Guild Wars 2

Like I said:

flow.6043:

Those are all very rough calculations, leaving out a lot of variables in actual combat

Also, I did not theorycraft anything. There was no build at all. I created a model purely based on the assumption that you’ll take direct damage only with either a rabid or a carrion amulet. That’s why the EHP in my example is correct, because I defined it to be just that: an extension of what your armor can mitigate.

I know that in an actual fight there are a lot of other things to consider, but one thing remains the same: rabid mitigates 20% more direct damage than carrion.

With that in mind you can tell exactly what amount of hp needs to be healed to give rabid the edge over carrion.

If you want to talk about different damage sources for EHP fluctuations, alright: in gw2 there are exactly 2. Direct damage and conditions.
I picked direct damage for my calculation to show the limits of carrion, when you consider a variable amount of conditions as well then all you do is shift the EHP in favor of carrion.

Now, before you say that this is all theory and I should try for myself:
This principle underlines every real fight in game, there is no way around it.
If you get burst down with a carrion amu by a thief in one go, then you sure as hell wouldn’t have survived the same with rabid. Why? Because math!
If your experience tells you something else, then it’s not because of your armor or healthpool.

Kravick.4906:

Its not perception when I have 4 other people, people whom I play with on a daily basis, all seeing the same thing I am. Hell, I’ve had people that I play against notice the same thing. I got a whisper from someone I’ve played a few games against also noticing this difference.

Some people “seeing” or “noticing” the same as you do would be the definition of perception.

All we can tell you is that the math behind it favours carrion.
And that means that either the formula for damage calculation is wrong or that coming to a different conclusion empirically can only be due to circumstances other than your amulet prefix.

Well of Power turns chilled into vigor, immobilized into swiftness.
Contemplation of Purity turns both into swiftness.

So my guess would be that tourment won’t have a direct counterpart, but will just be turned into an already existing boon.

I’d go with Hydromancy. Not only for the one missing sigil but also a second one for your off hand once your bloodlust stacks are maxed.

Or Sigil of Energy if you need extra dodges.
Paralyzation if you want an extra second of daze on your warhorn.

Mammoth.1975:

As soon as you heal once, toughness is ahead.

That’s certainly not always true, situational at best.

Let’s leave DS out of it and assume that your necro only takes direct damage, which will be mitigated by armor.
The difference in damage mitigation for rabid vs carrion is about 20% (like 10% vs 30%… if I remember correctly)
Hp pools are 18k vs 24k. So the EHP with direct damage only will be 23,4k vs 26,4k.

Let’s assume that both players heal for 7k with Consume Conditions once before they go down.
That’s (18+7)x1,3= 32,5 for Rabid
vs (24+7) x1,1 = 34,5 for Carrion.

So, bottom line: taking direct damage only and healing once will still put carrion before rabid.
Only after a second 7k heal the EHP will change to 41,6k for rabid and 39,4k for carrion.

But: that is so far from actual gameplay.
Especially in PvP you’ll take a lot of damage in conditions.
Still, without considering DS and the vitality/lf-scaling, let’s say 50% of the damage you take is in conditions.
That means damage mitigation is cut in half for both prefix types.
With 5% vs 15% you’ll need to heal 5 times with Consume for 7k to break even:

Rabid (18+ 7×5) x1,15 = 60,95
Carrion (24+ 7×5) x1,05 = 60,1

Those are all very rough calculations, leaving out a lot of variables in actual combat (like healing from team members..).

But one thing is certain:
Better survivability with Rabid? That’s an illusion, especially with the condition heavy meta in pvp atm.

Ha! The underwater version’s cast time is longer than on land… that’s a first.

I don’t see how this skill does anything for our attrition, but whatevs.. just another aoe dps skill.

What Login said.

Also, Zindrix, first choose your build, then the runes accordingly.

Stating things like yxc-rune is the best is only counterproductive.
The one thing you can say for sure is this: Undead runes will give you the highest amount of condition damage, even with pure carrion gear.
2 krait/cent./affl. will extend your bleeding duration the most.

