Toughness works with DS, always has as far as I know.
If you do want to test it however, get someone with a steady weapon in pvp, not random npc’s.
it’s showing you an empty page 2. change the url to show page 1, or add some posts until it actually has a page 2. Oh anet.
You’re severely underestimating the strength of perm weakness in any sort of pvp.
Limiting their ability to dodge makes a noticable difference in longer fights, the reduction in damage (which varies based off their crit chance, god knows why they made it like that) is just an added bonus.
Spite
Parasitic bond: Not bad large wvw fights and pve, but pretty terrible in pvp. Like all heals it’s wasted if you’re in DS (shroudstomping comes to mind).
Death into life: Healing power is not a good stat in terms of scaling, especially for necro, making this also fairly poor.
Siphoned power: I understand what Anet envisioned this to be; that a necro would get low on health, jump into DS and face roll things. Problem is, DS was nerfed pre release, and it’s not the unstoppable killing machine it was. Now this trait is a bit of a joke for a GM minor trait.
Death’s embrace: Sure, you can do a lot of damage with the 3 skill and a power build, but it’s still a pretty useless trait, although we’re not the only one with it.
Spiteful talisman: Fix the bug and it would be fine. Only worth mentioning because it’s been bugged since before release.
Spiteful removal: Good in wvw and in larger fights in PvP, but in general I dislike these on kill traits, as it’s much more useful to have something like Chill of death, which helps achieving the kill.
Signet mastery: Necro’s signets aren’t strong enough to justify using this trait usually (the only time it seems of any value at all is with undeath, in pvp). It should be combined with signet power to make it a bit better (and freeing up a trait to be replaced with something better), or improve our signets.
Reaper’s might: Fine trait in theory, but Life blast’s RoF is a bit to low to really make this a great trait.
Signet power: Same boat as signet mastery.
Axe training: It’s a very good trait in it’s own right, but is completely outclassed by Close to death. If we had an offhand axe, or if our mh axe was better, this could be worth taking over CTD.
Curses
Reaper’s precision: Could do with a slightly higher chance?
Death magic
Reanimator: Nothing needs be said.
Protection of the horde: Nothing strictly wrong with it, but’s isn’t great being a minor trait when a lot of necro’s don’t use minions.
Staff mastery: This trait has two problems, the first being it is completely outclassed by greater marks. The second, is that most necro’s use the staff as a secondary weapon, as once you have cast all your circles there is no reason to sit around waiting for them to CD instead of being in another weapon.But mainly because greater marks is better.
Death shiver: It’s really not good, a couple of stacks of vulnerability for a master trait isn’t good. I seem to remember the wiki discussion page makes some reference to it chilling early on in development, that would be quite nice, a suit the necromancers supposed ability to hold people down.
Blood magic
Dagger mastery: Combine it with quickening thirst or something, there isn’t a huge demand for d/d since they’re fairly different weapons.
Deathly invigoration: Does laughably small amounts of healing compared to the likes of ele simply switching into water. Really just needs a straight up buff, as necro needs more support options.
Quickening thirst: See dagger mastery.
Soul reaping
Fear of death: Is it a usually ability? Sure. Is it possibly more useful then some of the other adept traits? No. Why use a trait to help you after you’re downed, when there are great traits there to help you not die in the first place?
Speed of shadows: The speed boost really just isn’t enough to make a difference, especially when there are genuinely good traits that could fill that slot.
Decaying swarm: This has the same issue as siphoned power, it gives the buff when your health is to low to make a serious difference, even with DS.
Near to death: This is a great trait (although kind of outshined by foot in the grave in any sort of pvp). The issue with this trait is that lot of things about DS is balanced, with the knowledge that a necro can cut their CD in half with this trait. So it’s not that this trait is bad, simply that I feel anet is afraid buffing certain things because they could be OP with a 5 second DS CD.
yeah, dagger 2 needs to be a melee attack of some sort. A short leap like Garo suggested is best, but having a ranged channel has poor synergy with a melee autoattack.
