Guild Wars 2

Does “not from ticks” mean just the points from stomping?
I wonder if this really reflects player skill or just that there aren’t as many players on kodash to be stomped…

I know what you mean, but in this video Rennoko wants to show how he deals with focus, not how to escape it. If an ele, thief or mesmer gets hit with the same damage they would also be downed (or even faster).

And if you want I can offer you the same challenge: A friend and I against any class you want. You won’t survive unless you choose not to engage at all.

Can you post a link to that statistic?

Nemesis.8593:

ps: just to prove my point a bit more… i am willing to demonstrate at any time that, even though you survived 4-5 players at a time… you won’t be able to survive me + 1 friend of mine, you would be dead in under 30 seconds…

I am not saying you are bad, on the contrary i am saying you are a good player… yet it is the class that pulls you down, you would do more if you could… but you simply can’t…

That applies to every class, not just the necromancer.

And before you say other classes can escape and avoid getting focused altogether, that’s a different issue. Once you actually get focused by 2 equally skilled players you’re done.

phaeris.7604:

A necro popped signet of spite on me the other night, from 1200 range, and I thought i’m pretty safe here, don’t think i’ll stealth, i can just retreat. Only when 1/2 my hps had gone (about 8k), I thought I had better stealth up to avoid dieing.

messiah.1908:

signet of spit does 7k dmg full condition build and fear can tick 1k-2k dmg
so how can you kill thief only with it alone?

Signet of Spite applies poison and 2x bleeding, the rest are non-damaging conditions.
If you take 7-8k damage it’s because of other skills or passive procs.

Your gear is good as it is.
I’m just saying that with a hybrid you’ll average more damage if you invest more points in Curses, with a pure power build you’ll get more from Deathly Perception.

In some ways this build is similar to mine.

There are some things that bother me though.

1. Last time I checked the 6th Mad King bonus doesn’t work with Lich Form.

2. This being a staff build, I wouldn’t want to miss out on Staff Mastery, that trait makes all the difference, unless…

3. …you want to make it more Shroud based. But then I’d really rather go full power.
With a hybrid build I’d definitely get at least 25 points in Curses instead. This way you’ll have more precision, Furious Demise and Target the Weak.

I’m not sure about viability as it is. Maybe try the same build with Flesh Golem and 30/15/10/0/15, 30/20/10/0/10, 30/30/10/0/0… or 20/30/20 like I did in my build.

Andele.1306:

Only thing that goes over 100% duration cap for condis is lingering precision since it increases the duration of scepter skills by 33% of their new values.

*40%. The tooltip of Lingering Curse is wrong.

Strangely enough, the tooltip on scepter skills calculate the duration correctly, but don’t cap at 100% duration. For example, if I have 105% bleeding duration and Lingering Curse, then the scepter auto attack tooltip will say: 14 1/4 sec bleeding, when it’s really just 14 seconds.

Umut.5471:

The problem isn’t condition cap, with +100% condition duration(cap) fear still isn’t 2s.
I mean fear cc condition duration here, not damage ticks.

What? Why? Not true, and I don’t know why you assume you’d get another damage tick despite fear not lasting long enough..?
Reaper’s Mark with +100% fear duration will make your target run away from you for 2 seconds, and because of that you’ll always get 2 damage ticks.

Right.
Every condition does damage once every full second. The first condition you apply to your target sets up a timer for any other condition that follows.
So in case of that 5 1/2 sec bleeding, the 50% chance is not determined by RNG but by the time you apply it.
Let’s say you start that 5.5 sec bleed once at T(zero). That first one will tick just 5 times, but if you apply a second bleed and want it to tick 6 times, then you need to apply it at
T(zero) + (0.49 < x <1.0) seconds, so it overlaps 6 times with the damage timer.
So if you apply conditions at random times you’ll average 50% extra damage ticks. But you could keep an eye on the damage timer on your target and apply key conditions like fear right before the full second to guarantee an additional tick.

pierwola.9602:

So your post with “you win or lose v necro, 50/50” is wrong

That was my argument actually, the mods deleted half of this thread though, so you can’t scoll up and read it anymore.

