Guild Wars 2

I’m not really sure why people are hating on the 3 seconds of protection trait with wells. I mean yeah it’s not huge, but it’s hard for any non-guardian class to apply protection to allies. As well, it’s still a well skill. Well of Power will always be great from a support angle not because you can trait wells to do nice extra things, but because you can turn blinds and vulnerability stacks into fury and protection for every member of your team inside the well.

leman.7682:

I was thinking of it as of a 1-person 1-way mesmer portal.

As with everything necro, the skill only teleports you a bit towards the point and doesn’t even work when verticality comes into consideration.

To make it work like a 1 person, 1 way mesmer portal, Flesh Wurm would have to be summoned at your location. Otherwise, the skill invalidates jumping puzzles and some environmental design by not enforcing the pathing restrictions that apply to all other ground-targeted blinks.

Personally I prefer it as is- it’s a delayed blink / stunbreaker, that auto-attacks through the delay. But as long as you make it cast at your location, I can get behind this version as well.

I’d bet that they were just referring to the lack of conditions in Death Shroud. Technically skill 2 bleeds its targets, but the vast majority of damage you deal in Death Shroud is direct damage.

In any case, yes, you can crit with Life Blast and Life Transfer, so precision is relevant for increasing that crit rate.

I really do agree with him about the story being frustrating. While ArenaNet stated their goal of putting the RPG back into MMORPGs at least partly through the personal quest, you can still really feel that MMO aspect: everyone else is doing the story too, so don’t get too kitteny. The plot is afraid to keep characters beyond major segments (Claw Island. CLAW ISLAND.) and only gets more afraid to let the character change the world directly in the third act. The overall plot will be identical for every player, but won’t actually let that player feel important. I haven’t played through all the dungeon story modes yet. Maybe they’ll be better.

I’m iffy on his complaints about dynamic events. In principle I love them as a replacement to the traditional quest format. But the ‘repeating quests’ bit is too on the nose to ignore. Seeing the same bridge blow up and get rebuilt multiple times just gets silly. I actually really love arriving at quests already in progress though: jumping into the middle of things to help someone out is really refreshing to me. I’d say that events need longer recharge timers, but I think before that we’d need way more events. To be fair though, I can’t complain about seeing the same events on different characters. It’s just when I happen to cross my own path and see an event I helped complete half an hour ago start up again that I roll my eyes.

Ninth Requiem.3250:

I don’t see how the proposed changes will help : If Defiant is a duration ability, wouldn’t that make it worse? If someone CC’s at the wrong time, you’re now unable to CC for 30s as opposed to just needing a few more hits.
It also makes more than one source of CC utterly useless. Atm, a Hammer warrior has 3 CC skills on his own. If those extra sources can’t be used to wear down CC-resistance, there’s very little point to them. On top of that, it makes more than 1 person with CC worthless too.

With experience both in co-ordinated groups and pugs, I think the current system is OK. Sure, you can get someone CCing the boss at a non-optimal point (or using low-duration CC), but it’s no worse than any other organization mechanics.

I’m not sure I understand either: wouldn’t that also make it so that a boss wouldn’t be allowed to use there “INTERRUPT THIS” skill more frequently than the period of defiant, on pains of being impossible to beat?

I kind of disagree that mildly organized PUGs (aka one that talks to each other out of combat occasionally) can’t handle defiant. Just assign certain stacks to certain members. Make it a specific player’s job to clear the last stack of defiant, or even the last two, with everyone else instructed to avoid CCing until the boss’ big attack-to-interrupt comes up. At which point anyone with big CC (Long stun, knockdown, etc) can go for it.

The major blunder you find in dungeons with PUGs, I think, is multiple people trying to clear the last stack of Defiant to set up the boss for their group’s big Knockdown attack. Instead, you get one person clearing the stack, then the next person stunning at the incorrect time and resetting the stack. Assigning the last stack to a specific player avoids this a significant amount of the time.

