Guild Wars 2

Against Necros: (In general necro doesn’t have that many obvious animations, there are still a couple of important skills that people never pay attention to. Best practice is to make a new necro and try out the weapon skills on golems.)
- Condi burst: The basic rotation is marks 3-2-5, ds 2,3,5, scepter 2

The chill mark sets up a lot of the burst and makes landing the marks a lot easier. The moment you see the first animation from staff, dodge. Staff is a weapon with very long cd’s and a kittenty autoattack, not landing marks is a huge deal for a necro.

For the ds burst, the necro can either cast ds2 first and fear in the last second to ensure it lands or wait for ds3 until the claw has landed to get a third terror tick. Learn to dodge dark path (dodge through it instead of away from it), since it sets up geomancy or makes scepter 2,5 easier to hit.

If you avoid the big parts of the burst, scepter autoattack + low cd’s should be manageable.

Condi transfers: Mark 4 doesn’t look different than the rest. Against other condi classes necros usually hold it back. So if the necro swaps back to staff during combat, try to avoid it.

Dagger 4 is a projectile that you can dodge. Learn the animation and you should be easily able to avoid it unless it’s point blank.

Consume conditions: If you have interrupts, try to hold them back to interrupt the heal. You can bait it out by condi bursting him (if he used his transfers already).

-Minion masters: Take it slow. It’s a very good duel build, but has a hard time protecting the minions against aoe. They usually go with a tanky amulet, so bursting them isn’t really an option.
Only bone fiend is ranged, the rest can easily be kited. Try to kite and kill them, break los frequently (if possible) and doge the flesh golem and dagger 3. Once the minions are down, the necro loses is sustained healing, condi removal and all the investment he made in traits/utilities.

For the minions to actually do damage, some cc (dagger 3, charge, rigor mortis) or soft cc (cripples, chills) is usually necessary. Try to avoid these as much as possible and cure them as a priority.

- Automated response: In general it’s a good trait against necros, although i never really use it. It can be very hard for condi necros to kill you in duel scenarios (although it’s still quite easily possible with a bit of timing). I don’t like to rely on it since outside of duels staying at 25% health for a prolonged period of time usually means getting bursted by another roamer.

Maybe this helps.

Edit: Mesmers:
In general, try to work in bursts. Mesmers have a lot ways to avoid damage (stealth, distortion, blocks, pu boons, vigor). Try to hold big attacks until you can be sure to land them. Against skilled mesmers, winning means autoattacking a lot.

- Shatter: Dodge the sword leap combo. It’s very easy to avoid and with a bit of practice you should never get hit by it.
In general, dodge through the illusions that run towards you. It’s a lot easier to time right.
Avoid getting surrounded by illusions, since it usually sets up shatters without sword and makes keeping track of when dodge a lot harder. Always keep them in front of you.

- Phantasm: Dodge the phantasm attacks. Berserker and duellist are the easiest to avoid and have long cd’s between the attacks. Swordsman is harder and has a low cd. Try to kill it when theres nothing better to do. It can be hard to keep track of warlocks since they don’t have flashy attacks

- Pu condis: Either run away since they can’t catch anybody or prepare for a long fight. You usually only encounter them in wvw or hotjoins. Keep track of your conditions and focus on curing confusion bursts.
Dodge scepter 3. Try not to trigger the scepter block unless you have a clean ready.

Should you really have problems with keeping track of a mesmer during fights, you simply need more practice. Try to go to duel events or duel servers or ask your mesmer friends to practice with you a bit. Tipps like watching out for food buffs or missing second weapon didn’t help me. Focus up, keep track of the stealth (try to count to 3 or 4 to learn when he’ll reappear) and dodges and you’ll do fine.

It’s a cookie cutter wvw build, but please change pure of heart to pure of voice. And don’t play it in dungeons.

The greatest distinction between the servers was their forum attitude. In the game it’s the same faceless karma trains anyway.

Out of curiosity, is this the same CON from sfr?

maeggle.6021:

Monkeymonger.9235:

If at least people would start trying to learn the couple of viable condition specs in this game instead of writing amazing arguments like “stupid condition spam. gg”.

Condition and hybrid necro builds were viable in duels and small skirmishes before dhuumfire and torment. Currently they are faceroll against most other classes. You can set up pressure by just auto-attacking (for scepter-necros this adds up to about 10+ permanent bleed stacks and ~1/3 burning uptime) and pop either corrupt boons on boon-reliant builds or signet of spite inbetween. Both are very hard to see and don’t require preparation like most power build bursts do.

