Guild Wars 2

Bhawb.7408:

Just because our HP is high doesn’t mean we are entitled to larger heals.

Actually yes, that’s exactly what it means. Especially considering that our class mechanic and defense is based on having just that, a high hp pool. No blocks, no stealth, no invulnerability, no teleports or other means to evade damage.
Based on that, our healing potential should at least double with every opponent that outnumbers us.

Tim.6450:

flow.6043:

I can’t believe that so many people give this skill such high praise.

Healing with 8+ conditions is lucky at best.
And even then, this heals you for what… 10-12k? That is really low, considering that:
1. your hp pool is about twice as high
2. it’s on a 25 sec cd
3. and you don’t have any other significant sources of healing (unless you are also a siphoning MM).

1~2. This is a standard for most skills take a look at shelter less then 50% on a thirty second cooldown. Healing surge at most around 10K on 30 second cooldown. Elemental glyph around 5K on a 25 second cooldown. elixer H around 5.5K on 25 second cooldown. Most healing skills swim around 50% on 25 seconds.
3. Dagger #2 1800 health on a 12 second cooldown I would call significant. You yourself said vampiric master. The new spite grand master can be considered as a significant healing.

What I made was an example of a best case scenario for necros.
Heal 10k for a 20k hp pool is not the norm. When I roam in WvW my health is somewhere between 25-30k depending on buffs. My base heal on CC is less than 6k, so on average I might cleanse about 2 condis which nets maybe 7k on average. So worst case scenario for me: my main heal fills just 20% of my hp pool, and that’s it for another 26.5 seconds if it doesn’t get interrupted then.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Tim.6450:

Are you saying that we are entitledd to outhealing our enemies damag with consume consitions alone?

Another thing that you have too calculate in the heal is the damage you would have taken if the conditions stil ticked.

These two comments are very well put, in my opinion. First, it seems like people argue that conditions are too strong because you can apply them faster than you can clear them. Are people supposed to be able to completely negate a type of damage? Similarly, are heals supposed to totally out-heal any direct damage that comes in? That notion is ridiculous.

Obviously it depends on the amount of damage we’re supposed to be outhealing.
Many other classes have no problem healing back full in combat from almost zero hp, in addition to having mobility skills, invulnerabilities and blocks.
Is it really that outrageous to point out our lack in healing compared to that?
Any power build lands a 15k damage spike on me at the beginning of the fight. On my engi or thief I’d have no problem to get back to full hp. On my necro: never! I need at least two main heals just to compensate for that initial burst, not to mention any other damage I’d be taking since then.

So yes, I believe we are “entitled” to having all our main heals buffed, not just CC. Plus, every source of healing should go through Death Shroud.
And we should get additional sources of healing that are more easily accessible than wasting trait points on our current vamp traits, and most importantly: they should scale with the number of our opponents.
Parasitic Contagion and Unholy Sanctuary are steps in the right direction, but it’s not enough by far.

kyubi.3620:

Even if you do your epidemic what do you think will happen if i condi transfer using my staff… youl end up with every condition you placed on my minion as well as mine

Thanks for the nostalgia flash, but what you’re describing is Putrid Mark as it used to work until June of last year. Since then it no longer cleanses allies and it just transfers 3 conditions per target.

I can’t believe that so many people give this skill such high praise.

Healing with 8+ conditions is lucky at best.
And even then, this heals you for what… 10-12k? That is really low, considering that:
1. your hp pool is about twice as high
2. it’s on a 25 sec cd
3. and you don’t have any other significant sources of healing (unless you are also a siphoning MM).

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still the best heal we got.
But the simple fact is: our healing sucks in general. This is of course in part due to balancing it with life force generation, but still, necros are the only class that are not able to heal back to full health once they’ve lost a critical amount until they’re out of combat again.

Even if you’re able to heal 10k every 25sec (which like I said, is lucky), you’ll have to take less than 10k damage in that amount of time to not gradually lose more and more health. If you’re up against any half decent opponent you’ll take a lot more damage than that, and the only thing you can do about it is win before your time runs out.

