Guild Wars 2

NeXeD.3042:

As far as I can tell he is not really interested in progressing as a player other than in pvp for now. So telling a player he can get better at spvp/tpvp to change game modes where there are so many different things involving min maxing and whatnot doesn’t strike me as sound advice. He’s not inexperienced by any means so I don’t think wvw is the way I would go about training for tpvp.
…

I think you’re missing the point. The OS just happens to be in WvW.
If you can find enough players in sPvP to do duels with then that’s fine too.
Good for you if you have multiple-slot 1v1 or 2v2 custom servers in NA. In EU all you get is one or two “king of the hill” 1v1 servers which are always maxed out, and where the next player is determined by who can hit the select-team-button the fastest once a player leaves. If you’re unlucky you might not play at all. And since the winner stays it’s clearly an unfavorable environment for those who want to learn.
As to practicing for real pvp matches, all of those servers have gear and skill restrictions, like no tanky amulets, no elites with cd>90sec, no PU mesmers etc.
So if you’re actually lucky enough to play, it’s really not good practice for anything.

Now, Brandon has 2000 games under his belt and apparently he has hit a wall with his necro. What do you suggest he should do? Play another 2000 games? I’m very sure Brandon knows all of what Zzero said above already, but that’s all you can learn by playing that many games. If you want to evolve beyond that individually you need some form of detailed feedback, and imo duels are the best way to get that.

Care to elaborate?

NeXeD.3042:

Obs isn’t the way to practice for pvp.

There’s a difference between practicing for pvp and progressing your individual player skill. In pvp matches you mostly fight in teams and try to get points or secondary map objectives. This can teach you coordination with your allies, map rotations and so on, but it doesn’t really let you work on your individual gameplay.

Also, the location doesn’t matter much, if you can find people to sparr with you on a custom server in sPvP then that’s fine too, but like I said the OS arena is just better for practice because it’s bigger and there are always people just waiting to have a fight.

NeXeD.3042:

The players and builds are different

Doesn’t matter.
And to some extent that’s even an advantage. Most WvW builds are a lot stronger than what you can do in sPvP. Stronger builds = stronger opponents = better training.

NeXeD.3042:

I’ve always found the players in pvp dueling servers to be heads and tails above the ones you will find in obs.

Definitely not true.
Also, pvp dueling servers suck! 99% waiting in observer mode, no thanks. You’ll get more practice by killing golems in the heart of the mists.

125% movement speed is just 6% slower than 133%.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

I have not entered WvWvW for an eternity, so how does this work? Are there like communities working on this to set these up?

The Obsidian Sanctum Jumping Puzzle can be accessed directly through the WvW UI, it doesn’t require queuing up for Eternal Battlegrouds anymore.

Once you’re there you go through the long tunnel that starts right below the northern spawnpoint. It leads to a large arena which has since its implementation replaced the area behind the windmills on the borderland maps as the location to have duels and gvgs.

Depending on daytime and the servers you’re up against there will be people sitting on the side waiting for someone like you to challenge them

Holl.3109:

3 minutes is not enough if you are planning to do lots of roaming

3 min is what you get if the sigil gives 20 sec per kill because swiftness can only be stacked up to 9 times. But once one stack expires you can get more.
Basically, this way allows you to have perma swiftness by just switching 1 weapon instead of an entire armor set. The only drawback being that you have to kill something every once in a while.

GoogleBrandon.5073:

I either get stomped, or I stomp people

What other options are there?

GoogleBrandon.5073:

My question is really simple, what can I do to improve my game as a necromancer aside from playing regular matches? I wanna become better, like awesome… I am struggling to become awesome

Imo the best way to improve on any class is dueling. And the best place to do that is the Obsidian Sanctum arena in WvW because there’s much more open space than on any PvP map. Get the strongest players you can find and play against them as often as possible, and after each time chat with them and analyze what was good and what could be improved. This is a lot more constructive than playing tpvp.
Yes, you’ll get experience either way, but trial & error scenarios with constant feedback are just non existent in regular PvP matches.

Or you could get a weapon with a superior sigil of speed. Use it when you’re killing npcs and stack up to 3 min swiftness without any additional boon duration.

