Guild Wars 2

witcher.3197:

But it’s a 3.5 sec AoE fear

With Master of Terror and Nightmare runes it’s 3.3 sec . :P

witcher.3197:

people can use stunbreakers and condi cleanses (however most condi cleanses cannot be used while CC’d)

He was obviously talking about an ally’s aoe cleanse.
But just to mention it, you can cleanse yourself with a precast skill like Well of Power. Putrid Mark or Deathly Swarm will even transfer that fear.

SaintSnow.6593:

Passive fear procs are broken as they have zero counters, this one is even better due to its 100% proc chance.

They have a lot of counters and zero proc chance if they are on cooldown.

SaintSnow.6593:

This has literally saved my butt so many times and allowed me to win many 1v2s in my ques.

1v2s are only possible if your opponents are a lot worse than you. You won because you outplayed them, not because of a fear proc.

witcher.3197:

I used to think that as well.

SaintSnow.6593:

I used to be poor pleeb who thought reapers protection was useless until …

It’s funny how you make it look like you’ve somehow ascended this state of blissful ignorance I’m in apparently, where I have yet to discover how “awesome” Reaper’s Protection is. But I assure you it’s the exact opposite.
When you get that fear proc off, good for you, but don’t for a second believe that this is better than any other trait you could’ve picked instead.

Jinx.7258:

Im not that bad to roam in wvw and make videos about it.

This immediately makes me think that Pardi is a lot better than you.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Grenth_Hood_Skin

Fyi, you could’ve just checked your account wardrobe in game.

Capitol City.4856:

bronze-diamond rank system

A system like this could only work in gw2 if there was an official 1v1 death match arena.

Team matches with secondary objectives like capture and hold mechanics plus additional wild cards like canons/trebs/lord-kills make individual skill hold a lot less value than other factors. This way it is not just impossible to tell who is skilled by looking at their leaderboard rank, but it’s also not really important. A lot of players are successful in tpvp and have a high MMR because they have a decent map awareness and are being carried by their allies in team fights, but they wouldn’t win a single 1v1 against some other players with a much lower rating on the leaderboards, or even – whisper it – against a wvw player.

I agree, the lack of feedback on personal progress is kind of a bummer. But will it ever change? Probably not.

Last Gasp is about the only significant defensive buff of the 3 things you’ve mentioned.
Reaper’s Protection is the worst, I’d rather take Unholy Martyr and Renewing Blast instead.
No I got a better one: I’d rather they bring back Reanimator as a master trait and I’d still take that one over Reaper’s Protection.

witcher.3197:

Dhuumfire … has less defense.

Are you refering to the extra 200 toughness the 06404 build provides? Not only is that amount negligible, but I would take an extra 30% duration on chilled, weakness and fear instead any day.

Roe.3679:

The dhuumfire build generally misses out on the heavy boon corruption.

Unless you go 6/6/x/x/x.
I assume by “heavy boon corruption” you mean Path of Corruption?

Jelzouki.4128:

Terrormancer provides more protection from CC

The only trait you need for a Terrormancer is Terror, but I’m sure you’re talking about Reaper’s Protection here, so here it goes: Reaper’s Protection is a garbage trait, I can’t believe some people consider it to be “meta”.

Since Dhuumfire is pretty much exclusive to condition builds you’d probably pick both traits.

Halcyon.7352:

Kaldrys.1978:

It’s the best heal option for dungeons because the active effect increases your group dps by a small amount and helps keep people >90% health for the damage bonus from scholar runes.

I can see this being true, but only for the most optimized of dungeon parties.

Because the most optimized dungeon parties use necros? :P

Mazdan.2071:

Just lock Consume Conditions on your bar and never look back. It’s the best heal in class and one of the best in game. PVE, PVP, WvW—doesn’t make any difference.

Anchoku.8142:

Keep in mind, folks, that if we only run Consume Conditions and talk it up, it will get nerfed.
…

I wish people would stop being so hyped about Consume Conditions. It is our best heal, but it is not good. The full clease just makes it somewhat less lame than all the others.
The reality is, necros have the worst healing of all classes. Every main heal deserves a huge buff, including CC, every healing trait deserves a buff (maybe even add more healing trait options), but most importantly: all sources of healing should go through Death Shroud, which is probably the biggest reason why Vamp Signet is total garbage.