I think it could be because of the significant conceptual overlap with Longbow / Shortbow. Basically, you’d have to make the Rifle be a ranged, 5 slot weapon that behaved in a different manner / filled a different need than either the shortbow or the longbow.

There’s also the thematic link between rangers and nature. Between the way their traps work, spirit skills, and animal-named weapon skills, there’s a serious animist / untamed wild theme going on there that’s hard to fit the rifle into. Compared to the soldier class warrior or the engineer, who is basically a collection of gimmicks.

Really late edit: gimmicks is the wrong word. Gadgets.

Levian.6742:

I personally think a cone attack would be impossible on the auto attack, 600 range and a constant aoe like that would be considered OP.

Now I realize that it’s on a different class, and on a two handed weapon, and maybe people call it OP all the time and I just haven’t heard it yet, but…

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Wave_of_Wrath

War Mourner.5168:

Protection of the horde is a simple, yet effective trait for MM build’s, but I’ll say once again that I don’t like forcing this trait line to be about minions by putting something like this as a minor trait.

As far as I can tell, this is the only minor trait in the game that has no effect unless you take a specific category of heal / utility / elite skill. Every other minor trait in the game can be utilized with weapon skills, the class specific mechanic, or general mechanics such as dodging(1) or the presence of boons & conditions, but this one from the necromancer requires the usage of a minion skill, something it’s very easy to build a skill bar without including. The only minor traits that I can find that come close are the Guardian minors about symbols.

Back to the point though: this shouldn’t be a minor/forced trait, at all. As far as I can see, no other minor trait requires you to slot a specific category of skill that is not available on any of your weapons to receive an actual benefit. Reanimator nearly gets it by, except that it’s a really limited minion summon.

I can’t really offer a full build for PvE since I tend to switch tactics every 15 or so levels, but here’s some tricks I’ve found for PvE.

Necromancers have a few fun ways to mess with conditions & boons in Well of Power and Well of Corruption. In many situations, you can use one of the two to great effect. So when you go into an area, try and note if enemies tend to use conditions on you, or if they buff themselves with boons, then pick the appropriate well. For example: fighting dredge? Take Well of Corruption. After somebody plays a gong, you can make them vulnerable, weakened and crippled, speeding up the fight (in your favour) significantly.

Also, if you carry Well of Power, consider taking corruption skills with you. The vulnerability from Epidemic turns into Protection, which can be a nice defense, and the poison from Corrupt Boon turns into regeneration.

Signet of Undeath has a huge recharge, but it’s more easily used in PvE: You can revive fallen NPCs with it. While NPCs don’t have a ‘Downed’ state, the signet will still rally them. If they’re close enough together, you get three NPCs at 50% health, which if nothing else can be good for cannon fodder.

I’ve always found it interesting that the Underwater version of Death Shroud #3 is pretty much strictly better than the on-land version. AoE and a longer duration than Doom. My secret hope is that eventually the two ability sets will be merged into one Death Shroud with essentially all the abilities of both sets that changes only slightly between underwater and on-land. It might be brokenly good though, just because of the insane versatility that would provide.

This is in the Blazeridge Steppes zone, Unbroken Expanse area. Sorrow’s Furnace server.

On the second phase of this event chain (Walking the two back to their camp), Porgar & Rupek exhibit some weird behavior. When they get close to the end, the “Ogre Bully” segment triggers, and after a brief bit of talking the bullies start attacking them. At some point, either Porgar or Rupek began running back to the Oasis. They made it about half way there before starting to walk back. When I killed the first bully, a second appeared, but failed to lose its Determined Buff.

It then began beating up Porgar and Rupek, as would be expected. It still had the Determined buff. After futilely attacking it for a bit, the mob still retained its buff. Because Porgar & Rupek were both rushing directly into its face (for some reason since they don’t appear to be able to attack while holding water barrels) the mob wouldn’t move further down the road, so I couldn’t try and lure it out of Determined range.

