Guild Wars 2

Lordrosicky.5813:

The thing is death shroud used to be fine before all the sigils and massive damage in the game.

Now with all the sigils and massive damage on auto attacks/weapon swaps it makes a mechanic which just ABSORBS damage worse. And makes things like blocks much better.

I don’t think it went downhill from there. The problems you’re describing existed even at the hight of necromancer dhuum-cheeser times. And the sigil patches also affected necros in a positiv way.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Currently on EU everyone runs shout warrior and dps guardian.

Personally I’m glad about this meta shift. I had a much harder time against hambows before the adrenalin nerf. And so far I’ve yet to see a dps guard beat me in a straight up duel. Then again, I don’t play the condi meta build.

But overall I agree with your assessment. The damage vs tankyness vs CC-output ratio of some classes makes it extremely hard to justify having a necro on your team.
And that’s not because I think necros are generally weaker, but other classes have so much more room for error. Sometimes you have to play absulutely flawless while other classes can make mistake after mistake and still hold on to their life. Once you are downed you can bet your sorry butt that you’ll be stability-stomped a second later. On the other hand, if you try to secure a stomp and even sacrifice your elite for it, you’ll be lucky to pull it off before 10 rez banners land on your head.

Bhawb.7408:

Lucentfir.7430:

Just remember people, If regen and vamprisim traits were to heal through DS, it would be stackable with Unholy Sanctuary. So its practically double the regen, mixed with life steal procs, it can get ridiculous amounts of healing in DS.

Then they can adjust or rethink unholy sanctuary…

Keep in mind, this would be a build with 6 points in Death Magic and at least 3 points in Blood Magic. The loss of damage would be huge, a fair trade for an occasional ~300 hp/s in DS. (which is no where near ridiculous btw)

TyPin.9860:

On my mesmer, I can’t remember the last time, when I lost to any necro condition dmg build…

Write me in game next time FSP plays against Kodash. I’m always looking for a challenge.

It was too loud. They changed it March 2013, so almost 2 years ago.

I’m actually amazed that you would still remember the old sound if you haven’t heard your or any other necro use their staff since then.

Falcon.8713:

7 necros allround (4 builds, 3 looks only)

You have more necros than I have characters

RashanDale.3609:

flow.6043:

So an exception to the exception of the exception… great -_-

uh no, it’d really just one exception:

allied healing doesnt work, except regen.

all regen works, no exceptions here.

all boons work, no exceptions there either.

Depends on how you want to phrase it.
I might as well say: Healing is now allowed through DS (which up until then used to be the single exception to all other defensive mechanisms in the game), except for healing from allies… expect if it’s regeneration applied by an ally, then it’s still working like the rest of our self-applied heals…

NeXeD.3042:

im just imagining a necro getting really low on health while fighting at mid 3v3 with his engi and ele teammates necro get focused allys peel necro pops SA goes into DS engi healling turrets ele water attunes dodges and blasts and hits 5. Now there us a necro wioth good health and a ton of DS. rinse and repeat as needed when the necro is unable to use CC

flow.6043:

… I know you are thinking of a very specific outlier scenario right now in which the planets align and a necro would get healed for an obscene amount of hp while sitting in Shroud… but the counter argument to whatever you can come up with is and always will be: other classes would do even better.

Also, the fight you’re describing wouldn’t be a rinse-repeat scenario at all unless your opponets are super bad.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Honestly, if they had us take normal damage in death shroud, I would be much less hesitant for full healing in death shroud. Still a little iffy, but much less so.

For the sake of having a bug-free game, I’d rather have the damage reduction removed as well. But an actual 60% lf pool would be way too low, even (or should I say especially) for power builds. So how about an even 100%.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

@flow: Or, just “Regeneration, regardless of source, heals a Necromancer in death shroud.” Doesn’t have to be “Regeneration and all ally healing.”

So an exception to the exception of the exception… great -_-

Bellamy.9860:

Also DS gives you an additional 60-78% of your current life, not 120%, and this assumes you got a full bar of life force at your disposal.

The displyed number is 60-78%, but the actual value is double.
People either refer to that bug by saying there’s a 50% dmg reduction or a 120% lf pool. There seems to be no difference, but the reason why you would assume one over the other is only evident once you take damage that overflows to your regular health pool. For example: you have 1k hp and 500 lf. If you are in DS and take 500 damage your lf pool would drop down to 250. But if you take 501 dmg you’re left with no life force and 999 hp. So that would make it seem more likely that there is a dmg reduction when dmg is exclusively taken to the lf pool, rather than a part of that damage value is doubled if some of it overflows to your regular hp.
It’s been like this for 1.5 years now. It was introduced with the same patch we were able to take overflow damage. And it happened around the same time they implemented the fix to the issues of us taking double damage in downed state. Maybe those to issues are somehow related, after all the current Death Shroud used to be the necros downed state at some time before the game was released.

