Guild Wars 2

You JQ guys have got Obsidian Sanctum locked up tight. I tried breaking through yesterday with a group to no avail… Congratulations.

Don’t run in a straight direction, change it all the time to make sure to confuse your enemies. If it’s a small group I like to dodge roll backwards, then spin camera 180, lightning flash and ride the lightning, burning speed away.

You should try necro. It’s basically the counterpick of ele because of all the conditions that you can throw out and the speed. Epidemic and corrupt boon absolutely cripple d/d eles if they’re used at the right time. They have absolute boon and condition control, but not much support.

Bunker d/d ele is very viable but up to the point where you’re pretty much whittling people down very slowly but they’re not taking much damage either while you’re sitting at full. They rock at 1v1 but 1v>1 becomes a dodgefest and you have to keep moving to keep the bunker effect going.

I play a balanced build now and it works so much better for me because I can kill quickly, while having very good tankiness

For fractal rings and backpacks, which stats would you choose on them? HP/P/P or P/T/V?

WvW still has this annoying bug where you overshoot your RTL or your magnetic grasp pulls you too far

If your opinion is that staying in fire and AA’ing is better than attunement switching, why don’t you guys just duel each other or something. The arguments you provide tell me that you’re very experienced with the class.

Magnetic grasp sometimes has the habit of not actually moving me at all. If the target is immobilised or crippled, my grasp will either stop me from moving or pull me to the target but won’t connect, the animation keeps playing.

Kailoq.3051:

brickforlife.1364:

I’m wondering whether to go from 0/10/0/30/30 to 10/10/0/30/20 or 0/10/10/30/20.

the reasoning behind this is that I dodge a lot. It’s not random dodging but I like to reposition myself a lot during a fight and I feel like by doing what I usually do I won’t make use of fire4, dodge, earth 4, earth 5 for full might stacks. I’ll probably be dodging in and out and everywhere and it’s just a habit of repositioning myself and I can’t get rid of it. So which one would you suggest out of the two?

If you just get into the habit of swapping to water every time you reposition in the fight, you’ll be getting regeneration boons. That alone would be worth it imo. And I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to get rid of it if you really wanted to.

The best advice ofcourse is, try out both builds and see what you like! I’ve been using evasive arcana a lot to get regeration and might stacks (or apply burning so I can open up with a fire5), but I’m going to switch back to 10 in earth one of these days just to compare the feel of the build!

EDIT: A quick summary of all my number crunching:

• Ruby vs beryl jewels results in a 75 effective damage output difference (due to higher precision for ruby) and +900 hp for beryl.
• Soldier vs knight daggers results in +128 vit (1280 hp) for invaders, but 40 less effective damage output (invader has higher power, but less crit chance) and 52 less toughness/armor. One soldier and one knight dagger is in between ofcourse.
• Sapphire jewels grant you an extra 150 healing power. The reduction in healing for the other builds will play a greater role in builds with high toughness compared to vitality. Sapphire also adds 90 extra toughness/armor. The effective damage output is a whooping 265 points lower than ruby (mostly because of less precision/crit chance) compared to ruby and -188 compared to beryl. When comparing knight dagger builds, this difference will grow a bit larger because of the synergy between precision and crit damage.

Thanks for the extra advice. Which trait do you pick when you put 10 in earth. I’ve evaluated some of them but I’m not entirely sure which is the most useful. I’m leaning towards 10 in fire mostly because it’s more offensive than 10 in earth which is defensive. I can’t pick one because there’s just so many situations where both would apply and be good.

I can’t kick the habit because it’s an old one from a lot of dagger necro and s/p thief play.

EDIT: I’ve figured to go back to 30 in arcana after much experimentation. Even if I do randomly dodge, a random attack in the fray every 10 seconds is actually very, very useful. 10 in fire gives me a very situational might which I hesitate to use and 10 in earth means that I don’t exploit the trait enough. Armor of Earth on a 90 second cooldown on a trait is a bit meh-ish because I hover around 1/2-3/4 health a lot.

Thanks for the help!

@kailoq Thanks for the suggestion, I’m now running PVT on wep/armour and sapphire+ruby jewel on acc.

I’m wondering whether to go from 0/10/0/30/30 to 10/10/0/30/20 or 0/10/10/30/20.

the reasoning behind this is that I dodge a lot. It’s not random dodging but I like to reposition myself a lot during a fight and I feel like by doing what I usually do I won’t make use of fire4, dodge, earth 4, earth 5 for full might stacks. I’ll probably be dodging in and out and everywhere and it’s just a habit of repositioning myself and I can’t get rid of it. So which one would you suggest out of the two?

For the build, I was wondering if switching out the weapons or jewels for berserker’s or knight’s would be viable. I was hoping that I can give up a bit of tankiness and healing power for more damage. Can someone confirm if this is viable or gimpy?

