Guild Wars 2

@upsdn
You can’t accuse the one that gave us chronomancer, IP baseline and made mesmer a staple of high competitive PvP of mesmer hate. (Some of) the player base hates mesmer because they don’t understand it!. Mesmer is one of the least straightforward class in the game and also one of the least played.

I partly agree with Helicity except on the “lazy and cheap” part (not after the patch). Certainly more forgiving, but not lazy.
If you run PU, disengaging when things look bad is indeed a good idea. Try to come progressively, single out enemies as much as you can, focus on archers first because their blind can really destroy mesmers. Running a bit of reflect can actually help (see below).

I personally play shatter condi PU. To start, try to avoid upgraded camps or camps with mercenaries (their number can easily be overwhelming). Ether feast instead of signet of ether may be easier thanks to the burst healing (but a well managed signet can be very strong). Since you have already 2 manipulations in the build, I would actually recommend using mirror and traiting manipulation to get the reflects I mentioned above.

I intend to try a chronophantasm build, to see if phantasms build could work in PvP. Curious also about what alacrity could bring to any PvP build, maybe a shield alacrity bunker (your defensive utilities recharge faster)… Then probably try wells in backline WvW zerg.
I’ll try to split my time between Chronomancer and Reaper.

One which I would love and would fit necro so much is one which prevents condition cleanse for a few seconds. A bit like an opposite of resistance. It should be rare, but could be very useful.

Sigmoid.7082:

Silverkey.2078:

Honestly, I don’t understand why the damage of GS is lower. The way I saw it was that GS was supposed to give a strong (much needed) boost to PvE by completely outranking the dagger for DPS while both weapons would be balanced in PvP with GS doing higher DPS but much easier to avoid. We should not forget that dagger usually has a warhorn to complete it, with nr 5 giving a lot of LF and some decent additional DPS. Right now, I may be pessimistic, but except for the potential chill play, I don’t see GS competing with dagger/warhorn.

Why would they design a weapon to outclass another and that weapon you need to buy the expansion for? That is exactly not what they were going for when building these things. Its supposed to be strong but in a different way to the current stuff not make it obsolete or feel like an upgrade to it. They are meant mainly as play style changers and it does that giving much needed and greater cleave outside of shroud if using GS and again much needed cleave and better attack speed inside of shroud be it melee.

Because it is situational. Dagger outclasses scepter or staff in PvE, right? The balance is for PvP because the roles are different, but for PvE where only damage matters (more or less) one is better. Currently necro is bottom tier in PvE, so ideally I would have loved it to be fixed in the main class, but if Reaper fixes it, so be it! The cleave is an improvement over dagger, but the damage (currently) is not.

Anyway, the beta event is precisely done for that: seeing how good the weapon behaves. I believe (but I may be wrong) that the DPS will be too low by a small amount. If so, we will report it and hopefully they would fix it like they did for revenant.

Dagger AA DPS coefficient is pretty decent compared to other AAs in the game (may even be one of the highest), but most classes have a weapon with strong burst (usually nr 2) on top of a decent AA. Dagger DPS ends up being much lower than the DPS from the best weapons of almost of all classes. GS would look similar to most weapons, with nr 2 being a strong burst, unfortunately it does not seem to beat our dagger AA

And the nice thing is that this will be burst conditions, not the slow attrition play style that the scepter/dagger is currently giving. I would like to try the hybrid because if the chill is strong, the GS might be good enough condi-wise. I really don’t like the scepter-dagger a lot… GS/staff may be better.

Condition reaper will depend a lot on how strong the chill is. With all the increase crits from traits, I can see a powerful hybrid Carrion chilly-terrormancer or something similar.

Honestly, I don’t understand why the damage of GS is lower. The way I saw it was that GS was supposed to give a strong (much needed) boost to PvE by completely outranking the dagger for DPS while both weapons would be balanced in PvP with GS doing higher DPS but much easier to avoid. We should not forget that dagger usually has a warhorn to complete it, with nr 5 giving a lot of LF and some decent additional DPS. Right now, I may be pessimistic, but except for the potential chill play, I don’t see GS competing with dagger/warhorn.

How good would be Plague form in the middle of the enemy zerg? I would assume blinds and weakness to be quite strong there, would that on its own be a justification for necro in the frontline (despite long CD)?