Knote.2904:

Softspoken.2410:

For the first part: I don’t recall it being mentioned either. The second is an interesting note. If full immunity to Fear (Not basic Defiant, but something else. Like on the Champion Giant at Nageling, for example) stops Fear from doing condition damage with Terror, then I’d call that a real problem.

Giving a monster Defiant doesn’t mean that they can’t be CC’d. It means that a group needs to coordinate their collective control conditions to land at the right time, something different from the immunity to CC. I bring this up because before the change, Fear was circumventing that purpose. A Fear skill could be a free pass for an entire group (5 man dungeon or 20 man world events) from actually managing stacks of Defiant.

That’s not true, you can still manage defiant stacks for CC, fear was just able to ignore it completely and have priority. Makes sense to me considering fear is the weakest CC in terms of having 2 counters.

Also, it wasn’t OP, people weren’t begging for necro’s to cheese certain bosses, and even if a boss was being cheesed too hard they could simply make it CC immune. There’s actually plenty of CC immune bosses/champs.

I’m really not sure what you mean by “That’s not true”, since we seem to agree with how defiant worked with fear. I guess we could be disagreeing on whether that behavior was acceptable? In any case, regarding fear having two counters: how many bosses have stunbreaks or condition cleansing?

The last time I was part of an effort to beat the Risen Acolyte of Melandru, we explicitly cleared it by using fear to CC him through the health zone that triggered his “You are all animals” phase. So we didn’t have to deal with being drakes, a tactic that was pretty impossible with stun / daze etc. because you can’t chain them together without somehow clearing 20+ stacks of defiant he would regain between each major CC. I realize this is one point of anecdotal evidence, but the fact was you could use Fear to cheese a boss consistently.

Knote.2904:

I don’t recall Defiant ever mentioning it stops Fear like stability does, and Fear is a condition so it actually makes sense for it to ignore Defiance.

Also you won’t get the condition/dmg at all if the boss is actually immune to CC anyway. Which is another thing, any bosses they don’t want to have feared, they just make immune to CC altogether, this change is completely unnecessary, they just felt like kicking us in the nuts.

For the first part: I don’t recall it being mentioned either. The second is an interesting note. If full immunity to Fear (Not basic Defiant, but something else. Like on the Champion Giant at Nageling, for example) stops Fear from doing condition damage with Terror, then I’d call that a real problem.

Giving a monster Defiant doesn’t mean that they can’t be CC’d. It means that a group needs to coordinate their collective control conditions to land at the right time, something different from the immunity to CC. I bring this up because before the change, Fear was circumventing that purpose. A Fear skill could be a free pass for an entire group (5 man dungeon or 20 man world events) from actually managing stacks of Defiant.

Deadfly.3268:

Hellmood.2097:

Hello,

I’d really love to level a Necro, but I am really offset by the fact that EVERY weapon bar the Staff has a strictly single-target autoattack.

What? Everything about the staff is about hitting multiple targets.

I think the sentence is “Every weapon bar’s autoattack (Skill 1) is single target, except the Staff.”

Edit: That conversation moved on quickly.
I mostly would love cleave on axe because it would help to differentiate it from other weapon sets, in my opinion. Especially from dagger.

Argistrin.3597:

Isn’t it strange how Knockdown will still interrupt bosses but fear has no become useless?

I’m not really sure what you mean here. Unless something has changed recently, defiant still blocks knockdown.

Regarding Fear going through defiant: I think that since Defiant blocks Control Effects, it prevents the ‘run away’ part of fear, but the condition part of Fear (Damage if you have Terror, another condition for abilities based off of # of conditions like Feast of Corruption, Phantasmal Warlock) is not affected by Defiant at all.

Bump because I’m still seeing posts from a particular user I’d rather not. Or is the ignore function for private messages only?

XiL.4318:

Softspoken.2410:

Thank you necro forums, for reminding me that it is apparently possible to defecate on a ray of sunshine if you only gripe hard enough about it.

