Guild Wars 2

Since SweetCream’s build is somewhat related to mine…

Chuck Nizzle.6283:

From recent testing in PvP, I have found that the initial damage per second with the axe is higher than with the scepter/dagger. .

That is one of the reasons why you want an axe in the first place. It’s a staff build so most of the time you’ll switch betwen staff and Shroud until you need the axe burst.

Chuck Nizzle.6283:

However, overall, I am still able to kill things faster with a maxed out condition build, than a power build with the axe/warhorn/staff.

The only time I ever switched to a more condi heavy scepter build was against Liadri at Queens Gauntlet, because auto attacking with huge condition damage from a distance is a lot easier when you have to run and dodge certain death the entire time.

Chuck Nizzle.6283:

My question is, why would you go for power when you can do more damage with conditions, .

You don’t do more damage unless you’re trying to take down a champion npc like Liadri by yourself. Against other npcs or players your damage isn’t higher at all.
Plus, when you go hybrid you eliminate certain weaknesses that come with a pure condi build, like being completely useless in world event or dungeon bosses when you condis are getting pushed off by other players constantly. Or objects and structures.. or being hardcountered by classes like stun warriors.

Chuck Nizzle.6283:

and why aren’t you using more minions, when in fact, with the right amount of minions, you can do even more damage with the axe/minions than a condition build..

It’s not a minion build.

Chuck Nizzle.6283:

Lastly, why not go all dire?

It’s not a pure condi build.

Chuck Nizzle.6283:

A hybrid build with more condition damage than power just makes more sense to me.

A build with more condition dmg than power is likely to be a pure condition build since you have 916 power by default. 1300/2100 is a good ratio for this hybrid build.

SweetCream.8051:

bleed ticks for 100/s, burning 300, fear 600, poison 200

bleed: 107, burning: 635, fear: 627/940, poison: 214

SweetCream.8051:

I feel you have that element of surprise that the typical scepter/dagger/staff necro won’t have.

That is indeed one of the perks.

Oblivion.8307:

starting with 0% life force forces you to actually realize how to gain life force and apply that to real combat situations.

You need to know how to regenerate life force even when you start with more than 0%. And there’s really not much to learn other than “press button of the skill that gives lf..”

Banjal.7328:

Day one Necro here and I think 0% LF at the start is fine.

Imo it is not fine at all, and there are two reasons for that:

1. Our regular healing is pathetic considering how much health we have. A standard necro build will heal with Consume Conditions for somewhere between 6-7k hp… every 25 seconds. Let’s be generous here and assume we’ll sprinkle some regeneration on top of that and average 8k/25sec, that is somewhere between 30-40% of a necro’s total health.
The point is, you can’t recover from big hits to your regular health pool. You have to anticipate bursts and soak them up with life force. If you start with 0% and your opponent opens with a 5k hit… that is 1 main heal right there, gone for the rest of the fight.
Imo our healing could be stronger anyway, but it is balanced around the fact that we can protect our regular hp with a faster regenerating second hp bar.

2. If you really had to start without life force, you’d be very limited in how you can open a fight. Every necro would struggle for life force in the beginning. They would all have to stick to certain skills that generate it, most of which need to hit the enemy so not only would it be limiting our initial use of skills but become very predictable for the opponent. If they know what generates life force they could try to avoid those skills in particular and dry us out before the fight has even started.
Some builds do of course generate lf better than others, but this is another issue: you’d limit build diversity. For example all condi necros who pick Spectral Attunement with Grasp, Wall and Armor would have a clear advantage over those who don’t.

So again, imo at least 20% for every fight, but above that it totally depends on the opponent.

I started a similar topic a month ago
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Life-Force-in-WvW-duels/

People who say we should start with zero are those who don’t play necro. Other than those there seem to be 2 mentalities regarding life force in WvW:

1. Since this simulates a “real” encounter you’d have in WvW, it’s safe to assume that the necro has full life force, you definitely won’t ever encounter a necro in the middle of nowhere with 0% lf.

2. Necros should start with the amount of life force they have available at the start of an sPvP match, so 20-30% if you desummon minions.

My personal style/experience:
I almost never fill my life force completely, I start with 20% or whatever is left from the last duel. The reason: I’m impatient… I’d rather get the next duel going than running off somewhere to kill npcs.
Of course this causes me some losses that would’ve been clear wins otherwise, but that just makes dueling more exciting for me (and my opponent).

Alright, since there still seems to be some confusion about how the mark finisher works, here are some details:

1. As some here have mentioned allready: double finisher, one when you place the mark and one when it’s triggered, both will only combo when the mark is triggered but the placement-finisher will always display the combo-icon before that.

2. It is actually very reliable, it never fails to combo, even the placement-finisher.
Why do people experience “random” results with this? Because: the blast area is the entire mark surface, but in order to get the combo the center of the mark needs to be placed on a combo field.
That means: sometimes ppl stand in a field but place the center outside which doesn’t trigger the combo. It also means that you can actually stand outside of a combo field but still on the mark and get the combo as long as the center hits the field.

