Guild Wars 2

Nova Stiker.8396:

Am I the only one that remembers how much the necro suffers in a glassy-fast meta?

We already had a glass cannon meta, necros were not in it. Hell, they didn’t become viable until the cele meta came around, one of the biggest reasons was they could actually start building life force and run viable builds like power necro.

If the meta is about hitting fast and not get hit, necros get left behind.

There are easy ways to make the necro much tankier and surive in a meta like this. I actually think a shoutnecro with merc-amu might be one of the tankier builds that will be played heavily. (death magic, soul reaping, reaper, 5 shouts, soldier amu)

Besides, who says the meta will be glassy and powerspike oriented? This would heavily depend on Thief being viable for example, which is not a given, also, there are better counters to stealth-bursts now with engineer reveal for example.

I actually theorycrafted about this a ton.

I feel pretty confident in saying, that the following 3 classes will be pretty strong:

- Necro (mid tier before, received huge buffs and can use the new amus well)
- Engi (top-tier before, received only minor nerfs and can use the new amus well)
- Ranger (top-tier before, shouts got better and can use the new amus well)

Now it gets complicated:

- Guardian (Bunker could be good, since it can use the tankiest amu, clerics, very well, but it heavily depends on how many necro’s and condi-revs are played (the more, the worse for bunker-guard. Also, DH could be very strong with much less stability and no insane quickness-rezzes anymore. I can even see a more sustainy version with 3+ meditations and menders amu working pretty well)
- Rev (got some serious nerfs to both dmg and defenses (cuz of durability rune removal mostly), will also depend on how prominent necro’s are in the meta, cuz they’ll simply shred rev’s most likely.
- Thief (no idea…. srsly. Depends if the rev will still be the go-to +1, if there’ll be a stealth-burst meta again etc)
- Mesmer (got some absolutely crushing nerfs, didn’t really try to come up with new builds, but I’m pretty sure this one’s out of the meta.)
- Warrior (The buffs we’ve seen so far are nowhere near enough to make it viable.)
- Ele (Now that’s a very tricky one and depends on so many factors: Fresh Air with Menders Amu could be strong as DPS/Support, D/D with Sages Amu could work etc. I still think it’ll hardcounter condi classes in 1v1’s, even with the new diamond skin, but it’s simply too hard to say. I think Fresh Air could be decent at a high level of play, but most likely not “meta”)

couple things to note before making those bold statements:

- The builds in general will be less tanky thanks to the removal of almost all amulets that were used in tanky builds (besides clerics).
- Ele wasn’t relying only on “hard” dmg-mitigation because of very strong healing-output.
- Diamond Skin is still as hard of a counter to pure condition-classes as it has been.
- With Frost Aura, Geomancers defense, protection+hardy conduit, ele still has the by far highest soft dmg mitigation in the game.
- Certain amus, like menders, are promising for a supporty dps-build.
- Possibly, there are still a few changes they haven’t mentioned yet.

Besides that, ppl must begin to realize that they should be able to play more than 1 class. The meta and builds will change drastically and you’ll have to learn all the new MU’s again anyways, so if Ele truly is that bad, just play sth. else.

Phanta is a great player, but honestly, I’ve never seen him play sth. creative nor have his speculations and build-ideas turned out to be valid all the time. I don’t think his words on this topic should be taken as gospel.

The whole meta will likely change completely and ele will surely change in one of the more drastic ways, anything more atm. is just speculation.

sure will be impactful….. I kinda like it, just take that sledgehammer and bash this meta to bits! ^^

Both D/D and Staff Ele still have a good place in PvP, but we’ve seen a decline in Eles in the ESL because of 3 reasons:

- Staff-Ele is not as bunkery and strong in 1v1’s as other builds.
- D/F Ele is absolute crap and ppl start to realize it.
- No1 seems to have figured out that D/D is actually absolutely amazing in the current meta.

- Staff-Ele can still be very strong if your team aims for bigger teamfights (3v3 and more).
- D/D-Ele can be a very strong allrounder/roamer that can win most 1v1’s, and at least survive and keep the node against the other MU’s. It also has a freewin against Necro or Condi-Rev for example.

