Guild Wars 2

Signet of undeath- Make it an elite skill and lower the cast time, lower the cooldown, and make it 600 effective radius. Maybe slightly improve passive. We are necromancers, we should be able to bring allies “back from the dead” better than a warrior or ele.

Corrosive poison cloud is actually really nice on defensive builds. Especially when traited, 12s weakness and poison field on 20s cooldown. I think it might be OP if buffed anymore.

Spectral grasp- I like the suggestions of making this a flip skill that targets then pulls on the second activation. It would actually benefit from spectral mastery this way and it would be up to par with the other spectral skills.

Life force gain from AA and soul marks, AOE pressure from far away, condi transfer, and an interrupt. I’d prefer those over a focus or axe.

Honestly the thing that bothers me most about staff is that the role is completely unclear of it. It’s too mixed between power and conditions and it doesn’t do either very well.
The 2, 3, 5 are useful for condition damage, auto attack is useless outside of lf generation.

The 4 and 5 are useful on power builds, auto attack is the only hope of ranged damage outside DS.

Putrid mark is especially confusing, it clears conditions on yourself which is very defensive, then it’s a blast finisher which has defensive effects on every field we have access to, but it also does BY FAR the most damage of any mark we have. So our valuable high CD defensive skill is also our only hope for doing high damage with the weapon? Wtf is that

Lukas.7159:

ranger: blind helps a lot, try to LoS when hes on bow and go hardmode dps when hes on gs, just try to dodge the obvious gs animations

mesmer: since balance patch they are not free food for you anymore, you basically need to outsustain their cds. when they stealth, most likely they will just open with mirror blade followed by shatter, so you wanna stealth also when they do. then you wait till their stealth runs out, you wait for them to random dodge (since thats what everybody does when thief is stealthed, cause they are afraid of bursts) and THEN you backstab.

necro: necro isnt a too hard matchup, its just gonna take some time. they are weak out of deathshroud, thats where you wanna attack them. when they go in ds, there is most likely the instant fear from #3 coming, so just random dodge that. when they are in ds, just go stealth or LoS a bit and they will leave ds soon, thinking they could heal – thats where you jump them and iterrupt the heal, then kill them ezpz.

engi: almost impossible matchup, since they got high dps/cleave combined and some engis run the trait where you get revealed when they hit you in stealth; interrupting the heal is also pretty kitten hard – recommendation is to NOT take the 1-1 at all

war: depends which build….if shoutbow, the 1-1 IS theoretically possible, but you need to dodge pindown, arcing arrow and avoid the firefield. also they run shield over warhorn now which gives them another 3sec block and a short stun….hard to kill, but doable….still better to avoid that 1-1, could take quite long time

zerk war is also doable, sad that one attack from gs hits thiefs vor ~3k, so you REALLY need to dodge that gs #3 whirlwind, otherwise it can hit for 10k. you can take the 1-1, but if you get hit just a few times, youre dead

THANK YOU this is exactly what I was looking for, this will help a lot.

Staff is so useful to us but it has to be one of the most boring weapons in the game. I’m down with any rework that doesn’t ruin it.
The dark evil spellcasters of GW2, the masters of life and death, and our main weapon does nothing but put 4 circles on the ground and shoot a slow moving blob of uselessness.

I’m new to thief and i’ve been trying to learn how to play D/P in sPvP. The thing i’m having most trouble with right now is dueling. I usually just end up +1ing fights, decapping, ressing teammates, usually avoiding 1v1s or disengaging from them.

Versus specific classes I just want to know the basic strategies for fighting them, like what to interrupt, when to kite, positioning, what to avoid, etc.
Specifically:
Power ranger
Mesmers
Cele necro
Soldier and/or burning engineer
Warrior

Well I guess I picked a good time to start learning thief in PvP lol

I’d be happy with just being able to see the cooldowns

Can you guys post the sPvP Reaper power builds you’re using? I’m torn between a lot of different sets and I want to know the most effective. Most importantly which weapon set to use out of D/wh, Staff, and GS.

Tonikor.5637:

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Thief_-_Dagger/Pistol

You’re welcome :^)

Oh wow thanks, I never thought metabattle would go that in-depth on a build, but that pretty much covers every single thing o.o

I’m looking to start trying out thief in PvP, I was wondering if you guys could give me some tips on the build and class. I have a basic knowledge about pvp and the thief’s roles in it, What i’d like to know more about would be the fields, finishers, burst combos, setups, chaining moves, match-ups, etc.
Anything helps, thanks.

I think we get more dps from running dagger/focus and then dagger/warhorn on the second set if you don’t want to use death shroud. Dagger auto-attack is amazing and the warhorn 5, focus 4, while using auto attack, I think is more DPS than using the axe’s burst.