Define your ray of sunshine. Because I can’t see that ray of sunshine through the chocolate rain.

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

All of us thank you ( Anet team ) for this great and awesome patch.
You made the game more enjoyable and amazing

The Demonic Spirit.3157:

Dude , I’m talking about the entire patch( all classes ) as it is awesome.

I’m saying the OP was trying to be positive, but you insisted on everything being terrible. It’s not even like the OP was saying everything is perfect either, since he stated his desire for a minion change. But still, people come out of the woodwork to tell him to leave since he wasn’t just going to sit in his corner and cry.

I’m kind of done with the self pity party that the Necromancer forums have become.

XiL.4318:

Every major slot should have a Minion focused option but each one should be for a different kind of Minion. And each Minion should serve a beneficial function according to the Trait line they are in. Minion in Toughness line for example should shield you. Minion in Power should do direct damage and/or midify your damage while being out. etc… so on so forth. Every line for Necro should have a viable and meaningful Minion Trait.

Until this or something reasonably similar happens I am no longer a GW2 player. I came for Necro Minions (as a Necro since March 1999) and I leave without ever enjoying them.

That’s similar to saying that every trait line should have some sort of forced improvement for spirit weapons for guardians, or venoms for thieves. It’s clearly not the way that classes and trait lines are balanced in this game. Necromancers are always going to be about more than just minions. It is unfortunate that they have difficulty being about minions right now, but that’s not everything there is to the class.

And I’m willing to bet money that in a week, you’ll still be here crying all over the Necromancer forums.

Or make it bounce, or something. I’ve always found it bizarre that Axe 1 & 2 are single target, but Axe 3 is a large point-blank area of effect. In terms of PvE, I have to be very careful when using it to not pull extra mobs, which the rest of the axe’s skills can’t deal with.

Thank you necro forums, for reminding me that it is apparently possible to defecate on a ray of sunshine if you only gripe hard enough about it.

Arianna.7642:

I won’t be bothering to update for a while, so confirmation would be good, I guess.

Just to kind of throw some laughs into the thread, here’s Arenanet’s obliviously incompetent outlook on the Profession, apparently;

Necro
The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

I’ve been curious for a while about how ArenaNet sees their Necromancers. I find it weird that they are encouraging combining raw and condition damage, but I can see where they’re coming from when they talk about restriction of movement.

I’m surprised they’re praising/focusing access to poison, of all things. I honestly would have given that identity to Thieves.

For now, I’m just going to play with a few of the changes.

Ellimist.2619:

Taken from the new Dec. 14th patch notes
“Terror: Damage is increased by 50% if the target has any conditions on them.”

My assumption is that this is a typo and the intended (and probable implemented effect) is that it is an additional 5%, similar to engineers and guardians(burning only).

If I could get a clarification on this that would be great

I believe the patch note is referring to the damage that the Terror trait does, not the damage done by the Necromancer in general. I also believe it means a condition besides Fear.

Yeah, 50% bonus damage if the target has a condition would be ludicrously broken.

Lots of underwater changes, but a lot of the changes for most classes were about underwater combat, so I’m not too broken up about it.

Really it’s about what I expected: a wide variety of small changes, but no major overhauls. I think we’ll have to wait a while for those. ANet isn’t at that stage of the game, and I’d assert they shouldn’t be trying to make sweeping changes to a profession just yet, like the ones this forum whines pines for.

As for specifics: The change to Gluttony is welcome, though it still looks a little small to me. Time will tell there though. Spiteful Removal is a clever change that makes the trait a lot more powerful in my eyes, especially for PvP play. Reanimator also looks like a good compromise for now, but I’ll have to test how it plays now to see if I actually get more stacks of bleeding out of it.

The change to Terror looks incredible though, I’m really surprised by it.

Edit:

There was a massive stealth nerf to Necros, though. Fear no longer bypasses Defiant.

