele, all who were facing one person – me. That movement was meant to exactly that – distract. Was it effective? I would like to think so, as it not only distracted 4 people, but downed 2 uplvls.
Now… I could have stayed in the back spamming my staff attacks and what not, but that would force everything that I distracted towards my allies probably ending very badly. The person who got everyone up was one thief (who is a friend) and our Norn guardian who didn’t down.

Good job, you killed a guardian when he was outnumbered.

Watch the video again please. Our guardian was outnumbered. I came in to help her, so it was a 2v2, then a 3v2, in their favor. After a while, our allies came as the enemies ran and we finished off their guardian. Was it outnumbered? Not really.

To me it seems that you are writing stuff just for the sake of writing and disagreeing. I know you like epidemic, and I know it’s a nice skill, but I don’t like it, simple as that. My spectral wall alone can not only CC people, it can enable me to tank, as each time someone passes it, I get life force. So by placing it mid-fight and popping DS, I can tank very well, on top of the protection from it, and Chaos Aura. It causes a 1.5 sec fear, but it ticks twice. This means that, at full stacks, it has the potential to do 2.8k damage each time someone hits it – and people often hit it more than once (as simple math, that’s 5.6k damage). That is in AoE. Just because the damage isn’t as obvious doesn’t mean it’s not there, really.

As you probably noticed, I deleted a large chunk of “lovely stuff” that I wrote to you. It just didn’t feel right. Either way, there is always a solid explanation for why I do something. If you don’t understand, feel free to ask and I will tell you exactly why I did something and we can discuss from there. Please don’t assume.

If you have any questions as to why I performed certain actions in the video, feel free to ask. I’m not entirely sure what you mean by wanting me to “do something”. It seems we are on some wrong page. If your idea of doing something is standing in the background throwing spells and then rolling over and dying as you get focused, I’m sorry, but that’s not my idea of a Necromancer. As you probably noticed, a lot of my damage happens off-screen, as I often move while casting spells. Additionally, any time you saw Reaper’s Protection, at full stacks, each fear ticks for about 1.4k, and it ticks 3 times. That’s 4.2k AoE damage just by getting CCed. Of course there was no way to notice this, as the enemies are off screen.

Some teleports:
- http://youtu.be/upKfsaZkqKU?t=24s
At this time stamp, I decide to charge a very glassy thief, who seemed ready to attack us. With a billion other enemies there, it would be very easy for her to lower one of us enough to cause downing, and possibly death. To prevent this, I charged her for some psychological distress (it worked) and I safely ported back to my allies while at the same time we didn’t have to suffer from her burst.

- http://youtu.be/upKfsaZkqKU?t=1m6s
At this time stamp, you’ll notice I caused 2 stacks of Torment to the Guardian, followed by a corrupt boon which effectively sealed his fate – he downed in the middle of all his allies.

- http://youtu.be/upKfsaZkqKU?t=2m12s
At this time stamp, I saw an ally getting downed. Since I had no source of stability at the time, ressing our friend was not the best option, as you can see from many other allies downing trying to do so. Instead, I decided to distract the group of enemies in hopes that the other allies who were better equipped to res would be able to res. In addition, I had Locust Swarm on me, which meant I could not stay in the Shadow Refuge, so there was really only one option – distraction. The Guardian I had targeted took massive damage, while the ranger downed. I pulled the attention of a group of enemies away from our downed allies while at the same time downing 2 people. In the end, we all lived to tell the tale.

- http://youtu.be/upKfsaZkqKU?t=4m56s
Corrupt Boon sealed her fate + Tainted Shackles sealed her fate.

- http://youtu.be/upKfsaZkqKU?t=7m59s
This warrior would have went down very easily if I focused my attention on killing him. I didn’t realize he was that squishy at the time, and wanted to play around with them first. I also noticed that the big charr warrior had cleansing shouts. If I fought them all at once, no good could come out of that so there was really only one option – play around with them.

- http://youtu.be/upKfsaZkqKU?t=10m1s
I think “doing nothing” here wouldn’t include downing three people.

As for the rest of the video, it shows escapes a Necro. Since Necro is considered to be one of the least mobile classes in the game, it’s entertaining to see mobility on such a class.

@phaeris,
As I see it, you really have no reason to post here. You have provided nothing constructive thus far and at this rate I doubt that will change. If you think someone should change or improve the content in their video, or change an aspect of their gameplay, that’s cool. Criticizing for the sake of criticizing isn’t.

Perhaps your frustrations with the Elementalist are getting to you.

Lol what is your problem? Either provide constructive criticism, or say nothing at all. If one player can kill 7 players, no matter how skilled they are, that’s 7 people. Yes. Seven people. If you make one misstep you are dead. Fact is they were outplayed by a single player.

And in my opinion, when you got stealth at your side, you can afford to wait to make decisions. Careful thieves > reckless thieves.

Good job cat cap man, keep it up

bokkieskitten.8023:

Adorable.

Come on Mar-mar, roam single or duo necro team. You can dooo it.

PS: The GoM blood was orgasmic to see.

Honeybunssss
Haha I’d love to roam solo or duo but that’s very hard these days unless I split off from the team =/

GoM tears are delicious indeed, but so are all red names

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

good fun,
must have a pretty good pc, i never get to cast so fast in WvW.
Just the fact alone that you are able to teleport ahead with fleshworm ^^
when I’m finished casting it i usually passed the spot i placed it.

