Guild Wars 2

Nynuwe.5893:

Substatic.6958:

Minions would be pretty if the game had normal dungeons, rather than skipping and exploiting everything. Pets kinda suck with that.

Then don’t skip. Dungeon runs with my guild don’t skip stuff so rangers and MM necros are rarely a nuisance. Seriously, it’s still fun that way.

Indeed, and most of the time it only tacks a few more minutes onto the run. The worst place though is probably the priestess of dwayna in Arah though, because of the Sparks.

I think it’s also the fact PvPers have been playing nothing but conquest…and the build variations have never really changed. The only reason necro is even in right now is because it’s the only class that can keep Ele in check.

Hopefully stronghold will give us a nice game mode that utilizes and capitalizes on multiple roles.

Bhawb.7408:

Will they? Probably not. Nor should they.

Why must you squash my hopes and dreams mr bwawb? ;-;

Bhawb.7408:

Velimere.7685:

Can you link your build for this? I’ve never played MM, but it sounds fun.

This is the base of all PvP/WvW MM builds. There are other MM builds you can run, but they’re worse. Then you have the Soul Reaping and Spite variants, which are the two main build types.

From there, decide if you want staff or not, if you’re SR pick up Soul Marks if you have staff, if not using staff use Axe/Dagger
If you are Spite choose if you are using SoV/Blood Bond (highly recommended) if so pick up the signet trait, otherwise grab Spiteful Spirit
Pick up the traits you want from Blood Magic, the bottom 2 in Adept and all 3 in Master are viable
Finally grab runes, there are a ton you can use but in my opinion Pack is the best all around, with the large swiftness boost being a big help paired with warhorn and Banshee’s Wail and a good minion damage/anti kite boost, and sigils, again lots you can choose by my favorite are leeching/renewal

At the end, the build should look something like mine.

Icetrinity.3804:

I find this amusing as I don’t believe I have ever played an online game below 200 ping. Yay for Australian internet being behind the rest of the world.

It isn’t just high ping, it is having a ping that can randomly jump from around 90 (my stable ping) to 500 in a fight, where all of a sudden I go from full HP to dead because I missed the entire combo from an enemy while I sat and did nothing because all my ability orders didn’t register due to packet loss. It means I also can’t stream because not only would the stream look choppy and crappy on my screen and stream, but I’d also probably have an awful connection in general with the packet loss.

But yeah, I’ve played with high ping before, and in GunZ there was client sided hit detection, meaning you had to lead enemies and hit them on their screen, after lag, in order to get a hit register. It sucks, I’d hate to do that all the time, but I know Aussies have a really bad internet structure on top of being ages away from everything.

I’d have this sorta trouble when I lived on campus, I had to adjust a lot of security settings in my computer to get it to work. I’m trying to think though….there was something the IT department did for me but I can’t remember what it was…..think they opened a port? Ahhhh crud, if I remember I’ll message ya.

Eh, if they don’t it’s ok, just I remember down in Arah I could get so many jagged horrors and the bleeds would just sky rocket to the point even burn heavy Condi classes would be shamed. PvP this would be much harder as the horrors would need to survive throughout a fight, WvW less so because I could stock up on horrors on Mobs.

I sorta wish they’d get rid of Condi duration entirely and just give all Conditions a flat 50% boost. Maybe make it so Critcal hits with Condis applied a longer lasting duration or something?

Granted this sounds like a terrible idea but If it allows someone to springboard and create a better idea, please, step on it.

Tyloric.7520:

We were running Arah p2 last night and I had the same issues with Inquest Technicians. Their perma stun is impossible to work through even when I pop balanced stance, and god help anyway who has two of them focusing them.

That being said, while I actually can get frustrated with how things are now, it’s very rarely am I in a situation that I even notice. Only in very specific dungeon paths.

I HATE those buggers! Hate! Dang you for bringing them up! Ohhhh I got some dang asura to kill. -_- Arah just makes me depressed to be a necromancer. ;-;

Yeah I just thought of this. Seems silly but after seeing what I could potentially do on with Rise on my Condimancer this just came to mind.

Reaper’s shroud should honestly make you more reliable, since you can use RS 3 before your spin to win, then shatter it if an opponent/opponents get too close for your liking. And you’ll still have your stability to boot.

Ahhh good, he’ll make a nice pelt for my necromancer’s study!

Before: Behold! My army of the undead…daisy….pickers…

Now: Flesh golem! That centaur just took your daisy! (Hears blood curdling cries) (O_O)’ ….note to self, don’t take flesh golem’s daisy.

