Guild Wars 2

Iris Ng.9845:

Ehm, excuse me but I play tempest at t4 daily and it’s no where near the point of “dying from being breathed on”. I agree that playing condi necro is easy in fractals and for the records I was one of the few first people to promote playing necro in t4 if players can’t handle the mechanics to save their own hide. That doesn’t mean playing anything else than necro is impossible to be as good.

In this one particular thing in discussion: add cleaving, protection means nothing, boon stealing means nothing, armor defense means nothing. The adds have very little health pool that a clever pull, disabling and powerful burst are all needed to cleave them down.

You guys start making me doubt that either all the good players I know either quit the game or jump to this necro train for everyone starts worshipping it as a be-all-end-all solution.

Yes I’ve done all of this before it’s even meta and I still stand behind my words and say a good tempest/DH burst + chrono pull can out cleave the 5 necro epidemic.

Now if Anet decides to nerf minions or make environmental damage kill them quicker or simply make add leave no corpse, the necro meta will cease to exist. But that’s another thing to debate.

Ok go to 93 and get your team to clear the mob at the end of the tunnel. If you can beat my video’s speed to melt that mob. I don’t really understand how come you don’t understand that power damage loses huge chunk in T4.

Iris Ng.9845:

4 tempests/ or trap DHs + 1 chrono with g.well will out cleave your 5 necro setup. Especially in those three specific fractals.

100% wrong. You lose 30% damage from all power damage because of armor scaling. The fact that all your boons are stolen will destroy your group as well. Ele damage is really bad because of the 30% armor scaling and the fact that it’s harder to play at T4 due to you can die just by getting breathed on.

Can you beat this clear speed at 93? Just watch the tunnel sequence an the mob at the end of the tunnel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chVPWPiL8TA

You never take PS for MT 100 because you get 1 shotted because horrick will get 100% 25 might and fury. He one shots the entire team if you do the face tank method.

My static group does MT 100 4 necros 1 druid healer in 8 minutes. Find something that can beat that. You know why people kick chrono in t4?

Realistically chrono does only like 10k DPS and all the boons you give gets stolen. Then there’s that thing called armor scaling where power DPS drops by about 30% ?tested by a dnt friend). So you in total you do about 6-7k DPS and all your boons are stolen. It’s basically asking 4 people to carry you for a free ride.

T4 fractals all power based damage goes down by about 30% due to armor scaling. Not to mention high power based builds are notoriously squishy and get sort of demolished fast if you lose track of stuff and this also gets amplified by having slower endurance regeneration. So if you take a look at a lot of groups in LFG, there’s a decent amount of people asking for condi and necro only now.

That being said, venom share is actually really good if you can pull it off right and it’s a very good build for T4 as well as a niche role in raids. Just don’t run power unless you want to kitten yourself on T4. If you do not know how hard condi trashes power builds for T4, I can provide footage as well.

Run this:
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Daredevil_-_Venom_Share

Xera last night still bugs out like mad. She randomly chase people that are not the tank and goes everywhere. She also goes invulnerable from time to time which is ridiculous.

It’s actually really easy to get in raid hear me on this. People that didn’t start raiding since week 1 of release don’t know this.

I pugged my butt off after Spirit Vale was released and got to Gorseval on the second day. At that stage nobody knew how to play a lot of roles or even put together a team that is min-maxed and can excel in damage and support. People like us carried on and put in a lot of money (to get new gear) and effort make new builds and try out different team comps. You people getting in raids later have absolutely no idea how much work we had to put in to get even VG down in the first week of release.

Now all the guides of builds and bosses are out. Guess who wrote them? It’s people that raided since day one and didn’t give up at the difficulty. They’ve done all the hard work for you by finding the best builds and best team comps to run. The hardest part of raiding is actually done for you. All you have to do is try yourself. There are plenty of guilds that are willing to take in new raiders and all you have to do is try to learn and improve. I personally co-led a raid training guild and we got 8 raid virgins their wing 1 and 2 kills in 4 weeks; all we required was full ascended and running correct builds and judging by the thread most people can do that easily.

Also remember if you run into problems with your team or guild and can’t get past a boss or something. Just take a breather and think what is being done wrong so that people can improve. Remember to think any problem that you face now in raids, we got it infinitely worse back at release. Don’t give up and just keep going.

