Guild Wars 2

Softspoken.2410:

Skyro.3108:

Weakness if very underrated in pvp. Even if a player has 50% crit and 50% crit dmg, 1/3 of their damage direct damage is from non-crits, which means it reduces their DPS by 1/6 on average. Plus the reduces energy gain is pretty big as well.

But IMO both weakening shroud and mark of evasion should have no cooldowns. Anything that ups the synergy of DS traits to make the near death trait more appealing is a plus IMO, it will open up more viable builds. And why mark of evasion has a 10s cooldown I have no idea since necros can only dodge once every 10s anyway since we have no access to vigor.

In that scenario, weakness would reduce their over-all damage by 1/12th, or 8.3%, not 1/6th. (50% reduction to 50% of non-crits, so 25% * 1/3rd = 1/12) For reference, someone with 5% crit chance and no bonus crit damage takes around a 23% reduction in their output damage. The reduced endurance gain can be pretty big though, less dodges, less big spells (epidemic, for example) whiffed.

I have no idea what the logic is behind Mark of Evasion’s internal recharge. It’s also one of the few “on dodge” traits that triggers while out of combat.

Oops you’re right. Forgot to factor in the 50% of 50% of non-crits.

Certainly Necros are bad roamers, but they are not alone in that aspect. Really, only the Thief and Ele can reliably disengage at will (you can possibly make an argument for Mesmers as well depending on the utilities they bring).

Like I said above I don’t really follow the EU scene very closely, but a cursory glance at their comps seems to suggest very little condi damage and more focus on mobility with Thieves/Eles/Mesmers being very well represented, so it is not too surprising to not see many Necros because they currently fill a fairly niche role (condi cleave and anti-boon/condi support).

I don’t think it has much to do with the abundance of condi cleanse though. Players have been running with heavy condi cleanse for ages, but you can still burn teams down with heavy condi. And some of the most popular condi cleanses in the game have been nerfed pretty hard (Empathic Bond/Cleansing Water).

I do think the old school Rabid Amulet with earth sigils and rez sig and stay at max range old school condi Necro build is a thing of the past now. Once I switched over to Carrion Amulet with Geomancy Sigils I’ve never looked back. You can get some wicked condi burst with it.

Haha wow that’s good to know. I’ve still been using it assuming it still required you to be looking directly at your target, on a level field, standing on one foot, avoiding blades of grass, etc.

lol… I never paid much attention to the EU scene. I guess there’s not much condi cleave teams in EU?

Weakness if very underrated in pvp. Even if a player has 50% crit and 50% crit dmg, 1/3 of their damage direct damage is from non-crits, which means it reduces their DPS by 1/6 on average. Plus the reduces energy gain is pretty big as well.

But IMO both weakening shroud and mark of evasion should have no cooldowns. Anything that ups the synergy of DS traits to make the near death trait more appealing is a plus IMO, it will open up more viable builds. And why mark of evasion has a 10s cooldown I have no idea since necros can only dodge once every 10s anyway since we have no access to vigor.

Depends on the stun. If it’s a launch/knockback type skill you have to wait around the second you land back on the floor. All stun breakers work this way.

Softspoken.2410:

Skyro.3108:

There seems to be some weird interaction with transformation skills (i.e. Plague Form) and weapon swap sigils. Exiting transformation skills triggers weapon swap sigils, but sometimes it bugs them out so that they no longer work at all until you load into a new map or you de-equip and re-equip your weapons.

The key word there is “sometimes.” Testing on the dummies in the mists I cannot seem to reproduce the bug, but it happens quite often during the course of actual game play. The reason I believe it has something to do with Plague Form (and more specifically, transformation skills) is that I have no issues with my sigils of geomancy not working when I run Flesh Golem.

I only sPvP however, I do not know if this is an issue in PvE/WvW.

… Okay. Someone else mentioned something very similar to this before, and at the time I dismissed it as a conflict with their bleed on crit sigil. So first of all: what other sigils are you using in your weapons? Because if you’re getting the issue without other sigil interference, then we’re on to something.

I’m using sigils of geomancy on both weapon sets, with a minor corruption on my offhand. There is no sigil interference. Trust me, it is a bug with the transformations because I have absolutely no issues when I run Flesh Golem instead of Plague, using the exact same equipment/trait setup.

I think if they make swapping in/out of transformations not trigger/interact with weapon swap sigils at all that would fix whatever weird coding issue is causing this.

There seems to be some weird interaction with transformation skills (i.e. Plague Form) and weapon swap sigils. Exiting transformation skills triggers weapon swap sigils, but sometimes it bugs them out so that they no longer work at all until you load into a new map or you de-equip and re-equip your weapons.

