Guild Wars 2

Picked out a few odd things:

1) On-Crit sigil on MH dagger with a 9% crit rate isn’t too good. Consider on swap or permanent.

2) Furious Demise (fury is 400 prec) may offer a greater damage boost than Deadly Strength

3) Can only see one siphon on your build (on hit, 15pts BM). Not sure improving this by 50% merits the use of a trait.

I haven’t mucked about with Deathly Invigoration in a while, but last I checked it didn’t heal enough to be worth it even with 5s DS CD… your call though!

If you were a dev, and you were a dev who gave a darn about class balance and how interesting things are to play, would you add combo finishers to necro?

Where, and what kind?

Personally:

Axe 3 would be a blast finisher
DS 1 would be a 20% projectile finisher
Dark Path would be a leap finisher

Meh.

DS abilities should, across the board, have a power and a condition based component. For power users the power aspect is useful, for the condition users the condition component would be useful.

The problem is that DS1 is utter crap as a conditionmancer, and using DS5 to paper over that problem isn’t too clever. Likewise, it’s unlikely powermancers will gain much from DS5 (if we do, I suspect a mass influx of powermancers, as DS is already very much a powermancer friendly feature as is).

The real solution of course is to tie the DS abiulities to the currently equipped MH, but that’d take time and thought, neither of which is spared when Necro dev is considered.

Forgive me if I’m being an idiot, but isn’t one of the easiest ways to confirm this bug when you’re ressing at a big event? Like I have 27khp and get healed for about 800 a tick when being dressed. When I heal someone else with 27khp, they get about 1700 a tick.

Surely that confirms it very easily?

Also, where the kitten are ANet. Their silence is really starting to grate.

If someone’s mid-fight and wanting to win, then they’ll stay and fight even if you skip back and forth in SW. IT’s only once they start to lose that you’re likely to see them change behaviour.

If you’re a ranged player vs melee, then SW is great, because the fight dynamic will force the melee player into your SW area.

If you’re ranged vs ranged, then load up the bleeds and go back/forth to get prot. 3 lots of 5s (plus whatever duration you’ve got) is massively better than the wells prot trait, and as it’s applied whenever it’s absent you can get boon stripped/corrupted numerous times and still hold onto it.

It’s a control ability. All control abilities can be mitigated to some extent – this is the nature of a game. The art is in forcing your opponent to choose between a disadvantage and running away, and non thief/elementalists suffer when running.

As deathhammer build, I have absolutely no problem sticking to and violating a DD elementalist. They either run, or die. Retal, kittenloads of power/tough/vit and boon corruption.

I don’t play any sPvP, but I’d imagine it’d work reasonably well there. I can solo elementalists all day…

Will watch later, thanks.

Is there an EU equivalent of BoC?

Rennoko – it all depends, doesn’t it?

If you drop it mid-fight vs a melee opponent and can outrange them, then they either engage at your location and risk vuln, or let you mince about picking up prot 3 times.

If you drop it mid-fight vs a ranged player, you may struggle to get them to cross it once, let alone twice.

You can also drop it at the front of your zerg and let everyone pick up prot or the entire enemy team pick up vuln.

It might be easily avoided by the enemy, but armed with axe or staff you’re able to control the field. Sure a longbow ranger might not give two kittens, but worst case scenario you’re picking up prot equal to 2 well casts or Spectral Armour.

I’m not sure if it’s better than WoS (root + WoS = easy kill quite often) but I’m gonna try it before I rule it out.

I think the SW/WoD is a potent combo vs melee who are forced to engage, and engage immediately – warriors for example. Less significant against thieves, who can stealth and wait out the duration, then re-engage.

I always go in with SW, but I may take SW as well in future. My only concern is that SW doesn’t tag like WoS/WoC, and while I can see its power in winning engagements it most definitely does not help grab loot bags.

Solo roaming, SW/WoC(WoD?)/SW, but for ZvZ I think WoC/WoS/SW for permaswift.

Yeah, I can see him crossing back/forth over that field to get the warrior vuln plus prot for himself. Did people criticise based on his ground casting? Pity really. He’s got some really neat ideas but I can imagine people will get kitten y if he’s not got fast ground casting on.

Sup.

Normally SW lasts 9s and SW lasts 8s, however with this trait it increases the duration to 15s and 13s respectively, making this quite an awesomely powerful trait. This piqued my interest, so I started mucking about with it a bit more.