I do agree with you that necromancers are too bursty (and that is even without dhuumfire). My point is rather that very few people in wvw seem to understand how a necro burst rotation works and how to counter it. If you counter necro so much that all he does is autoattack then you shouldn’t have much of a problem with him.

maeggle.6021:

Monkeymonger.9235:

It would be the same as being angry at a physical damage warrior to pick axe or hammer.

Let’s not use warriors as reference for balanced gameplay, shall we?
Anyways – ….

I’m not talking about the warrior but used it as an example. A condition spec will use weapons that apply as many conditions as possible, in the same way that a power build will pick a weapon that scales well with power. To afterwards complain that players spam conditions while they simply use their skills is stupid.

maeggle.6021:

Monkeymonger.9235:

Condition specs become useless in zerg fights and loses a lot of effectiveness even in 2v2 against good opponents.

The OP stated that he was not talking about zergs or any form of large scale combat, but about small scale and duels. Just look at how many conditions one can dish out at a given time and how much can be mitigated by condition removal. Due to auto-procs and AoE condition application it is an uncontrollable mess. Besides: you cannot control which condition gets removed. It is not just about some bleed stacks, poison, torment, burning and fear, but mostly about immobilize and confusion all stacked together without a chance to reliably remove the condition which currently hurts most. Especially outnumbered you can be the best players in the world – it doesn’t help when you get snared to death (yeay, immobilize stacking!), but only remove that one stack of vulnerability. It is just stupid.

What usually kills me in a frustrating way is burst damage by multiple players, no matter if it’s set up via immobilize or stun. Fighting in every 1vx scenario means that every way they control or damage you becomes amplified. It’s something i have to take into consideration no matter what char i build.

maeggle.6021:

Monkeymonger.9235:

There never has been any condition meta in wvw.

And this is why you only ever see solo-roaming mesmer running blackwater or blackwater-perplexity, every necro traiting dhuumfire-terror and using sos, every engineer slotting p/s-ip-bk-tk-eg-perplexity, and every fourth warrior laughing at you with lb-s/s, etc…

I don’t believe that it’s useful to speak of a metagame in wvw in general. When we talk about a small scale meta this will only affect a very small group of players that are actually dedicated roamers. The most kills i get are from people in group setup who want to get back to their zerg or just rushed ahead to secure the camp before the main zerg.
I also don’t agree with your examples. The vast majority of mesmers and warriors i meat are physical damage builds. Engis are mixed from my experience. The only class that has a majority of players on a condition spec is necros, which at the same time is the rarest roaming class due to a number of reasons (the most important one is their inability to 1vx like other classes).

maeggle.6021:

Monkeymonger.9235:

Even while roaming the vast majority of players run physical damage builds and as of late i encountered more sd than pp engis.

Some of our engineers switch to direct damage builds because they get bored by the cheese condition gameplay we have atm. There are still some direct damage builds around, but most of them are warriors, and ofc the occasional d/p-thieves (some of which seem to try out s/d-s/d or s/d-d/p atm)…

Okay.

If at least people would start trying to learn the couple of viable condition specs in this game instead of writing amazing arguments like “stupid condition spam. gg”.
Of course as a condition necro i use weapons and utility skills that apply conditions. It would be the same as being angry at a physical damage warrior to pick axe or hammer.

As it has been pointed out a couple of times already: Condition specs become useless in zerg fights and loses a lot of effectiveness even in 2v2 against good opponents. There never has been any condition meta in wvw. Even while roaming the vast majority of players run physical damage builds and as of late i encountered more sd than pp engis.

As you may have noticed, they all have the same guild tag. That means that they enjoy playing together as a guild. Since you aren’t part of that group they don’t want to play with you. Only because you picked the same server doesn’t make you friends.

I’m sure there’s a commander in your neighborhood who can make you a better player for the glory of the server etc. (you know the usual community stuff)

x Charlie.4820:

thelma.9824:

Just for the record, I don’t think I’m the only one using this “OP” build. “OP” because Mr. OP necro from Imp just slaughtered me several times, showing that there are builds that kill enemies more efficiently than a PU condition build.

Necro is the one hard counter to a PU condition build. Other than that PU will pretty much tear apart any power speced character, any melee character and give condi characters a run for their money if they have the correct utilitys.