Also, even if it was possible to siphon through DS, the healing of Vamp Signet should at least be doubled since – unlike the warrior’s healing signet – it triggers on hit with about the same amount of healing and still has a 1 sec cd. So it would only ever be reasonable to take this signet over other heals when you are able to take a hit without actually losing hp: in Death Shroud.
And here’s the next problem: signets don’t work in DS. Yet another no-brainer that hasn’t been fixed since release.

mrbunnyban.4578:

an someone confirm what this Flow said? His claim is that “Condition duration” does not stack with specific condition duration modifiers such as bleeding and fear.

I did not say they don’t stack, just that there’s a +100% cap on every duration. If you have +90% condi duration and an additional 70% fear duration then you can still only turn 1 sec of fear into 2 sec, not more.

mrbunnyban.4578:

I don’t think this is true: with my guardian for instance, I seem to be able to increase the burning duration from 1 second to 3.5 seconds?

Either of two things might have happened here:

1. You picked a trait that modified a skill’s base duration, in that way you get a new duration which can again be increased up to twice as long, hence not violating the 100% cap rule.

2. You looked at the tooltip of your skill.
Skill tooltips are calculated correctly, but they ignore the max duration cap. So in your case the tooltip of Reaper’s Mark would say 2.6 sec fear (90+70%), but it will still only last 2 seconds.
On a side note: there is a semi legitimate reason why the tooltip isn’t corrected. Against a player with lemongrass and melandru you’d still do 1.95 sec of fear. So the reduction is calculated against your actual duration increase and not the cap limit.

mrbunnyban.4578:

Does anyone apart from Spellof Iniquity actually have experience fighting them with necro?

DoomKnightMax.6592:

Is it possible to develop a build for necromancers just to hard counter P/D or even S/D thieves?

I believe everyone here has experience with fighting thieves, which is also a lot more valuable than trying to find the right build for it. In the end, the more skilled player will win, it’s just that as a necro the odds are heavily stacked in your favour.

First of all, condi thieves are pretty much the easiest matchup for necros you can find. You don’t even need Plague Signet unless you are too lazy to dodge. So yeah, if you want to hard counter them go with necro.

@build: you need to look at how you distribute your condition duration. +100% is the maximum. You seem to have +90% with food and sigils of malice. That means Hemophilia, sigils of agony, runes of the necro and Master of Terror are altogether just adding another 10% to bleeding and fear.
That means: lose the toxic crystals, normal ones are fine (and cheaper), change both sigils to something on-crit or on-swap, change Hemophilia to Weakening Shroud, change Master of Terror or the runes (or both).
Don’t try to max out every duration at all cost, it’s not worth it.
Also, Unyielding Blast seems an odd choice for a condi build, but whatever.

I doubt aristocracy runes are the best choice for necros. I bet it makes more sense to either max bleeding duration or get some extra ferocity instead.

spoj.9672:

A fully buffed condi necro does something like 7k dps (probably a bit less, maybe a bit more with the new stat combo). Thats including might, banners, other buffs and direct damage portions of rotation.

But in this kind of scenario you’d just have a party to give you those buffs. As soon as they also attack they’d push off some of your conditions and effectively lower your dps.

Pregnantman.8259:

How much dps would full set of Sinister have?

Since those 7k dps where refering to a best case scenario it would do the exact same as carrion (minus a small amount since tuning crystals give you a smaller buff). All you get from sinister is a higher crit chance which doesn’t actually improve the highest possible damage. You’ll just average a better crit rng this way.

Afya.5842:

I just don’t see 7k SUSTAIN achievable.

I think most of it would still be direct damage. If you run scepter/warhorn and Flesh Golem you will probably do an extra ~2k with max might/vuln stacks and banners.

It’s still a thing for dungeons.
I’m not sure condi was ever the meta in WvW, perhaps popular after dire stats were released. Anyway, run whatever you like. This thread might show a strong bias towards power builds, but this is only because it turned into a debate about dps. Condition builds are viable against players, just for different reasons than the opening post suggests.

Lopez.7369:

What I always find most perplexing about these threads is the creator almost always ends up saying that these are just his “opinions.”