And that argument is not wrong if you don’t involve different builds and player’s skill. Because when people say something like “others don’t know how to play class X” they might refer to personal experience, but that hardly reflects on the actual strength or weakness that a necro has over a different class.
So yes, you could say upleveled players in WvW are the easiest targets for a necro, then again, that’s the easiest target for any class so it doesn’t really have any relevance to this topic.
You are either objective about a class’ abilities and pretend that two AIs are fighting each other (or maybe a clone of yourself is fighting you), or you subject your assessment to personal experience against opponents with different individual skill, at which point the distinction between classes becomes rather moot. The reality is, there is rarely a case where build/class wins over skill, not for me at least.

As to the observation that most people play a warrior or guardian these days: yeah, sure that might average to a higher kill count of those classes, despite them not actually being the “easiest target”. On the other hand, what if I told you that I fine tuned my build to hard counter stun warriors? And I actually win more fights against them than against necros..?
I didn’t btw, but it’s certainly possible. So my argument stands, you’d have to look at each build first, but that is not much of an argument if one player is just more skilled than the other.

Bawi.9541:

Then again there seem to be some problems (lag issues?): With +96% bleeding duration I sometimes got barbed to tick four times.

Why would that be a problem? With +96% duration it’s a lot more likely to get 4 ticks than just 3.

@MoT: I just quickly tested with Doom at close range, no other +duration except for that trait, and I got 2 ticks. Seems to be working correctly.
Is it possible that you got that 1,25 sec from a tooltip?

Scarran.9845:

Elixir S

Invulnerability doesn’t mean mobility, you won’t create any distance to your opponent with that skill alone.

Scarran.9845:

Automated Response

If you have this trait and play against a condition build (like full dire) you don’t need to run away. Against a power necro this will do almost nothing, maybe prevent you from being blinded or immobilized.

Scarran.9845:

Add onto that Shield 4 that has 3 sec reflect projectiles and push back opponents and Toolbox 4 with 3 sec block attacks

We have so many unblockable skills, add Greater Marks and you’ll not be able to block much else. And projectile reflection… what projectiles? Maybe a power necro’s Life Blast..

Scarran.9845:

and net turret to immobilize you and that’s not including the stun you get from supply crate.

Necros also have some sources for immobilized, and then there’s of course fear… even makes them run away from you! Still, that doesn’t really mean necros have mobility or that they could run away from more mobile classes.

Scarran.9845:

Rocket Boots which allows to them to leap a great distance
the stealth that they get from combining their fields.

Now those two I agree on, but seriously… unless you combo the leap with a smoke field, just rocket jump (range 900) away from me: if I can catch you with Chillblains (range: 1440 with Greater Marks) you don’t get away any further.

Scarran.9845:

…and little in the way to stop opponents from disengaging from us.

Like I said, it depends on the build, and it’s just not as easy as you make it sound.
Also, most people aren’t mentally prepared to have an escape plan ready at any time. For example, you could use supply drop on your opponent, but who runs away after that instead of trying to finish the fight right in the middle of all the turret support?

aspirine.6852:

I’m just talking personal experience, I have had so many fights that I could have won but they choose to run away. And we cannot chase and for me that makes another necro the one I win the most against. If we had more escape or chase it could be different. And oh yes I am talking WvW 1-1 not pure pvp.

I stand by it, for a hypothetical matchup of necro v X, and especially from personal experience in both WvW and sPvP: it’s not that easy to escape a necromancer.
Of course this depends on your build to some extent, for example a necro who uses Spectral Grasp will have a better chance at not letting his opponent get away than another one who doesn’t.

And it’s certainly not true that every class except the necro has the means to get away like a thief or sword/GS warrior. A guardian, engineer, ranger…? Yes they have some mobility skills, but not enough to guarantee a safe escape whenever they want.