Hehe
I actually don’t have a top-notch lap top. I’d say it’s sorta in the “upper middle” range. The video appears nice and smooth but my frames are not nearly as nice when I play. Keep in mind that some of the clips are also 25% faster than normal speed, so it may have looked like I was casting it quickly.
-Also, when you are out of combat, using wurm to travel to a place faster isn’t gonna get you far, but once you are in combat, where you can be slowed, rooted, etc. it can. The best time to summon it is BEFORE the fight even happens. If you are forced to use it while fighting, it’s always good to juke in some sort of way. For example, run in a slightly different direction of where you wanted to summon the wurm to confuse people. Even better is if you summon it ahead of you, then, if you have a nice amount of life force, pop into DS and dodge backwards, so you are behind the enemies, then follow with Tainted Shackles (or Dark Path for chill). The enemies’ camera will face away from the wurm, so once they are rooted, you can safely port behind them. They will lose a few crucial seconds trying to figure out what happened or where you went… not to mention they will be rooted or chilled
-But yeah, the best way is to do it before the fight happens

Hello all,

I have put together a video of roaming as a Necro in WvW. I know it’s a long video, but there were many fun fights that I wanted to include. The first half of the video is more actiony. Due to the length of the vid, I cut off some parts. Several of the fights went on for a bit, but it wasn’t very interesting.
-Most of it contains group fights, and there is lots of death flying around, I just don’t tend to stomp as a Necro if we have Thieves/Guardians/Eles.

The build I use is this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vQAQNBLhZwEgkirhO6xxKHMlC4ZH-w

I used to run Mark of Evasion with 10 points in Blood Magic, but by taking those 10 points and placing them into Curses, I could experiment with Terror. Since I had Terror, I also grabbed Reaper’s Protection instead of Greater Marks, which does a 3 sec fear (with food) when you get CCed. Not only does this add another layer of protection, it also has the potential to deal massive damage. I’d say the build has excellent damage while also maintaining several layers of defense.

The video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upKfsaZkqKU

If interested, here is another video. This one has the preliminary version of the build, without Terror. Also contains a tip or two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPI8w21NZVU&list=UUqFKmVqiOjRdtU2gKWxdd0g

Hope you enjoy

-I agree that Putrid Mark has been nerfed badly, which was sort of silly, but it’s been that way for ages now… It’s sort of old news… I’m already used to it myself. If anything, it helps me hold onto it for myself until I’m loaded with condis. I see it as a mini stun break (for those situations when you are rooted in a bad spot). The transfer from allies was really quite strong, when you think about it. If you had a team of Necros that stuck together, they could basically be immune to condis if they coordinated it well. But the removal of cleanse from allies AND reducing the number of condis that cleanse from yourself was a bit too much =/.
-The reason things were taken away was because they were borderline OP. Simple as that. I do agree that some sustain needed to be added in there to make up for overall damage lost, though. Last thing about the new heal skills… let’s be fair, most of the new heal skills aren’t really used that much… Necro heal skill is pretty horrid, but most of em are in a weird spot right now, not just ours.
-I frequently have 2-3 jagged horrors in larger fights. They are slightly useless (and ugly), but still… if they can soak up AoE away from me/my allies, why not have the uglies around? XD

If these past few months are any indication of where we’re headed, necro is in trouble. Right now yeah we can scrape by, but there’s only so far you can sink this class before it becomes unplayable.

What! We’ve received burning and Torment, a wall that fears and triggers Terror, fills life force, grants protection….etc. Now we’ll get additional sigils, on top of who knows what…. and before it’s even known what changes we’ll get, we are “sinking into being unplayable” ? My apologies, but Necros don’t seem in the “deep end” to me.

Druss.6917:

And don’t even get me started on pve necro. What a walking disaster….

PvE is easy mode when compared to fighting real people. The only place where it becomes problematic is world bosses/zergy events where condis cap but even then you’ll get your reward, especially since torment never stacks high so it will do its full damage on the boss.

Druss.6917:

I disagree with you. I play ranger as well and my defenses as well as escapes on ranger are like night and day compared to necro. My survivability is through the roof and I don’t have to load my bar with defensive utilities to do it either. 1 stun break or invuln is all that’s needed. The rest are on the weapons themselves and tied up in traits that you would usually take anyway in a variety of builds.

Well.. then you are one of the few rangers that survive well. They are usually one of the easiest classes to kill in WvW, which is why it’s often lovely to focus them first. Also, you didn’t address all the other classes that have to invest into defensive utilities… which is almost all of them.

These are things that necro lacks. and while I know they said they are refusing to give necro mobility (which is something I’m fine with btw) they give nothing in return for survivability (which really should translate to sustainability for necros). And yes Im talking about wvw, but even in pvp, we’ve had our damage shaved significantly, but they’ve also hacked up our defenses and not given much sustain in return. It’s like they want every class to be able to counter necros yet necros counter to none. It’s not balance with necros, because to have balance you need to bring one thing up and lower another to achieve equilibrium. In this case, they wanted to lower our damage. I’m fine with that, it needed to be done, but in doing so they also lowered our sustain.

From my perspective, Necros really doesn’t need that much more mobility than they already have, as it is only really a big deal in WvW.
-I don’t know how you can say that they want every class to counter Necros and that they can counter none. Necros can destroy warriors, eles, guardians, other Necros…. everything in a 1 v1 situation. And if you let a Necro sit at the back doing his/her thing in a team fight, you are gonna find yourself dead quite soon. Also, you don’t know the full scope of the upcoming changes so you can’t say they’ve lowered our damage without increasing sustain.

Druss.6917:

That’s not balance, That’s hack-n-slash nerfing. On top of all that they now gave out condi immunities to everyone else and even gave warrior yet another physical immunity…because that’s really what the most sustainable and high damage class in the game really needed…. and lowered our weakness, chopped up our bleeds, removed DS as our one defensive tool we could count on to be reliable and removed one of the best aspect of team play we had (looking at you putrid mark cleanse). So what are we given in return? A healing signet that doesn’t heal and a faster reanimator that doesn’t proc when you need it (during fights) making the faster uptime on it pointless.

The hack-n-slash nerfing was needed, imo. Necros, as I said earlier, are one of the strongest opponents you can come across in WvW. They literally were (and arguably are) still over the top, in WvW. The problem is when they blend the nerfs for sPvP and WvW.
-First of all, we can deal with condis quite well ourselves, despite having no immunities.
Additionally, not everyone has access to condi immunity- just eles, warriors, and engis. Diamond Skin is useless in team fights. And about the new warrior skill, I’ve only seen like 3 people using the new warrior heal.. I wouldn’t say warrior is the highest damage class in the game either. I’m personally more weary of other Necros. Berserker Stance and Defiant Stance both have a set duration and the engi condi immunity doesn’t trigger until they are 25% health. With 25% health, one backstab can send them to their graves. Also, by the time an engi is that low, they likely already have plenty of other condis on them, and most lack more than one or two cleanses so they still die as a result. The condi immunity doesn’t cleanse anything. Existing condis still tick.
-Lowering our weakness output was bad, imo, but DS is still good. I don’t know what you mean that they removed DS. It is still a good way to mitigate damage, when used well.