Yep, noticed that. I honestly thought there would be way more crying about it here. I’ll miss our free pass on boss interrupts, but really I think more players need to learn that peeling stacks of Defiant is a good thing to do for your team.

In summary: I’m pretty okay with this patch. I would have liked more changes for all the classes, but I think that saying Necromancers were ignored is flat out incorrect. Saying they got less than other classes seems pretty wrong too, so don’t even start forums.

As much as I like Flanking Strike already, this could be an interesting twist on it. However, it then forces the thief to be attacked so they can use the rest of the move. So it becomes harder to use on a target that’s already focused on someone else.

Tulisin.6945:

Which is nothing in GW2, because GW2’s combat system isn’t target based. Some players have become very reliant on locked tab targets to do damage, and stealth punishes their refusal to learn how to actually fight very harshly. Someone spamming projectiles into the ground when faced with a stealthed opponent is an excellent indicator that they never learned to fight without a locked target.

There are several skills in the game that need to have a target selected to even be used, let alone actually hit things. Certainly not all of them, but not all attacks can work without first selecting a target.

EDIT: I should probably provide an example, huh? Here’s a couple skills I can think of that can’t hit unless you activate them with a target selected. Necromancer’s Doom, Ghastly Claws, Life Siphon. Mesmer’s Spatial Surge, Confusing Images and most (if not all?) Mesmer weapon Phantasm Skills. Phantasm skills won’t start the recharge though, they’ll just tell you they can’t be used. I can’t think of any for the Guardian though, or even for the Thief, so it definitely counters some classes drastically more than others.

Obviously there’s still a lot of options for attacking a stealthed character, but just remember (if you didn’t already) that it does flat out remove some of them, including some Weapon 1 skills.

gamefreak.5673:

If it applied in combat that would great, last i checked on signets which has been ages, the speed buff does not work. So its still pointless for me to have on my bar like the other signets are besides the rez one and that is only used in instances not in wvwvw often.

I’ve seen this debated over the Thief’s Signet of Shadows. Yes, the speed buff works in combat. You always slow down once you enter combat, but you still receive the speed boost. So you still move at 125% the standard speed, it’s just that in combat forward speed is significantly slower than out of combat forward speed.

In the case of a close fight, it allows the chance for a reversal.

In any location where reviving to a waypoint is very inconvenient, but a revival from defeated is more likely, it could let someone at least make a run back to safety / allies. (WvW springs to mind, but certain dungeons could also fit this bill.)

The Warhorn is a lower damage option, but off-hand Dagger isn’t going to be a major source of damage for you, compared to what you’ll do with a scepter main hand. Plus, Warhorn gives you a (small) AoE 2 second daze.

The swiftness from Locust Swarm is nearly enough to justify Warhorn alone, so I wouldn’t worry much about taking it when Wail of Doom is also amazing.

manveruppd.7601:

This may sound like a strange question, but I’ve often had Chilled applied on me and noticed that I can cast through it and my skills will go into the normal recharge cycle rather than 160% their recharge… Is this actually working? Or is it only supposed to affect skills that are already recharging when it’s applied? (if so it seems a lot weaker)

Chilled doesn’t directly increase the recharge time of skills: it actually slows down the rate at which skills recharge. So the next time you get chilled, watch the movement of your recharge timer: it should slow down while you’re chilled, then speed back up to normal once the condition is cleared.

Signet of the Locust gets buffed to passively grant 15-20% movement speed, and more explicitly doesn’t stack with any other passive boost except swiftness.

Just finished one of the first quests in the Priory initiation line for Sylvari, “Dredging up the Past”. Afterwards, I decide to talk to a few of the NPCs, specifically this new guy, Kekt.

I got the message in the attached picture.

So I haven’t done this before and might be reaching, but I’m guessing at some point Kekt is going to wield the sanguinary blade? As for right now though, this dialogue seems a bit out of place… Or Kekt just likes to tell strangers how much trouble he has wielding things.

Obviously a minor continuity error, but figured I should log it here.

nerva.7940:

common sense. wvw isnt really pvp.