NeXeD.3042:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I was only referring to the traits there. In the case of Regeneration as a boon, it would be best (for consistency’s sake) if it either worked or did not work in death shroud. No “well, the Regeneration from this trait works, but not other Regeneration.”

I’m going to guess it would be easier for the devs just to have it not work in ds, but I wouldn’t complain if it worked in ds.

My guess would be that the easiest change is allowing everything instead of building in exceptions to the rule like Unholy Sanctuary. (which btw is… I wouldn’t say “dog poop” but it’s terrible for being a Death Magic grandmaster trait.)

Also, I’m surprised that Drarnor would use the word consistency to argue for or against regeneration working in DS.
First of all, the only consistent thing to do here is to allow all sources of healing.
Secondly, if you think about allowing regeneration you can only come to two conclusions: You either don’t allow it at all, which for consistency sake wouldn’t make any sense of course.
Or you allow it along with ally healing, because the “only traited” regeneration simply wouldn’t work.
Example: Let’s say you have 2 points in Blood Magic with Mark of Evasion. What happens if you dodge into an opponent who happens to trigger a precast Marks of Blood while you’re falling below 90% hp and getting regeneration applied by an ally? In that case you’d have 4 stacks of regen on yourself, all from different sources. So… do you allow traited regeneration? Is Mark of Evasion a trait or a skill? Is your allies regeneration just regeneration or getting healed by an ally?
Making any kind of restriction here would just be chaos, not to mention losing out on skillful play when you can’t tell if you are getting healed by regen or not. So just don’t be a hypocrite about this and skip straight to all heals allowed.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

next Dhuumfire fiasco …
impossible to kill with anything but team focus fire.

You must be experiencing different fights than I do. I don’t know what else to think at this point.
From my experience, the amount of healing a necro would have to receive and the team coordination nescessary to turn someone into the immortal necro you suspect them to become simply doesn’t exist in PvP.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

You watched my WvW roaming, which uses a different …trait setup (Weakening Shroud instead of Reaper’s Precision)
…58% crit chance, 78% for the first 6.5 seconds of death shroud

Okay, so with that you’ll generate an extra 1% lf every 5th hit, every 4th for the first 6.5 seconds. This does in no way deminish the point I was trying to make. The calculated 5k damage were a best case scenario in your favour anyway, and even if you have 100% Protection uptime, there’s absolutely no way that players who are that incompetent are your “usual” encounter.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

…and where my opponents have stat inflation (notice I never had guard leech stacks or a sharpening stone active)

That’s actually an argument I could’ve made to further demonstrate how you must be fighting the worst players when you allegedly take so little damage.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Because no other profession can protect their actual health with the uptime Necros can.

That’s simply not true.
You are confusing face-tanking with other defensive mechanisms, such as mobility, blinds, blocks, evades, several forms of damage immunities… all of which actually scaling better against increasing numbers of attackers.
So again: you are wrong, necros need ally healing the most of all classes.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

If allowing self-traited healing doesn’t prove to be enough, great! Expand what can heal us some, but only some. Evaluate that, and if it still isn’t enough, expand again. Full healing in Death Shroud is a decent goal, but it should not be the first step.

No thanks. Considering how long it takes Anet to implement even the smallest of changes, I’d rather skip the formalities and get straight to full healing.

Bellamy.9860:

Tbh apart from allowing siphons in DS i would like to see Transfusion working on the necro. Yes with hpow this heals for 5k (or even 6k?) but it also sits on a 40 sec recharge, can only be traited for -15%cd and requires a trait to do so and it can be interrupted since it is a pretty long and obvious animation.
I think with these changes there would certainly be some value in bloodmagic and some different builds could surface that might require some tuning but could allow the “sustain caster” to actually sustain.

I agree, but if healing in DS was possible I’d promote Transfusion to a higher trait tier, possibly even grandmaster.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Again, I am fully in support of getting our self-healing traits to function through Death Shroud to help our sustain, but I firmly believe that getting unrestricted healing would indeed put us well over the edge.

So basically you’re against being able to get heals from allies? That’s pretty much the only thing that is very easy to balance and clear as night and day: should be allowed in full.
I really don’t understand what could possibly be anywhere near op about something that all other classes have access to. And quite honestly, I think the fact that the we haven’t been able to receive any healing in DS for the past 2.5 year is borderline offensive and a discrimination against the necro class.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Takes me an average of about 15 seconds to fill my life force from 0, longer if I have to heal.
…
Here is how my fights usually go:
…
After15 seconds, I’ve healed 2k health while they’ve barely made a dent in my life force (if I was at 100% to start, I’m usually now at about 80%)