3. Multiple combo fields (this in not specific to Putrid Mark but I’ll mention it anyway):
Which combo has priority when several different fields are overlapping?
There are two rules:
a: the nearest field (again determined by the center) has priority, so the center of the field which is closest to the center of the mark will trigger the combo.
b: the first field has prioriy if they have the same center (like when placed without groundtargeting). Unlike other mechanics in the game “new” does not push out “old”.
For example, a necro places on himself: Well of Blood, Well of Darkness and Corrosive Poison Cloud (in that order). Any blast finisher in this area will trigger retaliation because the light field has priotity over dark and poison.

4. the double finisher actually means that you get double the combo effect, like 6 stacks of might instead of just 3, or double duration of whatever stacks in duration.
Effects like Chaos Armor are the exception to that, apparently it doesn’t stack and will therefore last 3 seconds either way.

5. The placement finisher can combo the effect even if the combo field it was placed on doesn’t exist anymore, it “remembers” the combo for the entire 30 seconds the mark stays alive. The icon you see when it doesn’t really combo anything (yet) serves as a visual feedback for the player so he knows the mark gives an effect if he stands on it when triggered.

6. Because of the double finisher principle, the mark can actually trigger two different combos, see attatchment:
In the first panel I charge the mark with Chaos Armor on the eatheral field of Spectral Wall. I then place Corrosive Poison Cloud on the mark and pulled the warrior so the mark gets triggered. Result: combo weakness on the npc, Chaos Armor on me.

Bhawb.7408:

The most they can do is make small attempts to balance builds, but how do you balance 1/10th of a game mode where the other 9/10ths by design cannot be balanced? Why would you even bother? They take away things that break the game (like a lot of PvE tools did), but they aren’t ever going to balance around WvW because it is completely impossible.

I assumed we were talking about builds since Dhuumfire started this argument in the first place…
The way you descibed WvW as an unbalanced game mode is just the fact that higher populated servers have a higher score. No one would ever say this is unfair, you can overpower your opponent with numbers, that’s just the same in sPvP. Yes, you’ll have some more people in other parts of the map doing something else… in WvW you might not, the server score will reflect this as a result, that’s not a big deal to anyone who plays WvW.

Also, the reasoning about not having the same resources etc, I might as well apply that to sPvP and take it to the other extreme: The only way to balance PvP is to reduce the entire gamemode to a 1v1 deathmatch with just 1 class with only 1 available build.
Fact is, people run different builds and some counter others… doesn’t matter which game mode you play. But if a build (trait, rune or w/e) is clearly a lot stronger than it’s supposed to be, then it shouldn’t be left as it is just because it doesn’t have an impact on the WvW server score.

Long story short, you can main staff but you wanna go hybrid with it.
So unless you want to keep your full rabid gear, this might be what you’re looking for
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Build-Staff-Corruption/
This guy asked me a few questions about my build recently
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Dire-Hybrid-Mancer/
we continued a rather lenghty discussion via pms, if you’re interested I might share some of it here.

Nemesis.8593:

Brando.1374:

FinalPatriot.8034:

Well, if it’s a noob build, he sure made me look stupid. For a moment, I was considering deleting a character just to roll a Necro and see what the deal was.

its a noob build in the sense that any necro can run it and be decent with it.

…
So many noob builds that players have to press a few buttons to be decent…

The fact that there are several other builds like that shouldn’t serve as an excuse to keep Dhuumfire.
Also, it doesn’t require any extra clicking, you just auto-proc huge damage, hence “noob build”.

Bhawb.7408:

Its an unbalance-able game mode.

SPvP is a lot simpler than WvW, fewer players, less equipment, no food buffs… it’s a toned down version of what you could do with PvE gear, but just because there are a lot more variables doesn’t mean that you can’t balance it. And it’s kind of a lame approach to hugely overpowered gimmick builds or traits or runes (perplexity) to say: well, it doesn’t matter because it’s all unbalanced anyway.

FinalPatriot.8034:

1. I would like to play a heavy condition build

Necroooo

FinalPatriot.8034:

that also provides a great deal of survivability.

…nope

FinalPatriot.8034:

2. How well does your class do in team support, AOE damage, and solo roaming?

Aoe damage is the necros team support for the most part. They debuff enemies rather than buff allies.

FinalPatriot.8034:

How is your mobility in WvW?

Bad… but that’s not always a bad thing.

FinalPatriot.8034:

4. Lastly, do ya’ll know of a video that provides an in-depth overview of your class and really explains the mechanics?

Nemesis’ videos are mostly about PvE mechanics.
WvW is different for every necro depending on their build, so I’m not sure there is a guide that explains basic stuff for all necros.
There are some necros who live stream sometimes, maybe that helps.

Bhawb.7408:

30/20/0/0/20 is a good build, should work just fine for WvW. Just be warned its a very glassy build and its meant for team fighting (or zerging in WvW), and you’ll be using wells most likely there.