I mean look at this crap build and team comp we ran in week 1 of raid release. We got it on day 1 though after about 6 hours straight of trying and failing?
http://i.imgur.com/RqaujS2.jpg
And this is day 2 of raid release, getting Gors down with downed skills after spending about 5 hours of trying; people alive in the picture are from the rally due to killing gors with downed 1 skill spam and it was really funny actually. Can you imagine playing engi for 5 hours straight? My hands were dead.
http://i.imgur.com/yHRL7mH.jpg

But ya my point still stands what newer people trying to raid now have it easy come compared to what we had to endure back at release. We did not give up at all and instead kept on going forward. Most of the hard work is done already and if you are someone new to raids, never give up and always try your best.

Ok so the thing a lot of you casual people don’t get is that in games if you can’t do the content, you don’t deserve the reward. Please don’t use that you don’t have time for this because in my core static group there are full time grad students and people that work in banks and they cleared all wings. Training raids exist and you can spend just 30 minutes in a run to see the mechanics. Plenty of training raid guilds exist and some even recruit on the forums or Leddit.

It’s 9 insights per week and honestly I feel wing 3 is easier than wing 2. My team cleared it in 2 days. There are a crap ton of raid training guilds so just look them up if you can’t find groups.

The point of high end gear and rewards is for people who has the balls and dedication to do harder content. I’ll use Runescape as an example, people who can’t beat the fight caves cannot get the one of the best capes in the game or people who can’t beat QBD cannot get the Royal Crossbow. Legendary armor is suppose to have prestige so if you make it so easy to get then what is the point?

Full magi with monk runes. Get magi trinkets from dungoneer and rest of the magi trinkets as you get more magnetite. People realized zealot is terrible when wing 2 came out and it’s still terrible.

Also do not watch Dulfy’s druid PoV in her raid guides. She is a garbage tier druid. Practice your rotation and figure out how to time your skills yourself as you play. Watching some good player PoV videos could help.

First boss is harder than bandit trio also more entertaining.

Sometimes when you kill the white ghost even right on top of the boss, it won’t remove a stack.

Keep construct has serious hitbox issues. Also it took my team about 1 hour to beat it, but the maze is ridiculous. 2 hours in and we are still stuck in the maze.

Side effect of a dwindling player base. I’ve seen worse.

Less incentive to play because a lot of people finished their wings/achievements. Also queue times are garbage because lot of people just stopped playing. Sapphire sometimes gets to like 15 minutes.

Give you an example of how it’s not always your fault when you lose because this happened to me yesterday. I got matched up against some person I know from last season and he was a former diamond player of both seasons with quite good skills and understanding of the game. He got put up with a guild stack.

The guild stack literally showed up with PvE raid builds and eles were running staff. One shield bash and 1 mace hit was all it took for me to drop one of his eles. His team had 2 of those eles that just feed and don’t they can’t win a single fight. The other 2 on the 4 stack were running equally bad stuff with a thief trying to manfight a warrior and lose in 2 seconds and so on.

Sometimes thing happen that’s not a player’s fault and matchmaking is purely to blame. Do you blame that he got matched with PvE scrubs his fault? He got diamond in both seasons and is a very good player. You are pretty delusional if you think matchmaking is perfect and can make zero mistakes.

So the past 2 season I both hit really high tier ruby then real life (aka 3rd year electrical engineering) came and I had to stop playing. Like I can hit diamond pretty easily if I kept going as my ruby games were up against most diamonds and I had a decent win rate.

So anyways, I got advanced placement into emerald and I thought it would be pretty fast to get out but guess what happened. I had games where 4 people camped mid at the start of the game and 3 people went to camp for the initial beast spawn. I was pretty much borderline diamond the last 2 seasons and what did I do to deserve this.

Condi warrior is OP because of that stupid bow bug.

They pretty much made the same mistake they made in season 2. With eles getting a heavy nerf, they did not consider what eles were countering at the time. With eles nerfed and necro relatively untouched, it paved the way for the condi meta in general and not just warriors. Every condi build is very strong right now.

So this season is a repeat of season 2 because eles and druids were nerfed quite heavily, leaving the classes they counter relatively unchanged.

Just kill me kthx at least wasn’t 5 engis

Uhhh reapers are sort of broken right now? They down right make T4s a faceroll? Either you have the wrong gear and people found out, or that you simply got really stupid pugs. Most people are smart and know reapers are super broken right now though….

Smart groups ask for condi builds actually. Engi, necro, thief are really good for 80+. You can cheese a lot of levels just by stacking 2 or 3 condi necros.

