Guild Wars 2

The problem with Rage, it procs from any attack/skills. If for example you pop Locust Swarm, it crits on a rabbit that you passed by and Rage procced, you’re down for 45 sec and your “burst” is wasted.

It does melt things with dagger #1 when it proc and you’re on target, but I agree that Air/Fire provides a cheaper and better sustain/burst.

The other problem of a 45 sec cooldown sigil, you’re stuck with no other sigils proccing for that long.

Sigil with Weapons swaps also shared a cooldown with those Proc sigil. Normaly after a proc, weapon swapping won’t take effect, so another waste if you do use those.

I think more crit % equal more damage in the long run. Of course when you crit you’re gonna be more bursty than someone equipped with Knights for example, but you only crit 20% of the time.

You can see in this table : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_hit#Table that having crit % is better than stacking crit damage with low crit change, in the long run.

Not saying it can’t work, but that’s why more peoples tend to stack crit % first.

Just to add some tests:

I got Reaper’s protection, so it may be the culprit.

In WvW, if I’m hit by some CC while in DS, I get out of DS, DS is not on cooldown, and my bar is locked for 1 sec. I can go back in DS immediately after.

You can test it with any vet guards that protect flags or camps.

Maybe the only way to fix the Transform’s loss was to remove the growth’ effect from player.

I’m still glad they fixed it, losing lich form/plague because of an elixir wasn’t fun at all.

Just try summoning your minions underwater, they almost pop instantly, while on land you’re stuck with the casting animation, casting the spell, and then the creature coming from the ground till the first attack is landed.

If Epidemic was as fast on land than underwater, it would be much more reliable!

Since last patch, I get a +-1 second lock on my #6-0 skills after leaving Deathshroud.

Pretty annoying not been able to heal right after if needed.

The only thing that make me back off from perma regen and lifesiphon build (apart from the bad +healing ratio), is the fact that you can’t bring your healthpool up in Deathshroud.

All your healing power is then wasted, the second you gotta use DS. And sometimes you have to use it long enough to stay alive until your next heal, because your regen doesn’t tick enough to keep you up while you’re being focused on.

If there was a way for healing power to be used, or if regen/lifesiphon affected Lifeforce, while in DS, these kind of builds would be a step in the right direction for our attrition class I guess.

Casting time in water for nearly all our spells are almost halved, if not instant cast.

Seems like the animation on land takes longer than the actual casting, I don’t know if it’s intended though.

Yeah that’s why I’m borderlin with the “grouping”, duels seems like a cool idea, maybe they could just implement it elsewhere, or on a specific borderland (arena style).

However if they want to do jumping puzzles and hold hand together, then please, transfer and everyone will be happ. At least it will be a true cooperation.

With the rendering/culling issue, stealth (not just thief) in his present state is really irritating.

I agree that using it in combat, without cooldowns, long durations, and thief having permanent access to it if they want to (thanks to culling/rendering issue), with no possible way to remove them from stealth, can seems a bit OP.

It should still be looked at, considering WvW issues.

Just to note a trend I see in WvW lately:

We all know we can now party up with other servers, some use it to make some nice duels etc and it’s a interesting use of this “bug”. I’m borderline on it being ok though, because of communications between server etc etc.

Now, the real problem is, I’m being shout at by my own comrades, because I kill red names that are “friends” that are grouped with them.

I’m really sorry in advance, but I will continue attacking every DH and HoD I see, even if the odds are not on my side and even if it’s your “friend”. If you wanna play WvW together, please consider transfering!

Been whispered and called names because I play the game is becoming tiring, and I play a necro to boot so it’s not even like I’m stealthing my way to victory!

By the way, gotta say I loved the last 3 weeks, been the closest fights we’ve seen in a long time. I try 3 times a day to grab my favorites camp in other BLs and keep them, and there’s always peoples that quickly comes and defend it with all their might. Good fight!

Razdhul
GoM

I had a fun battle 2 vs 1 perma-stealth thief near Redwater (we were Red). My friend however, left the borderland in frustration (after an almost 10 min fight where he would down one of us, one run back from waypoint while it’s 1v1, down another, run back etc) because we really couldn’t see him more than 1 second at a time, and he had time to regen more health between those than we could damage him.