Clearly you are describing a PvE fight here.
I’ve watched your stream and even with your build this is not how fights work at all unless you happen to run into an upleveled guy who started playing gw2 on that very same day.
I mean, come on… just 20% life force lost in 15 seconds? That means you have to net +10% over natural degeneration if you have Vital Persistance (which you do iirc). Now let’s be generous and assume that your opponent is actually lame enough to get hit by all Locust Swarm ticks. So 30% from that skill while in DS. Which means that your opponent needs to do damage worth 20% life force in 15 seconds to reduce your lf pool from 100 to 80%. Now, I don’t know how much vitality you get from the rest of your build if you have an Assassin’s amulet, but assuming your health pool is bout 20k big and factoring in the 50% damage reduction in DS: Are you really telling us that the people you “usually” fight can’t do ~5k damage in 15 seconds??
Suffice to say, this can hardly be the basis of a balance discussion, and against real opponents you’d have a much harder time.

Cogbyrn.7283:

My question is: what sort of self-healing in DS do you think Necros will be able to do that will bring them up to snuff? Do you think the vampiric traits will truly be enough to provide the sustain that is necessary? Does that mean that Necros would turn into bunkers, since going into Blood Magic would most probably sacrifice damage potential?

Vamp traits would certainly not turn necros into bunkers, but healing in DS would at least give the pure-dps type builds (that we’re currently forced to take) alternative trait options that are actually worth considering.
Let’s say you want to take 3 points in Blood Magic for Vampiric and Vampiric Precision in a power build. Usually you’d go 62006, so what do you sacrifice? Deathly Perception would actually have nice synnergy with Vampiric Precision, so do you give up 3 points in spite instead? Or the 2 points in Curses and 2 in Spite for a 40046 build? Maybe you’re willing to give up 3 points in Soul Reaping afterall, so you’d get to keep Close to Death and Chill of Death.
Either way, you’d lose a significant amount of damage, but this time you’d actually get something decent in return. Not just for something like a higher (and actually working) regeneration uptime, but for example: the best case scenario with both Vamp traits and Deathly Perception would probably be an uninterrupted Life Transfer on 5 targets. This would heal you for a little over 3k hp. Sounds outrageously high by current necro standards, but is it really? After all you have at least 20k hp in total and you’re healing at best up to 15% of that on a 40 second cooldown, and only if you are surrounded by 5 opponents. So in that context 3k hp is almost nothing.

So what I’m saying is, we don’t really want DS healing for the sake of buffing our current builds with Blood Magic traits because you can’t have both anyway. But it would be a really nice gateway to open up build diversity. You’d see more condi necros take Parasitic Contagion, you’d see people max out defensive traits while still trying to do just enough damage with a zerker amulet. Maybe we’d even see some builds with both Parasitic and Vamp traits.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Would the vampiric traits cement a tankier role for Necros in the arenas where they are lacking representation (assuming high-level PvP)?

So the bottom line for this question: No, Vamp traits wouldn’t, at least not on their own. But ally healing would help a little. Not because that would turn necros into sustain monsters, but because certain skill and position rotations in team fights would be made possible.
Also, it would simply be fair to no longer be the only class that can’t be supported by allies in that way while they’re actually using their main defensive mechanism to survive pressure.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

The thing is, healing while your health cannot go down is much stronger than being healed normally.

This isn’t any different from blocks, invulnerability or escaping a fight entirely with mobility… you use it and your hp doesn’t go down anymore because you avoid damage rather than mitigating it with a different source.
If anything this is an argument why necros need healing in DS more than other classes while they use their defensive mechanisms.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Unholy Sanctuary’s healing can’t be mitigated with DPS.

Well, you just need to remove all the life force. It’s not like you have a guaranteed 8 seconds of Berserker Stance, 3 sec Mist Form or Gear Shield. If you focus a necro hard enough you’ll emty their lf pool faster than that while they can still be stunned/immobilized/chilled which all carries over directly into their regular hp. You’re put into an unrecoverable situation, and for what? 4 ticks of healing from Unholy Sanctuary? Pls…

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Consider how OP Warriors would be if they had Defy Pain on a 10 second cooldown …
That is more similar to a Necro getting full healing

No it’s not at all like a necro, not even if necros could use the warrior Healing Signet.

I won’t even go into detail on how a warrior’s traits and weapon skills combined with a soldier or celestial amulet inherently makes them a lot tankier than necros. But just the fact that they have a permanently working, uninterruptable 360+ hp/s main healing skill puts their sustain in an entirely different league.
Now add stances, vigor, stability and access to ally healing at all times and really ask yourself: would necros come even close to that if they had healing in DS?
(spoiler alert: nope!)

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

It’s also shown me that receiving all heals in Death Shroud would be horribly OP.