Sun Lian.4075:

am I supposed to keep joining those a 100 times first and listen to the same explanations in TS until one happens to succeed? As if you would do that yourself.

I tell you what and read my post earlier again. Trying for 100s of times and having that 1 success is exactly what people that started raiding on week 1 release did to get to where they are now.

At release we just pug over and over and over again trying to figure out optimal tactics and classes to run. Week 1 VG pugs that I in was took 5 straight hours of practice to finally got the kill. Week 2 Gorseval pugs that I was in literally went for 6 hours straight before killing it and don’t get me started on how many runs the pugs that I was in trying to kill sab at release. Also I played engi for 6 hours straight which isn’t the most fun, but hey this is what dedication is about.

What I said above was called hard work and most of it is already done by people like us. You just have to go in with the correct mindset, listen to what raid training leaders are telling you to run/do, and put in the effort to improve. You guys new to raiding actually have the easier job compared what we had to do before.

So 80 LI 6/6 cleared raider here that raided since the release of raids with a few weeks of hiatus to play other games and I’m going to tell you what I’m noticing about a lot of the complainers. On another note I also co-lead a raid training guild and we whipped up a team of complete raid virgins and got them 6/6 cleared in 6 weeks.

If you think about it this way, for every complainer crying about raids being inaccessible and unable to meet the strict requirements of high tier teams, there are 2 other people in the same boat trying to do something about it. Where did you think all of my guild’s recruits came from? They were in the situation as you, but instead of crying and complaining about the raid playerbase, they tried their hardest to improve and get good. If you can’t put in the effort to become the caliber of player that end-game content require, might as well not just bother doing it.

You need to put in effort to do end-game content and this is true for every game. There are tons of guilds that are willing to take in complete raid virgins and whip them into shape, so go find them. Listen to what they tell you to do and try your hardest to improve. You know what people like us did when raids first came out? We bang our heads against each fight trying to figure out tactics and team setups. Sometimes pug in the first few weeks of release go for like 6+ hours straight. You guys have it easy as optimal tactics and team setups are already established by people like us, so there really isn’t a reason saying it’s hard to get into raids because we’ve done most of the hard work for you. If you are not willing to put in the effort and still want the rewards, it’s just won’t happen unless you have a credit card ready….

Also the guild I co-lead only ask for full ascended and no experience is required. As long as you have TS+mic and willing to listen to what the leaders are telling you, you can join. Before you casuals are saying ascended requirement is too much, think of it as a proof of dedication. If you can’t even put in the effort to get the proper gear (it’s not hard at all to get a set by the way), why should we think that you will put in the right effort to learn the raids?

Flumek.9043:

Can someone answer me how t4 fractals are?

Theres been a necro veteran but he claimed power necro should be kicked from DUNG/FRACT LFGs.

My arguments were:
-This isnt raids. Stuff dies too fast so power is waay beter and easier than condi (landing epi half second after trash mob dies). U also lose 5k per set of minions on any non boss thing.
-this isnt 10man buff but 5man. So perma 25/25 might vuln at all times is worth more
-its lfg puging, not record runs. Necro is easier to play and thus the average and subaverage pug can still be very effective on it. A training wheels build that goes as fast as normal car

Am i wrong somewhere?
Are t4 fractals so high hp on mobs that the condi dmg has time to ramp and catch up? Do you do high hp 5target epidemics every 15s, that you couldnt easier burst with wells every 30s ?

If this is how a “necro veteran” missinterprets the mechanics then idk what other even think of necros

You lose 25-27% of power based DPS on T4. Source, SlyDevil from dnt.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WjrchNLmng&feature=youtu.be

If you want to see rampup time on T4 that video shows 79 scale, also ignore the music I had Dark Souls 3 running in the background and fraps picked it up. I don’t think you can beat this in terms of damage with berserker power builds stack and typically berserker builds are way harder to play at T4 as well. Also not that many reasons of taking power necro since DH can beat you and gives arguable better group utility.

If you want numbers 50k party dps roughly with the ele on healing auramancer. Also notice how faceroll necro condi stack is to play. It’s pretty easy to play and has very competitive DPS to berserker stack team comps.

Only viper necro is good on T4 fractals. Dungeons stuff dies too fast you can get away running power for dungeons.

You still can out heal that if the druid is using the right gear.

I guess you missed the point of me showing the DPS is very competitive between a condi focused team and power focused team and I even showed it with gameplay. Guess which one is easier to faceroll? Obviously it’s the condi based team. Assuming T5 will be a thing, condi facroll will get even easier to play.

