Guild Wars 2

Pretty solid build. I usually prefer to have at least 15 in SR for auto stunbreak/LF refill at 50% HP, or 20 in Blood for 20% off Well cooldowns, but your build has good stats.

0/10. Would not read again!

While his reasons are kind of hard to follow, he is correct.

There is a reason why Guardians and Warriors will pretty much never be turned down for a dungeon group, and why those two professions make up most of wvw zergs…

For Necro’s to truly be an attrition class, we need to be able to heal in DS.

I mean their own quote says they want us to sustain ourselves through Deathshroud AND health siphons. Well how in the hell are we supposed to do that?

My build is made to sustain from Deathshroud uptime and health siphoning while out of DS… and it is really annoying that half of my traits just dont work while I am sitting in DS.

My biggest issue to date is this new healing skill. It is so pathetic and you can tell when they were introducing the new skills that they didn’t even give a crap about it. That made me mad. To hear the excitement in the Dev’s voice when he showed off the Guardian and Warrior heals, and on the Necro heal no one even wanted to say anything.. and the guy playing got owned by a Golem! LOL. He activated the new heal and got like 2k healing from it.

I am a big supporter of Siphon builds via Vampiric Precision, but since you are using a scepter are you really getting enough healing from that trait?

I have always thought to make the most of Blood siphons you need to rapidly attack your target via dagger auto, axe2, etc.

Yes, Mark of Evasion is affected by Greater Marks.

martyrius.8957:

passive heals me for 500. active for 961. i have perma regen ticks for 390. i mean. nobody just stands there. necros has massive regen. this heal has been working for me

Okay but just because you loaded up on healing power doesn’t change the fact that Well of Blood and Consume Conditions are much more efficient and effective than Signet of Vampirism. Its pure math friend.

Any profession can be tanky and last a long time if they load up on healing power/toughness. That doesn’t make this Signet good.

Josh Davis.6015:

I just wanted to stop by and let you guys know that we are listening. We’re looking at a few different ways to address the time investment it currently takes to get new skills in PvP, but it’s not something we’re able to talk about quite yet.

You’ll see a drastically different system in place in our next major rewards release that should address many of your concerns.

If you are going to release skills that are completely useless (like the Necro heal) could you at least price them accordingly? Why should I have to pay 25 skill points for a horrible skill when awesome heals like consume conditions only cost 1 or 3? (I cant remember).

Well, regardless of opinions, the most efficient way to play in dungeons is to gear for pure damage(zerker for power, rabid for conditions), and gain defense from dodge/boons, etc.

Now if you aren’t in an organized group and just want to casually run dungeons/world pve, then sure run with toughness or healing power or whatever you want really.

Now I would recommend using some soldiers gear if you are having trouble surviving in full berserkers. I did this on my thief because I found surviving all the random cleaves and AE with 11k hp very tough. The best way to maintain dps and gain survivability is to switch out berserkers legs, chest, and helm for soldiers, and if that is still not enough then weapons.

I am mostly outrages because Signet of Vampirism had such great potential, and they turned it into a boring and useless skill. Its not just that the skill sucks, its that they had a skill that was high risk high reward, and would have been useful if used correctly, and then decided to gut it completely.

Also kind of kitten ed at the nerf to weakening shroud(2 sec weakness, really?), and A-Nets general lack of logic when making changes for the game.

Diamond Skin is such a terrible trait to add to the game. It is either OP, or useless. And it is also passive, so there is no risk vs reward, skill, counter play, anything. Just a terribly balanced and lazy trait. PvP balancing in this game keeps getting worse and worse(nerfing sword thief back to back patches even though they were in the lower tier already).

Crit damage without Precision isn’t a good idea, even with Deathly Perception. There are still times when you wont be in DS and your damage will stink. You also have only 2500 armor which wont cut it for an attrition build. With a mix of Knight’s, zerker, and cavalier, you can achieve 2k power, 2k toughness, 50% crit chance and 70% crit damage. Thats what I prefer anyway, I feel it works very well for attrition.

I also agree with the above poster about Shrouded removal, that trait is great for dealing with pesky single conditions such as thief fear, or random cripples/weakness. I almost always use it when traited into Death.

Necro can achieve attrition if you build for it.