Azure.8670:

ive been dying to have a charr necro and I dunno if I should delete my asura or just buy another toon slot…. ughh

The only thing better than a charr is a charr necro.
Unless you want to keep a second necro I’d suggest you ditch the little gnome!

lol

Just fyi, I’m still using this build.
Yes, the thread is old, but I keep it updated since it generated some views even when it dropped back to page ~80.

Why did DarkFQ bump it? We met in WvW yesterday and talked about our builds, I guess he felt my build is worth some more front-page attention…

spoj.9672:

Its pretty much why noone shows videos of bad plays.

Not intentionally anyway. And it’s not like Holl needs to persuade anyone to use his build because it’s pretty much a standard power build. He showcases his skill – or in this case he even explains some combos – which is of course nice to see.
But in regards to losing fights, I wasn’t talking about bad gameplay, but a well played situation in which a good player ends up losing and explains why. Maybe something like “If I used this skill instead… or dodged to the right instead of left…”. I would definitely be interested in seeing videos like that because it would go beyond simple advertising of one’s build and maybe even teach an old necro-dog a few new tricks.

Holl.3109:

Winning would show the capabilities of the build, and make people more likely to try out the build.

Actually, losing can show limitations of a build and pin point its capabilities more accurately than winning. It could showcase how far you can push it, if you will.

Also, I could show how I kill people with a really bad build (or even naked and without traits). I doubt anyone would be motivated to try it just because it’s in a video.

EremiteAngel.9765:

I have not watched a video where ppl actually posted themselves losing and what can be learned from it for a long time.

In a long time? Is there someone who makes videos like these?

I really don’t think it’s the least used necro weapon.
Warhorn has the highest off-hand dps in PvE, it’s a cripple-machine in WvW and has the second highest life force regen potential after Necrotic Grasp. In any PvP environment the focus actually brings the least amount of utility, so regardless of build most necros decide between off-hand dagger and warhorn.

As to your proposed daze change (on #4, which does only 2 sec daze if not traited):
Imo this would actually be a nerf. The moa’s daze has to be directed at your opponent the entire time to repeatedly get the daze-pulses to hit. So this change would actually force you to stand still and prevent you from casting any other skills for 2 or 3 seconds.
And if your opponent moves out of the cone they won’t get the full daze duration at all.
However, if you’re suggesting that this change shouldn’t come with these negativ side effects and that the enemy should be dazed repeatedly regardless of either player’s positioning, I don’t think anet would allow us to have a semi-unbreakable stun.

Imo Signet of the Undeath was never a good skill. A long time ago other people just expected necros to be rez-bots I guess. But since June 2013 at the latest other skills just became so much more appealing bacause of several reworks or cd reductions.

@fury up time: try Runes of the Pack.

I think the response in both subforums will be the same: we can’t tell you what your personal preference is.

However, regardless of what profession you end up going with, necros profit the most from ascended armor because vitality infusions increase your regular hp and lf pool.
And keep in mind that ascended gear is account bound, so maybe make a prefix that every class can use so you can switch if you change your mind later on.

No offense taken. Like I said, most people play both anyway, but the access to different gear sort of makes a duel against the same person in WvW the hardcore version of what it would be in sPvP.
The reason why high ranked PvP players seem to steam roll everyone is because they actually meet all kinds of players in WvW, in sPvP they aren’t matched up against less skilled players in the first place.

Zodian.6597:

But this infers that I’d be just be life blast spamming, no? …

Well yeah, it would be a different build. I didn’t mean you should change your play style, just wanted to point out that you’d average more damage with Deathly Perception if that was the argument for Terror.

Another thing I wanted to mention about your build:
You just might be the last necro in PvP who uses Signet of the Undeath.

I applaud your enthusiasm, but…

1. This build is actually a lot closer to a current standard power build than to what Khalifa used a million years ago. So… not sure how this build is related to his, just take credit for your own creation.

2. Terror and 375 condi damage just to make Reaper’s Mark and Doom hit a little harder?
With a soldier amulet you’d be doing waaaay more damage with Deathly Perception. 64% crit chance in DS (not to mention the extra ferocity and life force) vs 14% or the occasional 34% on what is a power build for the most part. Imo a no-brainer.