Ok so to explain in another different way. You say reflects, protection, quickness, alacrity is useful. Yes they are but the point of this cheese team is that you can just ignore everything and mash buttons on your keyboard. It’s just as fast, if not faster on some maps, yet requiring way less effort.
Also you can think about it this way. A necro condi spam team can go really competitive with a standard optimized team comp and this is with only might, banners and EA. We have no alacrity and quickness and many other buffs yet the damage remains competitive. I think this alone shows that a necro condi spam team’s damage potential is definitely there and necros are no means useless.

If you guys want to see this in action for today and I actually remembered to record….

https://youtu.be/4WjrchNLmng
Turn your volume down a bit, I had my system volume a bit loud….New to recording.

3 Necro
1 PS
1 Auramancer (we wanted to play it a bit safe)

Using one of those legal DPS meters our measured number was around 50k DPS give or take (also 1 of our necros popped lich early so we lose out on like 5 jaggies at the start, so it could be higher than 50k if he didn’t pop lich early). Now considering a well balanced power based team comp which can do around 80k give or take if tested on the DPS golem (based on insanemaniac’s theorycrafting).

Please correct me if I misunderstood you SlyDevil, I think your post means that compared to the DPS golem’s output number, you are going to see roughly a 25% DPS drop due to toughness scaling compared to the tested number. That means the 20k out of 80k is gone, so that leaves us with 60k DPS. Now this number can go as low as 50k maybe due to the unpredictable things of actual fractals such as you have to dodge or cancel rotations and so on.

So the bottom line is that so let’s assume random things happen and an ideal power based team comp drops to like 50k DPS. Now compared to the DPS we did in the recording, it’s almost dead even as 50k vs 50k. Now look at how easy the necro condi based team comp is to play. It’s almost a complete face roll and requires like almost no effort. So ya I think I proved my point that this team comp will work, is fast, and pretty stress free/faceroll. Also keep in mind how fast we cleared everything as everything was dying almost together due to epidemic. This sort of AoE mob control makes a lot of fractals almost trivial such as volcano or aetherblade.

Things to consider:
1. Insanemaniac, your estimation of 80% is pretty darn accurate as 50k/60k is roughly 80%.
2. Condi DPS is always hard to measure using one of those legal DPS meters as it has issues keeping up with condi ticks. So in reality our number could be higher.
3. I still think epidemic splashed damage should be taken into consideration and those things are hard to measure and quantify effectively. This is why a necro’s true potential can never be measured. So ya…..
4. I was listening to the Dark Souls 3 soundtrack that came with my Steam copy.
5. Ele is definitely harder to play than necro at t4.

insanemaniac.2456:

this thread certainly went places today while i was unable to log in to do a little testing.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

2. necros provide no boons. A necro’s dps without and might/quickness/banners/etc is about 7k. with a proper team comp and full buffs it is around 22k. It is not a 20% increase it is closer to a 300% difference in damage

so i went to the dps testing area and got 6.5-7k buffless, which was a real head scratcher for me. i looked at my traits to try to diagnose why my dps felt so low against the golem because it doesnt feel so low in fractals ever… well, vuln gives 50% crit, which not only feeds into miniscule power dps, but also generates 5 sec bleeds. simply adding 25 vuln to the golem bought my dps up to 9.5-10k. additionally, having rise hit 5 things doubles your hits/sec, which in turn should up your dps by another 1.5~2k ish, but isnt exactly testable in the testing arena.

and then you need to count epidemic. if you have a burn based condi class, and no buffs, it will add ~20k dps spikes every 13 sec for maybe 3-4 secs, tapering off to like 3k dps for the rest of the time. so something like 7k dps overall. no buffs.

so lets see… lets say your comp is engi, druid, 3 necros. the engi will do like 15k dps and give vuln, 2 necros will do like 17k dps, the 3rd necro will do like 10k dps. overall, around 60k dps + druid (idk how much condi druid does).

fully buffed/comped party: mes is like 10k, ps war is like 15k, ele is like 30k, dh is like 25k(?), which is 80k + druid.

so yes, actually, 80% is a decent estimation of how much dps a necro centric party brings compared to a fully comped group. 300% my kitten . lol.

the difference is the necros dont have to pay attention to surviving, they dont have to bring buffs, they dont have to do any complex rotations besides faceroll every key not on cd, and the reward for not tryharding and possibly not knowing their class is to finish the dailies 5 minutes slower than a fully comped (guild) group that youll never attain in a pug group. stress free is certainly the right label, and joining a pug with a necro or as a necro is currently the best way to ensure you have a smooth run with at least ok dps (anecdotal evidence from me about my last 4 months of experience pugging fractals, but its still true). it is certainly not bad advice to roll up reapers right now.