I can last pretty long against most professions via DS and siphons out of DS.

The only thing I would change with your build is to take 5 from Curses and put it into Death. I would much rather have a passive 200 power over 0-8% damage based on my targets conditions.

Melandru is a solid choice. The other option for higher damage is Ogre. Lyssa runes can work with a MM build due to Golem having a 48 sec cool down, but I find that I clear conditions just fine with Fetid consumption.

For sigils I use Force/Leeching, on both weapon sets.

Minions are much better than at launch. They attack quicker and more accurately, they deal nice damage with siphon trait, and they just got a nice HP boost in wvw/pve.

Minionmancer is a VERY strong 1v1 spec. It becomes less potent against multiple foes because you cannot keep your minions up and you rely on them for condition clears/healing.

Passive: Your attacks siphon 900 health(baseline), 3 second ICD. This makes it a viable choice for not only fast hitting weapons like dagger.

Active: Place a Mark(Non-avoidable) on your target with 25 charges that lasts for 5 seconds. Attacks by you and your player allies siphon 500 health. 30 second cooldown.

NO ICD on the active! Does this give it the potential to be OP? Yes… if the target just sits there. This is a high risk high reward heal.. if your target simply dodges or uses a stun breaker to get out of your CC, you just lost most of your heal skill for 30 seconds.

I usually pair Focus or Dagger with Axe and pair Warhorn with a mainhand Dagger.

Andele.1306:

Guys, Signet of the locust got stealth re buffed, now you can get a nice 7-9k heal with it pre 60 seconds if you get 5 targets… utility being a better heal than a heal for pve, how ironic.

7-9k? That seems like a super buff. I may have to consider using that in my build over spectral walk. Considering the only times I die normally are when 3-4 people gang up on me.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

It’s been pretty OK for me (not groundbreaking, but not the utter disaster people love to claim it is) but I run a siphon build anyway.

It is without a doubt overpriced, however. This needs to cost only 3sp.

I also run a siphon build, and I tested this signet for a few hours before work today. I have to say that it really doesn’t even feel like a heal skill. The active is so bad on it. Every time I pop the active when I am under 50% health, I usually don’t really even gain much. And then of course I am left with no passive for 35 seconds.

Even as a siphon Necro, I would much rather have Consume Conditions in PvP, or Blood Fiend/Well of Blood in PvE.

I give it a 1.

Bumping before I go to work… =(

I won’t even buy it until it gets changed. This is pathetic A-net.

So I have always played a siphon spec in WvW, and despite what most players say, I think Vampiric/Vampiric Precision are useful for sustaining one’s health especially combined with high toughness.

I currently play 0/20/0/20/30 with 2k power/2800 armor, 50% crit chance, 70% crit damage, and Dagger/Dagger + Axe/Warhorn. I feel that I can survive a very long time due to my spectral skills refilling my Life Force very quickly, and my fast attacks with dagger/axe2/swarm proccing siphons at a nice rate to refill my health.

I have an idea for a very heavy crit build. This is what I came up with:
http://gw2buildcraft.com/calculator/necromancer/?5.0|8.5n.h1.8.5n.h15.e14.0.d14|7.5n.h1.g.5n.h15.0.0.0|1n.a4.1n.a4.1n.a4.1n.a4.1n.a4.1n.a4|21k.d14.21k.d1a.31k.d16.21k.d14.31k.d1a.2s.d14|k58.f4.0.k25.f4|54.7|3r.46.48.4d.0|e

The idea is to have almost 100% critical chance when fury is up, and to use this high crit chance to gain maximum benefit from Vampiric Precision, Sigil of Blood, and Lifesteal food for self sustain.

Currently, when I get a critical hit with an attack I leech 90 health. With no internal cool down, this adds up to 360 health in about 2 seconds while attacking with dagger #1. This also adds up health very fast when channeling Dagger 2 and Axe 2. It is pretty nice considering it is just from traits.

This build also has 2700 armor which isn’t super great but it is high enough to take hits comfortably. And even though this build lacks power compared to a soldiers setup, it still gets close to 2k power, which isn’t terrible, and it can get to 2200 with bloodlust stacks. The damage this build puts out isn’t nearly as high as zerker, but with 97% crit chance, it is very consistent damage, and is still better than soldiers.