Because Anet.
Axe 3 should be a blast finisher (just look at the animation)
Focus 4 should be a projectile finisher, since it is literally a projectile, same with spectral grasp and dark path.
Life blast should be a small projectile like every other projectile autoattack.
Sadly we don’t really have anything like a leap on land, except sort of golem charge, and the closest thing to a whirl we have is axe 2.
The whole thing about losing the spectral buff in DS is extremely dumb, if they don’t want us to gain LF per hit while in DS, make it so we don’t get THE EFFECT of the spectral buff while in DS, I don’t want to enter DS to interrupt someone’s heal, just to waste the better part of a good utility/trait, I should still have the buff once I leave, just like how regeneration works currently.
Yeah, both dagger traits are pretty poor, partly because off hand and main hand dagger are used for completely different play styles (I don’t think any other weapon in the game is like that, correct me if I’m wrong), with an extremely small niche for using dual daggers that is out classed by using another class anyway.
Both traits aren’t worth the slot, the speed one is simply outclassed by locusts sig or swiftness, since you have to be in a particular weapon set to get the boost which just doesn’t cut it.
The shorter CD’s trait will for most necro’s only benefit two skills (and honestly who uses dagger 2 so often they wish it had a shorter CD), and has to compete for better traits, such as mark of evasion, healing Life transfer (which actually heals team mates for a fair amount) or ritual of life, wish give you the main heal as well as the well itself, making it very good in pvp, where you’ll often have the res signet. Hell, if you’re doing life siphoning then it has to compete with those traits as well, they just don’t justify the slot in my book.
It’s just another throw back to GW1 like our high base HP, but this one is poorly thought out, as wasting condition cleanses to remove self inflicted conditions is not a good thing, and the aren’t strong enough (well, corrupt boon and epidemic are) to justify the self condition – so honestly there is no reason for it to do so, it’s just a needless throwback.
25% movement speed for an adept trait, just for using a weapon that is viable on the majority of builds would probably be too strong, as it makes locust sig completely redundant, either it needs to be completely trashed as bhawb said, or merged with shorter dagger CD’s or something.
It’s exactly as tenderly says, a necro bunker works, but it doesn’t work well enough for competitive play, and other classes do it better, leading to the point of why use necro for a role that it is outclassed in?
At a guess from what’s been said I would say something like http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAoYWjQah6daaa87JAJFYb9kivHn6R5sfOA-TsAgzCmI2RtjbHzOSgsANKY9x8DA
Changing shrouded removal to greater marks/vampiric ritual if conditions aren’t an issue. (Near to death is rather neat with shrouded removal, but the stability is way to important)
Of course he also claimed near a minute of protection, which would instead mean spectral wall+armour combo, which would mean shorter spectral CD’s instead of shorter DS skill CD’s, and would rule out vampiric wells entirely. This build would theoretically mean you could have protection for over a minute, but now that have thieves have no CD boon steal, it would be rubbish now if it wasn’t before.
(edited by War Mourner.5168)
the bite animation/sound is thankfully gone with incinerator, replaced with fiery explosion type things. Also when you kill things their corpses burn.
Last check sigil of blood in fact had a 5s CD, also it’s only 30% chance.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Sigil_of_Blood
Sigils apply to all skill, so yes, any attack, not just weapon skills, can proc sigil of air.
A sigil of air and force on each set, with a 5th weapon with sigil of bloodlust for stacking is a simple setup for more damage. Or put bloodlust on one of the main weapons if you’re lazy, or if this is for pvp.
Lucky thieves don’t have ample stealth that cleanses conditions, heals them and lets them reset or run from fights right?
But it would be unfair to focus only on stealth, after all, my thief has
Withdraw: heal + escape +mobility condition cleanse every 15 seconds
Roll for initiative: stun break + escape + mobility condition cleanse + init regen every 60 seconds
Shadow step: x2 (stun break + teleport + condition cleanse) every 50 seconds
Infiltrator’s strike: teleport + immobilize, then condition cleanse + another teleport + stun break, on no CD at all!