Also, speaking from my experience: people usually don’t run from me. The ones who manage to do so once in a while will always come back to finish the fight, and those players are just skilled enough to pull off a reset (which is not easy at all) but not skilled enough to win. The best players I’ve encountered don’t need to reset a fight against me.

So you can say all you want, other (equally skilled) necros are definitely not the easiest to take down.

TheDevice.2751:

Lol Btw all I gotta say is that Nemesis was just saying that since condition transfer is such a necro staple that fighting another necro can be an opportunity if you play your skills right.
…

And I argued that “another necro..” being the easiest opponent can only imply 2 things:

1. you believe that a 50/50 chance of winning against the same class is better than anything you could do against any other class, as in: the necro is the weakest profession of them all atm, which is simply not true.

2. You assume that your opponent is weaker than you. But any kind of argument involving “other class X players are less skilled than I am” is off topic.

You could explain why necro with build A beats necro build B, but a general statement “necro>necro” is either false or off topic.

Not necessarily. Jon Peters himself made the suggestion of tying Dhuumfire to Life Blast. He also said that they have discussed moving both Dhuum and Terror to gm Curses many times already, or even creating a torment variation of it.
Maybe they will end up doing both, burning on LB in Spite and a torment version of Dhuumfire together with Terror in Curses…
Either way, I’m not too pessimistic about it, even though such changes might take months to finally make it in the game.

jalmari.3906:

Scrap well of power, it’s the least desirable well skill (for general use).

I very much disagree.
Second to the wurm, WoP has the lowest cooldown of all our stunbreaks.
It’s a dark field as well and our only access to boons like vigor or aegis, and the extra cleansing doesn’t hurt either, not to mention that this pretty much makes it our only active support skill.
As to the general use of it: since WoP was made a stun break it’s been a regular skill on my bar in sPvP and WvW. And I’ve also been using it in the condition heavy Tower of Nightmares. If anything, it’s the most desirable well for me.

Interesting observation. I could confirm this.

In my sceenshot comparison the svanir training npc in the mists hits me twice in less than 0.5 sec (stun counter on my skill bar), so it was within natural lf degeneration ticks.

Both hits do the same damage: 2684.
Comparing the first two panels you can see that the hit took 1342 out of my life force pool, 50% as expected.
The second strike (2nd vs 3rd panel) takes the remaining 743 lf and 1941 of my regular hp, total: 2684.

That means: if damage overflows to your regular hp then the damage taken to your lf pool will no longer be reduced by 50%.

Rennoko.5731:

Ever since the introduction of the class icon on player portraits, necro has become a favorite target for any organized group.

One of the reasons why I didn’t use signets.

Dredlord.8076:

Draehl.2681:

Another Necro. Not because I’m so amazing,

good call on the disclaimer, you wouldnt want to upset flow…

No, he just gets it. Draehl explained that his build is stronger than the one most people are using, unlike others who simply assume they would win against the same class because they are a better player than their opponent.

If you check fodem’s post history you’ll notice that he’s created the same thread in every class subforum. And (not to my greatest surprise at this point..) in every thread there are people stating “another class X”, on the basis that they know the class better than others.
Now, what’s the point of a thread like this if everyone assumes they will win because they are more experienced? Why make the distinction between classes at all, if you make your assessment based on scenarios where you fight worse players than yourself?

Rennoko.5731:

Celestial gives you extra stats from a standard 3 stat build, and covers all forms of damage and survival…. how is that not embracing the power of all skills? By the very definition of fairness, it gives you everything you might possibly use in the biggest helping possible.

That was probably poorly worded on my part.
What I meant to say was, celestial stats have to be seen in context of a specific build, therefore going full celestial can be a suboptimal choice depending on your traits, skills and weapons. Of course it gives good stats overall, but for myself I want a different stat distribution than the same amount of everything.
And then there’s the issue of our poor scaling with healing power. I don’t have points in Blood Magic to warrent any kind of investment in healing, but even if I had, I’d only see celestial as a superior option for hybrid vamp-necros if siphoning traits had better scaling with healing power and if it worked through Shroud.