I think I saw this guy in wvw once. I was bunker necro and doing near 0 damage to him. He never once fell before 75% health. I was flabbergasted. After about 1.5 minutes I got reduced to almost nil health. :O

During BWE I played ele and I quit it at lv 6 because of how I hated switching elements. It was confusing and I couldn’t get my head around. Fast forward to release and I play a guardian for 200 hours and a necro for 700. Earlier today I switched to ele to main. I don’t look back. Switching elements and juggling them is incredibly fun and not as hard as you think. Think of it like a weapon switch combo. lay down a combo field in one weapon, finisher with the other. Same concept here. Lay down a fire field, earth finisher.

Apart from unlocking skills, I’ve barely touched the autoattack button in pve.

It’s a great class. The class isn’t bad, the forums are. Visit any class forums (not warrior) and there’s a ton of QQ.

Hi again! I’ve finally collected all the pieces and tried the build out and it works astonishingly well in pve. However, in WvW, it lacks a bit because I can easily get someone to dying level and I’m still 3/4 health but they just run away and I can’t catch up usually bceause they dodge my dark path and spectral grasp. Any idea how to catch up?

This build sounds as reliable as “world’s best cup of coffee” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUPDRnUWeBA

It sounds great in theory but a good player will rip through your minions in 2 seconds and be straight to you. Besides, minions can’t help you if you get backstabbed by a thief.

Necro has a high health pool so not dying would be one of them. I usually kite/tank hits from the boss.

Have you looked at the AoE that we have? Marks and wells, that’s 8 already. Staff auto is also piercing. That’s 9. Death Shroud 4, that’s 10. 10 easily accessable AoE skills.

Solo play: Duration. Group play: Damage

groups usually hit 25 bleed stacks ridiculously fast and you’ll never flesh out your damage unless you have enough damage to make a difference and make up the majority of the 25 stacks. However, playing in solo play, you want duration to maximise bleed stacks before you epidemic.

I play a power build in spvp and it’s the most hilarious fun when someone (non-thief) tries to run away. When they start running away I use spectral grasp and they’re back at my feet. If they manage to get away again I use dark path and they’re dead again.

I never play cond damage in pvp, don’t know why, it just seems useless in terms of damage and satisfaction unless you’re in a team fight.

Sheobix.8796:

brickforlife.1364:

rogerwilko.6895:

Hi,
please explain the reason behind choosing Spite -> Master -> Signet Power.
This gives might for 10s every 60s, if you use signet of the locust.
Is that worth it?

No. I think it may have been a mistake. You should never use signet of the locust. Ever. The passive beats the active everywhere. I suggest you pick Spiteful Marks or Chill of Death. I personally picked Spiteful marks because having 10% extra damage on such a useful weapon never hurts.

If you are running in WvW or a dungeon with locust sig and you get hit into combat for any reason (getting ganked, don’t have time to swap util for S.walk) you can use the 3 stacks of might from popping the small heal from locust sig with the 10 stacks from BiP to get a total of 13 stacks and a slightly longer duration. This gives you more damage over time than a 10% increase for marks, situationally. (marks have long cooldowns, even when traited)

Right. Ok. Thanks for the clarification. I wouldn’t use it in WvW but I can see some situational use in dungeons.

You can do the same with spectral grasp + dagger 3, now you have chill, 1200 range and immo. At the cost of 2 skills.

I dunno about attrition and chasing people down. Putting conditions on a guardian usually means death for me and I can’t chase thieves who I don’t burst down fast enough.

If you’re doing a well build, dagger/warhorn and dagger/focus are much more optimal.

Derk.3189:

brickforlife.1364:

rogerwilko.6895:

Hi,
please explain the reason behind choosing Spite -> Master -> Signet Power.
This gives might for 10s every 60s, if you use signet of the locust.
Is that worth it?

No. I think it may have been a mistake. You should never use signet of the locust. Ever. The passive beats the active everywhere. I suggest you pick Spiteful Marks or Chill of Death. I personally picked Spiteful marks because having 10% extra damage on such a useful weapon never hurts.

I highly disagree. Especially for dungeon runs it can act as a good heal since you’re gonna get slowed down when you get into combat anyways. 48 seconds isn’t too bad as a recharge either, especially if you’re gonna be using wells that have 60 recharge untraited. Lowish damage, decent heal.

I think it’s a rather crappy heal. It requires 5 mobs to take maximum effect and you’re only going to get 3k or so healing. It’s not a lot. That much can be bursted down from you in a matter of seconds. It’s a bad escape plan, trying to get away with that little health is going to get you killed. When you’re in combat I think you travel at 33% slower speed, if you put locust on top you travel at 92% speed which isn’t bad. I just don’t forsee ANY possible situation where it would be wise to use it. Ever. If I wanted to survive a bit longer while my wells last out, I’d use DS.

rogerwilko.6895:

Hi,
please explain the reason behind choosing Spite -> Master -> Signet Power.
This gives might for 10s every 60s, if you use signet of the locust.
Is that worth it?