Both Ele-variants still offer heavy teamsupport and especially the D/D has a huge DMG-output if you take the AoE cleanses, prot, reg, vigor, heal, auras etc. into account.

Valkyriez.6578:

Go read the forums of any single mmorpg or moba or whatever genre out there that has PvP, don’t worry I’ll wait.

Done? Sweet. I hope you noticed they all sound exactly the same as this one. Regardless of game, if it has PvP, it has people who think it’s the worst ever and isn’t worth the time.

Well, I’ve played quite a few games competitively; some were good, some were bad. GW2 is at it’s core amazing, but the current league system is probably the worst experience in a game I’ve ever had. Never has a game and it’s developers made such a bad impression on me than GW2 in the last month or two. One reason of course was that I was so heavily invested in GW2 in believed in it’s success and the developers. Well, ANet didn’t really care much about PvP to begin with and it got worse and worse.

do you also open threads when you had a nice breakfast or what?

I had a game today ( you were in it too sey) against a 4-man premade and we were only soloQ’s and they had had higher divisions as well (5 diamond for us VS 4 dia and 1 Leg for them, I think) and we only got 1 pip for a close win. Why? Because the MMR system is utterly broken, thats why.

They would “manually” search for the last player….

This would be amazing for the community since it would make ppl actually talk to each other, use the group finder which actually exists for PvP, expand their FL, use forums and stuff like that.

It’s easily possible, in GW1, it worked for groups of 8, it sure would easily work for groups of 5.

Yes, it’s not easy and it takes time, but if they make some nice unique rewards for team-q’s and higher gold-gain/rank-gain and stuff like that, it’s easily possible to make a working and lively team-queue that could be absolutely amazing for the game.

SolarDragon.7063:

DH isn’t horrible but is pushed out by the current top-flight bunkers. If the bunkering gets pulled into line, DH is going to need a rework as well.

yepp, thats why I’ve written “in the current meta”. It gets pretty much hardcountered in multiple ways by the top-4 builds. There is no need to talk about rebalancing DH until the meta has changed in a substantial way.

DH is horrible in the current meta…. maybe soon even emerald players will learn this fact…. ^^

berserker trait line needs much more survival for warrior to be useful…. DPS could be buffed overall as well.

War has simply no survival atm. No dmg-mitigation, not much healing, pretty bad against conditions…

I’ve just tried out some tankier/sustainy builds on war that I thought could work: Not even close. ^^’

DH OP?….. lol…….

tempest, scrapper, chrono, druid and rev (zerker and viper) are IMHO all very viable and pretty close together, the rest is trash

muscarine.5136:

PowerBottom.5796:

well, they aren’t the easiest targets to focus down for sure, but in terms of often having fairly defensive runes and traits, the fall way short of stuff like tempest and chronobunker.

But again, I really like the druids position and balance in the current metagame. It’s a very interesting dynamic to me that a team running druid would want to force 1v1 situations for the druid, while the other team would try to force the druid into teamfights. This makes IMHO interesting rotations and tactical plays.

That’s the thing though, it’s way, way too much. While they won’t bunker endlessly like a chrono or tempest, they still get insane survivability while dishing an outstanding level of burst punishment.
Again, 11-12k pet burst only while having personnal survivability almost on par with bunker tempest and chrono (which can’t kill anything by themselves) makes absolutely 0 sense.
Scrappers are on the same train, although the burst is a lot more avoidable, but their sustain is higher.

I don’t mean to single out druids mind you, everything is in such a sorry state.

have you read anything I’ve written? Yes, in 1v1’s, it’s better, but if you have problems with druid in teamfights, it’s simply your fault.

The Pet’s should not deal much dmg at all, since the bristleback F2 can be LoS’d and bodyblocked by teammates, illusions, reflects and the “burst” of the smokescale will be spread out over many targets.

If you talk about 1v1’s…… don’t 1v1 the druid, it’s as simple as that.

There’s no question in my mind that druid is godtier in 1v1, but in 2v2’s, it’s mediocre (slightly worse than tempest, scrapper, chrono, rev) and in 3v3’s and more players, it’s bottom of the current metabuilds.

muscarine.5136:

PowerBottom.5796:

snip

I’m not entirely disagreeing here, but saying druids have their downs because they can die to focus in the middle of the blob fight is kinda biased. This is true for any class, and being focused also means your bunker(s) and teammates also focus around protecting you.