So again, yes the skill is good because of the cleanse. The healing on the other hand should be much higher by default, and maybe include some extra scaling with opponents like the Locust Signet’s active.

kyubi.3620:

Minion master hand down due to the insane number of availlable control ability

Im not denying that MMs are strong, but they don’t have any more control abilities than other necro builds.
They are simply not the strongest in a necro vs necro fight, which is a deal breaker for me.

kyubi.3620:

if what you aim for is a condition glass cannon then run condimancer

Condition builds aren’t glass canons. They always have either a lot of toughness or vitality, or both.

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Anyone else have the feeling this skill is very slugginsh considering the quickness that other professions can burst with?

I agree, but I think it’s supposed to be this way. A good opponent will interrupt your heal if he gets the chance, there’s nothing strange or unfair about it.

Tim.6450:

The cast time is a bit long but the skill is ridicously strong so a good trade off.

The heal is not strong at all.
The full cleanse is good, but considering the necro’s high hp pool and lack of other sources of healing: it is waaaay weaker than it should be.

daimasei.4091:

Muchacho.2390:

Reanimator is merged with death nova…
Are you saying death nova is useless?
I dont play mm but i am sure that the 20/0/30/20/0 mm build uses this which is the superior mm build for pvp if i remember correctly…

Yep, totally useless. My 20/0/20/30/0 MM would have no problems against that in PvP (seriously? 30 points on Death to apply poison?).

Bhawb, where u at?!

Anyway, Death Nova is a good trait. It deals a lot of damage (direct and poison) and it creates a poison combo field.
Also, 20 in Spite isn’t mandatory for minion mancers. You could run 30 in both Death and Blood Magic.

Rennoko.5731:

DM GM: It is weak. Not much else to say. Additionally it should allow 50% of all sources of healing through, end of story.

Make that 100%, and there shouldn’t be a trait for it.
Healing should go through Shroud, period.

Rennoko.5731:

Spite GM: It is okay. Under the right circumstances it will be a reasonable sustain component. However as others have mentioned it is just like siphoning skills, in the since that optimally it will be good to impressive, and the other 95% of the time it will do an ignoreable amount of healing.

The major reason why this trait won’t be super hawt: see above.
But if you could actually heal in DS it wouldn’t be bad at all, actually it would be the first proper damage mitigation that scales with opponents.
Let’s assume 1 tick of bleeding does 150 damage. Mark of Blood on one target in WvW: 3 stacks would heal you for 22,5 hp per second. 5 targets: 112,5 hp. And that is from a single skill. You’ll actually do a lot more aoe condition damage than that. With a proper Epidemic maybe 5-10k aoe condi damage? That’s 250-500 hp/s right there.
But oh look! Major damage incoming, better go into Shroud to absorb it… and not heal at all -_-

Furienify.5738:

It’s WvW; your Death Shroud maxes out every 5 seconds.

I wish…

Nick.6972:

I’d say cheap is around ~20G.
I have tons of condition damage/precision Ascended Rings in my bank.

I would prefer something that dishes out the most damage and yet has some survivability.

Buy carrion exalted armor and carrion pearl weapons on the trading post.
Many people craft these to level their crafting professions. Carrion is one of the prefixes which are sold far below their actual value. You’ll spend about 12 gold for armor and weapons. Each armor piece would be 4-5g and weapons 7-8g if you were to craft them yourself.
Rabid is more expensive because the insignias and inscriptions can only be salvaged.
Besides, mixing Rabid (your rings) with Carrion is more effective for both offense and defense anyway.

If you don’t want to buy more rabid accessories/amulet to boost your armor value, you could trait 30/20/20// instead of the standard 30/20///20 condi build.

Yami.9035:

Dhuumfire will be no longer a viable option for conditionmancer

This is certainly not true.
It will still be the highest damage option for condition builds, not just because of the trait itself but also because of the +30% condi duration.

On topic:
Don’t forget that all runes will be reworked as well.
But let’s assume the 6th bonus stays the same or is going to be similar to what it’s now. Perplexity necros would be stupid overpowered! Just when you think that the Dhuumfire nerf would restore some of the necro’s former respectable status…

Ascii is a commander, so yes.
Yesterday they changed the commander buff icon to be invisible to foes, I’d imagine that you could get away with something more glassy now as well.

lol cool story brah xD
Care to elaborate? After all, you asked for advice on carrion/dire yourself…

@build:

Withering Precision is the worst trait in Curses after Toxic Landing. You should really pick a different one.
Also, for condition builds there’s only one viable food: +40% condi duration. This would also free up the Hemophilia trait slot for something more useful.
I’d also go for Scavenging runes instead of Undead, especially if you decide to mix in some more vitality.