Muchacho.2390:

I dont think deathmagic is the right tree for celestral builds so no i dont think it is viable.

I think deathmagic is more a tree for minion masters and condi builds (putrid defense, reapers protection, corruptors frever).

Crusader amulet also kinda works if you go into soul reaping and take the 50% critchance trait in DS (in deathmagic you then would take the shroud traits. Also shrouded removel, deadly strength and unholy sanctuary). Though i find unholy sactuary kinda weak…

Unholy sanctuary has its uses, a lot of times in WvW I’ll have people who will go all out on me when I get below 50%, thinking that I’m out of life force or don’t have enough to enter DS, only for me to have Sanctuary activate and burst them down. But the heal is too weak to really do much of anything, unless you have vital persistence and plenty of protection. The same thing happens in PvP from what little I’ve played. It’s rather funny to “Accidentally” flash DS and then just watch them go hog wild haha.

There really isn’t near as much anti-necro sentiment as people would have you believe, necros do FINE in dungeons, me and my bud regularly duo with no problems, I draw all the aggro while he goes to town with his hundred blades on warrior. The only time I need to switch out is when we’re doing a boss that has a sort of time limit, like the last boss in the inquest path," for Arah, and as for Lupi, I’ve always had a hard time with him on my necro because of his projectile attack, but then my friend just grabs his guardian and we cheese it.

The worst thing we have for us right now is the fact we have no group utility, Ele had ice bow which is just broken, and can pre-stack 25 might, thief and Mesmer have stealth, so your party can just skip 90% of the mobs in the dungeon, as well as some bosses. Warriors have phalanx strength, and that with the GS trait and strength runes lets them just output ridiculous amounts of might for a party, guardians have AoE stability and cleansing, and lots of boons, engis can really fill any role the party needs, and rangers are sorta with us on the low list.

And reaper won’t fix these problems, these are foundational problems, the devs sorta took the whole, selfish class design concept too far and ended up hindering us as well. We don’t have that many blast finishers, nor do we have any projectile destruction/reflection, which is a bit weird for a zone control Profession.

But, we do have a lot of weakness ouput, which I’m just finally figuring out is great for bosses and multi hit enemies, and we are rather naturally Tanky with Deathshroud, and with the spite tree, we can stack might like a crazy person, and reaper will do that even better, while providing better sustain and damage output. AND we have been gettin A LoT of attention lately from Mr. Robert Gee, who’s been working hard to fix our concerns and bring our needs to the attention of the balance team. Just look out the Reaper change list in comparison to the other BWE event threads, we’re getting a ton of buffs and fixes, and he even mentions scepter and axe buffs for the next BALANCE patch, and minions are FInALLY useful now.

So to answer your question…yeah make a necro, we’re going through a big time of change now, and who knows where we’ll be by the end of it.

arenta.2953:

Jimson.5168:

A bug report is more useful to devs than a rant… just saying…

it isn’t a bug

theres A TON of PvE monsters who spam the knockdown so many times a secound that stability is USELESS

like Necro’s lich form, or plague form…..COME ON. i didn’t even know these COULD be knocked down.

they don’t have the animation for it.

but i know they knocked down, cause the stability stacks are gone, my skills all went on cooldown, and i cant MOVE.

WTF. it was ONE mordremoth!!!!!! ONE.

its getting overkill

other monsters it happens with, various bosses in fractals, as well as Arah, where the plaguebringers start pulling you left and right non stop.

RIP elite skills.

Been chained pulled by krait yet? Doesn’t even matter if you have stunbreakers slotted.

Make a macro, long as you aren’t doing anything nefarious, you’ll be fine…although yes a simple (open all) button would be nice.

I just wish we had better jagged horror access, I still remember using rise as a Condimancer and wracking up the bleeds. Ohhh that was so much fun!

Probably engi. Or ranger. I see plenty of every other profession.

leftyboy.9358:

Apparently Everyone is saying the same thing. Farting necros ftw? I don’t think theyll stick with this sound for long. The people have spoken!!

Axe animation….and good lord this thing makes me wanna stop using my shadow war horn!

Unfortunately….not really. I mean axe and focus are decent, and in the right setting I’ve seen axe 2 hit as much as a hundred blades, but it’s all single target. But! Look at the first page of the BWE changes and you’ll see Robert mentioning axe and scepter buffs. So there is hope.

