Guild Wars 2

TheAgedGnome.7520:

Epidemic, Focus5, DS1, DS2 cast times bother me the most.

Its terrible to see a target loaded with conditions melt before Epidemic takes its eternal time to cast.

Focus5 is ridiculous. The cast time essentially cuts its effective range by about 1/4-1/3.

DS1/DS2 are essentially lag-simulation cast times.

Cast focus 5 before you’re in range – you can guess fairly accurately how long it will take for you to get in range based on your speed and what the target is doing.

The wurm and plague sig are also stun breaks, the wurm being rather useful as a stun break, in the right situations.

Anet seems to think the spectral buff itself is very strong, but this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you outright lose the buff merely by using our class mechanic.

It should be both, since damage (other then falling) is done in simple numbers, while Life force gain and degeneration is done in percentages. I would like to think it was merely an oversight, but yeah, it’s hiding basic stats of our character for no real reason, intended or not.

Furienify.5738:

Yeah, we’re okay, that doesn’t stop us from having a dozen unexplained bugs/limitations on just about everything. That just puts us at ‘mediocre’ assuming we aren’t dueling.

P.S: How to shroudstomp?

Same as you (formerly) could animation lock, shroud then stomp immediately after, virtually at the same instant.

toughness still applies to you in DS, it’s just that you have much less life force then you do hp. I only discovered this after someone pointed it out, and I found that a 1k something hit did about 10% LF, and this is with 30 in soul reaping, so that’s why it might seem like you’re taking more damage from attacks, it’s because percentage-wise you are.

The only real issue I have with necro right now are all these pointless limitations on deathshroud, punishing you for using your class mechanic.

We cannot gain health while in deathshroud from any source, regeneration is wasted while in DS, heals from allies. life siphon traits, all wasted while using our class mechanic. If they think it would be so shockingly overpowered that could reduce healing effectiveness in DS or something.

We lose our spectral buffs while in deathshroud. While I understand why we shouldn’t get to use the buff while in DS, it makes no sense for us to lose it outright, it should simply not work while we’re in deathshroud, as I find the idea of wasting a good part of a 90s CD skill by pressing f1 rather displeasing.

We cannot see buffs and conditions while in Deathshroud. They’ve promised to fix this at some point, but this is pretty basic UI functionality that should have been in since release. On top of that, we cannot see condition ticks on us while in DS for whatever reason, further reducing the information we can see.

We cannot see how much life force we have as a number. People have made fairly good estimates, but I cannot understand why we shouldn’t be able to see precisely how much damage we can take with our life force, it just pointlessly reduces the information we have access to.

We cannot normally stomp/res while in deathshroud. While we can, and do shroudstomp, it’s always been a gray area, and it would be much better if we could do it without doubt, and it adds some pretty basic functionality to deathshroud.

We can no longer change weapons in deathshroud. No one knows for certain if this was intended or not because anet doesn’t have accurate patchnotes, and don’t post here much for various reasons. Either way, it reduces our combat effectiveness and simplifies deathshroud for no real reason. This change is particularly notable in PvP.

All these things are stuff we can do normally, but cannot do while using our class mechanic, in my opinion the class mechanic should enhance our gameplay, not restrict it.

I was under the impression the x2 force sigils won’t stack.

Do you know how many people I’ve downed and promptly killed because the field kills them before the can finish stomping me? It does a lot of damage. The dark field isn’t some amazing thing, but it’s decent in tpvp when you’re down on a point and you teams mates can aoe blind off it.

The downed 3 skill actually does a load of damage, and is aoe, and a dark field as well.

Our downed auto is a channel so it will keep hitting thieves even if they cloak, which has netted me more then a few kills, but it also make it hard to change target as it will keep trying to hit the first person you used one on unless you use another ability.

While it would be nice if our fear was AOE, we’re overall not that terrible.

The biggest difference between the two is that caltrops applies it’s conditions every second, stacking bleeds the longer you are in it, so it is to your benefit to get out quickly.
With CPC, it applies 3 second of weakness and poison every 3 seconds, meaning the conditions will only stack up if you have condition duration. This means if you’re actually worried about weakness and poison, you have a slow 3 seconds to walk out of the circle before you take any more conditions.
(I remember I suggested in a thread I made one time to reduce the time between ticks in CPC, which they did, but they didn’t do the other half of the suggestion which was to make the duration longer then the interval, to allow it to stack.)