Oh yes, people catch me all day with this :(
This video is actually great. Thank you. I see that you have 1/3rd the health. This is not happening to my necromancer on live nor am I seeing it on test. Is this only happening when downleveled?
Jon
Just tested with multiple guild mates in wvw. They would heal me (20k hp) for 600hp per tick. 20000/600 = 33.3
Healed another guy for 1400 per tick, but his hp was only 15k. 15000/1400 = 10.7
So that’s a pretty simple test to show that our downed hp is a third of what it should be, assuming the heal ticks are percentage based.
They have a 15 second internal CD because if it didn’t, or if it was 10s, it would be perm AOE weakness, which would be pretty neat, but probably stronger then they want it.
Of course it’s still a dumb idea because it punishes you for using DS more frequently, especially if you’ve invested in shorter DS CD, which is why I suggested a while ago removing/reducing the CD, but reducing the effect durations somewhat.
You can only stun break while ‘getting up’ from a knockback/down, but even so it’s typically a waste of a stun break (since most necro’s hardly have spares to throw around), since it only saves you half a second.
Actually I would find it quite in inconvenient if I was forced to have ground targeted wells, the extra moment to aim it, even with fast casting is quite precious in certain circumstances.
You can make a build to reliably hold anyone except sword mainhand thieves (because they have basically unlimited stunbreaks/condition removals when combined with the rights heal/utils), but you do have to really build for it.
In WvW I’ve got:
Dark pact: 3.3s immob, 25s CD
Wail of doom: 3s aoe daze, 25.5s CD
Locust swarm: 2 seconds of cripple, 1% LF and some damage every second in an AOE for 13s, as well as swiftness, 25.5s CD
Unholy feast: 5.5s AOE cripple with a very large range, 15s CD
Spinal shivers: 5.5s chill and boon strip at long range, 20s CD
Dark path: unblockable 5.5s AOE chill + long range homing teleport, tiny 12.75s CD
Doom: instant cast 1s fear, 17s CD
Spectral grasp: 4.5s chill + long range pull, 24s CD
Spectral walk: stun break + 30s swiftness, 48s CD
Golem auto attack: 1s cripple, but it’s unreliable so I usually ignore it.
Golem charge: long range on demand CC, 40s CD
SW+ locust swarm gives perm swiftness – anything less simply doesn’t cut it if you’re serious about killing people.
Locust swarm + golem auto typically means near perm cripple which is hard to cleanse, since it’s applied per second.
These two facts are the main points alone mean people can’t escape without movement skills.
The golem charge, SG and dark path are the real keys to actually stopping from escaping, as you can counter play movement skills such as RTL. For example, because RTL goes in a straight line, it means if you cast SG on them as they cast/mid ride, the grasp goes straight to where they end RTL, and pulls them straight back to you. Or if you cast dark path and run towards their end point, the projectile will follow them as they RTL and bring you to them, provided you haven’t let the gap increase even further.
Doom with it’s very short CD and no cast time means you can reliably interrupt key skills like heals, CC or movement skills, which typically have longer CD’s than doom.
High amounts of chill further make it hard for them to escape, but the slower CD’s are the real kicker, messing with their timing more then anything, which is especially notable against ele’s.
Perm weakness from traits (11s AOE weakness on entering DS + how ever meany seconds of weakness on a quarter of crits, with 77/97% crit) also reduces the amount they can dodge, and combined with constant cripples and short bleeds from crits also make it hard to cleanse off all the conditions, especially the important ones like immob.
Of course this is for solo/gang wvw – all this is redundant in PvE, and in PvP where it’s about point capture I’d rather be a ranger where I can be extremely difficult to kill, and let the pet follow them (which does x5+ of the player’s DPS), while staying on the point yourself.
But yeah, you can stop people from escaping from you, but you really can’t halfass it, you have to build around the idea.
