Guild Wars 2

uh conditionmancer is one of the stronger dungeon builds out there. dumb people don’t make that any less true.

If you have the talent whenever you dodge for the first time in 10 seconds it does a pbaoe blast finisher. The weird thing is mark of blood itself isn’t a blast finisher. It’s hard to tell whether it should be and is bugged or whether the dodge Mark of Blood is bugged.

Also blast on a light field (e.×. well of blood) does aoe retaliation.

Necros are one of the better field manipulation classes, honestly. I dunno what yall are talking about. Necro isn’t ele but then no class is ele.

Also all other classes absolutely can’t do that. Warriors for example have very limited combo field creation abilities and they’re on generally unused specs to boot.

Uh on demand stability is huge, especially for a class that is so immobile and has such limited evades. No matter what the cooldown is.

this is a really stupid thread. ranger shortbow auto attack stacks great single target bleed, and only single target bleed, when flanking. no one denies this.

a condition necromancer doesn’t stack single target bleed quite as well, but does much, much, much better with aoe conditions, not just bleed but also cripple, blind, weakness, and poison. a condition necromancer also has much better condition removal and manipulation than a ranger does.

saying rangers make condition necromancers useless is absolutely insane unless all you ever do is 1v1.

I’m sad this isn’t getting a bit more attention. It would really address the main weakness of the class in PVP right now and it’s a 5 minute change for the devs. The class needs more thorough work for certain but something like this would go a long way to tide us over in the meantime.

Nobody does combo fields better than a staff support ele. So the statement that everyone else does everything better is wrong.

It is a rather limited niche, though.

Pets are too stupid to be reliable. Which is why most people don’t go particularly pet heavy.

It seems like a third of the time they just stand there doing nothing at all, a third of the time they run after some random mob and start hitting it even though you don’t want them to, and a third of the time they do what they’re supposed to do.

Because it’s a lame tactic that makes no sense. You don’t stay in stealth while using other cast time abilities. Why should you be able to stealth while finishing? It’s at odds with the design of the stealth system.

If the problem is with some classes having overpowered downed state CC effects that is absolutely true but the solution is a gimmick it is nerfing downed state CC.

I love people who say “all classes are balanced” because it is never, ever, ever true.

Ever.

It’s a statement that by definition is always wrong. And yet it’s very common on message boards. Interesting and sad at the same time.

lol

and because that is too short:

lol again

Yeah right now it is hopelessly weak. Adding stability both makes the skill worthwhile and solves the biggest problem with the class in competitive play.

Necros have various weaknesses but the biggest one right now is the only practical way to get stability is to switch to DS, and that requires a 30 point talent and only lasts 3 seconds. You can pop plague too but that is very situational and you shouldn’t be forced to use an elite skill just for the stability.

Honestly this one change would do so much for the class in competitive play. And it doesn’t seem particularly overpowered since it would literally just make SA a clone of AoE.

Ele are fine versus run of the mill morons but any class is fine against morons.

Ele arn’t terrible period, but you are definitely required to work a lot harder for the same effect than most other classes.

Epidemic is arguably the most powerful WvWvW skill in the game. If a build that can use epidemic effectively could also effectively tank stuff 1v1 there wouldn’t be any point to being anything besides epidemic condition build. It is startlingly powerful. As someone else said, unlike almost all other AOEs there is no warning or realistic way to avoid it.

As a condition necro find someone else who stacks condition, preferably someone who can put on conditions you can’t, and the two of you can wreck whole zergs on your own. There’s nothing quite like putting 20+ stacks of bleed, poison, cripple and burn/confusion on 20+ enemies at once and watching them all panic as the entire group gets eaten down to about 20% in about 10 seconds.