Also I’d say that bleeds + cripple is more useful then weakness and poison, but that’s an entirely different point.

lettucemode.3789:

Arvid.3829:

Mackster.9726:

… but I have noticed that exiting DS seems to trigger weapon swap sigils, which I hadn’t noticed occurring before.

If anyone else can confirm that, I’d actually call this change a buff to be honest

I can confirm, it was happening to me in sPvP yesterday.

Are you certain? I just tried it out with a friend to no effect, also tried in pve with the same results.

I’ve encountered the delay on skills only a few times, but when it happens it is very notable, especially in pvp.

I doubt it’s hardware, and it isn’t intentional, they probably changed something backend and causes it to happen occasionally. I wish I could say the same about weapon swapping sadly…

Ruufio.1496:

I can’t believe it either. Just constantly lowering the skill cap to floor ceiling. Removing abilities that classes can do left and right. There was no reason for this. If my weapon swap is up 2 seconds into Death Shroud, I should be able to swap. Now that I can’t, this effectively increases my weapon swap cooldown by ~2-5 seconds since I have to wait until being out of Death Shroud.

Real classy.

If Shroudstomp/res ever stops being possible…

Funny you say that, I’m pretty sure they fixed animation locking with the patch, which includes shroudstomping. I’m not able to do it now, tell me if you can though.

I consider it a bug because it’s a lazy work around for a minor exploit. As it is I can go into water and lose a minute or so of swiftness because I don’t have walk on my underwater bar. By the same logic if a guardian used retreat then ran into the water he’d lose swiftness because he doesn’t have access to that skill anymore. So yeah not technically a bug, but it’s a poor fix to the old problem.

They’re good, but they are very different from a thief. Level one if you have the time, both are viable. The most significant difference though is that it’s much harder for a necro to disengage from/avoid a fight.

Plague last 20 seconds. Lich lasts for 30.

9K across a dagger auto attack chain is very much realistic and doable without might and vuln, it’s not OP because the chain takes 2 seconds to deliver all 4 hits, not one second.

If you look at the thief dagger auto attack you’ll find it’s almost exactly the same- same animations, different graphical and secondary effects, but necro does more damage (of course they have heartseekers but thats a different story).

Our dagger auto attack is our most damaging ability save for the lich autoattack by a considerable margin.

In the same vein as the spectral walk bug, if you leave lich/plague form early you lose all stability, not just the stability granted from that form. Seems Anet only knows how to outright remove a boon.

that’s without any buffs to damage of any sort, of course the stats are slightly different from spvp.

Bas.7406:

DS1 is only bad in that instance if you are a condition mancer, at which point DS shouldn’t be used for damage, except to pop crits. At lvl 80 with full zerker gear and a power build. Dagger1 hits for around 150-200, Dagger2 hits for 250, and Dagger3 hits for around 900. That’s a total of 1300 with Crits as high as 2200. DS hits for 2200 normal with crits of 3300 – 4k. That’s twice the hit, and if traited it stacks might, pierces and stacks Vulnerability. Axe 2 with a full power build can hit up to 8k in it’s channel. Dagger is not as great as everyone says it is, and Axe is not as Bad. DS is great if used for the right reasons and in the builds that support it.

For Hybrids and Condition builds, Death Shroud is used for Bleed on crit with DS 4, DS3 and DS2. DS1 is simply used as filler or when waiting for cd, and to possibly stack might if traited.

I don’t know about you, but the last hit on dagger auto hits the vet guards in wvw for over 3k for me before might/vuln.

Choops.3710:

They have pretty kitten good mitigation actually. You know it as ‘Death Shroud’.

You mean the thing that starts every game at 0%?
It’s not damage mitigation in the same way as blocks, invulnerability or evasive abilities like blurred frenzy, it’s just (potential) extra health.

It doesn’t change the fact that you are getting CC’d, then killed. You’re asking for a solution to this, and I’m offering one, which you’re rejecting because it’s ‘bad’.

If there is a solution to your problem, use it until you find a better one.