@ Andele,
I agree that the Spectral stuff was really strong earlier. I’m not sure whether it was too strong or not though, because with the previous version of Spectral Walk (when traited with Spectral Attunement for 12 secs, just to add to the effect), you could tank really, really well. And that’s just Spectral Walk.. not to mention Spectral Armor. 100-blades from warriors and Blurred Frenzy from mesmer… any flurry-type attack either did no damage to you or healed your life force while in DS, which was really excellent. I enjoyed it very much… while it lasted It shouldn’t have been changed, imo. Tears were shed :P

-Druss, I highly disagree that our defenses are the "laughing stock" of the gaming community. If anything, I'd say the ranger is a better candidate. I'm sorry, but calling it that is just ridiculous cuz it simply isn't true. What IS true is that people like damage. Necros are bad$$es at dealing damage. But when you go all out on damage you sacrifice your survival. It’s just the way it is. And it just so happens that the majority of people like damage, and they grab everything damage – traits, weapons, utilities – and then they say we can’t survive O_o. When you look at a high damage thief, for example. A lot of the time they have all three (or most) of their utilities as defenses (Shadow refuge, Blinding Powder, Shadowstep). Elementalist (lightning flash, mist form, armor of earth). Warrior (endure pain, zerk stance, balanced stance), Mesmer (Blink, Decoy). So why don’t you sprinkle yourself with some defense? I will admit that survival isn’t the easiest (in WvW, when compared with many other classes), but it’s very possible, while STILL maintaining a high amount of damage. In other game modes, I don’t see it AS difficult as WvW because WvW survival requires mobility, which Necro doesn’t have an easy access to. I’m assuming you are referring to WvW because you are talking about team fights.
-For example, running something like this will give you high survival while maintaining excellent damage. The first is more defensive, while the second is more offensive:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vQAQNBLhZakjmebLuxvG+bTASKuG6oHHrcwUKgndA-z0ABk3g0HBquuIaskCAmpRA-w

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vQAQNArYWjc00YbxN+1wfbCB6BAgLgYkijJYoUAAsDA-zkAB0HBqMsIaskCAmpRA-w

@Rennoko,
It is true that other classes will be getting the sigil changes as well, but I’m not sure if they will be getting much more benefit from them than we will. Although a warrior, engi, and ele can swap weapons faster than other classes, the on-swap sigil will still trigger every 9 seconds… I’m doing some math in my head, and I don’t think it should trigger much more frequently than other professions, so they shouldn’t get much extra benefit out of that because of the internal cooldown of the sigils.
-I also agree that I’d rather have them up the survival and lower the damage.

Rennoko.5731:

Does this still justify the reductions in our other non-related bleed skills and terror?

Or will the requirement for entry still be to make the burning work, at all costs, because that currently is (and will remain) one of the needed damaging effects to take down certain classes.

I guess it all depends on the other unspecified changes, but I still think the hit (in spvp only) is going to be too hard.

The thing you are leaving out is the additional conditions we will be able to apply through the extra sigils. For example, with 30 in spite:
-Geomancy. It not only deals damage, but it can crit AND cause bleed on-crit effects, such as Earth sigils (1 stack, up to 6-7 seconds) and 5 points in Curses (1 stack, 2-3 secs). So on top of the raw power damage, and the chance of causing 1-2 additional bleeds, it causes 3 stacks of bleed for 9 seconds, every 10-second weapon swap. If this is taken to begin with, you could still have Sigil of Earth, which will cause additional bleeds than we currently have. Or… on top of Geomancy, the sigil below.
-Sigil of Doom – about 6-7 secs, every 10-sec weapon swap. You will be able to keep up basically constant poison on the target (if they don’t cleanse, but even if they do, the poisons are spaced out enough that it will apply again rather quickly).
- Not to mention Hydromancy, which could basically hold your opponent in place, making it easier to land life blast, for example. Or could even allow you to deal damage easier, since you won’t have to worry about kiting as much.

These combinations are the sort of stuff we DON’T have at our disposal at the moment, but we will have access to with just the sigils. So yes, Dhuumfire will be less accessible, but that’s not. the. only. change. being. made. and we need to stop looking at it as it’s the only change happening.
Also: good players will adapt and will make it a part of a new rotation of skills, in my opinion. Currently, your opponent can do very little to counter Dhuumfire. Very. Litttle. Especially when you sprinkle in those Terror-fears. That makes it super strong, maybe too strong. This at least gave some professions a way to avoid it, as opposed to eating it each time. Lastly, I don’t think a profession’s strength is solely reliant on one trait.

@ Mad Queen Malafide,

Again, I wouldn’t say it’s a massive nerf. We don’t know how it will all pan out 100%, and if we’ll get other possible buffs. Sure, placing dhuumfire on life blast ALONE is probably unpleasant, but you gotta consider all the other changes on top of that, as was said before. So whereas you will still keep your burning, although inconvenienced, you’ll be able to get an additional poison/chill/bleed/etc. that you didn’t have before. In other words… we’ll potentially get MORE condis than we currently have. So when you say we are getting a “masive nerf”… eh… I wouldn’t say that.
—Also, I’m not with you on the “conditions are broken” part. I personally only feel that they fall short in world bosses or large zergy events. But even then, you’ll get your credit (and rewards) if you get there in time. Other than that they are quite fine and far from “broken”, in my opinion.
-“2x sigils won’t increase our attrition” Sigil of Energy, Hydromancy would increase your survival. If you can survive better, you will be able to deal more damage over a longer period of time, no? Or on the other hand keeping poison up on the target with sigil of doom could be interesting as well.
-I also disagree that we aren’t in a good spot right now. Some classes, like ranger, for example, can be considered in a worse spot. I think we are pretty good where we are now, overall. Necros are one of the strongest enemies to face in WvW at the moment…
-What I meant by “reduced crit dmg” is this: Power builds, especially those glassy ones that stack high crit damage will now deal about 10% less damage. Sure, if you go glassy, you’ll deal less dmg with your power build, but you’ll take less damage as well. And if you are a condi Necro, you are unaffected by the crit damage nerf. So that glassy thief that annoys you in WvW will deal about 10% less dmg while still being as squishy as he was before.

