Guild Wars 2

There is a misconception that being efficient equals to quality play. I am currently leveling my Guardian alt, he is 60 right now. Indeed we can be quite efficient and irreplaceable for many groups. We are in a good spot. But we are not in a fun spot. I also have a 80 level Necromancer and I can say that the two classes have problems that share the same point.

The problem is, both classes share a pet playstyle that is not integrated to class and both classes share the same amount of energy and investments as Mesmers and Rangers, classes that are thoroughly integrated with the concept of pets. Necromancer’s Death Magic line was practically dedicated to its minions. He also has two other trees that has master and grandmaster traits dedicated to minions. Whereas he only has one trait in all 5 of the trees that is concerned with signets. Though Guardians do not have an entire trait tree dedicated to spirit weapons, up to 4 trees have major traits dedicated to spirit weapons, also consisting of master and grandmaster traits. Whereas he has only several traits that is concerned with signets that have questionable values and uses. At the end however, both minions/spirit weapons and signets are utility skills and should be addressed equally. However, as it stands if you do not choose or flat out unable to use minions/spirit weapons you also can’t efficiently build on signets either, so you are left with only 8-10 skills. There seems to be a silent trade off between the two utility skill sets that ultimately results in cancelling them out. No matter how deep or efficient these skills may be, they will not be enough to keep players interested for too long.

The reason Warriors are so good is that they are quasi Guardians that do not have the problem of having too much energy spent on an arguably broken option and too little on another set of utilities. All 4 of their utility skill sets are efficient and has more or less equal energy shared for them.

Withering Exposure (Withering Precision): Apply one (or two?) stack of Vulnurability for 8 (or 10?) seconds when you apply Weakness.

Edit/More:

Siphoned Power: You (and your allies?) gain might for 5 seconds when you strike a foe that has Weakness. (1 second cooldown).

Dark Armor: Gain stability while channeling.

Flesh of the Master: Your minions have %50 more health and/or you and your minions share boons.

When you are applied a boon all of your minions are applied with the same boon with the same duration, and if any of your minions are applied a boon you and all of your minions share the boon. Shared boons can not be shared again. For example, when you gain might from Blood is Power, all of your minions are applied with the same might. However; when your minions are applied with might, they can not share the same might stacks with you or among themselves.
Boons that are applied simultanaously to your minions and/or you simultaneously will only be applied to those who lack the boon. For example, those who initially recieved the Regeneration from Mark of Blood can not share the Regeneration from that Mark of Blood amongst each other, but can only share it to those who weren’t applied the Regeneration initially.

Unholy Presence (Protection of the Horde or Deadly Strength): Foes close to you do less damage to you (or all?). 0-200 %10 less damage, 200-600 %5 less damage.

Spiteful Vigor: Gain 2 (or 3?) seconds of Retaliation when you are applied with Regeneration.

Necromantic Corruption: Each of your minions have %100 chance to remove one boon from the attacked foe every 10 (or 15?) seconds/Applying poison to a foe removes a boon every 10 seconds.

Engulfing Dark (Reanimator): Place a Well of Darkness below your feet when your health drops below the threshold. Health threshold is %50 (or %75?) and cooldown is 50 seconds.

Death’s Embrace (Protection of the Horde or Deadly Strength): Gain toughness when your health is below the threshold. +200 toughness when below %75 health, +400 toughness when below %25 health/ Corrupt boons of nearby targets (or simply fear them?) when your health drops the threshold. Range is 200 or applied to the target, threshold is %25 (or %50?) and cooldown is 40 seconds.

I will edit if I find some more.

So is it better if we refrain from using minion traits (apart from Training of the Master) to be an acceptable Minionmancer?

That is discouraging I really hoped it wasn’t like what you said. Ah well, thank you for providing the video and taking time to make it.

I was able to came up with that from two threads dedicated to the issue.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/How-does-stacking-Burning-effect-Damage

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-does-burn-work

These are my sources, but if you have the video I would like to see it. Visuals always beat threads :P

Pelopidas.2140:

i think condis spread with epidemic, tick based on the necro’s condi dmg. so if a zerker spreads 150 tick bleeds they will tick 25 on the new target.

Vuln spread is very good

The conditions spread benefit from the caster’s condition damage, but even without any condition damage Zerker Necro can have Bleed that ticks for 42 damage, Torment that ticks for 32 or 64 damage, Burning that ticks for 328 damage and Poison that ticks for 84 damage per second. With multiple stacks of Bleed and some Confusion these damages can quite add up.