It’s actually not just “fine” but at least 50% of all necros in WvW run this build.
And like Targuil said, you’ll have Dire and/or Rabid gear with it so you are absolutely not glassy at all, plus Last Gasp and 20% extra life force from Soul Reaping and possibly some decent additional healing from Scavenging runes. If anything this makes you a tank.

People seem to have settled into accepting that necros have access to long duration burning with absolutely no drawbacks.
Necros shouldn’t have it in the first place, yet the duration is still unnerfed for WvW despite being a PvP environment just like sPvP.

I, for one, am still hoping that it’s going to be removed alltogether at some point… or replaced with torment.

Targuil.3741:

From the few times i’ve used it in wvw, no groups under 3 players stood ANY chance whatsoever.

All this tells us is that your opponents were super weak.
There is no build (for any class) that can handle a 2v1 with equally skilled players.

Hey guys. I feel like I can contribute here since I do not only main a necro, but play him exclusively in WvW and participate in duels whenever I get the chance.

There are some things I want to clarify first:

hyman.7526:

Corrupt boon is a little bit harder, but just remember the goal of the corrupt boon is to turn your stability into a fear. The necro will not use it for anything else except your stability, that is assuming hes a competent necro.

That is not true. There are certain key-boons that (competent) necros are looking for depending on the situation, like turning big might stacks into weakness, retaliation into 3xconfusion, fury into blindness…

hyman.7526:

Both of these utilities require the necro to face you.

Only true for Signet of Spite. Corrupt Boon needs line of sight, but can also hit if you stand behind the necro.

There are many necro builds that qualify as Terrormancer, because all you really need is the trait “Terror”. There just is no condi necro who doesn’t use this trait, so the outcome of a warrior/necro 1v1 very much depends on the rest of the build.
Chances are you’re going to encounter a condi necro who also uses Dhuumfire, that’s the super cheesy ez-mode fotm build these days. 30/20///20 is the most common one.
Lucky for you though it’s the easiest one for warriors to counter with BStance, because they usually run Rabid or Dire stats with it and have close to no direct damage.
So if you encounter someone with a pure condi build then in most cases it’s the warriors fight to lose.

I can give you some general advice against any necro build though:

Most necros will set up their burst by incorporating Death Shroud. Note: the closer you are to the necro once he goes into Shroud, the stronger and faster will be his burst.
What you need to do as a warrior is sync up your burst with the necros rotation so that he eats all your stuns and dmg once he drops out of Death Shroud. A necro has horrible healing. The only thing that generates half decent is life force, but once out of Shroud it’s on a 10 sec cd, which means: all the dmg you do now will be almost unrecoverable for the necro for the rest of the fight.
So, what you need to do is: bate the necro into Shroud, don’t use up too many of your skills until he drops out and then bring on the hurt.

Rennoko.5731:

Of course if you are flipping a fully upgraded camp solo, that is generally a bad idea in any build.

It is?

Is this about sPvP or WvW?

Lorelei’s build looks decent. The spectral/lich rotation sure can be deadly… but it has several weaknesses:
1. You might not have the chance to fill up your life force completely before the start of the duel.
2. Once you fight the same opponent a second or third time, a large rotation like you described it becomes predictable and therefore a liability.
3. Lich Form: for duels nothing (!) beats the Flesh Golem, it doesn’t matter which build you have, the golem is the best elite. Not just because of what he contributes to the fight while your other elites wouldn’t do anything, but because Lich or Plague can be hard countered by some classes.
This is also where the liability of a rotation comes into play, if I as a necro know that you are going to use Lich Form, then I’ll save up Corrupt Boon and all other CC at my disposal for when you transform and I’ll kill you before you can drop out again. And other classes can prepare for that just as well…

So what is the “best” build… I don’t know, I doubt there is one. I believe powerbuilds are a little more versatile in regards to how well they do against other classes/builds.

Bweaty.9187:

Yeh, I fueled the flames because it’s nice to see old flow, troll with a bit of art this time. 2 words, 1 link. It’s also nice for him to do it in own thread, particularly in the boring time before next ‘big’ patch and we got new bugs to cry about.
Anyway, much nicer than his usual, trolling, getting a topic off track & all abusive tuning in into the usual dev’s don’t have time for that.

lol
Are you really referring to me? I wasn’t aware I had this reputation.
Anyway, the author of this thread is mipbar.2986, he deleted his original post after Afya and I replied. He just asked how thieves are able to use fear…

youlostthegame.8102:

There is a trait that freezes players when blinded, so you can use the well that blinds (which when traited will also freeze) then pop the other wells on top of them.

Sepreh.5924:

I know this is similar to what well of darkness can do with chilling darkness but putting that aside, would anyone be interested in this type of a change?

Rennoko.5731:

ruuik.9450:

Did you swap to a weapon set that does not increase vitality?

Yeah this is likely it….