SW doesn’t refresh the protection buff until the last one expires, but it can and will stack 10 more vuln if your opponent crosses over it repeatedly. At 15s, this is a pretty reliable way of sustaining protection – assuming you cross over it three times in 15s, that should be 15s+ of prot from a single cast on a 40s cooldown, as well as being a combo field, applying 10x vuln per enemy crossing AND it’s an ethereal combo field.

If only we had some blast finishers… it could give our conditionmancers some seriously powerful protection in the form of chaos armour and prot… staff 4 and Bone Minions only though

SA is very, very interesting indeed. In the case of SW, SW and SG, there was no change to the duration of the conditions or boons applied. Assuming a base of 6s, I was expecting SA to grant 7.2s of protection when cast (20 points DM). Imagine my surprise when it was actually 9s, and ignored my additional duration from DM.

Sadly, the SA trait at 15pts in Soul Reaping is not affected by SA at 20pts in Curses.

(abbreviations deliberately unclear – it amused me)

EDIT: SG lists a 5.25s chill with 30 points in Spite, yet it chilled for 7s(ish) when I cast it with SA. Seems it benefits too.

Siiiiigh.

I despair sometimes. One of the following would be sensible:

1) ANet posts, confirms it’s an issue, confirms multiplier will be fixed in the next patch.
2) ANet posts, confirms it’s an issue, confirms will fix soonish.
3) ANet confirms it’s not an issue, because of y or x.
4) ANet confirms it’s aware, but believes it to be well balanced and won’t change.
5) ANet realises QA is a part of software/game development, and hires some people directly responsible for QA.

This and the focus trait bug. And the DS health bug. And weapon swapping in DS (which is no longer a bug, despite being a recommended tactic by a dev).

I love this game, but I hate ANet. Cognitive dissonance is a kitten.

I’m actually reasonably impressed with myself for such an awesome name. Should’ve gone with “Meaty” instead of “Mighty” though.

Just been roaming a bit in WvW. 1v1 it’s as good as Deathhammer, despite the loss of CtD and 100 power/10% condition duration.

Hi.

Teh basics

So, as you all know by my rage-laden posts elsewhere, I’ve been experimenting with Rune of Vampirism. You may also know me from my Deathhammer build, where I focused on melee and dagger usage, with an emphasis on survival and causing a lot of pain.

Well, I figured it’s time for an update and a bit of experimentation. So, I’ve grabbed a set of RoV, paid some cash and re-specced.

Before you hit any links, bear in mind I’ve built this with these key aims:

1) To stay alive
2) To do a lot of damage
3) To be a powerful duellist
4) To disrupt as many of the enemy as possible in WvW

Teh build

The Mighty Deathtickles

It’s a lot of fun. My previous statemens re: daggers, axes and staves apply – use them if you like them, I prefer melee. I’m not stupid, and I know there are times when axe/staff are required, but I roll with dagger unless I’m in one of those situations.

When I hit 25 stacks of Bloodlust, I swap the dagger out for the same dagger with Hydromancy. Hydromancy procs are a steady 1k/10s AoE proc with 3s chill (3.6s with Spite 20pts).

Teh highlights

4s daze on a 24s timer which hits up to 5 targets. Stops those pesky thieves from hiding, among other things.
Horribly high direct damage.
Tough as boots.
High retal uptime (more if you use axe in ZvZ)
A decent last gasp (gives you 3s of mist form semi-reliably…. you can use this to heal or enter DS depending)

Things you might question:

You’ve not taken Close to Death? Are you quite mad?

Losing that trait sucks kitten However, the 6 piece bonus on RoV can be blocked by Siphoned Power. It’s therefore a necessary sacrifice. Let’s do some maths on Target the Weak:

5 conditions equals a 10% damage increase. This affects the target regardless of its health (unlike Close to Death), so strive to maintain conditions where possible. You should be able to maintain 2-5 conditions fairly easily.

10 conditions equals a 20% damage increase, again irrespective of the target health. You probably won’t see this outside of ZvZ or instanced PvE, but it’s outright better than Close to Death for those circumstances.

So overall, provided you can maintain some conditions, it’s about as good. It will be worse sometimes, and it’ll be a LOT better when you’re beating on a target as part of a team.

LOL y u no Locust Signet?!

