Guild Wars 2

I play the skirmisher style pretty elusively in WvW, with the following build with a mix of Rabid and Carrion stats:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-P3SZ;1VPk-197wUV71;9;5JJ-T;119-39;246AKoG6;2jwmAjwmA2Fc

I’ve gone with the Glamour blind/confusion traits, and the Glamour confusion on exit/enter traits, and just found them not to be all that reliable, especially enough to drop IP, dodge roll, or the Staff/toughness.

Shatters, Chaos Armor, the scepter, and combo fields provide enough confusion in this build.

Would be silly OP if it worked with Blurred Frenzy.

I think our biggest issues are:

1. The bugs. This is something that every profession is dealing with at this time.

2. Viability of power-based builds — the axe just doesn’t do enough damage, and there is not enough mobility with the dagger/offhands.

3. Our traits. This is my biggest gripe. When I play my Mesmer or Thief, I’m overwhelmed at times with the options available, and it is truly a difficult decision on which traits to pick. The Necro just has so many uninteresting and dull traits that don’t affect the gameplay nearly as much as other professions.

Knote.2904:

If weakness wasn’t so bad we could basically have some of our protection be from our offensive conditions. Weakness doesn’t even come close to protection however, it needs to be a flat 25% dmg reduction.

I would expect at some point weakness made into a flat damage reduction, or reduces the chance for the target to critically hit you. Right now it is, by far, the worst condition in the game.

I’d imagine your crit is pretty high since all pieces have precision. Your toughness should also be at least decent with 6/6 Knights.

If you want to increase damage, while still helping out somewhat with your survivability, I’d consider the Valkyrie stat (Power> Crit Damage=Vit) on your weapon.

I have both of these toons at 80 in full exotics, both with similar condition damage type of builds (mix of Rabid and Carrion gear), so I can discuss briefly how they fare in WvW. The Necro has both good and bad points in comparison to the Mesmer.

The Mesmer can be set up to have good escapability and survivability, but it requires the use of 1-2 of their utility spells to be devoted to this (Blink, Decoy, Veil, Portal). The have some other options, such as Sword #2 and Distortion Shatter, though these suffer from still taking condition damage, as well as a long CD on the Shatter. Chaos Armor/Field is also quite nice for the boons.

The Necro is designed with less mobility and escapability, likely the least amount of any profession in the game. Pre-BWE, Dark Path was actually a ground target teleport ability similar to blink, and they changed it to an enemy based teleport. I think it is expected that if we want mobility, we should have to utilize SW. I also believe the design philosophy was for Necro to be more tanky than avoidance based.

The Necro makes up in its lack of mobility and escapability with the high health pool, great condition management, and obviously DS. It is en vogue to rag on DS, but even untraited it is a fantastic tool for survivability. Coupled with a high amount of toughness, our incredible condition control, and innate large HP pool, my Necro absolutely can ‘tank’ more damage than my Mesmer.

My tl;dr is basically this:

If you want to have a more reliable class that can escape and get away, the Mesmer is much stronger at this. If you want to remain in the fight, tank and continue to be engaged, the Necro does a better job with that.

@merch

I think you mean that “…you would need more than 5 total ticks/seconds of bleed on a target.”

You don’t need 5 stacks of bleeds, just a total of 5 ticks, so a single cast of MoB or Chillblains easily gets more benefit from condition damage.

I thought it would be helpful to have a thread that discussed some tips and suggestions that other Necromancers have learned that might not be so obvious, or have been overlooked.

Here are a few I’ve learned and use:

Consumable and Food Buffs http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/11i9bj/absolute_must_have_consumables_for_condition/
The condition duration buff is huge, with or without points into Spite.

Focus
I believe this offhand is very often overlooked by Necromancers, especially by conditionmancers in favor of the offhand Dagger. I personally found that I had plenty of bleeds as is, but being able to Epidemic an 8s Chill onto enemies (in addition to whatever else is on the target) is often more powerful than weakness and an extra two stacks of bleed.