I doubt it is.
Hammerguard said he ends up with 0% after using marks. If that’s the case, then he either doesn’t know which skills regenerate life force or there really is a bug with Soul Marks.
And “…it may be due to condis” is rather vague to say the least, some more detailed explenation would be helpful here.

Btw the only scenario where you actually lose life force on weapon swap is when you have 96-100% life force on your vitality set. If you then switch to your non-vitality weapon it cuts off the excess life force and leaves you with 95% when you switch back. It only stays at 100% if you have full life force on both sets.

Do you guys remember the time when this forum was full of complaints about how other classes are so much better at conditions because they could stack higher and faster, like 3 months ago…?
That was before we got all our buffs that had absolutely nothing to do with transfers, in fact Putrid Mark was even stronger back then.

FinalPatriot.8034:

I actually saw a guy in sPvP today with 3 other condi built classes attacking him and he killed them all. Was pretty darn impressive.

That is impressive, but I doubt he won that battle with transfers alone. On equal skill 2v1 is already too much even if you could counter their builds individually, so my guess is that those 3 players made a lot of mistakes.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Skull_Fear

Ethaine.8419:

Use a transmutation stone on a white item.

Xyonon.3987:

It’s not that easy …

Actually it is that easy.
The whole bank thing… not necessary.

tattoohead.3217:

is this confirmed?

Not only confirmed but common knowledge.

Contiguous.1345:

The colours on a CRT or LED screen are a manufactured standard Red, Blue, Green to match the spectral response of a ‘normal’ human eye. That makes the three primaries the most clearly distinguishable colours for most people.

Green is not a primary color.
Your argument is valid though.

nekretaal.6485:

Use these runes and you will sometimes, but not most of the time, get confusion procs for staff 5 or spectral wall.

You already mentioned this in a different thread a few days back, but it’s false. Fear does not interrupt, ever.

Tman.6349:

i’d also like to know what interrupt procs you’re talking about b/c necro has none.

Wail of Doom, Spectral Grasp.

I suppose it also works with Sinking Tomb… never tried the runes under water though.

Repuran.1859:

Kodash, the #1 roamer EU server

Junkpile.7439:

Blob server kodash. God you don’t have any roamers.

lol

hyman.7526:

Any decently played/specced warrior will never lose to a necro.
…

You will never kill a decent warrior, you may beat (or maybe kill) low skilled warriors, but most will just run away with GS and come back at you again.

Btw, I have a warrior too and necros are just free kills.

Edit: oh i forgot to mention runes, if they run melandru or lyssa you are even more out of luck.

Not true.

You’re assuming that every necro runs a condition build. I grant you that there’s some type of rock-paper-scissor sutuation going on against condimancers here.
But I play hybrid, and I know some seriously good power necros as well, they have even less problems with having their condis cleansed.
I duel warriors on a regular basis and in my experience the fight is about even if I start with ~70% life force. If I don’t bother getting more than just 20% by desummoning two minions I usually lose.

youlostthegame.8102:

staff 4 removes conditions off allies

Doesn’t work atm, bugged.

youlostthegame.8102:

I believe a dark combo field and staff 4 is AoE retaliation too.

*blindness

What RedSpectrum said. (no correction needed)

Short version:

@1: Apply a lot of conditions within a short amount of time.
Uptime: until you cleanse.
Setup time: a couple of seconds.
Rotation: depends on the build, but you can usually expect it after you have some condis on you and the necro goes into Death Shroud.

@2: Every class can do that, I suppose. The necro stands out though because of Terror (fear does damage), plus he has access to every other condition in the game as well.

@3: If you land a serious burst you can expect condis to do more than 4k dps over the uptime of fear. plus some direct damage on top of that.

@4: Cleanse or don’t get hit in the first place.

Shout out to all the duelists on AG and GH. It’s been a really cool week so far.

Toxikthrash.2704:

Oh and the Kodash Necro from FyF (Not sure on this guild tag) who decided to jump on me after chasing me down with a zerg of about 20 people and finally managing to kill me quarter of the way across the map. Would love to have a 1v1 if you are interested Mr Necro ^ ^

-Dis Noise Terror, CHvc

Not sure if you’re referring to me. Are you wearing one of those invader hats, armor all in brown/grey?
I’m up for a 1v1 either way…

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

Pretend you commit suicide jumping from cliff, and when warrior follow you – activate spectral walk

lol there you have it, the counter to stun warriors is to make them jump off a cliff xD

Seriously though, usually a fight against stun warriors goes like this:
First you lay some conditions on them, when they feel you’ve exhausted a good amount of skills on that: Berserker Stance. Followed up by a huge stun sequence.
So during that time you won’t be able to defend yourself at all. You can’t fear them away, you can’t blind or weaken them… you just have to get through those 8 seconds without taking too much damage and blowing any of your skills in panic.
What you need to do in preperation for that is:
Slot Spectral Armor, have a 50-100% full lf pool, don’t use any skills with 30+sec cd before they enter their op-mode. Then after they land the first stun, activate Spectral Armor and go into Death Shroud… and just stop attacking, even save up your endurance a little for later.
When his Berserker stance is over, you have to land a gigantic burst yourself to turn the pressure back on him, also kite and dodge like a baws.