On topic:
Mixing toughness and vitality will make you a lot more durable than picking just one or the other. And since you’re using a main hand dagger you’d really profit from some extra power. So in your case, getting some carrion into the mix is a pure win-win.
Don’t worry about crit procs. Barbed Precision is the only thing that get’s a noticable boost from a higher crit chance because there’s no icd. But everything else is totally negligable. You still have Furious Demise so lowering your crit chance to 35-40% is not a big deal.

Player.8373:

Use Carrion only when going for a DS Condimancer.

What is a DS condimancer? O_o

Blackmoa.3186:

basic condi build …

90% condition duration + Master of Terror?

Silinsar.6298:

…but with lyssa both skills will become extremely effective moves.

Right, Lyssa. The balance forum is already full of complaints about this rune, because in most cases it surpasses the elite itself.
If there was an elite that gave all boons and a full condi cleanse on a 40-60 sec CD then almost everyone would use it. As it is now some classes just enjoy the luxury of getting an additional “minor” side effect, like a stun or more boons. Not because those elites are particularly great, but because they happen to have a low cooldown.

Travlane.5948:

no such thing as cheeze elite.

Moa?

To be fair, a basilisk stun or the boons from rage signet are fairly weak compared to the pressure the supply crate adds to a 1v1.
When I duel on my necro I rarely use my Flesh Golem because it’s usually overkill, so it really depends on your opponent if they are worthy of your elite or not.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

In all honesty I think dhuumfire should just be taken out …

Good man.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

I think a teleport chill/imob plus chills on staff would help necro lock down opponents that are vastly more mobile than it is, if its gonna make up for the terribad mobility necro needs a bunch more slow CC.

I don’t run a chill-build, but by now I’ve heard from a lot of opponents in WvW that my chill and cripple uptime is brutal. A 1 sec base duration on every mark would almost double up my chilled application, not to mention the indirect damage increase as a cover condition.

On the subject of mobility, yes necros are slow. But tbh, of all the classes I’ve played in WvW (including thief), my necro really is the best at preventing other players from escaping me. It’s just easier to slowly walk after someone who’s chilled and crippled than leaping and blink teleporting after someone who has the same mobility.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Furious demise on fear would be a significant buff to necros out of DS crit chance without greatly changing its in DS function.

Out of DS it would only work if you have a staff, and then you’d only get 5 sec fury every 40 (or 32) seconds. Corrupting stability or Spectral Wall is too situational.
You could sometimes stack more fury, but overall the on-Shroud-fury is just more reliable. And for many players it’s a crucial part of their damage rotation.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

I really think necro needs better ways to regain hp, if it really is suppose to be an attrition class ele, guardian, warrior, mesmer and ranger(to lesser extent) all have some quite powerful heals that can be traited onto utility skills, we get … like 60 hp when we hit something … wew thanks.

I agree.
It’s quite ironic that the class with the highest hp pool has the worst healing. Atm your Shroud timing has to be perfect to protect your regular hp, and even then, once you lose health it’s probably gone until you’re out of combat. It’s impossible to win real attrition fights like this.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Re-animator
Summon a vampric horror, this minions attack steals health and transfers it to you 5s icd (currently summons a jagged horror on a 15s icd)

This trait will be combined with Death Nova.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Dark Armor
gain 200 toughness while in death shroud. (currently gain 400 toughness while channeling)

If it’s the new minor instead of Reanimator, yes pls.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Spiteful Vigor II
steal 1 boon from each nearby foe when you cast a heal skill, max 5 foes in 240 radius (currently applys 5s protection on heal skill)

It currently applies retaliation.
I like your idea though.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Buff all life stealing traits heal amount by 20%
…
Full of Life
increase regen duration from 5s to 15s and icd from 30s to 40s
…
Blood thirst II
gain 3s of regen when you apply bleeding to a foe 5s icd (currently increases life steal amount)

All of these could stay as they are if we could heal in DS.
Also, I think you got some regen overkill going on with your trait suggestions. It’s not too difficult to get perma regen as it is.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