Staff is good because it’s a 2h weapon which means more damage if you go into death shroud while wielding it, you don’t get that with axe/dagger since they took the flat damage buff trait off axe.

Since Necromancers of course have zero access to quickness, probably the most OP boon out there, should we have methods to apply slow?
Quickness can secure stomps in pvp with basically no chance to counter, it can give you guaranteed escapes/movement skill buffs, it can secure ressing a teammate, and obviously it can give a massive DPS boost to both PvP and PvE.
So much utility in one single boon, yet the negative counterpart to the boon is basically non-existent.
I think necromancers should have some access to application of the “slow” condition, this would fit the whole “debuffing the enemy to make yourself stronger” aspect and I also feel it would fit the “Fear, Chilling, Death” aspect of the necromancer.

What do you guys think?

phys.7689:

well they couldnt call it gambit.

it probably should have been acrobat, but they already have a line named that.

Necro has a line called “soul reaping”, that didn’t stop them from calling the spec Reaper

Would this be less dps than knight’s?

Didn’t Robert say we were getting projectile defense on shroud skill 2? I think he’s doing an amazing job with our class but he seems to have a lot to worry about with the expac, just give him some time.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

MrKahwk.9524:

They break PvP because they’re literally flooding the matches with their presence because everybody knows they’re overpowered.

Yes we’ve all seen how much they dominate PvP tournaments.

Oh wait…

Yeah I guess turret engi’s weren’t actually a problem since they weren’t in tournaments

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-34-_;1kHkB0343JkJ0;9;479A;0136038246;4RBoFU;1Uwl6Uwl60y

I originally put cleric’s ammy which had some insane sustain and healing support, but I decided to switch to celestial which gave more vitality, crit chance for dps and trait proccing, and even a small amount of condi pressure.

-Master of corruptions is traited to help with CPC, plague form, and consume conditions.
-Corrosive poison cloud is actually very nice for holding points and helping in team fights. 12 sec field that poisons and weakens every pulse on a 20 sec cd.
-You have 3 condi transfers in putrid mark, plague signet, and plague sending. Intelligence sigil ensures you proc plague sending when needed.
-Signet of the locust is there for the movement to get between points faster and has a 1600 self-heal per enemy.
-Upon entering shroud and leaving; you get aoe weakness/bleeding, you get stability AND a stun break, and you also get a 1600 aoe heal(works on yourself too). You can do this every 7 seconds.
-Transfusion can be used to save downed teammates and also heals all allies within the area for around 4500 with full channel (FiTG helps with this)
-Swapping weapons has an aoe heal for around 630
-Reviving an ally grants 400 toughness and gives a well of blood which has an aoe heal of 430 every pulse
-Dagger 2 has a self-heal of 430 every pulse (x9)

The heals listed here are base, but it’s important to remember that with Last Rites, your sustain and outgoing healing increase immensely when you’re below 50% health.

I probably wrote too but bet me know what you think or what I should change pls.

I play power necro pretty much exclusively; the marauder, blood magic, siphoning wells build.
I have a general idea of most of my skills, which situations to use them in, etc. The only one I can’t figure out is lich form. I don’t know when to use this skill, not wanting to ‘waste’ it, only to end up barely ever using it at all.

Would anyone be able to give me tips for when/how to use lich form? (PvP only)
Do I use it in 1v1s? if so, against which classes/builds? How do I know when to use it in a teamfight without getting killed in 3 secs? How do I position myself when I use it?

Basically I just want tips to be able to get the most out of this elite in PvP.

3k bleed ticks? What about the poison ticks and fear ticks? And was the duration on the condis close?

CrimsonDX.4821:

$50 is a perfectly reasonable price given what we have already received (massive amounts of free content) and what we will be receiving (massive amounts of more free content going forward)

That free content is one of the main reasons Guild Wars 2 is different from other games. You’re saying that should suddenly change now?

Not sure if this was mentioned in the stream, but will path of corruption rip boons from all foes hit on the leap or just the end hit?
An aoe boon corrupting leap on traited 4 second cd seems very OP but maybe a good counter to the meta?

Wat

Read this https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/meet-the-reaper-necromancers-elite-specialization/

“To fit in with the area-of-effect theme of the greatsword, the reaper gets a full set of shout skills. "
We are the class that got the shouts, a full set of them, 6 of them. I’m not sure what you’re saying with this.

Swagger.1459:

Somehow I don’t think thieves will “fear the reaper” at all.

Yeah I can see Dagger/Pistol theives wrecking this spec, initiative= gg chills , they have interrupts blinds and evades out the kitten , have stealth, insane mobility. Yeah can’t see us beating a smart thief, but if they make a mistake or don’t play as well, we’ll probably drop them in 2 hits.

