Guild Wars 2

As a long-term Necro player I have to live through repeated cycles of…

1. Excitement
2. Disappointment
3. Denial
4. Anger
5. Apathy
6. More Anger
7. Abandonment
8. Withdrawal

I´m at apathy now. Please don´t make me angry again.

Wouldn´t bother me if they ditch the leaderboards again tbh and that legendary back thingy is ugly as furry charr balls anyways =P

The FX changes are great news to me personally though. Let´s just hope it´ll be done properly.

Garimeth.8725:

I definitely don’t disagree with you, but it helps to be a little forward thinking. My guild is very chill, and we’ll probably just try it with whatever classes we have. I also as a rule only invite players, not classes. That said… I do have guild members asking me about what class I want them to play, or what we’ll need. Helps to be a little ahead of those questions.

Yeah, I can definitely see why a bit of forward-thinking theorizing can be beneficial to many people that haven´t already fully prepared for HoT. I for example started preping in March/April and now I am in a position to pretty much gear myself up for whatever is necessary.

I just don´t think anything can be set in stone yet, which is why I´m reluctant to make any definitive predictions about class compositions, specific builds etc.etc..

As a general advise I think it is good to have one character for each class you enjoy playing leveled, outfitted in current meta gear and with ~170 Hero Points ready to unlock the Elite Spec if necessary. What I personally also did is getting the stuff ready to make each a full set of ascended Sinister gear (I already had a medium one done) and some kind of “healer” set (Zealot´s, Cleric´s, …. ?) AND to have the gold/mats ready to make a third ascended set for the possibly new stat combinations that maybe will be introduced with HoT.

On top of that, a bit of theory-crafting surely won´t hurt I guess, so please continue =)

Rym.1469:

10 Bearstaff Druids

#newmeta

Daze for days, huh? :>

Sigmoid.7082:

Skoigoth.9238:

Not necessarily, I think. Dhuumfire requires shroud camping and I´m pretty sure that RS with dhuumfire < Dagger #1 and Gravedigger below 50% spam in power builds, generally speaking (I´m not 100% sure about the actual rotations yet).

You are wrong about this because of the difference in weapon strength. In actuality RsAuto = GS auto ~= dagger auto ( within 1%) . Adding dhuumfire to this actually make RS auto the strongest of the lot.

Actually I was only talking about Gravedigger spam sub 50% health, not GS auto.

What I found to be working best for me personally last BWE was going Spite/BM/Reaper with Dagger/x + GS. My rotation looked roughly like this: Above 50% health I kept on camping Dagger + using Warhorn #5 or Focus #4/VampSig/Wells/RS #2 and #5 on cd, below 50% spam Gravedigger (no GS/RS autos unless I missed the target) + GS #4/VampSig/Wells/RS #5 on cd and I occasionally mixed in GS #3, RS #4 and Lich Form when appropriate.

As I said, I´m not sure if this is anywhere close to optimal (I didn´t do much calculating, mostly just testing and gut feeling), but in the group I played with last BWE this is what had the best results with. Soul Reaping is most likely the better choice in solo situations, because you want to stay in shroud for the might and vuln stacking, but in decent groups Blood Magic is the way to go I think (a year ago I´d never thought I´d actually recommend BM, ever, good job Mr. Gee lol).

As a side note, I also expect the devs to tune down burning a bit with HoT, which would probably rule out Dhuumfire as a DPS boost in power builds. But that´s just speculation on my part of course. I guess we´ll have to wait and see how things pan out =)

Sigmoid.7082:

Reaper+dhuumfire > vamp aura in terms of total DPS unless your group is doing an unrealistic amount of hits per second.

Not necessarily, I think. Dhuumfire requires shroud camping and I´m pretty sure that RS with dhuumfire < Dagger #1 and Gravedigger below 50% spam in power builds, generally speaking (I´m not 100% sure about the actual rotations yet).

I don´t want to stifle discussion here, but I don´t think we can have a reasonable meta discussion yet considering that with HoT there will probably be another round of balance changes to both core and elite specs (e.g. Herold seemed pretty OP), maybe also condition damage (Burning is too strong when compared to other conditions) and because we´ve literally only seen the first boss of the first wing so far.

If you want to recruit people for your raid group right now, I´d say make sure they are decent at playing multiple classes, have their characters geared properly and are willing to spend the time and effort to change gear, builds and class if needed.