25 blood to power
7% of vitality is given as a bonus to power (currently gain 120 power while over 75% hp)

k.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Fear of Death I
inflict fear on foes when you fall below 25% hp (currently fears foes when you go down)

The generic stuff-happens-when-you-go-down-trait. Yes, it’s useless, but it will probably stay this way forever.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Aquatic life blast would become the same as normal life blast (1s cast instead of 1/2s cast)
…
New trait Plague blast XI
reduce life blast cast time to 1/2s from 1s but reduces life blasts damage to 235 base from 244, life blast now transfers conditions to your opponent. This change makes life blast the same as the current aquatic skill of the same name.(currently this trait spot is Dhuumfire)
…
Speed of shadows V
gain quickness for 5s when you enter death shroud, trait moves to Master tier from Adept (currently increases moment speed by 25% while in death shroud)

OOOOOOW PEEEEEEEE!!!1!1!!!11

Did you really think this through?
You’d be able to fire 20 (!!!) Life Blasts in 5 seconds after going into DS, all of which transfering a condition.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Mark of Revival moves to Adept tier.

That trait should be removed completely.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Dhuumfire could apply 3s of burn when you receive a hit while in death shroud on kitten icd.

Another passive proc? No thanks.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Corrosive poison cloud
surround yourself with a poison cloud that apply’s 4s of Poison, Weakness and Cripple to foes you touch,
self poison 10s
15s duration
240 radius
(this skill would work the same as the Human elite Reaper of Grenth)

So you want to make this skill more mobile, like a poison version of Locust Swarm?
Sounds good actually.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Spectral Grasp
apply a shadow tether to target foe that chills them for 5s, you may shadow step to tethered foe by using Spectral Traversal imobalising foe for 3s

Meh… could be good, but there are a lot of situations (especially in WvW) where a pull is extremely useful.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Blood is power
sacrifice 10% of your current HP and gain 15 stacks of might for 12s

The whole point of Corruption skills is that you self inflict a condition which can either be consumed or transfered.
But I’m not saying no to a might buff.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Rending Claws (Axe 1)
Slash foes near your target twice applying vulnerability, 180 radius around target.

Yes.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Spiteful Marks VII
All marks apply 1s chill (currently marks deal 10% more damage)

Overpowered.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

25 point minor
You have a 33% chance to blind foes when you apply vulnerability 4s icd (currently gain might when you fall below 25% hp)

I think most people would rather have a proper damage boost in Spite.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Hemophilia II
moved to master tier and combined with lingering Curse XI, new effect is +40% bleed duration.

Not sure what you mean by this.
Are all bleeding durations increased but not the other scepter durations?
This would actually be a nerf to scepter bleeds.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Withering Precision XII
moved to adept tier, Weakness duration reduced to 2s icd reduced to 10s

That’s right Withering! Back to the loser tier!
Not sure if anyone would take it even then.

Lurock Turoth.9085:

15 Furious Demise
gain 5s of fury when you fear a target 10s icd (Current, gain 5s of fury when you enter death shroud)

No. Absolutely not. This trait needs to stay as it is.
Why would you want to change it anyway?

Lurock Turoth.9085:

Terror IX
has damage buffed to origenal at launch level (or higher) and is moved to Grand master tier.
…
Dhuumfire
moved from spite and placed as second grand master trait in Curses

The devs said they considered this already. I doubt it’s going to happen (anytime soon or at all) after the upcoming change to Dhuumfire.

Yami.9035:

I’m thinking about maybe 39 healing and 19 damage . No ICD .

A better version of Vamp Signet? :P

It’s a good idea though.

Berullos, I agree with the overall concept you described, but:
1. Signet of the Locust is absolute garbage in combat, it’s a wasted utility slot especially against warriors.
2. Since this thread is about 1v1s against warriors: Golem>Plague. It doesn’t matter what build you have, Flesh Golem beats any other elite in duels, period.

@cursE: You could consider using Lyssa runes for some extra stability and cleanse. This syncs up rather nicely with most warrior’s rotation of Pin Down+Combustive Shot into hammer stuns.
You could also pick up Well of Power and just sit in his long bow attacks, this will give you aegis with every burning+well pulse, swiftness and vigor from Pin Down, plus you can blast combo blindness with Putrid if he switches to hammer.
Other than that I think the odds are allready stacked in your favor because you’re using a warhorn. Save up Wail of Doom and Golem Charge for his Berserker stance, should you still be caught in their perma stun chain then soak up all damage in Shroud with Spectral Armor. Once that is over your golem and locust swarm will stack some really long cripple, that and the occasional chilled should make kiting rather easy.