Tested at 100 Mai Trin (again) but we had 1 PS warrior and 1 pug chrono we grabbed because we gave up pugging for a condi class. So the comp we used as follows:

2 condi necro
1 PS warrior
1 chrono
1 druid

We ran our druid as magi as he’s only setup for raids and we ran 1 of those really iffy DPS meters. We got around 45-50k DPS and mind you this is Mai Trin so epidemic targets only show up at 25% and they die really quick to epidemic. I would say your test and assumptions are accurate. Also keep in mind we will see a 27% drop off in power damage due to toughness scaling if the post earlier that said this is correct about it. So you can turn down that 80k+ druid number down more, so it’s more like a 60k+druid number to be honest.

1 Thing though I forgot to mention for my test. The numbers we got is probably not reliable as most DPS meters, including the ones that read memory, can’t register condi ticks fast enough so a lot of numbers get missed. Also our pug chrono was not using the right stuff and probably ran full berserker/assassin or something instead of boonshare. The quickness and alacrity we got was pretty terrible and was near nonexistant. Anyways the DPS number could actually be higher.

Get a good druid which lets your team face tank her the whole fight.

There’s always that one liar that joins an experienced group only trying to get carried. Don’t be that guy.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Condition damage is extremely valuable in its current form, but the Necromancer does literally nothing outside of damage and stay alive. You might be able to faceroll, but you’re facerolling really slowly when you have minimal might generation and no damage buffs. Your composition might win and you might not even be advertising it as super optimal, but it’s not just suboptimal, it’s extremely suboptimal. You’re missing out on so many damage buffs that any damage you gain from condition over power due to toughness is completely lost.

In my composition, you could substitute a condition Engineer or even a VenomShare Thief over the Dragonhunter/Tempest and do generally great anyway (maybe even better!). The thing is that it still would retain the core damage buffs while also having great survivability. It doesn’t even require anyone be great players. With permanent protection, perpetual reflect uptime, Aegis, and a Druid’s heals you can basically AFK auto-attack through everything L76+.

Your comp might not even be bad if instead of “random condi person” you had a PS Warrior and your “random other person” were a Tempest or a Dragonhunter. You could even keep both Necromancers and do ‘fine’ with the damage buffs from the other classes.

I think you missed the point. I did say earlier you can take a PS warrior for banners, EA, and might for fractals that give ample amounts of melee space. Also I’ve ran this for a week now and every night I get all T4s done in about 25 minutes or less depending on the roll. It is pretty fast when we get fractal rolls that let us take a PS warrior. Even times where we don’t take a PS warrior because of terrible rolls, it’s still quite fast and we never spend more than 30 minutes ever. I updated the team setup a bit fixing that you can replace the 3rd condi with another utility if it’s suitable for the fractal rolls of the day. I do see your point in terms of taking a bit more utility and I was playing a bit too safe.

Also did you see the numbers? 27% damage loss due to toughness scaling is still pretty huge. You definitely will see drop offs and condi will start to overtake power damage.

SlyDevil.3952:

Amicable Pugs.4503:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/updates/Game-Update-Notes-December-15-2015
“From fractal scale 1 to 50, the toughness attribute of creatures will scale up with the fractal scale. Beyond fractal scale 50, the toughness stat of creatures will no longer increase with the scale of the fractal.”

But the toughness still scales until 50. Based off numbers weth gave me after that patch, the toughness is around 27% loss to power based damage from the 2600 against most raids bosses or spreadsheet calcs.

The drop off is still pretty big and that’s why I’ve been saying just roll condi for higher tiers. I just think people have been forced into the berserker meta for too long. Based on what I’m seeing, people are still thinking condi is a gimick that you have to use for the sake of beating a few bosses in the raid wings as oppose to being a viable alternative to berserker builds. Condi by no means is something that’s just there for the sake of being there as a boss mechanic, it is completely viable outside of it.

There are situations where power builds will outperform condi and there are also times where condi builds will outperform power; even there are times where you need an equal balance of both (raids). I believe high tier fractals is one of those things where condi builds will outperform power builds.