Hello, Mad Queen Malafide, hope all is well,

1) We will become stronger as a result of having 2x sigils regardless of whether other classes have them.
-The strength of all classes will go up. So where someone might kill us quicker, we will also be able to kill them quicker. It’s just the way it is.
2) They are nerfing crit damage, which will reduce the strength of power builds. This will indirectly increase our sustain against people with power builds.

Although I’d personally take sigil of Energy above everything else (Vigor spoiled me) I agree that hydromancy will be a really strong sigil to add. In sPvP with 30 in spite… that could go up to 4 seconds of chill on swap, along with Dark Path (6.5 sec chill) and Staff #3 (5 sec chill)… sprinkle in some Chill of Death (6.5 sec chill) trait from 20 in Spite …. gg.

@ IKaikiasI.
“Necro’s won’t be viable in PvP anymore”.
You don’t even know what else they will add to the game! Reworked runes, stacking sigils, etc.. Going with Sigil of Earth and Geomancy, for example, would add an extra layer of damage, or geomancy+energy, geomancy/doom, doom/earth, etc, etc. Just listing things at the top of my head, but you’ll be able to put out more condi pressure. If people can be as negative as “necros won’t work anymore”, I can be as positive as to say… What if they add something like a sigil of earth/geomancy effect but on a Rune (for example, when you heal you bleed those around you, you inflict bleeding on next attack, etc), or if they add Torment Runes to sPvP… Or torment sigils.
Stacking sigils, plus the possible reworked or new runes would increase your damage. Maybe not the runes, but the sigils would for sure. This is why I wouldn’t catastrophize just yet. You can’t just settle on one trait change.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

ManaCraft.5630:

Since we don’t even know the full content of the patch at this point, I think you might be jumping the gun here. Let’s at least wait until we can get an informed discussion going.

Haha…. Clearly you are unfamiliar with necromancer ‘balance’ .

Trust me, they will once again nerf us completely into the ground, further pushing us towards one build. If you thought build diversity was bad right now, just give it a few more patches.

I’m sorry but I can’t help but to disagree when people say this. First of all, the patch was said to be fake by Anet themselves. As far as I’m aware, this is the 1st time Anet stepped in like this to explicitly say something was fake. It’s illogical to come, say the notes are fake, then they turn out to be real. If they turn out to be real, it wouldn’t look good, would it? So why would they go out of their way to say they were fake? To make themselves look bad once the notes are released? I doubt it. We’ll see.
— In addition to this, someone pointed out that apparently one of the “changes” was already in the game. Why would this change that was already in game be in the “real” patch notes? Also, the list excluded any Death Magic trait reworks, which, as far as I can remember, are supposed to happen.

What….?
Really?
Since when is dhuumfire the only way to go with a Necro? The nerf is not that big at all. It’s justified, in my personal opinion. Even better, you will be able to spread your lovely 6-second burn with Epidemic on-demand, as opposed to randomly, so you can plan to burn a target for 6 seconds, then spread with Epidemic. AoE burn? Seems pretty good to me.

Also: If they do buff our default mark size, like the leaked patch notes stated (if)… that’s a pretty significant BUFF. Additionally, if they rework some of the Death Magic traits, which apparently (hopefully) they will… that’s a BUFF.

If I were you, I’d wait for the actual patch to come out before making such assumptions. Runes are being reworked, and sigils will stack. This could actually be a significant buff. For those Necros that take on-crit effects like flame blast/bleeds/etc., you’ll be able to stack Sigils of Energy with your other sigils, which is basically like mini Vigor. In my eyes, that’s a pretty significant buff. Granted, it will apply to all other professions, but that’s beside the point.

Lastly, the Dhuumfire change (I’d call it a change, not really a nerf per se), only affect condi Necros, maybe hybrid, but not power Necros.

Indeed, it’s been a while since we fought an organized guild group in WvW. I think the last time was… [VLK] I think…. which was months ago.
Hope to run into you guys more

On a different note… Eles rock but they are kinda OP so plz nerf kthxbai <3

Spectral Walk ends as soon as you enter Plague (didn’t check about other transformations). This used to not happen, so it’s a bug that came about in one of the latest patches.

Bhawb.7408:

I’m pretty sure ANet is literally Hitler.

Haha :P

Two things.

1) @Andele
The teleport-back acts as a pseudo-stun break. When you get locked down, and you disappear, you take no damage. In a way, it’s almost better than breaking a stun because you vanish from the scene. That’s why thief sword was so strong some time ago – it could teleport away even when stunned (it was nerfed… wonder why). Also, Lightning Flash (from elementalists) isn’t a stun break, but it teleports you, much like Spectral Walk return.
—The 2 skills (Wurm and Spectral walk) can work wonderfully in a combat situations. Calling people who know how to use the 2 skills ignorant is ignorant.

2) @ronpierce
Good use of wurm isn’t casting it mid-fight. Good use is preparing it BEFORE the fight so you can instantly teleport away when you get locked down. Sure, it’s not AS useful when you try to catch up to someone (although it can be, when your movement is decreased in-combat, or you are crippled, etc. Then you couple it with Dark Path and voila). BUT, Necros have lots of ways to catch up to their enemies simple my rooting them/slowing them/fearing them in opposite direction. Sure, sometimes a teleport is more useful than slowing down an opponent, but other times a slow is more useful because it allows your allies to catch up to the enemy as well.

borrok.9267:

And yet I haven’t seen them. One or two here and there, not a striking amount and no where near what you are saying. Then again, that is MY experience and you are talking about YOUR experience(as if it is the only truth). By all means, base an entire population off one zerg you saw 2 hours prior to your post.