3. I laughed when I read “…against wvw skill leveled players”, when apparently the whole point of the build is “carrying those newb teammates in solo queue”.
First of all, I’ve fought with and against pretty much every well known name you’ll find on the leaderboards these days (solo or team arena). Most players aren’t exclusive to either one of those game modes anyway, but the access to food, mixed gear stats, non-pvp rune sets and some other factors makes it more likely that you’ll find the most challenging fights in WvW rather than sPvP.
Secondly, if you can carry a team with this build, you can carry with any other build as well. In general though necros are one of the weakest class when it comes to carrying a team. Decapping free points, safe stomping or rezzing, getting secondary map objectives quickly, bunkering down against multiple opponents for a longer period of time, area control through mobility…. those are things that will carry a team.
Winning 1v3 (or even 1v5???) just means that the other team sucks monkey balls and deserves to lose.

TyPin.9860:

Because it still could be caused in your own ultimate skill level. Meaning your skills are overpowered but not the necromancer profession

Then again, the strength of a class isn’t measured by how well a mediocre player can do with it. If someone can be overpowered then his build is strong regardless of whether the player or the build is that good.

TyPin.9860:

…if we give any player, no matter how experienced, this build and they would significantly increase their win lose rate or even simply dominate the arenas over other professions.

For all we know there might be a build like this, but it’s impossible to pull off because you’d need 4 arms on two keyboards.
However, if someone could actually play that build to its full potential then this person would set the new benchmark for the strength of the class, and for anyone else it would then be an l2p-issue rather than “the class is weak..”.

Lutete.5379:

I mentioned that to show GoogleBrandon why I’m not going back on my word until more people show me that necromancers are not as op as I think.

Usually the one who makes a claim has the burden of proof.

All the info you provided so far is:
1. you’ve been playing necro for a month.
2. you’re convinced necro is op
3. and therefore the class should be nerfed… maybe.

You didn’t say what exactly is op about the class or your build specifically.
You didn’t elaborate on what you think deserves to be nerfed. The damage? The survivability? A certain trait? A weapon?

I agree that some people here seem to have a short fuse, but are you really surprised by the general reaction when you post something that sounds like “I’m almost new to the class, but nerf cuz op! kthxbye”.

@everyone who thinks there’s a secret engi agenda that could actually cause a nerf:
lol. Like any anet dev would go to a profession subforum, read what at first appears to be the one millionth whine-thread whithout any explanation as to why and how, followed up with a build that no one has ever seen before in a high skill environment, and then conclude: Yup… I can totally see it now, the necro needs a giant nerf-slap!

Perhaps you were just… – puts on sunglasses – …unlucky. /yeeaaaaaah!

Roe.3679:

Until you – and many other necros – are rocking top 100 in teamQ, you really can’t even begin to seriously imply that necro is OP.

To be fair, leaderboard ranking is hardly an indication for anyone’s skill.

Lutete.5379:

Something I can say so far is that playing necromancer is an easy way to get you out of the percentile system and into the actual leaderboards.

Any class can get you into the top 1k easily.
What you will realize though when you’re higher up the food chain is that some classes can carry a team a lot better than necros.
At a certain point your ranking will mostly be determined by how lucky you are to be placed in the better team rather than how good you are individually. If all of your allies are worse than your opponents you stand no chance at winning even if you’re the best player in the match. However, some players can compensate for their team’s shortcomings to some extent. For example, a team immensly profits from safe rezzing or stomping. Or the ability to tank on a point for a long time against more than one opponent. Or having enough mobility to quickly decap points or steal secondary map objectives.
These are just a few things that can be done a lot better by classes other than the necro. So if your team makes mistakes you’re much less likely to somehow make up for them with a necro than for example a thief who would be able to neutralise side points in a short amount of time. It’s not an argument against the viability of necros, but it means that other classes can exploit an opposing team’s weakness more easily.

Lutete.5379:

FYI not sure what hotjoin is but the only pvp I do is solo queue.