The key word there is “sometimes.” Testing on the dummies in the mists I cannot seem to reproduce the bug, but it happens quite often during the course of actual game play. The reason I believe it has something to do with Plague Form (and more specifically, transformation skills) is that I have no issues with my sigils of geomancy not working when I run Flesh Golem.

I only sPvP however, I do not know if this is an issue in PvE/WvW.

I thought clones had 3.2k base hp (and phantasms had 2.1k)?

Well from my tests I can confirm that Reaper’s Protection and Fear to Death do NOT share the same cooldown. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that Fear to Death is a terrible trait with an incredibly small radius that is meele-ish range (<240 radius for sure). In real game play it is very likely to proc and not hit anything without you even noticing since it has no animation, and be put on a long cooldown and more or less be incredibly useless.

@Softspoken

I tested Reaper’s Protection on the mid node on Legacy. The radius I eyeballed it to be roughly twice the size of the gtAoE marker of 240 radius skills, which is why I said it is roughly 480. I do know for a fact it is between 240 and 600 radius however.

gimmethegepgun.1284:

Softspoken.2410:

Fistful Of Bacon.3046:

Yes, I’ve done lots of testing with it, and it never seems to work during spvp, but recently I have gotten both of them to work on npcs in heart of the mists, thought i wish the range was mention in the skill because it seems like I’m having to stand right on top of them to get the fear on down to work.

Yeah. It’s tiny, and surprising, but it does make a sort of sense. If the range was say, 600 like unholy feast, it would probably be too huge since it would punish everyone in the fight rather than just the person who CC’d or downed you.

Granted, it doesn’t necessarily hit those people if they apply the trigger from range. But you’d have to make the range like… 900-1200 to guarantee that, at which point it’s just ludicrously big.

If it works on the sparring NPCs in the mists, it should work in actual matches. I don’t know of any bugs/skills that change between those two areas.

They could have made the fear affect a nearby area AND the enemy that downed you.

Yeah they could’ve made it like the fear effect from the 6pc bonus on nightmare runes, which from my tests seem to indicate it is a single target fear that triggers on the target attacking you.

I see this complaint a lot, and IMO I think this stems more from the effectiveness of their passive mechanics (phantasms) than noise (lots of other classes make noise and clutter up the screen). For example, imagine if Mesmers had no phantasms so they could not deal significant damage without actually engaging you in the fight. In this scenario Mesmers might still be annoying due to clones and stealth (along the lines of thieves), but probably a lot less frustrating for players.

IMO I think it would better for the game, from an enjoyment perspective, to reduce the effectiveness of passive mechanics (BM rangers, Phantasm Mesmers, turrets, minions, etc.) and correspondingly increase the effectiveness of their active mechanics and/or make these passive mechanics themselves more active. ANet devs stated that they have these kinds of mechanics because “some players enjoy playing these specs” but honestly they tend to be the least popular specs around. And the ones that are popular are, IMO, more due to their effectiveness than enjoyment factor.

That’s interesting, since Reaper’s Protection has quite a large AoE radius (I’ve estimated it to be ~480). I am going to try to test Fear to Death when I get home.

To me condition necros don’t feel underpowered at all. The trick with condition necros is to alter your traits/gear based on the comp you are facing. There is no one uber condition necro spec, there are so many variations.

Power Necros to me feel a bit niche, where they can shine in particular maps/scenarios and be sub-par in others. It’s the long cooldowns that hold it back the most, IMO.

I’ve never seriously given minion specs a try in tPvP, but playing around in hot join with them they don’t seem terrible in smallish engagements. If they made the Flesh Wurm teleport a longer range (enough to go from mid point to back point), they may be a viable back node defender. I have however taken a liking to Flesh Golem on my condition necro spec. It seems to survive a lot better after the last patch, and it amuses me to no end when I manage to line up their charge vs someone against a wall/ledge and it insta-gibs them

Gaidax.7835:

Skyro.3108:

Gaidax.7835:

Zenith.7301:

Pyroatheist.9031:

The only counter to a phantasm Mesmer in a 1v1 is another phantasm Mesmer.

Since you’re assuming a 1v1 scenario, that allows for specific counter utilities. If I’m going against a condition heavy class, I will take the heal mantra for rapid condition removal through mender’s purity as well as the condition removal mantra. Between the 2 of those, you can remove about 8 conditions every 20 seconds, which is far more than enough to deal with any condition class.