No. I think it may have been a mistake. You should never use signet of the locust. Ever. The passive beats the active everywhere. I suggest you pick Spiteful Marks or Chill of Death. I personally picked Spiteful marks because having 10% extra damage on such a useful weapon never hurts.

Wells and Flesh Golem Charge

In pvp you’re not going to go anywhere much with wells, people walk out of them so easily. I’d suggest blood is power, spectral grasp and corrupt boon. Blood is power has 10 stacks of might which is always useful and bleed. Spectral grasp is a good pull + freeze which is a good initiator. Corrupt boon is mainly for guardians/mesmers/eles with tons of stacks of regen and stuff on them.

Spectral Recall and Worm Tele makes us useful for some things where you can teleport past objects to skip something. IDK about the class itself but people should bring other people because of skill not because of class. Usually when I go dungeons people bring me because I can survive.

Scepter/dagger is in every way superior to scepter/warhorn. You won’t need personal swiftness because your levelling partner (ele) will have group swiftness

Have fun!

I’d use focus. Warhorn has a windup time for it’s daze which means you need good timing. Locust swarm is priceless though. Great initiator and escape tool.

Focus has vuln and regeneration on 4 which is very useful. 5 is a freeze which is situational and a good initiator. It does not have an escape button though, while warhorn does so you need to consider this in your build.

Thanks for the update Sheobix. I still think warhorn is useful for those chase and getaway situations using Locust swarm because of cripple. The .75 second windup time for daze makes it hard to time for stopping people using attacks but works great when it does. the main problem I have with it is the long cooldown.

Focus appeals to me much more because of bouncing vulnerability and regeneration. The chill powerful as well because it gives -66% cooldown speed and -66% speed. However using a focus means we lack a getaway utility so that’s the only flaw I think it has.

Props on the build, it’s a really well thought one but I have some questions.

1. What sigils and runes/crests do you use? it’s not highlighted in the first post (or I can’t find it).

2. Why warhorn? The cooldowns are high and the daze has a windup time so it’s more suited to pvp than pve? Wouldn’t the focus be more suitable because you can dish out vulnerability and regeneration on yourself to keep you up and do more damage?

3. Would the buffed signet of locust be better than spectral walk? I understand you’re trying to pull as much out of spectral mastery, but it seem much better to swap it out with signet of the locust.

War Mourner.5168:

Could you clarify what you’re intending to do with this build?

General PvE, exploration, fractals, dungeons etc. Hybrid conditionmancer right now isn’t cutting it, my damage is low and it takes way too long to startup. By the time I’ve got good poison stacks and 10 bleed stacks, the guy is dead and epidemic misses.

Abigor.4952:

I don’t think the point is to be a bunker, if you put everything in DS/vit you won’t have enough power to deal decent damage and as I understood brickforlife wants to be 50/50.

That is correct. Dagger/warhorn well builds (I’ve played this one for 300~ hours) require a ridiculous amount of prancing around just to avoid being killed. I was hoping a tankier approach this time might help.

Abigor.4952:

Thanks for the response. Vampiric Wells is weak but the other choice in that traitline would be minions which are almost useless. If I took protection from wells I would lose greater marks which IMO is worth more.

Greater marks are “must have” if you use staff imo=), I’ve meant that you can add 10 into death magic for 10 blood magic. You won’t loose tanky effectiveness because you trade vitality for toughness, but you get less effective minor trait.

Ahh ok, thanks. I’ll go review that. Just waiting for more responses now. I’m still not sure if it’s viable or not. I don’t wanna blow 20g respeccing is all.

Abigor.4952:

brickforlife.1364:

I use focus not warhorn because warhorn cooldowns are ridiculously high and 4 has a chargeup time making it useless for interrupts. Focus has much more utility IMO.

It’s up to you of course, but from my experience focus #5 is easy to avoid/interrupt, same goes with #4, but since you’ll be in close range it will work fine.

I’ve wanted to make a build that centres around a good well-rounded build with decent damage with dagger and can tank well. I dislike death shroud builds because it locks you in a state where you can’t see much.

Personally I think well life siphon is too weak, I’d prefer protection, but then again, I don’t like wells at all xD
DS – devs said that it will be improved sometime in future, maybe even soon, so you might give it another chance=)

Also if you dislike Death Shroud play another class. Death Shroud is Necro.

It doesn’t mean that he won’t use it at all, because we have DS doesn’t mean that we should put everything in it and use DS only.

Thanks for the response. Vampiric Wells is weak but the other choice in that traitline would be minions which are almost useless. If I took protection from wells I would lose greater marks which IMO is worth more.