I agree that your team comp is very well thought of and very min-maxed. It is a good team comp for experienced people actually and it will work wonders. However it’s not the easiest to play and has a lot of room for errors for a lot of people especially the people who have never touched a lot of harder content before. What I did was simply think of the simplest team build that requires very little coordination and still be able to faceroll. The thing is though condi spam just works a lot better in some fractals and you have to see the merit of stacking condi classes and spreading the ebola with epidemic for some levels. Volcanic and Aetherblade is like a joke and makes things really trivial. I really doubt you can cleave elementals as fast as condi epidemic spam on volcanic or kill the golems on aetherblade as fast.

The point of this is it simply is the easiest thing you can do and requires very little coordination and cohesion yet you can face roll every tier 4 fractal. Just like what Dinosaur said earlier, the build just works and you can face roll with almost zero effort and the most importantly, it’s blazing fast.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

This is a TERRIBLE team comp.

1. Toughness no longer increases after scale 50. There is no benefit to using condition over power.

2. necros provide no boons. A necro’s dps without and might/quickness/banners/etc is about 7k. with a proper team comp and full buffs it is around 22k. It is not a 20% increase it is closer to a 300% difference in damage

If you want to make an il informed post about the current state of necros please do so in the necro forums, this really isn’t the place and is terrible advice.

Is it fully min/maxed and will poop out the most DPS? Probably not? Is it easy to play and still be able to finish all 3 tier 4 dailies in 20 minutes or kill 100 Mai Trin in less than 10 minutes (If you take a PS warrior for the random person slot)? Hell yes. The point of it is pure face roll requiring as little skill as possible. I did mention that in the original post that you can take a PS warrior to be a buff bot. This bumps up the DPS a lot for fractals that gives ample amounts of melee headroom.

Dinosaurs.8674:

I’m really surprised at all the people saying that OP’s comp is bad. I would agree that it’s not the mega optimal fractal clearing comp, but it really is very effective. My group has run something similar and I can say with confidence that you really can faceroll the t4 scales with very little effort with condi spam and epidemic.

I think people need to keep in mind that he made this post to help people that were having trouble with t4 scales to begin with. So yeah it’s missing out on some stuff that would typically be used if you were putting together a “best” comp for clearing fractals with players who are experienced with high level fotm. But plenty of people are probably still in withdrawal from their daily mossman trains and have trouble dealing with the damage that high scale mobs can do, and I can say from experience that this kind of comp will perform as advertised.

Thank you for being able to see the point why I made this.

A lot of groups are already asking for specific classes such as druids or condi necros now actually. It’s catching up. I wouldn’t say necros have zero team support, I consider aoe mob control and group condition management good support. In terms of banners, EA, quickness, and all that stuff, I did say you can take a fifth to be whatever you want.

For example if the fractal gives you decent melee room, go ahead take a PS might slave to pump out the might and banners. It’s situational what the 1 random person can bring. Necro DPS is actually quite high with epidemic and transfers, and even without bounces and transfers the DPS is still quite good. Not to mention the condi DPS is not dropping off due to armor scaling.

Amicable Pugs.4503:

If condies would be better at anything above 15 sec then why isn’t anyone stacking condies in raids?
Toughness scaling was removed, only thing bosses in high levels have is too much hp.
If your eles are bad then yea, stacking condies is better.
Too many eles play wrong builds in wrong places with terrible rotations, so obviously easier classes will net most people better results.

It’s still in the game from my knowledge. The armor scaling is still there and this is why I’m advocating condi stack. To your question of why don’t you just run 10 condi stack in raids, it’s just a question of roles. Different roles need to be filled such as might giver, boon/quick slave, boon duration slave. Actually to answer your question, necro stack is legit now on Sab because the bug with minions is fixed. It’s actually really disgusting how fast sab dies with necro stack.

Edit: I posted some more analysis along with gameplay recording a bit later on in the thread.

Preface: It seems like a lot of people are having problems with tier 4 dailies. This guide will let you face roll any tier 4 level stress free. I have killed 100 Mai Trin in less than 10 minutes with this team comp and clear every day’s 3 dailies in under 20 minutes. This will work and I highly suggest everyone to drop their berserkers only mentality and give this a try.