Well how about we take an average of both our claims. 0% of players are Necros by your observation, and 30% of players are Necros by my observation. The average equals to 15%. If all classes are equal in distribution, 12.5% of the players should be each profession. So even if we take the average of our observations, Necros are still played above average (15%). But if we are being serious… really, the class isn’t that rare.

As for tattoohead, you obviously don’t know Anet. I’ve been with them from when GW1 first came out. Sure, they aren’t perfect in some things (like not telling us about the staff nerf or whatever), but they are sure as hell better than some other companies out there.
This here is about Necros, not politics, not law-school, and not some “oppression” by the all-mighty totalitarian ruler. If you want to make changes/suggestions to better the Necromancer profession, feel free to post on the class balance sub-forum with a nice outline of the changes you would like to make (if you didn’t post already). If the “issue” is big enough, or important enough, people will naturally agree with you and Anet will see that (after all, that’s what the sub-forum is for), and it might get taken into consideration. Good luck.

Oh you haven’t? Cuz I could’ve sworn I saw at least 4-5 Necros in that 15-20 man zerg just 2 hours ago. That’s easily 30% of the players in that group playing one profession… and there are 8 professions. Why they would play a class that “requires a strike” is beyond me.

We both know Necros are quite common.

Lily.1935:

Money and time.

Its honestly as simple as that. Do you get annoyed when your time is wasted? Do you get annoyed when your money is wasted? Well, This explains both. Since a video game, especially a MMO is a Huge time sink its very understandable that people would get upset over something that they have invested both time and money into and haven’t gotten an appropriate return. You may not value your time and money that much, but I do. Especially considering have so little of both.

You bought the game for what, $50? You have at least 1k hours into the game, no? If you ask me, that’s more than worth it for -yes, you guessed it – $50.

Necros are in a pretty good shape right now. The game has 3 modes. PvE, WvW and sPvP. Walk into sPvP – Necros. Walk into WvW – Necros. That says something. So on the one hand, you have a huge amount of people playing the class and on the other, you have people demanding a strike. What the?

And the gif was for the gibberish about rights, status quo, seeing Anet as an authoritarian government, and laws…. really? …. Really? What the? Chill out.

Actually, in a team deathmatch, condi teams are easier to counter than power teams, in my opinion. I’d much, much rather face a bunch of condi professions on the enemy team than burst power people.

So ummm… yeah.

Zirith.6429:

The main problem with chasing is how slow the ds 2 is, you only move ~300 range closer if you are running with swiftness after them. My main annoyance is necro mobility, roaming with a necro slows the entire group down.

Try using your other slows first, like staff #3 or scepter #2 on the target, then move in with Dark Path. You should be able to catch up to most opponents. When you dark path to them, dodge through them and fear them in the opposite direction (fear them back to your group). If you think they have leaps ready, use Doom as your Dark Path travels to disable them from using them. The chill from Dark path will make their leaps pretty much useless.

If you don’t have swiftness yourself, or any kind of speed buff (like locust signet, runes of traveler or some traits), your team should provide you with swiftness. Running away can be harder, but as mentioned earlier, using spectral walk or wurm can easily save the day.
Spectral wall is also really good. Casting slows on your enemies WHILE you are running is also crucial.
Last thing, Dark Path to NPCs while running away, it can be a life saver. Not only that, but it tags the NPC, so if you end up downing, you can try to kill the NPC to rally.
I’m talking from a WvW perspective only though..

Here’s a video of some tricks you can do with Spectral Walk and Wurm. You don’t even need to follow the build if you don’t want to, the main point is the options that the two utilities provide. Some people find Wurm alone to be enough, some prefer SW, while others like both
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhcaEyWW-sc

How about you just quit the game instead?
#problem-solved

Yeah the delay is there only if you let your life force run out (by just standing there or by being hit). It’s pretty bad. The upside to letting it run out is that Death Shroud cooldown will count from when you first entered. So.. if you enter into Death Shroud, you wait about 10 secs and let it fully run out, when you exit, you will have the utility skill delay, but Death Shroud will be recharged. Still, I think the delay is unintentional. It’s best to try to save a dodge as it runs out to buffer the damage you would take during the delay… or at least that’s what I try to do. Or yeah, just exit DS :P

I don’t know what you mean about Dark Path being delayed. Do you mean the cast time, projectile or?

It can be channeled while outside of Death Shroud, if your life force runs out as you press #2.

@aspirine,
Thank you for sharing the video, I appreciate it

As others have mentioned, positioning is very important and requires a bit of brain and experience. But positioning alone can only get you so far, especially when you get surprised by a sudden burst/CC-train. Others have also mentioned Spectral walk and Flesh Wurm. So when you say we have no escape, it isn’t true. You just have to invest a utility or two into defense. I’d say wurm alone should do the trick if you are fighting zerg battles. You will get swiftness from nearby allies so a swiftness source isn’t a must-have. Basically all other classes invest into at least one defensive utilities (or in some cases, ALL defensive utilities), so why shouldn’t we? Eles – Cantrips (Including Lightning Flash… full cantrip builds are common), Warriors – Endure pain, Zerk Stance, Mesmer – Blink, Decoy, Engi – Elixir S, Guardian -Contemplation of Purity…. etc. Those are very, very common defensive utility skills of other classes.

The reason others often survive better is not only because “they have more escapes”… it’s also because they actually use them.

Thank you sir

p.p.s. Sigil options are added

Fun fights with [Zero]
You guys have a good frontline,

p.s. …. those warriors O_o

Brode.7689:

Lol my post was based off your scenario from an earlier post. I found it funny that you downed a guardian before a glassy target in the first place, in your made up fight. So… yeah.

Whoever goes down first, friend Maybe the glassy person is more skilled than the guardian and the guardian was just a better choice. You dispute what I say, I dispute what you say. It can go on forever.