Other classes and builds have different counters. I will change my utilities to suit each individual 1v1. There is no counter to a phantasm Mesmer with utilities set up for your class. If you catch the Mesmer with poorly set up utilities, you have a chance, although the build is still immensely powerful.

So how do you kill P/D thieves that are getting free cnd heals and resets off your illusions?

With P/D thieves it’s not just their conditions — it’s the mini unload from stealth opener they can chain while using basilisk to stun to land the cnd with steal.

Stall them with your own stealth, dodging and ports… At some point soon you will have 2 duelists up – the moment thief unstealths he eats 8k burst and 10+ stacks of bleed, while you are just sitting invulnerable in Blurred Frenzy and the best part is that he won’t avoid it by cc’ing the Mesmer.

Thieves’ strength is also their big weakness really. They attack and then they NEED to go to stealth for a couple of seconds to recover. While they stealth around, phantasms just get their attack cd back up and the moment he appears to attack they just instantly unload on him everything they have.

If you time it right with Null Field, he will also get 15 stacks of confusion too

This is PvP we’re talking about here right? You guys all make it sound like Phantasm attacks are not predicatable and easy to dodge/LoS because you know, they are NPCs after all. Also FYI iDuelist attacks are not 100% projectile finishers (it is 20%), so unless you hit the RNG jackpot you are not getting 15 stacks of confusion on anybody. Let’s have less theorycraft and more actual game experience shall we?

The fact of the matter is Phantasm Mesmer’s strength lies in smallish skirmishes, in the 2vs2 or 3vs3 size fights, where the fight is just hectic enough that you lose track of the Phantasms while at the same time you team doesn’t quite have enough AoE to destroy all the Phantasms quickly. IMO any strong sustain build could likely outlast Phantasm Mesmers in 1vs1s.

In case you did not know from your “actual game experience”, Duelist’s Discipline also turns Phantasmal Duelist attacks into 100% projectile finisher.

So much for your “actual game experience”, lol.

Haha touche. Although the general point still stands on what kind of terrible thief would allow double iDuelist to open on him when he pops out of stealth while sitting in a Null Field.

Gaidax.7835:

Zenith.7301:

Pyroatheist.9031:

The only counter to a phantasm Mesmer in a 1v1 is another phantasm Mesmer.

Since you’re assuming a 1v1 scenario, that allows for specific counter utilities. If I’m going against a condition heavy class, I will take the heal mantra for rapid condition removal through mender’s purity as well as the condition removal mantra. Between the 2 of those, you can remove about 8 conditions every 20 seconds, which is far more than enough to deal with any condition class.

Other classes and builds have different counters. I will change my utilities to suit each individual 1v1. There is no counter to a phantasm Mesmer with utilities set up for your class. If you catch the Mesmer with poorly set up utilities, you have a chance, although the build is still immensely powerful.

So how do you kill P/D thieves that are getting free cnd heals and resets off your illusions?

With P/D thieves it’s not just their conditions — it’s the mini unload from stealth opener they can chain while using basilisk to stun to land the cnd with steal.

Stall them with your own stealth, dodging and ports… At some point soon you will have 2 duelists up – the moment thief unstealths he eats 8k burst and 10+ stacks of bleed, while you are just sitting invulnerable in Blurred Frenzy and the best part is that he won’t avoid it by cc’ing the Mesmer.

Thieves’ strength is also their big weakness really. They attack and then they NEED to go to stealth for a couple of seconds to recover. While they stealth around, phantasms just get their attack cd back up and the moment he appears to attack they just instantly unload on him everything they have.

If you time it right with Null Field, he will also get 15 stacks of confusion too

This is PvP we’re talking about here right? You guys all make it sound like Phantasm attacks are not predicatable and easy to dodge/LoS because you know, they are NPCs after all. Also FYI iDuelist attacks are not 100% projectile finishers (it is 20%), so unless you hit the RNG jackpot you are not getting 15 stacks of confusion on anybody. Let’s have less theorycraft and more actual game experience shall we?

The fact of the matter is Phantasm Mesmer’s strength lies in smallish skirmishes, in the 2vs2 or 3vs3 size fights, where the fight is just hectic enough that you lose track of the Phantasms while at the same time you team doesn’t quite have enough AoE to destroy all the Phantasms quickly. IMO any strong sustain build could likely outlast Phantasm Mesmers in 1vs1s.

Uberkafros.5431:

On the spectral subject anyone knows if it is normal the fact (tested it) that Spectral Attunement does not increase the duration of swiftness of Spectral Walk?

With and without the trait the durations are 33 for the skill.