Your candidacy for necro forum specialist is hereby revoked! :P

Seriously though, you’re wrong about this. When focused in teamfights necros have worse sustain than any other class, even if they sit in DS with active Spec Armor/Walk, Locust Swarm and Well of Corruption combined. And other classes are not only better equipped to survive those kind of situations on their own, but they are able to receive ally healing at all times in addition to that.
In other word: there is no rational argument that could support the claim that any form of healing in DS would be overpowered. I know you are thinking of a very specific outlier scenario right now in which the planets align and a necro would get healed for an obscene amount of hp while sitting in Shroud… but the counter argument to whatever you can come up with is and always will be: other classes would do even better.

magicsparadise.4871:

flow.6043:

Besides, how often do you really use the auto attack of any weapon in PvP?

Dagger Necro, Thief, elem; Staff guard; LB ranger, war may have to disagree about that

I actually meant just as a necro. And even with a power build you don’t get to dagger or DS auto that often, same for scepter condi builds.

Blackmoa.3186:

flow.6043:

But just to give you some numbers: with a zerker amulet a heavy golem would take about 20 sec without, and 15 sec with stowing. A low power amulet or a target with more hp would actually make stowing better, something like ~35 vs 20 sec.

You have to do a significant amount of trials to get any meaningful numbers as crit chance is a thing

Considering it takes 143287 hits to kill a golem with axe auto and I did it several times, I believe I gave a pretty representable average. And I didn’t use any crit sigils, just had Barbed Precision traited but that should’ve actually worked in favour of stowing weapon.

Blackmoa.3186:

but you can do it by hand and get results that get close to a macro for limited amounts of time by chosing apropiate keybindings(any 2 standard keys next to each other, i find the stow weapon on the left easier to do) and for pve it actualy is doable, making axe a “viable” single target dps choice(0.24 sec stow on assassin/zerker gear fully buffed gives you ~18k dps on 2.6k armor targets, which isnt too bad).

18k dps?
And I really doubt anyone could do it without a macro. My keyboard is good, I have both keys bound next to each other and I tried my best to lighting-reflex-hit them in perfect timing… I just couldn’t do better than a regular auto attack (always stacked less vuln).
You have to keep in mind, pressing and releasing one key takes ~0.05 sec, so this alone will add some time to your manual stow rotation. Also, if you hit stow before 0.19 sec it will cancel the hit entirely. And if you let the second auto attack hit after 0.25 you can’t use stow weapon until after the cast animation. So the window of opportunity is extremely short here.

Blackmoa.3186:

you can actually increse dps from axe auto attack by over 50% by properly stowing (after ~0.24 seconds), it’s still bad for pvp though cause the range is kitten

I tested this on training golems. I tried some macros of “1” and “stow weapon” with 0.22-0.24 sec delays. Keep in mind, it’s actually not allowed to use macros like this but you know… for science!
The bottom line is: if you don’t use a macro it is impossible to get anywhere near the regular auto attack damage. The time it takes to press and release one key and then press the other adds a significant delay, not to mention that you will never ever consistently hit .24 sec several times in a row. There’s even a noticable difference between programming one repetition and queing more, so even having to klick your macro key adds some delay to this “cheated” auto attack chain.

As to the actual damage increase, it’s not really accurate to calculate just the time it takes to execute the full chain and compare. The faster attack ramps up vulnerability more quickly, add different amounts of condition duration and you’ll max out 25 stacks quicker or slower, or not at all.
But just to give you some numbers: with a zerker amulet a heavy golem would take about 20 sec without, and 15 sec with stowing. A low power amulet or a target with more hp would actually make stowing better, something like ~35 vs 20 sec.

In conclusion, should you be an axe user, don’t bother trying this trick. You won’t be able to increase your damage against a training golem while standing still and concentrating on nothing but that timing, so no chance at making it work in actual game content.
Besides, how often do you really use the auto attack of any weapon in PvP?

NeXeD.3042:

Immobilize doesn’t count as a stun. Doesn’t seem much different …

A stun interrupts and disables all skills (except for instant casts), Immobilized does neither.

ozzy.8059:

basically fear is a condi plague transfers condis im sure its possible even if its also a stun breaker..

Actually condition transfers can transfer fear but only if the skill is precast.
Your approach to Plague Signet is rather problematic because the solution to that would either be:

1. Remove the stun break ability but it remains an instant cast skill.
An overall nerf at the cost of specifically being able to transfer fear.

2. Change fear to no longer count as stun, so it can’t be stunbroken.
That wouldn’t make any sense and fear would be op.

3. Change the way stunbreaks work to allow certain skills to execute their utility before removing stun.
Basically another loophole specifically designed to allow a fear transfer on Plague Signet. So yeah… probably not going to happen.

ozzy.8059:

why shouldn’t I be able to transfer 5 seconds of fear to a thief if he is stupid enough to f1 fear me while its up, every time I fight one its the same thing with no consequences to them.