Does that mean you will take either of those runes? Who knows…

I know a necro who uses 6 runes of Divinity with a hybrid build.
I know of necros who use 6 Lyssa or Mad King (<- myself) to combo the 6th bonus with the golem.
Some use Baelfire or Balthazar for their access to vigor or haste, which might become more popular with Dhuumfire.
Some chillmancers will take runes that extend chill duration.

There is a huge variety of viable rune combos, so don’t get too hung up on the idea that you need to have some sort of condition related trait or attributes on them.

Here’s some more reading material for you.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/players/Damage-Power-Precision-and-Golden-Ratios/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Finding-the-Diminishing-Returns-in-Stats/

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/What-stat-spread-do-you-find-most-effective/

Let’s not make this thread anymore about armor prefixes.
After all, the OP asked about runes…

ProxyDamage.9826:

I can tell you that regardless of what his build is, Full carrion vs. Full rabid, rabid wins every single time. Full carrion is bad. No "if"s, "and"s or "but"s.

Since this is obviously your first time on the necro forum I’m gonna let it slide :P

Just read the thread I posted. A lot of people have actually made an effort to calculate the damage, both direct and condition dmg.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Power without crits hits like wet noodles and might as well not be there.

More like the other way around. Pure Rabid hits for a lot less direct damage.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Conditions can live without crits, though they benefit heavily from them.

Nope, conditions don’t benefit from crits. Barbed Precision does, the Sigil of Earth does, Dhuumfire apparently will…

All you have to do is weight the damage you’ll get from those against the higher direct damage from carrion.
Btw you’ll still have like 20% crit chance with carrion.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Vitality is complimentary to Toughness. High vitality is only worth anything if you also have high toughness. Vitality is a flat survival increase, toughness is exponential (before diminishing returns, becoming parabolic once you include those). Vitality’s “worth” is exponentially increased by toughness, as each point of health absorbs “more points of damage”, per say. Otherwise it’s like having a reinforced steel door on a crap straw shanty.

Wow, if it’s “parabolic” then I guess you’re right -.-

Again, just read the other thread. It’s just one out of hundreds that shows calculations of healing effectivness vs vitality scaling with Death Shroud etc.

ProxyDamage.9826:

End result is that Carrion offers you 1 stat that’s dependent on another stat you don’t have (power), 1 stat you don’t really need (vit) and condition damage, while Rabid offers you 1 stat you need (toughness), 1 that’s really useful either ways (precision) and condition damage.

Wrong, and again: read the thread!

ProxyDamage.9826:

Mixing the two is another matter entirely, and depends heavily on build.

True.

ProxyDamage.9826:

Feel free to show me one good build that benefits from full carrion though. It’d be the first I’d ever see. Full carrion just makes you worse at everything.

There doesn’t need to be “one good build”. Many players made the switch to Carrion after they player Rabid the whole time… with their exact same condi build.
Maybe all they did after that was switch out their Sigil of Earth for Geomancy or Hydromany.

I’m not sure I’d go 30 in Spite with pure Rabid… but yeah, as it will be a crit-proc trait you’d be better off with more precision, oviously.
However, you could still time the ICD of burning with Furious Demise and you’ll most likely end up triggering it with carrion too.

According to the leaked patchnotes Shadow Return will no longer be a stun breaker.

I believe what you (War Mourner) are describing is a mediocre thief. But a good one will have the option to get away from you.

However, has anyone of you ever heard the story of the really good thief who had to run away from the necromancer because he couldn’t beat him?
Nope, you have not… because, while a thief has the option to run away, it still always ends in a fight to the death. The good thief will return and try to finish the job if he was forced to keep his distance earlier.

I’m not saying that thieves are stronger than necros, in fact I believe it’s one of the most balanced and exciting 1v1 match-ups in the game. But the scenario that a thief escapes and never comes back to finish the fight is just a super rare occasion.

Really? Rabid vs Carrion again?

This is just one of the threads about this topic:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Carrion-or-Rabid/

You know nothing about his build except for the weapons he is using. Therefore you can’t tell which prefix will benefit him the most.
The bottom line will be: does he rely on crit-procs. If he doesn’t then there’s no point to having pure rabid.