Use a stun break instead of Spectral Wall and you’re good to go.

A little off topic: I think you should pick different traits in Soul Reaping. Spectral Mastery for a single skill? Also, I’m not a fan of Soul Marks. I’d probably take Path of Midnight and either Vital Persistance or Master of Terror.

manveruppd.7601:

Vitality, which has a 10:1 scaling on the amount of HP it gives you

22 if you count life force as well, or up to 25.6 depending on how many points you have in Soul Reaping.

Anchoku.8142:

Healing is second to last with actual vitality bringing up the rear. (Siphons, regens, and straight heals are more important than adding health points because, without them, Necro has no sustain.)

First of all, vitality is arguably the best defensive stat a necro can have.
Secondly, ranking stats like you just did certainly depends on the build, but one thing is for sure: healing power is always dead last by a mile. Not only because necros have very little healing that could be improved in the first place, but half of the time (in Death Shroud) healing doesn’t even work.

killahmayne.9518:

…
Add that together that is +372 to stats (I could be wrong) but that I think makes a pretty significant difference.

It really doesn’t, and here’s why:

The amount of stats a character has may vary depending on whether they have crit dmg or boon/condi duration, kill stacks, the wvw server bonus, the bloodlust stacks, (not to mention boons). But let’s just assume that an average exotic geared character will have 8k stat points.
372 extra points would be less than 5%.
If those 372 stats were just power, then I’d be inclined to agree, that would probably be somewhere around a permanent 10% damage increase.
But instead it’s a little bit of everything. Some extra armor will mitigate ~1% direct damage, a little precision might increase your crit chance from 51 to 52%… there are some stats that just aren’t doing anything significant.

The best you’ll get from ascended by far is the damage coefficient of your weapon for power builds.
But as far as regular stat increase is concerned, kill stacks will do a lot more for you than ascended gear instead of exotics.

Back to my original point: all of that is far from enough to cope with an additional opponent. Especially since you don’t win a fight by dishing out and taking damage like in a turn based final fantasy battle mode. 2 opponents means twice the stuns, twice the blinds, aoe healing, boon sharing, ally stealthing, rezzing one another (if it even comes to that). No realistic amout of extra stats could compensate for that.

So again, with proper builds and equal skill: 2 guys in nothing but green gear vs one max buffed ascended player. There is no chance that the one guy can win a single time against those two.

killahmayne.9518:

But then again, if a warrior has full Guard buffs, full stacks, he probably has full ascended, all of them fitted with infusions, yeah, just run lol.

One might argue that guard and sigil kill stacks are much easier to get than ascended gear, because getting wvw rank 230+ is “just” a matter of time. On the other hand, leveling a crafting profession to 500 costs about 150gold and a complete set of armor will set you back 400-600 gold, most players aren’t willing to make the investment because (unlike the higher damage coefficient on weapons) the stat bonus on ascended armor is rather negligable.
Which brings me to the next point: full ascended vs full exotic. While kill stacks and super-duper maxed out gear can make a difference now and again, it will not double or tripple your fighting potential, as in: 1 ascended beats 2 exotics.
It can’t make up for a second player. Far from it. 2 players in nothing but green gear would still win every single fight against a fully buffed and stacked ascended guy. Provided they are equally skilled there’s just no contest.

Depends…

If you’re refering to PvE then (like with alle classes) power>condi.

If you’re refering to PvP then it depends… WvW zergs: power>condi. Small scale or solo roaming and sPvP, depends on your group composition (and your opponents): a condi necro’s Epidemic can work like an amplifier for every ally, so they synergize quite well with other condition builds.

If you’re refering to a straight up 1v1 between a condi and a power necro: the better player wins. But if both players are equally strong then the outcome is a coin toss, there is no build-win (assuming they both use a good build) if that’s what you’re asking.
Some people say that condi beats power in a duel, but I suspect that’s because they haven’t met a good power necro yet, which might be because condi is more popular and easier to pull off.

Spicyhash.7605:

The only way you can beat a condition warrior as a necro is using well of power and plague signet.