Also i agree some necro builds are way out of hand, dhuumfire being one. Nerfed in spvp already but sadly not in wvw >.<

I don’t run dhuumfire. It’s useless against pu mesmers anyway. The challenge lies in finding a good time to burst in between all the stealth/moa/distortion/blocks/aegis…

@Gizmorage: I have to admit it: I hate to fight other necros and try to avoid it at any cost. I don’t like being feared, crippled, chilled and see myself slowly bleeding out. Should you play a power necro, i’m up for it on thursday

@Tash: I know that my previous comment appeared to be a “lighthearted jest”, but since i won’t be on vabbi for much longer, let’s try it with a bit less passive aggressiveness:
You are a joke. My favorite part was when you veiled on a solo roamer who was fighting a sentry.

Gizmorage.6412:

is Mr OP necro referring to rorik or is there a necro i didn’t hear about running around? :p

Yeah, although both aren’t doing themselves justice. Most duels were a lot closer than they like to think!
I still lose quite a lot of duels against pu mesmers, but i get a lot of practice. Roaming or dueling necros are a bit more rare.

It’s a bit strange to see large groups of people in all the karma trains with the same guild tag. Do you have specific guilds set up to make it easier for all the pugs to hop on the karma train? I’m an old man and can’t remember much (they even made it easy for me and always stayed in one pile a bit away from the rest), but it was something along the lines of “J…” and “T…”. I could be wrong though.

However, these community guilds have really mastered the art of the cho cho! Maybe one day you’ll find groups of your own size to play. Until then, remember the old rule: “If you take damage in your zerg, then you need more people”

If i might add though that Sin actually duelled Nubu, Los and myself yesterday in wvw.

So far you lost to six different people, 2x gs/h warrior, 1x Condition mesmer, 1x hybrid mesmer, 1x power mesmer, 1x condition necro. If you’d like i can come on my engi, guard or warrior (i have 20h played on him, so i feel pretty confident).

Valerith.6512:

We saw you were so bored there, so we decided to have some fun with you there! Maybe it was rude, but hey, we had a lot of fun trying to survive surrounded by all those thieves, necros and mesmers. And right, our ball was too slow to catch all those thieves and we were lacking of a leader to command, but I will try to convince some ppl for tommorow, maybe we could fight some 5 v 5 then. We will be prepared!

It is rude when you succeed. It is a joke when you fail.

You might want to reconsider some very basic things about your lineup though, since during all these fights you didn’t do much. Occasionally you chain immobilized and stunned a ranger or necro, but even then it took you forever to kill them.
The reason you weren’t punished more for the constant stacking, lack of mobility and chain ressing was because you were fighting a bunch of outmanned roamers in duel builds.
I know it must be tempting to be the immortal group in a zerg v zerg fight, running around in water fields with high stability uptime. While running as a guild your not doing anything though.

The borders appear empty when you do a guild run, because the blob you run with is the size of the entire population of vabbi. By now everybody has realized that you’ll leave anyway once you’re wxp ratio drops or someone fights back. So they simply wait and recap it afterwards.

Tag might not be the best guild in the game, but they run without their entire server and they always came back to fight again, no matter how badly they got beaten. They got the attitude of a true guild, not a karma train.

@Rennoko:
I’m biased due to playing with a burst heavy group that can without much effort kill mesmers (given that they are glassy, as almost all wvw mesmers are). I have to admit that i haven’t seen an engi that was dangerous or a problem to kill in… forever.

In the end picking the initial target is always a risk and even the average bearbow could turn out to be pvt, with s/d offset, signet of stone and rampage as one.
It, of course, also depends on your group setup. Mine at least can’t reliably burst a dire necro down.

Icewielder.4195:

1. Most necros are amazingly bad, they do little and are amazingly reliable epidemic targets. (They don’t randomly go invuln making it miss).
2. They generally cause cripple/chill/fear/weakness which is exceedingly annoying and makes it harder for my melee peeps to get things done.
3. Easy stomp, stability or blind stomps and it’s out of the fight. Compared to a thief/Mesmer/ele that won’t sit still. (Corpse epi is easier too)
4. While very rare, occasionally the necro is horrifyingly dangerous and could quickly drop my other party members. Generally these are very skilled condition necros. In this situation I am often the only member of my party that can handle the kind of pressure they can apply. This is very rare, Rennoko is actually the only one we consistently run into. (Iris Ashensoul is also one, but we’re on the same server now luckily).