To be fair, that’s not the case here.
What I find more perplexing is that lorndarken’s post history goes back 2 years. The PvE zerker meta is one of the most discussed topics on the forum. How can you miss that? And how do you not see what kind of builds other players use in game? Maybe he’s just trolling.

lorndarken.3702:

seriously is this your first time playing a necro let alone an mmo ?

Yes, you got me.

Just for the record, by “PvP” I meant WvW as well.
Also, all of what you said is wrong, literally all of it.

I didn’t mean to take anything out of context, I was genuinely confused by your statements, and I still am to be honest:

Are we talking about PvE or PvP/WvW here?
The only place where you can even begin to talk about high sustained condition damage is PvE, because like you said: players cleanse.
Then you also mention transfers, boon conversion, condi immunities, …. which made me believe all the more you were talking about a PvP environment.

So let me try to get this right here:

1. You say the damage potential of condition builds with up to 5k/tick is higher than that of power builds, in fact it’s the best we can do, period.
2. You point out as a negative of power builds that they have a build up time and initially only start out with 2-3k, but then they get higher. And this somehow doesn’t happen in zerg fights…?

So let me ask you this, if power builds need a build up time then how on earth would you describe condition damage?
You know, there’s a reason why the PvE meta for all classes is full zerker power builds: higher initial damage, higher bursts, higher sustained damage.

lorndarken.3702:

if you read the entire thing instead of doing what you did here ^ you would see what I really said which is

when you are able to lay heavy amounts of condi damage it is the strongest sustained damage a necro can go with in the entire game because it can build up to almost 5000 damage a tick in such a short amount of time

Yeah, thanks for explaining what you meant by copy pasting the exact same sentence you wrote in your first post. -_-
What do you mean by “short amount of time”? And how is any of it better than direct damage from power builds? Are you implying power builds have a lower dps than 5k?

Also, the might stacking argument could be acceptable if we were talking about a different class, but this is the necro! We don’t stack might like other classes, we get 10 stacks from Blood is Power and that’s pretty much it, unless you want to spend an even longer time Life Blasting.

And last but not least:

lorndarken.3702:

life force building is a pointless argument when most power or condi builds do not put heavy focus on death shroud in the first place unless they want to be based around a ds power build <—— which by the way is a horrible build

Again, I might agree if you’re talking about PvE.
But if this is supposed to be an argument with regards to PvP then you’re not only completely wrong, but I also have to tell you this: learn to play! There is not a single PvP build that doesn’t make heavy use of Death Shroud.

lorndarken.3702:

condi damage … strongest sustained damage… in the entire game… 5000 damage a tick

Whaaat?

lorndarken.3702:

power

pro: it is great for burst initial damage . given 2k , 3k , or possible higher damage for a short period of time

First of all, power builds have better sustained damage than condi builds. No contest there.
Secondly, what kind of “burst” is 2k or 3k damage? Are you talking about a lvl 1-15 PvE map? xD

lorndarken.3702:

power
negative : the build up is tough unless in zerg based fights

Build up for direct damage? And how would it be better in zergs?

lorndarken.3702:

…sustain for damage is not as good as condi spec .

One might argue the opposite considering that condi builds usually have worse life force regeneration.

Ah right, made a calculating error. Your lf pool is 72% of your normal hp pool, which means 20% more than 60%… duh.
Master trait is Near to Death :P

Patch notes from June 25th, 2013:

Well of Power: This ability now breaks stuns. Added 1 second of stability. Reduced the cooldown to 50 seconds.

The skill hasn’t changed since then.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Zerker will see ~20% dmg increase

What?
Afaik the best part of upgrading to ascended is the weapon since its strength coefficient is increased by 5%. The pure stat difference of all gear combined amounts to far less than that.

You know, if there’s one place where lf regen is basically unlimited it’s in zerg fights.
And it’s not just about conditions (which you’ll always get in zergs as well), even when taking nothing but direct dmg the deminishing return for a high hp pool over healing effectiveness sets in way later than most fights even last, even if you go exclusively with toughness. And that is only if you completely disregard lf regen.

I do agree that mixing stats is optimal, but…

Afya.5842:

Only that between 0 vit and 0 tough, I’ll increase toughness first.