Hotjoin is when you go to the “Game Browser” and click “Play Now”.
Solo queue is when you go to “Arenas” and click “Join” on the left where it says Solo-Arena. If you do that for a couple of games you’ll be ranked on the ladder.
I can’t find your account anywhere on the leaderboard, ergo: you’ve been playing hotjoins all this time.

As to your build, perhaps you’d care to elaborate on what makes this build so op…?

It’s certainly not 9/10 in favour of the dagger.
The main selling point is the high damage auto attack, so as soon as you get kited you’re better off with the axe.
The immobilized and healing doesn’t make up for the much more reliable lf regen and untargeted aoe cripple and boon strip. Also, you’ll get more damage in DS with Axe Traning, which is where most of your damage comes from in pvp anyway.

Pelopidas.2140:

Did I understand it right ? If yes, say i have 5k lf and 5k hp, and i get a 6k backstab, im downed ?

Did anyone actually ever test this?
Because I just did with a thief and I couldn’t confirm any of it.
We tested this about 5 times: I always had about 3.5k hp and 2k lf. Then I took a ~5.2k backstab, it never downed me when it shouldn’t.

Interesting assessments.
Personally, I always associated “positioning” with some sort of 6th sense for when you are overextending. In that sense the word itself is probably misleading, there’s no perfect spot to stand or an optimum range to an enemy you should be moving in at all times. Sometimes you can stick like glue on your opponent with just 100hp left and sometimes you’ll overextend even when you’re at full health and life force. Just know how far you can go without dying. Obvisouly this kind of battle field awareness doesn’t just involve your own skills, hp and coodlowns, but mostly knowing how and from where your enemies can inflict damage on you.

You probably haven’t seen it in the combat log before because up until July 1st the Sigil of Geomancy used to register as “Frost Burst”.

Chilli.2976:

I was actually soaking all those hits up and healing at the same time, now imagine me being a Thief or a Mesmer for example.

Obviously a thief or mesmer wouldn’t face-tank a Lich. Also, as others have said already, they’d both just strip stability, blind, CC and dps the necro down. As a guardian you could’ve used reflects and the necro would have killed himself with just 3-4 hits.
Lich is super weak without support from allies, it needs babysitters because they basically give up all of their defense for a temporary power boost. So in your case either your team mates sucked or weren’t present in that fight at all, in which case it’s probably a win for you because you made the necro waste his elite for no reason.

There was a necro who used his elite, he pressed 1 a lot and you seem to have taken every hit.
Then there’s a second necro who uses a dagger but does really low damage with it (maybe a hybrid build).

So… how is this Lich Form damage unusual? And what have thieves got to do with it?

Muchacho.2390:

i would agrue it also depends on what on crit effects you have and depending on your overall build the one is better then the other but no one that is better in all cases.

Good guy Muchacho, trying to bring the discussion back to the actual topic. ^^

Also, you are right.
Statements like…

it’s fair to say that rabid is a better choice in most situations

…are meaningless because one amulet can only be a better choice if the build allows it to be. Same applies to this:

If we factor in that Rabid widens our possible sigil choices (earth sigil one of the better choices on scepter is borderline useless with carrion)

Either you use sigils of earth or you don’t. In the end there’s no wider range on any build, 4 sigils, that’s all every necro gets. Low crit chance? Well don’t use on-crit sigils, simple as that.

manveruppd.7601:

And if you really get twice as much LF then OF COURSE carrion>rabid, especially with the new Death adept minor trait!

First of all, yes, vitality gives you more EHP than toughness.
However, the real advantage is that life force regeneration is always percentage based. So unlike with toughness you don’t have to worry about healing effectivness.
The more life force you can generate the better off you’ll be with carrion instead of rabid. And most of our defense comes from mitigating damage with life force either way. Regular healing is pathetic compared to the amount of hitpoints we can generate with life force. Well… actually our regular healing is pathetic, period. But that’s a different issue.

manveruppd.7601:

So I assume you tested with both carrion and rabid gear and you take half damage regardless?
…
How does putting points in SR affect this stuff?

Again, the damage taken out of your lf pool is only half of what the actual damage numbers on screen say.
It’s always 50% unless damage overflows to your regular hp.

manveruppd.7601:

Your own falling test is inconclusive, as you seem to take 25% damage to your health bar when you fall from not inside DS, but slightly LESS than 25% of your LF pool when you fall in DS. So I’m guessing you didn’t fall from/to the exact same spot, as you should’ve taken about 300ish more damage in DS.