Even with only 15 in SR, this build can still fall back on DS for lots of damage soaking, and can refill Lifeforce easily enough due to Spectral armor, dagger auto, or axe 2.

So I need input and thoughts from you Necro’s who pvp in wvw a lot. Do you think this type of build would work? I need to really think it through because I do not run fractals often at all and I rely on laurels for my ascended amulets/rings. I do not want to purchase the niche prec/power/tough items if this build ends up sucking. But I do have a vision of this working very similar to the style of build I run now except with even more healing procs.

Relentless.7023:

Of course Necros complain about anything that doesn’t puke over itself with “obviously overpowered” stamped on it.

The signet pairs well with Blood Magic builds and is built for both dueling power builds, and helping in team fights. Conditions are going to be less common in pvp after the patch hits, and especially so over the coming months when “Immune” keeps popping up on the screen against Warrior and Ele, disappearing against Mesmer and Guardian.

This gives Necro a potentially viable duelist build if you have the understanding of your class outside of scepter/dagger staff most of you have been drooling with for so long.

Look at the numbers on it, dude.

There is literally no argument you can make for this crappy new heal. Passively, it heals less than Blood Fiend. The active heals less than all of our other heals, and it is on a long cool down.

The team synergy isn’t there either. This heal does about 5k damage total assuming all the charges on it get used. Not only can I deal more damage than that in the time it would take to CAST the heal, but it also heals for about 1/4th as much as our other team oriented heal: Well of Blood.

I have played a Blood specced/Vampire Necro for almost a year… and there is nothing about this heal that makes it good for a siphon build or a 1v1 build, because you are still giving up a lot of healing and condition cleanse for this crappy signet.

The facts are in the math, the signet sucks, badly. You cannot logically state otherwise. The passive healing is worse than Blood Fiend, Healing Signet, and the active heals less than other heals with a longer cool down. It is trash.

Nerfing the perma-Black Powder stealthing was needed.

But if you think Thieves are OP, or easy to play… try it first, because you are wrong.

I have no issue with thieves being able to escape easily, because they are very fragile. You know what I find plain stupid? A class like Warrior that has excellent damage output AND high passive survivability being able to remove roots/slows and shoot very far out of combat to escape whenever they want. Explain to me how that is balanced.

As in the boon retaliation?

It really depends on what type of PvE you are talking about but retal doesn’t deal nearly enough damage to really build a playstyle around it.

Now if the new Signet heal still had its retaliation style life steal attached that might have been the beginning of a viable tanky retaliation pvp build but it doesn’t do that anymore.

I will never stop playing Power Necro but I have had many frustrating days while solo roaming because no matter how good I play, eventually I will die because I cannot escape anything.

I actually had a pretty good day earlier, I had multiple 1v2’s and 1v3’s while roaming around killing sentries/dollys and taking Camps. But even then there were times that no matter how many times I downed players or outplayed someone, they could just run away and I couldn’t hinder them or catch them, and then their friends showed up.

It is really frustrating. I understand thieves being able to get away because they are squishy as hell and can be downed in a short CC, but warriors being able to GS swoosh/charge away whenever they want while ALSO breaking roots/cripples is just ridiculous.

I think a good place to start for Necro ability to keep players from getting away would be to change the mechanics of Spectral Grasp so it works 100% of the time your target is within LOS, and maybe buff the skill in some way directly.

I use my WvW build, because the dungeons I run are easy most of the time.

OtakuDFifty.2965:

Sepreh.5924:

OtakuDFifty.2965:

I’m really depressed by the amount of players that desperately need a strong healing skill just to survive. Like they’ll automatically die if they don’t get that extra 1000 health.

That’s not the complaint and not the point. The point of this qq is that they had the opportunity to introduce a healing skill that increases survivability and instead this flaming pile of crap was thrown our way

It’s not “the” complaint, but it sure as hell is “a” complaint. Literally seeing people saying they’re going to be useless in battle because they have to be ressed for bringing in this heal.

They are probably just trying to be funny because this healing skill is that bad. Its so bad that jokes are warranted.

If ever there was a time when complaining about a skill was justified, Signet of the “Vampire” takes it.

I applaud your effort to try and stay positive about this new heal, and to try and make it work.