If you’re dead, you’re not helping your team. If you can’t keep up with the group, that’s reducing the effectiveness of the team. And are you saying that you’re in a group fight, and this thief is repeatedly picking you out and killing you, and your team isn’t helping you?

hm, spectral walk is rather useful, and has a CD of 48 seconds when traited.
The Wurm however, is 40s CD, untraited, which is faster. Not that killing a dagger thief should take more then 10 seconds.

Also calling them useless when they’re exactly what you’re asking for in the thread is pretty dumb.

There is this wonderful thing called ‘stun break’, I would suggest using it if you’re having that much of an issue.

100% is your max life force. It doesn’t matter if that number is 10000 or 18000, 100% is 100%, soul reaping increases that number, it doesn’t increase the percentage, so the 10% gain from spectral walk will be 10% regardless, but in terms of raw LF, with 30 in soul reaping the number will be 30% higher.

You shouldn’t have that much trouble in 1v1 except against d/d ele and p/d thief (which are both annoyingly hard to kill).
Firstly I’d reccomend scrapping the OH dagger, both focus and warhorn will be far more useful to you. I personally use a much higher dps build, but if you want to go soldiers kit, you should take a look at the juggermancer thread to get a rough idea of what you can do with it.

It works fine, although it’s not my personal preference as It’s annoying if it proc’s earlier then I want it. What sigil are you using on your dagger? if it is also a ‘on crit’ sigil, they share a CD, so it’s far less likely for rage to proc then the other one.

banshee’s wail, trait VIII in curses, boosts the effect of the horn, although it doesn’t display it in the tooltips.

You know that’s an aoe daze, 3 seconds with the trait, and that cripple is applied along with damage and life force gain every second, so much so that if you have the trait you can keep an enemy perma crippled if you stay in melee range, as each tick applies 2s of cripple.

Not to say focus isn’t good as well, but I find horn more practical in wvw where mobility is so important.

Bump for a response, since I think Robert misunderstood the issue.

I use what’s more or less a glass cannon power necro at frac 30, no problems. It more depends on you and your party members not being bad.

We were’nt downed, we were completely dead. Two of us were getting hit by the lasers while completely dead for our full hp every tick so there is no way to res us. those two were unable to respawn because it said we were in combat. the third person was fully dead, but died in such a way that he was no longer being hit by the lasers, and was able to respawn. We tried it after, 4 of us standing outside, no one in combat, I jumped in, got killed and was unable to respawn. I was being hit by lasers while dead at the time.

certain, we were all standing infront of the lasers, the weird thing was 3 of us died, 2 of us were unable to spawn because we were indivudually in combat, but the 3rd guy wasn’t being hit while dead, and was able to respawn.

With the new changes prevening you from respawning while people are in combat my party has already discovered an ugly flaw.

I am dead in the lasers, but still in combat because the lasers are hitting my dead body for 20k twice a second, so I cannot respawn because lolcombat, forcing me to disconnect just so we can try again.

Anet, what?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Necromancer_bug_compilation

Rough page for now, based off soft’s thread since that’s more up to date. I’ll go through the bugs myself in a week or so when I’m not on this laptop.

The problem is only one person can edit the post. It would be better if we made a page on the wiki, then had a thread linking to it, where you can post new/fixed bugs, then anyone can verify the bug and modify the wiki page.

Or Anet could fix our bugs. Either way works.

Rannulf.9417:

How the hell you get 40k HP from a zerker necro..And you prob didn’t fight a good BS thief or P/D.

deathshroud… I have more LF then HP, and if they do their combo into you during it, you hp doesn’t go down, which means HS does minimum damage. And yes, surely I haven’t fought a single ‘good’ thief ever while on SOS.

I never mentioned anything about P/D thief, that is a completely different story, and is the most difficult build/class for me to kill, although usually they don’t kill me either, but I’m forced to disengage.

Nemesis.8593:

I agree with what you said about crit chance, the rest of what you said has to be tested and retested… not in just a 1 vs mob scenario, but in real scenarios in dungeons… how does this effect the party’s effectiveness overall and such. Because vulnerability benefits the entire team, not just yourself… by acting as a debuffer, and 25% extra damage not just for yourself but for 4 other people sounds way better in my opinion.