You’re mixing up when to use percentages and when to look at the actual numbers.
In my screenshot I jump from and land in the very same spot. One time I take 6070 damage, the other time my lf is reduced by 3035.
50%!

manveruppd.7601:

OK, the question of whether it’s actually a x2 LF pool or a 50% damage reduction is an interesting one.

Like I said, imo it’s rather evident we’re dealing with a damage reduction instead of a tooltip error.
And it wouldn’t make a difference anyway if it wasn’t for the differently behaving overflow damage.

manveruppd.7601:

This stuff is utterly gamechanging! If I’d known about them I’d never jump into DS to soak up a backstab if I have only a little LF left (as I end up suffering the whole damage to my HP and putting DS on recharge for no reason).

No, you can still mitigate part of the damage with life force, just less than if you take the hit to your lf only.

manveruppd.7601:

flow.6043:

Your original question was regarding whether or not the base hp was affecting the damage reduction in DS. It doesn’t.

Not really, as I didn’t know there was such a thing as damage reduction in DS, so my question cannot possibly have been that specific! :p I just asked “is this a thing?”

I was refering to this one:

And does the bug persist no matter how much your base HP is?

manveruppd.7601:

So the way I understand it is: the rumour is that there’s a 50% damage reduction, while you, by contrast, are saying that there’s no damage reduction, we just have twice as much life force HP as the UI claims we do, so when you take a hit for X damage, the amount of life force HP lost is in fact X/2, half what the combat log states. Right?

Not quite.
There’s no rumour. The damage reduction exists, it was tested right after the patch for the displayed lf number went live.
However, not everyone knows about it because the only way to confirm is checking your lf pool before and after you take damage. The numbers on screen and in the combat log tell a different story.

In regards to whether you take -50% damage or it’s actually just half the number of what should be displayed:
The devs said our lf pool was 60% of our regular hp. Plus, the overflow damage matches the displayed number of your remaining lf pool.
So you might as well say: the devs were never right about the lf pool, the number should be twice as high, and overflow damage doubles damage taken to life force.
The result is the same, but it appears more likely that there’s a damage reduction in DS instead.

manveruppd.7601:

flow.6043:

I’m not sure what “steady weapons” would change when testing this, or a hotjoin server for that matter.

Well they always output the exact same damage vs the same target, so it would be pretty obvious. Assuming you take screenshots of your LF bar before and after each hit so we can see exactly how much LF was deducted (and assuming we also account for degen of course.

Like I said, I’ve done exactly that as you can see in the screenshots here and in the other thread I’ve linked above.

manveruppd.7601:

And the amount of hp is of course irrelevant since life force is percentage based.

Well, life force gain from skills and loss from degen is percentage based, but incoming damage isn’t, it’ll be in HP.

Your original question was regarding whether or not the base hp was affecting the damage reduction in DS. It doesn’t.

manveruppd.7601:

Or: you know how Reaper’s Mark has a different cast animation from the other marks? Yeah… mine doesn’t. It’s the exact same animation as all the other marks, except that it’s now twice as fast.

For me 4 and 5 have a different animation to 2 and 3.

Haha, that one is new to me.

RashanDale.3609:

As if people care about facts. Just look at all the CONDI-OP-whiners in the balance forum. they would see the new numbers and start crying.

There are always people complaining about everything. Luckily balancing isn’t done because of whiners on the forum.

manveruppd.7601:

Has anyone tested in an empty hotjoin server using steady weapons to confirm? And does the bug persist no matter how much your base HP is?

I’m not sure what “steady weapons” would change when testing this, or a hotjoin server for that matter.
So far I’ve tested this in sPvP, PvE and WvW. It’s always the same.
And the amount of hp is of course irrelevant since life force is percentage based.

manveruppd.7601:

NeXeD.3042:

Ahh nice, but it would still be nice if they fixed it so we couldnt get double damaged when both our ds and health are low.

Is THIS a thing too?

