Guild Wars 2

There will be two Elite specializzations and that will bring on the table a LOT of Build Diversity!
That will make players able to make a lot of different builds, play in different ways and the matches will be always different.

Actually if you see a warrior is at 100% Berserker and at 90% use a Power build. If we obtain a new elite we will see different builds, different ways to play the same class.

I see for sPvP a great future in terms of build diversity and fun, but for shure there’s different problems that can’t be fixed easy like the troll community, the lack of players that force the MM to pair noob and pro players to fight in frequently unbalanced matches (still if I did a lot of really balanced matches in the last month). And the Ranked will always be really Toxic. everyone want to win and if there’s someone that play to have fun and not only to win he can find bad in that enviroment. In that Unranked grant you more fun if you like to play and don’t pretend to win every single match.

That expansion can bring good news for sPvP and I hope for the better.
We have only to ways and see.

Yes, devs don’t want to.

Maybe “theme” is not the right word, we can talk more about a “role”.
The necromancer have to survive as a meatshield using only the LF to protect himself, be totally selfish and be an Attrition class that do costant but medium damage and spam negative conditions (mainly poison and vulnerability).
That all make us unable to obtain real defensive skills, real support and real damage. We have everything but only for ourself and only at an average level.

The necromancer is the Kingand master of the Death, is The Reaper itself!
Spectral armor or walk should transform us into a phantom to evade every hits or be immune to everything as the ele mistform do, we should obtain bone shields to adsorb damage, invulnerability grounds as you suggest, a skill7trait that grant us to turn back from the death is we fall to 0 hp while the skill is active (as the berserker trait or tempest elite), and more and more and more.

But we’re a selfish meatshield attrition class and devs want that since the release.

We’re the only class forced to a so restricted role, theme or call it as you wish.
Even thief and mesmer obtained Block skills, ways to be bunker and ignore they’re main weakness potentially obtaining a new role and for shure a new gameplay. Thief is no longer forced to play with stealth if he want because can spec to dodge all the day long and don’t need stealth to survive (still if not the best build atm is really strong in low/mid tier). Guardian is one fo the best dps since years still if it was made to be The Bunker class of this game. The ranger had to be even more selfish than the necro but now is the best healer ever appeared in this game. The warrior had to be able to play only with Power and now is one of the best condi class of the game (the Power is still better in sPvP, but the condi build is insanely strong).
And more……………..

More or less every class obtained a new role or a way to change a little they’re gameplay. The necromancer obtained to hit up to 5 enemies instead of 1-2 with the main weapon (but not with the AA, only with the 2-5 skills) and nothing more. The GS is barely good in PvE and frequently useless in sPvP and WvW (as everyone predicted since the HoT pre-release).
The only new thing we obtained in the last years was to be able to corrupt boons and that’s our only strength. In PvE is more or less useless but in Pvp is good, still if is the only thing we’re able to. Better than nothing.

Unless devs changed they’re minds with this expansion, we’ll not obtain any kind of real defensive skill as immunity, block or evade.

The necromancer is a Support class, atm.
In sPvP the necro role is not to inflict damage, you’re the worst to burst and that game is all based on who burst faster. Also the overall dps of a necro will never be higher as a druid, war, mesmer, dh or thief, they all make you’r dps look bad.
The necromancer can inflict good damage, and also kill people, but not the best for shure.

The role of the necro since before HoT is only one: corrupt all the enemy boos. Focus your corruptions on who have stability and might and eventually kill eles (we’re the best to kill eles because we can spam boon corruptions all the time).
If you don’t bring boon corruptions you’re totally useless to your team. Necro is the best (and the only one) to corrupt boons and that’s the only role for that class since the trait and condi rework before HoT.
(always better than before, when a necro was Totally useless. At last we’re good to something)

The Necromancer in sPvP is a Offensive Support class that help the team to kill the enemy corrupting boons, spamming poison to reduce they’re heals and spamming different conditions helping allies that use condi builds to keep they’re conditions up also if the enemy have tons of condi clean.

A good necro can be a great resource for his team, but for shure not a dps. If you want to be a dps change class.

At high level you also need a babysitter to stay alive, but that’s a different and old story.

We totally lack support skills and that’s the “only” thing we can’t do. then, is probably the way ANet will build the new elite spec.
And I’ll be happy about that.

That elite will be at 100% Condi based, while the reaper will totally converted in pure Power damage, and we all know that, but i’m not shure how strong it will be and if we’ll obtain a true spot in raids or pvp as damage dealer.
Maybe as a support, but there’s a lot of classes that grant way better support than us and there’s nothing we can grant to others that is useful, not with out core traits. But the druid obtained really strong healing abilities that granted him to be the best healer of HoT and that can happen also to us.

Obtaining strong healing or support skills we’ll be able to play without defensive skills, more or less as the actual tempest auramancer do in sPvP.

I still hope to obtain a defensive skill, but the necromancer is the ONLY class of this game totally chained to his Theme and that will never change.

Just wait 3 days and see what they will give us.

Condis are good, Can kill you and a condi build Have to be able to kill you. That grant a lot of build diversity to the game.

Told that, Power is still the best way to kill someone. Faster, can’t be cleaned, toughness amuleta are rarely used and there’s even lesser builds that spam boons because everyone fear the necro corruptions.
Only Mesmer is forced to go condition, all the other classes have really good options to go Power and frequently do better than with condi.
We’re in a Power meta, after all.

Anyway, condi thief is a finger in the…… because you have to know a little his skills and tactic, then you need few condi cleans to survive and be able to CC/burst him when he end the dodge chain. If you do so it’s really easy to kill a condi thief, reason why there’s so few of them in high tier pvp.
But jes, the condi thief is really easy to play and grant an easy victory against players that don’t know how to fight one.

I can tell you the same thing I tell to who think that the burn guardian is OP: learn to fight your enemy and you’ll never lose again against him.
They both are forced to extremely static builds that do always the same thing without chances to change or adapt. Find the right timing and your enemy will die, no matter what he try to do.
Then, if your build is expecially weak against conditions try to chance a trait, a utility or adapt a little.

Do practice, try your enemy build in some unranked, learn some skills and the rotation and you will win at 100% every single time.

The necro is “weak” in PvE since ever, but with the reaper we get some good things that grant us to obtain good damage and high survavibility.
If you go condition, in a dungeon7raid/fractal you can’t use your combo Rs5+Rs4 to spam chill because your field should cover a more useful field as a firefield casted by a team member. But you can use a firefield to spam burn instead of chill and it’s damage is similar.

Your damage is not the top for shure and you don’t grant any support to your team, but you can spam vulnerability (still if a lot of other classes can do the same…) and are really hard to kill.

In fractal and raids the best skill you have is Epidemic. With a condi build that skill will grant you to use your allies conditions to spam insane AoE damage.
The only problem is that some boss can reflect your skill and you can die in 2 seconds with tons of conditions… But otherwise it’s an insanely strong skill. You will melt common mobs as the sun melt the snow.

If you like the gameplay, just play it and don’t think if it’s optimal, the best of all or other things, play only to have fun. That’s the best thing you can do.

With a necro is really hard to go up in rank, but with a lot of practice and even more luck you will go in platinum.
The MM can work but it’s not the best build atm, there’s too much AoE that can kill your minions or make them useless, and there’s classes with enough movement skills to make your minions run and run and run without hitting the target for a lot of time.
But for shure tons of minions in a team fight help the target making the enemy hit the wrong target with common skills and AoE.

If you want to play Mm you can, but that’s not the best choice.

If you want direct damage and big numbers that can’t be cleaned go Power, also have more self sustain.
If you want more long time damage, preccure, more corruptions and tactical skills go Condi, with a support you will do great things.

I use the condi build (and maybe is the best meta of the moment), with Corrosive Poison Cloud. I can eat rangers and a lot of guardians with that skill, is really useful. There’s different builds that use Projectile weapons, like ranger(LB), guardian(LB or Scepter), mesmer(Scepter), thief(expecially if they use Pistol/Pistol) and some warrior(Rifle). The CPC destroy all te projectiles and also spam Poison and Weakness, granting you a huge advantage over all the builds that use that weapons and if you trait it you can use it every 20 seconds and last for 8 sec. Basicly you have the CPC up 40% of time in a fight.
It’s not a true defensive skill (don’t stop the enemy to hit you if don’t use projectile weapons and skills) but it’s effect can be really huge and weakness is really good to be spammed in a Power Meta enviroment. I kill a lot of enemies with that skill. is also good over a downed enemy to slow down the ress.

Anyway, there’s a lot of skills really useful and you have to learn to use them all and chose wisely in every fight what’s the best skill to keep and what’s the one to change to obtain the best effect. You have a basic build but that don’t mean that you play Always with that skills. if the enemy have ranger, druid, mesmer you can use the CPC to stop they’re skills and reduce they’re damage, if the enemy have revenant, ele, engi you can use the well to corrupt they’re boons, if the enemy don’t have thief or you think that the wurm can be useful based on the map and the enemy team composition a wurm can inflict good damage and be a perfect “oh crap” excape button. And more.
Don’t have fear to change your skills if you need to and adapt to every match. The necro is the best class to do that and have all the skills you need to grant to be a really good resource for your team.