..wrong choice :P

Afya.5842:

toughness instead of vitality?

For necros: vitality>toughness.

It’s not just conditions though. 1900 power, 45% crit chance (with the occasional fury) and 161% crit dmg is nothing to laugh at. Combine that with an Epidemic every 12 sec and you’ll probably do more damage than the average pure power necro.

The only thing I’d change is Consume Conditions instead of Well of Blood.
And I might go with Vampiric Precision over Dagger Mastery, maybe Greater Marks instead of Reaper’s might, or Spiteful Spirit if you wan’t to stay in Spite for the stats it gives.
Also, I’d only go with those 3 utility skills if you’re absolutely sure you’re not going to need a stun break. So perhaps Well of Power or Spec Armor depending on the situation you’re in.

He doesn’t use Soul Marks, also his life force pool isn’t big enough for 4 in SR. So my guess would be 6/5///3.

Narkodx.1472:

super bunkers will out last you

I really doubt that.

Nice, more love to hybrids.
Mind posting the build? I’m quite surprised that you don’t have a single cd reduction trait.

I might even give necros an edge here.
6-10 includes the main heal. We pretty much don’t heal ourselves anyway, the majority of our defense comes from lf regen which is for the most part done by weapon skills.
On the other hand, imagine a warrior without healing signet and stances.
But the worst class in that scenario by far: engi. One weapon set, no toolbelt skills, lol. They’d be like a level 10 character in PvE.

manveruppd.7601:

Don’t see it working for necro, as we don’t have the sustain or means of escape to survive in it

But this is not a gear issue. If you can’t survive without escaping you probably wouldn’t have suvived with carrion/rabid/dire either.

Yeah, I think even though the stats are all glassy now you simply wont surpass power builds because conditions can only tick once per second. So on single targets the extra ferocity and power of zerker gear will do more damage, not just because you’ll probably pick some different non-power traits as well.

Yes, definitely better than rampager’s.
I’ll probably get a full set just to see how it goes.

Condition damage > power – precision.

Thoughts?

Norjena.5172:

flow.6043:

Staff and Epidemic in a condi or hybrid build is more and faster damage than dagger/warhorn when you need aoe tagging.

Once all 30seconds? ah….well good argument. Epedemic is a slow and weak AoE with a huge CD. Nothing for tagging mobs frequently.
…

Since you obviously don’t play necro at all, how about you look a skill up before you post next time? The cd of Epidemic is 15 sec or 12 sec traited.

Also, you’ve taken my post out of context. It was a comparison between the aoe potential of staff vs dagger/warhorn. We all know both is weaker than what other classes can do.

I just have to say at this point, you are cherry picking when it comes to incorporating DS and utility skills. Dagger/wh has far less aoe but here you say there’s not much aoe downtime with proper skill rotation, with staff on the other hand “you’re stuck with the auto attack”?
Believe me, if I use all skills available with my build (no scepter) I can burst bleeds faster and higher on a single target, and this is after having done more aoe damage while having more utility and range at my disposal as well.

And no, I’m not taking staff purely for Mark of Blood, every single skill on this weapon is important in PvP.

spoj.9672:

With regards to scepter vs mark of blood. Grasping dead has 1 less second of bleed duration and 4 second longer cooldown. Only in extended fights does mark of blood become obviously more powerful.

Well, first of all you’re likely to have a decent amount of extra bleeding duration.
So in my case: +100% bleeding duration, the difference would then be 16 sec (on a 4.8 sec cd with Staff Mastery) vs 14/20 sec with 10/25 sec cd on s/d.
Also, “extended fight” as in after the second MoB? Because that is when you get 6 stacks instead of just 5. Not to mention that I might start attacking earlier because of the 300 extra range.

I’m sure we can agree on one thing though: if you want proper long range aoe damage for PvE, go engi or ele.

leman.7682:

Some things counter necro so hard it’s not funny (cele ele, some rangers, medi guard trololo)

I’m rather surprised to hear this from you of all people.
Those “hardcounters” might apply to some necro builds but definitely not to the class in general (pretty much like not every engi is an easy kill for us). I for one have yet to see any of them pose a serious threat to me.

spoj.9672:

Camping scepter/dagger with epidemic is far superior in terms of aoe and single target condi damage than using a staff.