I’ve never personally experienced this. And so far I’ve only heard people talk about it, but not seen any actual evidence of it. For all I know people might just take a big hit and “feel” they’ve gone down unusually fast.

Then again, I have a theory that not every character is affected by patches in the same way:
Remember, there was the patch that only fixed downed hp for characters created after date X.
Or rather recently there was a patch that fixed Reaper’s Mark to no longer have a shorter cast time when traited with Greater Marks. I didn’t even know this bug existed up until then because my mark worked correctly before. But this patch actually had the opposite effect on my necro: now my Reaper’s Mark has a shorter cast time! (I even reported this in the bug section, but no change so far)
Or: you know how Reaper’s Mark has a different cast animation from the other marks? Yeah… mine doesn’t. It’s the exact same animation as all the other marks, except that it’s now twice as fast.

So perhaps the insta-gib damage when in shroud does indeed happen to some people, but personally I could never observe this bug myself.

Bhawb.7408:

axe is 1.5%/s…. and scepter is anywhere from nothing to 3.6%/s

You forgot to include cast times (and Gluttony for builds with points in Soul Reaping).
It’s rather negligable on scepter, but the little over 2 sec on Ghastly Claws makes 1.5%/s only possible with Axe Traning.

Bhawb.7408:

staff is 2.9%/s to 8.6%/s
…
Staff is 4% per person hit (up to 3 people)

Necrotic Grasp hits up to 5 targets, so it’s potentially 22% per cast with Gluttony.
Also, the time per cast is actually 1.3 sec, not 1.4 as stated in the wikipedia notes.
So the best possible lf/sec is close to 16%.

Bhawb.7408:

WH can give up to 100% per cast (4% per second)

Locust Swarm gives 1.8% lf (~2% with Gluttony) per hit.
Traited with Banshee’s Wail you get 13 ticks (bugged because it should actually be 15) on a 24 sec cd with a 1 sec cast time. Best possible average: 5.2% lf/sec.

Bottom line:
The question will always be how many targets you’ll actually manage to hit with your lf skills, but if conditions are perfect you’ll average by far the most lf regen with staff, followed by warhorn.

RashanDale.3609:

the downside of this: other classes will start to whine about us having 120% LF.

Since it wouldn’t be an actual buff they’d just need to phrase it something like “…has been fixed to be displayed correctly”. Make it look like a tooltip improvment (which it would actually be) and no non-necro would be the wiser.

Well yeah, of course it’s a bug.

These are the patch notes of July 23rd 2013:

• Damage taken while in death shroud will now overflow to the necromancer’s health pool if the damage taken is greater than the remaining life force.
• Fixed a bug that caused the necromancer to take increased damage from direct attacks while in death shroud.

Remember? It was the patch that made it no longer possible to jump from any hight and mitigate all of the falling damage.
Anyway, right after the patch went live people noticed that we’ve become a lot tankier in DS. They tested and arrived at the conclusion that you have about 120% of your regular hp in life force without any points in Soul Reaping.
Devs denied it, but 2 months later we could confirm our suspicion: the devs rightfully assumed it was 60% because the number said so, but it was really 120% because of the damage reduction. And the only evidence of a damage reduction rather than a wrongly displayed number is the overflow damage.

Where does that leave us? Well, it’s been almost a year now. I’m sure the devs are aware of this issue. But considering how long it took them to iron out the remnants of what used to be our downed mechanics, actually finding out what caused all the problems (I suspect the double damage taken in downed state issues were somehow interacting with this as well) – including a later patch which revealed that not all of our lf was shown on the lf bar in the first place (Oct 15th 2013) – then finally arriving at the current yet still imperfect state of our Death Shroud… I have a feeling that they just don’t want to mess with it any more than they need to.

Also, I think our lf regen combined with the damage reduction is in a pretty decent place right now. So ideally I’d like to see the damage reduction gone and the lf bar number adjusted to be 120%, rather than having our primary damage mitigation nerfed by 50% to match the current numbers.

Flumek.9043:

flow, so you saying that, example: zerker 23k hp 18k DS. killshot will hit me for 10k hp or 5k in DS ?

You can basically pretend that whatever number is displayed on your lf bar is actually double, unless you take more damage than (twice) the displayed number.