Pre HoT was really funny, but also depend on what time of “before hot” you’re talking about. Because after the trait+condition rework there was so many condi builds in game that the actual meta laugh when someone call it “condi meta”. Even more if you call the actual meta a “bunker meta”.

You’re right, there’s a lot of meta builds with mender but lesser players that use that classes or builds than who use the Power dps classes and builds.
Also when I see someone that don’t play the main meta 70% times is using a marauder amulet with an offensive power build.
Eles play as suports and don’t need offensive stats 8still if not a single ele play amulets like magi). And a Druid don’t need Marauder to inflict huge damage because the HoT pets inflict so much damage that is better increase the healing to keep you and your pet alive than increase the ranger personal dps. The pet surviving longer will inflict all the damage you need to cover the lack of ferocity between the two amulets.
Also a lot of rangers use dps or immunity builds and they don’t need mender to burst down people and survive.

You play a Bunker build when you use amulets like Magi or Paladin (the only two bunker amulets actually in game), not a Mender that still grant you enough damage to kill someone. I don’t see anyone use that amulets, not even druids.

The huge difference from now and before HoT is that before HoT there was classes and builds able to survive even in 1v3-1v4 easy for Minutes.
Do you remember the old decapper bunker engi? I hated that unkillable build! Or the elementalist? So unkillable that ANet reworked an entire Class only to kill them! Because, you know, ANet granted to necromancers tons of skills to corrupt boons ONLY to make them a counter for elementalists, otherwise there was no one able to kill an ele. Before that fix the main class to steal boons was the Mesmer, that had this chance/role since the game release.
And the dps? The dps was so low that even necros was able to survive in a team fight and his defensive statistics using a celestial amulet plus the life force granted him a really good survavibility.
Do you remember that a single 1v1 duration was able to be more than 4 minutes?

Yeah, that was a golden age for all the dps builds and all the active and reactive gameplay… or not?

Phantom.5389:

That’s because every ‘’true power build’’ disapeared… You know.. the folks who ran full berzerker builds..back when we said high risk reward and it actually applied…Heart of Thorns killed those… they don’t exist anymore…

What you see now as a ‘’power build’’ is only folks saying ‘’the amulet have +power stat so it is a power build you know! Erp kitten ’’.

I would qualify such builds as support/bunker before anything else.

Yes, because Marauder (the most chosed amulet in the game) isn’t a Power dps amulet at all, it’s more a full bunker amulet… it have only Power, Precision and Ferocity, with a little add of Vitality and a little lesser Ferocity than Berserker. But ehy, that make it a Bunker amulet, isn’t that?
Seroiusly… 80% of players I see in game use Power.
At last eles and some rangers use Menders, but they still have Power and Precision to inflict damage. Eles go more bunkerish they can and use skills that don’t inflict so much damage, but Rangers can inflict a high damage also with an amulet with lesser precision and no ferocity than marauder/berserker.

Also Warriors frequently run in Berserker because already have enough hp and all the defensive skills they need to survive to everything, and also few thief run zerk.

Who inflict damage in this meta go Power dps.

Condition stacks can be removed by random AoE (by ele, ranger, engi or eventually a guardian if go support) adn every build have different skills to counter condiiton damage. frequently more skill to counter condiiton than power damage because everyone fear the “op” condiiton damage.
I run a necro with only the staff 4, the heal and the passive plague signet to clean/transfer conditions and I don’t need more to fight. I spend more activable skills to protect me from Power damage than Condition because there’s only few condi builds and a large amount of power builds and frequently in team fights I find my passive plague signet send to the enemy only conditions like vulnerability, cripple, weakness, immobilize and eventually few damaging conditions but not so much.

I don’t know if I’m lucky to find 4-5 power builds on the enemy team in every match or if players see that I play necro and they change to power to elude my condi transfert and kill me easier.

The only classes i see play condi are mesmer and necro, and not all the mesmer and necro I find on my matches play conditions, frequently they play Power.
There should be few burn guardian, but they’re the easiest condi build to kill. wait for the burst, active the condi clean and the enemy damage is reduced by 70% for 30 seconds or more. Incredibly easy to fight even with few condi clean.

Back in time the condition damage was seriously out of hand, with different problems of balance, but actually there’s not so much balance problems. In a large amount of team fight situations a condi build inflict lesser than 50% of damage if compared to a power build. Depending on the enemy team composition, even lesser than 30%.

If you play 1v1 against a mesmer that know how to play and your build isn’t made to counter condition spam and you can’t burst down the enemy fast enough you will probably die, but in a team fight there’s not a single problem about condition damage.
Also, if your build is able to counter conditions (the current Power Warrior for example) there’s not a single problem to fight a condi build and the only way to lose is make some big mistakes.

Condition can be dangerous and can kill you. If different condi builds focus you you will die, but that happen also with Power builds and Power builds will do it without any problem to see they’re damage reduced or resisted and really faster.

If you hate so much condition builds and are unable to fight one in 1v1 try to change your build, your playstyle, learn the enemy class mechanics and if you still aren’t able to fight one don’t fight it alone but go in 2v2-3v3, if your team isn’t bad there will be someone to clean your conditions.

When I play my necro, guardian or ranger I fear Power builds much more than Condi builds because they’re damage can’t be mitigated so easly and can’t be negated. if a power build hit you you will suffer all the damage, with eventually a mitigation by protection (also because no one actually use amulets with toughness and the Power damage have a free way to inflict it’s full damage easier than ever).
i feel more dangerous builds like Power warrior with tons of CC, or the dh trapper or the extremely boring immobilize ranger (that is funny to play because make the enemy totally unable to do anything but is really boring to fight).

Just try to play as a team and change your build.
If you don’t want to adapt to a little condition damage builds there’s nothing we can tell you and nothing that you can tell us.

jbondo.9817:

Condi meta’s are the most boring, passive, laziest meta’s to play. Don’t go to condi, force people to play power. It’s more active.

Condi meta? Where? When?
Actually 7 over 9 classes do best using Power than Condi, I totally don’t see that condi meta. Not at all.

I found a more active play use condi on a necro than spam traps on a dh or use the perma-immobilize build on the ranger that grant easy kills with low to zero effort or a warrior zerk that hit like a truck and can be untouchable for all the time he need to kill any opponent that try to face him.
If i want to play easy i log in my power DH, not my necro. Even a condi dh is harder to play than a Power dh that only need to set traps→ active F1→ profit. With traps I can also become invisible now with the runes, there’s not even need to time the F1 because the enemy will not even see it come! is hylariously easier to play than any condi build I had ever played.

About Conditions:
Back in time there was a huge advantage on using conditions because there was amulets, runes and sigils that granted exagerated advantages to condi builds and there was a huge lack of condi counter skills and builds making condi even stronger, that’s totally true, but actually conditions are countered by so much things that isn’t easy at all play condition. Any good warrior will just ignore your conditions, any good thief will eat condi builds alive, any skilled ele will make your condi spam useless in teamfight. Condi builds need different playstyle experience than power builds and in a high level enviroment you find that Power is way better than Condi for almost All the classes. Only mesmer and necro do better with Condition than with power, all the otehr classes do highly better with Power then Condi.

Talking about the mechanic the condition grant easier damage if you don’t clean it, but also delay your damage over time, while a power damage is istant and that’s already a huge advantage. If the enemy is totally unable to clean conditions and is unable to burst you down fast enough is doomed. The problem is that any decent build run at last 2 condi clean/transfer and frequently more, with a lot of other defensive skills that also affect condition spam.
Everyone think that defences like Block or Immunity are useless against conditions but the only thing they do is use them BAD. If you Block a condi burst you block all the future damage, still if the enemy conditions inflict you damage while you’re blocking.

Atm there’s only a huge L2P issue around all the game. May that be a newbye problem, may be that a low rank lack of experience, may that be because newbyes play random builds and think to do good unless they find a guardian that burst them down with conditions, may be beause there’s not enough players that think to all the ways you can counter condition spam and damage, may that be that everyone still think that condition damage kill more than power damage or because everyone think that DoT skills don’t have to kill you, and not even so fast, and then cry when a condi build kill them, may be the lack of knowledge of the other classes and how they work and what’s they’re best skills to block/dodge/immune to make they’re damage low.
There’s a large amount of wrong behaviour about condition and inexperienced players that cry don’t knowing they’re enemies weakness.

Condition builds are strong and can kill you. You can counter condi builds in different ways using the right skills and timing. Condition is a Valid alternative to Power, grant a good build diversity and don’t need nerfs because otehrwise there will be no more conditions and everyone wil play Only Power builds (no one want to play builds unable to kill the enemy).
Just make more practice, learn from your mistakes, try a condi build and learn how to counter them.

