Guild Wars 2

I don’t play with this trait, or any minions except flesh golem for that matter, but if I had to guess I’d assume that this trait already affects both.
If anything the tooltip suggests that their abilities have lower cooldowns.
So imo yes, it should reduce both cds, I’d maybe draw the line at increasing their regular attack speed.

I made what has to be the 1 bajillionth bug report on this in the “Game Bugs” section
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Necromancer-Putrid-Mark/

pls bump it for great justice if necessary, maybe we’ll get better results over there…

This has to be the 100th bug report on this, but if history taught us anything it’s that constant reposting and reminding gets bugs fixed eventually.

1. Like every other staff mark, Putrid Mark will go on full cooldown if interrupted or the cast cancelled by the player.

2. Putrid Mark used to cleanse the caster and allies if they stood on the mark and transfer all conditions to one target. Now it doesn’t cleanse allies at all, and the caster only transfers 3 conditions per target.

All of those bugs have been in the game since the June balance patch!

The non-ally-cleansing and the full cooldown on interrupt are without a doubt bugs.
However, the 3rd change (3 condis per target instead of all to one) could be intentional, but it wasn’t mentioned in any patch notes. In case any dev who reads this doesn’t frequent the necro subforum, we’ve been asking for a clear statement on this for almost 4 month now: Is the 3/target-transfer an intentional change or a bug as well?

If what Pendragon said is true then this sigil out-performs every other on-crit sigil for condition classes.
And aoe-torment sounds really good, as a condi-mancer I’d take this over sigil of earth even if it was just single target.

Btw, Sylpheed is on a posting-spree xD

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Rennoko.5731:

I am just now logging in to investigate… but honestly an on-crit additional condition is just getting ludicrus. You can potentially have 6 conditions proc on a single attack.

Seems like it synergizes really well with epidemic to me.

Necros can only get up to four, unless I’m mistaken. All of our skills that can crit and add more than one condition add bleed. Best we can get is a Deathly Swarm crit with Chilling Darkness and Withering Precision, proccing both Barbed Precision and a sigil. That gets us five.

I believe what he meant was:
1 attack that doesn’t apply any conditions by itself could inflict up 6 conditions with Dhuumfire (burning), Withering Precision(weakness), Barbed Precision (bleeding), Sigil (torment), Rune (confusion) and something like Venomous Aura (poison).

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Unless you mean Signet of Spite critting with this sigil and Chilling Darkness. That’s 7 conditions.

Or you could use Plague Signet to tranfer 11 conditions.
Or (if it worked properly) all 12 conditions with Putrid Mark by cleansing a feared ally.

First of all, coming from any other class means you’re spoiled by their mobility :P

I suppose one of the most popular super-tanky-well-zerg-builds is Ascii’s (it’s on page 4 atm), but he uses a different one for solo stuff.

30/10///30 is a pretty standard trait setup for power builds, the 10 in Curses is usually for Weakening Shroud but could be switched to Focused Rituals in large scale battles.
Most roamers go full Berserker with this and rely on spectral skills for quick lf regen to buff their defense. (not sure if that isn’t too squishy for zergs though)

You could also check out my build. I solo roam for the most part, but I use it for zergs as well without changing anything.

I believe you mean “stomp”…?

You can shroud-stomp but you have to press “F” and f1 (or whatever keybinds you have) at the same time. Once in DS you can’t do it.

@ downed #2: it always interrupts, but that skill like every other doesn’t work on stability or if you’re blinded, also it needs line of sight.

Banjal.7328:

Dagger 4 does the most DMG out of any other Necro OH weapon.

No… unless you transfer enough conditions.
If you’re referring to the skill dmg coefficient: you need to add 50% for every boon removed with Spinal Shivers. And Locust Swarm ticks 10 times or 13 if traited.
Not to mention that Deathly Swarm has a 3 target aoe cap, while all others have 5.

Stubie.5834:

So that even more makes me not understand why D/W is the common choice of weapons. Is because we are suppose to be auto attacking and it gives us a kind of ohh crap button?

Actually, the best power necros I’ve met in WvW run both warhorn and dagger off-hand.
Dagger is clearly to lowest damage option for power necros, but the cleanse and blind makes it a good choice for every build.

According to spoj, D/W is the highest single target dps you can get with a necro in PvE. I’ve never used his build but I’m inclined to agree.
On the other hand: cripple, swiftness and lf regen is (like the aoe daze) a better selling point for PvP.

Actually, Wail of Doom doesn’t do any damage.
In sPvP/WvW off-hand dagger is actually a popular choice for power builds, not for its damage of course, but for the utility.

ManaCraft.5630:

flow.6043:

Plague Signet?
And are you implying that they are better for power builds?
All of our stun breaks are equally good for any type of build.