Mesmer didn’t get theirs til nearly 2 weeks after their reveal and because the devs messed up.
Guardian’s was about traits and name (lol) and didn’t happen til after they showed the reveal.

Bhawb.7408:

And you make us better at fighting 5 people by giving us stuff that scales into teamfights.

But a shout that summons a single underwhelming minion for each enemy, I can’t see how this one skill accomplishes it. Especially when that one skill requires you to fight multiple people to be effective. I’m assuming and hoping that this is the only shout suited towards minion builds.

My only concern is that you need to be around 5 enemies to get the desirable effect. Am I missing something? Fighting even 2 or more people is not something we really excel at, even on Minion builds that are usually trying to bunker points.

We’ll figure that out tomorrow, I seriously doubt the greatsword AA is better than dagger for pure single target damage.
Between shroud knight, greatsword bursting attacks, dagger AA and reaper’s touch, new damage shouts and ofc wells, I’d imagine power necros could pump out some insane dps rotations.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Zetsumei.4975:

Yeah ofc :S don’t see why trooper won’t work

Trooper runes specifically say they remove a condition from each affected ally… And if the Necromancer shouts affect no allies, then it will logically remove no conditions. They may change Trooper runes in anticipation of this elite spec, however, so who knows. I’ll try to ensure it gets asked during the live stream tomorrow.

I think this would be hilarious, Necro’s would become the very thing they hate. We’d join the group condi-cleanse meta that we always complain about.

-All the chills
-Shroud knight, holy kitten, those animations. Whirl type attack, charge skill, a fear. So many possibilities for this, probably defiance bar on GM to keep with the ‘slow and unstoppable’ theme.
-Gravedigger GS skill, idk what to think of this. Could be amazing for DPS on PvE bosses, maybe comboed from another skill or CC to be good in PvP. Could be very deadly with defiance, depending on how that works.
-That reaper hood in the video, yes please.
-Shouts, so many possibilities on this. I’m most interest in the healing and elite shout. An offensive elite status shout? Who knows what that could hold.
-Pull on the greatsword skill

I don’t even give a kitten about group support if we do insane DPS and tear up team fights. I’m a sucker, jumping on the hype train now.

Stealth on a necro would be pretty kitten cool, I wonder what the chances are of us getting thief inspired utilities.
I do think stealth would fit us somewhat, maybe? I mean, we ARE the dark spellcaster class.

Guys isn’t the symbol behind just the dragon in the Heart of Thorns logo?

http://i.imgur.com/YWxlrOX.png

Necromancer it is

http://i.imgur.com/D8K7psU.jpg

Time Wizard?

I’m confused as to why people say Guardian has no mobility. They have a leap on their GS, a teleport on their sword, a 1,200 range teleport meditation, and a good amount of swiftness if they need it. If that’s lacking mobility then what is necro? lmao

There’s a thread with over 500 replies in this forum with concerns, ideas, and suggestions for this class. Without a doubt the most popular recent profession thread, probably one of the biggest threads on the whole forums right now, and it’s not even 2 weeks old.
Catered specifically to the devs about how we’re unhappy with our class and the changes, but still no response from the devs.

This is getting ridiculous, why do they hate necro so much? Our community is clearly active and dedicated, what have we done wrong ._.

Successful troll?

Can we just take a second to appreciate that this thread is literally 10X the size of the same thread in the ele forums? Dedicated and active Necro community, I would hope the devs take notice.

I’m sure we will get access to skills from another profession also, no need to worry. This seems to be the entire point of specializations anyways.

“Have you ever wanted a different way to take advantage of all that life force? How about a new way to shatter illusions? These are some of the changes you can expect to see for your favorite profession.” -From their spec news 1 week ago.

That f5 shatter is completely awesome and unique. Here’s to hoping that our additions can match up

Atherakhia.4086:

Nightshade.2570:

We really need to hope it is shouts, its the real thing that could add USE to our class.

I just want to be viable, have access to usefulness in every setting.

I don’t begrudge them the wells, However traps would be a step in the wrong direction for us.

Actually with greatsword and the fact that GW1 alot of people played Necro Warrior I could see this being a thing. Banshee I don’t know I was thinking more of an Undead Knight, a Skeletal Knight.

But then this is just my dream

My problem with this argument is the Necromancer should be valuable to the group without needing to spec into this ‘elite’ specialization. This was my concern months ago when they first started announcing all this stuff.

The poor performing classes will get nothing but stuff to fill in the gaps whereas the other classes will get new fun and exciting things to really expand on the way the class is played.

While too early to tell, I’d be very annoyed if all we had to look forward to was 4 instant cast shouts and a sword of questionable worth.