In which case no, druids are far from being the most sensitive to team fights focused bursts.

well, they aren’t the easiest targets to focus down for sure, but in terms of often having fairly defensive runes and traits, the fall way short of stuff like tempest and chronobunker.

But again, I really like the druids position and balance in the current metagame. It’s a very interesting dynamic to me that a team running druid would want to force 1v1 situations for the druid, while the other team would try to force the druid into teamfights. This makes IMHO interesting rotations and tactical plays.

druid are the strongest 1v1 class by far, but they fall off pretty heavily the bigger the teamfights are, because of various reasons:

- pet’s can get sniped or simply die to AoE in bigger teamfights, which hugely affects the druids strength.
- Many druid builds have a pretty delicate balance of sustain and DMG that works best for 1v1’s: they have enough dmg to kill even bunkery stuff, but enough sustain to win against more dps-oriented builds. This balance goes bye-bye in bigger teamfights, where they can actually be focused down fairly easily.
- Condi-removal works similar to the sustain described above: it kinda works against condi-builds to win 1v1’s, but it gets too much fairly quickly.
- There are some decent softcounters to druids outside of 1v1’s, like boonstrip, stability etc. They aren’t big enough counters to win the 1v1’s, but in teamfights they become more important.
- A lot of the druids strength in 1v1’s come from decapping point and making it hard to LoS the pets and mess with their AI, cuz you have to stand on point. In teamfights, you can simply dodge off point behind a wall when the bristleback hits you with it’s F2 and let sm1 else go on point. Also, you mostly have 1 guy with stability or sth. that will still be on point after the knockback.
- Druid is also fairly easy to stomp.

Just lots of little things that come together that make it harder for druid the more ppl are in a fight. So I think it’s perfectly justified that it’s really strong in 1v1’s, because your team can adapt their strategy and rotate well and then it comes down to better rotations and better plays.

well, if ANet continues like this, then yes…. Ppl continue because they wanna grind out legendary, but it’s not fun at all and soon most ppl will realize. It’s not fun on the lower levels or MMR, it’s not fun in the middle and it’s not fun at the top. GW2 PvP is IMHO in the worst state it has ever been and that actually says a lot.

GW2 survived cuz at it’s core, it’s an amazing game, but ANet can’t keep making mistake after mistake, not support PvP and not listen to the community. And I’m not necessarily talking about the forum-trolls, but the actual PvP community that cares deeply about this game.

The League-System needs a major overhaul, MMR as well and we desperatey need soloQ and a teamQ that offers enough unique reward so ppl will actually want to Q as a team. You know, like the tournaments we’ve had that got cut for no apparent reason.

I do have huge problems with necros and DH’s…. if they are on my team that is…..

Kaishina.6584:

I just lolled at this topic. Anyway there is no best 1v1 classes they all rely on how you use them and how good you are.

there sure is a best 1v1 class….

Yes, if you are a better player you can win against classes that are better in 1v1’s, but on equal skill, no class beats druid in a 1v1, it’s that simple. Even if you surive quite long, Druid can get decaps/caps cuz of superior and low-CD knockbacks.

meow one twenty.4376:

PowerBottom.5796:

1 less counterbuild against conditions and we’d simply have 2 reapers, 2 condi-revs and 1 bunker mesmer per team: Is that better?

DH’s would get a shot. Scrappers would also be included due to strengths against Reapers and DH’s.

Yeah yeah, scappers would still be very strong, but DH’s are crap…. DH’s get hardcountered by chronobunker, scrappers and rev’s way more than by tempest.

As long as there are chronobunkers for quickrezzes, a 1-shot-wonder like DH doesn’t stand a chance.

pls get rid of MMR completely (pure random matchmaking) until you’ve fixed the system so it’s not completely and utterly broken.

1 less counterbuild against conditions and we’d simply have 2 reapers, 2 condi-revs and 1 bunker mesmer per team: Is that better?

druid without a doubt.

basic math would suggest you should support promoting those builds, since if you don’t run one of these builds, the chances of your team having those builds on the team is lower than the chances of the enemy team running one of those builds. ^^’

Besides, if ppl study how Helseth and Sind play those builds, they might actually be somewhat useful.

being a good player helps to get to legendary, but unfortunately, there are 10 times better ways than that… That’s why many ppl hate the system; too easy to abuse it so the actual skill isn’t accurately reflected in your division.