Dredlord.8076:

everyone else took it to mean that in a group fight the other necro is the easiest to take down

fodem.2713:

Wich class is the easiest to kill as a necro ?

Maybe you didn’t read the very first post, but it doesn’t say: which class is easiest to focus as a group? “…as a necro” implies that you’re fighting alone.

So many players have shown that being in the top 100 tPvP only proves how much time you’ve invested in that game mode.

The fact that you believe that top 100 is the one place where the most skillfull players hang out and everyone else who isn’t should strive to be there (because “it’s the only way up”), is but a testament to your arrogance.

Clearly you’ve reached a level of skill that is not just unattainable if you don’t play among the top sPvP population, but can’t even be comprehended by a lowly commoner like myself.
So forgive me when all I hear from you “making a point” is: “wayne, wayne, necro is weak… except when I play against another necro, they are easy because I’m the best necro there is!”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/

According to Jon Peters we’re getting a fix next week.

lol. How am I “starting something”?
Your argumentation does in no way support that a necro is the easiest kill for a necro, just that you kill him fast if you get a lucky transfer… which btw might as well apply to your opponent, and by your logic that would make you the “easiest” kill for him.

Like I said, I disagree. Going hybrid doesn’t mean you have to compromise.

Tbh I’m not bothered by the removal priority at all.

Moving stability into the top 5 would negate the purpose of why CB was nerfed in the first place.

And let’s be honest, the classes who can get more than 5 boons (without Lyssa) are the easiest opponents for necros anyway.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

Imo the order should be random – which makes it fair for everyone.

I’d rather be able to target specific boons than leave the outcome of a fight to RNG.

Rennoko.5731:

There just are no really good hybrid weapon sets for necro that can make effective use of ~1000 condition damage

Staff and Death Shroud.

Rennoko.5731:

The problem with hybrid builds right now in WvW is the Min/Max style of play you will see from other players, that makes your well rounded approach incredibly ineffective.
…
You lack the defense to really handle a zerker build well, you lack the burst to really deal with tank/sustain build, and you may lack the HP/removal/damage to deal with a condition build.

…the bottom line is that you will be at a big disadvantage to the favored builds. You will win, but it will be because you significantly outplay your opponent, not because there was some parity in the builds.

As a hybrid player I can only say: non of this applies to me.

I believe you misunderstand what the “min/max style” of a hybrid is all about.
Using a hybrid build means nothing other than embracing what most skills are doing anyway, both condition and direct damage. (hint: don’t use celestial gear)

I don’t want to go into too much detail, but let me put it this way: in all my time in WvW with a lot of dueling all kinds of players and builds, I have yet to meet someone who will make my build seem inferior to their’s.

On topic:

I’ve never heard of a scepter/focus build, and I don’t think it would work.

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

like best healing skill in game (low CD, high base heal…

lol nope!
The only good thing about this skill is the full cleanse, the heal itself is bad and the cooldown is average at best.

For small scale WvW and PvE you can run a standard berserker shroud build (30/10///30). You might be a little squishy for zergs, but it’s manageable if you’re careful with positioning.
Or you can try a hybrid build (like mine).
Pure condition builds can have severe damage deficiencies in big zergs and some parts of PvE, but if that doesn’t bother you then they’re fine as well.

JonPeters.5630:

FYI, the cooldown thing is a bug. We are fixing that for nov 26th I believe.

He’s referring to all staff marks.

Ravezaar.4951:

Terror isnt OP and has bin ingame since start ( I have 1900 Condi-Dmg with 25stax + 5stax Guard.) I have Terror ticks for 1200 when other Conditions is on. (noway near 2k) Dhumfire is hitting for less then half of that.

With 1900 cond dmg burning will tick 803/sec, terror: 777/s or 1165/s with other conditions on your target. And (assuming you’re in WvW when you include guard stacks) Dhuumfire will tick 7-8 times if not cleansed.