The rest can be figured out later =)

The DPS meta for dungeons and fractals most likely wont change (for +50 maybe, we don´t know yet). And yeah, I guess ppl still kick Necros from time to time. Dungeons just bore me to death at this point, so I pretty much only do fractals these days and I personally haven´t been kicked in ages.

For raids it´ll depend on your raid group/guild probably and whether or not they are ok with you playing Necro/Reaper. I don´t think people will be successfully completing raids with PuGs for quite some time (if they are “PuGable” at all), so don´t worry about that for now.

I like the idea of 2 – 3 rares (read “ectos”), with the chance for exotics. Maybe even skins unique to each dungeon? That´s just wishful thinking of course…

Luke.4562:

Make way, adulescents.

A large well similar to Elementalist’s Static Field and Necrid Trap from Lupicus.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Static_Field_
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Giganticus_Lupicus

A more proper Unholy, Dimensional Cage stopping people inside and maybe draining large amounts of health to heal the Necro and his teammates.

This would effectively combo with Wells, Minions, Marks, Epidemic…
Also it would give control in WvW, and solve some PVP focusfire and chasing problems Necro has.

… Yes. Please!

Mine looks fine. What are your graphic settings? When I run lower settings because of lag I noticed that the lantern sometimes “freezes” in a horizontal position. No violent shacking though.

Skoigoth.9238:

Kordash.2197:

How much time for completion on average for 50 with your necro in pugs ?

Depends on the fractal RNG and the pug. I don´t pay much attention to the time tbh, maybe 40 min. – 1 h. average for a 50 I´d say (I usually have to refresh my buff food once and leave fractals with a couple minutes remaining).

Just to be a bit more specific, just did my daily 50 run. Party comp was 2 Necro (one was me), 1 War, 1 Ele and 1 Engi. We rolled Swamp, Uncategorized, Cliffside and Molten Duo. Took us 47 min. to complete.

Kordash.2197:

How much time for completion on average for 50 with your necro in pugs ?

Depends on the fractal RNG and the pug. I don´t pay much attention to the time tbh, maybe 40 min. – 1 h. average for a 50 I´d say (I usually have to refresh my buff food once and leave fractals with a couple minutes remaining).

Casmurro.9046:

But pugs still like to kick rangers and necros on sight, even when they thenselves play non-meta builds.

I pug fractals daily on my Necro (usually 50, ~40, ~30) and I haven´t been kicked in ages. Maybe I´m just lucky, but probably it has more something to do with the fact that I read and respect lfg-descriptions

NeXeD.3042:

Actually happen to like WoB on a reaper, would be amazing I’d they reverted some of its healing though

For Cleansing Bolts you mean? Yeah, with all the Whirl finishers that might actually be a thing…. But having a Water Field would still be better overall I think.

I agree with OP, the much wanted projectile block was a step in the right direction, but CPC is still totally not worth to take most of the times imo.
The self-weakness, combined with the reduced duration of the field, is really bad, especially in power builds that would have to slot an extra utility JUST to get rid of the weakness.

Vuln, poision or bleed would all be better on this skill I think.

Not a fan. Nightfall being a Dark Field is fine.

I´d much rather see Well of Blood finally being changed to being a kittening Water Field =P

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’d really love to use one of those third party tools, but I care far too much about my account for it to be banned. If only Anet could at least let us know their stance on these particular tools, it’d put the issue to rest.

That said, any of this functionality natively supported in-game would be great, but I know it’d be on the bottom of their priority list if they’d even consider it in the first place.

^ Pretty much this, even though I personally think it shouldn´t be super low on their priority list IF they are considering it at all (which I highly doubt tbh).

I´m curious, did anyone here tried to run Condi Ranger? I wonder how hard it is to keep the spirits up with all AoE-stuff going on.

Mitch.4781:

But that isn;t really what annoyed me most of all. I just felt the whole instance felt static and lifeless. there was no sense of wonder of awe of “oh wow we are in the raid!”. You have the 3 coloured Guardians all stacked behind each other in an extremely bland environment. Compare this setting to the majesty of verdant brinks itself and it’s hard to not feel a little disappointed. The trash/mini bosses all have extremely awkward animations and move like they are walking in tar.

So your major concerns are that you don´t like the environmental design and the lack of an epic cutscene or something like that?