You think so?

Let’s take plague signet then. Do you think the relative value of plague signet is the same for a build that has two condi transfers already, as opposed to one that has, say, none?

Do you think the relative sacrifices each build makes to accommodate a stun breaker are identical in terms of opportunity cost?

Of course it’s not the same for each build, like you said some might have less cleanses than others. But I wouldn’t draw the line between groups of builds like power and conditions.
Although in case of Plague Signet, I haven’t seen a single power-mancer using it. They usually run off-hand dagger for cleansing in rather glassy shroud builds, so naturally they gain a lot more from Spectral skills, regardless of them breaking stuns.
And from an offensive point of view Plague Signet is a lot stronger on condition builds because the transfered conditions scale with your own damage.

What I meant to say was: life force regeneration, boon access and cleanses are useful for any type of build.

ManaCraft.5630:

If you get hit by a random static field, you probably won’t hit it. But get stunned right in front of the enemy hammer train? You’d probably burn it, don’t you think?

In that case I’d really rather have Spectral Walk and/or Spectral Armor.

ManaCraft.5630:

Of course you’ll have to evaluate each situation correctly when you do get stunned, but requiring skillful play to get the most out of your build and rewarding battlefield awareness are generally good things, wouldn’t you say?

Yes.
Also, battlefield awareness is what influences the utilities I pick before I go into combat.
I actually use all stunbreaks (except for the wurm) on a regular basis, depending on the opponents I might encounter. For example: Plague Signet is the perfect hard-counter to perplexity interrupt-spammers. Against stun warriors Spectral Armor is for sure the better pick.

ManaCraft.5630:

In most cases it’s true that the current selection of stun breakers aren’t good for a WvW condi necro.

Plague Signet?
And are you implying that they are better for power builds?
All of our stun breaks are equally good for any type of build.

ManaCraft.5630:

You can live with having one on your bar, but you’ll likely be making too much of a tradeoff for it to be worth it. Signet of the locust would be a prime candidate.

Oh the irony…
Signet of the Locust is not just a trade-off, it’s a waste of a utility slot. Don’t get me wrong, I use it all the time in WvW, but exclusively out of cambat.
Also, the only reason why anyone uses this signet in combat (but shouldn’t…) is for the increased movement speed. Using it to break stun would completely defeat the purpose of having it in the first place.

Did you ever take a look at all stun breaks?
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stun_break

Necros don’t lack them, 5 stun breaks is exactly average.

Umut.5471:

None of them are on an offensive aoe utility(except well of power).

Almost all stun breaks are defensive skills (so is WoP btw).

Umut.5471:

these unpopular utilities aren’t suitable for many builds.

What builds are you referring to??
All of our stun breaks are popular skills, in fact WoP and the 2 spectrals are some of the most popular skills in WvW, period.

Umut.5471:

they are getting a heal skill with condition removal(which will make them op against a neco)

If only necros had one of those!

I think you have the wrong impression of this skill.
Primarily it’s a cleanse, with access to boons… even vigor and aegis.
Now it’s also a stunbreak, and if you don’t count the worm it’s the one with the lowest cooldown.
The stability is not meant to give the necro access to stability, but really just to let him cast the well uninterrupted.

And what’s “fear getting aegis blocked” got to do with the well?

Actually the stunbreak and stability part is instant cast. The stability covers the cast time of the well, which you can still interrupt yourself (or someone else, like another necro with Corrupt Boon). In that case you will have used the stunbreak, but the well which wasn’t cast goes on full cooldown.

SOUL REAPING

The good

Similar to Curses, this is a trait line that does most things right.
We have defensive buffs on minor traits: more lf regen with Gluttony or a free Spectral Armor on the superb Last Gasp.
Cd reduction traits are always welcome (III, IV, VIII), traits for increased damage (VI, IX, XII), and let’s not forget: the necro’s only source of non-elite stability: XI Foot in the Grave (not counting WoP of course)

The conceptually good, but falling short

Minor gm: Strength of Undeath: The concept is great, more damage when you have more life force. It makes a lot more sense than Blood to Power because not only is the threshold lower but life force regeneration is a lot easier and manageable than healing regular hp. Also 5% dmg is more than you could get with 90 power, so it’s stronger as well.
Falling short: my understanding is that this trait is still bugged..? If not it deserves a spot in the “good” section.

Vital Persistence: 1% less degeneration per second… too weak, not worth taking over other traits.

Mark of Revival: Pretty much the same as Ritual of Life. It’s good to get an extra Well of Blood or Reaper’s Mark, but reviving is just too random and there are better alternatives for sure.