Brode.7689:

To your second part. I was only pointing out that you may want to use plague stomp over SW+wurm stomp, especially if it’s the middle of a fight and you’re going to use it anyhow. I wasn’t nit-picking, your previous post was saying plague stomp would be nice if in the middle of a big group, yet it seems with this build you’re more worried about being flashy with SW and Wurm. Half the time in your video you were porting all over the place for no reason, imo.

The survival is inherently flashy. Teleporting is inherently flashy, especially when a Necro does it :P Survival is the main reason I use those skills – not stomping and not to appear flashy to my enemies (unless I’m trying to entertain the viewer – when the audience is entertained, I am too). It just comes with the package. Stomping is an option, which is excellent. Why wouldn’t I use it when an opportunity presents itself?
As I said in the first paragraph of the guide, I did not include the thought process of why I chose to do certain actions, which is why it might seem “for no reason”.
Lastly, in situations where I could have used Plague stomp but I didn’t… among the particle effects and my two allies in a large number enemies, I instinctively thought it best to protect allies with Plague – not to search the battlefield for downed bodies. I agree with you the stomp would have been perfect there, though.

Brode.7689:

The spot in your video where you do the stomp, could have still been interrupted. The only reason it wasn’t, is because there was another person stomping that the guardian pushed back.

You think that the guardian was keenly watching me (A Necro usually NEVER teleports), instead of all the other enemies around him and counted the exact seconds in his head when I would come down? Even if none of my allies were there I would get the stomp. Refer to the very first scene of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxOc51oQmkA&feature=c4-overview&list=UUqFKmVqiOjRdtU2gKWxdd0g . I could have waited longer to port back, but it worked, as it almost always does. Fact is: I got the stomp.

Hello Brode,
— The Epidemic strategy is good. Downed people and NPCs are really good sources for epidemic. However, you are making a few assumptions:

-First that your epidemic is recharged and that you didn’t use it to down the guardian to begin with. If you wish to wait another 15 seconds for it, go right ahead. -Second, if you are assuming you are fighting a melee opponent, which you have to maneuver close to the downed person so marks can trigger, etc., which would take time. He’s glassy, he isn’t just standing there, you may need to use your slows, fears to defend yourself.
-Third, you are assuming you are NOT fighting a ranged person. With a ranged person, like a ranger, good luck using your Epidemic combo – waste of a skill, as well as your weapon skills on one downed person who you could have simply finished off. While you waste your skills on the downed guy, the glassy range is wasting you.

Another thing – watching someone else’s video and nit-picking “you should have done this” is kinda… interesting. That could be done with anyone’s video. You think I’m not aware of most of those situations myself after watching? Any normal person knows that in the heat of battle your mind isn’t going slow motion and you can’t think of every possible thing you can do. Thanks for the suggestion tho
I don’t know why someone would go through all the trouble saying something’s bad when it clearly isn’t. If you dislike that kind of stomp, no one is forcing you to use it.

As for your “fail” video. I don’t know if that was you or not, but that was clearly meant to debunk the usefulness of the stomp because it was done by an inexperienced person (it might as well have been staged), which is really…silly. Tip: You should teleport back as your guy reaches the floor. The stomp would be near 100% guarantee. (please refer to http://youtu.be/fhcaEyWW-sc?t=5m52s – 5:52 in the video – THAT’s a proper SW+Wurm stomp.)

@reign,
You make some excellent points. I’m glad you are trying it out. It’s definitely not as “glassy” as the full-damage setup, but it is different in that you can escape and survive situations that Necros usually can’t. I’m interested in how it goes.
I’m glad people are trying it out

@ Oozo and Rennoko
That’s an interesting point. If that did happen, first of all, I’d hate that thief haha. That kind of situation really happens so rarely… I have fought more people than I can count and maybe only 1% of them do stuff like that. Generally, if the surface where we fight is flat, I try to position the wurm as far away from the fight as possible – more than 1200 units away from me, so when I port, I don’t port RIGHT to the wurm, simply in its direction. Then I heal up. If the thief was waiting by the wurm, he would overshoot my location. If I did happen to port right to the wurm with a thief waiting for me… there would be a river of tears. Just kidding. I would hope that I noticed the thief ahead of time so I can mentally and physically prepare for my death xD But really, I don’t know. If ALL the defenses, dodges, life force, Plague are down, I’m not sure there’s much you can do. Depends how low you are and how glassy the thief is, and where your allies are.
—If he’s waiting where I used SW, I’d pray I still had wurm up (which I often do. I find it better to reserve wurm for last).
-If a thief is using wurm as a freebie to stealth, the wurm is a bit too close to the fight, although it has happened to me before.
- Last thing, personally, I think a thief just waiting for one guy to port back while doing nothing else could be wasting time. He may or may not get a kill. If he does, jackpot, well planned. The encounter might be won for the enemy (which will automatically place the thief on a hit list ). If he doesn’t, there is a LOT of damage that he didn’t do because he stood there waiting.
(I’m glad you the video entertaining)

@Brode,
I have a video I’m working on right now. In that very video, though it was a laggy night, I have a little section where wurm stomp would be perfect. Not game changing, but perfect. I take a lot of damage while I’m doing a normal stomp because I’m getting hit. Instead, if I just wurm stomped, I wouldn’t lose any health.
—Anyway, let’s say you are fighting a 2 v 4. There’s a glassy enemy and a guardian that are on you, and your ally is handling the other two, or something. You down the guardian, but your ally just can’t stomp right now – maybe he’s low, maybe he’s a bit too far, whatever. Your Plague is not ready yet. A glassy person is around, so if you do go for a NORMAL stomp, you will get a pretty bad beating. On top of that, the guardian will push you back, also very bad/annoying, especially with pressure from the other person. Instead, you can simply do a wurm+SW stomp and get it over with. One enemy down, and you’re alive as ever. On top of that, you got life force from using SW (from Spectral Attunement), Wurm, and enemy’s death.

