Guild Wars 2

/signed /15char

Rennoko.5731:

alanis.6094:

Bawi.9541:

vs. coordinated groups conditions can’t be stacked high enough to get good epidemics
vs. random blobs targets don’t live long enough to get good epidemics

:<

http://www.youtube.com/user/Rennoko?feature=watch

Yeah we do a pretty nice setup for GvG that focuses on conditions. I will agree that in general power is better, simply because it requires far less coordination. We call targets on voice chat, try to do our best to rip boons at the same time etc.

Conditions are definately easier to counter than to bomb in a big WvW situation, but they are far from useless. It is also far more fun to do than hammer train everywhere.

Specific GVG that is a pretty good example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5keIYn0mGX8

I use a number of different builds, but really anything with ranged wells and greater marks seems fine for me in WvW zerg fights, but condition stats are really only going to be worth it if you have the ability to stack conditions quickly with your group (or just epidemic downed targets constantly). With Chilling darkness, blind well, and corruption well, your can lock down a hammer train better than anyone else (for a few seconds).

What is the third trait you take in the Blood line there?

Additionally, I always wondered about Spectral Wall as I have found great success in it for the ‘puggish’ groups in normal WvW. Obviously stability is an issue, but in watching several videos I certainly wouldn’t say that stability uptime is more than 40% or so (at least on your primary target), and with the way your opponents group/train, a well placed SWall on them w/o much stability might really scatter some?. I haven’t seen you use it much (at all?), so I imagine your experiences with it aren’t all that positive?

Bawi.9541:

vs. coordinated groups conditions can’t be stacked high enough to get good epidemics
vs. random blobs targets don’t live long enough to get good epidemics

:<

http://www.youtube.com/user/Rennoko?feature=watch

SrebX.6498:

Alanis: I swear, I sat in front of my screen scratching my head trying to decide weather I should invest so much in Spite, or go 20 down Soul Reaping… Finally I decided that Sigent mastery + Spiteful Removal is more important than 50% Fear duration that can be broken through Stun breaker, and also I couldn’t find any fitting Adept Tier :\ You are right about Dhuumfire though, I’m trying to fix it now… not sure how yet

It’s entirely personal preference regarding Soul Reaping.

For the adept tier, I use the DS -15% Cooldown reduction trait, but have used the -20% spectral cooldown reduction as well. The spectral armor at 50% HP minor trait is also probably our best minor; and the third Curses trait of your choice will always be a strong one. Each build is fun, though.

Zikory.6871:

Next would be terror, in a zerg setting you might find more use from chilling darkness (paired with plague #2) or master of corruption to get epidemic off more often. The reason for no terror is because your limited to 6 possible fears, 1 in DS and the 5 from staff #5. Staff 5 being a 32s CD you would get more damage out of Master of corruption.

He is specced for Spectral Wall, which is frankly an amazing ability to use as a Terrormancer, and the combo is one of the most powerful damage dealers at its not limited to 5 people.

In addition, he could (as I do) spec for ranged Wells and run Epidemic, SWall, and WoC and throw the WoC prior to the zerg hitting the SWall, in an effort to strip some of that stability off.

If he wants to drop anything, I’d recommend him dropping Dhuumfire and trying 0/3/2/0/2, and getting the increased duration of fear, and having another slot open for one of the many amazing Curses traits (Chilling darkness, Banshee’s, etc).

Josh Davis.6015:

@Rangers/Guardians/Engineers/Necromancers

Just because Jon didn’t include any changes regarding your profession in the above post doesn’t mean we’re done making changes.

Please continue to leave feedback – we’re still listening. We’ll keep you updated as things come up.

Thanks!

Should the @Necromancers take this and Jon’s post as a “deal with it”?

JonPeters.5630:

Here is a summary of the changes we have made thus far based on feedback we have read. This is not necessarily the end of adjustments, but where we stand currently. There were a lot of good suggestions, and some of them may not be able to make it due to time constraints on testing and implementation. Please continue to give feedback over the course of the next few days. We will continue to monitor that feedback and take it into account in changes we make for this patch and for the future.

From a big GW2 fan, thanks for the solid communication. From a Necro…I’m truly shocked shocked shocked that we aren’t listed as any further changes yet, especially with all the back and forth discussion with Devs on our own balance thread.

Bhawb.7408:

1) Fix the bug that causes marks to go on full CD.

Per JP this is a bug that will be fixed 11/26.

I’m running 0/3/2/0/2 and enjoying it. Tried the Dhuumfire build, but didn’t want to throw 30 points into Spite for just that trait (plus cond duration). Plus I really prefer the two Staff traits. Run spectral wall and epidemic always — WoC or CB depending on the objective.

You might also like 0/2/2/0/3 for Stability, but I like having three traits from Curses (most often for ranged Well, Terror, and Warhorn).