Overall, you have to accept the fact that stun warriors just are a good counter to necros.

Alright, that build is really strong, but let’s check out all the changes you made one by one:

1. Dhuumfire instead of Greater Marks:

I actually make this switch sometimes when I duel people if they don’t know or believe how strong that trait is for necros. Against some classes it won’t do all that much and you could be better off with unblockable marks, against some other opponents this makes all the difference or even gives you an unfair advantage.
Why do I not run this myself all the time? I want to have Protection of the Horde! Jk :/
Most of the time this seals the deal on 1v1s that I would have won anyway, so unless I use epidemic on burning I give up some aoe.
Also, some situations on a small scale fighting lvl are all about positioning and area control. Greater Marks are almost 80% bigger than the standard one. The bigger the fights get the more you’ll appreciate the extra size and the unblockable feature, not just for tagging targets but also because the utility on your marks and the combo field/blast effects cover bigger areas.

I’m not saying you should pick Greater Marks over Dhuumfire, but for my style it’s the better choice.

2. Banshee’s Wail – Mater of Corruption

This is also a switch I make sometimes when I duel, depending on my opponent I sort of rotate between those two traits and Spectral Attunement.
But the smart thing about chosing Banshee’s Wail as your standard trait for this line is: you don’t need a sigil of paralyzation to get 3sec daze out of it, which imo is the most important thing about running a warhorn in WvW. You have a slight aftercast delay, so the extra second goes a long way for following up with other skills or getting a heal uninterrupted. Plus you get more swiftness and lf regen, so it’s definitely a good choice.

3. Mad King: approved.
4. Pizza: approved.

5. Infusions:

You actually can’t pick offensive or defensive for all of them, accessories and rings have to be one of each. But yeah, it should be power or vitality. Also, you want to get the WvW infusions with +5 stat and dmg/def against guards, they are the cheapest.

6. Sigils:

They certainly work. I’d maybe get a second set of axe/wh with 2 corruption sigils to quicky get your condi stacks to 25 and then switch back to those two.
Here’s the thing, I was actually running this particular sigil combo before I posted my build like half a year ago.
So why do I use different sigils now:
Back then people didn’t know that the Sigil of Paralyzation added an extra sec to stuns and also worked on daze as well (even fear as it turned out, but that was nerfed), so that became my replacement for Sigil of Force. Not the best choice for me in some PvE content of course but whatever…
@Sigil of Battle: I actually added a little paragraph about my sigil choices in my build thread, and you can even see it in the 2 little clips I added in the end.
For the axe set it’s all about the extra burst I get after I switch. Sigil of Battle could maybe outperform Geomancy in the long run (especially if you are not in range for Geomancy to hit anything), but for the style I play I really need the extra instant damage on switch. (it deals some pretty nice direct dmg too, not just 3 bleeds)
Most of the time I switch to axe and follow up with Ghastly Claws right after I go into Shroud and close with Dark Path, that way I still have fury on me for the Ghastly Claws sequence and the gap closer basically guarantees Geomancy to hit.
Also, the on-switch-damage can also serve a defensive purpose because switching weapons can be done while you are stunned. So even if you’re disabled you still have means to defend yourself other than going into Death Shroud.
So bottom line for me: Geomancy is my prime choice for PvP, against npcs Battle can work too or even better sometimes.

7. Signet Mastery:

A good choice as well. Not sure if it’s really better than Spiteful Spirit though.
Retaliation damage is not to be taken lightly, especially if you run a high power value with your build. So if it’s just for the reduced cd on the signet I’d say not worth it, the 3 stacks of might gives it a little edge though.
My alternative choice to Spiteful Spirit for PvE is Reaper’s Might… for the might stacks obviously. But against other players it is again another layer of defense when going into Shroud even if you are disabled.

SweetCream.8051:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Build-Staff-Corruption
from a few months back…i believe before dire stats were around

That would be my build.
I actually have 2 dire accessories, but I indeed added them before that prefix was introduced with a name.

SweetCream.8051:

I guess I’m here for more info on the WvW Necro, does full condition(Condiduration, fear duration, scepter, dagger) work more efficiently in small groups or is a hybrid even viable?

Well, since I still use my own build I can attest to its viability
What is better for small groups? That’s very situational, every type of build works and has its pros and cons.
I will say one thing though: a Dhuumfire condimancer = ez-mode. It needs less skill to be pulled off since you basically auto-proc huge damage every 10 sec. So if you’re a newcomer to the class this is a good place to start.