Nemesis.8593:

This skill – Automated Response: currently gives you PERMANENT IMMUNITY to conditions while under 25% health…

I just duelled one of those engis in WvW. I’m not sure I would’ve won if I wasn’t running a hybrid build. On the other hand, engis wouldn’t stand a chance against necros without this trait…

And btw, that 22k backstab might have worked a million patches ago, now you simply don’t get such numbers unless you hit some poor upleveld who’s naked and has zero trait points.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Feel glad it can’t happen in PvP, since the Perplexity Runes don’t exist there. Much to everyone’s relief.

Actually it would have been better if Perplexity existed in sPvP as well, because then they would have been nerfed already.

Carpboy.7145:

A grandmaster with a base 4 sec of burning is completely fine. But a master that does 2k per sec, combined with loss of control of their character is a tad OP

You mean a trait that is bound to a specific condition, that con be completely avoided with stability, and can only be inflicted by very few skills which can all be avoided?

On the other hand: Dhuumfire, a trait that can proc passively on everything you do and does about 70% damage of terror (only with the 50% bonus), for at least twice the duration of every fear skill but just on a 10 sec cooldown, not to mention the extra cover it provides for other damaging conditions.
Yeah, that one is fine… naaaat!

Carpboy.7145:

With 2k condi dmg (not hard with stacks) terror is 1k x 2 with another condi on them, which if you don’t youre doing it wrong

2k/sec would mean you have 4126 condition damage.
Check the formula again, also the bonus damage is 50% not 100.

Either troll or oblivious to the blatant OP-ness of Dhuumfire. And since you didn’t even know the damage modifier of Terror I’m starting to opt for the latter.

Carpboy.7145:

I dont think its dhuumfire thats broken. Its terror thats broken.

Troll?

It always amuses me when people say traveler runes (or any other speed buff) frees up a utility slot, like it’s otherwise mandatory to have Signet of the Locust.

Anyway, @build:

1. Sigil of Geomancy and Earth share their internal cooldown. After you switch there will be 9 seconds during which sigil of earth can’t proc.

2. Every condition caps at +100% duration, so Master of Terror will do absolutely nothing.

I just tested again:

First screenshots, falling damage:
I jumped from the same spot, 2457 dmg taken out of DS. In DS I lose only 1228 hp (=50%).

Second, condition damage:
I used Corrupt Boon to self inflict poison. First picture shows that poison ticks with 196.
As seen in the picture for falling damage my full hp is 24526. Natural LF degen is 4% of 60% of my hp, that would be 588. With the poison in DS I should lose 784 per second. But as seen in the comparison between the last two screenshots I only lost 686, because poison only damaged me for 98 (=50% of 196).

Third, direct damage:
Direct comparison right before and after I get hit. The damage number on screen says 699, but I only lose 350 hp on my lf bar (=50%).

I would change 2 things:

1. Unholy Feast generates 2% life force per target.

2. Rending Claws: more damage.
Either by simply buffing it single target, or rework the skill to be like Crimson Tide.

I’m perfectly happy with everything else.

lol you guys really aren’t using the staff much these days ^^
It’s 3 per target, always has been since the nerf.

It used to be 11 because there was no torment prior to the nerf. And as far as I can remember the ally clease had a seperate aoe counter, not including the caster…?
So 5×11 from allies and 9 from yourself because you couldn’t use it while feared and it didn’t work with blindness.
Anyway, a lot… and now it’s just 11 conditions if you hit 4 targets.

With the condition meta during the past 4 month, I get that in hindsight anet doesn’t want to add more condition pressure to necros by restoring the mark, but they could add a minor form of ally cleansing without the transfer.

probably ^^

The one buff Putrid Mark got (conveniently on the same day it was nerfed so hard) was that blindness is transferable too instead of causing a miss.

It’s still a blast finisher and a 5 target skill rather than 3, range is also higher than Deathly Swarm. And it always transfers 3 condis/target, not just one.
So idk.. I’d probably still pick Putrid over dagger.
I just don’t understand why it needed to be stripped of all the ally cleansing.

Btw mark cooldowns will be fixed on nov 26th.