Are you suggesting that you can’t beat them if you don’t have 5 cleanses of which 3 are transfers? (dagger, staff, consume conditions, signet, well)
Even with half of that you’ll hard counter any condi warrior.

As to the warrior in question, I suspect that it was a power build with a long bow. But that’s beside the point anyway, if anyone wins a 1v2 then he was simply a better player. No one can win an outnumbered fight on equal skill against enyone, especially not against necros.

A leap cutting a necro’s hp in half? That doesn’t sound like a condition warrior.

Drakent.9605:

For does who are asking for pic or video I have a much better idea , you try this your self make a condition build take a friend and compare your condition damage

You say this like non of us have been paying attention while playing the game up until now.
Are you really saying that a boss that is permanently loaded with 25 stacks of bleeding will tick for that amount for every single player that inflicts a single stack with their condition damage?
That claim simply goes against everything I and many others experience all the time in game. You have the burden of proof here.

Drakent.9605:

Also did some other testing with other condition like fire and posion, after applying them my poison damage was 500 a tick and fire was doing 700 a tick, mean while my friend necro was doing 700 poison damage and over 900 with fire on the same mob.
….

Then we ran fractal lvl 33 and every boss was being kill under 1min, condition damage was just eating thru mobs hp in sec . I was doing over 4k bleed damage a sec, over 1k with poison and another 1k with fire and this is not including my dagger auto attack that where doing 1k that’s over 7k damage a sec.

1. Unless I’m mistaken, the damage formula for poison is: 84 + (0.1 * Condition Damage) per second at Level 80.
That means a 500 dmg poison tick is only possible with 4160 condition damage. With that your burning should’ve ticked with 1368 dps.
And then 700 or even 1k poison ticks?? I really doubt you had more than 9k condition damage. Btw if I were to assume that it isn’t impossible to have that amount of stats, 25 stacks of bleed would’ve done more than 12k dps instead of only 4k.

2. What you are reporting is just not what I (and I’m sure many others as well) are experiencing everyday. Some screenshots or a video would help your claim, but for now I just don’t believe you.

3. Every fractal boss in less than one minute? Again… pics or it didn’t happen.

4. The amount of damage you describe (total of 7k with poison, bleeding, burning and some direct damage) can hardly be maintained permanently.
Burning has a cooldown and bleeding+poison will drop if you switch to dagger.
Power builds on the other hand can easily put out 7k dps constantly, and spike even higher than that

Testing this would cost you just a few seconds. Activate Shroud and wait until your life force is gone.
Spoiler alert: your regular hp stays the same (unless you take damage).

Those test results are quite predictable, I’m afraid.
Anet would have to (at least) double the damage conditions do in PvE to match direct damage output, even after the ferocity patch.

Bhawb.7408:

You could just as easily use this example to show why conditions are broken: a heavily defensive amulet has comparable DPS to a fully offensive one

….with a condition weapon.
There would be not contest if he used dagger or axe instead intead.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

#1, anything over 100% condition duration is wasted. Lingering Curse is the sole exception in the game.

Actually it’s not an exception because it increases the scepter’s base durations.
The 33% in the tooltip is not only misleading in that regard but also false, each condition is increased by a fix (and different) amount of seconds rather than a percentage.

@Mice: dire>giver’s.

Oozo.7856:

flow.6043:

Eventually you’ll reach a point when your chilled, cripple, weakness and poison turns them into sitting ducks, but getting there is the tricky part.

Against lemongrass, melandru, and dogged march?

I’m not denying that it’s hard but I don’t think it’s impossible.
Chill of Death and Dark Path (maybe a Hydromancy sigil) add up to a decent amount of chilled, even with all those reductions. It’s better than nothing, and more than you can do against complete immunities like Diamond Skin.
Anyway, all of those builds are one of the reasons I play hybrid.

If you really want to use Runes of the Afflicted when already having +80% condi duration, Hemophilia is almost a complete waste. You could go for cheaper utility food, but imo you should drop this trait either way.

As for general impovements: I’d probably mix in some carrion gear. You have a main hand dagger and Reaper’s might, more power can make a significant difference here.
I’d also consider taking Chill of Death instead of either of the two adept traits you have in Spite.

Nemesis.8593:

PS: Try to go up against automated response engineer with the same combo…

Automated Response and certain Diamond Skin builds really are impossible for pure condi necros. But imo not warriors.