Make Withering precision AoE weakness and the 25 point minor in Curses. Move “target the weak” to where Siphoned Power is. Throw Siphoned power in trash.

Would obviously need to swap Terror and Scepter mastery so you can’t get terror and dhuumfire.

Make dark armor give stability (or protection) instead of immunity.

Weapon Skill Traits

One thing I’d love to see normalized through entire professions is with the weapon skill traits that reduce cooldowns. For many (not all) of these, there are secondary effects. For example, my two main professions are Mesmer and Necromancer.

For a Mesmer, every single weapon skill cooldown reduction trade has a secondary benefit, such as condition damage, toughness, condition removal, reflect, precision, power, or increased range.

For the Necromancer, there are still several that miss these additional benefits and feel a bit lackluster. We do have a few that are already there and are looking solid — Axe, Warhorn, and Focus. However, the Scepter, Staff, and Dagger still are lacking. There already exists additional traits that might be easy fixes to merge:

Staff: Mastery and Greater Marks
Dagger: Mastery and Quickening Thirst
Scepter: Mastery is only one, but wouldn’t be too hard to add cooldown reduction here too (more preferably increased range, but that might be deemed too powerful).

And while we are discussing weapon traits — can we get the Scepter trait off the GM line? (not that anyone would really take it at Master either, but just for uniformity)

Ascii.9726:

Is it just me, or do all developers think Necros have the best most powerful skills in the game?

Jon Peters on Mark of Blood

This is one of the most versatile and powerful skills in the game.

Tyler Chapman on Putrid Mark

It will no longer cleanse teammates and it will always give a full cooldown when interrupted because its one of the best skills in the game.

Well, if there weren’t 14000 ways to remove conditions, MoB would be amazing.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Jon, the biggest problem with Dhuumfire is that it is easy coverage of the bleed stack that you mentioned is hard to remove. Dhuumfire is a high-damage cover condition. By keeping Dhuumfire as-is, or even making the trait more accessible, you are actually reinforcing the problem. If you wish to keep the trait, then it needs to be changed to a condition already in the necro’s rotation. That would make cleansing condition stacks moer effective.

Yes, there is not nearly enough cleansing of conditions going on in this game already…

Was always interested in rolling a LB ranger, but I almost exclusively WvW and have always heard they weren’t really viable there. Are the buffs enough (in peoples opinions)?

Adiemus.2081:

Think about it, to make a trait line less dependable is to make vital trait more accessible with less point invested. How can they get this right with mesmer by moving illusion celerity down to 15 but totally messed up the elementalist by moving up Water V and Arcana V and VI?

I don’t get Anet’s logic.

Its not rocket science — those three traits were very, very, very strong (i.e. OP) for Adept level traits. (much, much stronger than IC)

selan.8354:

well glmour builds got hit from 3 sdes:
confusion dmg reduction 50%
bb nerf
and the so called “bugfix” of confusion dealing dmg when its not supposed to

then we got the temporal curtain nerf
the retal nerf
blurred frenzy nerf
the underwater trident nerf
timewarp nerf
portal nerf
ic nerf

and all these nerfs happened while warriors and necros kept getting buffs….even other classes like engi got buffed and got their bug fixed. ileap is still bugged, blink still doesnt work n a bridge….so yeah that just mad our class not being able to keep up in wvw and right ow we are not in a good spot. there is maybe 2 builds u can sorta run in wvw zergs, but none of them feels like the glam or imortal mesmer builds felt in wvw. yeah we got blackwater, but thats still more of a roaming kinda build…
we need more aoe, that doesnt rely on ai!

In Anets defense, most of these things were silly OP.

Nefejrangh.2584:

Last night, some action, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS1vkDxdKTo.
We moved to Vabbi due too much lag on gunnar’s hold.

After I saw the initial post, I swapped to this build and loved it. Eventually began playing some other toons because, frankly, I’m not as good as you to pull these outnumbered fights off. But overall, I think its one of the best large scale builds out there; the reflects are really something.

Great teamwork, and some impressive heal/boons/cleansing from your teammates too.

Have you tried this build as a 0/2/2/3/0, with staff trait?

Poxheart.2845:

While I enjoyed the video, I gotta say that the build using Dire armor does not cut it in T1. I’ve tried roaming with it for a few days this week (at different times day/night) and killed a few people. What I found was that with no stun break or stability any fight with more than one person went badly for me because of all the CC. And, unfortunately, in T1 you rarely find fights where enemies don’t add in.

Not going to try the celestial build. This was an expensive enough experiment already.

OP is on a T1 server.

Helios.3598:

Other than Spiteful Spirit, why go into the Spite tree at all for a DS WvW build? What about this build (0/20/0/20/30) http://intothemists.com/guides/1472-necro_debuff . It has both DS and Wells matched with chill.