Even if there was no abuse, the MMR system is probably still too bad, couple that with soloQ mixed in with teamQ and a huge portion will still be very much luck-based.

It’s just a broken system in so many ways that skill only plays a minor role in it.

being a good player helps to get to legendary, but unfortunately, there are 10 times better ways than that… That’s why many ppl hate the system; too easy to abuse it so the actual skill isn’t accurately reflected in your division.

Even if there was no abuse, the MMR system is probably still too bad, couple that with soloQ mixed in with teamQ and a huge portion will still be very much luck-based.

It’s just a broken system in so many ways that skill only plays a minor role in it.

this is no secret….. tons of ppl got to diamond/leg doing stuff like this.

As for the information you can gather before the game starts, you can also right click on the names on the enemy team to see the options like “block”, “report”, “join party”, “invite to party” and stuff like that: You can see which ppl are soloQ and which are in a party in the game bc. if they are in a party it reads “join party”, if they are soloQ, it reads “invite to party”.

Other informations is more or less metagaming or knowing the players by name: Look at the classes and try to guess what they might be playing based on whats popular or look at the names and try to remember what they usually play.

Often, there are certain classes that have strategies/playstyles that work better, an example is ranger, which is often a bunkery druid and often pushes far and is very strong in 1v1’s, so you should probably get close with 2 ppl.

Kharr.5746:

zxstanyxz.8769:

any necro with more than 20% brain function can take down a DS tempest, which coincidently is about 20% of the players that play necro…

all you have to do is switch amuulet to give you some extra power with the sacrifice of a small amount of that condi burst (and i do mean small) whenever you see an ele on their team, and then AA them for 3-5 seconds and they’ll be below 90%. after that condi bomb away and watch them melt. they’ll either die quick or around 20% health they will run away.

This. All you really need is to corrupt the boons after hitting the tempest a few times with a power build. Tempest simply can’t cope with losing all their boons, especially protection, and getting a ton of conditions on them at the same time. They either have to cleanse the condis or focus on reapplying boons, both of which take time.

never ever ever gonna happen…..

I play main tempest and tested out tons of necro builds with various amulets and none of them stands a chance against a decent D/D-Ele.

The Necro would basically blow all his CD’s to even get the ele below 90% and the Ele would re-sustain above 90% within seconds.

The sustain and dmg-mitigation of a D/D-Ele is just so high and the counterpressure decent, that necro’s simply don’t stand a chance.

Any necro that thinks he’ll beat me in a 1v1 (on my normal D/D-build) is welcome to try.

*edit: lol, hitting him a few times…. with my DMG mitigation of prot and ice aura alone I mitigate 50% of the dmg, and I can confortably heal against any auto-atk pressure without blowing big CD’s. I probably won’t even have to kite. But plz show me this build of your’s, I’m actually curious.

Yes, the trait is ridiculous and there are tons of ways to make it more balanced and more fun to play and to design it so it actually takes skill to use it properly.

No1 disagrees about this.

BUT: Currently, Certain Condi-builds are so OP that I don’t mind a strong counter against it.

And if ppl don’t use DS as a counter to condi-builds, the next OP thing will likely just be Necro or sth.

It’s a tricky thing changing that skill without making ele obsolete or without making condi-builds run rampant. :P

reikken.4961:

PowerBottom.5796:

compared to Offhand Focus

removes 3 conditions. you forgot that

earth 4 is decent, of course, but overall offhand dagger is simply better than focus. If ppl start running dual DH, engi, power-rev and stuff like that again, I’d probably change back to Offhand focus, but not against the current top-builds.

But use whatever works for you, my opinion is simply that D/D is the best choice against a meta consisting of bunker-mesmer, tempest’s, druids, engi’s and condi-revs and where mobility is hugely important.

I find it quite an accomplishment to even get to ruby. :P

pure condi-builds are absolutely dead in the current meta…. Also; why not run the meta marauder scrapper or even cele scrapper? The build is amazing and fun to play and pretty versatile!