It’s too kitten slow. Use Locust Swarm and Spectral Walk to get around. Stop using them when you’re in a zerg and can use guardian speed circles to keep up. These two abilities should be saved where possible, but if you’re solo or need to keep up then alternate them.

Permaswiftness is vital in WvW.

Runes of Vampirism suck noob

Not really. An exta 1k on your main heal, and a 1k from a 5% proc chance. Plus a lot of power and a last chance to escape or turn around a fight. I’ve tried the others – Lyssa, Divinity etc. and RoV is the most entertaining I’ve found.

Y U NO CRIT LOL

High power, high retal uptime, Fury from tabbing DS. That does me nicely.

Teh basic approach

In ZvZ, drop all yer wells, toot ya mighty horn, hit Plague (then 2) and tag as many suckers as you can. You’ll lock down 5 players for the duration. Trolling people with Spectral Walk is great. Mix in Axe 3 for Retal, and tab DS to get Retal and Fury.

Solo… well, you’re all competent players. Just use those 3s of mist as best you can!

Sadly, this’ll jsut get added to the list of kitten which wouldn’t have gone live if ANet had a halfway decent QA team, and then to the list of kitten ANet would know about if they actually read the necro forums.

Your work, Targuil, is exceptional. Unfortunately the work of ANet cannot be said to be of the same standard.

I have plumbed new depths of inanity.

I disabled the Spite trait for Might on hit below 25%, and yes… it’s more reliable. Still quite often procs but not in time to save you, resulting in the cloud of mist above your corpse. That’s kittening annoying.

So I could potentially move 10 points from Spite into something else, but even then it isn’t reliable. Even when I’m on 10% HP and get hit again, it often doesn’t fire in time to save me. Stupid.

The icing on the cake though? I went from mist to DS when it did work, killed something, and the game presented me with the following message:

You have unlocked: Locked.

Sweet baby Jesus on a bicycle ANet, get some kittening testers.

kitten’s sake ANet, get a kittening grip already.

Andele, not sure about that – the omnom lifesteal has an ICD of 1s, right? That’s ~300hp/s assumping a decent crit rate and a bit of luck. Mango pie is 85hp/s.

Indeed, that’s something I can confirm. Used confusion damage from the lizards in South Shore.

The thing which is irking me is why physical damage which is inflicted when I’m below 10% HP but does not kill me does not always proc the mist.

Ideally I’d like it to engage before death regardless of the current HP and HP after the final hit, but it’s not even following the rules which it should be – I’m taking normal “white” damage and it’s not proccing reliably at all.

And nope, no Last Gasp here.

How do we go about talking to someone about the state of Necro traits, abilities and bugs? It’s lovely you engineer chaps have someone who’s playing your class (and the buffs to turrets speaks volumes regards the impact it’s had) but where’s our rep?

Come to think of it, how come there isn’t a rep per class?

Runes of Vampirism.

Great idea, buggy as kitten.

Taril.8619:

SupahSpankeh.8452:

Also, it doesn’t do damage to the target

Sigil of Blood should do 452 damage and 453 + (0.1 * Healing Power) healing when it procs.

Thus making it deal slightly more damage than Leeching if you proc it every 5 seconds, it should do more healing than Leeching if you proc it often and/or have an okay amount of healing power.

Mmm. I tested SoB, it did around 480 healing but did no damage at all. That would be roughly half that of the 10s heal from Sigil of Leeching, which also does no damage, but requires only one hit to proc.

Plus, once your 5s cooldown is off, it could be anything from instant to a few seconds before it procs again.

For my purproses (DF/DW or DW/AF), where I swap regularly, it’s not a great choice.

I checked damage on screen and by reading combat log. Got it to proc a number of times.

Another exciting variant – in the mists, it engaged at 0hp.

That’s right, 0hp.

Floated around, healed, no down state happened.

Who coded this shambles?

Hmm. Well, I thought that at first too – then I jacked up my HP to 29k, and took 3 hits below 2.9k before I went down.

Nothing.

Then the next time it did proc (I’m waigting 90s per attempt here) and I died immediately as the proc fired at the same time as another hit landed.

Again, siiiiigh.

Hmm. It seems it doesn’t always proc in time to actually stop you from being downed – sometimes there’s a quick hiss of mist and then bam, you’re down.

Yay for ANet’s quality control process.

Anyone managed to work out what’s up with the 6 piece bonus?

I’m considering it for my deathhammer build but I’m trying it on my spare Knight’s gear and it’s not proccing reliably at all.