Toughness
Even for WvW, Toughness is huge. Since we basically lack any real escape/disengage measures, we have to be able to take the inevitable hits that will occur. I’d greatly recommend getting the 4p Condition/Tough/Prec karma pieces from the Orr zones.

@taemek

All the bugged skills that abuse LoS should obviously be fixed. There are several spells specifically designed to arc or ‘mark’ to get onto a wall.

Shooting down is even for everyone.

If iBerserker can no longer be cast on people on top of walls without LOS, this is a well-deserved fix, which hopefully applies to other professions skills that abuse this bug.

It absolutely feels that the scepter attack speed (not just projectile travel time) is faster. I used it occasionally in WvW, and have wanted to use it more. I used it a lot last night and was having good success.

iWarlock nerf is not at all noticeable for me. The scepter attack appears to be improved and I feel better using it in WvW.

The increase in iWarlock is not noticeable at all to me.

Scepter absolutely feels faster.

Mammoth.1975:

Spectral walk

Yah, a touch annoying but obviously wasn’t intended to work the way it was.

Full Necro notes:

Corrupt Boon: This skill now properly removes aegis rather than being blocked by it.
Fetid Ground: This downed skill now has a Dark combo field. Its visual effects have been updated to show its actual radius.
Life Leech: This downed skill’s damage has been increased by 25%.
Spectral Walk: Removing this skill from a skill slot while it’s active will now remove all benefits gained from activating the ability.
Spinal Shivers: This skill now properly removes aegis rather than being blocked by it.

Artificing is rather easy and inexpensive to craft, and you’d be able to make Staves, Scepters, and Focus.
Tailoring isn’t too bad once you get past Jute.
Cooking also provides very helpful buffs.
Jewelcrafting is something all professions use.

You won’t be able to go and make profits from crafting, but you’d be able to save a few silver each from what you’d get on the AH. You’d also be able to craft for guildies.

The main benefit from leveling a crafting discipline 1-400 is the 10 levels of experience you’d get.

Savoth.5721:

The only thing that keeps the staffs’ head above water is Putrid Mark;

Chillblains and MoB are both fantastic abilities.

Short answer is “No, we aren’t really that bad”.

We have bugged traits and abilities like any other class, and we suffer from a very lackluster overall trait design.

However, we do do pretty decent in PvE, and perform very well in large scale WvW. For sPvP you obviously don’t need to invest much energy in a new toon to figure that out.

I’m pretty sure that you likely just put your 15th point into the Blood Magic trait line.

The main thing I’d like is if they reverted Dark Path to pre-BWE, when it was a ground targetted teleport.

The Necro has a significant amount of AoE damage and control — their conditions aren’t merely bleeding.

Necromancers have the easiest and longest access to Chilled, which is greatly overlooked in WvW. In addition to Chillblains, Necro’s can spec for longer range on the Focus and get an unbuffed 5s of Chilled at 1200 range. With Epidemic and some food, I can easily spread 9s of Chilled onto a large group of foes. Every 15s.

CarelessKrow.8032:

The only reason we’re able to bring a ton of people to swarm a freshly taken supply camp is because at this point, people just want something to do. I don’t find it fun that we own everything, and the zero queue times that we’ve been getting lately kinda shows it.

It’s actually kinda crazy how many people are in the EB jumping puzzle concurrently. Dozens of dots everywhere.

If only there was a solution to that problem…

JQ truly showed this week what type of server they are…

-Zerging and camping throughout the day, bringing 50+ ppl when 10 enemies take a supply camp
-Getting pushed back during prime-time, despite the 3 orb bonus and all structures upgraded

and now, up by 260k prior to the reset the next day, players from your server exploiting/glitching to take Sharadan Hills on the JQ Borderland.