The group composition:
1. Viper horrors necro
2. Random condi class
3. Random condi class/Random person
4. Druid
5. 1 Random person

Why stack conditions?
At tier 4, stuff just dies slower because of more HP and armor, therefore fights last a lot longer. With fights lasting longer and you can get 1 shotted easier meaning you can’t just stand around and attack. For this reason alone, condi damage will dramatically beat power based damage; like the competition isn’t even close in terms of daily clear times if you compare a condi stack team vs a power stack team. Before HoT release, people figured out that if a fight lasts longer than 10-15 seconds, condi will straight out demolish power builds. For this reason alone, you want to stack condi classes. Another way of thinking about this is that condi damage does not drop off with higher HP and armor scaling, where power builds will drop off quite dramatically.

Why necros?
If you have any experience in raid wing 2, you already know they are OP and probably expected this meta to exist already. A lot of people say 2016 is the year of the necro for a reason. In terms of damage, they are extremely good. In addition to that, they have epidemic which gives everything in a big area all the big juicy condition stacks. Another big boon is that necros make condition management a trivial thing with plague signet and transfers. So you have a class that outputs massive area damage and makes your party immune to conditions what else do you want? Actually there is….scepter boon strips nuff said.

What the 1 other condi class could be…
You have a lot of options actually. Engi, venom share thief, even warrior will work. They all offer a lot of benefits too, and you can pick whatever fits your needs. From my experiences, venomshare works wonders. There’s always the option of taking 1 extra necro for maximum entertainment as well. There is the option for replacing this role with another utility role as well if you decide you need more utility. Candidates include but not limited to PS warrior, chrono, DH.

Why druid?
It’s mainly for maximum face roll. The sustain makes a lot of encounters a trivial thing such as snowblind where you can just regroup and heal up very easily. Grace of the land is not something to be underestimated as well. It provides a massive DPS increase and a good druid can upkeep that quite well.

What the 1 random person could be….
Again you have many options. DH, PS warrior, chrono, and many other things. They all offer a good utility buff to the team and again take whatever you think will benefit the most.

Afterthought
I’ve used this team comp everyday after the April update and pretty much face rolled every day’s dailies in under 20 minutes. Even 100 Mai Trin was done in like less than 10 minutes. It does work and I can post some recordings of tomorrow’s dailies if people want to see the massive damage and face roll playstyle of this team comp (already finished today’s dailies and didn’t record).

Also I sort of want them to buff the difficulty of fractals because stacking condi classes just makes things die too fast and it’s not even a challenge….

Disclaimer: To be honest this team setup is not the most well optimized and min maxed. However…Is it easy to play and allows you to face roll through everything you see in tier 4 in very fast time? Yes! That’s why I made this guide.

Dinosaurs.8674:

I’m really surprised at all the people saying that OP’s comp is bad. I would agree that it’s not the mega optimal fractal clearing comp, but it really is very effective. My group has run something similar and I can say with confidence that you really can faceroll the t4 scales with very little effort with condi spam and epidemic.

I think people need to keep in mind that he made this post to help people that were having trouble with t4 scales to begin with. So yeah it’s missing out on some stuff that would typically be used if you were putting together a “best” comp for clearing fractals with players who are experienced with high level fotm. But plenty of people are probably still in withdrawal from their daily mossman trains and have trouble dealing with the damage that high scale mobs can do, and I can say from experience that this kind of comp will perform as advertised.

Take 3 necros and a druid + 1 random and just epidemic down everything after each phase regroup. Nobody dies and elementals just melt from condi stacks. I almost want them to buff the difficulty because stuff just dies too quicky if you stack condi classes. If you take a condi stack for tier 4, every level becomes almost face-roll easy. Try different things instead of the berserker meta and you will be surprised.

At tier 4, condi > power builds because fights just last longer and condi dps does not drop off as oppose to power builds. Necro stack and a druid + 1 random is probably the meta for fractals because this build kills 100 Mai Trin in like 8 minutes. My guild runs this setup a lot and we also use a venom share DD, and we finish all T4 dailies in like 20 minutes or less.

Please use your brains and identify what is not working and try to fix it instead of complaining for no reason. For every thing you find difficult, there are smart people who already figured out a solution. If you have any experience in raid wing 2, you probably already can figure out that necro + condi stack is the way to go for tier 4.

Experience:
1. Played the game since launch, very deep understanding of game mechanics.
2. Very experienced raider; 72 insights kill experienced on all 6 bosses including wing 2 clear on release week.
3. Able to multi-role very well and have all meta gear. Have every class and role if needed. Best roles: Druid, DH, Necro.