Already asked that question in the general forums but this one seems to be more useful more often :P

How does one get the 6 piece bonus to proc reliably?

I honestly can’t figure out the pattern.

Further to the above, tried Sigil of Blood too. Sadly, it procs at most once every 5 seconds, which means you’re probably ebtter off with Sigil of Leeching if you’re swapping every 10 seconds. Also, it doesn’t do damage to the target

In addition to this, often the Vampiric runes wouldn’t do anyhting at all. I found on one occasion I was turned to mist with 0hp left, and was able to run, leave mists (still on 0hp) and heal. Unfortunately, it didn’t work the other 6-7 times I tested it (on mobs with small but steady damage, and in PVP vs burst damage).

Siiiigh. The bugs in this game are many and varied and depressing

Interestin’.

Tried Runes of Grenth btw? 20% fear duration with 30% from Spite does guarantee another tick from Reaper’s Protection, but 20% extra chill and chill on heal might be interesting.

Hey Kraag.

I tried it – albeit with Sigil of Leeching.

I’m used to being the linebreaker – my Deathhammer build is very much a “first in, last dead” build. I actually found it to be a great deal more survivable than the leeech build I tried, as well as hitting much harder.

However, your number analysis is exactly the sort of kittenzle this class needs. Thank you very kindly for your efforts!

Bloodthirst does indeed not affect them.

It does affect siphoning though – so the Blood Magic traits (on crit, on hit, wells), Signet of the Locust and Blood Fiend. Blood Fiend alone is about 1k/s with this trait.

OK, so nobody’s tried this. I figure it’ll give:

1k/s from BF attacks
4.5k from Taste of Blood
975 for first hit after ToB
975 for first hit after switch
38 per hit
45 per crit?
Regen at 90%
300/tick for dagger heal (2.4k total)
1.2k per target with Signet of the Locust.

Am thinking 20 points in BM, with +siphon and siphon on crit traits, then blood fiend, Runes of the Vampire x6 and Sigil of Leeching on OH. Steal on crit food in WvW… and sigil of locust, as that also synergises with the +siphon trait.

I’ve got a spare set of Knight’s gear (weapons and armour) but was wondering if anyone had been experimenting.

Frig it.

Could someone please take a necro into the mists with a buddy, and experiment with HP with 0 and 100% LF, then also as another class with the same toughness and HP?

This is the sort of thing one should be able to test in 5 minutes rather than debate over 5 days. I’d do it myself but I’m halfway thorugh cooking

Hi everyone!

So, I wanted to get everyone’s opinion on a few things.

Currently, there are a number of bugs. Varies greatly by class, but it’s safe to say Engineer and Necro have the largest share. There are non-class bugs, such as Charr footprints being backwards, and the handprints being missing altogether.

Would you be happier if the next patch had a fix and polish focus? I’d personally be very happy. As a necromancer, I’d also like a bit more variety added to our traits. For example, as a necromancer, our grandmaster minor traits look like this:

Might on hit below 25% HP (useless)
2% damage per condition (not too bad if you’re running power, pretty awful for condition users)
5% toughness given as power (for a PVTuser, this is typically 100 power)
+100 power if health over 90%
+100 power if LF over ?%

Now, these traits are uninspired, and pretty useless to the majority of our players. 3 of them are simply +100 power (assuming approx 2k toughness), the Spite trait is pointless and the condition damage tree trait doesn’t affect condition damage.

So – fix and polish, or moar content?

(also, out of interest – please list your main. I do wonder if it’s just some classes who are depressed by trait trees and bugs)

I lol’d.

Thieves would rebel. It’s bad enough they can’t autooneshot everyone any more, can you imagine how upset they’d be if conditions had the same effect on them as everyone else?

Incoming thief rage at merest suggestion. /popcorn

Bhawb.7408:

Engels.8537:

Bhawb.7408:

Actually, necromancers can easily keep 100% ret up time, which in your example would indeed be ridiculous :P

Wow… this seems impressive on paper, did you tried it?

Yes, I currently use a DS build that gives me 100% ret uptime (along with some other things). With how high necromancer eHP is, you can really abuse the ret damage, even more so when you see that you can get high fury/weakness/condition removal along side it. The difficult part is using DS every 5 seconds to keep the buffs going, and also learning when to let the buffs fall off because you need to actually tank with DS.

Yeah, I have near-100% ret uptime too.