I do agree with these points. However in my experience (bad) necros immediatly drop into plague as a panic reaction and remain there for the entire duration. I’m usually content with just leaving them there and focusing them once they come out again. I don’t quite understand why people would chase a blinding plague.

I have to admit that i never get why people would call target on a condition necro (which very reliably has dire gear, plague and last gap). It simply takes too much time and cooldowns to kill. [I understand calling target on power necros or if i see a flesh golem] Gs mesmers, rangers, engis, staff eles make for so much easier targets.

Overall i don’t believe that necro has to be carried by a supportive group setup. Our group runs without a guardian or warrior with a focus on elusive glass cannon builds. So i get a lot more focus than i’d like and am forced to take two defensive utilities (So i’m glancing with envious eyes on everybody that has the room to use Bip…). Necro forces you to learn to kite the hard way.

Dealing damage against tripple shout groups (etc.) can be hard. In these fights i tend to focus on assisting on the target a lot more, rather than the usual aoe condi pressure. However there is no build that provides aoe condi removal that doesn’t come at a cost to damage.

Sin.4130:

Yes, enjoy both that few hours deep at night when you can play as normal wvw servers. Someone says here you don’t care about score, lol.

Greetings friend!
Let me start by expressing my gratitude. In a world of polite matchup threads full of happy campers, your condescending tone is refreshing.
However, you seem to under a wrong impression. Being last (and having been for such a long time) isn’t a horrible fate. Being stuck on a server in the low 20 ranks that personifies mediocrity and pettiness – now that’s something i don’t envy anybody for.

A lot of people here are refugess from the glorious “normal wvw”. Continue to stack on your commander and blast fire fields, only to see all of it crumble once you meet a server with more numbers or a raid guild that actually knows what they are doing.
Continue to karma train with as many people as you can, only to lose an entire borderland to ten people during prime time.
Meanwhile we’ll continue with our abnormal practices, like ignoring commanders, praying to Ham and sodomizing our yaks.

Have a wonderful week!

Aen Gelinor.4062:

Have Vabbi resorted to cheating or they have so uber players that can battle for 15 minutes 3 vs 12 and kill most of their opponents without even etting downed. Hmmmmm….

I’m sorry i suppose? (I’ll just assume it was me. I’m awesome.)

What is the bt strategy of letting 5-10 people take an entire borderland during prime time, then karma train it back, only to have the same repeat once your train crashes once?

After the initial zerging, some really nice fights tonight. Nice to see that Jd has some really skilled players (especially the necro and s/d thieves). Should be a good week.

Neandramathal.9536:

Oh don’t worry I understand the problems all too well Just trying to inject some life into the thread!

Gnomes of Vabbi [Gov] – We care about your matchup thread!

Btw. Vabbi has pretty much secured second place. We can stop the hacking now.

Hamham.7504:

Monkeymonger.9235:

Special thanks to the three gentlemen from ECG and their reports to arenanet. My life becomes a lot more entertaining when my little necro becomes the attention it deserves.

What did you do now? I knew CB was a shady corporation. I bet the shirts and sneakers don’t even exsist!

I might have killed their group of three (including two tasty commander warriors) without dropping below 95% health. This prompted them to invite me, ridicule me and report me for hacking.
Due to difficulties in delivery and our philippine production centre there will be substantial delays. For more information please contact Neil in Logistics. Thank you for your understanding.

So far this is actually a very nice week for roaming. A bit too much karma training, but well, one gets used to it.

Special thanks to the three gentlemen from ECG and their reports to arenanet. My life becomes a lot more entertaining when my little necro becomes the attention it deserves.

Yeah! Freyn, you bullly!

So, how about the weather?

Alright, i gave it 11 hours for some white knight to come and save me from this bully. Apparently you are all just sitting idly by while this verbal abuse continues! But no more! I can’t take it anymore: Ham, you won’t get a CB shirt.

There, you made me do it. I hope you are happy now.

sofired.6071:

Surprised there isnt more comradery in this thread, we’ve both been hammered by mega-servers (compared to us anyway) over the last few weeks – at least we have a close battle for 2nd this week.

Because usually the winning server is a bit more condescending and likes to talk random nonsense, which unites the other warriors of the forum clan. kitten you arborstone!