You’re saying the internal cooldown of Last Gasp (the trait) goes down with Spectral Mastery? I find that hard to believe since the cooldown reduction traits seem to be coded as another skill just with a lower cooldown. I will have to test this.

So word on the street is weapon swap sigils have an odd interaction with transformation skills that cause them to bug out, but I can’t reliably reproduce it with 100% accuracy. I do know that when you exit a transformation it triggers weapon swap sigils however (as well as picking up kits and stuff), which probably should get fixed.

Noerknhar.3826:

I don’t think ANet should remove the possibility to shroudstomp or shroudrez. They should just make it possible without pressing 2 buttons at the same time. People (and guys, seriously, i can both shroudstomp AND dodgejump even tho my shroud is still on F1) can do it anyways, so why not implement it so that everyone can use it?

THAT’s the entire intention of this thread. If elementalists can stomp in mistform, why cant we stomp in deathshroud at least?

Why in the world would you ever leave your shroud hotkey on F1.

Like I said above it’s not a big deal once you get the timing down, but it would be nice to get a dev response on whether it is intended or not. I think DS stomping is better compared with teleport stomps and dodge jumping (core mechanics) than Mist Form/Elixir S (which are utilities with long cooldowns). IMO there is a certain coolness factor involved with these types of things which would be gone if you could just DS whenever mid-stomp.

AFAIK the top 2 dueling specs are BM rangers and perma-stealth D/P thieves running heal/condi cleanse in stealth. They both can outlast Phantasm Mesmers. I’m not really sure where Phantasm Mesmers fall in the pecking order of dueling builds after those two. But those two builds are far and away the best dueling specs IMO.

Condition Necro is the “bread and butter” spec of serious tourney play, so it is advisable to learn the playstyle first in case you ever do venture into tournaments. As a starting point for hot joins I would recommend a tanky condition spec, such as this one:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNArYWjMat7xbib8bKAJFPD9UhvjKEM1D4TndA-TsAg2CrI+S9l7LzXyvsfN8Y5xcBA

It is very tanky and has decent mobility with high swiftness uptime from Spectral Walk, so there is a lot of room for error for those starting out. It also has a lot of flexibility with the traits and amulet choice, so that as you get more comfortable playing the spec you can start to trait/gear for more damage and less survivability.

I am not making an argument, I am stating a fact. It is not that big of a deal once you get the timing down.

You can stomp in deathshroud, you just have to get the timing right (hit stomp a split second after activating DS).

Kravick.4906:

Bhawb.7408:

Actually yes, I believe it has been posted at least on the Mesmer forums.

That thread was complaining about condition damage in general, which mesmers have a weakness against. Funny thing is, engineers do condition damage better, so when they mention necromancers specifically, I kinda laugh.

There is many differences between condi Engis and condi Necros and both have their advantages and disadvantages. If you’re talking about raw condi DPS on a single stationary target yes, condi Engis do more DPS. But Engis also have to fight at closer ranges and are not as strong in terms of AoE condi application so they should be stronger single target. Condi Engi’s also generally lack CC and have no boon removal. There are a ton of differences between the classes honestly, I could go on and on.

But at the end of the day a good condi Necro or Engi would both give a glass cannon shatter Mesmer a good fight. And this is coming from a person who mains Necro and Mes and played a bit of Engi as well.

To the OP: If you like Necro playstyle I suggest you stick with it. It is obvious you have just started to play the class. Research builds and spectate top players. Contrary to popular opinion Necros are not UP. Top teams do runs Necros.

I just tested it. It’s a 1s bleed like it has always been, and it has no noticable ICD. Way to not know your own class.

Barbed Precision always lasted 1s.

I do know however that it did not have a ICD pre-patch, but from your post you seem to automatically assume it has a 2s ICD now without even testing it. Personally I have not tested it post-patch so I have no idea (I’m at work), but to go on such a long rant without even testing to confirm it yourself is well… I assume you are not in a proper frame of mind ATM.

I was quite surprised when I found out yesterday you could actually still gain glory in custom servers. The only thing I can think of on why ANet did this was so they would get more revenue from custom servers from glory farmers, which to me seems like a short-sighted approach.

What they should have done is take a long-term approach and try to funnel as much players through the tournament system to increase the playerbase there, as that is really the only place new players can be motivated to actually play learn to play within the intended tourney structure. This would hopefully increase the health of the sPvP population as a whole, and people who become motivated/hardcore enough to form teams and such would then be incentivized to buy custom servers for their teams.

Well the change obviously was for PvP, so the fact it can still be blocked by certain PvE mobs may be intended. I’m pretty sure I CB’ed through Aegis and Shelter last night though.