I’m saying you’re wrong, the “small scale/1v1 wvw thingy” is why most people play wvw in the first place.
And saying it’s not balanced is just an excuse for those who are bad at it.

Dawdler.8521:

players with optimised PvP builds…

Is there a different way to build for WvW?

Empyre.2531:

I doubt anyone with a brain is taking small scale roaming seriously…

Unless you’re a guild like Second Law, small scale fights are about the only aspect of WvW I take anyone seriously regarding their skill.

If you’re used to running staff + axe/wh you could take a look at my build.
Overall I don’t have any preference when it comes to roaming partners as long as they are able to pull their own weight. Like Moon said, some mobility professions create less obvious synergy with necros than others (like boon sharing), but they often turn out to be reliable peelers, stompers or rezzers.
In my experience it comes down to the player rather than the class anyway.
As to the necro build, you’ll be fine with any solo roaming build.
Your main group support: damage, that’s the necro’s role atm. Stay alive and do damage. So don’t worry about helping others too much other than letting them stay in your wells and marks (or Plague).

People only became aware that fear doesn’t count as interrupt because of those runes, if it wasn’t for perplexity no one would care that you don’t see the “interrupt” pop up on screen.
And yes, if this bug was fixed necros with those runes would be more op than ever before. I wouldn’t hold my breath for this fix though. However, the devs did make an official appearance on the WvW discussion forum, stating that they were “already looking into it”. So it’s safe to assume they’ll nerf those runes in the near future, rather than a fix for necros to create more synergy with them.

NightmareFiction.5478:

flow.6043:

I can see why people feel that a “do or die” style of gameplay warrents the ability to do high damage, but I’m rather surprised to see this kind of argument again and again on the forum: our sustain is bad therefore we need burning! That is just wrong.
I agree that the necro has the worst attrition of all classes, we can’t recover from a certain amount of damage dealt to us, so either finish the fight early or get worn down eventually. Imo this needs to change, but it’s in no way related to Dhuumfire.

It’s because the Necromancer lacks attrition that we got Dhuumfire as a bandaid solution in the first place. Now we have higher burst so we’re less reliant on our awful sustain to keep us afloat in fights.

Sustain lets the Necromancer outlast their opponent, but it doesn’t effectively do what it’s supposed to (let us survive/win extended engagements). So we get burning so we don’t have to try and outlast people, we just blow them up instead.

I don’t know what else to tell you other than the very same you quoted from me.
Any form of damage we do, especially Dhuumfire, is not compesation for our poor attrition.
As the recent conversation on the patch preview threads has shown (again), the devs just don’t know the class as well as the players do. They aren’t aware of just how difficult it is to survive as a necromancer, originally they branded the necro as “the attrition class”, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Do you really think that if they realized the extent of how poor our sustain is, they wouldn’t fix that instead of overloading us with damage?
They added Dhuumfire because they thought we didn’t do enough damage… that’s why they added more damage. Of course it was completely wrong to assume we were lacking damage in the first place, besides: we got a lot of damage buffs besides Dhuumfire that would have gone a long way by themselves, like Tainted Shackles or Deathly Perception for example. Anyone who believes that he’ll be subpar without burning just doesn’t realize the full damage potential of the necro (yes, I’m calling l2p at this point :P).

Oldbugga.7029:

My basic concern is that our damage balance budget includes DS offensive abilities. If I use them I am left without enough LF to handle the defensive requirements that ANet have imposed on DS…

Like I said in my earlier post, I believe you have the wrong impression.
Yes, damage is balanced by including Shroud skills. Does it make sense to do that despite DS being a defense mechanic in the first place: yes!
When you fight as a necro you create a rythm, a skill pattern that includes damage mitigation by sacrificing life force. You react to your opponent by using DS as a shield, but at the same time you attack while defending. You set up timing attacks like that, but they serve a defensive purpose at the same time. You never have to choose between just offense or just defense.

Ultimately the damage gated through Death Shroud depends on your build, but even if you choose every single trait that is DS related, it would not diminish its defensive capabilities.