I think the REAL value of the new mesmer spec is the addition of their new shatter, Continuum Shift. Without it, all they got was 1 offhand weapon and some wells. This class mechanic is pretty game-changing, I would hope Necro gets something comparable.
New shatters and new ways to use life force were both specifically mentioned in the news from a couple days ago.

Nightshade.2570:

We really need to hope it is shouts, its the real thing that could add USE to our class.

I just want to be viable, have access to usefulness in every setting.

I don’t begrudge them the wells, However traps would be a step in the wrong direction for us.

Actually with greatsword and the fact that GW1 alot of people played Necro Warrior I could see this being a thing. Banshee I don’t know I was thinking more of an Undead Knight, a Skeletal Knight.

But then this is just my dream

Yeah when I heard greatsword I definitely jumped on the whole “death knight” hype train. I can’t really see that being a thing though since we’re still a light armor class xD
I could definitely see Banshee though, we even have a trait called “Banshee’s wail”

spoj.9672:

Shouts are pretty universally weak so i hope not for our sake.

Mesmer’s wells seem pretty different from ours, making attacks unblockable, destroying projectiles, things that fit mesmer’s style a lot more. I’m sure a necro’s shouts would act very different from other classes.

spoj.9672:

Shouts dont really make sense on a necro. Id expect something completely new for us. But other options could be spirits or auras.

I was thinking more of a “Banshee” type thing, a spirit that screams or wails near somebody that is about to die. I think that would fit Necro very well.

Since the mesmer spec is getting wells, a necromancer mechanic, this proves that any new spec can take skills from another class.

What do you guys think this means for necro? What other profession’s skills do you guys think would work well with necro?
I’m pretty sure Anet has already suggest that another class is getting shouts, and another getting traps.
I’d guess shouts, since our spec weapon is a greatsword, a complete melee weapon.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Apparently everyone is over-looking how Necromancer will be able to run a pure power build and still have ground targeting wells for free after the patch.

A lot of necro’s don’t even want that, they lose the ability to insta-cast it on their feet with no targeting. But yes, we now have an ADEPT trait that we get for free now. Literally every other class got at least that, some even get major traits free.

My only problem with the lore aspect is that Signet of Undeath is a sucky skill. If there is ANY class in GW2 that should be good at reviving allies from the dead, it’s the class that literally controls life and death: The Necromancer… but nope- warrior, engineer, ranger, and arguably ele does it better.

It even says in the profession description,
“Necromancers feed on life force, which they can use to bring allies back from the brink or cheat death itself.”

Bhawb.7408:

Sabre.8627:

Btw did anyone hear anything about the new parasitic contagion? The picture on dulfy says it’s boosted from 5% now to 15%! Wtf that could be huge for PvP and even more so for PvE

Its 15% now, yes.

That means we get healed for 15% of the damage that our conditions do? If so, that seemed like a really big buff o.o why is no-one talking about that?
Tons of extra sustain in team fights, also in wvw groups, and basically unkillable in PvE.

I’m not really understanding either.

-We can still use path of corruption and terror in the same traitline.
-Death magic basically still the same, meh, would be nice if it was more useful but I don’t see how it’s a nerf.
-Soul reaping we can still trait staff mastery, master of terror, and FitG. Bonus from this: we now get life force on marks and another fear on downed.

Btw did anyone hear anything about the new parasitic contagion? The picture on dulfy says it’s boosted from 5% now to 15%! Wtf that could be huge for PvP and even more so for PvE

Scoobaniec.9561:

^Good thing that revenant can use his elite to keep up his resistance forever and there inst that many boonstrips ingame to get rid of it. I have seen people mentioning to use epidemic on him. Again thats great for revenant actually.

Revenant takes conditions from team, necro strip his boon and use epidemic, revenant takes these conditions again from team gaining high uptime resistance once more, goes into ebola form = ? = profit. If he maange to get load of conditions like 25 stacks bleeds on himself etc i can imagine already his impact on teamfights where he spreads these 25 stack bleeds for some 2,5k/s damage from bleeds alone. Its down to how well player manage to play his toon eithery way.

Where are you getting this high uptime on resistance from? I see one skill on a 35s cd, it gives 1s resistance per condition taken, which looks like it can only be 1 per ally, plus an extra 2 seconds flat. 7 seconds max in completely perfect conditions, which wouldn’t happen in a pvp teamfight.
Epidemic on a mallyx Rev would spread all his conditions to nearby allies, giving heavy damage to all of them, the rev would use his pain absorption, giving resistance but also putting even MORE conditions on himself. Once that resistance runs out, he is going to melt within seconds. Necro can always corrupt his resistance at any time with 2 different skills on 15s and 40s cd’s, it will be interesting to see what a corrupted resistance boon will turn into.