Mitch.4781:

I was also irritated by the way we all had to swap from power to condi and back again too, <snip>

Nobody has to swap gear back and forth, especially not in between fights. Before you start you communicate with each other, allocate roles, get your builds ready and then you are good to go for the rest of the encounter. I really don´t see the problem.

Yeah, Reaper was doing pretty OK for me as well, although Gravedigger still feels a bit too clunky for my tastes. It is really annoying if you miss with it because the boss moves away from you or when you have to cancel it to dodge a displacement field.

Rabid Dingo.7053:

Thoughts on Ranger – Spirits
The loss of mobile spirits, and the loss of on-death effects, combined with the small range on the activated skills means outside of PVE content that allows us to stand in one spot for an extended duration (such as in boss arenas), they don’t serve a purpose, and when you do summon them, they die faster than you can activate their kamikaze-skill

My thoughts would be to make them appear similar to the staff wisps, but with identifiable features. Given their similarity to banners (passive aura bonuses to allies), it would make more sense to have them untargetable, and they don’t actively attack enemies, so aside from avoiding them when the active skill is used, they don’t pose a direct threat like phantasms, gyros, minions or elementals. Obviously the storm spirit daze duration would need to be decreased, and the cooldown may need to be increased to make them less spammable, but it would give the druid more options for support with auras, and make the active skills more accessible as they’d be centered on the ranger.

I feel the same way. As is they die way to quickly and in certain situations you can´t even circumvent that with clever positioning.

You can always just do the dungeon on your main and switch to your alt at the last boss. That´s how many people power-level their alts and nobody has a problem with that generally.

evnw.9324:

from what I’ve seen from the raid content playable this weekend the first 3 mini bosses require you to strip boons and another is only vulnerable to condis which reaper can pump out very nicely so yes I think it will be optimal to include reaper in raids.

The problem with boon stripping is that Thieves and especially Mesmers are much better at it. They can do it without specifically having to trait or slot certain utilities for it, while simultaneously bringing other valuable things to the party.

Mobs that are only vulnerable to conditions aren´t helping us either unfortunately. Necros are good at controlling conditions, but our condi application is very slow. I haven´t played around much with condi Reaper, but I´m pretty sure that e.g. Engineers and Rangers still outclass us in that department as well (I´ve also heard people theorycrafting about crazy things like Venom-share Daredevils =P).

That being said, this is purely about optimization. As is, optimized groups have not been necessary to complete anything in PvE. Don´t let the fact that Necro currently isn´t part of that turn you off from playing the class!

Necro is a very selfish class, it lacks meaningful team support and utility. We have some, but it is either very niche or other classes simply do the same things much better.
In addition to that, our damage is on the low end when compared to other professions as well. Reaper addresses that to a certain extent, but it is not nearly enough to catch up I feel.

On the other side, we still don´t know yet what exactly raids and 50+ fractals have in store for us. Maybe our natural sustain and self-sufficiency will give us an edge over other professions in certain scenarios, but we´ll have to wait and see I guess.

Viable? Yes.

Keep in mind, pretty much everything is viable in this game, but viable =/= optimal, so some people might not want to have you in their party for various reasons.

Sinister of course :^)

The particle clusterkitten on bosses is by far the thing that has been annoying me the most ever since I started playing this game. An option to turn off particle effects selectively would be an absolutely fantastic QoL feature and make me happy beyond measure!

Never.8147:

Skoigoth.9238:

I really don´t want to sound insensitive since some people in my personal milieu are suffering from severe mental health issues themselves (and it sucks, nothing you should be making fun of), but I hope this is just a troll post.

Do you think people in a wheelchair are offended because one of the movement impairing conditions in this game is called cripple, which can be used as a pejorative term as well?

It´s ridiculous, you are taking things out of context big time OP.

Honestly I hope I won’t have to resort to the chinese water torture metaphor. Please don’t make me resort to the metaphor.

I cannot/do not intend to make you do anything.

All I´m saying is that it seems ridiculous to me to take the names of a halloween-themed set of dyes in a video game and somehow relate those to real world mental health issues, even though it is absolutely clear that these names are just a reference to the general flavor/lore surrounding GW2´s Halloween festivities.

I really don´t want to sound insensitive since some people in my personal milieu are suffering from severe mental health issues themselves (and it sucks, nothing you should be making fun of), but I hope this is just a troll post.