Single target: overall yes, but it really depends on your skill rotation and how much hp your target has.
And definitely false in regards to aoe. Even without having Staff Mastery traited, Mark of Blood alone will do more damage than Grasping Dead and Enfeebling Blood combined. If you add the other skills there’s no contest at all.
As to incorporating Epidemic: it’s far more effective to multiply aoe than having to stack some condis with scepter on a single target before spreading them.

spoj.9672:

Staff is only used in PvP and WvW for the range, the cleanse and the fear. If it didnt have those it wouldnt be used. Its certainly not used for its AOE potential. Thats just a misconception. Its used for AoE in WvW because it has 1200 range. If it was short range then your standard dps weapons would be superior for AoE.

All of this is false. You’re really underestimating this weapon.

Staff and Epidemic in a condi or hybrid build is more and faster damage than dagger/warhorn when you need aoe tagging.
Unless it’s in a situation like the (meanwhile nerfed) Svanir champion farm event in Frostgorge Sound, in which case even necro power builds fall far behind the high bursts you needed to get any loot at all.

Spiteful Marks: sounds good.
I assume this would include healing yourself as well and not just allies?

Weakening Shroud: 3 instead of 2 sec weakness, 3 instead of 6 sec bleeding. Not sure that makes the biggest differenc ein the world.

Withering: out of those two I’d definitely go with condi transfer on LB. With Deathly Perception it would be pretty strong for power builds, but then again its cast time is longer on land than under water, and power builds would have to take 4 points out of Spite for this defensive option. A fair trade imo.

Dark Armor: It seems ok, but I wouldn’t make a blindness proc rng dependent. So I’d rather make it on entering or leaving DS.

Mark of Revival: better idea, move this trait into the trash bin where it really belongs.

Ritual of Protection: I don’t know why this trait isn’t 1sec per pulse already. Seems like such an obvious change to make.

Vampiric/Bloodthirst: yes.

Deathly Invigoration: yes.

Transfusion: meh, I don’t think it’s that strong.
However, I’d maybe consider moving it to grandmaster if they’d finally allow all healing to go through DS, and if at this point Trasfusion would still heal yourself. Seems like a worthy 6 point investment this way.

Quickening Thirst: makes sense, but I’d actually move Dagger Mastery up and combine it with +25% movement speed.

Unholy Martyr: yes.

Speed of Shadows: 3 sec swiftness, still useless.

Spiteful Vigor: make that at least 50% since it’s just in DS.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

havn’t lost a duel vs necro yet. (procfear condicheese don’t count)

What class/build were you playing?

Equinox.4195:

flow.6043:

I know what the trait does, but I don’t see how it is in any way related to channeled skills being interrupted when leaving DS.

Flow, I explained perfectly why the short duration and cooldown of Foot in the Grave necessitated another method of stopping a necromancer DS stomping for the sake of balance, which is getting them to 0 Life Force to interrupt the stomp. However, this intended balance made it so that all animations are interrupted at the end of Death Shroud, which I think was an awful mistake on their part and not worth the trade-off for necromancers.

You’re just explaining the obvious again without actually arguing your point. But I see what you mean now. Just fyi: if you’re that low on life force you can just double tap DS and still make a stability stomp. Problem solved.

And yes, I know the change is annoying and unnecessary and I wish they hadn’t done it, but traits are barely affected by it at all.

And again, what you said just proves my point: people pretend there’s no 1v1 balancing based on the fact that there is no “game mode” for it.

Also, Limitations like excluding bunker builds is just a means to prevent 2 bunkers from dragging on their duel forever. This is a time issue, not a means to iron out imbalances. And it doesn’t mean that bunker’s are unkillable. Quite the contrary for necros actually.
What is really a balancing precaution is excluding certain elites or limiting the starting amount of life force.

Sors Immani.8429:

Equinox.4195:

In 1v1…

I’m just going to stop right there.

This, in my earnest opinion, completely invalidates any argument you make. Until ArenaNet implements a “dueling” mechanic (and subsequently re-balances the entire game), you enter such matches at your own risk and acknowledge they may be grossly unbalanced, for or against your favor.