Anyway, the modifications you made to my build actually makes it a full on condi build rather than a hybrid. The 2500 power you’re referring to is actually the attack value (power+weapon dmg), my build has ~2k power and 3,2k attack. When you shift that much power over to condition damage your axe and shroud skills will lose a lot of their umpf.
So my advice: if you go full dire you should drop the axe for a scepter and go 30 in Spite for Dhuumfire. If you want to run my build instead then go with a dire staff (instead of carrion), the loss of 130 power shouldn’t be too big of a deal, direct damage matters a lot more on the axe/wh set.

SweetCream.8051:

I know in spvp I needed stunbreak like no other, but is that true for wvw as well?

Since wvw is a pvp environment as well: yes, you need stun breaks. But compared to tpvp you have the luxury of being able to switch skills all the time, which you (…or every player actually) should do.
Adepting to specific situations or opponents is part of fighting in WvW. My build is called “Staff+Corruption” so naturally I picked 3 corruption skills to be displayed in the build calculator, but this particular combo isn’t always in my utility bar, especially since they reworked our stunbreaks.
The stunbreaker I use most of the time is Well of Power: It has the lowest cooldown (not counting the wurm), provides a dark field, cleanses conditions and is a rather reliable source for boons like vigor or even aegis. Against some opponents you might want to take Spectral Armor instead (or both) to prolong your stay in Death Shroud, against necros I sometimes use Plague Signet.
Like I said, it all depends… and I actually use about 80% of all utility skills on a regular basis (but ~2 corruption skills most of the time).

SweetCream.8051:

Also what sigils are best to use? I’m sure bursting goes on the staff, but what about the axe/wh (force/energy?)

I’ve actually considered using a sigil of bursting, but for me hydromancy (despite being rather situational) is a better pick for the gameplay that comes with my build.

Nice video, as always.

Brigg.3961:

Awesome video. I’ve been running the same thing, although I am having issues using epidemic on my intended target. Any tips? I am a victim of autotargetting, I’m sure, but when I use epidemic, and the target switches mid cast, does it still go off on the original target? It seems as though it does nothing at all when that happens.

It goes off on the original target if switched mid cast.
Do you have the “promote skill target” option enabled?

VolumePlus.8059:

I know some people will say oh hey, why do you run so much toughness?

I’m sure you went 30 in DM for the traits and not just because of the extra toughness to combo +15 cond dmg with undead…?

So this bug has been around as long as I can remember, couldn’t find an existing report on it though.

The bug is caused by swapping in utilities that are also used underwater but in a different slot. Example:

slot: 7 8 9
skill on land: A B C
under water: D E F

I use skill A on land and it goes on a 1min cooldown, then (out of combat) I decide to change slot 9 from C to D. Under water skill D occupies slot 7, but changing slot 8/9 on land to this skill will copy the remaining cd duration of A.
This is the same for sPvP and PvE/WvW.

@attachment:
first one is underwater with Corrupt Boon on 7, on land I activate Spectral Armor then change Epidemic for Corrupt Boon and it copies the cd of Spectral Armor.

A weapon being used for its utility and therefore being a “utility-weapon” can be argued for pretty much every weapon in the game, but that’s beside the point.

The OP’s suggestion makes sense to some extent. It would be a huge buff to some builds out there, but I’m not sure it really needs that. Also, 280 stat points for an adept trait, that’s pretty huge considering that some master or gm minor traits don’t grant you half that much.

Anyway, what I’d like to see first is a staff that works free of bugs :/

Phenn.5167:

nekretaal.6485:

WH4 needs some attention. It’s another skill like epidemic that is highly situational to use and does no damage. The cone is hard to aim, and seems to fire slower than the time stated by the tooltip. At least it hits 3 times.

Again, I’ll give you this. Wh #4 is ridiculously hard to aim well. But awesome when it connects and pops three “interrupts.”

Actually Wail of Doom is not hard to aim at all.
And what’s this about 3 hits? It stuns up to 5 targets, once.

nekretaal.6485:

…since DS3 and downed 2 are bugged and staff 5 requires the target to be moving and channeling which you wouldn’t get often in pve.
…
wolf fear, “fear me,” staff 5 all trigger interrupts.

Wrong and wrong.
Fear doesn’t interrupt, period.

nekretaal.6485:

Warhorn is a curious choice as it requires melee and doesn’t offer defense.

Aoe stun = defense.
Range of Swarm: 210, most melee skills have 130 range, plus you can kite with perma cripple.

nekretaal.6485:

I don’t see how WH can ever be that viable with out a rework or new MH weapons.

Not sure why you don’t like our mainhand weapons… anyway, a lot of players use warhorn, especially in WvW. It doesn’t need a rework.

spoj.9672:

@flow

Ive seen my locust swarm crit for 1k per tick when buffed up with might, vuln and banners.

Impossibru O_o
warhorn op!

Bweaty.9187:

Don’t really use it, but jealous of the necro’s running past me with swiftness in Champ farming situations ;-P

You could carry a warhorn in your inventory, swap in – press 5 – then swap back. (out of combat of course)

I’d imagine that with spoj’s build Locust Swarm ticks for about 180 or 350 with crit…?
So an average of 265 for 13 ticks, that’s ~3,5k, or 17,5 on 5 targets. Not too shabby considering this is a passive damage source. Plus, it generates up to 65% life force.