Amaterasu.6280:

I’m wondering about the thought process behind “let’s nerf showbow #1 so that it can’t hit anything remotely mobile anymore.”

I personally think the nerf is really extreme. It’s WAY worse than the mug nerf.

If you haven’t tried it yet, shortbow #1 could EASILY be avoided now by simply strafing left and right. It WON’T hit you, and it doesn’t require trying hard neither – it is literally just pressing left and then right. You have more of a chance of landing a far ranged cluster bomb than a auto attack. No decent player would ever just stand in place for you to shoot at…

A ranger can brainlessly shoot fast homing, bleeding arrows, at 1200 range, but thieves shouldn’t be able to hit anything with auto-attack within 900r unless the enemy is brain dead? Well that’s not fair, let’s buff ranger pets as well! That would make things even!

As a thief player who has stayed loyal to playing a thief in tpvp, it’s frustrating when things like this happen…it’s hard enough to play a proper thief in tpvp. (no I don’t mean hotjoins) Now you can’t even sit at range anymore to shortbow, which was one of our only way to play defensively. Now, our only choice is to either put a poison field down or pray for slow cluster bombs to hit a random target. The catch 22 is that we will still be forced to use a shortbow because of it’s amazing mobility and tricks with #5.

Question is: Why should a thieve’s long range weapon set get a nerf like this? I don’t see how it’s justified…no one ever complained about how OP thieves’ shortbow auto attacks were…people complained about how OP hgh engis are, and the devs decided to keep them untouched. People complained about ranger pets, but they decided to buff them, because why not? The pets can ONLY follow you across the map…why not give them more hp?

They don’t want to nerf anything drastically, then pull something like this?

Really?

What got changed exactly? The projectile speed?

Bhawb.7408:

@Skyro, I’m still waiting for a team of 2 well coordinated Terror necros with Epidemic completely destroy team fights by having Epidemic’d fears every 10 seconds.

Not even that, there are tons of things you can do with Epidemic in a coordinated, team environment, due to the fact that conditions spread via Epidemic take into account the caster’s condition damage (which for a condition Necro will obviously be high).

For example, Cry of Frustration is fairly useless for glass cannon shatter Mesmers, but 8 stack of confusion in a 600 radius with Necro’s 1300 condition damage? Or how about those long duration burns from Engineers or Guards? The fact of the matter is that even at the highest levels of tPvP, Epidemic is STILL not being used to its fullest potential, and yet it is still incredibly powerful.

Which highlights another issue on player’s view of Epidemic, in that everybody looks at it from what the Necro can do with it alone (which they can still do a lot with if you know how to time large bleed stacks correctly), but in reality its strength lies in its ability to leverage your team’s conditions.

This is likely due to you using Decoy before a projectile you just fired lands. The instant you deal damage (even from projectiles you fired before you used Decoy) will break stealth. This is particularly noticable with bouncing traits such as Staff 1 or GS 2, as each bounce will deal damage and will break your stealth.

I’m a tPvP’er, not a WvW’er, so I can’t comment on WvW’er dynamics and how effective or ineffective it is there, but in tPvP Epidemic is pretty much standard. This was pre-nerf and post-nerf, and it will continue to be standard on condition necro bars going forward. The fact that it continued to be used in high level tPvP even after the nerf is a testament to its strength. Everybody likes to use hyperbole regarding how hard it is to land Epidemic vs good players or what not, yet Epidemic lands very regularly even at the highest levels of tPvP.

So from my tPvP perspective, I find it a bit silly when people are continuing asking for buffs to Epidemic. A short cast time on Epidemic would make it incredibly powerful combo with Doom, essentially turning Doom into a 20s cooldown, 600 radius AoE fear. Some have also suggested balancing a reduced cast time with an increased cooldown, but that hurts the raw DPS output of Epidemic, which is really the core of what Epidemic is all about.

A bit of a tangent here, but I’ve always found vast inequities in the rates of LF generation of various skills/traits. Soul Marks for instance provides massive LF generation, whereas other traits like Reaper’s Precision are fairly lackluster. I certainly would like to see these balanced out a bit.

garethh.3518:

They should have just scrapped mantra channeling, its a bad mechanic.
No one wants to channel a skill for 3 kittening seconds.
No one wants to be forced to run stealth utility skills or pray they aren’t fighting someone with timely CC.
It doesn’t make gameplay more fun, just punishes/awards you for the enemies spec having or not timely CC.