Maybe moving FiG there so that it does not compete with the great SR traits…

More seriously, as I indicated in my initial answer to OP, CC is my main fear. But if we try to compare to warrior
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Warrior_-_Shouts_Frontliner

the only usable stability I see is balanced stance, 5 stacks on 40s CD.

Our own stability is 8s pulsing stability from DS on a 17s CD + 1 stack from foot in the grave.

From what I understand, the main source of stability is AOE stab from guardian: 5 stacks on 24s CD
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Guardian_-_AH_Frontliner

As a necro, we can benefit from the guardian stability obviously. So I don’t think it’s too bad.

PS: as stated above, I don’t play frontline so I may miss some important details.

Well we have a 120s CD, 2s activation skill which gives up to 10 stab for 10s….
Ok, I leave…

I agree with Dawdler. Berserker is the way to go for both PvE and WvW zerg. There is not much love for necros in organized PvE, but if you bring conditions, you’re seriously at risk to be kicked out!

If your limitation is the gear, crafting/buying exotic is not so expensive, especially if you count dungeon armors and stuff. Ascended is expensive but only mildly stronger. I always have one berserker/scholar and one rabid/nightmare set. Buy berserker, then do twilight arbor dungeon or PvP reward track and you get rabid/nightmare directly without wasting any additional money. Then you can use the rabid set in roaming WvW

Should we organize a mesmer/chronomancer event during the beta week-end?

I have a noob question: do nearby death regenerate life force even if you’re in DS?
What I am curious is how long will we manage to stay on DS. With the reaper shroud AA regenerating LF we probably will have more regen than in usual DS, but obviously we will take massive damage…

@Embolism
I usually shatter like crazy (which may be a bad thing): MW as a first shatter, then CoF and back to MW (if needed). They usually use their cleanse before the CoF which is of course ideal for me. Added to chaos storm, duelist volley and confusing image, this often brings the duel to an end except for defensive classes (guardian/ele/necro). A good necro is obviously a very bad idea to engage as condi, but even bad/average minion masters are difficult. I usually keep a fairly mobile role and thus avoid if possible the 1v1 against bunkers. So I think I fulfill about the same role as burst shatter, possibly mildly less effective but I enjoy it more.

@Vydahr
You make a strong point. Your build is indeed probably more survivable than a BM one. In particular Unholy Sanctuary as an emergency “back to shroud” since I really suspect the shroud CD will be our biggest enemy.

But then it comes back to my question: what are we bringing to the table? I doubt we will out-damage warriors, and yet they also bring potent utilities (I don’t even mention guardians). Sure, any additional member on a zerg can be an improvement, but why wouldn’t we stay backline where we already shine? I was just hoping that a bit of vampiric support could be a worthy addition and that a commander would ask at least one of the necros to spec reaper and join the dead zone

I think we can’t go much further until we put our hands on the reaper (which fortunately is soon). We’ll see how survivable we end up being, how damaging and ultimately how useful.

Sad most of us are probably not on the same server. Since I’ve never been frontline (I mostly play mesmer and necro, so never had the occasion before), I’ll probably die fast but it will be a nice experience

I didn’t expect it to be that slow. Ok, well if it’s the case I really think the GS is not properly balanced. With such slow animations, we should get a higher reward…

@Drarnor Kunoram
Assuming you strike foes below 50%, your DPS is essentially gravedigger full-time which with current numbers seems more than dagger AA. On the other hand, if they really reduce it to 3 targets, gravedigger loses potency because 1) less targets 2) less chance to hit one below 50% to recharge it. The pulsing blind/cripple on GS is also a reason to take it on its own…

For the well, I was tempted with the “utility” wells more than pure damage. Corruption, darkness or power can all be useful. I love corruption in particular for being what necro shine at and potentially deadly in a zerg. But shouts may indeed be best.

@Vydahr
While DM makes you more survivable, it is very selfish. You don’t benefit much your party. Also, tougness becomes less important the more you have. On the other hand, the siphons from BM will heal you. In particular, I’m not too afraid for my life while in DS but rather for my life out of it. Being able to heal (a little) while still in DS means I have more life when I pop out of DS to survive until it is available again.