Senkaga Yanze.7896:

ok condi is beyond what any berserk/power build is. the problem is when you fight a team of five and three out of five are condi. say guardian, necro and mesmer if they are sticking together or the entire enemy team is “zerging” the whole game i get where every one is complaining that condi is way to strong i deal with that zerging garbage often enough to be allowed to even post on this matter. so say the guard and mesmer throw there condi’s on you then the necro and then out of no where you get feared you die the moment the fear hits you. same with the torment from the necro and the mesmer. you dodge most of their hard hitting condi skills at this point you have 3 stacks of torment 5 stacks of confusion, bleeds,burn, and the most annoying imo poison. then the necro fears you and you instantly die. point is one condi player is not to bad but three condi players mixed with two power players say the other two are thiefs you will lose. the only thing condi players sacrifice is power thats it unless your vipers amulet.

A lot of condi clean skill are istant and you can also clean/resist fear (if you use stability or a breakstun the fear isn’t a problem). Different condi clean also grant breakstun.

About 3 classes focus you with condis and 2 with power, I can tell you that if they focused you with Power you will die easier and faster. A focus of 3-4 players will kill you, no matter what’s the source of damage. If you’re CCed is not only the condition damage that can kill you, a power class can burst you even easier.

I run a necro with really few condi clean and i don’t find any problem at all. i have only the passive plague signet and the staff 4 and I really don’t find any group of full condi. May be in some matches situations when an extra condi clean should be better, but 80% of the builds I ought in ranked was Power based.

the condition complain is mainly a L2P issue plus the “oh crap, I have an insane amount of condi on me! I will die of condi!” scream when you have only few damaging condi derivated from side effect of different skills/traits but a lot of non-damaging conditions like vulnerability, weakness, cripple, chill.
Using my Power build (still if I more frequently use a condition) more times I was whispered by players as a “condy abuser” or other not so kind terms, still if my damage was totally coming from Power. For example I can spam chill, weakness and vulnerability, with some side effect of poison, bleed and eventually other conditions if i go in an ally combo field or active a corrupt.

But ehy, I see my screen full of red things, they’re killing me with conditions!
Oh, right, there’s also cc and debuffing conditions in this game…I always forgot that thing…

I seen an hylarious video time ago that become viral on teh forum: there was a guy screaming and showing to everyone how he was always killed by conditions, while if you kept a look on the screen was obvious that there was a so low amount of damaging conditions on him that was shurely not dying for that.

Condition can kill you as the Power do, but slowly. You have to play in a totally different way against a condition build. If you don’t want to learn or eventually change a little your build to be able to counter conditions if you’re too frightened of condi builds is only a L2P problem.

Also remember that GW2 sPvP is Team Based and the classes are totally fixed around that system. If you don’t have enough condi clean, because your class or build isn’t made to counter conditions, there will be someone able to clean conditions from you.
If you have an ele on your team there should be any number of burn guardian on the other team but they will do only 20% of they’re potential damage because a good ele should clean so much conditions to make a large amount of condi builds totally useless in team fights. If you have also a support guardian is even better (still if more rare, I seen some of them in ranked and they’re able to do great things to support and clean conditions).

The condition problem isn’t a problem at all. Just learn to play.
That’s a Power Meta, not a Condition Meta. There’s different good condition builds out there but a good ele will resolve all your problems without any effort.

As a Necro/Reaper there’s more or less nothing you can give to your party. In endgame the only thing we’re able to do better than any other classes is corrupt boons but in PvE it’s useful only against few raid boss, then there’s only a little space for necromancers in the pve top endgame.
You can try to use the Blood Magic traitline to grant to your team a littel vampiric effect and stop the hp decacy while downed, you can also try to use the Transfusion grandmaster trait to heal a little your allies, but that’s really poor if compared to what all the other classes can do. We can’t help to stack might, can’t heal and our damage (in PvE) is almost always the worst of the game.
There’s two skills you can use to help your team: Plague Signet and Epidemic. The first grant you to steal from your allies a lot of conditions all the time, working as a condi clean for your teammates (and using the staff 4 to send that condi to your enemy obtaining dps) and the second is useful against a lot of mobs because you copy all the conditions on an enemy to all the others obtaining a lot of AoE damage from your allies.
In WvW you can use the Epidemic spamming a lot of damage (if you play a condition build) or Well of Corruption, corrupting a lot of enemy boons and granting an advantage to your Zerg group.
The necromancer is a purely selfish class, the same for the Reaper elite specializzation. But in PvE you will survive better than any other class. In sPvP you’ll be eaten alive and the same in WvW because the necromancer don’t have any real active defence (block, evade, stealth, immunity…..). You need a lot of practice to do good in sPvP with a necromancer and don’t end frustrated.

The necro/reaper is the worst class in terms of mobility and also have the worst access to stability or breakstun abilities. Your only leap is chained to the reaper shroud and have an aftercast that reduce it’s effect, then you have spectral grasp as a gap closer in PvP but an enemy player with stability will be totally immune to it’s effect, making you waste the skill (that also can be evaded, dodged, blocked and more) and is totally useless in PvE. You have the worm as a teleport but can’t be used as a movement skill because have 1.5 sec of casting. Spectral Walk grant you a lot of swiftness and with the warhorn 5 you obtain a lot of swiftness, that for PvE is enough to run in teh map but in WvW or sPvP isn’t enough at all. Also the spectral walk grant you a teleport back, more or less useless (maybe only in WvW to disorient an enemy that is chasing you)
The sigil grant you 25% of movement but you lose an utility slot. Can be used but it’s not the best choice, the combo spectral walk + warhorn 5 grant you 45 sec of swiftness with a skill cooldown of 30 and 50. Basicly you can run all day long with swiftness, there’s no need to have the signet (they’re not cumulative, swiftness win over the sigil and you have only the +33% speed).

All the other classes have mobility skills like leap or teleport in a measure enough to cover all the distance you can obtain with the swiftness spam, making the necro the slowest class of this game and the easiest to catch.
The daredevil don’t even need swiftness, he can spam teh shortbow teleport and move away for miles in 2 seconds. A necro can’t compete. warriors have leaps with the GS, guardians have a leap on teh GS and two teleport skills (one on the sword and one really good utility skill), eles have leaps and teleport, mesmers have teleports, rangers have leaps. Before HoT the engi had our same problem but now the hammer grant him a really good leap if need mobility and can spam swiftness better than us.
The necromancer is not made to have mobility.

With the dagger/warhorn you can try a vampiric build with Berserker and BloodMagic/Spite/Reaper traits (you can chose the combination you want, but the dagger/warhorn with the vampiric effect is really good), is funny and grant you a really good survavibility and Power damage.
The GS is good, but only in PvE (sadly is too slow to be good in any PvP situation but you can make some funny builds with it). You can use the GS/Staff in PvE and go Berserker with Spite/SoulReaping/Reaper traits, you will do good. But it’s not the meta build for shure.
Actually one of the best builds is Sinister (or eventually Carrion) with Staff+Scepter/Warhorn with Curses/SoulReaping/Reaper.
Still remember: your inflict lesser damage than more or less any other class can do, but you can still be really good. If you’re a PowerPlayer that want only the best damage the necro isn’t for you, but it’s still really good and a good necro can do really good things. At last you will stand still if all the team die because you’re made to survive to everything (only in PvE because in PvP everyone can kill you easy and fast).

For the armor, you can do every day Citadel of Flame run 1 and 2, farming for the Exotic Berserker or Rampager equipment (waiting to obtain the Sinister equip, that you can also buy from the TP) and obtaining some golds.
You can chose to play power and go berserker with dagger/warhorn or greatsword/staff, or go sinister with a condition build using staff and scepter/x.
Try what’s your favorite playstyle before craft your ascended equipment (you have all the time you need), but you can also change the equipment statistics of an ascended armor/weapon using the Mystic Forge if you end with the “wrong” set.

You clean the last x conditions applied to you, then if you fight a mesmer you have a high chance to clean confusion or torment, if you fight a burn guardian is probably at 90% that you’ll clean burn because it’s the only condition the guardian is able to spam.
That system can grant you few problems in team fights where the enemy spam cripple, vulenrability, weakness or other conditions, eventually making you miss to clean the damaging conditions. That’s also a tactic, frequently used by necros to try to keep they’re conditions up.

Anyway you have enough burst damage with your guardian to kill condi builds fast enough to make them unable to spam conditions on you. Also you can obtain tons of condi clean. Condi smite clean 2 conditions, F2 clean conditions, F3 can clean 1 condition every sec when you block (but you lost your Lb knockback trait, you need to chose what’s better based on the enemy team composition).

Anyway, I won 10 consecutive matches but before i lost 6 consecutive matches. In the actual situation you can’t make a team and can’t chose whu play with you. You can bring a friend with you but that’s not enough to make your team win if you find bad players or a bad team composition.
ANet do his best using the players choices (solo/quoQ) but can’t force players to be good. They use a win/rate statistic to make “balanced” teams but that’s not enough because a mediocre player can be lucky and find good players and win or you can be unlucky finding a bad player that make you lose the match.

The ranked is a Roulette, nothing more.
Do your best and hope to find players that know what they’re doing.
Play classes able to carry the team (thief to decap, ele to support, mesmer to kill-decap-movement, and more). Try to learn to play more classes as possible and change your class when you need to.

In the actual sPvP ranked you only have to do your best and be lucky, nothing more.