That’s just a bad mechanic.
Anet, seriosly you can scrap skills, you should scrap bad ideas in the game.
GW2 was released kittenINg waaaay too early and has pretty much no playerbase left.
There is nothing to lose from a trial period as you get all the kitten worked out of the game, only opportunity.

Just scrap it for something like a passive recharge… something like ‘you take 15~% more dmg and can’t regen endurance (possibly instead just ‘can not evade’) for 4~ seconds’.

A change from a flaming long kitten cast time could add a ton more depth to the skill.
No numeric change, Anet seriously I’m not joking, I can’t see any numeric tweak making mantra channeling a good mechanic…

Yeah mantras need some serious re-working. Perhaps make the mantra charges themselves last for a set duration, long enough to keep the original intent of pre-loading it before an engagement, then reduce the cast time to something manageable like 1.5s, and re-balance the activated effect around that.

kschmidt.5901:

Distortion skill: No longer allows capture of control points in all formats or communing in PvP
VS.
Endure Pain skill: Players can now capture points while under its effects

They’ve been removing contesting points while invulnerable from most professions, but suddenly Warriors are specifically updated so they can.

Endure Pain isn’t an invulnerability, it simply reduces direct damage to zero. You can still apply conditions on them, knock them off the point, etc.

I’m also having issues with Sigil of Geomancy proc’ing. It has nothing to do with the internal cooldown or being in combat or anything simple like that. It works fine at the start but then later on completely stops working. I have to re-equip my weapon sets to fix it. I cannot pinpoint exactly what is causing them to stop working. Anybody else having this issue?

My thoughts on the new DS skill is that it should:

1) Be something that allows interesting counterplay between caster and target
2) Be beneficial to all builds
3) Serve a function that is currently not in the game via other skill/traits
4) Not be some so ridiculous as to make the Necro OP, as IMO they are very balanced (from a tPvP)

So in my mind I’m on board with a “cover” condition, one which always gets removed first when condition cleanses are used, with a very similar mechanic to how Parasitic Bond worked in GW1. It should have a small dot component with a long duration (10-20s) and a fast cast time (1/4s) and 5s recharge, with multiple casts simply refreshing the duration. Wh

This will achieve the following things:

1) Allows counterplay on both caster and target by changing the dynamic of the optimal time for when the target should use his condition cleanses due to the thread of the cover hex, instead of simply waiting until he gets stacked to high heaven with conditions and then using cleanses.

2) Would benefit all Necro builds, and in fact open up more viability in Necro builds giving Necros another healing option (more incentive to stat healing power) and buff bunker-ish builds, indirectly improves the Near Death trait (5s DS recharge) which would allow you to apply more cover hexes.

3) Cover hexes were a very interesting gameplay mechanic in GW1 that many players enjoyed. Applying many instances of this new cover hex over many targets would also make Necros very tanky in big group fights vs AoE cleanses.

4) Since the cover hex is simply a small dot in itself, the raw DPS aspect of the skill is very low, and there are still many condition cleansing abilities which remove multiple conditions. Combined with the fact that the Necro must use his DS cooldown to utilize this cover hex I think would make this skill add a very nice flavor/game style to the Necro without making it over the top. It would also appease many old school GW1 Necro fans.

You can make bunker-ish type Mesmers who can hold backpoint, but they feel useless in team fights which is like the whole point of portal’ing backpoint, so that the Mesmer can help mid. Portal on back point may still be viable due to multiple people being able to Portal back, if your team is coordinated enough.

Plus I don’t even remember the last time I even saw a Mesmer on back point. This is just the final nail in the coffin. This is going to force Mesmers to be in more team fights and roam more.

Nice work. Just to add some more tricks/tips on Kylo:

-This also works on the crates on the two outer points, as well as the windows on clocktower (but you preferably do NOT want to destroy all the windows as since they are targetable you can use your Dark Path to teleport from the ground floor up onto the ledge of clocktower).

-You don’t actually need to be very close to hit with your staff auto-attack. With no target, the staff auto-attack travels in a line that corresponds with angle of your view, so it is possible to hit these targets without being right next to them if you aim it correctly with your camera view.

-In regards to the 0% LF at the start of a fight, you can cast Flesh Golem at the start of a fight and swap it out for a free 10% LF, which allows you to activate DS skills at the very first engagement.

First of all you cannot completely remove the downed state. This has been repeated over and over again but anybody with any idea of how these types of games work knows that there must be some mechanic where you can rez teammates. Otherwise coordinated burst would reign supreme and the game would devolve into who gibs who first in team fights since the first kill would cause a snowball effect.

However I do think downed state is pretty unbalanced between the classes. Also the effectiveness in the downed state is also debatable.