Soul Marks: More life force is good of course, but the one thing that I don’t like about this skill is that you get 3% no matter how many targets you hit.
I believe the necro needs more skills like Locust Warm or the underwater Feast, skills that generate more life force if you’re up against more opponents. Soul Marks would be the perfect opportunity to implement this, I’d give it 1-2% per target.

The bad

I Fear of Death: about as useful as Death’s Embrace, once you go down it’s usually over anyway. No one would pick this over a trait he can use when still on his feet.

V Speed of Shadows: Another movement speed increase, and a weak one at that. Like Qickening Thirst, any traited speed buff that isn’t higher than what you can get with swiftness is a waste.

BLOOD MAGIC

The good

I Dagger Mastery, VIII Ritual Mastery: cd reductions, good.

III Mark of Evasion: Traits that grant extra skills, always good.

VI Transfusion: not bad with the upgraded amount of healing (…if only it would heal the necro as well).

Vampiric Master: atm the only siphoning trait that is worth picking for any build.

The conceptually good, but falling short

All other siphoning traits
Vampiric, Vampiric Precision, Bloodthirst, Vampiric Rituals:
There was some serious hype about all of those traits getting buffed. I guess people were expecting those traits to work similarly effective as the thief’s Signet of Malice. (133 + 0,05x healing power)
What the last patch did instead was make Bloodthirst weaker and all other traits marginally less pathetic.
However, the concept is good of course (as you can see when you play a thief with the signet), but the amount is way too little and we can’t use it in Death Shroud.

Adept Minor: Full of Life: Gain hp when you fall below a threashold is good in theory. But in case of the necro it’s too little and not often enough. Recovering health to get over the 90% mark in combat is a rare occasion, in which case the 5 sec of regeneration would certainly not have made a difference.

Minor gm: Blood to Power: Same reason as Full of Life. As a necro it’s extremely hard to stay above 90% hp in combat. 90 Power is nice, but you will rarely ever get to use them.

IV Ritual of Life: I suppose it’s a good trait, but I’ve never seen it being used in any build. This might in part be due to the fact that necros just don’t do support builds.

IX Deathly Invigoration: Good concept, amount too little.

XI Fetid Consumption: Why is this a grandmaster trait in Blood Magic?
This would be a contender for a merger with Necromantic Corruption in Death Magic, so it would be a viable defensive alternative to the higher damage option that is Death Nova.

The bad

Quickening Thirst: Just no. There are other and more effective sources of increasing movement speed. This trait is nothing but a waste.

CURSES

The good

Almost all traits here are somewhere between good and outstanding. It doesn’t matter which build you use, you probably have at least 10 points in Curses. This is how a traitline should look like.

The bad

I Toxic Landing : Pretty much like Death’s Embrace, every class has a falling dmg reduction trait. At best situational for Jumping Puzzles etc, but anywhere else it’s completely overshadowed by other traits.
Maybe it would get more attention if it spawned a Well (of Darkness?) instead of a poison cloud.

XII Withering Precision : Not worthy of a gm spot, even if the icd was lower (30 sec as far as I can remember..? ridiculous).

DEATH MAGIC

The good

Minor GM: Deadly Strength Moar Powaaa!

III Minion Master, V Staff Mastery : Cd reductions are always good.

VII Greater Marks : still a good trait, even after the base size increase.

X Fleash of the Master, XI Death Nova : the two traits you want to have as a minion mancer.

The conceptually good, but falling short

I Dark Armor : It only works with 3 skills on land, 2 underwater, and 1 downed. (do they, actually? Or are half of them still bugged?)
Too situational, better alternatives.

IV Ritual of Protection : Aoe protection, good in theory but 3 seconds is just too little. And again, no one would (or should) pick this trait over the better alternatives.

VI Shrouded Removal : It uses to be a popular pick for power builds, but now they all go for Weakening Shroud and off-hand dagger.
It’s again one of the traits which fall short to better alternatives.

XII Necromantic Corruption : Boon removal with minions, ok-ish in theory because MMs don’t run Well of Corruption or Corrupt Boon, but a 10% chance for 1 boon… weak, and of course Death Nova is the better alternative.

The Bad

Adept Minor: Reanimator : For me this trait does not deserve a “conceptually good”. Maybe if it was a major trait, but then: how good would it need to be to replace Minion Master, Flesh of the Master or Death Nova? It would have to be a different trait all together, Reanimator as it is now is just bad.

Master Minor: Protection of the Horde: Ladies and gentlemen, the worst trait of the necromancer! The. Worst.
It’s not only pathetic for minion mancers, but an even worse imposition on non-minion builds.

II Spiteful Vigor: If there’s one boon that necros have good access to it’s retaliation. 5 sec when healing… weak, no thx. No one would (or should) pick this over a different trait.