But dude, you don’t need to theory craft at all to see how bad this heal is. Just look at the facts.

We recieve 300 healing when we take a hit… with an internal cool down of 1 second. Meaning in a BEST case scenario, we are healing 300 per second. The Warrior Healing Signet heals 400 per second… passively, with no need to be constantly taking damage.

The active portion of our new heal is on a 35 second cooldown… Lets be generous and assume we are traiting 10 into Spite and reducing it to 28 seconds. We recieve a 4k Heal and MAXIMUM 2k healing from siphons. This is assuming the enemy does not notice the giant red mark over their head, and hit their dodge button, block button, teleport button, CC you, or evade in some other way.

This heal is pathetic, just face the facts.

It should be 300 healing recieved and 300 damage dealt when recieving attacks, 1 sec ICD. And the active need to at least have a 25 sec baseline cooldown, with NO ICD on the active. I think you should siphon 500 per hit during the active.

Then I would play around with it to see if it was worth losing Consume Conditions.

This signet and Reaper’s Precision are both really pathetic at generating life force… Luckily in WvW I get lots of LF from kills.

I think the whole LF generation system is broken but meh, its not a major concern for me right now.

KOPPER.1458:

toying with axe / warhorn
and D/D mostly because I love my skins but scared that staff is simply too good for well necro.

thoughts on this? I know a few of you use D/D but what sort of build favors this?

I use Axe/Dagger and Dagger/Horn while roaming, but when I am in large battles I use Staff, it is too good with the range and AE.

Conditions don’t bother me at all…

Then again I play a Necro who has a plethora of ways to cleanse them.

Considering conditions never really do much damage in zerg battles, I am not sure it is a huge issue. I could see certain professions having issues with conditions, like Mesmer or certain Ele/Thief builds… but overall I think there are plenty of ways to build your character to survive condition stacks… Lemongrass/Lyssa runes, cleanse traits, Melandru/Hoelbrak runes.

I agree sometimes you just cant survive a condition burst from say a Necro or Engineer.. But then again sometimes I just cant survive being chain knocked down/stunned by a Hammer warrior so I guess it works both ways.

Mesmer heal is crazy OP.

Necro heal is worse than pathetic. In groups, solo, pve, pve, wherever. The Necro heal is garbage.

Thief heal sucks but could be fun in a venomshare build.

Warrior and Guardian heals are pretty strong as expected.

The original version was very promising. It had a high risk vs. reward aspect to it.. with setup/strategy required to make the most of it, and easy counters built into it.

If it were something like.. 150 health stolen from enemies that hit you(with no internal cool down) passive, and an active that lasted 5 seconds with no ICD that leeched about 500 HP per hit, on a 20 sec cd… I could see that being not only useful in group PvE, but also a very balanced heal in PvP that forces both the Necro and his opponent to use skillful play to use/counter it.

This heal had potential and I was really looking forward to using it in a Blood siphoning build.

Sadly, its current state is so terrible that I doubt anyone will even try it. Max 5200 HP on 35 sec cd lol… with a passive that heals less per second than Healing signet and also requires the necro to constantly be under attack. What a joke.

Moa killing all minions makes me want to mail a burning bag of feces to A-Nets doorstep. Such BS.

It is all around terrible. PvP, PvE, anywhere.

The active needs to have a shorter cooldown(like 20 seconds), and the ICD needs to be removed. The damage portion of the active siphon needs to be buffed, and the passive “siphon” needs to have damage added back.

Then it will possibly be useful in a team setting.

Norn elite is great for solo pvp. You can stealth and sprint away for a clean escape once every 4 minutes.

Human elite ‘Hounds of Balthazar’ are pretty awesome for burst damage, and deal lots of burning damage if you are condition spec.

Sylvari has an elite that grants invulnerability, can be useful for select pve mechanics.

I haven’t played the other races really.

The extra siphon damage that Bloodthirst gives your minions is probably also better than the damage from the bleeds from Mark of Evasion.

I like Mark of Evasion because it heals not only you but your minions/team as well. And if you time your dodges right you can have 6 seconds of regen every 10 seconds, for about 135 healing per second, its pretty good.

Bloodthirst would be better if all your minions were hitting a target consistently, and the extra health they leeched surpassed 81 hp per second. There is a good chance that BT is better in high uptime situations.