Do you think people in a wheelchair are offended because one of the movement impairing conditions in this game is called cripple, which can be used as a pejorative term as well?

It´s ridiculous, you are taking things out of context big time OP.

What a great thread! Thanks everybody for introducing yourselves and sweeten my breakfast

#mademyday

Jerus.4350:

Matt Stacey.7415:

You’re thinking dungeons, where everything can be steamrolled by stacking in a corner

How do you do this? I tried standing in a corner one time and I sat there for an hour and I still didn’t complete it. What am I doing wrong?

You can´t exploit on Necro, we are not meeta.

Matt Stacey.7415:

You’re thinking dungeons, where everything can be steamrolled by stacking in a corner

Actually, I don´t

I´m just pretty sure that raids wont be so hard that decent players will be forced to swap to stats as defensive as Soldier´s, especially not when playing Necro.

Taking more defensive traits and utilities? Sure, I´ll probably just swap some in tomorrow to test the water. PVT gear being necessary? Very, very unlikely.

I´d be really surprised if Berserker wont be a feasible option for Necros in coordinated groups anymore. A mix of Berserker and Valkyrie/Cavalier maybe if you don´t feel 100% comfortable running full-on glasscannon, but Soldier?!

PVT gear and the like sounds a bit excessive.

/inb4 Lightning Hammer becomes the new Ice Bow

I don´t think that cranking up our damage would change much about our (currently non-existent) position in optimized group compositions. I mean, look at Mesmers/Chronos. Their dps is even worse than ours, but they pretty much already have their spot in the new meta secured because of their utility and support capabilities (portal-, quickness-, alacrity-bots).

More dps wont really help us, unless it is an absolutely insane damage boost that would put us above and beyond of what all relevant classes are capable of now. That is not going to happen of course, because it would probably break Necro in other areas of the game (sPvP, WvW, Solo PvE).

But, since we don´t really know yet how raids will be like, I think it´s to early for a definitive verdict. Who knows, depending on how “challenging” raids actually are, maybe our natural sustain will warrant us a spot in organized parties (probably not, but one can always dream =P).

@Drarnor Kunoram: Yeah, kinda sad, but true =/ Although, I think MH Dagger is still way better off than any of the weapons I mentioned (expect Staff maybe, idk, that´s debatable).

Falcon.8713:

We don’t need any buffs, we get reaper ????

I wish it were that simple, but it´s not. The addition of Reaper doesn´t magically fix all of the issues the base profession has.

Edit: To add to your list OP, I think we really need reworks of/buffs to some weapons, mostly Axe, Scepter, OH Dagger, Focus and maybe even Staff.

I recommend checking out Brazil´s build and advanced tactics videos.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrzL2tyd59u6gm8pO-MjjEgSBbZEiOmJ2

Other than that, what are you struggling with in particular? Without being given any specifics, it´s kinda hard to give you more than general advice.

Ithamir.5928:

I think I may have made up my mind. Viability is more important to me than cosmetic is. Too bad that racials have such a big impact on gameplay. Unless you guys think that Reaper of Grenth will be nerfed… Ahhh I’m so torn.

I find it interesting you see it that way, considering we are one of the classes that already has access to unblockable chills. This and the fact that it is a rather fringe-use of the mechanic (not used very much outside of grawl fractal if I´m not mistaken) in my eyes makes the skill almost obsolete for us Necromancers.

Not that I think the skill is bad, I think it´s awesome. I just wouldn´t take it into consideration when I have access to unblockable chills by default (Dark Path) or can switch a trait or two (Greater Marks, maybe even Chilling Darkness + Well of Darkness if you want) to achieve the same thing.

Not to mention that Ice Bows (or Eles in general really) make chill pretty redundant as is anyways.

Edit:

nekretaal.6485:

What does chill do to the legendary imbued shaman?

If you time it right, it prevents him from going into bubble phase again after the first one (because of longer CD from chill), which makes the fight a lot easier.

A lot of people have been suggesting this (or something similar) when the changes that came with the specialization patch first were revealed. I´m all in favor of giving us access to an additional damage modifier, but I think there is a problem.
Curses is supposed to be the go-for condi line. A direct damage boost in the condi line wouldn´t exactly do justice to their new overall design philosophy (“clear direction” for each specialization), so I don´t see something like that happening unfortunately.