IV Reaper’s Protection: I know that a lot of people use this trait, and they would all put it in the “good trait” section.
But imo this is a bad trait. One hour cooldown for an effect you have zero control over. Bad in general and a waste of trait points.

Death Shiver: Who in his right mind would invest 20 points in Death Magic and shoulder the burden of the two minor traits just to get this trait? It’s a trait for power/shroud-builds so who would take points out of Spite or Soul Reaping for this?
Even the tooltip is a mockery: “Constantly apply vulnerability…” = 3 stacks every 3 seconds.
The radius is too small, vulnerability is too little, targets are too few… nothing here is worth the investment.

SPITE LINE

The good

Minor Adept: Parasitic Bond: Really good. Necros are so desperate to regenerate health in combat, that I sometimes drop out of Shroud if I see that someone I tagged is about to die (then again, healing in DS pls…).

II Spiteful Talisman, IV Signet Mastery, VIII Axe Training
Traits that reduce cds are always good, especially if they give extra perks like might, higher range or more damage.

V Spiteful Spirit: Retaliation is good, and this trait adds it in a way that gives Death Shroud another layer of defense. Very popular in most PvP builds.

VI Reaper’s Might, IX Training of the Master, XII Close to Death : more damage, nuf said.

X Chill of Death : extremely effective PvP trait.

The conceptually good, but falling short

Minor Master: Death into Life : just too weak. I’m not sure if the problem is the low amount you get from this trait or the fact that our healing in general is so bad that 50-150 healing power won’t change a lot.

Minor GM: Siphoned Power : Either the hp threshold or the might duration is too low… or the trait is just not worthy of a grandmaster spot.
As it is now the trait is probably only useful for someone who goes into Shroud when he falls below 25% hp and is then hit with a lot of very weak attacks within 2 seconds. Too situational.

The Bad

Death’s Embrace: Anyone who ever used this now dropped it because a: there are a lot of better alternatives, and b: because the downed hp was fixed.
This trait has no place in anyone’s build anymore.
I get that “+dmg while down” is a standard trait for every class, but it should probably get an additional feature to make it more attractive.

III Spiteful Removal: at best this is a PvE trait, but when does a necro have problems with cleansing in a PvE environment? This trait doesn’t even have a niche use.

VII Spiteful Marks: 10% damage on skills with a long cooldown and not much direct damage in the first place. It’s not only overshadowed by other traits but conceptually bad.
I’m a staff-build user, and the extra dps I’d get from this trait is lower than 1 stack of bleeding.
Even in a power build, it would need a 30-50% damage increase to make it worth considering over other Spite traits.

Good, conceptually good, and bad
XI Dhuumfire:
It’s good as in: huge damage.
It’s bad as in: the damage is so huge that it’s totally overpowered, it requires no skill because it auto-procs and has absolutely no drawbacks in terms of lower defense etc.
The infamous “condition meta” was introduced with this trait, necros who use this in WvW have a similar reputation to stun warriors or perplexity users.
It’s conceptually good as in: it should be 2 stacks of torment instead of burning. Or moved to gm Curses together with Terror so you can’t have both, essentially making it a PvE trait.

Sorry, by “you” I meant Ascii.

Asche.5362:

flow.6043:

Damage and survivability are completely seperate issues

Excuse me? Damage and survivability are two sides of the same coin. If you add to one, you need to substract at the other.

Maybe to the extent of taking soldier’s over berzerker gear (for example…)

With traits and class mechanics it’s more complicated, but following that black and white logic, one would assume that the necro’s survivability was nerfed at the expense of adding Dhuumfire. But that is not true at all, quite the contrary, we’ve seen some decent improvements in life force regeneration with the same patch. Additions and cd reductions of stunbreaks, followed up with a doubled lf pool…. just to mention a few things.

Don’t get me wrong, our survivability is still lacking, but the addition of Dhuumfire had nothing to do with it, much like the removal of this trait wouldn’t change the need for further increase of attrition capabilities.

So yes, maybe that statement was a little vague, but in regards to Dhuumfire: definitely not the same coin. If anything, you made a perfect discription of what happend with that patch:

Asche.5362:

If you add to one, you need to substract at the other. Otherwise you end up with an unbalaced class

Oblivion.8307:

you should really use death shroud 2 a lot more judging from the 5v1 clip.

Ha.. when I watched your stream live a couple of weeks ago, I also noticed that you rarely ever use Dark Path.

I don’t get why people make excuses for Dhuumfire. We don’t need it to do enough damage, there is no downside to having it, it’s rediculously overpowered and it’s a total no brain auto-proc.