Reaper’s Might is a staple.

Close to Death is strong, too.

Banjal.7328:

Moon.6371:

@ Rennoko:

Well made vid, as usual. Thanks for that. But i do feel your celestial setup is not cutting edge. I use Celestial, Berserker, Knights and Cavalier with dagger/focus and staff and it absolutely rocks. The direct dmg output is so much higher than with scepter and the control coming from dagger 3 is key to build my play around it.

Basically I am trading 200 condition damage of yours for direct damage close to full berserker power necro and still have 500 condition damage plus 2700 armor.

@ Sororita:

Your playstyle seems to be very close to mine judging by weaponset but I feel your traits suit MM much more than focus on lifesteal without minions. Additionally your stats seem kinda low, despite you having consumables applied.

I have about 3k attack power, 40% critchance, 113% critdamage, 500 condidmg and still 2700 armor. I feel compensating the traited lifesteal with toughness is the better trade off, since the offensive potential is so much higher statwise (and offense is the the best defense).

No offense, just my input and thoughts.

Best regards

Do you have a build you can post?I guess you are 30 in Soul Reaping to have that high Crit DMG.

I run 80% Celestial and my stats unbuffed are 3200AP, 45% crit, 51% Crit DMG with 900 Condi.

What build do you get those stats with (and what are the other 20%)?

Looking through past videos and builds, and this one didn’t get any love — despite being a really strong individual and group video. I liked the build/gear a lot too, though noticed that the OP hkittentered Concentration and Shattered Conditions, though he doesn’t really utilize shatters that often. Wonder if those could be better placed.

Tomas Godlewski.4086:

not just rely on sheer numbers to win. FA has been doing this

Only thing you were right about.

Its certainly an option for the first tier traits if your going conditions in WvW, especially without signets.

Solid ‘fight’ at Sunnyhill, DB.

step 1. Have 5:1 odds

step 2. after knocking down walls, refuse to charge for 10 minutes while building massive siege equipment.

step 3. finally charge, with 5:1 odds

step 4. lose over half your numbers.

Big brass ones on display there.

Been gone for the past 7-8 months. Disappointed to come back and see this group stacking, boon stacking nonsense, and huge blobs blobbing around the map.

20v20, or similar, fights are incredible. But too few and far between when most groups I see are 75 players or more.

How is running around in groups of 100-125 remotely fun?

alanis.6094:

Glad to see Osicat still playing. Got a link to his thread/build? (scrolled a few pages deep and didn’t see it)

Nm found it. (Google is your friend)

Glad to see Osicat still playing. Got a link to his thread/build? (scrolled a few pages deep and didn’t see it)

Was running 0/20/20/0/30; there are tons of builds and discussions on the forums, but I haven’t seen a single IP.

crickets.

/15char

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Corrupt_Boon

Was wondering if others could provide an update on a few specific questions I have. Its been a while, and my basic research still leads me to a few things I wanted to clarify…(note: I only play WvW, small and large groups)

General
One of the big things that led me to leave was the ‘item creep’ that came with Ascended items. I’ve been told that these are now easier to get and don’t need to do PvE, and I can get them in WvW?

People seem to be alluding, through a few threads discussing Weakness, that it was buffed at some point. I couldn’t find info on this. It was pretty terrible when I played, but is it now a strong condition?

Necromancer
When I left, I was running a 0/20/30/0/20 Condition Fear/Terror build. It appears that Terror was nerfed somewhat. The trait/style still viable? If so, would I be looking at 30/20/0/0/20?

Dhuumfire- its new to me, and appears to be very common spec. Is it strong in a large scale condition WvW necro?

Signet of Spite- seemed buffed and common on builds I pull up. Fairly strong now?

Epidemic- still standard for WvW conditionmancers?

Corrupt Boon- still miss often? seems to be nerfed (balanced) to 5 boons. worth slotting?

Spectral Wall- buffed, but worth slotting in WvW?

Staff Marks- appeared to be buffed to 180 range untraited. Greater Marks, which I always found to be vital, no longer needed?

Dire- appears to be a new set of armor, cond/tough/vit. Is this the preferred conditionmancer WvW set? I always preferred Carrion due to the extra power.

Wvw meta- Conditionmancers still hold their own/strong; or rampant condition removal an issue?

TIA.

Brando.1374:

alanis.6094:

Haven’t played in 7-8 months or so. What nerf happened to Terror?

July 23rd update
Terror: Reduced the damage by 17%. Fixed a bug so this trait now checks for the torment condition as well.

only 17%?

guess MMO players didn’t grow up in those 8 months

Haven’t played in 7-8 months or so. What nerf happened to Terror?