Signet of Spite looks impressive when it hits but it actually does very little damage by itself. It’s useful for its cover condis against classes/builds which cleanse conditions one at a time or have bad cleansing in general.
But I honestly wouldn’t bother using it against warriors. Despite their heavy condion duration reduction and hp regeneration, your damage should be high enough to bring them down eventually. So the question is: how do you survive that long?

1. Picking the right utilities.
It’s hard to give general advice here because everyone runs a different build, utilities can be much like using the right key to counter certain attack patterns which will vary from player to player.
Against Hammer/GS I’d try Spectral Armor – Well of Darkness – Corrupt Boon. This might not be the best for every Ham/GS warrior, but it’s a good start.

2. When defending against a warrior you’ll have to make it through several stages.
a. Initially they will use Signet of Rage and probably come at you with Bladetrail and/or Whirlwind Attack to close the gap.
b. They will probably use Berserker Stance at some point.
c. Hammer stun.
d. Stability from Last Stand/Balanced Stance or Lyssa. (maybe you’re lucky and they don’t use any of that with melandru)

Now, when they use their Signet of Rage the first question is: to corrupt or not to corrupt? Corrupting his elite immediately can be a good move. However, if they have any source of stability you want to save Corrupt Boon for later. In fact, if they have more than one stability, you might even want to take Well of Corruption instead of CB.

Berserker Stance: Golem Charge. If they have stability, strip it. Even if it doesn’t turn into fear, you’ll want to knock him down with your Golem.
If that doesn’t succeed, they are likely to try a stun lock with their hammer to bait you into Death Shroud while they are still immune to fear, torment, chilled and immobilized. That means: either dodge the hammer stun or pop Spectral Armor and just take beating in DS for a few seconds. Don’t panic, don’t use any skills… just let them hit you while Spec Armor fills back your life force.
Once Berserker Stance is over it’s time to counter attack. Use enough pressure, but don’t waste all your skills yet. Save your dodges and your blinds for when he gets ready to counter attack. Well of Darkness for the next time he switches to his hammer, you can blast finish blindness with Putrid Mark on him even if he stands outside of the well.

Eventually you’ll reach a point when your chilled, cripple, weakness and poison turns them into sitting ducks, but getting there is the tricky part.

Link doesn’t work.

grave of hearts.7830:

Yeah forgot bout that one,had wells in mind.

Actually, wells and Corrosive Poison Cloud are the only unblockable skills that have 900 range, not counting the additional 240 radius. Wail of Doom 600. Epidemic, Corrupt Boon, Dark Path (I probably forgot some..) 1200.

grave of hearts.7830:

As far static,well it isnt the static that kills you its the enemy frontline that catches up.

1. If you were referring to wells being ranged 900 then you should be aware that the only reason to have Focused Rituals is if you’re zerg surfing. That means you’re probably not alone, you won’t be hunted down by an angry mob because you’re likely to have one of your own to back you up.

2. Keeping it in context of the OP’s statement “Immune, Block, Dodge, Evade…rinse and repeat”, he’s clearly not refering to situations where he is getting overwhelmed by a stun train, unless he was implying that he could take down a zerg by himself if they didn’t block or evade.
Instead, his problem seems to be that he can’t kill certain classes 1v1.

grave of hearts.7830:

Too bad all those unblockable aoe’s are also in the 900 range.

You mean like Greater Marks? 1200+240 mark radius?

grave of hearts.7830:

Thats ….300 range past the range you get stunned by a static field and die horribly because everyone but anet knows how horrible the class is.

Yeah, static field.. staff ele… so dangerous, stunned at max range = always certain death.

rivurivurivurivu.3041:

so full rampager is the way to go?

spoj.9672:

If rampager had power or condi damage as main stat or we had another similar stat combo then maybe we could make some genuinely good hybrid builds. But atm we have to overstack crit chance or focus more on condi damage.

Rennoko.5731:

The bigger issue, the more wide-spread problem, is that the additional time required to spend in DS, which will:
…

I think people will have to abandon the mindset of having to apply burning as much as possible and as soon as it’s off cd.
The way you described the “issues” makes it sound like burning application has priority over everything else. But in reality, instead of trying to make a Life Blast hit at all costs, players will stick to their regular skill rotations and only if the opportunity presents itself will they squeeze in a Life Blast.
And before anyone says something like “making Dhuumfire work will be so much harder…”: 1. Yes, that’s the point. 2. it’s easier than it sounds, you’ll get used to it.