Simple solution: use a different skill against thieves.

ozzy.8059:

why shouldn’t I be able to fear that terormancer when he condi bombs me and tries to fear chain me.

You can use Plague Signet and then a different skill to fear them..?

Flumek.9043:

nightmare wins, hands down.

scavenging is 5% more dmg, while nightmare changes the flow of whole battle.

Or it doesn’t when the proc fails… or you die because you didn’t get that extra 2k hp from Scavenging… or couldn’t down an opponent because you were short that amount of leeching dmg.
Stating that Nightmare changes a fight but the other rune doesn’t is rather unfair.
Also, you are comparing the wrong stats here. What you should really think about is 15% condi duration vs extra healing.

Anyway, nice post, Ema. I’m siding with Scavenging.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I just say “silly Perplexity Necro,” as I finish them with about 75% health and 80%-full life force.

Without perplexity you’d have stomped them with 85% hp :P

The 6th bonus of each rune is ok at best. What you really have to decide between is +15% condition duration or 2k extra healing and dmg every 25 sec.
Personally I’d go with Scavenging.

EremiteAngel.9765:

How about Reaper’s precision?

Imo it’s generally a worse choice than Weakening Shroud, regardless of what build you’re playing, and it’s definitely not worth the slot if your gear is carrion/dire.

On topic, I both agree and disagree with some of the general sentiment in this thread:

1. Yes, thieves (like any other class really) have better attrition than necros.
However, the real culprit for our lack of it is not life force regen but regular healing. Even with scepter/dagger you can compensate that set’s unreliable lf regen through traits and utility skills. But our healing is simply bad no matter what we do.
So if life force really is an issue for you I’d switch utilities to something like S-Wall/Grasp/X.

2. SA thieves with high stealth uptime are, at least for me, the easiest type of thieves to fight against. I know very few players who can play d/p or d/d at a level that would pose a challenge at all, but it’s still an uphill battle for them rather than the other way around.
It gets a lot more tricky if they use a sword/X perma evade build. Much higher in-combat mobility and generally harder to hit at all usually means the fight is determined by how much lf you have initially.

3. @ condi vs power:
In general power builds are definitely not weaker than condi builds. Ultimately it depends on the player’s skill anyway, but in case of fighting thieves I’d definitely give power builds the edge. Because: Shadow’s Rejuvination and Shadow’s Embrace basically means you have the few seconds of the thief’s revealed debuff to one-shot them. Scepter/dagger just doesn’t have the necessary burst to pull that off. Power or hybrid builds on the other hand can do so more reliably and with higher frequency while maintaining a steady amount of life force.

So the “trick” here is basically to set them up to overextend without them realizing it. Prepare a burst combo while pretending to expose an opening for them. Draw them in, do just a little but enough damage to get them somewhere between 60-70% hp, maybe make them use up some endurance, keep them thinking they have the upper hand until it is too late for them to realize they should’ve backed off. If you follow up with a decent burst you can easily take control of the fight if it hasn’t ended at this point already. But like I said, scepter/dagger is usually too slow in that regard.

This is from the July 1, 2014 patch:

Chillblains:

• Increased the blast radius to 240 to match other staff mark skills.
• Fixed an issue in which the blast radius skill fact would not be displayed when traited with Greater Marks.
• Increased the particle effect size to better match the skill’s radius.

I’m not sure if there really was a tooltip for blast radius without Greater Marks before then, but hitting targets outside the actual mark radius was always possible. So this patch made things a little clearer in that regard, in addition to the poison field of Chillblains getting a buff.

The irony in using the Wurm, usually coupled with Spectral Walk and Corrupt Boon, is that you need a teleport because the Wurm/SWalk combo is taking away utiliy slots that would allow you to face-tank or avoid damage entirely in the first place.
At some point a few “popular” players startet using it and now it’s considered meta, that’s all there is to it. But imo you are very correct in assuming that WoP and Spec Armor provide more defense, not to mention the ability to stay on point intead of abandoning your allies.
Ultimately the situation determines which skills are optimal to have. Either way, you’re always compromising by choosing one skill over another, so overall it comes down to your and the opposing team composition, and of course personal preference.

I’ve tested the changes yesterday as well.

Locust Swarm: I wouldn’t say much more fluid, but it’s definitely a good change.

Signet of the Locust: imo this is still trash.
If you run a viable pvp build you won’t have any healing power so the heal per traget would be about 1k. At first glance this doesn’t seem to be that bad, after all, necros are pretty desperate for every slightest bit a healing. And with this skill you could get up to 5k hp every 40 (or 32) sec.
But here is the problem, you usually will not be able to heal 5k. You will not always hit 5 targets in a 480 radius, and you might have poison on you sometimes. So the full healing potential is rarely ever met. What you can expect is probably an extra 2-3k hp every 40+ sec, and this is just too weak when you could have any different defensive skill instead.
Also, the passive bonus is useless, in case the skill isn’t on cooldown.