And yes, our survivability is bad, that does in no way justify the existence of Dhuumfire.
Damage and survivability are completely seperate issues:
Dhuumfire should be removed regardless of how bad or good our mobility and tankyness is.
Our survivability in WvW is the worst of any class, in part due to our lack of mobility, but mostly because of our horribly bad healing and because lf regeneration doesn’t scale with an increasing number of attackers. That needs to change as well, not as a trade-off for reduced damage, but regardless.

Pendragon.8735:

They would also have to make the Torments max damage be greater than the Burning if they changed it, since Burning has great additional value as a cover condition and now we’d be losing one condition overall, since Torment is usually on an enemy already. And because they already nerfed Terror to make room for Dhuumfire.

The whole point of removing Dhuumfire is to remove a cover condition and reduce damage.
And it would have to balanced around the fact that your opponent is constantly moving, because no one stands still because he has torment on him. Since it does about ~25% damage of burning in a condi build, 2 (max 3) stacks of torment would be an appropriate amount (if it was otherwise the same trait..).

Btw Terror wasn’t nerfed because of Dhuumfire, but because our access to fear was buffed.

Asche.5362:

ManaCraft.5630:

Now I can’t speak for sPvP, but in WvW dhuumfire is just overkill, no question. My necro often has no problems putting an opponent into an unrecoverable position just by autoattacking.

Nyee… I don’t see Dhuumfire as a problem in WvW at all. When you are running in the big PvDoor Zergs, you will fight other Zergs. In those big battles your conditions will be cleansed sooner than you can apply them.

This is not an issue with Dhuumfire but conditions in general, which is why zerg-fighters tend to run power builds.

Asche.5362:

If you are roaming however, there is a different mechanic canceling out the OP-ness of Dhuumfire: We are slow like a snail crawling uphills. If the condi pressure gets too high you disengage and then attack again.

That’s not really an argument in favor Dhuumfire.
Also, escaping a necro is not at all as easy as you make it out to be, and the fact that players will escape you sometimes doesn’t make Dhuumfire any less overpowered.

Andele.1306:

Bhawb.7408:

The Grandmaster trait being one condition option makes it so a full damage Necro is incapable of also having major defenses (only at most 20 traits left over, instead of 50), and that is good. We’re also very hybrid by nature, so power hardly hurts.

20 points left, huh where should we put it, oh yeah A-net butchered necro 1vx to make Sarmor op in 1v1 and Swalk worthless unless exploring, maybe a second Sarmor(crippled Ignore Pain) might give me a lot of free defensive options.

Indeed. I don’t know why some still think Dhuumfire comes with a drawback in defense, because it doesn’t.

Bhawb.7408:

Necromancers still really need torment or burning, without it our only real DPS condition is bleeding, which just isn’t enough. Pre-burning patch, pure-condition necros just weren’t up to par, they really only ran with Sun Spirit (gives them burning), Engineers (to feed them burning via Epidemic, and also compliment the bleeding), or were just kicked out in favor of an Engi, who’s damage couldn’t just be shrugged away.

No one asked for more damage before Dhuumfire.

Bleeding alone does more than enough damage. If anything we needed cover conditions to make cleansing harder.
Imo the introduction of other improvments that came at the same time as Dhuumfire would have been enough to increase damage and protect bleedstacks. Like Tainted Shackles, or the reduced cd of Signet of Spite.
The damage of Dhuumfire itself is total overkill, the shorter duration in sPvP somewhat helps to not make it as embarrassingly op as it is in WvW, where it gets about as much hate as perplexity runes.

Lopez.7369:

This ship has sailed.

I’m afraid that’s true, although nothing would make more sense than changing it to torment.

I’m in the middle of rewriting parts of my build (it’s a staff hybrid), but the bottom line for gear and traits will be: replace sigil of paralyzation with force and trait Banshee’s Wail instead of Master of Corruption.
I do have a set of ascended berserker trinkets, which I occasionally switch out for the soldier pieces in PvE, you could also go with rampager… the point is, if you spend more time in PvE than WvW you don’t need to be as tanky and could squeeze out a little more damage with glassier prefixes.
And if you want to have The Crossing out at all times, you can also put 2 sigils of corruption on the other set to fill the kill stacks (that’s twice as fast anyway).

Bhawb.7408:

flow.6043:

It is definitely not the strongest heal.

Heals me for 13,000, and heals for up to 41,000 total. Its your opinion that it isn’t the strongest heal, but it still heals for the most of any healing skill. You can debate that there are better ones all you want, have fun, there isn’t any point debating it.