I know a lot of people don’t like downed state because it makes it harder to 1v2, and I understand owning noobs can be fun for some people, but it shouldn’t really be a factor when talking about the downed state because it matters very little in organized play.

Issues with the downed state currently IMO are the effectiness of AoE bombing downed players, the huge imbalances between downed state, and the often times it is beneficial for opponents to not stomp you and leave you to bleed due to delaying your to respawn. I would also would be interested in seeing how the game would play if rallying were removed from the game.

Nice video. It’s great to see so much stuff coming out from the Necro community. Some suggestions for future videos you may want to consider:

-IMO the video dragged on quite a bit. The condition necro build is essentially the same core build of 0/20/10/0/20 with 20 left over points to allocate as you see fit, with a few tweaks gear/skill/trait-wise. I think you could have consolidated all the condition necro variations into one core build instead of splitting it out like you did to cut down on time.

-I’m assuming your target audience was for newer players? Although for new and experienced players alike I think more game play footage of high level tourney play would be much more interesting for the audience than seeing you do rotations in the air. I know you have footage on your channel already, but I mean footage where you are explaining what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Also FYI how condition damage works is all condition damage is on a 1s timer, which begins when the first damaging condition is applied to the target. Every 1s after this timer starts the game checks which damaging conditions are on the target and applies their respective damage. This is why you will see 1.6s fears (the duration of your fear with master of terror and nightmare runes) sometimes do 2 ticks worth of damage (but not always), because for example if you start this timer with a bleed, and 0.4s later you apply fear, your fear would tick damage after 0.6s, and 1s after that. If you applied it 0.3s after the bleed your fear would’ve only ticked for damage one time.

Also I do believe toughness does affect the damage (e.g. the LF drain) you take while in DS, contrary to what is stated in the video.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say a condi Necro counters condi Engis but they do fare very well against them. Corrupt Boon and Putrid Mark are incredible vs condi Engis. I would most definitely go 1 necro 1 engi over 2 engis. I have seen a few double engi comps around but it isn’t even as close to the number of double ele comps I’ve seen in the past.

The furious demise variant is strong when you catch them with your immobilize and can flash DS for the weakening shroud proc and get to utilize the full uptime of the fury on auto-attacks. It’s not that great when utilizing DS 2 into immobilize since you waste a large portion of the fury duration not auto-attacking the target.

Personally I like going for 30 in SR instead. It’s not as bursty but it feels more solid with higher LF generation and stability. And anything that is caught in your immobilize for the full duration is dying regardless.

@OP

You say in the OP to not take X trait. This is, literally, the definition of build advice. You can emphasize the caveat that it is directed at players “who can’t control a particular trait they have very well” all you want, but even then, it simply becomes very very bad advice. The correct advice for these players is simply to learn how to use the trait better.

Also the correlation between this trait and “fooling” your opponent is completely and utterly inconsequential vs experienced players. This notion continues to escape you. I do not think there is a single experienced PvP Mesmer who would recommend attempting to fool your opponent with your clones. That is like saying don’t ever strafe since clones don’t strafe.

And I’m sorry I assumed you didn’t play Mesmer. I would imagine somebody who played Mesmer to any significant degree would know that attempting to fool players with your clones is a fruitless endeavor.

Arganthium.5638:

shimmerless.4560:

Arganthium.5638:

Agony.3542:

-Don’t run Dueling X.

I lol’d … seriously wtf?
Running Duelling X has its purpose in some builds, not running it would simply be dumb.

This was my point. If you can’t handle the trait, reroll or swap builds. Thanks for obviously having taken this into consideration.

Well, you clearly haven’t taken into consideration what’s already been pointed out…

Deceptive Evasion has no bearing on telling which is the real Mes. And why would it? Clones don’t dodge roll, no matter what the source: if you get caught dodging then having DE or not will not make any difference.

No, I’ve taken it into consideration, I just think that everybody’s ignoring the fact that, whether they like it or not, it’s difficult for any player to tell which mesmer is the real one if they aren’t doing anything to clearly show which one actually is the real one. Everybody just says “oh, a good player can always tell which is the real one”, but that’s only necessarily true under a few circumstances (such as the player being under leveled- clones don’t show up as UL, players do). Under other circumstances, it can be very difficult to discern between mesmers, or, failing that, it at least takes longer to determine which one is real, which is practically the mesmer equivalent of a daze that lasts, oh, say, 5 seconds. During that time, they can’t attack you, because they don’t know where you are, necessarily.