Supplementary information
1. Prefer to look for a non mandatory rep guild (negotiable).
2. Timezone very flexible as I can adjust sleeping pattern because it’s summer.
3. Teamspeak + mic is a yes and I am a very vocal player in terms of shot calling in raids.
4. Able to take constructive criticism very well and can keep cool under pressure.
5. North America

If the group leader specifically asked for META BUILDS ONLY, and you show up with a power necro build (which is not meta at all), he can kick you. If group leader didn’t ask for anything, play whatever you want.

Julius Seizure.4985:

It’s pretty sad that even after an entire class revamp and specialization focusing on a Power Weapon (Greatsword) that Power Necro is still bad.

I am salty to, be honest, because I main a Power Necro and a Condi Berserker. Guess what? Can’t raid with either.

The really sad thing is meanwhile power necro is completely garbage, condi necro is a top tier PvE pick anywhere in the game; they are insanely good at raids and high fractals. It’s just a total polar opposite in terms of viability. Even look at the DPS, a condi necro has the potential to reach 30-40k+ DPS even. Look where a power necro is stuck at, 15k-16k peak max.

Post screenshot of your 1 million hp golem results. It’s general consensus among the entire raid community that 10k give or take is the number, and maybe 15k-16k peak if fight is short and wells are up. Unless I see proof, your 24k dps on a power necro is full of crap. That’s number is approaching DH and thief tier.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/

Refer here for more numbers. Notice my condi necro number matches up very nicely. 20k vs 20k. Well mine is 17.5k without food, they used food, but with food 20k is very easily attainable.

Before we start here are my credentials:
1. A lot of necro games on PvP, made ruby in season one with necro.
2. Cleared all raid bosses with necro(66 insights), including a full clear of wing 2 on release week of that wing.
3. Lots of experience with both power and viper necro.

As of now you can go into the DPS testing room and see exact DPS. Under ideal situations, standard raid buffs + max boons, a power berserker necro can only hit a 10k dps on average.

To put things into comparison, a viper necro with 1 set of horror can average 17.5k DPS without food. With food, that number can climb to 20k very easily. Also under the right circumstances, viper necro can quadruple the DPS of a power necro when more horrors are spawning in raid fights. With 4 sets of horrors up in some raid fights, you can hit at least 40k DPS easily. On another note, power necro has almost zero group utility. Viper necro offers massive aoe control and group condition control, which is the reason why they are a top tier pick in raid wing 2 as of this moment.

Keep in mind, the DPS golem can not measure epidemic bounces and transfer damage. If you want to consider epidemic bounces and transfer damage, with 1 set of horrors, a viper necro can go above 25k DPS very very easily. Now compare that to the pathetic 10k dps of a power necro.

As of now power necros are COMPLETELY NOT VIABLE. Frankly if you play it, you are gimping yourself of the class. When people ask for meta builds only for a fractal or dungeon, they have the right to kick you because it’s not good and not meta. So please don’t be surprised if people kick you for playing power necro when the group leader asked for specificly meta builds only.

Now frankly, I do not like this and I believe both power and condition should both be viable. Please brainstorm ideas on how to make power not suck.

Ok I’ll teach you guys how to make 100 a cake walk. Bring 1 PS, 3 necros, and 1 druid. The entire fight you can just face tank her the whole fight and the entire fight literally becomes a faceroll. Instead of complaining about doing 100, how about everyone try out different things.

Because of how easy this strat is, I’m almost willing to call it a cheese strat…. Also you can kill her in less than half of the required time.

1 PS warrior, 3 condi neceros, 1 healing druid. Finished in 12 minutes. Condi necros are op for fractals above 80 by the way.

You want to improve your team’s DPS for sure. Two minutes seem to be a bit too much for VG, like someone said earlier that’s equivalent to 6:30 phase change. Good groups phase at 6:45-7 minutes.

Guardians are actually in a very good spot. People had a really hard time fitting them into raid team comps until about 3-4 weeks before the release of wing 2. After people figured out how to use them in raids, they are actually very good to have in all 6 boss fights. Also if you think blocks, stab, and reflects are all useless, you clearly haven’t raided enough. Guard DPS is pretty much only beaten by eles and thieves, and thieves are borderline useless in wing 2 and very little reason to use even in wing 1.

Leezy.4567:

well the bandit camp one isn’t a bug, if you read the bandit logbook by the burned bodies behind the fort, it tells you that zane like to abuse the poor things ):

So obviously they would target him for revenge

That is the point. Even if we open the cages with Zane right by them, the dogs just wander off and go bite other things leaving Zane alone. Their targeting should get an update making the doggies bite Zane more.