As for Plague stomp. Whereas Plague stomp is nice, using an elite skill merely to stomp someone is equally as…interesting. How’s 180 secs for a really long cooldown xD Sure, at a certain point in time, like when you are still surrounded by an army, and you use it, you will get a stomp and still get the use of Plague -which is perfect. But again, while it is nice, it’s ALSO situational and it’s ALSO a huge cooldown. Maybe you will take too much fire by doing a Plague stomp and instead want to port to safety, and port back in for a clean stomp. I’m not saying one is better than the other, I love em both.
-Another interesting thing is – one one hand, we have people saying that you will lose focus fire when teleporting away and that your allies will become targets instead, and on the other other hand, we have people saying that you will immediately regain focus fire when coming back. Maybe the focus wouldn’t even be on you when you port back in and you can just walk away.

Also: Armor of Earth has almost as high a cooldown as wurm+SW combined.

@pierwola, I usually find it enough to slow them with Scepter #2 and Staff #3, then follow in with Dark Path. Then I go with Tainted Shackles. It’s also good to run in-front of the enemy and fear them back in the opposite direction (back to your team mates, for example). There’s instances where the enemy happens to be running in direction where you started Spectral Walk or where your Wurm, so you can port to them.

@Monkeymonger,
You could still grab Terror by going 30 into Curses, but would lose Dhummfire. If you go with Dhummfire, you lose Terror… unless you give up Soul Marks -then you can have both. I’d never do this, but it will work, since most builds don’t use Soul Marks to begin with. You will find your life force at a low level pretty often tho… and in longer fights the lack of life force is felt.
If you are in a large group of like 10 people and are fighting even numbers, you probably don’t NEED that much mobility and can probably give up one of the mobility skills, can also swap a few traits around for more offense. There will be so much chaos flying around and you can just stick in the background. But that’s cuz you’ve got 9 people on your side who can defend you and who can take heat away from you. BUT, the build shines in common roaming outnumbered fights when you have 1-4 other allies with you, where you can’t just blend in with the background. That wasn’t made clear by me in the original guide.

@Brode,
If you used those skills for a stomp and you got yourself killed you just didn’t use it wisely. Why would you even do a stomp like that if it would teleport you back to hell? I only use it when I know I can get out afterwards or if I have full life force, for example (which is very easy with Soul Marks). It has its uses and can turn the tides of battle. If you dont wanna waste both utility skills, feel free to try the Dark Path stomps Also, Eles, warriors, engis, mesmers all use their “long cooldown” skills for stomps.

I have updated the guide to include the Runes As Nightwrath said, the choices are many, especially if you consider power and hybrid builds as well. The examples I provided are only for a condi necro… for now I shall do the Sigils shortly.

@ Rennoko,
Saying that mobility skills make up for poor positioning choices is odd, because most other classes have decent mobility. While I see what you mean, “if your position is good in the first place, you don’t need mobility”… but if a mesmer (who is inherently mobile) has to Blink out of a rough spot, was he badly positioned or was he ambushed? Focused down? There is only so much you can do to avoid enemies by foot.
- If you don’t port, you’ll likely die, and your allies will need to res you… which endangers the whole team. Once you port and if the focus is off of you, you can AoE the enemies from a safe spot now.
Sure, if you position yourself the best you can you may be able to avoid getting focused, but in an outnumbered fight (with 1-5 other team mates on your side, fighting twice the number of people, if not more), taking a large amount of hits is part of the deal. How would you handle a, let’s say… 4 vs 8 as burst condi Necro? What would you do to survive overall, and especially heavy focus fire?

I most often roam with an elementalist.

Yeah, wanting damage is always is nice in a high damage spec. But what use is having damage if you can’t live to tell the tale. Not trying to say burn/terror is bad at all, or that one thing is better than the other. Just trying to make you see the other perspective.

@Moon,
If a guy came along and said burn/terror is pitiful, as it focuses entirely on damage and makes you die in two hits, I’m sure you wouldn’t dance around happily either. If I was asked “Why do you think it pays off to take two utilities for a stomp, why do you think you should give up x and y and what do you gain from it?” .. Then a proper discussion can be had. Saying “you give up too much damage, are in a selfish build and leave allies to die” is no way to “exchange opinions”. I wasn’t trying to compete with anyone. Only intention was to show the other side of the story.

“Your build is not able to fight every class, you have to decide whether an engage is worth it after testing the waters. I`m confident a more aggressive approach to utilites (and/or traits) would allow you to fight any class. Thats what I wanted to say, no contradiction there.”

No build can effectively fight every class. That would be overpowered. I’m sure no one goes into a fight with 100% dedication with all damage utilities before knowing what and who they are fighting. More aggressive utilities don’t change anything. You’d still have to know who you are facing, what they can do, and now, you wouldn’t have an escape because you went with all damage – You would either kill them or get killed.
Besides, if high damage is desired with the build, 30 points in Spite are all the damage you will ever need while still maintaining excellent survival. This was proven time and time again during Fight Nights. It may be different than conventional burn/terror builds, it may require a bit of brain, but it sure as hell works.

@ Moon,

I feel the need to explain “very simple class mechanics” to explain the thought process. I, along with many others, have played this build for centuries. It is a simple fact that it works RELLY well. You can say you give up this or that, but it was mentioned earlier how you more than make up for it. I think you personally like damage, which is fine. If you don’t like the playstyle, it is fine as well, maybe it’s not for you or you haven’t mastered it like I have. But calling those mobility options pitiful is discourteous. Really, that means calling this whole thing pitiful, which is really quite disrespectful. Feel free to not use them, by all means, but there are many who will find it quite useful – hence why the guide is there. The guide is there because it DOES work, and it has been proven time and time again. It comes down to what a person personally likes. I don’t think the strength of the class is damage. That can be said for almost any class. I think the strength is the vast amount of conditions (not JUST the damage ones) than are inherent to the class. A glassy spec is one among many, as is true with every single other class.