If you create a scenario with an unviable necro build using WoB and 4 additional players who park in the well for 10 seconds, then you might as well asume that an elementalist uses all his aoe heals at once including waterfields and all other 4 players use their blast finishers on it. That is not only a realistic scenario, but the healing of WoB pales in comparison.

You might as well say “Heal X” is good because it heals for 100k hp, but the cooldown is 5 min and it’s the only heal the necro has. No one would use that, the fact that it is one skill that heals for a high amount doesn’t make it acceptable.

Consume Conditions is a cleanse, the amount it heals for is actually really bad. But the utility on it is better for group fights than covering up other combo fields with WoB.
And by “better group support” I mean: you’re less likely to die with an extra cleanse and rally all downed enemies.
That’s why (almost) every necro uses CC.

Check out Ascii’s well build for WvW.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Ascii-s-WvW-Wellomancer-Build/
It’s super tanky, so if you want to do PvE as well I’d take more zerker gear and maybe a dagger instead of the axe. Also, Banshee’s Wail instead of Chilling Darkness.

In case any devs are just checking the suggestion threads but not the necro forum, there’s a little more going on in the twin thread over there
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Make-well-of-blood-a-water-field/

+1 to WoB becoming a waterfield btw

Bhawb.7408:

Well of Blood already has a 5.4 self scaling and a 4.4 allied scaling AoE.

The self heal adds 1:1 for healing power, and 0,4 of healing power to each puls. So with 1200 healing power that would be 6440 hp initial healing and 11 pulses for 632 hp.

Bhawb.7408:

Would making it a water field be strong? Of course. But I just don’t see the strongest heal in the game (single and AoE) in terms of HP healed per use getting even more healing added on.

It is definitely not the strongest heal. Even with Ritual Mastery and 1200 healing power you barely average what warriors get with their healing signet without any investment in healing.
Every ele heal heals for that amount as well, plus they get a ton of extra attunement/weapon healing. Arvid already talked about the engi.
Thieves regenerate 330 hp with Shadow’s Rejuvenation just by being stealthed.
Ranger: Troll Unguent…? Oh yeah, and let’s not forget the ranger’s Healing Spring, that skill is just a stronger version of Well of Blood. It already is a water field, has a shorter cd by default and cures conditions on top of that.

The necro on the other hand, the one class that has to rely on hp alone when it comes to damage mitigation, has the worst healing of any class. The worst!
If there’s one thing keeping us from doing attrition fighting (besides our bad mobility) it’s the fact that we simply can’t recover from damage done to our regular health pool in combat.
WoB becoming a water field would be far from OP, it would merely be a step in the right direction.

But that was the point, Well of Blood is not fine, non of our healing skills are fine. They should all get buffed by a significant amount. And making WoB a water field would just be a start, at best.

I just want to add a little to what the others already said said:

alanis.6094:

the ‘item creep’ that came with Ascended items.

Ascended weapons, 6 trinkets and 8 infusions will add 182 stat points to pure exotic gear, or 146 stats and 8% crit damage. Not a big deal, but nice to have. You definitely won’t fall behind in WvW.

They didn’t really make them cheaper or easier to get, there are just more ways of acquiring them now:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Ascended_equipment

alanis.6094:

I only play WvW, small and large groups
…
Wvw meta- Conditionmancers still hold their own/strong; or rampant condition removal an issue?

@ Dhuumfire, Epidemic, Corrupt Boon, Dire:
It all depends on how small and large your small and large groups are.
In WvW the enemy can reach a critical mass that is almost immune to conditions, at that point power heavy attacks become a much more reliable source of damage. I’d say up to 15-20 ppl you’ll do well with conditions though.

Corrupt Boon: I don’t know if they changed anything, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen the last complaint about that skill not hitting properly on the forum.

Epidemic: 8 month ago epidemic didn’t require line of sight, now it does. You can no longer select targets behind walls and spread the joy. Other than that it’s still good enough to be on every condi necros bar.

alanis.6094:

Signet of Spite- seemed buffed and common on builds I pull up. Fairly strong now?

It’s the same except for the now acceptable cooldown, also the passive now gives 180 power instead of 90. And it was indirectly buffed by weakness now applying to both critical and non-critical hits.
They also merged Signet Mastery with Signet Power, now it gives both a reduced cd and 3 stacks of might.

alanis.6094:

Spectral Wall- buffed, but worth slotting in WvW?

It’s still an eatheral field and gives protection to every ally who runs through.
So yes, definitely worth slotting.

Soulferin.5236:

flow.6043:

@ staff: what stats do you have on the rest of your gear?