So if you take a 10k hit to a 5k+ lf pool you will just lose 5k life force.
If you take 10k to a 4999 lf pool you will lose that plus an additional 5001 of regular hp.

Blackmoa.3186:

I just redid my testing just for you flow, tehre is no 50% dmg mitigation in DS, if it is supposed to be there it is bugged and doesnt apply properly.

I don’t know how you tested, but here you go, just for you

First picture shows screenshots of falling damage. 6070 without Shroud, the difference between the 2nd and 3rd on my lf bar is exactly 3035.

Second picture shows a Chieftain Slash. Combat log says 1775. Difference in lf before and after: 887.

I also tested condition damage right after they patched the number to be displayed on the lf bar. It’s 50% for ALL sources of damage, unless damage flows over to your regular health pool in which case full damage is taken to the lf pool as well. (also tested a long time ago)

There is, for all sources of damage, it has been like this since almost a year.

Also, since you’re assuming 4 in Death Magic you’d have to factor in Armored Shroud which benefits the build with a lower armor value more.

Omg not this again -_-

Btw, you forgot the 50% damage reduction in DS.

Also, carrion>rabid :P

Kahrgan.7401:

You should be fighting a class, not just a build.
…

Like I said, in PvP you’ll always have more build diversity.
Unlike PvE, you don’t need full berserker gear, then “skip this, stack here, fiery rush there…”.
And whether or not people can pull off the build they want to run doesn’t depend on what the current meta for each class or team composition is.
Players who use their main class and favorite build – even if it’s not “meta” – will be a bigger asset to their team than someone who runs something supposedly better which they have less experience with.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I’m more of the opinion that, if each class has 1 build that they can use to compete competitively in PvP, then balance is doing well with every class being viable. At the end of the day, “competitive” anything (PvE, PvP, WvW) is going to boil down to filling a particular role as hard as you can. A certain configuration of traits/skills are going to accomplish that, and if you can fill that role harder than someone else, then you’re going to use the most optimal version of that build when you play.

I agree. Objectively, if one (best) build exists for each class you have a balanced game. Build diversity is a different issue.
However, this approach has more practical relevance to PvE. There is usually just one way to build for maximum damage, which is all that matters.
In PvP on the other hand, player skill is more important.
In case some of you didn’t see the last Ready Up interview with Helseth: he basically said you should run whatever you want, because being good at a non-meta build will contribute more than trying to make a team composition work that you’re not used to. It’s better to adept to the opposing team and situation than forcing predetermined roles on some classes or builds.

mompen.7952:

• 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.
• Reaper’s Mark: Fixed an issue in which the blast radius skill fact would not be displayed when traited with Greater Marks.

So just to clarify for those who are wondering what these changes mean:

Blast Radius in context of marks means the area of effect when the mark is triggered, as opposed to the mark radius which indicates the area of where the mark can be triggered.
The Blast Radius is always 60 units more than the mark radius, so 240 without and 300 with Greater Marks.
For combat application: if one target triggers any of your marks, any other target that is actually standing up to 60 range outside of it will get hit as well. This applies to regeneration for allies on Mark of Blood as well.

The big buff here is that our Chillblains’ poison field is now bigger than before because it matched the regular mark radius.

Also, yay Runes of Strength!

Wasbunny.6531:

Both sides arrived at the same conclusion, even when approached from two different directions and yet they both say the other’s methods are hopelessly flawed and biased and thus their conclusions can’t be accurate.

They can’t even agree to disagree since (whether they admit it or not) they actually completely agree, as their results are nearly identical.

Actually, Nemesis’ method was flawed. He didn’t use the best damage build/rotation for both classes and he picked a questionable place/npc to test it.
So you could say he arrived at the same conclusion for the wrong reasons. Also, he tried to disprove people who are saying that ele’s damage is 100 times higher, clearly those are not meta-theory-crafters (or whatever..).

spoj.9672:

Well the damage buff would have to be so high that it would beat both ele and thief by a huge margin. And that would be pretty broken.