Shovel Face.4512:

Here’s the issue.

Ruby onwards your team is gonna suck.

Truth, but often, it helps if you maybe lay out a strategy first and explain why. Yes, sometimes the teammates are stubborn and dumb, but often it helps.

A few examples:

- The enemy team had 2 druids, we had non but sm1 said he wanted to push far. I explained that druids are strongest in 1v1’s and weakeat in bigger teamfights and that we should play strictly 2 nodes. The team agreed and we won.

- Enemy team had Helseth on his shatter mesmer and I think 3 pretty tanky builds + maybe a rev and again they wanted to go for 3 nodes: I said Helseth will outrotate us and +1 on every node and they’ll get all 3 of them.

- I also often write in chat when I hold a node with D/D bunker/support-tempest against 2 bunkers of the enemy team that other ppl on the node can leave cuz I will be able to hold and stuff like that.

If you communicate well and precise and explain your decision-making concisely, I feel most teammates will get the point, even if the salt-levels are very high. :P

biggest problems is that it’s really “slow” in various ways:

- The combo-fields and effects spread out/“move” slowly
- The casting-times are rather long and feel weird with their aftercasts and stuff…. kinda hard to explain
- The CD’s are pretty long
- The DMG is also slow, with which I mean spread out over time rather than bursty

It just feels clunky, slow and inaccurate, which makes it unusable in PvP.

Here’s what I would change:

- Fire Field: Ground target, spreads out twice as fast, deals it’s dmg faster but doesn’t last as long. Also, the CD can be slightly reduced by like 20%.
- Water-Wave thingy (not the orb): faster cast/aftercast and moves faster.
- Air, both skills: faster cast/aftercast and moves faster.
- Earth: “Field” should spread out faster and again could be ground-targeted.

^I’d love to play Warhorn after these changes!

D/D is by far the best choice:

compared to Staff it has: More self-sustain, better against bursts/pressure, more mobility, much more DMG and is not as easy to interrupt. It also has no problems in 1v1’s against certain builds that can cause trouble for Staff, like scrapper or power-rev.

compared to Offhand Focus: Offhand Focus is mainly anti-powerspikes and anti-projectiles, which aren’t used anymore in the current meta. D/D, again, has more burst, self-sustain and mobility. It’s also better at holding/decapping a point cuz of Air5 and it doesn’t have a skill that is dead when holding a point alone (Earth5).

Also, tons of DMG is lost because of the anti-condition meta on focus and staff cuz they have skills that only deal conditions and don’t do power-dmg.

On Staff, the often very useless skills are: Fire 3, (Earth 2, kinda), Earth 5, Air 2 and water 4 is basically only the combo-field.
On Focus: Fire 4, Water 4
On Offhand Dagger: None.

Also, the high mobility of the Offhand Dagger is worth it’s weight in gold in the current often 3-node meta.

Staff can be pretty strong with the right comp that has enough DMG and is oriented towards teamfights and doesn’t need the Ele to hold/contest nodes. D/F is bad and D/W is a joke in PvP.

cakeonroof.7385:

Dagger off hand is bad. It’s so very bad in this meta.

Would have liked to go from bruiser to burster not bruiser to bunk((

what meta are you playing in? The one from a month or longer ago?

Dagger Offhand gives more mobility, burst and self-sustain than Focus. It also has slightly better decapping cuz of Air5 (this actually matters in the current meta).

Focus is anti-powerspikes, which aren’t popular in this meta and anti-projectiles which aren’t popular either. I used to switch to Focus offhand against many engi’s/DH’s and rev’s I suspected going for power, but atm. I just stay on D/D – I heavily prefer it in almost any situation.

Warhorn is just absolutely unusable in PvP.

Staff has more support, but is easier to kill, has much less dmg and more problems with certain 1v1’s. It’s a decent choice, but you need the right teamcomp. Even with a very nice comp, I still prefer D/D though.

very good write-up, every solo-Q’er should read this.

Agemnon.4608:

Shiro/Glint sword/sword + staff marauder revenant.

I’ve not lost a 1v1 against any rev in weeks on my D/D ele, diamond league, high MMR….

dodge sword3, shocking aura against the melee-pressure, kite him while overloading, don’t waste CC on stability, don’t atk into infuse light…. really not that hard of a MU.