Here, I’ll try the post again. With slight editing for emphasis.

nerva.7940:

this thread is only for spvp discussion.

You may want to make that explicit in either the thread title, or even the body of the post. As it is, nothing in the OP really indicates that you’ve narrowed the scope of this thread to structured player versus player.

nerva.7940:

this thread is only for spvp discussion. wvw =/= competitive pvp.

You may want to make that explicit in either the thread title, or even the body of the post. As it is, nothing in the OP really indicates that you’ve narrowed the scope of this thread to structured player versus player.

Edit:

Let’s all take a moment to appreciate just how quickly this thread was derailed.

It will be a moment of awkward silence, where everyone puts their hand on their face and shakes their heads in embarassment.

Way to try and derail the thread. There’s another thread entirely about fear on other professions, if you’d like to discuss that specific issue.

I’ll admit I’ve been a bit ambivalent about this trait before now because it has a long cooldown attached, but I suppose that it is a really good way to cancel a disable. The fear could interrupt a CC chain, unless they have stability. Which if you follow up with your own stunbreak, fear, and CC, could be an unexpected reversal.

I usually do PvE, but I’ll give it a shot and tell you how I feel about its duration and proc rate.

Mantra of Remorse
Applies 8 stacks of confusion on target for 3 seconds. 2 casts before going on full recharge.

A condition damage option, intended to let the mesmer apply a lot of confusion very quickly with very little warning. The numbers are mostly made up, but it should be quite a few stacks of Confusion with a rather short duration, to emphasis the instant cast and precise timing nature of Mantras.

I doubt they’ll be adding new skills, even elite skills, for a long while yet… But it is fun to try and come up with things to fill categories that are elite-less, like Wells or Consecrations.

Sorry, I guess I got distracted there. I’d say put a few more points into Blood Magic and Mark of Evasion. It’s a pretty solid defensive trait that gets you a lot of regeneration on yourself and free bleeds on your foe.

If you use Well of Suffering or Well of Corruption, you could try for Focused Rituals in Curses. (Ground targeting doesn’t seem that useful for Well of Power or Well of Blood) Otherwise, more points in Spite for Spiteful Marks to boost your staff damage & condition duration.

It really is up to taste though: if you feel like you’re having trouble surviving, go for the vitality and healing in Blood Magic. If you feel like your only issue is a lack of damage, go for the power and condition duration of Spite.

Nyx of night.1062:

Prayer to dwayna isn’t a good healing skill? :O

Consume Conditions is usually better, I think. If you cleanse 2 conditions with it, it outheals Dwayna on a 5 second shorter recharge.

It’s actually a weird factoid, but I’m pretty sure that every profession has a skill that straight up outclasses Prayer to Dwayna: either in terms of greater utility via some gimmick, or a shorter recharge time, or just having 100% scaling with compassion instead of Dwayna’s 85%.

Megothier.3847:

I’m new to Guild Wars, but I can’t help but think anyone that wants minions to regen doesn’t understand the minion’s purpose. I mean they are summoned undead, there is no “quality of life” for undead creatures. They aren’t pets, they aren’t meant to last and survive battles, their job (save for the Flesh Golem) is to distract your enemy long enough for you or your Flesh Golem to finish them off. They’re cannon fodder, and aren’t meant to pose any real threat. You’ll notice that the weaker minions have a CD timer of 30-40 seconds whereas the only minion that regens health is on a 60 second timer, that seems to point to my minion philosophy being the intended philosophy. At least this is how I view/treat my minions, and I think they’re working as inteded.

Cue the veterans ganging up on the new guy for having an opinion.

I’d actually like to support this view: minions should be disposable. Bone Minions, Blood Fiend and the Flesh Wurm do this very well, since their activation skill is quite powerful, but sacrifices them. As well as a few traits which promote positive effects on their death. (Death Nova is the most obvious example, but the reduced minion recharge time trait also applies)

Unfortunately, some of the minions don’t seem to work this way. Bone Fiend and Shadow Fiend can have their effects triggered multiple times in their lifetime, and can be healed through a few methods. As well, traits like increasing minion damage, removing a boon on attack, and siphoning health are obviously more helpful to the play style that keeps a minion up for as long as possible.