Yeah, our 3rd skill does a huge amount of damage if you’re a power build. Even with our seemingly 1/3rd downed hp between the damage of the 3rd skill and the siphon of 1 it’s pretty easy to win downed fights.
It’s one second, it has been since before release. It’s a reason why some people aim at 100% bleed duration.
Invaders gear is soldier’s stats.
A weapon based skill(s), as people have suggests for quite some time would be best, otherwise something that lets you use your life force for something else, be it extra damage in someway, healing or buffs would also be interesting. (burning X amount of LF for Y amount of stability or something for example would be entertaining.
the way you teleport is literally just based on ‘can you get there without jumping in x distance’. If you can, such as walking around up onto the bridge, then you can shadow step up there and all that jazz, if you can’t get there at all without jumping/falling, then no luck.
I would suggest at least trying foot in the grave, it’s a real game changer, especially for a melee necro. Life transfer is a real cc magnet it seems, but FitG covers most of it’s channel, which is nice for wasting peoples cc, as they seem to reflexively cc the transfer. Also it goes without saying shroud stomping people is a real winner.
Other then that I might suggest near to death for greater flexibility with DS (also great if you have retal/fury on DS), or Path of midnight to get more out of DS in a more direct way.
look at the skill list and look at the cast times. Individually it’s not a problem (except focus 5 which truly does have an excessive cast no matter how you look at it), it’s just that across the board we seem to hard a higher average cast time then most, with so many 3/4 and 1s cast skills, that it makes us play a bit sluggishly.
What’s your build and what are you doing with it?
That’s actually a good point. Vigorous renewal works each time healing spring ticks for allies as well as yourself (although it’s 3s per tick instead of the 5s from the other heals), and now infusion of shadows regens initiative for every tick of shadow refuge.
This seems to make a pretty strong precedent for allowing spiteful vigor to apply per tick also (although at a reduced duration, like healing spring).
The most obvious time that the flesh golem fails for me is when I am killing sentries in wvw. I’ll attack them with ranged as I close, then dodge past him to avoid the shield bash. every time I do this, the golem will run past me and stand there for the rest of the fight, and the only way to get him back into the fight is to bring the sentry into melee range of him or activate charge. It’s rather odd.
well the recall buff and the armour buff (although they are both called the same thing when you mouse over them) are seperate, so it shouldn’t be hard.
Perm evade build is pretty dodgy because the evade from death blossom doesn’t actually always seem to work. I was testing it with friends in pvp, and often attacks will hit mid evade, the most notable being illusions, where I would have duelists shooting me, and it keeps hitting even after I death blossomed.
Basically it’s really gimmicky, but yeah, annoying as hell.
I used this trait before the hp trigger fix (it didn’t give swiftness back then though), but stopped using it shortly after said fix. I found that with such a low hp trigger it’s far to reactive of a trait, and doesn’t help considerably when playing offensively.
I tested it a while ago, and the ICD was 90 seconds or something (it’s in some old thread if anyone can be bothered looking) which is another considerable negative.
I know the point you’re trying to make, but ultimately It’s about having fun; because sure, running around for people to gank isn’t greatly helping your server or anything, but your server winning or losing doesn’t make much difference anyway.
With find 1v1 kills it’s mainly about knowing where to hang out, certain areas are much better for finding lone targets, some places are very bad because you can’t see groups coming until quite late. As well as that, you have to keep in mind what everyone else is doing, if one server is trying top open a keep, then inevitably there will be lots of people coming back from their spawn/supply camps, giving you plentiful targets. By the same token, a map where all three servers have a strong presence increases the chance of lone people wandering about; sometimes I open up the WvW map and can immediately say it’s not worth going for a solo wander right now.
Also the right trait/gear setup makes a very significant difference when on your own. You were just in your PvE gear, so you weren’t geared specifically for solo work, but stuff like perm swiftness means you can very often flee from a zerg safely with the help of doom, charge and a few other abilities quite reliably. Stability on stomp is another game changer for small group/solo work, as it all but secures your stomps, even when facing multiple people – if you can’t reliably stomp then you’re at a big disadvantage in a lot of situations.