Whenever I read “but there’s no 1v1 balancing…” I feel the urge to facepalm.
People assume there’s no 1v1 balancing because tpvp is always 5v5, but that assumption is totally wrong. It’s THE way anything is balanced in this game, and certain additions are made in concideration of team fights as well. But it’s amazing how many players (especially on the pvp forum) are deluded into thinking that 1v1 balancing is completely disregarded at the cost of team fights. Pretty much like some people think the primary focus of balancing classes is holding points. Not true.

Of course, most players take traits or general build options in PvP that favor team synnergy. Clearly if there was a 1v1 tournament no one would use a bunker guardian who’s only purpose is support. You’d get a different meta perhaps, some builds would be more viable than other builds which are used in team matches all the time. But that’s about it, there wouldn’t be any need to make any rebalancing because guess what: 1v1 balancing already exists!

Speaking of which, there’s an ESL holloween 1v1 tournament today:
http://www.esl.eu/eu/guildwars2/news/249780/

GoogleBrandon.5073:

Well to be fair, the trade-off for this skill is that it is almost the best healing skill within the game
…
I think that CC is just too potent to not justify the casttime…

I agree on the cast time being justified, but I wish people would stop saying it’s the best heal in game, because it’s not. The utility on it is good, but that’s about it, the amount of healing itself is actually rather bad.

djooceboxblast.9876:

cancel cast / sheath it if you know that you are gonna get cc’ed. Make your opponent waste a CC

How is this any different? You’ll get another 5 sec cd either way.

Equinox.4195:

Because Foot in the Grave is an on-demand 3s stability …

I know what the trait does, but I don’t see how it is in any way related to channeled skills being interrupted when leaving DS.

Equinox.4195:

It shuts down so many traits centered around our Death Shroud skills.

Transfusion is really the only trait affected by this change. Then again, this trait was only ever used in some MM builds, so I really couldn’t care less.

Equinox.4195:

Depending on how much life force you can expect to regen between the times you go into death shroud, the less life force you generate, the larger the impact of the nerf.

No it isn’t. Regardless of how much lf you have, you’ll always be able to do just one Life Blast less than before the nerf. And btw, are we talking PvE here? Because that’s pretty much the only place where you can free cast Life Blasts until your life force runs out.
Also, a single stack of might and vuln from Reaper’s Might and Unyielding Blast is not a big deal.

Equinox.4195:

To clarify, I understand why you would want to end a revive or stomping animation when Death Shroud ends because of the Foot in the Grave trait

Foot in the Grave? Why?

Equinox.4195:

I would find removing the ability to stomp/rez while in DS HIGHLY preferable along with the animation interruption when DS ends.

Really? Imo DS interaction was the best change we got in a long time. Don’t get me wrong, interrupting channels when lf runs out was yet another unnecessary nerf, but are you really more often in that specific situation than rezzing or stomping someone in DS?

Oh it was moved? lol
It’s supposed to stay a secret I guess, otherwise it might be revealed that the Spec Armor cd reduction in september wasn’t that big of a deal after all and Anet would have to give our sustain a real buff instead.

Perhaps you should’ve told your team mates then instead of making a captain obvious post on the necro forum.

Shaogin.2679:

As for the runes, just pick another rune set if you can’t properly use vampire runes. It’s not like the mist form randomly happens. You KNOW it will happen at 25% health or whatever. If you fail to time your skills accordingly, then once again, that’s on you.

To be fair, vamp runes are the only ones with life steal procs in spvp.
Also, casting Consume Conditions takes ages. People have been downed from full health in that amount of time, so you really can’t always anticipate stuff like this.

Emapudapus.1307:

As for vampire runes. The 6th bonus must change.

Or better yet: bring Runes of Scavenging to spvp.

Doesn’t matter, PvE is more lucrative even if you get bad luck with rng.
The only reason to do PvP for reward tracks is transmutation charges and tomes of knowledge.

But doing those reward tracks takes a million times longer than doing actual PvE content.

SYPHA.9283:

why the same 75-100 every single day???
…
The skill level has dropped drastically since the PVE people can now come to PVP and grind crafting mats

You do see the irony here, right?
Also, what crafting mats?

SYPHA.9283:

why cant you immediately, randomly pick someone to sit out

That kind of mechanic would be abused. As soon as you die you could relog to force someone on the other team to take a break as well.