Also, Undead runes on rabid vs carrion:
difference in WvW/PvE: 600 toughness (trinkets: carrion only available as exotic, rabid only ascended)
difference in sPvP: 644 toughness
That means the Undead rune combo will add a staggering 30 or 32 with rabid to your total amount of condition damage.
Now, that is about as good as nothing considering a full condi build will have 1500+ condition damage.

There’s some nice gameplay in there.

I’m not sure this build qualifies as “hybrid” though.

You’re wearing Berserker/Knight’s/Celestial.
You still use your sharpening stones and life leech food.
The onyl condi-trait in Curses is Weakening Shroud, and those 2 bleeds are all the damaging conditions you apply, except for the ones on your marks… with 500 condition damage.

So if I didn’t know the title of this thread, I’d say that’s a power build.

I just tested this on some random mob, once with my gear then again naked.

I took almost double the damage the second time, so toughness/armor seems to be working for me.

Yeah, this has been suggested a million times already. I’m still crossing my fingers for this to change at some point.

Like Pendragon said, it creates an unnecessary bottleneck for many builds.

The one thing that makes sense is bigger size by default and merge unblockable with shorter cooldowns.

I’m rather sure that the ones getting the spread can’t do anything about it.
It doesn’t require line of sight, neither from the caster nor from the target, and I believe dodging doesn’t help either.
I guess the spread works like the Epidemic pre-nerf, where you could even cast it on someone mid-dodge.

However, I don’t think you can spread conditions to someone who’s invulnerable, like an engi with Elexir-S.

I know a power-mancer (a really good one) who doesn’t use a staff, but he still went 10 into Death Magic for this trait.
It helps to get out of immobilized or to get rid of blind, chill… all those annoying non-dot condis. In that way he uses it similar to a stun breaker.
Would it be op if it removed more than one condition? I’m not sure… but I’d seriously consider shifting some points around to get this trait.

@Bhawb: More LF or DS time doesn’t mean the trait gets more effective.

Azraeel.1238:

You guys complain way too much!!!!!

If this is true, they gave you almost everything they promised. More damage, More mobility, and staying in fight longer. You didn’t get ways to escape, but they never promised that!

Where do you get more mobility and staying in the fight longer?

What Anet really “promised” was a way to increase attrition without more access to boons.
All I see is more damage, which only makes us overpowered in duels but doesn’t help at all when focused by more than one player.

So I still call BS on that leak.

What do you mean by “kicked out of DS”?

War Mourner.5168:

You can dodge through it just like line of warding, but yeah, in a zerg situation, where you can’t clearly see what’s going on, this would be rediculous.

Line of Warding can’t be dodged.
Also, enemies still get vulnerability from Spectral Wall if they dodge through (I think…). But yeah, maybe you’d be able to dodge the fear… unless you’re already feared from the other wall :/

This has to be fake.

What happened to Anet’s “we don’t want to give the necro too much and end up doing whack-a-mole balancing”?

Also: “We wont just give the necro more access to stability and vigor blabla…”
Yeah, with this patch: perma-stability. Seems legit.
Reapplying stability every 5 seconds? That would be THE best access to stability in the entire game…

And some of those changes… how is any necro not running Spectral Wall after this?
Many pointed it out already, 2 necros could terror-ping-pong a zerg to death.
Or what would happen if you trapped someone between Spectral Wall and an actual wall? Too OP, can’t be true.

Stability aside, did anyone notice that this patch wouldn’t do anything for attrition?
Some improved lf regen, but that won’t make the necro an attrition class.
It’s just a huge amount of DPS buffs, which will just result in still being unable to handle multiple opponents and completely dominating every 1v1.

I’m not buying it.

Plague is a group support skill. If you’re alone against a stronger opponent it will only delay your inevitable defeat.
Take the golem instead!

Also, Chilling Darkness… more of a well-mancer trait. I’d definitely not take it for Plague alone.
Try Weakening Shround or Spectral Attunement instead.