Keelan.7498:

Yeah.. and make it so whoever has the highest cond. damage has first priority for dealing damage. And then whenever their durations/stacks run out, the other people in the party’s conditions would then take over. But when the person with the high condition damage attacks again theirs would get bumped back to the front. I hope that made sense :x

This is already the case for Burning and Poison. Maybe it will be easy for devs to apply the same feature to Bleed, Confusion and Torment.

For PvE DS + Minions work pretty well actually, due to the fact that you cant use any other utility skills when in DS. Flesh Wurm is similar to Demonic Portal (?) for warlocks, Shadow Fiend is tanky like your Voidwalker (on use skill helps DS maintainence) and Flesh Golem is a boss like the Dreadwalker. For Minions to work well, you really should slot Minion Master while Flesh of the Master is also very helpful, and DS works well with Vital Persistence while both Unyielding Blast and Deathly Precision are helpful. If you are talking about PvP however, the two doesn’t work really well for the reasons other people gave above. Hope it helps.

Epidemic isn’t excluded to conditionmancers you know, so are the conditions. A Zerker Necro can use Epidemic to spread on crit bleeds and burning of himself and friends for sustained damage he lacks, spread Weakness to lower the pressure of trashes and most importantly spread Vulnurability to improve group AoE. The Zerker Necro can also choose to swap targets and spam Epidemic for a maximum sustainence of those conditions. I am talking about doubling the stacks of bleeds, maintaining 25 vulnurability, perma weakness and perma burning on AoE fights; all possible with some target swapping and a push of a button. Dont forget that with 25 in Curses most of us Zerker Necros slot to take Target the Weak also gives good chunk of condition damage, so when Zerker Necro spreads Confusion and Burning of other players, they will add up to Zerker Necro’s damage quite a bit.

Why am I saying all this? Its because not being a conditionmancer doesn’t mean dropping some niches adore about its gamestyle. So OP, I would suggest you to try Power atleast once, you will see its not such a different animal than conditionmancer. Have fun.

Andele.1306:

Wont mention about WvWvW since i think its worthless to talk balance there since a)zergs b)siege c)i dont play it enough to comment correctly

Power:
Zerker – general ok, not very good for fractals, okish in pvp
Soldier/knights/valkyre – general ok, first being better for fractals and bosses, second for open pve and swarms of mobs, third okisher for pvp
Vamp – Anything past being complimentary to builds above/not the main focus but a bit of dps while picking up well cd, not worth it

Condi:
Rabid – kinda turned worthless in pve, still kinda broken in pvp
Dire – new rabid/default intro gear for pve
Carrion vampire – scav runes, leeching swap sigils and a (3)20/(3)20/0/20/0 build (optionals where 30) is kinda new meta for fractals and for wurm/tequatl event, but doesnt work in pvp
Rampager – look at rabid, but worse

TLDR
2 op setups, 2 ok setups, 5/6 bad setups still, 1/2 situational setups.

I got some questions for you:

Why is Soldier/knights/valkyrie better than zerkers in fractals?

Could you please elaborate on the “carrion vampire” and how it is getting popular?

Thank you

I am pretty sure they are counted as targets, so if there is an attack made that hits up to 5 targets and minions are in it, they will get hit. If all 6 of the minions are in, only 5 should be hit. Same goes for minions + players, so theoretically minions can keep you from an AoE attack.

A fix to Ranger Pet AI may not be so remote from some of the problems Necromancer have.

We are not bad as many here says so. However, every once in a while prepare for a random guy to enter your group through LFG, spam a variant of “omg kitten necro such noob” and leave, possibly discouraging the people you had gathered so far. My ignore list counts 6 of these encounterments at the moment

The Shredder is one of the easiest builds you can find out there. Your goal is to stack up Might and Vulnurability, both can be effectively done while camping DS. You will have have to watch the cooldowns of Blood is Power and whatnot, but hey who doesnt?

The Well Bomber is actually quite forgiving, and that is the point of the build. It optimises sustained healing without sacrifizing damage. In order to accomplish that, you have to use your wells, swap weapons and flash ds; which you normally do in every well/dagger build.

If you want something truly challenging you might want to try a minionmancer with max dps, a hybrid build or weakness stacking builds ( check out http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/88529-a-necromancer-fractalsdungeon-build/ ).

Even if you didn’t like any of my advices, I would suggest you to look at http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/87497-guide-an-introduction-to-the-necromancer/

1. Necro
2. Thief
3. Engineer

Yeah, most people already use it for the 12 stacks. With traits and condition duration it is a very potent tool. However, I am not sure about the projectile finisher part as I just tried it for myself (Reaper’s Touch through Spectral Wall = nothing so far).