I might review over warhorn again but I’m not sure

XiL.4318:

Links with ; don’t work you have to TinyUrl it.

Also if you dislike Death Shroud play another class. Death Shroud is Necro.

Not using Death Shroud would be like a Thief not using Steal or Stealth. Not the brightest idea, in other words.

No I don’t want to use death shroud to tank would be what I’m trying to say. I use it offensively, popping in and out to take advantage of fear to CC, 4 for AoE and 1 for boss focus.

If I used it to tank hits to fall back to staff, I wouldn’t be able to take advantage of it a couple seconds later to interrupt a boss. This is the gist of what I’m saying and why I don’t use it to tank normally.

PvE Build, no pve editor

http://tinyurl.com/cjsnwvc

It uses dagger/focus for damage in short range and staff for AoE and distance. I use focus not warhorn because warhorn cooldowns are ridiculously high and 4 has a chargeup time making it useless for interrupts. Focus has much more utility IMO.

I’ve wanted to make a build that centres around a good well-rounded build with decent damage with dagger and can tank well. I dislike death shroud builds because it locks you in a state where you can’t see much.

Utilities are wells for AoE and Spectral walk for travelling, spectral recall for grouping.

So is this viable or not, and why?

EDIT: Would it be better to get Soldier’s trinkets instead of armour or Soldier’s armour?

Edited the photo to make it a little bit more obvious.

Anyway the story is I log on, see a guildie with a random kitten name, pm him, no response. I wait a couple hours and pm him again and no response. He didn’t move areas. He’s not online now so I hope he can get his account back if he did get hacked.

@Xiao Haishou That wasn’t him though. I never spammed anyone, was just asking about it because he usually reps. Read carefully.

@NullArk I tried messaging him over a couple days. No response.

Can I assume the guildie with the random name got hacked? He won’t respond to any of my whispers or anything.

EDIT: edited the photo so it’s more obvious

I’ve read the entire thread and I have come to the conclusion that Logun is in fact some kind of very smart person who has given out many tips on how exactly to play with the market.

But one question lies unanswered. WHAT THE kitten ARE YOU PLANNING TO DO WITH THAT MUCH MONEY?

If I were you, I’d just dump it all into the gold>gem down the path just to mess with it. Or in some point in time you’d end up like Vork in “The Guild” and have a monopoly on every single item and destroy the economy.

facepalm A-net wants high gem prices so people stop trading gold >gems and buy from them. Personally I have nothing against this, especially when it goes to developing new updates.

Don’t be too afraid of the changes. ANet may listen to the community and they won’t add power creep. Too early to decide anyway.

100 per tick is more like full conditions. Anyway. This is probably the most viable one there is. Since conditions alone will make you useless at boss fights and power will get you killed from the range, hybrids are a healthy mix.

The only patch I’m expecting is seeing all the tooltips on bugged features changed to “does absolutely nothing useful” because “everything is working fine” and we need to “learn to use death shroud”

Warhorn is the best OH for WvW, PvE and PvP only. For other modes it kinda sucks.

The Aoe Daze which you can use while moving so you can cover a larger area than your blow is a great interrupt for a lot of attacks and opens up for a lot of attacks.

The perm-swiftness and cripple is just too good. Catch up to enemies and stop them running away. What else could you want?

Someone tried this on me, I countered by dodging, using necrotic grasp and dagger3. Dropping wells and lapping with dagger autoattack and warhorn4.

@Embershard

If you’re not sticking to your enemy like glue, you’re not playing the class as intended. They want you to be a unstoppable death machine chasing down your foe.

This is where I list the skills I guess.

Spectral Grasp – reliability is ok but if it catches, it’s a 1 second interrupt and you can wail before they get up.

Dark Pact – glue for a couple of seconds, usually they’ll fumble around with keys if they’re not pro.

Dark Path – Instant projectile despite the warm up. Use it and DS out and wail or combine with Dark Pact.

Doom – Basically makes them useless for a couple of seconds while you run at them.

Locust Swarm – Gives you swiftness and cripple every second, very useful for catching and killing.

Deadly Catch – Pull.

Dark Spear – Pull&disable

Sinking Tomb – Disable

I don’t get which part of getting to your enemy and sticking is hard. Usually they’ll come for you.

Up to 5 vet level minions which autoheal and have skills instead of autoattack. Commandable with their health bars on your skill bar like a ranger.

Or

Up to 20 normal level minions to steamroll enemies.

gamefreak.5673:

I don’t think i have actually heard anyone complain about soul walk in a serious manner. Also spectral grasp wont hit anything unless its basically not moving and that skill i will admit is horrible for pulling things to me I want to fight.

Spectral grasp won’t work if the target is running laps around you nor will it work if they are dodging. It only works on flat land as well. Working to these limitations, it’s pretty good, but still needs fixing.