One more thing: Are you using Mark of Evasion more often because of the Sigils of Energy? If so, then it’s ok I guess. But instead you could also try 10 more points in Death Magic for Shrouded Removal, Reaper’s Protection or Staff Mastery.
Or another 10 in Soul Reaping for Foot in the Grave.

I’m also not a fan of the 6th Nightmare bonus… but ultimately that shouldn’t be the deciding factor.

Same here, mine always scale with my condition damage.

@ Corrupt Boon:
All stackable conditions turn into 3 stacks.
So 3 stacks of bleeding with a 5 sec base duration isn’t too bad.

The only way to get chill with CB atm is corrupting fury with Chilling Darkness.
It would be nice though if there was regular access to it, like instead of cripple for swiftness.

JonPeters.5630:

Is this new?

I believe it has been there since the fix for the ground target indicator for Greater Marks or since the hotfix for Greater Marks – Staff Mastery.
I’m not sure though… could be a more recent bug.

War Mourner.5168:

This would be quite hilarious if it worked consistently… Fill someone with conditions, epidemic them then putrid mark them all back onto one guy.

It kinda works consistently. The target closest to the center of the mark is the one getting all the conditions.
But I’d rather maintain my aoe conditions tbh.

First thing that caught my eye was that you’d have 115% bleeding duration. So either drop Hemophilia or the Afflicted runes… or both.

Is this going to be a PvE build?

Towelie.4637:

Are you saying that… you gain 5k with consume condition? is that mean you use it without any condition on you? Man it broke my heart to hear that.

The base heal is 5240, with 724 for each condition, and 1:1 for healing power added to each.
Still, even if you’re lucky and happen to squeeze out a 10k heal every 25 seconds… how is that anywhere near your 800hp per second?

Towelie.4637:

Shadow refuge is the screw you up skill because he can stealth himself and the downed ally so it an easy revive ?

At least you know where he is.
There are so many untargeted skills that necros (and other classes) can use on the Shadow Refuge. And if you know he tries to revive someone, you can drop Reaper’s Mark.
It’s really not the most devastating skill in the thief’s arsenal.

Towelie.4637:

Yes, i agree on that because on 1v1 if you dont have an axe you will be having issues to fill the bar.?

So you’re telling us it’s troublesome to accumulate life force unless you use Ghastly Claws… which gives you 8% lf… on an 8 second cooldown.
Awesome, I just need 100 seconds to get a full lf bar xD

Towelie.4637:

And by the way i get almost 800heal per seconde, how many is enough for you ?

Kewl, by the time Consume Conditions recharges for a 5k heal you have already gained 20k hp by some other means… that would indeed be nice, if it wasn’t a fantasy.
Or were you talking about your elementalist? :P

Towelie.4637:

For the thief if he shadow refuge your screw like every other class… Otherwise you just fear im away.

Any question ?

Yes. Have you ever played against a thief other than the training npc in the mists?
How is Shadow Refuge the one thief skill that screws you or any other class?

On topic:

displacedTitan.6897:

Really since they have stated we wont get boons or disengage mechanics they need to make Siphon probably 4 or 5x more hp

If necros want to maintain their viability of many build, I don’t think it’s wise to put all our hopes in improved siphoning.
I’m glad that Anet will buff it, but if this turns out to be so powerful that you can tank multiple enemies without stability/vigor/etc then every necro would not only be pigeonholed into the Blood Magic line, but we’d be totally overpowered in 1v1s.

Imo the sustain should be irrelevant to a certain traitline and be connected to something that every build has access to. Like Death Shroud (→buff lf regen)
But more improtantly: it should scale with the amout of opponents you’re facing, like the active part of the Signet of the Locust.

So how about every standard #6 heal skill gets and added heal bonus similar to the Locust signet?
Let’s say 5k heal for Consume Conditions + 500 for every target in a 480 radius.. or something like that…

I assumed it was sPvP because in his link he has a PvP amulet and 1 extra rune of the Nightmare for 25 power. In WvW you would probably take a Ruby Orb or Crest of the Soldier instead.

Mine says 3 sec in both sPvP and PvE.

I tested it with various amounts of condition duration.