@Nike
I disagree, on most classes, a Soldier build gives less damage than a Dire build. If it was not for that, conditions builds would not exist or be as successful in roaming for example. Sure, a berserker gives more damage than a Dire, and actually, usually a bit more than a sinister or rampager because of the damage multipliers you can pull in PvE. The key is that a Dire is not dishing that much less than a Sinister!

@Sigmoid thanks
Then shouts build are potentially interesting indeed. I’m still hesitant with wells… The team protection + life steal from trait is strong, and boon corruption or blinds is always nice (of course, our non-reapers from the back line should give us some of that)… Any opinion well (and/or spectral armor) vs shouts?

I don’t think the necro in abjured is a handicap. The lack of mobility makes it an easier target than a thief obviously, but they also take him out first because they know he is dangerous in a team fight because of the boon hate and condi transfers.

@Johannes
dagger is only 2 targets max + DPS is lower than GS. Warhorn is good, so if staff is not so useful (but I feel it would be), we can trade it for dagger and open the push with locust swarm before switching to GS.
Life force regen should not be a problem with all people dying around, the limit to our survivability will be the cooldown of the shroud.

@lujate a full shout could be fun, especially with rune of the trooper. But I’m not convinced by shouts vs wells + spectral armor. “Nothing can save you!” could be interesting both the vuln and the unblockable, “You are all weaklings” is guaranteed 20 might on you + weakness around, “suffer” we’ll have to see how damaging this is… Definitely something we could think about. Do you think rune of trooper will work considering our shouts don’t affect allies?

This is what I’ve been playing with recently. I won’t pretend it’s the best, but it makes me happy. I’m using duelist’s discipline despite the bug because I just love the interrupt part of it. I cannot play mesmer without some interrupts, which is also why I don’t play torch.
The missing utility is arcane thievery.

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-R3SZ;1kUV11;0JVV71;9;4TUW;0238258058;9;1hoHAhoHA2v

A good question is what would reaper bring by being frontline. It’s not just about trying to emulate a warrior. Reaper will only find its place in the frontline zerg meta if he brings something warriors/guardians don’t.

For the damage, we’ll have to wait and see.

Vampiric Presence seems like a nice addition. I don’t know how effective it would be, but adding healing is always a plus. Last Rites may be useful, but the cleave + AOE will eventually finish people anyway. I didn’t take transfusion, but it may be better than vampiric ritual (so basically extra healing or protection+well CD?). I was a bit afraid of the teleport part, if you stack all your downed friends in the same place for a cleave, it may be bad…

An interesting question is if we will be able to bomb the enemy back lines with our wells while we are in the frontline (and if this is useful in the first place). But we will be the only frontline class with access to strong range AOEs.

Yes, I didn’t mention it but soldier is definitely the way to go. I’ll have to see about foot in the grave, because if we could use the 50% crits in DS, that would be huge. But I just think the extra stab + stun break is priceless…

TeuthidPurveyor.1970:

Embolism.8106:

You want to swap out of Sceptre ASAP because every Sceptre Clone you create is reducing your DPS. You only rely on #1 for Clones if you’re desperate.

Why do the clones reduce your dps? The only reason I can think of is if you’re trying to keep 3 phantasms alive, which just seems unlikely. I didn’t think people even used the phantasm utilities. Plus, shouldn’t their torment damage be decent?

I think embolism here did not consider condi shatter, and thus scepter clones are awful, staff clones are the damaging ones. But for shatter builds, scepter clones are as good shatter fodder as anything. The torment damage is literally awful though, it has to be mentioned.

TeuthidPurveyor.1970:

tobascodagama.2961:

In order to have respectable damage, though, you need to use Rampager amulet

I hadn’t thought of that. I was tearing my hair out trying to make a decent Carrion or Rabid build, but it would not come together.

Rabid/Carrion is perfectly fine but a shatter build. That is actually what I would advise. But condi-phantasm is probably different.

I haven’t given much thoughts but I would say
Skills:

• main weapon: GS, obvious choice for frontline
• second weapon? staff for disengage?
• healing: Your soul is mine! for the LF
• utilities: may keep a well of 2 (corruption/suffering/power?), spectral armor/walk
• elite: Chilled to the bone! for stability and strong CC if they reduce cast time… Else, plague.