Then again, from my perspective wsr doesn’t feel any different to fight than Rof or ros. To me it doesn’t matter if we play around with Tash, Tag or Frs. Running from a zerg feels the same no matter what server they are from.

super moo.2891:

how you like to play is completely fair enough, but people are not being considerate of how other people like to play, whether that is karma training or night capping. in some cases our server had been directly insulted, which is saddening considering how vabbi used to be.

however, to say vabbi doesn’t care about ppt is slightly misguided, many vocal players might not care, but the server clearly does. as i said, this is a very close matchup right now

The people that post from a vabbi perspective are (for the most part) from roaming guilds. Of course they will try to kill the people in the backline of a zerg or guild – if it works, great; if it fails you can always complain about getting zerged. It’s the same as when raiding guilds push into blobs, then complain about getting blobbed.

If you use a guild raid to kill a roamer (by veiling or portal bombing…), for whatever reason, of course you will have to live with the ridicule. That’s how this works and by now everybody should have a thick skin when it comes to that.

The only thing i’d like to add is that you should focus on Psy when you hunt roamers. They are the ones that actually want to kill you. We from CB only want to kill the people afk at gates or that fell behind while salvaging. We’re helping your raidleader by keeping up discipline!

All this ppt talk. Is being second some kind of pride achievement?

Actually quite some good fights on reset, although it seemed as if AS got twice the numbers they had last week. Good ol’ Vabbi effect…

12s48c is a bargain to watch myself scepter autoattack for 20min. I guess thats what trusting an asura gets me!

There were three people there. One condition mesmer from TaG and two necros from PI. Thanks to them for showing up!

I can only assume that the others were busy at that time taking over vabbi map. It’s a great achievement and i’m really angry with our defensive team. I do understand however that dueling doesn’t give you wxp – so it’s a waste of time!

Given how incredibly bored most of the guilds look this week, why don’t you take up on CBIMPPSYBNF’s offer for some 5-15 fights? I am sure you can assist your commanders in the glorious destruction of wooden gates afterwards.

[Speaking of commanders: I get it. It’s an easy week where you can pvd like theres no tomorrow; but i feel a bit insulted to be chased by an upleveled engi commander. If i get trampled, can’t he at least wear proper armor and look cool? That’s something all the melee trains at least do right. When they chase me around for 20s at least they have the decency to wear spiky armor and swing, big and shiny hammers.]

Neandramathal.9536:

Los Re.4607:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfKNUhYHFX8

Just a random video, 13:55 starts my favorite part.

The 1 spam, it burns! Thank god you got away from that!

I have to admit that sometimes i miss those days, particularly 15man raids like the one in the video. Nothing like leaping into a zerg, hearing the screams of the wounded and seeing a path of destruction behind you.
But, alas, gone are the days. Now i remain in the ruins of CB’s pettiness, eternally kitten ed to gank solo roamers…

Congratulations to the power necro from TAG. It was the first 1v1 in wvw that i lost since the leagues started. I will take a cold shower and cry myself to sleep now

Kryank.8069:

Point to the doll and tell me where the nasty Zerg touched you :p

They built an ac on my body…

We had a pretty weird event on rof border desperately trying to find some fights. So we golem rushed hills and failed at garrison. We had quite a nice run until CC showed up. Curse your moas and hammer trains!

Thanks to everybody from rof for the late night duels on their border!

Both rabid and carrion still work, but in general i prefer dire to survive focus fire and 1vx scenarios better. You don’t need more than 20% crit to reliably trigger dhuumfire.

Signet of spite is a great skill and i use it quite a bit, but i prefer CB. Corrupting stability is one of the best kill assists for group focus fire. It also helps to counteract some of the most common counters to the usual opening burst (marks + ds) like contemplation of purity, elixir c or armor of earth + ether renewal.

Best buy your dungeon gear first (check what you can buy with badges/karma) and get your dire gear a week later.

Why do i always have to feel so neglected in matchups against french servers? Can’t you at least once per page tell us how awesome you are, that you found a hacker or that rof blobs you?
You are missing out on an integral part of wvw: Talking kitten about the other servers and insulting random people on the internet. Join us today and i’ll send you a package with some classic matchup lines (including “Look how many lootbags i farmed from you!” and “Just delete Vabbi already!”).

Hamham.7504:

Neandramathal.9536:

So they’re just scumbags or just bandwagoners?

I was treated very nicely, many compliments were made about me. That doesn’t sound like a scumbag to me.

That is because you are a beautiful creature (for an asura/small human mix)!