MethaneGas.8357:

Also: If they do buff our default mark size, like the leaked patch notes stated (if)… that’s a pretty significant BUFF.

The patch notes were fake. And it said that mark size would be increased from 120 to 180, which already happened 4 months ago.

Rickster: lol @ thread title. Every class gets buffs and nerfs.
Dhuumfire is a sensible and imo very necessary change. Going 30 in Spite will probably still be the strongest you can be as a condi necro anyway. And it’s a clear l2p issue if you think you can’t apply burning if it isn’t an ez-mode passive proc.

Well of Darkness and Power: blindness and condi to boon conversion is very likely to prevent more damage done to allies than you’d be able to out-heal with stuff like Transfusion.
You could use both of course, but imo more damage > more healing.

charter.4095:

Does being in DS affect crit chance on marks as well?

Yes. But I’m not sure it’s advisable to precast marks for a possibly higher critchance on trigger.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

This thread is about conditionmancer, and currently it falls well behind terrormancer…

In sPvP necro condition builds without Terror don’t exist. Condimancer=terrormancer.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Dhuumfire only does around 2k in my condition build in pvp, so imo its pretty weak compared to lingering curse.

It’s hard to calculate the difference damage with and without a cover condition.
But by itself, I doubt that the scepter auto attack and Grasping Dead can average 2k/10sec more with Lingering Curse, especially when you’re using other skills as well.

Actually the trait is bugged (says so in wiki link as well), it only ticks 12 times. Each tick applies 3 sec of cripple with Banshee’s Wail, so depending on your +condition duration it can stack up to 72sec of cripple on a single target.

Sigil of Paralyzation will incease the daze duration and the only other trait that comes to mind is Gluttony for some extra life force regen. But that’s it, I think.

charter.4095:

I find I rarely or never switch to staff, and I don’t spend much time in DS. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, but I don’t feel I need it often. Usually I try and flash into DS, use 3, then life blast until whoever I’m chasing is dead. Sometimes I use 4 when there are a bunch of minions/spirits/clones nearby. Are the other skills worth using too?

Considering you traited Reaper’s Might, Unyielding Blast and Deathly Perception you should probably spend more time in DS than out of it. Plus, your ranged wells puls with your current crit chance, so dropping wells and staying in Shroud while they puls will make them crit more often (almost always).
And yes, every skill in DS is worth using.
Traits are rather standard as they are except for Speed of Shadows, you should really drop that for either II, III, IV or VIII.

grave of hearts.7830:

Condi wvw necro is UP compared to most condi builds.
There is no inherent con dmg modifier which makes necros possibly the worst class as far conditions are concerned.

lol no, more like the other way around: condi necro > condi anything else.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

The only time they shown was early dhuumfire patch, after that they have fallen back into obscurity. This is the number reason why they were elected as one of the top 3 professions that “Need the most help.”

The reason why necro was voted into those top 3 is because they are bad in PvE and have several bugs and useless traits like Death Magic minors or hp siphoning. Certainly not because condition necros are weak. This might sound harsh, but everyone who thinks he can’t do it without Dhuumfire: l2p. That’s all there is to it.

As far as damage goes, condi necros were doing very well before Dhuumfire. Definitely crazy op in its early stages, which was then mitigated a little bit by upping condition cleasing/immunity on other classes. Then came the Dire prefixes, Perplexity and Scavenging runes, -50% damage reduction in DS, fixed downed state and several other minor buffs. Necros actually have a lot less to complain about than some of the forum suggests.

Other than the general state of PvE, the only legitimate complaint imo is the bad scaling of our defense and (lack of) mobility against increasing numbers of enemies.
But that’s the same for all necro builds and will probably never change anyway.

Haha. Before creating a necro you should consider that relogging onto that character will take about 10 sec longer for applying your nipple clamps.
There’s also a hidden option in the game settings, only available to necros and active by default, which overlays the first loading screen with a pop-up text promting the player to put on their clamps – much like 3d glasses movie theaters – because only then will they get a true “feeling” for what it means to play this class.