Corrosive Poison Cloud:
I have to admit, I was positively surprised by this skill. I dare say, if I would run a regular condi build, I’d take CPC/Corrupt Boon/stunbreak with Master of Corruption instead of Path of Corruption. Once you do that you basically get a groundtargeted poison well that lasts 12 seconds on a 24 sec cooldown. Considering the skill’s base durations and that you might have some extra condi duration, you are looking at a 60%+ uptime of aoe poison and weakness on an area that covers an entire capture point. And that doesn’t include any projectile and blast combo finishers, which will not only add more weakness and poison, but also extend beyond the range of the field itself.
Keep in mind, the impact might be subtle because you can’t really monitor your opponent’s healing reduction and endurance bar as well as actual damage numbers on your screen, but it really is a highly disruptive skill. Plus, it adds nice pressure on downed players and is now rather easy to use thanks to the reduced cast time.
So imo Corrosive Poison Cloud, especially if traited, is now really great for on-point team fights, and worth a slot on your skillbar.

I liked the part when you tried to protect yourself from the warrior with Berserker Stance with Spectral Wall, which actually made him hesitate and use Balanced Stance before going through.

@life force:
The amount of lf and whether or not to use food or even the Flesh Golem is a matter of courtesy. People duel because they want to have fair fights, not because they want to win at all cost. So naturally you won’t need any life force against some opponents, maybe because they are weaker than you or maybe because their class/build makes it easy to generate it early on.
However, if we’re talking equal skill and/or against classes that will opend with strong bursts against you (thief, power ranger, fresh air eles…) you might as well start with half of your hp if you decide not to have any life force at the start.
So just adept to your opponents and start with some life force if necessary.

@gameplay, appart from some skill timings, I’ve noticed one thing. You usually control your camera angle with your mouse near your character. Sometimes when you use marks (or other groundtargeted skills) you first activate the skill, then drag you mouse forward until you reach your opponent. It kinda looks like a back and forth sometimes. I know that’s just a really minor thing but you could save some reaction time by moving your mouse closer to your opponent right away.

In the video you get 10 stacks of might once, but usually you just have somewhere around 3 stacks. Now, even if you replaced the absolutely terrible Signet of Undeath with Blood is Power, you still wouldn’t be able to do enough damage with a celestial amulet. Not just because your offensive stats are too low, but also because your traits and utility skills are mostly defensive. The only things that add damage to your weapon skills are Mark of Evasion and your minions.
It would be a little different if you used Dhuumfire, Path of Corruption/Corrupt Boon/Well of Corruption, Weakening Shroud, on-crit or on-swap sigils like Geomancy. However, celestial stats are generally weaker than carrion or rabid because necros can’t maintain might long and high enough while not being able to make any significant use of healing power.
Bottom line: barely better defensive stats and less damage than carrion or rabid means celestial doesn’t work for necros.

imaclown.1628:

if it’s a lockdown mesmer you are dead. It’s a true hardcounter to any necro.
…
No chance vs lockdown Unless they are just really bad.

Up until reading this I wasn’t even aware of any type of mesmer being considered a serious threat to necros.

Rym already said everything there is to fighting mesmers 1v1, regardless of what build they are using. (except I wouldn’t use Flesh Wurm)
If you have decent life force regeneration and Shroud timing you’re definitely holding better cards than any mesmer opponent.

Rising Dusk.2408:

flow.6043:

On another note, what do you guys think about Runes of Scavenging in PvP? Personally I’d take them over Nightmare any day, even with the shorter cd on the 6th bonus.

I’d consider it if the sixth bonus interacted with a stat other than Vitality. As it stands, Vitality is too low in any proper build in any format for it to be worth it. Maybe if it interacted with Toughness instead.

If only there were any proper builds with a carrion amulett… :P

Also, by “any format” do you mean WvW as well? Because Dire + Scavenging has been rather popular since it’s been added to the game.

leman.7682:

Locust Swarm: …
Dev note: This change will give necromancers a bit more mobility.

Is this serious? How does this increase our mobility?

Shorter cast time means higher swiftness uptime. So yeah… huuuuge mobility boost right there.
The real buff here is being able to more likely cast it without being interrupted, which means more reliable life force regen.

On another note, what do you guys think about Runes of Scavenging in PvP? Personally I’d take them over Nightmare any day, even with the shorter cd on the 6th bonus.

Zoso.8279:

If you think Nos is more knowledgeable then a developer then thats your opinion.

Is it really surprising to you that players would know more about certain parts of a game than the developers? There are people who invest thousands of hours in playing just one class, probably more than most devs can afford to play in total. Also, game developers have to rely on their player base to source out bugs or form a certain meta. It’s impossible in a game of this complexity to predict all of it beforehand.