An engi or ele or mesmer partner is great for this. Engi pistol has aoe bleed auto attack plus confusion and poison which can all be talented to 1200 range. With an engi partner you really only need about 3-4 seconds of setup to get your epidemic going. Seeing as the average reaction time for players is 2ish seconds that means you’re really only eating a second or two of ranged damage before your epidemic goes off, at which point you can get out of dodge while it does its work and then repeat if necessary.

Dungeon tokens being account bound would be a great change that would go some distance to eliminating the “I only want to run one dungeon over and over” syndrome created by GW2’s bad dungeon gearing model. I would be much more willing to run dungeons besides TA if I knew I could use the tokens to get gear for an alt down the road.

Epidemic is so startlingly good it’s hard not to build a DPS necro around it. The radius in particular is out of this world.

Epidemic is lollerific when it comes off just right.

The ice one is pretty good in PVP for the aoe heal. Most people ignore it and the heal actually heals for quite a bit.

Noein.9238:

just hoping the love for necromancer is coming soon

What’s the gear?

Melon.8410:

I’ve got a thread about this too, here. I think the badge thing is a good idea, but I’m not sure if they would be able to implement that.

Mind if I add your badge idea to my thread?

Go for it. I posted this in the dungeons section but apparently some moderator thought talking about dungeons in the dungeons section isn’t appropriate.

The only real use for axe is retaliation. It is absolutely wicked in PVP. Put up 10ish seconds of retaliation and then lol @ thieves who blow themselves trying to hurt you. Pop plague for added lols.

It does feel extremely gimmicky, though. It is very much of a one-trick pony weapon.

Yeah the greatsword is really awesome in PVE. Massive aoe damage and burning.

Anyhow I didn’t mean to say your build is bad. It isn’t. Ele can def do the bleed build.

It’s just like any other bleed build, more than 1 person leads to partial redundency because of the bad stacking mechanics for conditions in this game.

And I also agree that pugs don’t know how to use combo fields well. I find that when I start educating people about 50% of people just ignore me and 50% learn. The 50% who learn often end up thoroughly impressed with how some well timed blast combos on healing rain can turn a wipe into a breeze.

The current problems with farmers just farming the first 1-2 bosses of a particular dungeon basically stem from the bad gearing model GW2 uses.

Right now, GW2 encourages you to grind the same dungeon over and over 40+ times. Why? Because sets are cosmetic. No one wants one piece of Arah armor, one piece of AC armor, one piece of TA armor…you’d look like a freak.

But under the current model, that means that someone who wants to run TA only wants to run TA, someone who wants to run CoF only wants to run CoF, etc. This promotes the farming attitude because honestly no one enjoys running the same dungeon 40 times in a row and everyone wants to get it out of the way in the easiest way possible.

So, the proposed change:

1. Make current tokens universal.

2. In addition to current token requirements, make each piece of gear require 1 “Badge” from the appropriate dungeon. Badges are only granted from completing explore mode of that dungeon. One clear of TA = 1 Badge.

For example, if I want to buy a TA chest, right now I need 300 TA tokens. After this change, I would need 300 tokens I could get from any dungeon, plus one TA badge from beating the last boss of TA.

This system both increases flexibility by letting people play with their friends in other dungeons without wasting their time, but it also undercuts farmers who want to do only 1-2 easy bosses without completing an instance because they won’t get badges.

Thoughts?

Vladia.2731:

Phillukin.3708:

Fix) Revamp tokens. Make a head,shoulder,leg,chest,glove,boot,offhand, and (main head/two hand) token for COMPLETING a dungeon. There is 8 dungeons and 8 pieces of gear, this requires players who want a full set to run every single dungeon. Allow these tokens to purchase ANY token gear, so people who want dungeon set A can play with players who want dungeon set B. This will spread out the amount of players who were originally playing the same dungeon.
is will Force players to actually FINISH the dungeons rather then “farm” the first 2 bosses.

Um…you’re asking for tokens to revamped thus making it easier for gear to be gained. Why should you be able to run Ascalon Catacombs to be able to purchase Orr gear?