I don’t have yet, waiting for your opinion. Ofc the best is to have same stats on armor and weapons, question is which are the best? Becouse con dmg is not so good on staff i thought about soldier’s or zerk…

In your original post you say you’re using wells. That would indicate a power heavy build, but then you use a scepter which is a condition weapon.
Also, you said you’re playing PvE mostly but also a little bit of WvW. If you want to use the same build for both then you’ll have to find a mix of doing as much damage as possible for PvE and being durable enough to prevail in a PvP environment.

The staff can really go both ways (condition or power), although it is stronger in a condition build. However, Shroud skills and wells scale with power.
So if you want to have the staff as a main weapon I’d recommend a hybrid build.
On a well focused build: power.
If you wan’t to stick with the scepter: conditions.

Nudd.2970:

like choke point in WvW

Yeah, I remember now… filling those choke points with light fields… good times!

Seriously, it’s already easy to get perma retaliation with a necro, you absolutely do not need more by blasting Well of Blood.

All the direct damage you do in Death Shroud scales with the weapon strength of the set you’re holding at that time, so do all damage modifiers like traits that increase damage for a certain weapon. Since the staff’s weapon strength is higher than the axe’s you need Axe Mastery to do as much damage with Shroud kills.

@ staff: what stats do you have on the rest of your gear?

First suggestion: use a different build calculator :P
This one seems to be outdated, Greater Marks is now a master trait.
Other than that it looks ok, just take Staff Mastery instead of Greater Marks.
If you want to run the condi build that almost every necro uses these days: Go 30 in Spite (30/20///20) with Spiteful Spirit, Chill of Death and Dhuumfire. The 10/20 traits in Curses and Soul Reaping are spot on.

I think that this Vampiric Leap is a cool idea, I’d change 2 things though:
6 sec stun… way too much, not sure if you’d need that anyway if you get immobilized as well.
8x life steal for 1/2 of healing power: not good enough, make that at least 1:1 in addidtion to a base amount.

Bhawb, I think you are overvaluing all of our healing skills:

Necros usually run around with 18-28k health (if you gear for it and get all wvw buffs you could even reach 40k). It’s quite pathetic to be the one class that relies on nothing but a big health pool for damage mitigation, but is then equipped with healing skills that just heal for 30-40% (in a standard build) each time you use them. That means, if you’re very low on health you need more than a minute to heal back to full hp… if you take no dmg in the meantime.

Bhawb.7408:

Self healing – 16,000 – 40s max CD
Allied Healing – 10,000 – same CD

This is not a big deal at all, quite the contrary, it’s exactly what I’d expect when I have 1200 healing power. And this thread is about WoB becoming a water field, if the well heals you for 13k as it is then the 1,5k for each blast finisher isn’t that outragous.
And as you said, you’d still pick Consume Conditions over the well because of the utility on it. The heal itself is, again, just mediocre.

Imo all of our healing skills should be buffed, we should also be able to heal in Death Shroud of course… and just look at the siphoning desaster that’s going on in Blood Magic. Making Well of Blood a waterfield would just be the first step I’d take to improve our healing. The real appeal of a necro’s waterfield doesn’t come with an additional 3k selfblasted heal, the group in sPvP and WvW should be the benefactor. Because as it stands, even for group support no necro takes a slightly bigger heal over a cleanse.

To be a little more specific:
I’d not only up the basic amount of healing, but I would add a variation of the active part of Signet of the Locust to every healing skill.
Like Well of Blood: every foe who stands in the Well gives 800 hp to the caster when the well is placed.
Blood Fiend: if he is killed, 800 hp aoe siphon near the spot where the Blood Fiend died.
Consume C: just the same effect as the signet.

This would be a way of letting the one damage mitigation mechanic of the necro scale a little bit with being outnumbered.

First of all, torment is a cover condition for bleeding, it blocks a cleansing spot. Also, if it applied bleeding as well you’d just have even more problems with the 25 stacks cap.

Secondly, Tainted Shackles applies 10sec of torment and just 1 second of immoblized. Why would you complain that a target gets less dmg from torment for just one or two ticks? It’s not guaranteed that your target will move for the entire duration of torment anyway. And the damage from the immob-blast alone makes up for the potentially lost torment ticks.

You also have to consider that all DS skills are used by both power and condition builds. Power necros profit from immobilized targets a lot more, and less from torment dmg of course.

And last but not least: the immobilizing part of Tainted Shackles can be dodged.
But seriously… I can’t imagine a scenario in which I’d rather have my opponent avoid the shackles-blast than taking a little less damage from torment.

Brando.1374:

Kashijikito.1864:

flow.6043:

Kashijikito.1864:

Has anyone tried rune of the necro with a 30/20/0/0/20 terror build?

You mean… has anyone ever tried to max fear duration? Yes.
It’s capped at 100% like all other conditions, if that’s what you mean.

So how effective is it?

only effective against classes with no stability or stun breakers.