On a sidenote, I’ve met Nos a few times on his european account, imo the only great thing about him is his ego.

Zoso.8279:

Nos is good but The Abjured is beast and make him look even better.

This.

Seriously though, the build looks fine.
I’m not a fan of Reaper’s Protection, especially in WvW, so if you want more damage and group support you could take Greater Marks instead and maybe change up your utility skills once in a while. For example: Epidemic or Well of Corruption for more aoe pressure, or Spectral Wall for some area control, protection and Chaos Armor combos.

Anchoku.8142:

Condition damage is not as effective in WvW as it is in PvP.

Not generally. Since he said “group” and not zerg I’d assume he shouldn’t have to worry too much about coordinated aoe cleansing.

Dire/Rabid with Sigil of Fire and Lich Form?

http://dulfy.net/2013/12/24/gw2-dye-gallery/

And for some of the exclusive dyes which aren’t included in dulfy’s gallery: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dye

Actually Locust Swarm gives 1.8% per hit, but if you have Gluttony it’s 2%. It’s the only part of the warhorn that is unaffected by Banshee’s Wail, but it still has the second best life force regen potential after Necrotic Grasp.

Holl.3109:

A WvW power necro video is actually a good idea, something to work to.
(But currently completely broke with 40 silver xD)

Let’s start a fundraiser for Holl

Obvious fake leak is obvious.

Drag.7581:

1. What’s the fundamental difference between WvW solo roam builds and sPvP builds?

Imo there is non for necros.
You have access to more and a wider variety of gear in WvW, I suppose that’s why there has to be a distinction between the two game modes on metabattle.

But unlike other classes we don’t have builds that only work in sPvP or WvW, like turret engis or thieves who rely on high stealth uptime.

Drag.7581:

2. can I use a sPvP build with some tweaks (in this case traveler runes for mobility) for solo Roaming viably?

Yes you can, but necros are the slowest class no matter what skills or gear they use, so don’t try to be faster at the cost of being weaker.

I didn’t say equally :P
More like: as much vitality as possible and more toughness than zero.
The 50/50 golden ratio does apply to other classes, but not the necro.

Muchacho.2390:

Yes and no, the whole thing is far more complex, you have also to factor in healing from allies, condition removel etc.

Like I said, a situation where you only take direct dmg and the carrion build has no extra toughness at all is the best case scenario for rabid. As soon as you add any of those more “complex” factors carrion takes the lead.
Cleansing doesn’t factor into this btw, either you take condi dmg or you don’t.
And yes, ally healing shifts the whole thing back in favour of rabid, but in actual fights this is more like the exception to the rule than a reliable source of harnessing the healing effectivness of rabid.

But I agree, the rest of the build is more likely to determine your gear prefix. And for those who play WvW: mixing stats is best.

Sorry, you’re right. I was remembering a calculation I made with gear.

But still, the only argument for toughness is healing effectivness against direct damage.
Necros have bad healing, in pvp you will always take condition damage and life force regen scales better with vitality.

Muchacho.2390:

flow.6043:

Actually, the power from carrion will make you do more damage than extra crit procs from rabid. And because of our poor healing and the way life force scales and generates: vitality > toughness.

Sadly the vitality > toughness is not as clear as you think it is.

Actually it is.
I’ve done the math so many times for so many different build variations. The best case scenario for a rabid pvp amulet in a direct comparison is that you need to use your main heal at least three times before rabid can overtake carrion in effective hp. And this is only if:
1. you have no extra toughness from runes or traits.
2. exclusively direct damage was taken.
3. Death Shroud was not used at all.

So basically you need to fight at least 1min under completely unrealistic conditions before you can even begin to compare rabid with carrion. Once you include condition damage, life force, points in Soul Reaping or Death Magic, rabid will fall a lot further behind.

Hausaurier.9438:

Rabid over Carrion btw!
We dont need, power! More Crit-Chance means more bleeding-stacks. Further our health-pool ist big enough – so more Toughness is welcome

Actually, the power from carrion will make you do more damage than extra crit procs from rabid. And because of our poor healing and the way life force scales and generates: vitality > toughness.

Imo, having to wait in the Heart of the Mists while in queue is the worst change to the old PvP system. It is so boring that I usually just tab out and do something else.

First of all, a bank/tp/laurel npc is no compensation for not being able to play any different content at all.

Secondly, anyone correct me if I’m wrong, but the only reason I’ve heard so far why players should idle in HotM is because the q-pop might come during loading screens, so they might not get a chance to accept in time.
If that is the case, then please consider this:
Even someone who actually needs more than 20 sec to load a new map is actively playing the game. They are not afk and therefore wouldn’t cause a 4v5.
You can even assume they are done with whatever content they were playing in the previous map, so they most certainly are ready for PvP at that moment.