I’m not sure how to take it, really. It could just be that you can have your cake and eat it too by taking as many of the traits as possible, or it could be that they’re left in to give two distinct options of how to play minions. I mean, some of the necromancer audio snippets (No! I hand raised that minion!) imply their death is a huge hinderance, while others (They’re so… Disposable) brush it off as nothing.

Edit:

Also, they would be cannon fodder if they hadn’t 30s cd.

Well, this skill has a 20 second recharge (untraited) and summons two minions. If they’re strong enough to not get one-shot, that’s 4 single target hits soaked. Obviously they can’t soak AoE for you… But very few things can.

Interesting. Does the “Minions have 50% more health” trait affect its duration?

It appears that using Necrotic Traversal (Summon Flesh Wurm) does not trigger Death Nova (Death Magic trait XI). If the wurm is killed in typical combat, the nova does trigger. Could be intentional, but seems inconsistent with Taste of Death (Summon Blood Fiend) and Putrid Explosion (Summon Bone Minions).

I think by ‘duelist’ Lokheit may have meant this particular armor set: http://www.gw2armor.com/sylvari/female/k2/medium/display_looks.php

Granted, it’s still a coat. But it’s not a long coat, so that’s something. The one from Ascalonian Catacombs is also nice, but the metal rivet look may not work with what you’ve already got.

Swadow.6213:

@Softspoken, yes you can. Fear is both a condition and a “stun.” You can remove fear from ally with condition removal or a feared target can use a stunbreaker to get out of it. Fear is much weaker than any other stun because of it.

Also, Necros can only increase the duration of fear by 50% with 20 pointer in Soul Reaping.

Whoops. Reading comprehension fail from when I checked the wiki.

Doesn’t the generic condition duration stat extend how long Fear lasts for though? After all, we just established how it counts as a condition and a control effect. The 50% bonus in Soul Reaping is a foundation, but not the entire build to make it be at least twice as long.

Confused, mostly. Although I’d be a little curious about what they’d replace all the deception skills and Cloak & Dagger with. Oh, and half the traits in the Shadow Arts line.

He may have been thinking of the Sigil of Fire, which causes a fire blast on criticals, but that doesn’t apply the actual Burning condition.

As for runes, there’s Balthazar (Burn foes when you heal), Flame Legion (small chance to burn a foe whenever they hit you) and Forge (Burn Foes & gain protection at 50% health).

Funky.4861:

@Kardia- if you can be knocked back twice from weapon skills and again from a utility, how is us having a 6s fear (the equivalent loss of char control time) bad, even if it took us 3 button-presses to do it, and not this half-arsed 2s fear from 4 button-presses? Why should it take us twice as much effort for a third of the result?

For one thing, you can’t use a stunbreak ability to end Fear. The double knockback combo can be cut short by a stunbreak, and many of those make it so the second half of the combo whiffs since you’re now out of range.

I want the basic fear to be longer, but edge cases like the one Dylninja just outlined are what make me nervous. The Fear duration of any skill can be doubled by Necromancers in game already, and they probably have to be balanced around that possibility.

Taldren.7523:

Softspoken.2410:

Event Three: For some reason, you went into stealth immediately before you used Mass Invisibility. Then you attacked, got the revealed debuff, and the debuff expired just after you used Mass Invis. I’m guessing that you’re using Desperate Decoy? (Trait V in Dueling)

No, I don’t have anything in Dueling … I am 20/0/0/20/30
Build: http://tinyurl.com/cjg8qsg

Weeeird. You can see the ‘Revealed’ Debuff proc in the video though, immediately before you use Mass Invisibility. I have no idea why it came up then though.