It is really an issue with rendering/culling/whatever, because when I see videos of thiefs doing this exact same thing, they are not stealthed for as long as we see on our end, and it doesn’t seem that “OP”, and pretty counterable.

Having only a chance of one attack each 3-4 seconds, more if he waits longer in stealth, while he regen is frustrating, but I agree that the mechanic needs a fix, not the class itself.

Some classes can AoE and channel a lot, so they can deal with it better, as the one attack they’re permitted to land (before he stealth again) counts. Classes that can’t deal with it however will disappear from WvW if the trend continues, because lately it’s almost the only class I see (or not).

Been a asura necro, I’ve access to another spell (Pain Inverter) that grant Retaliation and Confusion for 6 sec. With all that power, your retaliation will hit around 340. With axe #3 you can keep it up long enough to matter too.

I’ve tested this with Well of Blood and bone minions (for the area Retaliation with their blast) and any 1 button spamming melee can die in second if they’re not paying attention.

Normally you end up not able to chase them down if they flee (smart players will stop attacking until the buff is gone), but you don’t die either and the cooldown is low enough to Retaliate again if they come back.

Like I said before, if you skip/stealth through most pulls, of course it’s not hard. Try doing it the “normal” way with a fresh group of 55-60 in greens, trust me it’s not for nothing they call it the Nightmare Set. Champion’s 1-2 shotting peoples, and only a waypoint at the entrance means you walk more than you actually fight if you wipe.

Of course with a full group of 80 exotic that knows all the strats/pulls/skip, you’re in for an easier ride. It doesn’t mean Path 2 wasn’t overtuned before patch though. There’s a reason they “nerfed” path 2 a bit, and I’m glad they did, my alt will be able to farm there with almost anyone now

Here’s a good guide that explained every paths tips and tricks:

http://dulfy.net/2012/09/22/gw2-twilight-arbor-explorable-dungeon-guide/

Ah I didn’t try it since the new patch, good news if path 2 is a bit easier. Thanks for the info!

Path 2 (Forward-Forward) is one of the most time consuming and hardest part of this dungeon. I don’t really mind peoples saying it’s easier than some other dungeons, but certainly not a walk in the park. (Except of course if you skip everything with stealth/tricks, but your average lvl 55-60 groups normally don’t know these)

If your group is not geared/sync enough, you won’t finish path 2. Better to farm path 1 (Up) and path 3 for badges, they’re are just fine. If you have multiple 55+ character, you should have your set in no time.

Your team can do 3 things when one of you dies:

-Finish it as a 4 man fight, the other watch and learn

-The one that got aggro run around while 3 others rez you up. If aggro change they change roles. (Of course some boss/event don’t allow it, too much AoE etc)

-Accept the fact that no one can die to continue further, wipe and come back again with a full group.

I play a lot with 3 friends and one of their girlfriend, who’s not the best at dodging and surviving in general. Yet we still manage to do fractals, and rez her while in combat (Mossman is always fun). We see it as a bonus challenge! Should have an achievement for doing it that much though hehe.

My first suggestion would be to read the tutorial by Nemesis (in the necro forum, first sticky on top) on all build types possibles to necro, and what you want to do with it mostly.

Then start to collect or buy materials from the TP to craft the gear you need to achieve your chosen build(s).

Good luck!

Hi all!

I’ve been playing for 500+ hours on my necro, and now that our guild is running more and more dungeons, I gotta say I feel lackluster in the “group” departement.

Not many buffs to give, lots of objects/static enemy (TA last boss etc) to destroy so I need to play power instead of condition to be of any use. And even with full berserker, my damage can’t even compare to melee-oriented class like warrior.

If I had to play a ranged class that deals good damage on any source, and can give buffs to my group at the same time, what would you suggest?

I’ve tried ranger but the pet dies a lot and then you lose a bunch of dps. In some instance the pet can even be a liability.

Warrior rifle hits harder on single target than my necro, but lack any utilities.

Engi’s good but we already got two in our group.

Ele could be interesting, but right now it’s seems if you don’t play dagger/dagger you’re shooting yourself in the foot (I do a lot of WvW and it shines there).

Is mesmer any good to deal damage at long range? We dont have many mesmer in our group, that could be a choice.