I seen it today and most of damage are condi but the damage that killed me was Power. I recived things like 500 condi- 700 condi – 400xx – 3500 power – 400 condi – 2500 power, things like that. frequently i die for Power damage and not for condition. I maybe have more condition at the last but they ticked for poor damage and when I was downed. When downed you still suffer all the conditions you had on you, ticking low damage, but at 80% of tine you are stomped and then that damage is irrilevant.

Also, if you play Thief you play a class “weak” against condition damage (generally the power thief have lesser condi remove than other classes) and that explain the reason you hate so much conditions.

Thief condi spec have a lot of survavibility, that’s true. Is based on the dodge build and can abuse of that to be hard to kill and spam conditions.
Anyway is a lot that I don’t die against a condi thief. Also is really hard find a condi thief because the Power build is so good compared to the condi one that no one want to play condi with a thief.
Also the power build have different skills to defend, generally using more stealth.

But yes, i was not thinking about the thief when i wrote my post, i forgot it, i’m sorry.

Anyway, you have +67% of damage modifier and can crit for 10-14k in a single Istant hit and still complain for conditions? O.o
Are you serious?
If with a similar damage you are able to make the condition build pair your damage there’s something wrong…

https://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Reaper_-_Power_Boonstrip

Gear is the same for everyone, there’s nothing that grant you an advantage on your enemy. You also have all the skills unlocked for free, unless for the Elite Specializzation because you need HoT to obtain it. But if you have HoT you have Everything.
You can play with a lv 5 armor and weapon and your statistics are the same as a full legendary set. You chose your Amulet that grant you everything, your traits, chose your skills and equip your wepon, then you’re ready to fight.

You need few levels in PvE and then you can join the Structured PvP area.

The sPvP is good, still if not the best of the world.
At the start you’ll be eated alive by everyone (as always when you approach to a new game) but with a little experience and some build suggestions you can do good and be able to play in a competitive way (for what a newbye can do).

I have fun in this sPvP but there’s who think is good and who think is bad.

Only one thing: in this game there’s Two source of Damage: Power and Condition (that inflict Damage over Time). Them both can kill you fast and they’re countered by different things. Mainly Power damage is reduced by Toughness, protection and some traits, while Condition is reduced by clean the condition stacks (bleed, burn, torment, poison, confusion, they’re all conditions that inflict damage and can be stacked on you), Resistance (that make you totally ignore the damage and effect of conditions), some rune, trait and sigils. Then, every hit can be blocked/dodged/evaded/blinded and you can obtain partial or Total Immunity to the enemy. BUT conditions Already stacked on you will Always inflict you they’re damage, unless you active Resistance or clean them.
But remember that they both can kill you fast and you need to pay attention on what the enemy is using, activating different skills and using different tactics.

Based on your class you have roles to play and builds that fit better in the actual “meta”, as in every game.
There’s sites like metabattle that can help you to figure out what’s the actual “meta” build for every class.

Highlie.7641:

Lol No kitten….

So clueless, when you open your list and there is 0 dmg from powerdmg it’s pretty obvious it’s a problem with conditions keep trying though with your meaningless rants
when you lose 3/4 of your life and then die to the last hit from power, you probably consider that a power spec right hahah my god man give you head a shake.

Sometimes fighting against different Burn builds (like guardian, engi or eventually ele) i found myself fight a lot and when I die I can see that I suffered over 50k (or more) of Burn…
Seriously, if I was able to survive to 50k of Burn there’s something wrong…
Also thet Burn is not divided by enemy, it’s all the burn/poison/bleed/confusion/torment/crap damage you recived since the last time you respowned. Then is easy to see this numbers as the biggest because even power builds have skills that inflicts conditions even if they don’t play condi (example: guardian).

Think as if 1/4 of the enemy team use only a single power skill to hit you (chose the one you like more, still if not spammable, only to make an example), what will be the higher skill damage in your list when you die?

To have a better look to what killed you, try to click on “show by time” (or something like that, I don’t remember the words) and you’ll see what truly killed you.
Frequently you’ll find that the last huge hits that killed you are Power based.

Also (if I don’t survive for more than a single team fight) I always see a power based hit in the main damage that killed me.

it’s an old problem since pre-HoT when “the burn guardian killed me with 90+k of burn! it’s OP!”. It was seriously hylarious thinking that players survived to over 90k of Burn before die and still complained that it was OP.
The same problem is the thing you listed as the proof of how “op” are conditions over power.

Also, a Power class need to inflict you lesser damage to kill you because you will die quickly, eventually unable to active heals or defensive skills (like dying from some thief, war or mesmer burst) and then the amount you see will be lesser if compared to condition damage, that will let you the time to heal, active cleanse, fight for longer.

Is not always the highest damage recived at the end of a match what truly killed you.

Conditions work fine.
There’s a large amount of ways to counter condition application and/or damage.

Play against Conditions require different things than play against Power. Power damage is immediate and you see the skills hit you, feeling the timing of the enemy easier.
Conditions work in a different way: if you feel the damage is already too late. You have to active your defensive skills in a preventive way if you have enough skills to make a complete defence against them. You can also wait for the end of the enemy condi combo, cleaning all his condis at once (every good build have a skill to clean a decent amount of conditions at once). You can chose your way to fight conditions but if you make the enemy miss you the enemy will not inflist too much stacks of damage and you will not be under his pressure. If the enemy succesfully make a condi bomb on you is because you let him active at last 5 skills on you.
To stack a significant amount of conditions different classes need to: mesmer need to spam clones/phantasm (expecially from the staff), active his scepter 3 and F2 (some condi builds don’t even active the Fx to keep they’re clones alive, then if you kill them the mesmer lose a lot of damage); anyway a mesmer need some time to stack a reasonable amount of conditions on you.
The necro main condition damage is Reaper Shroud 5+4, the easiest combo to evade ever made. If you have Swiftness you can just dodge the stun for the RS5 and the run away, evading all the Rs4 without any problem; to do that combo the necro need 4 seconds, have to stay in the icefield and don’t be interrupted (eventually “wasting” the stability to be able to make that combo).
The warrior just spam F1, then if you dodge the first hit or active a movement skill you make the enemy miss his hit and waste adrenaline and time. A dodge with a teleport or a good movement skill can grant you an insane advantage against the warrior, unable to active movement skills (expecially because the condi build play Mace/Shield + LB)
The guardian to make his full combo need to active the scepter 3+2, torch 4 (eventually two time if have the trait but is based on the build), judge’s Intervention, purging Flames and then swap to sword and use sword 2+3. 7 strong skills with a weapon swap to inflict his burst and if you active a block, invul, resistance, or clean all the burn at once (even with a bad condi clean skill because the guardian don’t inflict so much conditions) the enemy guardian lose all his damage for a while, becoming unable to inflict any good damage.
And that’s for all the other classes and builds.
You have to active different strong skills to obtain all that Op damage, you can’t obtain that from 2 skills coming from nowhere. If you have a little knowledge of the other classes you can see that there’s different skills to active and combos to do to stack enough conditions to kill someone. With some classes may be easier and with otehrs harder, but you need to active a lot of skills (or two but slow and easy-to-avoid skills like for the necro). A Power necro can inflict from a single gravedigger up to 8k of istant Power damage but will never be able to inflict so high damage from a single condition skill. That’s for more or less all the classes.

There’s a reason if almost all the Meta builds use Power instead of Condi. That’s not because Metabattle and Pro make preferences on the source of damage, is because have a strong istant damage is better than a strong damage (eventually higher) that should be ignored by Resistance or Cleaned by the enemy player/team. Also with Power you need more stats on your amulet but also Lesser Traits to make it work. In almost all the builds I see in this game if you want to play condi you need to invest hugely in traits to do that.
Basicly, if you play a Power build you have your Class Mechanic Traitline, the Elite traitline and the Defensive traitline, but if you play Condi your have your Class Mechanic and Elite traitline plus your Condition traitline, making you lose your Defensive traitline.

Condition damage is an alternative to Power and nothing more. it add variability on the game and is good as it is.
maybe the mesmer have to be toned down a little but not in the damage, only in the survavibility. A good mesmer will never make you able to catch him easy, granting him all the time he need to stack torment and confusion and kill you with conditions. Is not really a problem of condi burst, is more a problem of survavibility and condi application over time. But if you kill the clones you reduce his damage by a large amount.

Yeah, nerf Conditions in a Power meta!

There’s already a lot of skills, builds and even classes that Totally counter conditions. Every decent build in this game can obtain enough condi clean to fight a condition build or enough damage to just burst down a condi build before the condi stack grow too much.

Reduce stack to 5 will make Bleed inflict a top damage of 500/sec… wow, what an amazing damage! Poison will do even worst! Confusion will become barely useless against a decent player!
Amazing suggestions…

Conditions are affected by almost everything that affect Power skills (blind, block, total immunity, evade, more…), the only different thing is that you need to dodge/block the skills Before you feel too much damage. When the enemy stacked too much conditions on you is already too late to active a block. That’s the difference.
Also there’s a invulnerability against condition damage: Resistance Totally negate conditions effects and damage.
You also have condition clean/reduction skills, traits, runes and sigils to fight a condition build.