@Topic:

Staff MetaEle is beaten by Druid pretty handily and is heavily pressured by Scrapper and power-rev and can be beaten by them as well.

D/D-Ele is IMHO only beaten by druid.

D/F Ele is so bad I’m not even gonna talk about it. :P

what is a DS tempest?

Anyways, best 1v1 build is druid, he beats everything in 1v1’s.

Katrina.8702:

PowerBottom,

So which lines and utility skills u exactly run? Mind sharing?

I was gonna post the build, but the page of the editor is currently down. :P

I run cele amu, durability runes, and leeching + blood sigils. The traits are:
- Water (1/3/1)
- Earth (3/3/1)
- Tempest (3/2/3)

I use the heal shout, teleport, fire aura shout, ice aura shout and elite shout.

It’s just an amazing build in the current meta and a true allrounder: excellent mobility, 1v1’s, teamfight, support, sustain etc.

well, if you were playing unranked, then F those guys, but if you are playing ranked, I think it’s okay if ppl expect others to play builds that work. Thief atm just doesn’t work if you’re not 10times better than the other players and even then you’d probably still play another build you’re not that familiar with and do much better.

D/D is still a very strong weapon-set, IMHO the best in most situations in the current meta.

I’ve been playing D/D almost exclusively and made it into diamond with soloQ only. I’ve been using mostly very defensive runes (durability), but if you want a bit more punch, you can easily go for strength/hoelbrak runes or sth. like that.

Also, I think Ele does a ton of DMG with the new overloads, just add a lot more teamsupport to that and that’s the new D/D-tempest.

I win basically every 1v1 with D/D, except druids, have tons of mobility, teamsupport etc. It’s simply an amazing build.

Also, Diamond skin wasn’t used as much because ppl ran powerspike comps, so you needed to run stone-heart on eles to not get instakilled. Or you used D/D-Ele as a 1v1-roamer with fire. The new D/D-Ele does both teamfights and 1v1’s extremely well.

Galandil.9641:

PowerBottom.5796:

Here are some things affected by fear being a condition:

- Ranger Wolf (F2)
- Necro (Staff 5, Shroud 3, downed 2, Reapers Protection and converting stability)
- Warrior (“Fear me”)

Nothing that would be overbuffed or anything.

Thief bundle stolen from Necro. x2 with Improvisation. Fear not a condition. It’d be a good laugh then.

well, thiefs are one of the weakest classes in PvP atm, so I really don’t think this would be a problem at all.

atfer getting diamond (I main Ele), I tried out tons of sustainy/tanky necro-builds (cuz I think glassy necro builds are just a bad version of rev with less mobility that die very easily) and IMHO there are a few builds that can work in the current meta. What I was looking for in the builds was:

- Can hold a point against most 1v1’s (I think having like 1 bad MU is okay) and has maybe one or two 1v1’s he can win.
- Does well in teamfights (AoE, support or sth. like that)
- deals decent dmg, comparable to that of cele-tempest and other more defensive/supporty builds.
- Maybe offers sth. unique that other builds don’t or does sth. better than them

slightly tankier Signet Necro:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAW4Yn0ICV2gd2AebC0biFcBLuK2FDjUph2wzC6qFAWAA-TZxFABnfQASf/BAeCAIcBAaqMAA

- “Rise!” is IMHO the key to surviving in teamfights and to get yourself an advantage in certain MU’s (like mesmer or ranger). It just absorbs so much dmg that I’ll likely use this in every necro build. If you’re having problem surviving against focused DMG, doesn’t matter what build you run, try using this shout, it helps a huge amount.
- In all the builds I use mainhand dagger, cuz it generates tons of Lifeforce and you’re able to deal dmg through resistance/diamond skin.
- Offhand Dagger works really well in this build, because I think it needs a bit more condi-removal, doesn’t need the swiftness and there are so many builds with tons of stability, that I don’t really like the daze as much anymore on the warhorn.
- I think Blighters boon just offers so much sustain and conditions get negated so easily, that it’s for me a clear choice over deathly chill on this build.
- I use durability runes cuz they extend the duration of might, which is where tons of DMG comes from. Also, they give more survivability which is needed on the necro, cuz you’ll be focused first in almost every situation.
- I use the quickness sigil on the dagger, cuz I love it to quickly cast the heal signet or the elite shout. It’s also good for quickness-rezzes, stomps and a few guaranteed dagger-1 spams.