Traits

• Blood Magic: Ritual of Life, Vampiric Presence, Vampiric Rituals
• Soul Reaping: Speed of Shadows, Vital Persistence, Foot in the Grave
• reaper: Relentless Pursuit, Soul Eater (Decimate Defenses?), Blighter’s Boon (Reaper’s Onslaught?)

That can at least be a base to work on…

I think one of the strength of condi necro in roaming is that many (most?) other roamers are also condi. Take all the condi you can, send them back and you have a dead enemy. And if you don’t meet a roamer but someone joining its zerg, he’ll probably be direct damage but unequipped for a 1v1.

Since reaper mostly brings you utilities for melee range (shroud, GS and shouts), are you actually looking for a frontline build?
I will probably try it, but I’m really scared of CC. Better have a few guardian friends around

They said they will have more specialization in the future.

First, staff is definitely a very potent weapon, and in NA competitive play, double ranged mantra shatter (staff, GS, 2 mantras, no DE) is the main mesmer build. Last week’s patch may have killed this build, but still staff is a very useful weapon in both power or condi build.

Scepter is mostly for condis. Condi shatter does not burst people like usual shatter, but it is still very bursty. You obviously won’t 100-0 anyone (except a burn guardian with arcane thievery) but fights are usually rather fast (well, maybe not with eles….). It is definitely strong and I enjoy it a lot.

@Embolism what you’re describing seems to be a build where you expect staff clones to o the damage for you. This may be how condi mesmer was played in the past when clone death was a thing, but now, people are mostly using condi shatter which is as dynamic as usual shatter.

PS: about malicious sorcery, the 15% faster stomp may be a bug (time will tell), but I love it and it is enough for me to tip the balance.

Well maybe I’m playing it bad, but CC-heavy classes hard-counter me (I don’t have foot in the grave and in any case, so little stability). So ranger, often warrior, hammer-guardian are a bit more difficult for me.

I think [Woven] should not be on the AA but on a higher CD skill (3, 4 or 5).
Delusions of Grandeur is quite weak I think.
Drowning Waters: hopefully underwater combat will get a revamp some day so that it won’t be considered a “punishment”
Else, there are a few ideas I like (including the elite).

You could use this thread instead to post it.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/mesmer/Game-Create-Your-Own-Specialization/first

I think the trait would work fine. Mesmers have something like this for example with signets. The life force I added is to make up for the loss of life force on hit for spectral armor and spectral walk.

I think having some evade on spectral would make sense (spectre = ghost = evade attacks). The spectral trait could add “evade attacks during 1s after activating a spectral skill. Gain life force when you evade an attack”

Then, I don’t think we should have mobility as it does not fit the theme, but we should have more stability because it does fit the theme.

Scepter and axe need rework (they are almost unused). Focus may need a bit of improvement too.

The corruptions need rebalancing, they just don’t work well currently. They could focus more on team support (like blood is power) while still fitting the necro theme. One of our corruption should become a stun break.

This being said, saying necro is low tier in PvP is wrong, there is a lot of cele signet in the NA competitive scene.

Since my build only has bleeds as a condition, agony > malice. I didn’t include food in my calculations, and extra condi duration from food is probably not needed indeed.

This one is up-to-date and quite good
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Necromancer_-_Signet_Roamer

The main problem of the necromancer in roaming is that you can’t kite! So you’re definitely good at dueling, but can’t easily escape from a bad-looking fight.

I’m actually surprised we don’t see more necro bunker in high tier PvP. They have high sustain : no/few damage negation/mitigation but high passive sustain and good healing (including LF generation which is a form of healing). And they have many ways to negate stomping (corrupting stability, staff 5, warhorn 4, …) + blood magic is amazing for rezzing.

Well I agree partly with your comments. But it just shows that the other weapons are lackluster! Scepter should make sense over dagger for the additional range if it was stronger (or scepter AND dagger mh swap to complete each other).
Also, GS should be stronger than dagger in order to become our go-to melee damage weapon.
Axe would not be less used than it currently is.

I didn’t want to reduce the coefficients for dagger to make sure people wouldn’t see that as a nerf of the dagger. But yes, more condition and less damage could work.

Currently condi is unviable mostly because of the weaknesses of scepter as a condi weapon (+ staff is not really a condi weapon considering its AA does not apply any condi, although it is still viable in a condi build). Buffing scepter and adding dagger would make a good combo.