I’m quite certain that you guys probably have some honorable guilds and players, as most in this thread have been respectable. It is a shame that those in the game are trash.

Those were not a part of the game in any of the BWE’s.

So much fail to let this thread have so many responses without linking the simple and easy to craft precision and condition damage jewelry…

http://www.gw2db.com/recipes/8110-coral-orichalcum-amulet

The Well cooldowns are pretty typical and normal in comparison to other professions.

Can’t imagine that is much fun for all of those mid-day transfers.

Thanks, I particularly wasn’t aware of the Lyssa headpiece. I don’t run dungeons, so I’ll have to settle for the high prices of Khilbron.

MLieBennett.9031:

You can’t craft it, but there is Precision, Toughness, and Condition Damage for Light Armor from Karma (All but Chest) and Drops (Khilbron’s Exotic Set). Precision with Sharper Images makes Illusions a consistent source of Bleeds at the very least.

Grenth has the Mantle-Legs-Gloves, but where are you finding the Helm and Shoes with those stats?

First time I’ve ever had to mute a video that wasn’t due to awful music.

Yawn, the “when bad players zerg” is starting early tonight. What else is there to do in this game again?

Stenia.9623:

As SBI is home to the ArenaNet guild I hope Jon Peters will accidently hit ‘B’ and see what this free transfers has done and finally make an action before it kills JQ and destroys many other server communities.

He was on last night helping to attack SM when about 100 zerglings sat on two dozen siege weapons on the walls. His exact quote:

“f these guys”

They just need to gain more HP per ally in the area. We have 30-40 ppl doing these, and it could easily use a 10-15x increase in HP.

To be completely fair, JQ started to recruit transfers when you guys fell out of the top tier for that one (or was it two?) weeks. The influx of additional members is what helped you get to the top, coupled with the HoD exodus.

Reap what you sow I guess…

There are some amulets that are different in sPvP vs PvE/WvW, but for reference, I believe the Carrion stats from PvE/WvW add up exactly to the sPvP equivalent.

Purely for WvW:

I ran Adventurer for a while, and those were pretty solid with the 100% endurance on heal. But this was changed to 50%, and was less powerful (though still decent).

I swapped to the 3xKrait/3xAfflicted setup, and I don’t think this has been as strong as I had hoped. Frankly, I’m often doing most of my damage with the Staff and the bleeding damage from MoB doesn’t need to get to huge levels. A mere 25% bleeding duration will get it to 10 seconds.

I’ve used Rune of the Centaur on my Mesmer, and this is also an option for a Necro — the bleed duration is nice, and the Swiftness on Heal gives the Necro in-combat mobility that it often lacks.

I’m looking to swap myself, and here are the WvW options that I’m batting around (focus is on a 30-20-20-0-0 build):

1. 6x Undead — simple, relatively inexpensive, and gives the best pure condition damage with my setup (~250) and a touch of toughness.

2. 6x Orbs — also cheap, and gives a more balanced stat distribution (120 condition, 84 vitality, 84 power).

3. 2x Grenth & 4x “TBD” — This would put Chillblains up to a 6s duration. I also batted around idea to test the focus at 1200 range instead of offhand dagger, and could get Spinal Shivers chill up to 8s utilizing 4x Nightmare with these — instead of trying to stack a bunch of bleeds prior to epidemic, pop a 8s chill then Epidemic that.

drwookie.6391:

Sorry didn’t take a screenshot. But for an update…I logged in about 30 minutes ago. HOD and SBI had around 90 going each, JQ had the rest (500 something?). I believe we were ~40,000 up (almost double the next one).

I logged into the game, looked at the score. I asked my guild “Hey what borderlands are we in?” They said “Green but we aren’t doing anything…just hanging out at spawn chatting because we own it all”. I logged off. So much for WvWvW in GW2 WvWvW is why I’m here…this is just sad.

Blame the guys on your server that kept recruiting more players when you got knocked out of tier one.