Would it really?
Eles bring so much group support and still have the highest damage. It seems to be a fair trade for a class that doesn’t bring any support to have even higher damage.
So when you’re making a team comp for dungeons you’d have to weigh the high necro damage against losing out on ally might stacking etc.

@spoj (or whoever else is a PvE-guru here).

Wouldn’t it make more sense to significantly buff the necro’s damage, rather than to introduce some “+ferocity to ally” trait or any other team support of that sort?

Let’s assume the dagger auto attack damage was raised to a point where the necro would by far be the best single target damage class. No buffs required, just straight up more damage than anyone else.
The group support would still be as bad as before, but now people might take necros into dungeons as their best dps-ers in some situations.
Would this be doable? Or would the damage have to be doubled or trippled to make a necro worth occupying a party slot in dungeons?

It’s an interesting comparison and I respect the work that has gone into making the video.
But let’s be honest here, this test is really not “unquestionable and undisputable”.
The pre-buffed 10 sec sequence for the sake of timing one repeatable damage rotation is hardly a representation of how fights usually go. There’s a much longer build up time for might and vulnerability stacks for necros.

Also, a 6/6/0/2/0 warrior build? GS auto attack for max dps? Yeeeah… no.
Then again, he wasn’t using dagger auto attacks on necro either.

Bottom line: the test showed what most of us knew already. In the right group setting necros have good single target damage when compared to other classes.
As for the “delusional” players who think eles do 100 times more damage, I doubt they’d be convinced otherwise even after watching this video.

tuman.6593:

Artasqweroldy.7458

I think thats a great idea, opens up some interesting options ^^

Sad but nobody else think so((

I think a lot of people would like to see more shroud skills, and perhaps it will happen at some point anyway.
However,

tuman.6593:

• DS-6: Transform some of your HP in Life Force.

A lot of people don’t realize it (they’d rather see stability/blocks/evades/invulns/mobility…), but the biggest bottleneck to our non-existent attrition game play is our bad healing.
All healing should go through DS and if it was up to me I’d significantly buff the base amount of every standard #6 heal, and on top of that I’d implement some sort of scaling with the number of opponents so that the base amount would be doubled or even trippled if you’re under focus fire by multiple enemies.
The idea of sacrificing hp for lf should is counterproductive, spending lf for hp on the other hand would be a nice addition.

tuman.6593:

And teleport skill, we need it because our role in tPVP is all about position:

• DS-0: Necromancer spends all collected Life Force for move him into the target zone.

I actually made the same suggestion when anet asked the community for ideas for the (back then) new condition and DS5 skill (torment/Tainted Shackles).
It would be nice of course, but it’ll probably never happen because “necros aren’t supposed to have mobility..”.
But imo losing all your life force would be fair trade for a teleport. Also, it wouldn’t have to be an instant blink/stunbreak like other classes have them, the cast time and range could be adjusted in a way to give some in-combat safety rather than ooc mobility.

Inscrutable.8347:

The devs keep saying Necro is attrition and the players aren’t listening, so unless you want them to throw you another Dhuumfire bone that will enrage the entire community again please play your class better.

I agree with the rest of your post, but attrition is less a matter of listening to the devs than you make it seem.
The biggest issue with sustaining ourselves in a fight over a longer period of time is our regular healing. It is just bad. Of course is has to be to some extent because, like you said, DS and life force has to be taken into account as well. But ultimately the fact that we can’t heal in DS at all and that non-vamp-mms can just heal for a measly 5-6k every 25sec puts a clock on almost every fight we’re engaged in.
Other classes can recover to 100% health in combat. Necro attrition on the other hand means that you just prolong the inevitable: if you can’t mitigate everything above 6k dmg every 25 sec with life force you’ll go down eventually. Yes, you can get more healing with extra conditions, regeneration, traits, sigils, runes, ally healing…. but you get the idea. It’s impossible for us to recover from a certain amount of damage.

In theory your damage should be high enough, but if you need some extra kick you should get some boon-stripping, so use Well of Corruption and/or Corrupt Boon.
Additionally CB gives you a transferable poison. WoC does some extra damage (all crits if you are in DS with Deathly Perception) and it is currently bugged (?) to give 1.2% life force per pulse and hit, and since you have Gluttony it’s about 1.3% for you.