@Wail of Doom: You could use it with Perplexity in a condi build, and then epidemic for 10+ aoe cofusion stacks.

Alright, let’s see… you changed:

1. Staff Mastery instead of Shrouded Removal.
2. Dire gear (plus chrysocola jewels) instead of Rabid.
3. Necro runes instead of Mad King.

Is that everthing? I really wish Nemesis’ guides would include a build calculator link, it’s such a pain if you want to look up some little detail and have to skip through the video to find it :/

So first of all: food is part of the build, not just a “temporary boost”. You have it all the time and therefore plan your build around it. Why is this important? Because with +40% duration food and Master of Terror your runes exeed the 100% mark.

@1: Approved.
In fact, I don’t agree with half of the traits Nemesis is using, but I don’t want to get off topic…

@2: Dire vs Carrion vs Rabid:
It all depends, but for a build that gets +30% crit dmg from soulreaping it’d be a shame not to up your crit chance along with it. Usually I’m not a fan of Rabid, but in this case I’d say it’s the front runner.
If you really want to go with that Dire setup then I suggest you rearrange your traits to create better synergy, and also go with Scavenging runes instead of Necro.

It only effects the player’s attack or action speed.
Wells and conditions will still pulse and tick just once per second.

Landing a fear-chain is very situational, it depends on your opponent’s class/build and how many stunbreaks he has at his disposal.

What you need is less of a specific build but just a lot of skills that apply fear, then use them in a row to create a chain, that’s all there is to it.

A few pointers:
1. get a lot of +condi or fear duration, like 30 in Spite, food, Master of Terror…
2. If you go 30 in Curses you could take Spectral Attunement, which makes your Spectral Wall duration longer.
3. Chill your opponent first so he doesn’t run too far away from you. That will make it possible to fear him (or pull him with Spectral Grasp) into Spectral Wall more than once.

HardRider.2980:

then theres bowls of fire meat chili – +15 burning duration +70 precision.

…or you could just eat a pizza for +40% duration to every condition.

On topic: we shouldn’t have Dhuumfire in the first place, shortening the icd would make it even more op than it already is.

Caine.8204:

Another thing to note, is that if they have stability up, stability will corrupt into fear 100% of the time.

Unless they have more than 5 boons because stability has the lowest priority.

Caine.8204:

Opening with Corrupt Boon especially will leave you weak later in the fight, as you should wait until they are at MAXIMUM BOONS before you throw it. No, it doesn’t mean that you should wait until they have 5. It means you should wait until they have the maximum amount that they can achieve by themselves. If they don’t have protection, stability, or 8+ might, do NOT use your corrupt boon.

I disagree.
Timing your CB is a little more delicate than just waiting until you see a lot of yellow icons under your opponents name.
Sometimes you just want to turn fury into blind to avoid a heavy hit, or turn retaliation into confusion, or a ranger’s regeneration into poison.
It’s a lot more about the right timing and countering certain class/build specific moves than saving it up for “tha maximum boons!!”.

Dungeons/fractals: you will never see a group looking for a necro. It’s not like this class is bad at it, but ppl often look for specific team compositions, in which case necros are most likely not the most “desired”.

Soloing: depends on the content.

PvP: 2 scenarios:
1. You fight alone against 2+ ppl: if they are decent you won’t survive, while other classes have a chance at escaping with mobility skills or stealth. Underpowered.
2. 1v1: atm craaazy overpowered!
Especially in WvW where you can use PvE gear and nourishment.
And it’s not just the infamous Dhuum/Terror builds, but certain powerbuilds as well.
I run a build that works without Dhuumfire, but on very rare occasions I shift some trait points around to get it. So I don’t always run it, but when I do I feel embarrassed by how ridiculously overpowered it is.

Weapons for PvE lvling: stick with power stats and traits, so everything but the scepter.

..for PvP: depends on the build, so far I’ve seen every possible weapon combo in viable builds.

Oswaldzl.3652:

no idea guys I am build for solo roaming but i’m burst fast by just 2 players… why is this so?

I believe it’s time you posted your build…

Either way, for 1vX you should be aware of the following:
1. For equally skilled players there is no 1v2, regardless of profession.
2. The necro is arguably the worst class to fight against multiple opponents.

spoj.9672:

Pendragon.8735:

Not sure everyone is aware but, Putrid Mark doesn’t need an enemy trigger anymore. Try it.

Wrong, it does require an enemy. Thats a display bug. It shows the “area whatever” when you place in a field but doesnt actually give the effect. It does it again when theres an enemy and works properly in that case.

Actually it’s not a display bug… sort of..

For those who don’t know: Putrid Mark has a double finisher. One for placing the mark on a combo field and the second when it is triggered.