Also carrying very heavy cc/slows means the difference between killing people like thieves and eles, and often having them simply escape. Sure by no means can they not escape no matter what (sword thief is actually the most difficult to hold since infiltrator’s strike is honestly OP), but when you can hold a d/d ele pretty reliably then other, less mobile builds have no chance of completely escaping.
I noticed multiple times you got zerged you could have escaped if you did it at the right time, and if you were built the right way, but this is where locust sig simply doesn’t cut it- for chasing people or escaping it’s the same, you have to be faster then they are, which means going as fast as physically possible, and atleast one stun break that isn’t the wurm.
Again, ultimately it’s about fun, some people find this sort of thing enjoyable, others don’t and there is no reason to not let the people that do enjoy it to try find the very best they can do with what we’ve got as necromancer. Honestly speaking, we’re actually one of the more blessed classes for 1v1 in WvW, where mobility (and mobility denial) is so important.
You have to let DS degen/take damage so that you naturally drop out of DS after you’ve begun channeling life transfer.
To be ‘invulnerable’ if we could heal in DS (which is something I have supported for a long time) firstly you would have to:
>have enough LF to take whatever damage for the duration you stay in DS.
>You must then also be able to regen enough HP in one rotation of being is DS and being out of DS so that your HP at the beginning (entering DS) is the same as the end of the rotation (entering DS again) is equal or greater.
>Thirdly you must produce enough LF while you are out of DS to recoup whatever you lost in DS. If for example assuming you stay in DS for 5 seconds, that’s 20% LF + whatever you’ve taken in damage, keeping in mind your LF pool is only 60% of your health as I demonstrated in another thread.
>Lastly, you have to be able to do this every single rotation, meaning those long CD skills like transfusion boosted life transfer (which can be interrupted unless you have foot in the grave, which somewhat goes against this theoretical build) and well of blood would have to heal absolutely shocking amount of health, in order to carry you for multiple rotations each, which of course they can’t, both heal 2k+ (not including WoB main heal obviously) which is nice, but when combined with perm regen and vampiric traits is not going to heal you enough.
The most likely thing is that you’re going to get knocked out of DS prematurely, and not have enough LF to continue your rotations, as DS is effective against single, large damage attack. It’s not designed to face tank sustained damage, nor should it.
Healing in DS would certainly make a necro harder to kill, but it is so very far from making is as sustainable as an ele or guard.
(edited by War Mourner.5168)
Oh hey, they finally fixed our DS UI, that’s good.
Kind of confused as to why they added life steal to walls, but whatever, great over all.
He mentions an investment in blood magic I can only assuming the figures he is giving include that and any other bonuses he might have to healing power.
According to what I know the absolute, bare minimum increase in healing you should get with consume conditions and power to healing is 53 (it’s not a great trait how ever I look at it).
How much healing power are you getting out of it according to the hero panel? Consume conditions is supposed to be a 1:1 ratio of extra hp vs healing power as far as I know.
I wasn’t saying every necro has that, I was just saying that’ what my build has, as an example. SG works fine, you just have to be aware of the terrain between you, and lead the enemy or it will miss, and not fire it at max range while they’re running away from you because that’s also a miss because it would have to travel more then 1200 to reach them in the end.
Further on the topic of snares:
Necro have far less snaring options than many other classes. Specially immobilize, where we literally have only ONE skill on ONE of our weapons(dagger). That’s it. We are also very weak in crippling and chilling. We are a far cry from being the KING of snares as promised by Anet.
Many other classes have AoE immobilize, which is very useful in wvw zerg vs zerg fights. Other classes have immobilize on a utility and traits. Yet necro only got 1 single immobilize skill, single target, 600 range on a 25 second cool down. Seriously?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Immobilized
Eles have more chilling options than necros do. Seriously? Necros should be the MASTER of cold and chill. Grenth is the only guy we worship. Why does he love eles who worship every single gods more than us?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Chilled
Other than engineers, pretty much every single other classes have better cripple than us.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crippled
Keep in mind that necros are supposed to be the BEST snaring class in the game, to make up for a lack of mobility. We are supposed to be able to keep foes in our “kill zone” 24/7, even with massive condition removals. When we fight 1v1, the enemy should have a very hard time running away from us. When we are a part of a zerg, all the enemies should have a very hard time moving or running away.