About Toughness, conditions don’t obtain any kind of benefit from Precision or Ferocity. Grant precision and ferocity affect also conditions and then I’ll be ok to make toughness affect conditions too.
But that’s a really Old Old Old discussion.

What’s your rank, class and your build?
Maybe we can offer you some tips to counter your so hated conditions.

Anyway don’t worry, higher is your rank lower is the amount of condition builds you’ll find on your matches.
But at low ranks players have not enough experience to play against some different good condition builds like burn guardian, condi engi and condi warrior.

zinkz.7045:

Crinn.7864:

Silv.9207:

The actual powercreep made toughness not so useful. more toughness you have higher is your Power damage reduction, but you can’t reduce it enough to be able to survive to a burst only with your statistic. it was more useful back in the bunker meta, where the overall damage was lower and a damage reduction statistic granted something.

This is so hilariously wrong. Toughness is divided off the power of the attack, and as such scales evenly as incoming damage changes.

As incoming DPS increases toughness actually becomes more and more valuable compared to non-scaling defenses like vitality. (the reason necros are considered squishy, is because necros have no scaling defenses)

Against any power class Toughness is the best defensive stat to be using, however you’ll still want to be dodging and blocking things.

This is so hilariously wrong.

That it scales evenly is irrelevant, it still becomes less effective if damage powercreeps because at the same toughness you will take more damage even though it gets reduced at the same ratio.

Toughness scale based on the enemy damage where vitality don’t, for that is better (depending on the situation because against condition Vitality is still better).
The problem is that the insane amount of damage modifier, vulnerability spam and huge burst granted by HoT elite specs made the Power damage so high that even with the best toughness of this game your survavibility will not increase by enough to grant you to survive.

Before HoT I used on my necro a super tanky build and I had 3800 armor. that toughness granted me enough damage reduction to survive to everything.
Actually evena so high toughness will not save you. Will help, but will not change the end of a fight.

The actual insane amount of damage (that isn’t bad, I like that meta) make statistics grant only a little advantage against Power damage. That made Vitality better because grant “defence” against both power and condition damage.

Actually, if you want to survive you need to spam heals and condi clean all the time as eles do or have block/dodge/evade/immunity and movement skills.

The actual powercreep made toughness not so useful. more toughness you have higher is your Power damage reduction, but you can’t reduce it enough to be able to survive to a burst only with your statistic. it was more useful back in the bunker meta, where the overall damage was lower and a damage reduction statistic granted something.
Actually an enemy can burst you down still if you have Protection active. And protection reduce the damage more than any toughness you can obtain.

increse that statistic will grant you some benefits, expecially if you’re able to obtain a so high statistic, but will not resolve your problems.
There’s no more a chance to be a bunker only with statistics, not in teh actual meta.

Is better try to collect all the defensive skills/traits you can in your bunker build than try to max your toughness.
Today you don’t survive with statistics, you survive with defensive skills.

That’s the reason why the warrior is one of the hardest class to kill still if play berserker. Endure Pain, Berserker Stance, Stability spam and Movement skills grant him all the defensive stuff needed to survive to everything.

The necromancer is the only class unable to obtain real defensive skills and is the easiest class to burst down, still with Life Force. You do faster bursting down 15-20k of extra HP than wait that the enemy waste all his defensive skills to burst him down.

Block/Total-Immunity/Partial-Immunity/Resistance/Stability/Movement. If you want to survive you need that kind of skills. more you have longer you survive.

I will prefer SA and also pick Corrosive Poison Cloud (in sPvP).
SA grant you a breakstun that is really useful because the necro have poor access to stability, also when traited grant you 9 seconds of protection and every second you can obtain 8%LF, also when in shroud. That will grant you a good defence in different situations.
Rise! is really good but have two problems: Minions can be killed By AoE and to Active the Damage Redutions the minions need to Hit the Traget. That make it totally useless against classes like mesmer or thief (the two classes that hugely counter the necro) and delay they’re effect against full range classes like ranger, rifle warriors and other variations.
Rise! is good because can be used to trigger guardian/ranger traps or reduce the damage of the revenant skill 3, and also have a longer duration than SA. But I prefer to use SA.

They’re two totally different defensive skills that work in different ways and can be used in different situations.
If you can, chose them both.

I use CPC as defensive skill because block projectiles (for 8 sec every 20 if traited) and spam poison+weakness, reducing the enemy (team) damage and heal. When there’s a ranger, a guardian, a mesmer, a p/p thief or a rifle warrior on the enemy team that try to spam skills on your allies CPC is really good to stop they’re skills and reduce they’re damage to 0 (expecially for ranger, guardian and warrior). Also the weakness spam in a Power bades meta is really good to Hugely reduce the enemy team dps.

I think that these 3 skills are the best defensive skills of the necromancer and you can chose them without any problem and make them useful.

At the end, if you use Soul Reaping traitline you’ll obtain a Passive SA by defoult, then you can chose Rise! to obtain a different skill than the one granted by your passive traits.

I’m having fun in the current meta and did different really balanced matches. There’s few matches where you win or lose 100-500 but if you do your best there’s nothing to worry about. It’s only a game.

Play that sPvP don’t give you any real reward. Actually there’s the Ascended stuff and I’m glad that ANet finally made sPvP players able to obtain some endgame equipment (still if useless in sPvP). About the Gold, make few run of the easiest dungeons of this game will grant you more gold in 1 hour than an entire day in sPvP. but I’m here to have fun, not to make gold.

The only reason I have to play is have fun and in this meta I’m having fun.
If you’re not having fun, because there’s different things that make you ungry (like MM, unbalance or pugs), don’t be so heavy and think that it’s only a game.
Try to improve yourself and play your class at your best.
There’s not a real reward playing ranked unless if you farm pips to obtain ascended stuff.

I play to improve and have fun and there’s a lot of players that do the same.

There’s not enough Platinum players to make full plat divisions, then you’re paired with lower rank players to balance the matches.
Also depend if you have a win or lose stack.
When you win a lot you’re paired with worst players to compensate, if you’re losing too much you’re paired with better players to compensate. That’s a try to make more balanced fights, but don’t work all the times.

Also, ANet can’t force players to know what they’re doing. You will always find bad players that play don’t knowing rotations, roles, or just without too much will to play good.
There’s also the “troll plague” and some matches are manipulated by afkers and players that just play bad to have fun.

That’s a little too much.
Staff trait already make marks unblockable and generate LF (still if 3%/mark and not 3%/enemy-hit), add so much things will make marks OP.
Necrotic grasp with 25% chance to spam Reaper2s Mark is too much and that hit already pierce targets. Back in time that Pierce effect was only by trait, now is baseline in the staff.

The only change in “pulsing” marks I would add is the Blast Finisher effect to be applied not only when the mark is triggered but also when the mark is placed, granting a Blast Finisher to the necromancer to be used also outside the fight (like to help to stack might before a boss in PvE)

Dhuumfire will be a little too much with a similar change.

The only things I’d like to change in the Staff are the skills and not the traits.
Skill 4 and 5 are really good and basicly the main reason to use the Staff paired with the LF generation. But staff 2 and 3 are really bad atm. Staff 2 grant regeneration and inflict 2 Bleed, that was good back in time with the old Bunker Meta before HoT, but now that Regeneration will change nothing to you, don’t granting any help in the current PvP enviroment. Also 2 stacks of bleed are really bad as damage. increase by a little the Power and add 2 stacks of Bleed should work to increase by a little the damage output of the staff without change it too much.
Skill 3 inflict Chill and Poison for a total damage of 1800 hp in 5 seconds if you play Condition. Not a Power of 1800 but a Damage of 1800, that is really different. That skill was designed to keep the enemy at range reducing his speed, but actually the amount of condi clean, Resistance and Movement skills make Chill useless to keep and enemy at range. Add damage via Power or Condition (adding 3 stacks of Confusion or Torment for 5 seconds for example) will make that mark useful, while actually isn’t really good.

I use the Corrosive Poison Cloud to spam unblockable Poison+Weakness (to reduce they’re damage and heal) and destroy they’re projectiles. Then when the enemy active his combo F1+trap+knockback I active my F1+Foot in the Grave to breakstun and obtain stability, vanishing they’re combo. If the enemy don’t active anything else I will use My RS5+RS4 combo to inflict huge damage. if he active a block I active Plagueland Elite to inflict damage (still if is low to act, when the enemy end his block I will inflict tons of damage). that elite work good on them because a lot of DH is so bad and so copnfident on traps that they don’t move so much, making them easy prey of an AoE elite. But a good player can move around.
In that time I already had my CPC back, becoming invulnerable to projectiles for other 8 seconds and spamming poison+weakness.
When the enemy waste all his blocks, I start to hit hard, totally able to kill him.