But really, it’s just PvE, and axe is fine for PvE for LF generation with the two and tagging mobs with the three. So use it if us want, or go make another character that can utilize axe properly, I’m not sure which one that’d be, but give it a try. You might just need a break from necro is all.

Honestly just a bit of a health bump and make jagged horror have death nova by default and I’d be happy.

Well i just got back and tried it…..oh dear lord, it’s so amazing, I need Rise! back now for my Condi-minionmancer! It’s so amazing having minions work the way they are supposed to! THEY EVEN MATCH YOUR MOVEMENT SPEED NOW! Granted they will lag behind if you go over bumpy terrain but they are speed demons now! I’m even running with the 25% movement speed on dagger trait!

What stats are you using? If you have a bit of toughness and vitality you shouldn’t be getting one shotted by thief, maybe half health but thieves are so squishy, some cc and they’re dead

The only build I found that could survive Lupi was a MM build because he would go and attack my minions, allowing me to build LF, but this is not optimal and requires a heck of a lot of luck.

CastIron.7364:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Rav.9475:

As an added bonus they also rally people!

Ahhhh crud you’re kidding? Well….least it can work in PvE now I guess.

Ehmm … I’m either not competent at reading the patch notes or this is about to get fixed, because I’m 90% sure I was getting rallied whenever a Bone Minion / Jagged Horror of me died just now. I rallied 3 times in a row and was still surrounded by enemies.

So…wait are enemies rallying off our minions or are we rallying off our minions, or both?

Rauderi.8706:

LET ME KNOW IF THIS WORKS!
Sorry for caps, but I’ve been itching for a minionmancer build that actually works.

Same, after trying out Rise my theory crafting and build making has been dying to get on board with making a viable Condi minion man we.

Blaine Tog.8304

Actually I gotta go with lily on this one, Lupi is probably the one boss that I cannot solo on my necromancer because he attacks so quick and teleports I can’t build up enough LF to survive his next Attack, I had some good luck with Minionmancer, but I think it was just lick since he kept going after my minions one after the other, letting me cycle through each one as it was destroyed.

Other than that, I can handle most other bosses with enough weakness application and LF generation.

Oh I’m certainly not saying that the Necro is the ideal profession for Arah or anything, and I certainly wouldn’t try to solo Lupi with one, but the bar for success isn’t so high that the Necro can’t comfortably leap over it. If you’re looking to do a speed run with the maximum possible efficiency, yeah, you don’t want to take your Necro, but all that means is you need to find groups that are less uptight, not that you need to switch to another profession.[/quote]

oh na, I don’t do speedrun solos on my necro. As long as I can get through a dungeon in about 30 minutes in happy, and more lenient with noobs, had a horrible run in ascalon though a few nights ago, was just so off my game. On the bright side, taught some people you need to burst CC the boss in P3 or you’ll be flatter than a pancake with the stability changes, so that’s a big plus!

Rav.9475:

As an added bonus they also rally people!

Ahhhh crud you’re kidding? Well….least it can work in PvE now I guess.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Lily.1935:

For Arah on the other hand, Never ever bring a necromancer. They are REALLY bad in Arah! Like, actually useless. The enemies in Arah seem designed specifically to defeat high defense and health. So even if you have 30k health with full life force and activate it right before some of them hit you with a 80% damage reduction you’ll still be OKOed! Reflects, targeted instant blinks, invaln, stealth, stability are really needed in Arah.. OH would you look at that? Necros have none of those things… I doubt reaper could make you even remotely useful in that dungeon.

I’ve actually run Arah a lot with my Necro. I figured since I was getting the Arah armor for her, it was only fair that she earn most of it, though really I had a lot of fun doing it as well. If we ran into problems, it was rarely my fault. If my PUG wiped during Lupi, I’d usually be the only one to make it out.

All you really need for any dungeon is to know the dungeon mechanics and good dodging. Certain things can make it easier and I’ll admit that the Necro lacks most of those, but it’s still totally doable without them.

Actually I gotta go with lily on this one, Lupi is probably the one boss that I cannot solo on my necromancer because he attacks so quick and teleports I can’t build up enough LF to survive his next Attack, I had some good luck with Minionmancer, but I think it was just lick since he kept going after my minions one after the other, letting me cycle through each one as it was destroyed.

Other than that, I can handle most other bosses with enough weakness application and LF generation.

I shall not hold out hope.

Ok I lied PLEASE GRENTH LET THIS BE TRUE!