Solution: Make it possible again to leave HotM and make being in a loading screen an auto-accept if you are in PvP queue.

Thoughts?

Yeah, going solo doesn’t work like it used to.
Then again, the new point based leaderboard isn’t about MMR anymore. The ones who play the most games are at the top, win rate doesn’t matter.

FrownyClown.8402:

pompous neckbeard

lol

I don’t think this build is such a bad idea. The extra chill can certainly work and I’m not a fan of Soul Marks so imo MoT is a viable alternative.
However, the condition damage on nightmare runes just gives too little synergy all for the sake of having a passive fear proc. If you moved more points into Curses for Terror you’d probably lose more damage than you gain. So maybe use Traveller runes instead, you’d get your movement speed without warhorn and a little condi duration on the side, not to mention more stat points that you actually need.

That’s not a suggestion, there really is a new sigil.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Superior_Sigil_of_Mischief

And yes, it sounds very strong.

NeXeD.3042:

Yeah that’s right you all better not answer my question, you know you won’t like what I’m gonna say when I get your answers.

I honestly have no idea what point you are trying to make. Just assume we all said both more and less than 50%. What now?

Regarding your statement about bunkers, other classes can survive outnumbered fights longer while being glassier than necros could ever be.

NeXeD.3042:

But you being an experienced necro…. i just can’t see how you can argue we should have access to all healing while in DS

For several reasons:

1. Our healing is generally too weak.
One might argue that it has to be weak(er) considering we can mitigate some damage with life force. But what I mean is, it is too weak even when you’re spending most of your time in DS.
Keep in mind, a regular necro build can use Consume Conditions every 25 seconds and that’s it. Maybe some ticks of regen if you trigger Mark of Blood on yourself, but overall we’re talking ~6k healing every 25 sec. That means, if you take more than 6k dmg in that time interval you’ll eventually run out of hp: attrition is impossible.

2. Sources other than our main heal force you to give up a lot of damage.
The least offender would be Parasitic Contagion since you’ll have 6 points in Spite. But Unholy Sactuary and Vampiric traits need heavy investments in Death Magic and Bloodmagic.
If you take them now it basically means you’re trying to play a regular build with only ~10 trait points… but you get healing that is overall weaker than regeneration and only works half the time!

3. Vamp Signet.
This signet won’t be viable even then, but all signets’ passives should work in DS and that includes healing for Vamp signet. Secondly, the active is either consumed as a team or you need 25 seconds to use up all charges by yourself. There’s no way you won’t waste a part of that healing during that time by going into DS once or twice.

4. And most importantly, getting healed by allies:

Jelzouki.4128:

NeXeD.3042:

I’m ok with all sources of healing that come from traits I just don’t want allied burst healing.
…

So what is the difference between a warrior using endure pain and berserker stance but still receiving group heals and a necromancer going into deathshroud?

Perfectly argued.
It’s a double standard to assume necros would get an unfair advatage if they could couple their class mechanic with external sources of healing, when other classes have better defensive scaling in team fights to begin with and get healing all the time.

Some people seem to be under the impression that allowing ally healing means you’ll magically get your entire health pool restored to full everytime you go in and out of DS.
Just to make it clear, even if a team was trying to troll and get a necro with high DS uptime and a lot of support classes just to keep the necro alive, they would fail. Such a team comp doesn’t work, they would be very easy to outplay and shut down.

Also, allies usually have better things to do than to hold their entire skill rotations just so they can burst heal necros once they go into DS.
For example: engis will use their Healing Turret when they need to. If the necro happens to be out of DS they will get that healing blast, if they are in DS: tough luck, maybe next time.

Allowing all healing through DS would just be a quality of life improvment, not a balance breaking change. And most importantly, it would be a gateway to introducing additional healing sources, for example a dedicated #6 healing skill in DS.

spoj.9672:

Personally I think you are just being selfish and stubborn if you always use balance as an excuse to argue against changes. You can always balance around changes if necessary after all.

Hear, hear.

NeXeD.3042:

And let’s also not pretend we didn’t get healing in DS. We do. It’s not great we know but it’s a start.

Unholy Sanctuary is not a start, it’s an insult.

NeXeD.3042:

In all my posts i havent said they shouldn’t give us ANY healing in DS I just think alot of people are getting out of hand with it.

It’s the opposite actually. As of now, necro healing is basically non existent. Allowing any source of healing (and I mean all of it) to go through DS is but a minor step towards bringing us to the level of all other classes.
Beyond that we should actually get additional healing sources and/or buffs to our current sources of healing.

NeXeD.3042:

And I’ve been doing pretty decently even queueing up solo which apparently has been an issue for people. Hell yesterday we had a 4v5 game that we actually won, was a first for me.

Yes, I’m sure you won a 4v5 because your necro sustain was so good… not! Your opponents sucked, that’s all.