I’m not that interested in thief, but can be open to try it if somebody says they’re better than most.

Guardian ranged is not really impressive, I would use mine as a melee support instead.

Anyway if you could help choose, I already have a 40 guardian, 46 engi, 32 ele and 15 warrior. I could remove the warrior for now to try any other choice!

Thanks for your help!

Panhau

Hi fellow masochists!

While I’m leveling some alt to finally make the switch to something more useful for my group of friends, I’m trying some stuff in WvW with my Asura necro.

I’ve tested yesterday a (almost) full rabid set with Pain Inverter and Epidemic, just to see how many thiefs/mesmer I could down without much effort. (Why thief/mesmer? It’s all I see nowaday roaming between camps, and their ele d/d buddies, but those normally get away without a fight)

The result was amazingly fun (emphasis on fun, not Godlike ). Hit Pain inverter when the thief jumps you with his 2 pets, epidemic one of the pet to give the thief 6 stack of confusion hitting for +-1200, and watch him go down like crazy while he try to burst you. Same for mesmer, hitting clone and then spreading to mesmer, I loved the irony of watching that purple circle over their head with big numbers under it. We fought for 2 hours over the same camp, and I’ve won most of my fight against the same duo.

I really wish one day we could some day have easy access to high damaging conditions, it could be our “burst” type ability.

I just wanted to share this little moment of joy, it happens scarcely lately so every bit counts!

TLDR: Confusion is a wonderful condition against aggro burst type that think we are easy kills and spam their keys.

Razdhül

Be warned though, there are some internal cooldowns to spells cast when you switch to DS.

I know Fury works well with the 5 sec cooldown, but Weakening shroud has a 10 or 15 sec cooldown, can’t remember exactly. Don’t know if the other got that cooldown too.

Lots of underwater change, they added a lot of finishers to water skills.

Not much else, you can look the patch notes in the News and Annoucement forums. Were always at the end of the list, and yes sometimes we’re not even there

Search for culling problems on the forum, you’ll find a lot of answers.

Latest news: Anet is aware of it and working on a way to fix it.

The 50% more damage when down is wonderbar against Mesmer. For some reason it’s the single most damaging spell we have against them where they can’t really do anything except flee and let you rally.

The trick, of course, is to know when to down yourself. When I feel I’m ready, I turn my back to his clones, I bask in their shatter combo and finally my true potential can be brought to light.

Good luck for the timing!

I’ve tested it on those Ascalion warrior ghost that blocks all attack for 3-4 seconds, and all marks went throught no prob.

I don’t remember it being blocked by Aegis either.

Hey all!

After all those -Mancer builds we got, I’m falling in love again with conditions as a source of added damage on my power build.

Right now I’m using dagger/dagger + staff.

I was wondering what kind of stats we can get while ramping up power, precision and a small amount of condition damage?

Right now I have 3100 attack, 43% crit, 750 condition, 2,5k Toughness and 21k hp.

Would it be possible to keep Attack above 3000, get crit to 50%, around 1k condition, and still keep a high toughness? Vit would be the defensive stat to take a blow for the team here.

I love playing a dagger burst with Superior sigil of earth, the bleed are ramping up really quick and right now it’s ticking for 74 without BiP (100 with it), and dagger still hitting like a truck (500×2-700-1200ish). I can maintain a 7-8 stack just with autoattack on my primary target.

With Epidemic you can dagger away and AoE a large group down, staff is mostly here to help spread the love and for those big hits in DS (I would love DS and Lich to not be dependant on which weapon you’ve equipped but that’s for another topic.)

Also, are minions affected by your crit %?

Thanks for your help/input!

Necros are fun indeed, I can’t, for the love of me, stop playing this character even with all those issues. My others characters are all 40ish and I can’t finish leveling them up because I miss my necro.

But after saying that they are fine, you ought to post at least your build, strat, utilities etc to help some poor souls out there that are still searching for the truth.

We have some very good players here that posted a lot of build ideas that are all fun and different. One more shouldn’t be a problem to handle

I’ve tried a lot of time to make a Vampiric build work, and unfortunately, while it is still a nice ability when paired with Warhorn #5 and other quick successful attack, the fact that it doesn’t scale with anything make it quite poor against big incoming damage.