Just a flesh wound.3589:

TheLastNobody.8319:

Question, these B-day gifts, are they just something for people who had the game since the beginning, or do you get it in the gem store? And as far as dyes go, I haven’t been able to check but are the shadow dyes included in this? Sorry just haven’t been able to play much in the past couple of days.

The birthday gift is for any char that reaches 3 years old, so yes, right now it’s those from the very beginning of the game as these are the first to hit 3 years old.

You get it in your mail when your char hits 3 years old.

Shadow dyes are not included (and probably will never be included with this birthday dye gift) as they are still available from black lion chests.

Ahhh good good, just wondering cause I just got the shadow abyss due from the TP, and was going to be very angry if I came home home today to find I had a free dye selection available and could select it. :P

Try Honor of the Waves, I can solo path 2 easily on my necormancer on that, and against bosses that use multihit attacks that are small but wrack up big damage, our weakness output is a savior.

But yeah, our biggest problem is really we don’t bring much of anything unique for the group, which in fine with but in exchange we need to be more self sufficient. Like a good example is engineer, they aren’t meta, but they can stack might and stealth and bring a fair amount of CC to burst bosses out of their bigger attacks.

If our Life Siphons operated on a percentage basis instead of just measilly numbers, that’d also help a bunch. Hopefully we’ll see more love in HoT though considering this content is now 3 years old anyways.

Sigmoid.7082:

TheLastNobody.8319:

What if they just made it so chill does damage and applied slow as the GM trait? I think Thad be a lot more interesting and help reaper more than just damage in general. But give it an ICD so we can’t just stack like 20 seconds of slow on some poor soul, no fun crushing someone’s hopes and dreams when they have none to begin with.

Slow and chill i dont think should be put together. The two most punishing conditions in the game. Taking longer to use your abilities as well as them taking longer to cooldown would be no fun to play against.

Neither is fighting an opponent that just vanished in thin air every few seconds or can become immune to condis….but yeah, you’re probably right haha. I just wish we had something too allow us to slow down others and land our big attacks and allow for a proper execution. I was thinking maybe something like corrupter’s fervor, a status effect that with the more chill we stack the slower they get buyout, that wouldn’t be cleans able and therefore unfair. I hate those kind of affects anyways since they can’t be removed or fought back against, just gotta let them run their course…

Question, these B-day gifts, are they just something for people who had the game since the beginning, or do you get it in the gem store? And as far as dyes go, I haven’t been able to check but are the shadow dyes included in this? Sorry just haven’t been able to play much in the past couple of days.

What if they just made it so chill does damage and applied slow as the GM trait? I think Thad be a lot more interesting and help reaper more than just damage in general. But give it an ICD so we can’t just stack like 20 seconds of slow on some poor soul, no fun crushing someone’s hopes and dreams when they have none to begin with.

Bhawb.7408:

In fact if we were to remove all the self-applied conditions on the skills, some of them would still remain worthless or underpowered compared to what they should be.
But as it is now just adding resistance is a really bad bandaid that doesn’t even fully cover the problem.

I would even say removing them would be a nerf in the fact that I’ve gotten used to using them with plague sending and can now reliably proc it whenever I want to using the two added conditions from master of corruption.

Corruptions I feel should be our group utility, while spectral skills our our selfish utility, minions are our….let you fill that blank in, and wells our our dance utility. Least, that’s how I’m seeing it now after your post.

CpC really needs projectile destruction, Blood is power I think could be something like, for every bleed on an enemy you and allies gain a stack of might, and you copy a stack of bleeding into yourself….oh that second part just sounds horrible, just work with me! epidemic is fine I think, just needs a cast time reduction, and Corrupt boon would be great if it was an AoE corruption, though that might be a tad ridiculous.

Ingros.7801:

Also just to point this out, it heals 2610 hp + 266 hp per point of adrenaline that the Berserker has at the time his hp hits 0. A Berserker has 10 Adrenaline max while Berserking and since the heal is not Tier based but per point it would heal for
2610-5270 hp not 7830.

Also, just throwing this out there, wouldn’t it be affected by poison as well?

What about an anti-stealth field upgrade? Or special siege weapon for keeps only that needs to be taken out before enemies can stealth inside the walls?

Please be more evasion than stealth based. ;_;

….daredevil, all I’m going to say.

Ahhhhh man this thread is a hoot and a half! Seems like people just can’t decide how hard or even what challenging content should be. Ahhh well, we’ll just see when the big announcement comes out. I just hope it’ll be fun, and from the looks and feel of the beta area, it will be rather interesting.