The Guardian have strong CC and huge damage if the trap combo work, but if you put a Stop using a breakstun and stability, also blocking his projectiles, the guardian can’t inflict any good damage, don’t have mobility skills to flee (his teleports are good only to Engage and not to Disengace singe they don’t even use the GS in they’re builds).
The best strategy of the current guardian is stand immobile, place Traps, spam True Shot and make combos to inflict more damage possible. If you learn to counter that playstyle you can kill them.
is also important to be able to corrupt they’re stability, obtaining a big advantage.
At last, your marks are unblockables if traited and the Scepter isn’t a Projectile weapon then isn’t affected by skills like Sanctuary or Wall of Reflection, granting you a free hit if the enemy use that skill thinking to counter you.

If you find a good player you will not kill him easy, not at all, but you can kill him and that’s the only thing you need to know. You’re able to win, you only need practice and strategy.

I don’t really know in PvE or WvW, but in sPvP you can play both Power or Condi builds. in sPvP the necro is mainly condi, but there’s also Power builds really viable.
I actually play that condi build and is really good:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBLhZakjGauxabw8G4vxixgF9zCADg4dYQ8IS1EiCDBA-TZBHQBJpMgCfAAnZ/BAcEAa4pAAA

There’s also Power builds like that one, or similar:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBHhF6kZToaTsbTwcTgeTscMYR9stVAgaJ8EiVx3wf4QE-TpBHQBA4IAQwHAADPBAi7QA0j9H0WZAA

Condition grant you more team support corrupting boons, Power grant you more survavibility and burst (with the GS2)

The necro can use a large amount of different builds and variations doing good. Maybe there’s one or two builds that shine, but there’s still different good ones.
The best build you can use is the one you do by yourself. Play some builds, find the one that fit you better and then change it in anything you want to make it better for your playstyle.

Bunker meta? Seriously? O.o
The only bunker is the ele and I can kill any ele easy (maybe because I’m a necro) and the only other class able to play as a bunker is the ranger. That two classes can spam heals and condi clean (or have strong condi clean skills/traits) and have mobility, that all make them bunker. But if compared to the Old Bunker meta (the real one) they’re really squishy.

back in the bunker meta an ele was totally unkillable, the damage was low and to kill one you needed to be in 3 or 4 and make a serious focus, while the enemy ele don’t even needed to use the Focus to obtain a Immunity skill or stability, only spam heals, boons and run in circle, nothing more. Totally unkillable.
Then there was the Chronomanster bunker meta, where any mesmer was even harder to kill (and to catch) than an ele! And the Warrior Banner Bunker meta with tons of stuns and blocks and infinite regen with tons of condi clean?

You don’t know what Bunker meta means. You seriously don’t know.
In the real bunker meta a single ele/engi/war/ranger/mesmer using Celestial and Bunker amulets was able to fight against 3+ players and hold the point for Minutes (expecially ele).

Not a focus can take down any player that don’t play wisely.
The damage is high enough to make statistics and boon spam meain more or less nothing. Today you don’t survive spamming Protection and Regeneration, you survive using Defensive skills like Block, Immunity, Resistance and Movement skills at the right time, wisely. if you waste your skills or find caucht with defences in CD there’s more or less nothing you can do to protect yourslef from a burst and die in 3 seconds.

ANet devs “made the Powercreep” to STOP the Bunker Meta and they really did good. If they reduce the damage output of the classes you’ll see this game fall back into a pure bunker meta, without any chance to turn back.

You want a game more fast and more like “who hit first win” but there’s still different Burst builds out there, much more than Bunkers. If you don’t pay attention you’re killed in few seconds (I play necro and I can tell you how high is the risk of go around with bad defensive skills XD).
Then the main defensive skills in this game last for few seconds and then the enemy is totally vulnerable. The defensive skills that last longer are the Ranger Signet that protect you from direct damage for 6 seconds, the warrior Berserker Stance that grant you 9 sec of Resistance and the Guardian F3 that Block for up to 5 seconds. The otehr ckills last for 2-3 seconds, nothing more, and when the skill end the enemy is totally vulnerable to your damage as it was before. There’s also ways to counter that defensive skills. Invulnerable to direct damage? Hit with condi! Resistance? Corrupt or use Power damage! Block? There’s different Unblockable skills for every class (or just hit the DH from the side or the back). invulnerable? That last for few seconds and the enemy can’t use any skill while invulnerable (unless for the Evade Fx of the mesmer).

I see only 2 classes able to be “bunkers”, all the other classes are DPS class with defensive skills that you can elude in some ways. if they go out of CD you can kill them easy and fast.

Use your defensive skills wisely (block, movement, invul, resistance…) and chose the best moment to unleash your burst on the enemy, you will have not a single problem to kill him.
Theres classes better to fight other classes and classes you kill harder (or can’t kill) with your own, but if you learn how the other classes work you will be a good player.

That depend also on a personal choice and each work in different situations.
If you think to need more breakstun and stability, Foot in the grave will grant you a good breakstun+stability useful against different CC spammer builds (like warriors) or to stomp if you don’t want to use Shroud skill 3.
if you think that you don’t need that extra defence, higher critical rate (expecially in a Condi Carrio build or to reach 100% critical rate in a Power build) will grant you higher damage with every shroud skill.
Dhuumfire grant Burn only on the AA and that’s the reason that make it not used in PvP

I personally find better to fight with Foot in teh Grave, but they’re both good Grantmaster traits.

You talk about Roaming, then i think you play WvW. Otherways, explain better your problems and we’ll answer to all your questions

If you play condition use a condi weapon is better, then the scepter will do better damage than the axe. You lose the axe3 to corrupt 2 boons istant but you will corrupt 1 boon at the end of the AA chain, the axe2 grant 12%LF but is a channeling skill and with few conditions the scepter3 can grant the same LF but with no channel required (only 1/2 sec of casting time). Both the weapons grant you cripple AoE.
The main difference is that with the scepter you can use your Condition Damage Statistics and if you’re using a condition setup that will grant you an appropriate amount of damage, better than using a Power weapon with low Power/Critical/Ferocity stats (and you need them all to inflict good damage with a power build, while you can chose to focus only on Conditon Damage for the equipment stats and use foods to increase your condition duration to do all the damage you need).

I can also suggest you to use the Warhorn as secondary weapon, expecially roaming in WvW, because grant you an Unblockable Daze AoE with the skill 4 and AoE cripple + swiftness + LF generation with skill 5, that is always good in open spaces and eventually massive fights.

The dagger as main weapon for a Power build in WvW isn’t bad, if you’re able to reach your enemy, and will grant you Immobilize + boon corruption and a strong Auto attack, but a ranged weapon like the Axe helps you to catch your target easier (expecially because a lot of other classes have better mobility skills than the necromancer) and the difference in damage is not so big.

The staff is the only weapon that is mandatory in more or less every build (power, condi or hybrid) because grant you Life Force generation (traited) and different Utility skills (also marks are unblockable if traited). But have a really low damage (it’s the worst damage weapon of this game, but also the best Utility weapon we have)

That depend on your class. If you’re an engi you can double-ress everyone with the gyro and yourself and that grant you an huge advantage.

If you play necro you can stop your enemies from ressing using your Staff 5 or Warhorn 5, you can also go in Shroud and active the skill 4 or use the Corrosuve Poison Cloud to inflict Poison AoE and reduce the ress speed by a lot, inflicting damage to the downed and the resser. Also the Staff 3 will work to inflict Poison because it will be activated by the resser and will hit also the downed.
if you want to be shure to stop him you can go in shroud and use the RS5+RS4 combo, inflicting huge damage to them.

If a lot of enemies ress a player all together there’s not so much you can do to prevent them to keep up they’re allies, but if there’s only one enemy you can still CC him or poison the downed, still if you don’t see them.

A class really able to active a mass stealth and ress is the thief with the dome and the thief don’t have stability then a single CC can stop him, with eventually some AoE damage to kill them both at once.
Also engis can spam Stealth and they’re harder to CC because obtain Stability activating a Gyro. They’re the best to ress but if you have 2 CC and a poison AoE you can stop him. Eventually use some AoE to kill the Gyro.

I would like to see the self poison removed by the skill 3 and also the boon corruption. instead put a Leap with 600 range that when hit your target immobilize it.
that will make it useful to flee fomr dangers or to catch an enemy.
That will probably never happen but i can still dream.

The skill 2 need his casting reduced. In sPvP is impossible to use it when you need and hope to end it. It’s a channel-to-the-enemy skill, then is interrupetd by the enemy CC or if the enemy go in stealth, go back an obstruction or flee away.
I’d like to see it more like the Axe skill 3 but that heal for every enemy hit. The dagger is more a single target weapon but that should resolve different problems in the PvP area.

What’s the “burst” part of that build? I really don’t see it.