Because it’s silly beyond belief you have to grind each dungeon seperately and results in predictable results like some dungeons being done 100x as much as others. If I want TA gear and my friend wants CoH gear we shouldn’t have to each waste 50% of our time to play together. That sort of pointless grind is just the sort of thing GW2 advertised as doing away with.

There’s a drama queen somewhere whose thunder you are stealing who is not going to be happy about it.

P.S. It’s just cosmetic. The gear doesn’t matter for any of that other stuff you want to do in any meaningful way.

Fiery greatsword does great damage and skill 2 puts a massive aoe burn down. It is definitely useful for some of the later PVE story quests where you’ve got large mobs of risen to kill and some NPCs to tank for you.

For PVP the use is more limited.

Guardian tanking in sPvP is problematic. It’s like how everyone used only paladins as flag defenders in arathi basin back in the day…except guardian doesn’t rely on a long cooldown bubble, they can keep that survivability going almost indefinitely.

You’re not gonna hit your whole group 100% of the time with everything, no. But you don’t need to be standing in melee range. It’s like 240ish radius iirc, which is about double melee range. I usually manage to hit 2-3 group mates most of the time.

Staff ele have fire, water, ice and air combo fields.

Those produce the following possible effects for your team:

Might (x3), Fire Armor, Burning, Burning Bolts, Aoe heals, heals, regen, healing bolts, frost armor, chilled, chilling bolts, aoe swiftness, daze, vulnerability, vulnerability bolts.

But yes, bleed ele is viable if there’s no one else on the team doing bleed. I just find that practically speaking the one role I know no one else in my group is going to be doing is combo field creator. I’ve never, ever run a dungeon where I didn’t feel useful putting down combo fields and putting out aoe heals + condition removal. Whereas with bleed build if you get into the dungeon and find another class is running bleed, well, you’re redundant.

With the staff support you also end up laying down a lot of eruptions which put out decent aoe bleed anyhow.

Downed state is vital for making the game more team-based and interesting. If you are a solo hero who never revives anyone else then yes it probably seems pointless…but the problem is you, not the game.

edit: There are some issues with it though. It feels like pet usage while downed hasn’t been totally thought out and leads to sometimes unintended consequences, particularly with mesmers who don’t really even care if they are downed because their pets will kill you in the time it takes to channel a killing blow.

They probably need to make pets stop doing significant damage when you are downed. Making them despawn completely would be overly punitive in team play where there’s a good change of getting revived, but lowering their damage to 0-10% of their normal damage would be a good compromise.

This has been a problem in most MMOs with any class designed the way thieves or mesmers are designed in this game. For example in wow the devs had a tremendously hard time getting rogues not to wear PVE gear even in PVP because the class was basically set up aroudn not letting your opponent hit you period.

IMO it’s actually less of an issue in GW2 that in other games because of the downed state.

Ele can have 2 pets up at once too.

I find that usually the best use of an elementalist in a dungeon is supplying combo fields via staff, usually in a 30 arcane 15+ water build. Because it’s really the only thing we do better than other classes. Lots of other classes can do bleed builds and finishers. Almost no one gets good combo fields.

Warriors can’t passively tank 8 mobs. Heavy armor doesn’t do a whole lot in this game to reduce damage. Looking at maybe ~10-15% added mitigation compared to cloth IIRC.

But yes, ele does require more work for about the same result compared to faceroller classes like warrior or guardian.

The lack of easily accessed stability is the biggest problem with the class, honestly. Foot in the Grave should probably be made passive and replaced with something else. Or spectral armor should also give stability, like armor of earth does.

Pretty much like Rlyd, only I do 15 water/15 earth instead of 30 water. Both are viable.

Basically the best explore dungeon ele build right now is heavy staff upport that relies on frequent switching between water and earth for the passive attunement bonuses, comboing with water fields and the heal on dodge you get from 30 arcane.