That would also be true for 80% fear duration, w/o the runes.
But in case you successfully land that fear, having those extra 20% guarantees a second or third damage tick (depending on the skill). Also, your target runs away from you a little longer.
Btw this combo only makes sense in sPvP.
In PvE/WvW there are better ways to increase fear duration… and better runes, like Runes of Scavenging for example

Correct, but I wasn’t talking about letting it tick away.
What you describe was actually even more true before the lf pool was increased. You sometimes had to save up as much lf as possible to eventually use it for dmg spikes, even if that meant taking more damage to your regular hp. Today you don’t have to be as economical about it from an offensive pov, but you can shift a lot of it in favor of your defense.

@Drarnor:
Strange. I believe you, but in my case I swear it was different.
One solution to this might be the part in the patchnotes that says “Previously, about 10% of the bar was hidden”. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I used carrion with vitality as a minor stat and you used shaman with vit as main. So maybe the “hidden” value was cut off on my carrion set too but I couldn’t see it because it still said 100%.

Pendragon.8735:

Since the damage being hit in half applies after SR additions, it means your DS pool getting bigger is a lot more valuable than say raw health acquired from the blood line, which now gives far less to DS than it would if indeed the DS number was 100% of our health and mitigated at our armor level.

It’s not just that. Life force can be generated a lot quicker, which makes it even more valuable than just the extra % it has on our regular hp.
In a way the buff to the lf pool indirectly improved our regular healing as well because it allowed us to stay in DS longer to protect our hp.

Kashijikito.1864:

Has anyone tried rune of the necro with a 30/20/0/0/20 terror build?

You mean… has anyone ever tried to max fear duration? Yes.
It’s capped at 100% like all other conditions, if that’s what you mean.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

flow.6043:

And I already noticed a nerf to having weapon sets with different vitality stats. If you had 100% before the patch and switched weapons it stayed at 100%. Now you always lose some when you switch to the weapon with less vitality and back.

Actually, that’s been in the game since release. I’ve been running rabid scepter/dagger and a shaman’s staff for ages. I’m quite familiar with how changing vitality affects your life force.

You didn’t properly read my post.
I’ve been using carrion+rampager for a very long time. Before the patch you would lose life force only if the vitality weapon set wasn’t at 100% but still higher than on your non-vitality set. If both sets were at 100% you didn’t lose anything, now you do.
Imo a weird change… why would you “take damage” by swapping weapons anyway?

Bweaty.9187:

So, what’s the story. The amount of life it shows, is true and were missing ~10k, or the life it shows is wrong and were stronger than it displays?

Here’s the deal:
For now all you have to do is pretend that whatever number is displayed on your lf bar is actually double.

Since anet devs were so adamant about the lf pool being 60% over the past months while the entire player base proved that it was 120% this entire time, there are 3 options for what’s going to happen in future patches:

1. The devs will fix the bug that causes necros to only take half dmg in DS.

2. The devs will recognize that the current state of defense that the lf pool gives necros is what it should have been all along and fix the tooltip by doubling the value.

3. Nothing.

flow.6043:

The displayed lf and the value calculated by the players is correct, that would mean that there is a bug that reduces all dmg taken in DS by 50%, which effectively means double the value.

I just tested for direct, falling and condition damage: every form of dmg is exactly 50% of what you take outside of DS.

Btw the total lf value is 60% of my regular hp (120% actually…).

And I already noticed a nerf to having weapon sets with different vitality stats. If you had 100% before the patch and switched weapons it stayed at 100%. Now you always lose some when you switch to the weapon with less vitality and back.

No surprise so far…

Wolfheart.1938:

perplexity mesmers and stunlock warriors…

That sounds a lot like Zumy :P
And I doubt it was Moon, he uses Perplexity on his necro as well.

I’ve tested life force as well with damage from attacks, conditions or falling damage. And I even got close to 140% without any points Soul Reaping. The armor value has nothing to do with it.
And that can mean 3 things:
- The displayed lf in the video is correct and we’re looking at a nerf that will take almost 30% of our current hp away.
- The displayed lf in the video is too low and we’re going to see a tooltip fix in the future.
- The displayed lf and the value calculated by the players is correct, that would mean that there is a bug that reduces all dmg taken in DS by 50%, which effectively means double the value.

Brando.1374:

No dumfire should stay where its at.

…said the guy who wrote in the other thread that Dhuum/Terror is a noob build.
The only point of moving Terror to gm would be to force every conditionmancer to go 30/30/x/x/x, because no necro would take defensive traits over the damage that comes with those two.

I’m with Rennoko here, Dhuumfire needs to go.

Btw is there a reason why would you ask this question?