Rym.1469:

Traited focus is 1200 range and has relativly low cd. Spinal Shivers allows you to rip some boons, like swiftness or stability and apply chill, which in constantly moving zerg can be a death sentence for target.
As for Reaper’s Touch – It’s kitten good damage at 1200 range, bouncing. It applies helpful vun, gives you ton of Life Force and regeneration to allies

1. Reaper’s Touch has also another good thing-it is 100% projectile finisher on all bounces. What does it mean? Well, for example:
   -Lauching it through Water Field will provide very long regeneration to all allies standing near your target
   -Lauching through Light Field will cleanse multiple conditions on multiple allies standing near your target
   -Launching it through fields like Fire will make each bounce to apply condition, in this case, Burning.
   Everything on 14 sec cd with 1200 range.

Wow, I didn’t know that. I mean I knew it was always treated as a projectile (reflected, absorbed etc.) but I never knew it was a multi projectile finisher. Are you absolutely sure about it? I want to believe

Maybe I should head over to CoE and see it for myself I will let you know of what I will have learned.

Minions are pretty bulky compared to mesmer clones, and even bulkier when traited. In the Subject Alpha example, if I had a Hammer Guardian that keeps them under Protection at all times and Weakness on boss (I dont suppose it works in special attacks though), they could survive one or two more hits. Would this be effective on insta kill mechanics on lets say Fractals in which the death of all minions (I am looking at Blood Fiend, Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend and 2 Bone Minions) can be used in an Aegis like way for the group every 24 seconds, or am I assuming too much?

As far as I know, the usual AoE attacks indicated by red circles of bosses hit up to 5 targets. I was wondering what would happen if we had some minions, in lets say Subject Alpha. When he casts his large AoE attack, will the minions count as targets? If so, would they be prioritized to hit by the attack or the attack randomly chooses 5 targets? If I had all 6 minions with me, could the group effectively negate the AoE attack? Thanks in advance

I have been trying to reach anyone within the guild extensively for some time. Could you please pm me when you are available? Thank you

When I am using Skale Venom, I sometimes happen to proc weakness and vulnurability on both foes and myself (possibly on allies too?) This usually happens if I start with AoE rather than auto attacking a target, and although the glitch happens quite seldom, it caught my eye. I am still continuing to test (I am not %100 sure) but it would be helpful if this gets some attention. Thank you.

Same here, is there anyone else we can contact with to enter the guild?

Devs are kinda hesitant to improve DS flash traits/builds. How about X seconds of invulnerabilty when forced out of Death Shroud/damage is taken more than %Y of maximum life force pool on a single attack?

2 new GMs on Curses? If they move the Withering Precision and Lingering Curse in Master, that actually seems good.

AFAIK the devs mentioned that Dhuumfire would be better off in Master line not too long ago, so we might as well as get the chance to slot both Dhuumfire and Close to Death after the changes. That would deprive us from Chill of Death, however.

@Leeto
Do you intent to keep Dhuumfire after the changes?

Sure it is disappointing at first, but you will get used to them. In a way, they are more durable than skeleton minions as they have a lot of fresh and muscled flesh covering their body.

Looking at the past changes such as Deathly Perception, Near to Death, Vital Persistence, increased life force gain from skills, Spectral skills buffed and available to be used in DS, buffed DS health, Transfusion and other stuff you may like to add and the upcoming ones such as Dhuumfire procced on Life Blasts, I think its clear the devs intention is to encourage offensive (and to an extent defensive) DS play. In that mindset, refraining from introducing cleave to AAs can point the players towards Unyielding Blast and DS gameplay, so that means we might wait a lot longer than we know for a change in AAs. That said, with practice Life Blasts can pierce through most enemies successfully in situations – usually when the enemies are stacked – where other players can effectively cleave, while inflicting vulnurability and hopefully burning (the new Dhuumfire) to all enemies it hits up to 1200 range; so its not that bad as a sustained power aoe IMO.

Bone Fiend + Fire Fields:
Minions inherent the condition damage and duration of the owner. With 30 points in Spite (%30 condition duration) and a persistent fire field (staff ele), Bone Fiend can keep perma burning through its projectile attacks.

Reflected Dark Path – Enemy is trying to escape zerg/group and/or reflects to prevent damage? No problem, just use Dark Path to pull him to you for melee punishment. After that you can either use Well of Power for a 18+ second Vigor, or transfer the bleed and chill to the victim.
In the case of an NPC or boss uses reflection in its attacks, the use of Dark Path + Spectral Grasp + Blood is Power + Well of Power without any boon duration results in nigh perma Vigor. An example is HotW (forgot which path).