Rekt.5360:

OanSur.4590:

Now curious thing is, LB burst works perfectly with Cleansing Ire because it doesnt have to hit enemy. You create a fire field and that is your burst – all you have to do is hit the ground with it.

New primal burst skill for GS: Arcing sear. Create a firefield around you… ring a bell ?
Is the field created upon hitting enemy or just triggering F1 ? Cause i think like we might get a unbeatable meatgrinder with Strength/Defense/Berserker.
Condi ? HAH!
Deadly aoe dmg ? HAH!
Heavy cc ? HAH!
Just pop signet of fury for full adrenaline bar, then F2, F1, and you are allowed to shout KILL IT WITH FIRE! >:D

And you have no idea how much the lack of discipline will hurt you :S I’ve thought out quite a few fun and promising power builds using berserker but I’d ditch strength any day over discipline.

Yeah I don’t play much warrior, and when I do it’s PvE only, but the lack of fast hands is really noticeable as it means I get stuck on a weapon that I have spent all my cool downs on, and am left just hacking away until the CD comes off. And unlike necro a, while you do have the ability the become temporarily invulnerable, you can’t do it that often. Plus a lot of your Condi removal is tied to bursts and weapon swapping. The problem is though, I don’t know how’d they add fast hands to baseline as it alters a universal mechanic without the othe classes rioting…maybebif they made it a sigil? Like when you swap to this weapon, weapon swap cool down is decreased by 50%?

Vydahr.4285:

Bhawb.7408:

Dakunaito.9602:

shouts are so-so, but that dmg nerf on Suffer wasn’t needed. Berserker has utility skill that does ~1600 dmg and it has 100% crit chance. the traits where ubber horrible and weak as hell, so a rebalance was needed

And if this turns out to be an issue, we can provide that feedback in the next BWE, we aren’t even remotely close to that being the launch balance point.

While I do think that our shouts need to have more impact (more damage would be great, though added effects wouldn’t be a bad thing either) I agree with Bhawb here in that it’s not much of a concern at the moment while we still have more testing to do with changes that have already been said to be happening

^this. A LOT of people seem to be forgetting that this is a period a change between the specialization patch and when HoT drops, and even after that we’ll still be able to provide a lot of feedback and get things fixed once it’s dropped in the live environment, and Robert has show me that he does have his ear tuned into the necro thread and our concerns with his BWE post from before.

When I’m talking about being made baseline, I mainly mean the scepter durations and drop the increased Condi Damage. Thoughts, ideas, yay, nay, nachos?

I can see the pros and cons to this, butt….I’m also going to have to go against it. It would make DS feel too clunky to be used effectively, like with how Gravedigger was with it having a 1 second cool down eleven if it hit.

Hm…well than…if that’s true than that’s going to need a lot of toning down…

Zerker seems strong, I’ll give it that, but a lot of those things will probably be toned down, and by how much we don’t know. Just have to wait until we get our hands on it and figure out how to break that thing inside and out. in the meantime I look forward to fighting them as reaper, just hope they don’t turn tail and run in WvW right when their stances run out, never any fun when that happens.

honeslty I think it’s really just mobility that needs to be toned down in general…buuut that’s just my opinion. Removing celestial would do nothing, eles would probably just go soldier or knights or something else. Maybe even cleric. And another spec or build would rise to the top and be considered top dog.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

TheLastNobody.8319:

bhagwad.4281:

Ok…what’s a break bar?

Pretty much all bosses and mobs with defiant will have a bar instead of just stacks of defiance, each control type ability will drain this bar until it breaks, when it does, the boss/target is stunned and gains 25 vul. While they have the bar though, they are immune to CC effects.

Not quite accurate. What happens when the bar breaks varies with the enemy. Heralds (Revenant elite spec) using Shield 5 get a break bar that, when broken, stuns them for 2 seconds and gives them 25 Vulnerability. Tempests overloading Earth just get stunned if their break bar is broken (unknown time). Some bosses are stunned for 3 seconds, the Wyvern fight has it stunned for 4+ and taking double damage.

What exactly happens when the break bar is broken varies greatly. It may not even be something you want to trigger!

i thought it was weird each one had a different effect, and now i know why…i’m going back to my rock. ;-;

How will cleansing ire function wither berserker?

bhagwad.4281:

Ok…what’s a break bar?

Pretty much all bosses and mobs with defiant will have a bar instead of just stacks of defiance, each control type ability will drain this bar until it breaks, when it does, the boss/target is stunned and gains 25 vul. While they have the bar though, they are immune to CC effects.