I have played with 20 in Blood for leeching traits for a very long time…

And Life steal food/sigil of blood always have and still do out heal all of our traits combined.. its pathetic.

The patch that was supposed to buff the Blood tree actually nerfed our overall leech healing because Dagger #2 didn’t get any buff to compensate for the 30% Bloodthirst nerf.

I still run 20 in Blood because while the heals are small, they are still noticable during channel skills like Dagger 2 and Axe 2. A full channel of dagger 2 will usually heal me for around 6k between traits, food, sigils, etc.

Not saying Blood traits are fine, just that vamp/crit builds have worked for me.

No, the new signet is terrible for all builds, including vampire.

Permanent finishers I will agree on.

There is nothing to fix. The reward was more than enough for an achievement meta.

Your proposals are completely ridiculous.. right up there with an ascended weapon.

I play Power 90% of the time.

But if you want the “best” roamer build, I would have to say it would be Dhuumfire, 30/20/0/0/20. Dire Armor, with enough Rabid gear to reach 25% base crit. Scavenger or Perplexity runes, Bursting/Geomancy/Corruption sigils.

I would go with spectral wall, signet of spite, and spectral walk. Epidemic when fighting groups, corrupt boon vs boon heavy guardians/ele’s ect.

I like how in the video every time the Necro uses his heal, he gains like 2k max from the siphons lol. What a joke.

Wow, I just watched the video. What a completely useless, TERRIBLE skill.

It started off with so much potential… So many uses with plenty of counters. Now it is a steaming pile of kitten.

Thanks for nothing A-Net!

The rewards were perfectly fine. They were far greater than any other achievement meta in the game.

You can be disappointed, but its not A-Nets fault, it is your sense of entitlement. “so much effort”… lol.

+1 vote for enjoyable season.

It was just normal WvW but with some really fun match-ups thrown in. With a free chest at the end…

Vatlaaw Fierceshot.5713:

Stx.4857:

Vatlaaw Fierceshot.5713:

DeadlySynz.3471:

They can’t give top rewards, all it would do is encourage server stacking. I havn’t checked, are we able to open this chest yet?

I would fully expect either all the rewards to be basically the same for people or perhaps a very slight increase to those who finished in higher spots.

Imagine this, suppose Anet decided to give an ascended to the winner, how exactly does it make the rest of the servers/players feel who have absolutely no chance in winning?

The last time I checked, when people lose at a competition, they aren’t awarded with the same things as what was awarded to the winner. At least past the age of 5, anyway. It’s just not how things are supposed to be done at the competitive level.

A competition usually means that you cant just all join a few select servers to create stacked teams.

Whether or not you agree or disagree with the strategies used by the participating players is an entirely different subject.

Not really. I am just saying that I would barely even qualify WvW as a competition.

Vatlaaw Fierceshot.5713:

DeadlySynz.3471:

They can’t give top rewards, all it would do is encourage server stacking. I havn’t checked, are we able to open this chest yet?

I would fully expect either all the rewards to be basically the same for people or perhaps a very slight increase to those who finished in higher spots.

Imagine this, suppose Anet decided to give an ascended to the winner, how exactly does it make the rest of the servers/players feel who have absolutely no chance in winning?

The last time I checked, when people lose at a competition, they aren’t awarded with the same things as what was awarded to the winner. At least past the age of 5, anyway. It’s just not how things are supposed to be done at the competitive level.

A competition usually means that you cant just all join a few select servers to create stacked teams.

WhiteAndMilky.2514:

I spend an average of about 35 silver an hour in wvw just for food, with over 350 hours in seasons that’s 122g I spent during that period. My server came in first in the gold league. What did I get for it? About 2g in rewards, ascended mat junk I don’t need, a mini (which everyone got), level scrolls which I don’t need (16 level 80s), a tiny amount of wxp, and a finisher that has a limited number of uses. That’s just silly silly-pants!

That was your choice to spend so much on the OP foods. Your server really doesn’t matter, because anyone can just transfer to the top servers.

Level scrolls and ascended mats are very useful to most players. The number of rewards for this meta are far beyond any other achievement meta. Stop whining.

Did you expect 120g in the chest? Lol.