30/15/25/0/0, axe/focus and dagger/warhorn. Given the 25% increase to boon duration, you can get:

6.25s from healing (trait)
3.75s from Unholy Feast on 15s CD – critters and pets count
3.75s from tapping DS

12.5s (from Lyssa runes some of the time)

I feel the SR traits don’t do enough to aid either survivability or damage, so I prefer to stick my points into DM/Curses.

Shabump.

Gents, this isn’t how I udnerstand sigils to work. Am I wrong, or is this a bug?

Sigil of Bloodlust and Hydromancy – procs hydromancy on switch.

Sigl of Force and Hydromancy – does not proc hydromancy on switch.

This is a bug, right?

Cos as of the last patch, they stopped my favourite on-switch sigil from proccing.

I thought only on-crit or on-swap sigils blocked other on-crit or on-swap sigils?

The biggest thing I don’t like about the Givers weapons is they do nothing apart from sacrifice stats.

Bugged since launch people.

Retal, full PVT, 30/15/25/0/0.

I’ve only ever lost to a thief with this build when there’s been other players or mobs involved. Root n bomb is fine, but if you’re struggling with that (as you will against decent thieves) then retal is a very, very powerful boon to use.

29khp, 43kehp, and retal up most of the time. It’s actually hard to lose sometimes

Hint: look at casting times too.

I’ve gotten like 8 ectos from ~18 rares now. I know every time someone asks if something’s changed since a patch, they get laughed at and called names, but… is anyone out there still getting a reasonable level of ectos from rares?

I know, the plural of anecdotes isn’t evidence, but there sure are a lot of anecdotes about it in gchat.

Givers are still bugged.

Duration is important if you’re not in an area with lots of cleanses.

Achi – If the forums can’t answer a question, then take the initiative and test it yourself!

It shouldn’t be too hard to do. Find a mob with a special attack (just about any mob in Orr), equip runes (2 Svanir, 2 Ice, 2 Grenth) to get 60% chill duration, 30 points in Spite, then do a chilled/unchilled test run. I’d say 10 special attack intervals with/without chilling would be a solid statistical basis for claims re: chill in PvE.

I’ve never had Hydromancy stop proccing, but then I don’t use anything more than Force/Hydromancy Bloodlust/Hydromancy on my weapons, so if you’re using an on crit or on swap then it might be over-riding the Hydromancy procs.

Putting 25 points in Curses is useful for the prec, but it’s mainly about getting that amazing 25 point Curses talent – Target the Weak. In a good group, most targets will have 9-10 conditions at all times, which translates to a 18-20% damage boost. In WvW I couldn’t give up Deadly Strength or (especially) Spiteful Vigor, but in PvE (FotM and instances) moving 10 points to Curses will give you a substantial DPS boost.

In solo play you can generally assume Target the Weak to be worth a 6-12% DPS increase, which is pretty good, but certainly not equivalent to the 30 point Spite major traits for power builds, or the condition duration that Spite investment brings.

Hence why, for Deathhammer at least, I like to leave Target the Weak for group PvE content only. At all other times, it’s a strict 30/15/25/0/0 for that balance of pwnage and hard-shelled crunchy goodness.

Death hammer has a good amount of weakness and chill – AFAIK chill reduces the reuse of boss abilities like it does player abilities. Retal is useless though.

Hey!

I think 30/25/0/0/15 or 30/30/0/0/10 is great with PVT and a little Knight’s gear; that is, if you want to bring heavy DPS which is popular in the current PvE meta.

Personally I just slot out retal traits, lose my mobility utilities and equip axe/staff as the encounter dictates – I’m happy with 30/15/25 in PvE, its a solid idea to have at least one tough player in case the kitten hits the fan.

I’d welcome discussion on the subject.

Thanks all for confirming these numbers, especially Arvid.

It explains why DS feels so very weak even with Soldier gear on. It’s a handy HP sponge and great for dipping to get buffs/purge conditions, but it’s a little weak for me to enjoy the way I’d like to.

Also, note the absence of any devs popping in back when we were testing our own class to correct us. Sod ANet.

Glad you’re enjoying it.

Meanwhile, I’m deathhammering my way through sPvP, WvW, FotM and Explorable mode.

41kehp with 3.5k attack is enough to deal with most issues. First in, last to die, and I hurt everyone around me the whole time I’m there.

All we can ask is that you try