Regarding the two questions in the comments of the video: The Illusionary Mage at 0:40 probably got blocked by his temporary invulnerability while he was standing up. This seems kinda dumb, but I’m betting that’s what did it. And as for how that Guardian got back up… It looks like they managed to cast Symbol of Faith, which can get you about half the healing you need to Rally alone.

I’m really surprised that so many people are focusing entirely on healing as the metric for being a good support. Other ways to support other players include applying boons and condition removal to allies. Signet of Inspiration (Which also makes applying boons to yourself / receiving them from party members potentially altruistic) and Null Field seem to apply.

Apparently you can take Domination IX to make torch skills remove conditions, but I’m not sure if that applies to The Prestige. (If it only applies to Phantasmal Mage, then I can’t imagine it as worthwhile. Granted, whether Torch can ever be worthwhile is up for debate, apparently.)

And of course, Staff is all about the random boons for your friends.

I can’t tell you much about the first event: that one just seems like a straight up bug since you never disappeared at all, but the second two I have theories for:

Event two: Your Staff 1 skill hit a target immediately after you used Decoy. This counted as attacking from stealth, and as such Revealed you. This doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it may have been what caused it.

Event Three: For some reason, you went into stealth immediately before you used Mass Invisibility. Then you attacked, got the revealed debuff, and the debuff expired just after you used Mass Invis. I’m guessing that you’re using Desperate Decoy? (Trait V in Dueling)

ImagoX.4718:

Softspoken.2410:

Chill makes skill timers recharge 66% more slowly. So if you chill a player who has a skill with 30 seconds left on its recharge, you delay that recharge and make it take even longer for the skill to be available again. I am not certain if PvE mobs use this same timer system.
As to ‘snared’, it’s a slightly stronger version of cripple, that I believe stacks with cripple, so that a monster moves at 1/6th its regular speed. Which can be enough to keep a boss from catching someone who’s used up their endurance already.

Yep, this is exactly why I had Ice Drake Venom in the initial build, but I very nearly had Shadow Refuge in that slot when I first put the build together. I have replaced it in the current linked build, as I remembered that you can do other things besides emergency rezzing with the Refuge (unmolested harvesting in PvE comes to mind, as well as a good “oh crap” button since I have no other source of Stealth.

Well, you do have a dagger offhand. But yes, Shadow Refuge is amazing.

Malvagite.3254:

the chill venom is basically a worthless condition also. it only affects skills if they are cast while the mob is under its effect, which is very short and mobs attack with skills extremely slowly. if you are lucky you will increase 1 skills recharge one time. it isnt noticeable. The other effect of chilled is a snare and bosses cant be snared with regularity.

This is not how chill works. Chill makes skill timers recharge 66% more slowly. So if you chill a player who has a skill with 30 seconds left on its recharge, you delay that recharge and make it take even longer for the skill to be available again. I am not certain if PvE mobs use this same timer system for their skills, but it is possible.
As to ‘snared’, it’s a slightly stronger version of cripple, that I believe stacks with cripple, so that a monster moves at 1/6th its regular speed. Which can be enough to keep a boss from catching someone who’s used up their endurance already.

I won’t argue that Ice Drake Venom is a great choice, since I feel like it has a very short duration, but Chill is a useful condition, even if only for the way it can outclass Cripple.

Malvagite.3254:

That is the range of venom share, it basically melee range and under normal circumstances will never affect another party member.

Unless you run at an ally or two when you press the button. It’s not like your party has to do the positioning for you. Besides, venom share isn’t an aspect of this build in any way.

EDIT: Oh hey the OP posted again!

I’m still biased against your use of Signet of Shadows, especially since you already have Pistol 5. Signet of Agility is a great way to clear conditions in a group setting, between its fairly short cooldown and the ease of cleansing about 3 conditions. But really, how much you need that condition removal will depend on the fight, and personal experience. I was also kind of hoping that you’d resist the siren call of Shadow Refuge, but it is a really good skill.