Here’s the tricky part:
The second finisher only triggers if the combo field is still there.
However, for the placement-finisher it’s different: if the “display bug” icon shows up without actually triggering the combo, then that is an indicator for the player that the mark is “charged” with a combo for the entire 30 seconds before the mark disappears.
So even if there is no combo field left, it “remembers” that there once was and combo on enemies if they walk on it much later.
If you see an icon again if the mark is triggered then it’s because of the second finisher with a different combo field.

Obsidian.1328:

fyi, it negates the point of dodging if you have to stand inside a well to get vigor. :/

You don’t have to stand still, wells aren’t that small. Dodge range is 300, well diameter: 480, so you can even dodge within the well while your condis are turned into boons.
And base duration for vigor is 9 sec, with 6 pulses you are theoretically able to get enough vigor until the well is off cd again. I have +20% boon duration and I sometimes get swiftness for over 1 min from the camp veterans in wvw.

We did get an answer: anet wants to maintain class diversity. If you want to roll a boon machine you just can’t pick the necro.

And btw, Well of Power + bleeding/chilled = vigor.

You make it sound like I said something different.
But just to clarify, Lingering Curse doesn’t violate the 100% rule because the base duration if modified first. For example: Blood Curse with 5 sec base duration is increased to 7 sec (+40%), this is the new value for calculating the bleed cap for this skill, so with an additional 100% bleeding duration your scepter’s autoatack will tick 14 times (=280%).

I can see a few issues here and there:

1. Bleeding duration

You have 80% condition duration and 60% bleeding duration on top of that. The cap is 100% for every condition, that means 40% of yours aren’t doing anything.

Also, you don’t need max bleed duration + Lingering Curse in WvW anyway. Your scepter autoattack will do 14 sec bleeds, Greasping Dead 19,6 sec… no player will allow that to run it’s full duration.

2. Traits

Spiteful Removal… meh. It’s not a good trait in general, also you really don’t need extra cleanses.

Hemophilia: this is more of a PvE trait if you really want to max your bleeding duration. For WvW it wont do much, better take Weakening Shroud instead.

Terror: a condi build w/o it is like a thief who doesn’t use stealth.

Lingering Curse: atm it’s overkill. If you rework some of your gear it might be an ok-ish choice. Keep in mind, this trait has a wrong toolip. What it really does is extend the scepter’s base durations by 40%, so it works as a multiplier. That means with 100% duration this trait will add another 80%.

Focused Rituals: Umm… so in the first sequence of your vid you actually use 2 wells, but during the rest (and in the build calculator) you don’t. I hope you change that trait when you go with corruption skills..? (like Master of Corruption).
Also, even with just Well of Suffering (and Power): do you really need groudtargeting for that?

3. Utilities

First of all: I have an issue with necros using Signet of the Locust in combat. It’s popular, but I don’t get it…
I’m glad to see that it’s been dropping from ppl’s utility bars since they improved some of our other skills in june. And now many are switching to 6 runes of the Traveller for the 25% movement speed instead of the Signet.
Either way, imo every necro who uses this Signet is wasting a utility.

Well of Suffering (in case you actually use it): you do a pitiful amount of direct damage. You will probably do more damage with Well of Corrution if you can turn some boons into condis with it. Or you could try Corrosive Poison Cloud, it’s basically a poison/weakness-well that is already traited for groudtargeting.
A few skills that you should consider picking up from time to time: Well of Darkness, Spectral Wall/Grasp/Armor, Corrupt Boon, Signet of Spite (with Signet Mastery instead of Spiteful Removal), Plague Signet.

4. general gameplay advice

1. Enable the Aoe-loot option, so you don’t have to walk to every loot bag to pick it up.
2. I’m usually not a nitpicker for hotkeys, but you know… at least groudtargeted skills would be faster if you didn’t have to click-drag them all the time.
3. You had a lot of dodges while casting, which canceled the skill and put it on a 5sec cd, or in case of marks: full cooldown because bugged.
4. Change utility skills on the fly. If you’re out of combat there’s no reason not to have Sigent of the Locust for the extra speed, as soon as you see an enemy: switch.
Adapt to your opponets, for example when you see a boon heavy class approaching you: take up Corrupt Boon or Well of Corruption. Some classes require you to have more stunbreaks, sometimes: Golem>Plague…
I know that is something that needs experience and getting used to, but just keep an eye out for what skills might have helped you more in specific situations.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Pelopidas.2140:

Every condition goes up to 100% duration, except bleeding for necro which can go up to 133% (cause of lingering curse)

Not Bleeding. Only the bleeding, poison, and cripple caused by Scepter 1 and 2.

But yes, Lingering Curse is the only way in the game to break the +100% condition duration cap.

And it’s not +33% (wrong tooltip) but 40%, which modifies the base durations.
So combined with 100% cond duration, Lingering Curse pushes the scepter’s conditions to +180%.

oZii.2864:

and the tooltip also shows current/max Life Force available.

interesting… no more guessing how much percent of our regular hp the shroud pool really is.