I really like this idea as well. I´m not sure how useful it would be in actuality, but it would definitely add an interesting perk to an otherwise rather underwhelming skill (imo).

abc.5790:

sincerely,
an engie main on queue

Grind in and of itself is not something bad. The trick is to make the grind enjoyable and diversified so that it doesn´t actually feel like “grinding” and for the most part GW2 does a good job at that.

The current event however is the exact opposite. It is repetitive, super linear, has a very bad work/reward ratio and, to top it all off, is only available for a limited amount of time.

Big NOPE.

dsslive.8473:

They enver talked about there being no optional grind (for cosmetics and such, not extra power)

Since fashion/cosmetics is GW2´s true endgame, you could argue that grinding for cosmetics is not really optional for a lot of players =P

While the behavior of some people is quite sad indeed, GW2 is an online game after all. What did you expect?

If the clusterkitten that is going on right now really annoys you to a point where you can´t enjoy yourself anymore:

• Turn off /map and /say chat during large open world events
• Don´t try to argue with rude/angry/trollish people in chat, it is pointless
• If you did and they start whispering you, block them, report them and move on
• Or just stay away from the event maps altogether, you are not missing out on much anyways. The work/reward ratio is horrible and the “gameplay” (aka tag events until you reach 20 stacks and then afk) is kinda meh.

Problem solved.

MithranArkanere.8957:

• See anyone downved in the event with the explosive pods? Leave them be. If you revive them they’ll take the pods. The enemies do not count towards the event, only damaging the vine with pods. After a couple of explosions that hit the vine, leave.
• Do not pick the hammer to repair the siege machines. The enemies do not count for the event either, and if you repair the siege machines you’ll have a short time after removing the hammer before you can use the siege. So instead run to someone else repairing, and steal the siege from them, shot a couple of shots at the vine, then leave.
• On the events with the shields, save all your skills to do damage to the vine after the shields are down after others take down the shields, then leave.

Add “find a save corner and go afk/play the TP/beat the meat until the event finishes once you´ve reached your 20 stacks” and I think we´ve covered it all =)

If you go for Norn, Khazuhl Zerkerbane.

Talking about insults… like kitten, motherkittener and kitten?
(Edit: kitten you automatic censor function! Well, if you´ve watched the video in question you know what I mean)

Seriously, if you want to get a point across and add some entertainment value to your content, you don´t need to make excessive use of slurs to do so. All that does is distract people from the actual content and stir up turmoil, even if you flag it as “parody” beforehand.

So, Nemesis, I can see and appreciate the work you put into your videos and I think you have a point there, but the way you try to deliver that point is cringeworthy.
I really doubt that the gross your followers (especially the vocal fraction of them) actually get what you are trying to say, because they are too busy jacking off listening to you “shoing dem filty eltistz meeta zerkzz lololol!!!11”.

Listening to you on Teatime when you where on the other day did a way better job of getting that point of yours across, while simultaneously being less vile. Maybe you should take that into consideration for future content.

Rest in Pepperonis Reaper shouts

Suppose I´d run condi Necro in PvE (which I´m not currently), my build would probably look something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNArYWn0ICV3gV2AO2A83gjehC20FQAEj6JoCodxYcsA-TxRAABXqEUhDBAAPBArV/BblfEu/g0nAQfQAgDgdrbd3Nw4jP+4jPe7u7u7u7ulCAmlVA-e

Utility skill slots are somewhat flexible and can be adjusted as needed. The only reason for choosing the ones I did is for the might stacking, but the might stacking via popping signets/BiB on CD feels kinda gimmicky.
Regarding damaging conditions, we can only efficiently stack and maintain Bleeds + a bit of Poison and Torment, but the ramp-up on the bleeds is super slow when compared to e.g. Warrior.
The SR Adept traits and Dhuumfire suck. We basically only spec into SR because BM and DM are even worse for PvE condi builds. By speccing into SR we get at least faster recharge of DS skills. Which is fine I guess, because we only want to flash DS for Weakening Shroud, Furious Demise and Tainted Shackles. No Life Blast spamming recommended, although it´d be still decent-ish damage if we, for some weird reason, really had to since we are using Sinister gear.

All in all kinda “meh” in my opinion =/ My guess would be that momentarily both Rangers and Guardians have better condi setups than this. However I´d personally stick to Engineer or Warrior, both classes have very strong and fun-to-play condition builds for PvE currently.

/my2cents