Silverone.3452:

alanis.6094:

Halo.8976:

Reaper’s Protection is bad for survivability in my opinion. 1 sec of fear won’t save you from zerg, especially only once in 90 seconds.

RP is 2s with 0 condition duration. With my build, my RP is 4+ seconds and does 800-900 damage per second.

It certainly is better for smaller engagements, but is quite useful overall in WvW, as there will be times where you get charged at the front lines, or stunned/knocked down while trying to get back into a keep/tower.

Alanis would you share your build for comparison?

Thanks

Its not anything terribly complicated — Terror, Reapers Protection, Master of Terror, Staff traits, Corruption cooldown.

digiowl.9620:

1000 at 400 HP? Meh…

Then again, it is a 5 point minor trait…

Well its also ~970 at under 100 HP, so HP isn’t really doing much and its still probably over 950 for 0 HP.

Chilling Darkness is decent for a Power-based Necro, but its completely dwarfed by Terror in any build that is focused on condition damage — and its not even remotely close.

Needs more options, one that is something like:

“I was doing fine prior to the patch, and while it wasn’t great, it managed to provide a few buffs and bug fixes that had a mildly positive affect on my gameplay”

kidbs.8920:

Mesket.5728:

All servers get to tier 1 and number 1, take a screenshot of it, realize THAT screenshot was the whole prize of being #1 in Tier 1 and quit.

JQ is so far the only server that stood since release in Tier 1, I don’t know why are we still holding there.

Have you guys not fallen to tier 2 at all? It’s been so long I can’t remember.

They’ve absolutely fallen to tier 2 for at least one week, perhaps two.

I can’t remember if SBI has fallen to tier 2 more recently than JQ. We might have also had one week, then right back.

Replace other Necro’s with a tank-IP-condition Mesmer that can go in and drop 8-12 stacks of confusion on a few targets. Pick one, Epidemic, and proceed to giggle like a school-girl.

Arcades Saboth.5139:

I understand it’s not difficult but still I can’t see any difference from Fear alone and Fear with another conditions. I saw the same damage.

Do you have Terror as one of your traits?

Knote.2904:

Lol, my build has a decent amount of power/precision (+700 power) and on a boss loaded up with conditions, vulnerability, and some might on me the highest i’ve gotten was 2k.

Meanwhile, iWarlock.

My FoC on my condition necro does more damage than my iWarlock on my condition Mesmer, with the exact same gear setup.

Rennoko.5731:

But make no mistake, this was not a huge buff, or even a noticable buff in the long run. An extra 300 damage on a fear cast isn’t game breaking at all, and would be completely negligible in spvp. But it beats the hell out of the other “buffs” we go in the patch.

It was certainly a noticeable buff on my WvW necro running with 2s fears. That 300-400 damage is multiplied by two ticks, and for Reapers Mark its that extra damage for as many are hit by the AoE.

Levian.6742:

I think an easy way to make this trait useful is to make it add 3% LF gain on every skill. Staff already has 3%? It gets bumped to 6%. All abilities that don’t normally give LF should give 3%

Too powerful.

I think the trait would have been fine at 20-25%.

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

Dariroch.6482:

The best part of this patch was the gluttony fix and the dagger run speed buff. which probably doesnt stack with the singet speed buff.

It doesn’t stack, so you get Swiftness from yourself or an ally and that trait is useless. Same goes for Signet of the Locust.
Even more, why take Signet of the Locust instead of, for example, Spectral Walk? Signet gives you less movement speed and 800 lifesteal (ROFLMAO) while Walk gives you stun break, 33% movement speed, Life Force generation and a recall skill to kite some guys of you.

SotL is great for traversing in WvW. When I want to engage in a fight, I just swap to SW or something else. I no longer have to worry about:

1) starting a fight with SW on cooldown
2) wanting to swap to a different utility but can’t because SW is on cooldown

Arcades Saboth.5139:

Fynd.4890:

Order of operations :

Base damage for terror is:

• 2 + (level * 1.5) = 362 @ 80
• it is not (2 + level) * 1.5 = 123 @ 80

Infact: 80 *1.5 = 120 + 2 = 122.
362 would be 80 * 4 + 2.
Where did you get 362?

I don’t know how you get to it, but its 362 + 30% malice.

I like the event, but worried about the “you need to stand in this circle for 20 seconds a few feet from the tower” to start the assault. Seems as if your outnumbered, you’d get wiped there easily.

Yah, it was already pretty good yesterday.

Now, it almost makes it silly not to spec Terror/MoT — though you really can’t get the spec in sPvP without giving up a lot.

Not a huge game changer, but very much a QoL improvement for WvW. I no longer have to “burn” my SW while out of combat, and can swap to it just prior to engaging, so I don’t enter most fights with it on cooldown.