That being said, I agree with torment on scepter. But scepter 3 also need a change.

Let’s be quick for once:
Problem: dagger main hand and GS compete in the same field (melee damage). They obviously differ in some aspects but it seems difficult to balance so that one does not completely replace the other in one way or another (the main thing I see balance-wise is in PvP if GS does more DPS but misses more often because so slow).

danger:
the GS is not a “normal” weapon, it is bound to an elite specialization, so you can’t make it steal the place of a core weapon since not everyone will have the expansion/not everyone want to give up a trait line for it/future elite specializations won’t be able to use the GS

Solution: make dagger a hybrid weapon. You could actually keep essentially the same damage coefficients as currently but add some conditions to it. For example for the AA, if you keep the coefs and add 3 bleed (6s base) and 1 poison (4s base) you can do the maths and see that the damage of dagger is about the same in power as it is in rampager/sinister.

pros:
We would thus have a niche for each weapon
GS: melee damage
dagger: melee condi/hybrid
axe: mid-range damage
scepter: mod-range condi/hybrid
staff: long range utility/defensive

also, this change would not invalidate the dagger in power builds for those who don’t have the expansion or simply prefer dagger vs GS
but it would open options for condi builds

cons
Somehow I think people won’t like the idea of changing the dagger since it’s our most used weapon (with staff), almost present in every build. But I really think there is no downside to it.

future
I think the poison/bleeding fits very well with the theme of the dagger. But scepter already applies those. Many people already argue for a revamp of the scepter, and maybe some new conditions attached to it would be nice to cover more different type (terror? torment?).

So many mesmers in the necro forum. Is it me or the mesmer and necro community have a large overlap?
Anyway, as a main mesmer and noob necro, I would say that boon corruption is what I like the most with necro. Sure mesmers can remove boons fairly well, but corrupting is a obviously better. Then the survivability while dealing “ok” damage with the cele signet build is very nice. I also love plague form in a team fight or how to incapacitate the whole enemy team with blinds and weakness while your own team kill them.

Just for comparison, the DPS I estimate with the rampager hybrid with might, vuln and banner is about 17k.
http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Mesmer_-_Dungeon_Hybrid

Note that this is not the optimal average DPS because I favor short intense damage (for example using sigil of bursting) over long condis (sigil of malice).

@tobascodagama
I don’t like to think like this. People often stay “the advantage of condi damage is that even when you don’t attack, the enemy still gets damage”. This is a weird way of looking at it. The damage was applied when you attack. Sure it takes time to actually happen, but while you don’t attack, you do no damage, there is no way around. All the calculations we are doing are average DPS, so it’s as if the damage was applied immediately on hit. The loss for not attacking is exactly the same whether you’re in condi or in direct damage.

The only difference, is the damage from conditions is lost after the enemy dies (i.e. the remaining stacks on him are lost).

I’m very confused by your maths here… I may be wrong but I just don’t get it. Also I’m not sure where you are in your updates…

Winds of Chaos attack speed: .75s/attack
2 hits per attack
Chance of bleed per hit: .33
Expected bleed stacks per attack: .66

Here you used 0.75s/attack because you counted 2 hits every 1.5s attack (you then fixed to 1.32 but does not matter). But if you do so, you have to count 0.33 bleed every 0.75s and not 0.66. It is 0.66 every 1.5s

If I do the calculation with this, I get an average 7 stack bleeds and 1 stack burn for a total staff DPS of 2002.37 (using your numbers).

I haven’t looked at the rest but this already is a big difference

I think the problem is
1) Except for a few insane burning, most condi skills deal less damage than a direct damage skill. But you have more ways to remove them (cleanse + healing instead of just healing) so direct damage > condi damage
2) you can have full condi damage with only 1 stat instead of 3 for direct damage. So you can be more defensive while dealing only slightly less damage than a zerker.

1 (cleanse) and 2 (condi=defensive) balance each other somewhat for 1 vs 1. On the other hand:

3) AOE cleanse, so 1 vs 1 is balanced, 5 vs 5 is not because 5 people can have almost full cleanse up-time.

I did not understand fully. Can we use our “old” necros to become reaper for a little while or do we have to make a beta-reaper?