You use a Condition amulet to play Power and the only real way you have to inflict any good damage is hope that the enemy team is full of condition builds to send back conditions to the enemy with staff 4 and plague signet (both passive and active). that’s a wise move, but there’s always lesser condi builds in spvp (at last in the matches i fought), expecially at high levels. There’s only necros and few mesmers.
Your Power damage is low (3k with axe2? that’s a little too low…) and you mainly use the staff to fight and obtain LF, but you don’t obtain it fast as other power builds that use blighter’s boon and might proc. Your Power damage is ALL in Shroud and even there your damage is lower than any other Power build I seen in this game. But you mix it with Condition, then you obtain a mediocre damage from the RShroud 4 with poison stacks, but nothing more.
Maybe change the axe for the scepter and focus more on conditions? You already play a condition build, the only thing you do is play it with a power weapon. a condi weapon should use better your damage statistics.
You can not even tell us that you play axe for LF generation because it you spam few condis and use scepter 3 you will obtain the same or more LF than the axe 2 (the scepter 3 also isn’t a channel and will not break before you get all the LF). The axe 3 corrupts 2 boons AoE and is good, but the scepter AA can be better in different situations.

Then, you have a low Power damage and a low self condition damage output (expecially because you don’t use condi weapons -staff isn’t a condi weapon but an utility weapon-) that totally rely on the enemy conditions to grant you some real damage. That worked in the past and can work now, but there’s always lesser condi builds the higher you go in ranks.

That build is good, but don’t add any real high survavibility unless for it’s amulet (a little more vitality than marauder, if compared to power builds) rune and sigils (to obtain one dodge more when you swap to staff and use the heal), all the other things are already used in more or less all the other power or condi builds.

It’s a build that can work in team fights, and if the enemy don’t chose to kill you with a real focus you’re shure to survive or be able to flee. You’re also a good player and that make easier for you to flee from a fight.

That’s for shure not a build for the mass and not the best I seen. It’s a viable one that totally rely on the enemy conditions to inflict good damage and generate LF slower than any other Power build I played. But it’s a hybrid then there’s nothing to really tell about your damage. It’s made to survive and not to inflict damage, I think.
In team fight it can work.

0.5% for every different boon on you.
That’s a “good” secondary sigil for classes that can stack tons of different boons like engi, ele and revenant to increase by a little they’re Direct damage.
I don’t think that there’s builds that use it.

It’s a mape where you can use jumps and enviroment to protect yourself, the best map to do that.
If a player know how to move he’s in a big advantage compared to other players that are lesser experienced or just want to fight in a more direct way.

Ranged classes/builds have huge advantage in this map and classes with movement skills can disengage or cover easy.
I like that map because with the necromancer I’ve few ways to move around still if I don’t have any movement skill, but sometimes that make make me mad for the same reason.

It was 120 seconds, if i don’t get wrong.
It can be that you used the trait to reduce it to 80 seconds.

Curses will be better with a lot of critical rate, granting you better chances to active the passive plague signet and inflict blees, also will grant you more condition damage (13% of precision si a lot cof condition damage bonus), but that metabattle build grant you different ways to obtain critical rate still with a carrion amulet: 2% for every condition on the enemy and Fury+50% critical rate while in shroud.

Path of Corruption is really good, expecially because make you able to corrupt 2 boons every 6 seconds, then Death perception grant you all the crit chance you need while in shroud. That also grant you better chances to use the passive Plague Signet while in shroud instead of when you’re out of it (and you can use the main plague signet and other skills to clean/transfer conditions).

Carrion is used for different reasons: grant you more Life Force, making your shroud last longer; grant you more hp, making you not die istant using the Plague Signet (if you transfer on you 10+ stack of torment or burn you’ll need that hp extra or you’ll die immediatly), more resistance against conditions in general.

I don’t use Carrion on my build, I use Rabid and that grant me more condition damage (by traits), more critical rate and more Toughness (that in a Power meta is always good to survive a little better.
I also don’t use Plague Signet but Corrosive Poison Cloud. That reduce my anti-condi team support but grant me the ability to spam Weakness and block projectiles for 8 seconds every 20 seconds (traited). It’s a personal choice, nothing more.

At the end, the Metabattle build change every tot and the last time I cecked it was a Power build, not a condi one. But Metabattle show a build commonly good and balanced, that can grant you success based on your class role. There’s a lot of other builds you can do by yourseld and do really good.
Minion Master, Power, Power Shout (frequently bunker), a build like the one I use, and more. I seen few pro players on twitch use a Core build without the Reaper elite, and they was able to win different 1v1 and play really good, better than what I am able to.

Take your time to learn to fight in the current meta and then try different builds and make your own or play with the one that fit you better.

If you have problems with warriors you can try a power build. They have enough resistance and boons to make you waste all your boon corruptions doing no damage, but if you go Power they have only Endure Pain to counter you.

I think that a good warrior can kill any necro in 1v1, but (as said by Murdock) in a team fight a warrior will really hate you if you’re free to act and corrupt his Resistance and Stability.

I don’t play when i have lag or frequent internet disconnections, but sometime happen that your always-working internet crash for no reasons.
Today I played a lot of matches without any problem, then in teh middle of a match i got disconnected because I had not internet, forcing me to close the game, restart the rooter and then log in again. That was enough to make my team lose and grant me dishonor.
Then I played a lot of other matches without any problem.

Sometimes players have internet problems or crash, other times they ragequit or exit the match for other reasons (maybe they’re mom that call for dinner XD).

sPvP players in this game are few and divided in divisions, ANet can’t make a MM system to work with personal win/lose rating, rank, disconnection rate, skill level, HoT or Core, all together.
There’s things that only players can control, as if they’re good players, if they want to play as a team, if they want to buy HoT, if they want to play with a Elite or Core build, if they know how to play a sPvP match, if they play with lag or knowing that they frequently crash, and if the player join a match and then chose to log out or stay afk for some unknowed reason.

ANet made a good work with this MM system, still if a lot of people think that it’s not.
For shure when you’re in gold or silver you find really hard to increase your rank, but people that truly don’t know how to play go in Bronze by defoult because a bad player that don’t know how to play in a team of 5 make it’s team lose at 100%, granting him the Bronze rank or at last Silver.

You play with people that you don’t know. Is like go to play football with guys that you don’t know and don’t know each others, you can only hope that they know the rules, want to play and play good. If you find someone that don’t want to run, one that don’t know the rules, one that don’t want to get hurt, one that do all by himself without thinking about his team…

ANet can manage all the things of his competence, then there’s no way they can force a player to join only with perfect internet connection, with a full sPvP preparation, knowing everything at the perfection about roles, rotation and all the stuff.

You will always find people that disconnect, there’s not way to fix that.

That’s true, the siphoning skill problem is more the channeling than the heal itself. But is good to have higher heal, still if only in sPvP where only few players use it.
Dark Pact boon corruption is good but then ANet chose that apply a Self-Bleed stack was a way to compensate the boon corruption and was granting you 20% more healing. That’s a problem in sPvP and WvW because make you unable to disengage from a fight and a heal/condi build will never be able to benefit from that heal anymore. Also the 33% damage is good but unnecessary. But more damage is always welcome.
Life Siphon, that skill’s problem is casting then make it faster should be better than increase his heal, expecially in sPvP. A casting reduction of 33% should make it viable and grant to the necro the chance to not be always interrupted, also because the necro have really poor access to stability and breakstun skills.

Crinn is right. No one of the buffs really made any new meta build viable.
Maybe the rifle warrior, already used by some pro players, but it’s still not the best build atm.

People tend to make discrimination betwen who use elite and who don’t

Dirame.8521:

TheDevice.2751:

We haven’t even seen 2v2 duels in action yet. IDK why people keeps saying ele and necro are some godmode 2v2 when I’ve yet to see a real 2v2 tourney/match or whatever where the ele/necro combo was featured. Videos? Something?

2v2s? Puh-lease!! Helseth’s favourite shoutcaster can win 2v1!! Just check it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tB7vqYHtyeQ

The worst thief ever find, unable to make a single good burst, clean condi and do more or less anything.

The warrior… Do I need to say something on how bad that warrior fought?
No Resistance, no F1 spam, no CC, no Burst, no Movement, he took all the Plagueland elite (stay 10 seconds on an AoE with a class with so much movement and burst show how bad it is). Probably he was with all his skills in CD and under a huge lag, there’s no other ways he made a similar bad fight.

Anyway,Ceymash is able to fight and is one of the best players I found using a necro. I think that a lot of his videos showed only a extremely favorite enviroment against unranked players or just bad players, but I seen him do ranked and he’s able to do really good things.

Then, i there’s a 1% of players able to do great things but 99% of players doing nothing more than die and respown, there’s still something wrong.

The necromancer is more or less the hardest class to play in this meta. It’s easy to play if you talk ablut combo, skills and mechanic, but play it at a level that grant you to win some 1v1 is another thing.
The necromancer have some good pro but also so much cons that frequently is unplayable. The enemy team will only burst him down easy and fast if he go in team fight, that’s the reason that made Ceimash play as a close holder or a decapper. He made a 1v1 build able to kill thief and eventually mesmers, with few exeption for bad warriors, and he run close-far all the time, frequently holding the close and doing nothing else. That’s good but the reason is that a necro in a teamfight will never survive, and against a team fight class/build he will lose at 90%. He play without a single stunbreak (maybe 2 with foot in the grave) and a build that any CC spammer will eat for breakfast, but he fight against thiefs that don’t spam so much CC and don’t have stability (making him able to use the death shroud 3 to fear them easy and fast when he need).

I admi that a good necromancer can do good things but a good team will never make the necromancer able to do anything.