If you’re the only one stacking vulnerability, perhaps. but I usually have atleast 1 other person stacking some sort of vulnerability (usually a GS warrior, which has vulnerability on autoattack and whatever that trait it called for vuln on crit, as well as ‘on my mark’), which when combined with your build would be excessive vulnerability on anything except bosses (who with their 1/2 vulnerability duration makes it pretty poor in it’s own right).

But anyway, just looking at simple numbers, with 55% crit chance, you have 16.5% chance per hit, with a second/ 2 second CD to proc 1 stack of vulnerability. With axe 1 you do about 2 hits per second, maybe a little faster, but assuming 2 hits per second that gives you a 30.3% chance to proc every second. (If I had a calculator on me I could then go on to figure out how much dps overall it gives to your team, but the ICD makes it a little hard to do in my head.) Against a boss that vulnerability will last 6.5 seconds (you only have duration bonus from traits, right?) which means you’ll be lucky to get 2 stacks of vulnerability up at a time with this sigil (if you have a calculator you can figure out exactly). Assuming all your party has the same dps as you, that one stack of vulnerability is 5% extra damage, or 1% extra damage across the party, which is the same as a sigil of force, which has no chance involved.

Not really sure what I’m trying to prove here though, either way It’s not a huge difference, but it’s interesting to look at, atleast.

I find it worrying how many of you think a glass thief beats a berserker necro. They really don’t. In 3 months of playing a berserker necro, I have not once lost 1v1 to a glass thief, it is literally the easiest build/class to kill, simply because we have 40k+ hp and rather high melee dps, which means we can just kill them faster then they can kill us. In the few times they’ve managed to down me, I’ve always won the downed war thanks to our shockingly strong downed 3 skill.

Nah, it’s the same as other stunbreakers, although you will appear to be standing normally, you’ll still be stuck for the duration.

You have to wait until you stop moving, that is: after the knockback part of the knockback. You can only stunbreak the standing back up part, if you stun break earlier, it’s completely wasted. as for if it’s intended, probably. But you’d have to get an anet response to be sure.

if you really want more minions, why don’t you use any other rune set that gives you a ally? The jagged horror is the only rune based pet that bleeds to death.

Unfortunately I can’t test it right now, but if you really want to know, just try it in the heart of the mists, you can get the rune set there for free, and kill the test mobs there to find out: i.e. get hit until the runes give you the jaggy, then finish off the mob and see if you get another. That’s the only way it might interfer, it shouldn’t just increase the CD of a trait somehow.

Every stack of vulnerability increases incoming damage on that person by 1%, up to 25% for 25 stacks. This however only effects regular damage, not condition damage like bleeds.

Weakness makes half of all non critical hits do half of their regular damage, so on an opponent with zero crit chance, this would make them do 25% less damage. Weakness also reduces the endurace recharge rate of players by 50%, so it’s quite useful in PvP, but this part of the condition is completely useless for PvE (I recall one boss in arah dodges, maybe others do, but they don’t do it very often, and probably don’t even use endurance anyway).

Nice build, I also run a glass cannon, although it’s fairly different. People seem to forget that we have 40k+ health overall, which lends itself to glass cannon builds quite nicely, giving us way more survivability then other class’s glass builds.

Not sure why you’re using sigil of frailty, as kkagri pointed out, like sigil of strength, are simply outclassed by the plain old sigil of force or sigil of air.

You can also try to squeeze every last bit out of it, having another focus with sigil of accuracy for when you have a full stack of accuracy, maintenance oil for some more, skale venom for more vulnerability etc, although most people can’t be bothered.

I don’t see how you can say he has to much crit though, at 40% crit chance and 109 cirt damage he’s doing x1.64 his regular damage overall, at 55% that becomes x1.88. The only time you have to much crit is over 80% really.

why are you using rage and fire on the same weapon set when they share a CD?

if they find out, yes. They have a one button one action policy, so they’ll class this as botting basically.

It’s a bit absurd when you can have a melee build with only one melee skill. Dagger 1 is the only melee skill we have, and while sure dagger 2 works, it doesn’t synergise with dagger 1 at all, where as dagger 3 more notably does.

I like my horn and dagger, but then I didn’t really try going for a very necro-ish look.

Nice use of Lyssa runes to give you stability for the stomp.