With that build and decent +healing you’re looking at a 1kish aoe heal + condition removal on every water attune, plus another 1kish heal + condition removal on dodge in water every 10 seconds, plus constant aoe regen, plus aoe protection about 50% of the time. Without even getting into your actual skills. That’s a lot of added survivability for your group.

Ele is harder to play. It is a little underpowered, but not that bad. But if you want to faceroll mobs it is definitely a bad class to pick. For that pick warrior or guardian or something like that where you can win with 3 button presses.

That’s more a problem with guardian than anything else. This game clearly isn’t meant to be played by passively tanking 8 mobs, no matter what class you play.

MOA has 2 sec cast time and can be dodged. Learn to dodge it and watch them cry. Also any mesmer who takes moa in tpvp is making a fairly questionable choice seeing as time warp is so overpowered too.

Can’t you just equip two greatswords and switch them? Doesn’t that reset the cooldowns? I play ele main so I don’t remember offhand.

Well good eles tend to beat good warriors. Although that says little about the overall balance of the two professions.

Water healing is almost all based on putting points into arcane. If you don’t put points into arcane it is junk.

15 water 30 arcane gets you aoe heal + remove condition on attune on a low attunement timer, and dodge to aoe heal + remove condition on a 10 sec timer when in water. Combine the two it means you’re getting two aoe heals + two aoe condition removals every 10ish seconds. This is substantially more healing that you can get from the water skills themselves, no matter which weapon you choose.

Yeah, but on an ele there is very little excuse for letting a thief get a full heartseeker spam rotation off.

If you read what I said you’d see I don’t disagree.

My point though is that ele are not as underpowered as you might think from reading the forums. Even when played right an ele is still a little on the underpowered side. But it isn’t some dramatic thing the way people make it out to be.

Elee probably need about a 10% boost in effectiveness. What they also need is some adjustments to lower the skill floor so average players can do better on them.

Right now if you play a war and an ele the biggest difference is not the overall power balance but how much less forgiving the ele is compared to the warrior.

It basically comes from the fact that ele lack both easy burst damage and passive survivability. This means you have to work harder to damage and work harder to mitigate damage. When you use everything the class has it still comes up a little short, but not THAT short.

DiogoSilva.7089:

This idea that the means to master the Ellie are extremely obscure to us all, and that we are all noobs who haven’t found the dodge button yet, is a naive accusation.

The Elementalist is underpowered. Once it gets its deserved buff, most of us will be properly rewarded for our effort, just like good players from other hard-to-master professions are already getting the wins they deserve.

After putting in a few more days with the class my conclusion is that we are both right. Elementalists do have a higher skill floor than most other classes (mesmer is another one with a higher skill floor), but they are also (slightly) underpowered even when played correctly.

This suggests what ele need is both a small overall boost but also a shift down the skill spectrum such that even more marginal players can get decent results the same way they can on a warrior or guardian or ranger or thief.

Elementalists have a much higher skill floor than other classes, meaning you need to be pretty good at the game and your class to do decently. If you want an easy class you can pwn faces with, roll a warrior or guardian or ranger or thief.

Elementalists played well arn’t THAT bad off. Yes, we’re still a tad underpowered. But the main problem isn’t being underpowered per se, it’s that ele requires more work to get to the same effect.

WvWvW is a huge gold sink, as are dungeons if you don’t have an organized group to run them.

So is buying new sets of armor. If you want to switch to a different build that uses different stats that’s another 30g.

Orr is awful right now. On JQ it is just 50+ players in every base spamming aoe skills for hours on end. One botter has been sitting there spamming skills for like the past 36 hours straight.

The real problem is that elite skills are so inconsistent. You have some classes (mesmer, thief, guardian) with game-changing elites and then you have some classes (ele) with garbage elites. Moa morph is totally overpowered compared to ele elites but it doesn’t feel too bad compared to time warp or thieves guild or tomeofheal.