My point with DE is that mesmers often use it as their prime method of spawning clones, which is perfectly fine, but if they abuse it too much (as they often do), then it can backfire.

Even if the Mesmer just stands there and does nothing people can still tell due to their buff bar and the fact clones auto-attack slower. It should not take more than a second or so to discern the real Mesmer. Also the whole notion of attempting to “blend in” with your clones to fool the opponent(s) is just bad. Good players do not even bother to do this because it is completely pointless.

Not only that it only takes 1 person to mark the Mesmer and the only thing that clears it is stealth, so it’s not like each individual member of your team has to actively pick out the real Mesmer. And in large team fights clones drop like flies. You never want to rely on your clones for anything, honestly.

What in the world… the whole OP is implying that Mesmer’s main defensive mechanic is through fooling the opponent on which one is the real Mesmer. This could not be any further from the truth. Experienced players can easily tell which one is the real Mesmer quite quickly. You never ever want to bank on your opponent’s inexperience.

Deceptive Evasion is basically a must to use in any shatter-oriented build. Period. No offense, but I really think people should refrain from giving build advise on classes they do not play. Tips on how to fight your class, ok, but build advise? No.

Arguing about skillcaps of different classes in this kind of a game is moot. Games like SC2 have a high skill cap. Mastering whatever class you choose to play in a game such as this is not a hard endeavor if you put in the time. Being good in this game is almost entirely derived from team composition/strategy/communication/chemisty.

Back on topic, I think Necros are misunderstood. Do engi’s dish out more raw condi DPS? Yes. Better condi application? Best in the game. More escape options and mobility. Again, very obviously yes. However Necro’s have better condi management (ask your guardian if he would appreciate a full condi cleanse from you), boon strips (strong in current meta), can fight at 100% effectiveness at max range and their AoE’s are much larger. Necro’s also have the best rez in the game.

What this basically amounts to is Engineers are stronger in small engagements and Necros are stronger in large team fights, relatively speaking. They also have great synergy together. Both have their strengths and weaknesses and I feel both are underrated on class tier lists that people put out.

The only thing unreliable about it previously was if they cleansed their conditions (or died) in the 1s span from when you started casting it since it couldn’t even be dodged or LOS’ed before (which does happen quite a bit yes).

Reducing the cast time to something really fast like 0.25s would change the dynamic of the skill completely. It would be nearly instant cast and take no effort to spread conditions like crazy and would without a doubt in my mind be incredibly OP in team fights if nothing else is changed about the skill.

Is something like a slight reduction to a 0.75s cast time justified? I guess that depends on if you think the skill is underpowered and deserves a buff or not. I do not see anybody in this thread suggesting that even as currently implemented that Epidemic is underpowered.

I’m pretty sure one of the reasons Epidemic has a 1s cast time so that we can’t turn our 20s CD single target instant cast fear into a 20s CD instant cast AoE fear with 600 radius, which is what it would be with a 0.25s cast time.

I’m not sure why you think just because it got nerfed/fixed that it is now underpowered. It is still pretty much a must bring for condition necros in tpvp. Yes it is harder to land now, and I can’t count how many times the conditions were cleansed right before it did land, but I feel that is counterbalanced with the low CD and the sheer strength of the skill in team fights. To keep it balanced at short cast times you’d have to significantly increase the CD (much more than 5s) and make it not be able to spread fear.

The reliability of Corrupt Boon OTOH is something that needs to be fixed.

Blackjack.5621:

wookie.8934:

Asomal.6453:

1. Blurred Frenzy, most OP skill I have ever seen. 2 seconds of invulnerability on a 10 second cooldown, wtf? What other class has 2 seconds of invulnerability on a 10s cooldown? I’m not even considering the extra burst.
2. Ilusionary Leap, while technically not a stun break can basically nullify the effects of immobilize or snare or freeze. On a 12 second cooldown.

Both are hilariously easy to avoid. L2 kitten ue. In a matchup between an equally good mesmer and ele, the ele will win more often than not – by a significant margin I’m betting.

if the mesmer tries to hold the node , yes. If the mesmer let you neutralize it, no.

If you let the Ele neutralize the node the Ele has already won because the goal of conquest is points, not who would win in a 1v1.

Although even if you fight off a node an Ele would still either win through attrition or it will be a stalemate. And even if the Ele makes numerous mistakes and get caught in multiple shatter bursts they can simply RTL away and heal back up to full and come back. This is the primary reason Eles are so strong on Forest and Mesmers are so weak on that map, because Eles can assault the Mesmer’s point very easily and escape with near impunity, while at the same time defend their own backpoint as they are zoning out the bottom lane.