At one point the autoattack gave the target 1s of weakness.

Lol @ outnumbering servers 3:1 in a borderland then camping the spawn and dropping siege equipment.

How long until that gets old?

Pawstruck.9708:

Tongue-in-cheek trolling aside, I think the OP does kind of have a point. PVP gear is only aesthetic and can ONLY BE WORN IN PVP, so it doesn’t really feel all that special.

I mean, sure you play for fun. Duh. But an MMORPG is supposed to give unique feelings of progression, and you know it.

You progress into cooler looking gear.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Fail devs. STOP for GOD SAKE focussing on pvp. It hurts PVE tremendous.

I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

ManCaptain.3154:

EasymodeX.4062:

I have a build that would be phenomenally overpowered if Cry had as low a cooldown as Mind Wrack. While I could imagine how nice it would be to have a low cd on Cry, I don’t think it would be balanced.

No it wouldn’t be overpowered. Say you have IP trait, and maxed CD. You can CoF for 8 confusion stacks which can deal 1360 dmg every time someone uses a skill.
On my build I can mind wrack for up to 8k in dmg and 4 stacks of confusion hitting for 360 every time someone uses a skill.

I’d say that these 2 effects are quite comparable in power, but I can do mine twice as often.

With only an average investment in condition damage, that 8-stack of confusion is hitting for much more like 2300+ dmg per activation.

Aero.4829:

Ibeserker is 100% fine going through LoS just like many other classes ability to AoE without LoS. Cry moar whilst we bathe in your tears.

No abilities should hit without LoS, except those specifically designed as ‘lob-type’ abilities (grenades, catapults, etc). Just because its broken for several classes doesn’t mean iBerserker is working as intended.

aelnova.8590:

as a level 80 mesmer, I say Iberserker is fine. It should hit w/o line of sight.

If you insist on removing this ability, then you should also consider all the other skills that work w/o LOS. I’m specifically talking about every skill that can hit the top of a keep wall from down below with an AOE. I know I sit on the keep wall and get pummeled by all kinds of skills that are not line of sight.

Nerf one, nerf them all. Take your pick.

All abilities from all professions should require LoS to hit someone on top of (or through) a keep. To suggest otherwise is frankly silly.

@Aga:

They just have different places where they can both be strong. SW, while not great for 1v1, is quite strong in open-field WvW.

VictorTroska.3725:

SgtSarcasm.1653:

- The best condition damage stats combo (Toughness + Precision + Condition Damage) is impossible to get on jewelry in PvE, and for armor and weapons you need to farm explorer mode dungeons to get those stat combos. Also since not every dungeon has those stats available, if you don’t like the look of those sets, you’ll have to farm double to get the set you like the look of + the set with the stats for transmutations.
.

You can get T/P/C armors for Karma. I do quite often WvWvW on necro and Karma gain is really fast. Only item I cant buy T/P/C is chest for Karma. Rest is there.

and yes you need to use transmutation stones as stats are spread among many different armors.

However, outside of the Triforge Pendant, there is no rare or exotic piece of jewelry that has toughness and condition damage, at least according to the database.

The armor is possible to get — there is a dropped set as well, but jewelry is non-existant.

digiowl.9620:

Yep, the issue with hemophilia is that the initial number is so low that the increase vanishes in the noise.

The scepter auto attack is low duration, but MoB, Grasping, and Enfeeble all get 1-2 extra ticks just through Hemophelia alone. That equates to 300+ dmg per target from MoB and Grasping, and 400+ dmg per target from Enfeeble.

It is also a good starting point for those that want to stack duration with Spite, Runes, and Sigils.

Zogyark.4597:

@ alanis – Oh I’m sorry, I guess the class is fine now then I’ll go back and play it…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

p.s. All I did was provide you with correct information so you, and others, won’t be confused.

@Zogyark: Hemophelia and Lingering Curses do stack correctly.