We actually do have quite a lot, but you do have to build for it, and that might not be ideal for larger fights, but is perfect for 1v1. On my build I have:
Locust swarm: 13 seconds, applies 2s of cripple per tick, 25.5s CD
Wail of doom: aoe 3s daze, good for stopping them from using movement skills/healing, even when cloaked. 25.5s CD
Dark pact: 3.3s Immob, does what it says on the tin. 25s CD
Spinal shivers: 5.5s chill and boon strip, which often means stripping keys boons such as swiftness or stab. 20s CD
Unholy feast: 5.5s large aoe cripple, very useful against thieves trying to cloak away. 15s CD
Spectral grasp: 4.5s chill and pull, long range and from experience works rather reliably when you time it right. 24s CD
Dark path: 5.5s chill and teleport, good range on it. Tiny 12.75s CD
Doom: On demand CC is incredibly useful for cancelling key abilities. 17s CD
Golem: 1s Cripple on auto attack, and a long range on demand charge for knockdown/blowout (does anyone know the exact reason for when it blowout’s someone instead of the knockdown?) Also good for slowing down pursuers. 45s CD
This is on top of perm swiftness, so the only thing that is seriously challenging to hold is a d/d ele, where it’s all about the RTL: I can immob them mid cast and the won’t move, CC them or otherwise grasp/dark path them mid flight, and since they travel in a straight line it’s more or less a certain hit. If I can’t rein them in very soon after a RTL then they can successfully disengage as I can’t keep up, but yeah, we can carry a lot of tools to keep people where we want them.
The whole point of my build to to catch and hold things since the necro lacks combat mobility. And yes I can hold good d/d ele, although for tank builds can be rather slow to kill.
Compared to ele’s, thieves are much easier to hold, they have no movement abilities that take them far enough away from me fast enough, and the two most common stealths, the heal and refuge are easily countered by doom and well of suffering respectively. To me at least hide in shadows has the most obvious cast animation of any heal, maybe similar to consume conditions, against a few good thieves I’ve cancelled their heal every time they tried it, once or twice I’ve cancelled it 3 times before killing them. With refuge, WoS does 2+k per tick,and covers the whole circle, and I can find where they are around the circle with dagger 1. If they leave the circle early to avoid the damage that’s great, they drop cloak, if they don’t, they’ll most usually be dead.
I’ll try find some better thieves to fight today.
if something stands in it it will stack, but there is a minimum time before it reapplies it’s stuff.
Running away is exactly why you’re dying. If you don’t match a thief’s aggression with the same, you’re giving him a massive advantage and throwing away our own inherent advantages.
Also DS can take any combo in the game, stealth doesn’t.
Edit: here are all the thieves I could find solo today, + some messy ele kill. This is hardly proving something, but you asked, and this is all I have recorded.
(edited by War Mourner.5168)
well of suffering ticks for over 2k, the auto attack chain does 8k or so… Killing a bursty thief only takes 2 seconds of dps’ing, other then that it’s a simple matter of chain cc’ing/slowing them; good luck using roll for initiative to avoid 3 sets of cc.
If anyone in in t3 (NA) I’m around. Doing this outside of wub would sort of defeat the purpose, but it’s a pity there isn’t a duel function.
You cannot heal in deathshroud. You keep the regen but it’s effectively getting wasted while in DS, same with vampirism traits. It’s one of my issues with DS…
Staff is fine as it is, sure circles might not be the most exciting idea for a weapon, but it’s very practical.
The main change I would like to see is a change to the graphic of the marks, as it’s difficult to tell at a glance what marks are what when they’re on the ground.