Your build has a lot of synergy, like PTV and Well protection to make you more durable. It’s a shame really that Life siphon is just not that good. I’m gonna wait for a small buff until I spec into that trait again.

Did you notice that you were an aggro magnet with that much vit/toughness? In dungeon with a similar build I couldn’t even get them off me, even after rezzing and coming back to the fight the boss would switch to me immediately.

The only time I won against D/D ele (after almost a 10 minutes fight) was when the stars aligned and he got stuck without removal in my Well of Corruption, while I had enough hp to try to burst him down instead of just focus on survival. While those 10 min were ticking, he managed to kill a lowbie or 2 with me on his back at the same time.

The fight was epic, fun, but he still alt+F4 when I’ve tried to stomp him… So yeah, ele normally won’t lose, and when they do, they’re gone. At least now we get loot

Toughness scales really well with necro. With our high base vitality, Toughness should be your primary Defensive stat.

Knight or your precision/toughness/condition (rabid i think) are both good set for us.

Maybe a little too much emphasis on water combat for this one. Unfortunately that won’t make me fight more underwater.

I’ll go test Gluttony to see if 10% now works as intended.

1901 from gear + 250 from Death magic should do the trick.

I’m still trying to add some more burst to this build while keeping almost the same numbers.

What sigils would you recommend? I’m stuck right now with a rare Warhorn with Sigil of Air, and even with 4% crit with that many fast attacks I still see it proc a lot, and for high numbers (1,4k on average).

I’m wondering if Fire/Crest on dagger/Warhorn and Bloodlust on staff would be good, or just plainly stick to the master plan and gain 40P/28T/28V?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Item_nomenclature

Looks at the karma section, middle page. They’ll show you from which temple’s vendor you can buy and combine slots/stats to create the set you want.

Soldier’s set is solid, the only thing missing is the pants, you can grab them from AC or SE dungeon.

Yup already had 20 in Blood before too, just said no +healing from gear. That was why I was asking if anybody saw that change too and if it was a slight stealth buff (hey everything count! ).

I’ve made some tests today and it must really just be the patch. I thought it could scale off something now and was desperately searching what could make that number go up, but nothing is moving it now.

Thanks again for your input.

Nah just kidding around, with the amount of skills/utilities you put out just to “play” with him, one would think he should be playing dead by now I wish we could bring our prey in the spectral world, so that no friendly thief could steal our fun.

Then a thief just comes and two shot him while you were planning all these evil things. Bad thief, baddddd thief.

Hum that may be the case.

However, I’m normally using my exotic dagger, staff was my secondary weapon.

I guess I’m gonna test if it’s the WvW bonus now applying (got a 6% more healing on my server), gather even more power to see if Death into life helps it, or test a full healing set to see if now we gather a bit more from it.

Thanks for your inputs.

A condition unique to us would be great. In WoW it’s was unstable affliction.

Dealt a lot of damage, but if you would cleanse it you would be silenced for 3-4 sec.

Would make our target think twice about pushing that remove button Traits that does it automatically would suffer though!

Yesterday, my default Vampiric hit went from 25 to… (drum rolls) 26!!!

Amazed by this boost, I’ve tried Bloodthirst to see how it interact with the new value.

Flabbergasted by the result: 38 before, 40 now.

So 2 days ago, 25×1,5=38, now, 26×1,5=40.

Now, I’m trying to find why those numbers have changed. The only thing I’ve changed with my setup is a switch from a Knight’s exotic staff to an Soldier’s Rare Axe and Soldier’s Rare Warhorn.

No +healing from gear, and a 30/0/20/20 build with full soldier’s exotic.

A stealth buff or it stacks with power/damage done?

Anyone one saw that change too?

You can cast Epidemic without having line of sight. You can spread conditions from a targeted but hidden enemy on a wall (that you reached with Greater marks and scepter 2 and dagger 5 for example) and then Epidemic them away on all near him.

Downed enemy and veteran are good target, as they can’t cleanse them off.

By keeping the same build and gear, and just switching traits and utilities, you can run 2-3 different styles that are crazy good in their own right.