@Tag: The funny thing is that we didn’t even wanted to troll/fight you (it goes hand in hand for us). We were just looking for FR/WoD/WR/CC or some small roaming groups, maybe a pug commander. Personally i’m just a bit bored of being hunted by melee trains and corrupting guardians.

From an outside perspective it seems weird that at times ar and rof just refuse to fight each other. Two groups watching each other, then deciding to just chase the five roamers and go to a different part of the map.

Acotje.5689:

Jathres.7236:

850 upscaled rangers kills…. Those poor guys just want to level up!

And I wont let them, because once they become lvl80…
They…
They become Bearbows and…
Screw up my dungeon runs
I NEED MY GOLD OKAY

Do not make fun of the mighty bearbow. Ever. It saves me the trouble of thinking about which opponent to target first. You see a ranger nowadays and you know he’s glassy as hell and won’t swap out of his bow. [Also DON’T tell them about spirits. Don’t turn them into this abomination!]

I’ve always wondered about this: Was there ever a coordinated migration of rangers from the higher tiers to the lower tiers? Something like civil disobedience organized by the high council of rangers? To protest retaliation, barrage and the lack of aoe maybe? Also, do rangers have a hive mind? Or how do you coordinate your pew pew so effectively? And why don’t you like necros?
Sincerely,
a curious victim

Dushnaa.9318:

…So mostly what I’m looking for is a few (if there are any more) viable builds for roaming, mostly solo. I’ve tried power builds in spvp a bit but they seem quite boring to me….

Condition builds that i use for solo- or small group roaming:

30-20-0-0-20 burst build:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMax7hbub87JEoH7CuAiRKOmghSB8kOA-jUCBoOCyk0Bi8AOTqIas1gFRjV3ATlSQWxKpeEFRrWKAYWDA-w

0-30-20-0-20 build (if someone already provides good source of burning):
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMax7hbub87JAJFX/c0jjD2YKFwnOA-jUCBoOCyk0Bi8AOTqIas1gFRjV3ATlSQWxKpeEFRrWKAYWDA-w

30-20-20-0-0:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMax7Jbub87JEJFXzzA9YXwFQMSxxEMA-jUCBoOCyk0Bi8AOTqIas1gFRjV3ATlSQWxKpeEFRrWKAYWDA-w

0-30-20-0-20 might stacking:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMap7hbub87JAJFX/c0jjD2YKFwnOA-jUCBoOCyk0QkIBOTqIasVhFRjV3ATlSQWxKpeEFRrWKAYWDA-w

[Note: I use epidemic since i feel pretty confident going for 1vx and don’t usually feel that i need an additional slot for 1v1. If i only find groups too big or good for me i frequently swap it out for flesh wurm.
For spectral walk i assume you frequently swap in warhorn for the swiftness buff. I generally prefer it over signet.]

For good measure a power build [20-20-0-0-30]:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIhdu1IjWle4m2G9eCBSx7VLRKOGlh6B8gOfIA-jUyAYrAhvCNBKQUhQn+KiGbVsIasqFM9JRUt3oIa1yAsMGA-w

and one for zerging [0-20-0-20-30]:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIhdu1IjWlemmoG/eCZSR3MORKGmih6x6gOfIA-jUyAYrAhvCNZJQUhQn+KiGbVsIasqFMVJRUt3oIa1yAkPGA-w

Good luck!

Since you don’t care for criticism i’d just like to say that i don’t like the build and don’t believe it to be particularly effective. At the same time i want to congratulate you on killing the mesmer that killed you commander buddy and the upleveled.

Fluffball.8307:

Also honorable duels are ridiculous; it’s WvW, not a custom sPvP dueling server. I kill every red name I see, as do almost 100% of the people I come across.

Yes, because there are no laws, morale or honor involved in war. It just seems that for a lot of people wvw is an excuse to behave like a prick.

@OP: I still don’t quite understand what the difference is between “condi spam” (what does that actually mean? When i use the skills on my scepter once they are off cooldown, am i spamming?) and the “physical damage spamming” you showcase.

The problem in my mind is that it has become rather boring that every guild plays the same way for the last year(there are some variations for gvg) and anet in no way cares to try to add more options.
They nerfed confusion/glamours and buffed the builds that were almost exclusively played in large scale anyway.
The new party system made it a lot easier to provide very high stability uptime for the melee train.