The build is strong in 1v1’s against rev’s, condi-builds in general and can hold the point against ele builds if you don’t get knocked back. It does fairly well against druids, which is IMHO the best 1v1-class.
In teamfights, the boonstrip and the massive AoE comes in very handy. Some condition-removal/control is decent as well.

Shout-Necro
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBmQD7kZToaTsdTwbTgeTsgLYxVxuYYkKN0GeWQXtAQLA-TZxFwABOIAC3fAwTAAxFAoZZAA

A very tanky Necro that’s very hard to kill in teamfights. Offers more teamsupport with the soldier runes, but has less boonstrip.
I really like how hard to kill this build is and how easy it is to just have tons of lifeforce in teamfights (“your soul is mine!” + “you are all weaklings”+blighters boon alone generate up to 20% and 10% instantly with ridiculously low CD’s.
Like on the other Necro, most of the DMG comes from reapers shroud and the mightstacks, so with more lifeforce comes more DMG! ^^’

I really like these two builds the most and they seem to work quite well on the higher MMR metagame that is filled with tempest, rev’s, bunker-mesmers and other stuff that used to just laugh at necro, at least before the latest small patch.

If you use a somewhat defensive amu (like cele, soldier or sth like that) or a condi-dmg only amu, you’ll never ever beat a tempest and you won’t get a decap either. best you can hope for is holding the point, which is possible.

I don’t think viper or sth. will do much better against a good tempest. It’s simply the hardest MU for the necro and that’s IMHO okay.

What you can do is avoid this MU or call for a +1 or stay in teamfights agaist many eles. At least after the patch the MU against rev got much much better and if you build the necro right, it’s IMHO even heavily in the necros favour.

scarydavid.4809:

well if the devs of this game were competent in there jobs they would not have introduced a character that breaks the pvp maps! that’s right a class is not broken but your old maps are!. why is it that a rev in down state can knock me threw the physical boundaries of the map. this causes you to lose not only the point but now the match is a 4v5 when there team will not kill you. his is not acceptable needs to be fixed!

That’s a bug…. this stuff happens, so report the bug and calm down… -.-°

Okay, then I somehow must’ve remembered it wrong. The point still stands though, why can this control effect be negated by so many things to make it basically useless?

The things that fear often have pretty long CD’s and are supposed to be strong CC’s, but with fear being a condition, they are just bad.

And Reaper still uses the fear, as sm1 has already posted: It doesn’t make the CD any longer if you use the fear before the pulsating stability runs out.

Here are some things affected by fear being a condition:

- Ranger Wolf (F2)
- Necro (Staff 5, Shroud 3, downed 2, Reapers Protection and converting stability)
- Warrior (“Fear me”)

Nothing that would be overbuffed or anything.

Also, fear dealing DMG and other things coupled with fear probably wouldn’t be a problem either. If they turn out to be, they could be looked at seperately.

I also think that the skills are fairly dependant on good timing and using it well is rewarded, which I think is sth. a game like GW2 should strive towards, not tons of passives and random triggers.

Another point is that it would help against things many ppl regard OP or very annoying to deal with, like diamond skin, without completely turning the meta upside down.

Chip Skylark.2367:

Phantaram said on stream last night that solo queueing was actually easier than premades O.o

If you run with a team, there are certain disadvantages:

- longer q-times
- stronger opponents
- higher loss in pips if you loose

So yes, if you run with a team of equally skilled players in a similar division and with similar MMR, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily much easier.

The problem is ppl Q’ing with a low-division and low-MMR player that tanks their overall MMR so much, that having 1 noob on an easy to play build that can follow directions is worth the lower Q-times, worse opponents and higher pip-gain.

I think the meta has changed quite a bit since they made fear into a condition for whatever reason.

Now most builds run heavy anti-condition traits/skills etc.

- Diamond Skin
- very high resistance uptimes
- tons of condition-removal

Fear has become pretty much a joke, and who would’ve thought that it affects classes heavily that aren’t liked as much in the current meta.