Oldbugga.7029:

Quite a while ago I raised the issue of DS becoming the devs catch cry….you know “but you have DS”…a catch-cry for why necros miss out on certain things and I feel it is really starting to show. I just feel the one-resource-fits-all mentality/approach is leaving us very thin on the ground.

Indeed, they used that phrase a lot. But that is less of an issue with the class mechanic itself, but testament to the fact that devs don’t play necro intensively enough to understand certain aspects of it.

Stx.4857:

I would also like to see siphons and AE heals work while in shroud. So we can actually tank by going into DS to soak damage and build our HP back up a little while we are in it.

This is the one issue I have with Death Shroud. It just seems illogical that our main defense doesn’t allow healing.

Moon.6371:

With my current hybrid build I don`t have high armor (around 2.3k) and Vital Persistence alone makes me so friggin durable, it`s insane.

Interesting. Tbh I haven’t given it much thought except that it saves you 1% lf per second in DS.
Let’s assume you have 20k hp and 10 points in Soul Reaping, your lf pool would be 132% of your regular hp, so 26,4k. That means every second in DS is 264 hp not lost to degeneration, and it would be just half that if we didn’t take 50% less damage in Shroud.

Maybe I’m missing something, but on paper it doesn’t sound too overwhelming.

Pendragon.8735:

If they create true sustain then I really don’t care what happens to Dhuumfire, they can remove it entirely. Unfortunately they have no even beginning hint of how bring about proper Necro sustain.

I can see why people feel that a “do or die” style of gameplay warrents the ability to do high damage, but I’m rather surprised to see this kind of argument again and again on the forum: our sustain is bad therefore we need burning! That is just wrong.
I agree that the necro has the worst attrition of all classes, we can’t recover from a certain amount of damage dealt to us, so either finish the fight early or get worn down eventually. Imo this needs to change, but it’s in no way related to Dhuumfire.

TheAgedGnome.7520:

I think the upcoming change to Vital Persistence, which will reduce LF drain in DS by 50% instead of the current 25%, is a tacit acknowledgement by the devs that the DS pool is somewhat overcommitted.

If that was true they’d have to reduce the base amount of lf degeneration in DS. Vital Persistence is just a bad trait, that’s all. Even if they buff it to 50% it won’t be used much unless they create more synergy with other traits, like making Dhuumfire proc on LB only, or buffing/merging traits like Death Shiver.

Pendragon.8735:

Very good point and precisely a reason they should not put Dhuumfire on Shroud.

It’s exactly why it should be this way. The access of Dhuumfire needs to be restricted, and it’s not like you don’t do damage without it.

Lily.1935:

For a Condition build, the only skill you really don’t care about is Life blast.

Dhuumfire on Life Blast would solve that.

Lily.1935:

On a power build, the skills are less useful as you only really care about 2 skills.

Maybe in PvE, against other players every single skill is super important to have. Fear, chilled, immobilized… and Tainted Shackles actually does pretty decent damage considering its cast time of only 0.25 sec.

Oldbugga.7029:

I wonder how ANet reconcile this apparent contradiction. To me it appears a double counting of a resource.

I think you have the wrong impression of Death Shroud.
You never have to make a choice between offense and defense when you are using it.

Lily.1935:

Then there is the major problem with death shroud. You can’t break stun while in it.
…a smart foe can use this time to begin to cc you to death.

That really is a problem, more so when you’re getting focused by many opponents at once. (Fingers crossed for more DS skills in the future)
However, in 1v1s a smart foe will save his CC for when you leave Shroud because that’s when you are the most vulnerable.

youlostthegame.8102:

I think more commonly in condition builds is 30 is curses for the +33% duration on scepter skills, the trait allows you to go over 100% condition duration cap with them too.

In WvW Lingering Curse is not a common pick at all.
Despite what the tooltip says, it actually adds 40% to the base duartion. So at 100% condition duration this trait will add another 80% for scepter condis. Total overkill for PvP.