Boons are mostly fine, although:
- Boon conversion is a bad mechanic considering the abundance of warhorns/pure of voice. It would help quite a bit to allow condition builds back into gvg meta to change it to condition removal.
- Combo finishers only in combat wouldn’t change much since prebuffing (except for swiftness) is mostly a waste of time.
- Maybe think about diminishing returns for boons, e.g. 1/2s less per additional target affected by a shout.

Instead of destroying the cc train (which actually is fun to play, but after a year is without alternative), i’d like to see ui options to enable a more spread out playstyle.

From past experience the issue with not running control t on commander with everybody stacked tightly on him is that the damage won’t be focused and there is no way to harm pvt melees. I believe that an option to call target on any point on screen (instead of being limited to players) would help.

I want to thank DBG and CC for the good fights tonight. You did well!

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Well then let me also add, your yak ganking roamers have a finely tuned sense that trouble is coming, and wow they run fast!

When we run it’s because we smelled an underleveled ranger in the area!

Anyhow, as my asuran overlords from the CBIMPPSYBNF bandwagon alliance asked me (well, not technically asked…maybe silently wished…i probably should get some clearence before i continue..) to challenge our enemies in a test of cunning, brute force and might stacking. So if you read this, consider yourself challenged for a 5-15 “guild vs. gloryhunting, yak-ganking bandwagoners”!

@Jathres: You have to be the sneakiest asuran camera i’ve ever not noticed. I wondered where you’ve been during all these fights only to see you had my back all the time! If you weren’t asura and i was scared to mistake you for a snack, i’d hug you…

In my opinion you should avoid starting too tanky and rather start squishy, so you learn the hard way to avoid damage and how to play as a caster.
Knight’s with berserker is usually a good starting point though. [Something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW3YjMaV6Zaia87JgJFdPekihLm6R5ofOA-jUyAYLBZCCM9JQJvklAHEbboIasqFM1JRUt3oIa1SBcxYA-w]

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAW7YjMad7Zaub87JAJFX/c0jhDuYKFlnOA-j0BBoOCyk0Bi+AOTqIas1gFRjVdDTHjIqWKAYWDA-w

Is the condition build i’d use. (I ran it with complete carrion, since you don’t need precision or too much armor)
Well of corruption is a good source of damage. It prioritizes retaliation, which is always up on melees. Depending on the enemy you can switch spectral wall for well of darkness or corrosive poison cloud.

Avoid the usual spite/corrupt + epidemic combo. The cooldown is too long since the conditions will be removed after a few ticks. The most reliable use of epidemic is to stack conditions on downed enemies and spread from there.

Madderdin.3082:

Monkeymonger.9235:

@Madderdin: Enemy zergs always look bigger since you can see the entirety of them. Usually well organized enemies will have ~1/3 or so more people in their main group.
It’s like that on all servers and has been before any queue bugs.
People aren’t necessarily afk, doing the jp or leveling their alts (although that is quite often a sizable group). The percentage of people that want to help without joining the zerg (scouting, building siege, running supply etc. ) is simply higher on home border than on other maps.

I’m sorry, but are you implying that I do not know the difference between 20 and 60 people?

Have you noticed that part when I wrote “we run in one big blob with after one commander”

Have you noticed that your explanations exclude themselves logically?

Are you implying that someone who comes to level up his character is going to solo roam rather than join the zerg blob because that would be more efficient on WvW?

I guess you are not from any of the servers in this particular group and you have no real knowledge about the situation that pretty much shows how your arguments are invalid

When Drakkari Lake has 100% of Eternal Borderlands 95% of their borderlands 95% of Vabbi Borderlands and 70% of Blacktide Borderlands AND Blacktide has a queue because Blacktide Borderlands are full AND we all go to 1 commander AND there is no real chance for solo roamers or solo levelers on WvW or people running for supplies because we dont have anything more than 1 supply camp, 1 tower and the garrison AND there are no scouts because do you know how to spot someone who scouts? they write on the map chat about what they had scouted. And one zerg goes vs the other zerg, both zergs stack before fight starts so they are not spread (And i dont know how about you, but i dont have tunnel vision only on my currently selected target, i look around all the time) then the fight just ends within 20 seconds, one zerg gets destroyed the other loses 5 players.

Are you implying that its possible in such fights of two groups of 50-60 players, one group sits afk and barely deals damage? Or perhaps there is a possiblity that when it sometimes says Borderlands are full, the opposing faction might just have player advantage because something is wrong with the numbers of players allowed on such server?