Right now I have to say that this build is one of the most fun I had with my necro. I actually have time to learn to counter other classes instead of been instagib on some CC.

I’ve tried the Retaliation build with my asura, and man, the uptime is greater than expected. In combat, I can be perma-retaliation. It’s so funny when 2-3 lowbies in WvW are falling around me just because they try to burst me down. Of course this build won’t do much to somebody who’s running away, but then again when that happens you’re not dead

Thanks again for the main build’s idea.

I think the effective range of Spectral wall is larger than it appears, so if you cast it too close, you’re already standing in it and not going through it like they want you to.

Maybe it should also tick, say 3 times in 9 seconds, so that if you stood in it you could still get the buff/debuff.

With that much power and survival, what do you guys think about using Retaliation? I know it scales with Power, and ours is almost maxed out.

I’m mostly playing in WvW and thiefs are the most annoying little critter, mainly because of culling/targeting issue.

So with my 30/0/20/20 full Soldier kit build, I could manage to bring my Retaliation uptime almost permanent (27 sec, with a 32 sec cooldown, against more than one target it could be on almost forever, but thief is the culprit here )

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQQQNAnYWlQaq0WqR5G92EgkCs5dSR2jD9YXprF;TMALLGJMhA

Can it help against those pesky perma-stealth, or is the Retaliation’s damage laughable?

I’ve tried this build, almost all exotics etc, and I love the tanking/surviving/constant dps ability. I could run from Greenwater to my spawn while been shot and chased by 3-4 defenders and waste them instead of dying on the spot.

I do find that I lack some burst though, when WoS is on cooldown, what do you think about Close to death (30/0/20/20) instead of your build for added burst when they’re down to 50%?

Well I’ll be kitten I can’t get those numbers back too in the Mist, Murphy’s law oblige. Must be when WvW had orbs, under 50% and such…

So right SR seems almost good only for +Crit damage and some of his trait. I’ll gladly take some changes in the next patch

We can still “heal” lifeforce though, just need to see what heals it and what doesnt and if one day we’ll be able to stick in that form longer.

I think I found out how to see if it’s increase or not, and unfortunately it isn’t about taking damage, it’s about how much you ditch out instead.

I changed my DS build from 30/20/0/0/20 to 30/20/0/20/0 to test the healing in DS (which works, even if it’s abysmal compared to the flat 4% we lose) and I’ve noticed my Lifeblast hitting for almost half of what they did, with full lifeforce, same gear. Now Lifeblast states that it hits more the more lifeforce you got, so I guess my 20% more lifeforce was helping there.

I don’t feel more tankier with Soul Reaping, but it certainly deals a lot more damage (we’re talking about 2,4k LB against 1k LB without Soul Reaping, and that’s without crit) so maybe that’s an avenue that can help bring numbers to the table.

Have fun!

Yeah when I’ll grab more crit gear, I’ll try it without Curses and with Vital Persistence to see if we could counteract the loss of lifeforce more.

Warhorn #5 was just a AoE to make a quick succession of life gain, for peoples to see if it works. Wells and others sources of quick AoE damage combined would probably be able to gain a lot more.

I’ve read all the discussions about DS and lifeforce related to vit, Soul Reaping etc, and maybe that info will be able to shed more light on this mystery.

Hi fellow Necros,

I’ve been messing a lot with my builds, trying to find the perfect spot for my style.

Now we all know there’s a lot of bugs, but I’ve found something interesting and I wonder if it was already discussed/found. It could also be used to add some thoughts to how lifeforce interacts with health/healing:

After the well that heal enemies, I’ve found a way to “heal” my lifeforce in Deathshroud. Not by a large amount, but the peoples around you the better it is!

Traits are 30/20/0/20/0. With Vampiric Precision and Bloodthirst in Blood.

Grab a few mobs, pop Warhorn #5, pop DS, and just autoattack with Lifeblast. Between our 4% lifeforce lost, you should see your lifeforce rising slightly (like a millimeter per second, but still!) You also gain a lot more from DS #4 if you crit a lot.

So our healing seems to works in DS, maybe it’s just because the numbers are trivial that we dont see it, because we lose so much each second?

Sorry for my english, hope you can reproduce this setup and that it brings more discussion to the table for our beloved DS!