“Additionally, any decent thief, ele, warrior, mesmer or even meleeranger will keep up with your very high cd porting tactics as soon as he identified your utilities.”
I disagree. First of all, in a 1v1 you don’t even need to run from those. But… If you’re being chased, alone, by either one of those classes by themselves, they will have a hard time catching that utility setup, especially with your cripples/chills. Sure, if you just use wurm and SW unintelligently and forget about all your weapon skills (i.e. slows/cripples), you may get caught, but most of the times you don’t – you either make a mistake, get jumped or they have to coordinate a whole team around you. And if there’s a whole group trying to catch up and things are not looking well, the chase lasted for a while and now you are near a safe haven, like a tower.

“positioning, group support and awareness are outweighting the use of our limited escape utilities, especially when taking the trade off into account.”
Again, there is really no trade-off. There is, but there isn’t. To me it seems like going all out on damage is the worse option, as those Necros are the favourite targets to focus down. I’d rather be able to live through hell and back than be locked down and die, or require my team to always support me. Your team can only help you so much and you often do need an “oh kitten” button. You can’t say with a straight face that you didn’t sometimes wish you had some sort of escape. Sure, now you tried it and don’t like it. That’s fine. But being able to escape means you don’t require your team to support you as much so they can focus their attention on offense.
—-So, case 1, you deal damage but require your team to stop dealing damage to help you. On top of that, you are being focused down and it’s impossible to deal damage to your full potential WHILE you are being the focus target. Not with thieves, warriors, condi engis on you. So already, your team is at a loss, as you are not dealing the damage you should be doing and they aren’t either because they are trying to save you.
—Case 2 – you are more self sufficient, letting your allies focus on damage while you are hard to catch. Enemies waste time NOT dealing damage while your whole team deals damage, and you also throw everything you can from afar. Both scenarios are good in their own way. Saying one is better than the other, or that one “gives up” something is a personal opinion. BOTH are good in their own way.

Moon.6371:

It`s an inbetween build that is giving up a lot for being able to bring distance between you and the enemy. The trade-off is huge. Your build doesn`t excel at anything anymore, which is not what I would want.

The build excels at roaming and at outnumbered fights. The only thing you give up is the raw damage you would get from certain utilities, really – as mentioned earlier (but to be fair, you are only “missing” one utility, as many Necros bring Spectral Wall or Locust Signet, or something defensive). A single utility skill hardly decides your overall damage output. Picture this scenario.
Scenario #1: A Necro walks down the street with a few friends. He sees a larger group of enemies. He does his thing and out comes Signet of Spite, Blood is Power and Epidemic. Unfortunately, the other team cleansed some of the initial conditions. They see this Necro and promptly lock him down while he tries to go into Plague. The Necro is filled with conditions and a roots, but is stuck in Plague. Once he comes out, he tries to save himself by going into Death Shroud. Unable to cleanse any conditions and unable to disengage, he tragically dies.
-Scenario #2. He sees a group of enemies, sets up Wurm. He drops a many of his weapon skills on the group of enemies and that, along with the conditions inflicted by his allies are used for Epidemic. Enemies cleanse some of the initial conditions and promptly head for the Necro. As he is about to be locked down, he used Wurm. Enemies now need to travel another 1200 units to get to him, but when he ported back, he used Spectral Walk. He used Dark Path into the group and then proceeded to root them with Tainted Shackles. From there, he dropped more of his attacks and safely returned away from the fight. He still has plague, and the enemies have already wasted a lot of firepower. “Focus the Necro” didn’t get you very far now, did it?

No offense at all, I was running similar setups myself, but ultimately, I just don`t feel giving up utilities and going that deep into curses is a good deal.

None taken, to each his own
Although saying “don’t go deep into curses” on one hand and on the other saying “there is no damage” is a strange.

Moon.6371:

A power or power heavy hybrid will have to give up too much damage to not have hardcounters, that cannot be brought down without the right utilities and 30 in Spite. A condition necro would have to give up terror which is a no-go.

I always run without Terror and damage is not lacking at all, especially if you go 30 in Spite. I run 30 in spite in duels sometimes and there is rarely someone who can bring me down – warriors included. Sure, if you go without 30 in Spite, warriors can be problematic (but not impossible, by no means), but if you DO have 30 in Spite, warriors SHOULD be a piece of cake… If they aren’t, the Necro is doing something wrong or the Warrior is simply more skilled. A condi necro doesn’t need Terror to deal damage. That’s a pretty big misconception. On a side note, some people have a similar build but with power (zerker), like Nightwrath.

Moon.6371:

It`s fun for solo-roaming until you meet a well built and played warrior. You won`t be able to burst him, and he`ll laugh at you trying to scratch him. Same goes for PU mesmers. So in consequence you are not a real threat to the most played and dangerous roaming classes out there.

That’s silly XD First, PU mesmers generally lack condi clears. If you play your cards right you should be the one with an upper hand. Personally, PU mesmers are no problem, but neither are warriors. Once you test the waters and see what your opponent is worth, you decide whether fighting is a go, or no go. Just as if you are playing a tanky D/D ele spec, or tankier guardian spec, you will be able to kill some opponents and not others. But really.. if you want damage, which I believe you do, then 30 in Spite will ensure you have it. This is why I have shown the different variations of the build. Different people like different things. Honestly speaking, the burns are enough to handle even the toughest of souls.

Moon.6371:

For roaming up to 5 man: Why would you ever go so tanky and selfish, utility wise? Your role is to turn the tides via raw damage and if your team is decent, they will provide the tankyness for you via boons, cc, stealth and the likes.

The role of the Necro in a team is arguable. The player decides the role via the build/playstyle. I really don’t understand what about the utilities is selfish. It is the same, again, as Endure Pain, etc, that I listed earlier. Those things are just as “selfish” and yet no one calls them selfish. It’s… odd. Sure, you can deal more damage if you go solely into damage utilities, but what use are you if you can be easily singled out and killed. Necros are almost always the first target, ESPECIALLY if you fight guild groups. Why? Because most are sitting ducks xD Running those utilities (SW/Wurm) makes you resistant to common things that Necros find problematic, and that throws opponents off. It gives you a persistent presence in the fight and thus, your damage output goes up, over a longer period of time.