As Bloodyjoker wrote few posts above: …every time my team see a necro, we put that target maker on your head every time my team see a necro, we put that target maker on your head..
And for a necromancer there’s nothing he can do to stop the enemy to kil him.

Necromancer is one of the hardest class to play atm.
The solo/duo queue force us on teams where there can be a support or not, or where you should be supported or not by your allies. They can help you or just play for themselves and let you die (and frequently they don’t care about you).
The necro is an easy prey for a large amount of classe. Mainly thief, ranger, guardian and mesmer. You can fight and win only against ele and engi, with few chances against warrior and revenant (depending on the build).

I seen some streamers on twitch play so good that they can win 1v1 against different classes but when they go in a teamfight they die as everyonelse using a necro (maybe slower, but they die anyway). or they can be really hard to kill in team but do weak damage and when they go in solo for any reason they die insta bursted by someone without so much hope to flee or survive.

Positioning and knowledge of your enemy is the best way to fight, but is really hard anyway.

Someone say that the necro is weak, someonelse say that is ok and few players say it’s OP (probably bronze rank players). There’s not a real knowledge of how the necro is atm.
I think that is both weak and ok. Ok because have damage and some CC to survive, with a specific and useful role, weak because any CC spammer can kill you easy and fast, it’s really weak in 1v1, don’t have mobility and if the enemy chose to kill you there’s really few things you can do to don’t die in few seconds.

The necromancer is one fo the classes that need a skilled player to do good things and can do really good things, but in the hands of a not really skilled player will only grant frustration and hate.

Anyway, if you find hard to play as a necromancer the only thing you can do is find someone really skilled and ask him to teach you or change class and play something easier. There’s different classes easier to play, with better survavibility, movement and damage at the same time.

Also true that a good burst class will kill an ele easy. I seen a warrior on twitch at gold/platinum eat eles for breakfast with a Rifle/sword+shield build. Able to spam 8-9k with every Rifle F1, an ele would die easy and fast against him, still with all his healing skills. Then, dead the ele the necro will last 5 seconds, no more.
I see more a class with interrupts and burst. If you burst the enemy that is not the ele fast enough you can win the fight really easy with a couple of CC on the ele while ressing or an aoe burst. The necro is good in DuoQ with an ele, but if focused by two burst class the ele will find really hard to save his ally from the dead.
The necro is good to kill eles but inflict damage slower than any other class (unless ele) and don’t have any defensive skills. Also the due need to be extremly skilled because when the necro is in shroud the ele heals will not work on him and the shroud is te best offensive and defensive ability of a necromancer. I see the ele more suited to heal a class with good defensive skills than with much healt but no defence, in a 2v2 enviroment.
Ele/necro will for shure be a good choice but I’m not shure it’s the best for a pure 2v2. For a DueQ it’s relly good but there’s also other players that help to kill the enemy and make burst and focus, while no one of them can do a single burst combo. Expecially if in the other team there’s an ele.
A ele/necro vs ele/necro fight will last forever XD

There’s still time to see what due will be the best.
Maybe a thief/mesmer combo, with high mobility and burst (in both condi and direct damage), the mesmer that double moa the enemy (ele?) and the thief able to insta-stomp with his elite skill
Or a ele/war with a berserker warrior that burst down everything while supported by the ele
Or a ele/druid, able to unleash an insane amount of heal and with a druid pet able to kill anyone by himself (also the rnger have much more dps than a necro, with also stealth and mobility).
There’s so much possibile variations that I will enjoy to see these matches. Also I hope in a Spectator mode for that kind of matches.

In team fights the necro purpose is only to kill eles, then if eles will be meta he will be meta. Unless someone will find a better way to kill eles without using a necromancer.

That happen when you can’t chose who’s your allies: you take what you find. If you find good players you win,if you find bad players you lose. That’s how actually is the sPvP.

If you’re not playing a class able to carry your team or aren’t able to carry it with your favorite class, there’s nothing you can do unless hope to find good players.
That’s the solo/duo queue main problem and nothing can change it. Not the match making for shure.

What’s the problem of “powercreep”?
We came from a bunker meta where a fight against two “squishy” builds took at best 1 minute, frequently longer. Now a quick fight can take 30 seconds or lesser.

We have a more reactive game with more damage but also more ways to protect yourself, more reliant on Active defences than Passive defences, with more teamplay to stay alive and don’t get bursted down by a fast focus.

Everyone wanted that and now everyone cry about that.

Yes, someone can burst you down in 5 seconds if you’re bad enough to don’t pay any attention to what is happening near you. What’s the problem?
Do you really want the bunker meta back?
Do you want bunker amulets and sigils back? Only to make classes and builds able again to be perfect bunkers and unkillabe, making all the burst class and builds bad again as in the past?

There’s different things to fix, as grant to every class defensive skills and offensive skills, nerfing some clases damage burst skills or mobility/devensive skills to don’t make them so good to survive if compared to all the others.
There’s some adjustment to do that’s true, but the game isn’t so bad as it is now.
Much better than what we had in the past…

bluri.2653:

necro has been godmode for 6 seasons now….

How? When?
Did I lost something?

In season 1 and 2 ok, there was a bunker meta and the reaper was able to kill bunkers full of boons and able to inflict high damage with Chill.
In the past 4 seasons there’s nothing to say about a “godmode” for necromancers. The easier to kill, the lowest damage, the worst mobility, needing a babysitter All the time. It was so easy to kill that in all the last tournaments the best builds was not even using traits or skills to move/survive because without an ele to heal you all the time or a engi to ress you there’s nothing to do for a necro, only die. But was chose because is the best class to corrupt boons. No other reason. No damage, no survavibility, no movement. Only boon corruption.
And is 4 seasons that is the worst 1v1 class ever.

About the guardian, at low/mid ranks it was really good the last season but at higher ranks it was not so good. If someone know how to fight a guardian there’s only few things a dh can do to win. But it’s still good. Expecially in 1v1.

bluri.2653:

if we give easier lf to necro it will be even more godmode… GG

Back in Season 1 or 2, maybe. Now a necro with full LF have a chance to fight someone but still lose against more or less every class of this game. Also, a full LF bar will allow you to don’t be killed for more or less 3 seconds more, but you need to waste all your life force to do that. Also the LF decrease by itself while you’re in Shroud, everyone can just kite a little with movement skills and block and make you waste all your LF doing no damage. Or just strip you out of shroud with a burst combo, easy and fast. Expecially in team fights.
No more godmode for necros, still with full LF.

The fact that the LF don’t decrease to 0 when you die is the only thing that make necros viable in coordinated teams. If a necro start all the time with no LF there will be no reason to play this class, it will be even more easy to kill than actually are.

A supported necromancer can do great things, but need a real support that Always keep him alive. The ele is perfect because can heal, clean conditions and CC his enemies, keeping him alive even in a team fight.
A necromancer without a support, or with a support that don’t care about him (as many time happen) isn’t able to play.

Pro Teams in Torunaments can play with a necro without having issues only because they play as a team, have always they’re support to heal and help the necromancer and are able to focus the right enemy at the right time, spamming CC on the enemy that is focusing they’re necro for example, and able to take down an enemy with a perfectly coordinated burst. It’s a Team Play, comething that was stripped away from GW2 sPvP since the Solo/Dup Queue. In a Team you can chose and play your strategy, make synergic builds and do great things. In SoloQ you take what you find. The best example can be the builds used by top team necros: full corruption without any single defensive skill and frequently also without Soul Reaping. That because they don’t need to waste skills in Poor defensive skills, they have a full team to protect them, making them able to play as more offensively as they can, corrupting boons all the time and granting to they’re team a real offensive support.

In Solo/DuoQ if you have a friend that play ele and want to be your babysitter all the time you can do something, outherway you’re totally unable to do any kind of good things. How’s the actual “meta” build for necros? Power based with all the possible defensive skills and traits, with a single corruption skill. Don’t you see a little difference? Don’t you ever wandered why there’s a so huge difference between that two Meta builds?
When you’re solo you Need to be able to survive. If you can’t you’re useless. The ele will not stay with you all the time only to make you survive a little longer, no one will help you spamming CC on the enemy that is chasing you, no one will care about you and everyone will scream to you if you die or are unable to do good things. That’s how Solo/DuoQ work: if you’re unable to survive by yourself you’re only a problem for your team.
At higher levels that change, but only if you go over the Gold because from the gold and down below there’s no one that will play his match as a babysitter only for you.

The necromancer is balanced around Team Fights and is good and can inflict good damage and corrupt boon all the time long, but Need Support 24h/24h (better if by an ele) and a team that know how to play with a necro, supporting and helping him all the time. Then the necro can become able to do something really useful for his team.
The SoloQ runed all that making the necro weak and unable to find a team that support him. In SoloQ no one will care of you and no one will help you, unless you’re in legendary and find players that know how to play with you.

A rework on the necromancer is Needed if we want to play as Solo/Duo Queue. Without a real buff to our offensive OR defensive skills we can nothope to be a real viable class in sPvP. In tournaments there’s no problems but in SoloQ the things go really bad for a necromancer.