I’m sorry, but are you implying that i would care enough to insult you? My points were of a general nature. I’ve been in situations similar to the ones you described and this is the best explanation i could come up with.
(I would only add that particularly during the times when you are pressured, lose important keeps and the commander wipes a couple of times, players tend to spread out more and do their own thing.)

While there was fighting in one of your keeps we killed a group of upleveled farming drakes at the south camp.
There were constantly blacktide players in the south part of the map – roaming, getting their vistas/sentries/bloodlust points or killing mobs.

Edit: Thanks to ODZ for the fight at water camp.

Europe is different because there is only one primetime that is incredibly stacked (with the exception of the bottom ~3-5 servers there are queues everywhere). It has been like this for a very long time.
Guilds rely on pvt cc trains because it’s by far the most effective way to play outnumbered large scale. Fighting a spread out pug style just doesn’t work against server blobs. VII is the only top guild that actually plays this way.
From what i’ve seen there are few na guilds that play cc train as extreme or well as for example Votf.

Solo-/small scale roaming with a necro is still possible against every server, but can get very frustrating. It requires you to play more defensively and pull more than on an engi/mesmer/thief. Maybe play around with flesh wurm a bit.

Hamham.7504:

With such rough people working the floor I’m surprised you made any sales at all. Where can I find these ‘happy customers’ you speak of? I bet they were strong armed into buying sneakers! I thought CB was a cerious corporation.

Sir, please calm down or will call security. You are familiar with mike, aren’t you? If you don’t like our shop you can always buy sneakers from Psy.

@Madderdin: Enemy zergs always look bigger since you can see the entirety of them. Usually well organized enemies will have ~1/3 or so more people in their main group.
It’s like that on all servers and has been before any queue bugs.
People aren’t necessarily afk, doing the jp or leveling their alts (although that is quite often a sizable group). The percentage of people that want to help without joining the zerg (scouting, building siege, running supply etc. ) is simply higher on home border than on other maps.

For pug zergs this works out quite well (see the builds by asura or rennoko). For guilds and gvg’s there are a couple of reasons power is usually picked over condition:

- It’s reliable damage. Epidemic is amazing but notoriously unreliable. People cleanse, dodge and go down.

- It provides immediate damage to a kill zone. The european scene is more defensive than the american one. The melee trains are a lot bigger and there are only few guilds that run big periphery pressure teams. Usually you have two guardians tome the first push and kill zone. Between good guilds people don’t go down in the first minute of the fight.

- It requires a party commited to conditions. Without it there just won’t be enough pressure. This means that you already steered your guild in a certain direction and either it works out or you won’t have enough burst damage to scratch the enemy melee train.

- It’s harder to play. In order to get reliably 20-30 players for a raid you will have people that are less individually skilled. Condition necro requires experience and overview of the battle to be played effectively.

There are some niches for condition necros, e.g. pressuring eles and mesmers against guilds, finishing downed clusters against zergs with staff eles. It’s fun to play, but can get extremely frustrating and overall you’ll be more useful with power builds.

Edit: @Alanis: Most guild melees have 80% or more stability uptime during a fight. At least i’ve always planned parties as close to 100% as possible. There is no effective way to remove stability in an aoe.
Also, static field and lines are a lot better to control the battlefield.

Hamham.7504:

When I attempted to enter the CB lair, or ‘shop’ as I was lead to believe, I was met with swords and magics on my person from the ‘sales rep’. Please fix so I can buy a Casual Blob™ t-shirt.

“Swords and magcis?” Yeah, that sounds like Bob. He had a rough childhood. We only took him in because he’s Mikes (from security) son. Now that i mention it, all the people with short temper and jaundiced eyes are related to Mike.

Overall the roaming is quite decent, as long as you don’t take towers. Or kill too many players. Or just get trampled by a random zerg taking bloodlust points for hours.

Since no one mentioned it so far:
Dear Drakker,
to get 3 points and a step closer to the awesome golden doylak finisher you only have to win by one point. In order to maximize your karma/gold/wxp gain (or whatever the reason is that you run around in trains like this [mhh…maybe you just like trains? Do you like trains?]) you should take a break every hour, roleplay a bit and then recap the stuff.
Sincerely,
Rorik, future chief economic advisor to the drakkar lake high council

x Charlie.4820:

Again, I’m not sure why you seem to think because vabbi have less players, that they don’t get kills.

Because you need a zerg to kill people, silly.