Without any the tooltip timer starts at 3 seconds, so it’s definitely more than that.
With +40% it’s more than 5 seconds, and with +90% (the most I could get in the mists) got me way over 7 seconds.

And my regular WvW/PvE condi duration is +65%, with that I get more than 6 seconds.

Anchoku.8142:

Thx, Flow. Thought Chill was a duration stacking condi for some reason, not intensity stacking.

Chill does stack duration.
The only condi that doesn’t is immobilized. This is a bug though.
So if you were to cast Dark Pact and Rigor Mortis in a row, then one would replace the other.

Conncept.7638:

but Spiteful Spirit is just as bugged as most necro traits and doesn’t function with boon duration.

Yes it does.
And you should know, because you have 20 in Death Magic. So your retal lasts for 3,5 seconds.

I’m also curious to know how you can perma-weakness someone with Weakening Shroud alone…?
You don’t have a staff to combo weakness, and you don’t have an off-hand dagger for Enfeebling Blood.
So with your 10 in Spite, you’ll get 11 seconds of weakness (if not cleansed) and that’s on a 15 sec cooldown.

I couldn’t find any info on this, so in case this isn’t public knowledge already:

The tooltip for the immobilzed duration seems to be wrong. It’s really 4 seconds, not just 3.

Anchoku.8142:

Anyone have evidence duration stacking works?

Why wouldn’t it work?
Also, the in-game description of conditions always says “Stacks in intensity” (=bleeding, confusion, vulnerability) or “stacks duration” (=all other conditions).

C Hanson.4056:

Technobabble and warhorn 4 durations are increased by my runes of the Mesmer and sigil of paralyzation (also increases dagger 3).

Last time I checked having both the sigil and the runes is redundant.
The duration is always rounded up to the next second, so +15% and +33% will give the same result on their own as they do combined: always +1 second.

Also, Immobilize is a condition. I haven’t tested it but I’m sure it’s only affected by condition duration, not stun duration…?

I tried verifying if stun duration multiplies condition duration for fear by stacking Doom and Reaper’s Mark to get 3 ticks with 31% condition duration. (1,31 x2 x1,15= 3,01)
I only got 2 ticks.
Then I tried your way, 74% + sigil to get 2 ticks (or 4 with Doom and mark)… it didn’t work :/

Then the weirdest thing happened:
I tried if any of the weapons were acting buggy, like Rennoko said. So I had axe, wh, staff with a Sigil of Paralyzation each.
I then tried 85% fear duration + each weapon. I couldn’t make fear tick twice.
But then I took both axe+wh (so 2 sigils) and then it worked again O_o

I’ll have to test some more later -.-

True, it activates twice. Well of Blood + Putrid Mark gives 6 seconds retaliation, not just 3.

Well “easy” is relative. I’m sure everyone agrees that warriors are easy targets, but a good warrior can also put on decent pressure sometimes.
That’s the same for me with eles, but overall I have yet to meet an ele who can beat me in a straight up 1v1.

Anyway, my build

Aphix.9846:

I dont get why spend points on soul reaping on a condi build ? I mean the traits hardly benefit you. Crit damage in a condi build ? Life force pool ?

The same argument could be made about the Blood Magic line, especially if you use it to trait for hp siphoning.

Nemesis.8593:

You can never kill a good bunker elementalist, at best what you can do is make him go away.

Maybe with your build…

Blackhat.4016:

I can’t think of any necro condition builds which are able to counter bunker eles

With my build they are one of the easiest opponents in wvw.

So saying that a good bunker ele beats a conditionmancer everytime is just false. It comes down to the build.

Could you tell us more about your traits, runes and sigils?

I don’t want to make any wild guesses, but I suspect that you just don’t do enough damage…

I was just going to ask the same. Can you cleanse enemy players with it?

What I did observe for sure was one of those veteran guards being cleansed and all condis were transfered to some snowleopard or something…

Rennoko.5731:

EDIT: Just tested, the sigil does stack in the case of fear. I assume your test was about using 1 sigil of para vs. 2 sigils as it relates to daze and warhorn, which it may do nothing for, but in the case of fear, they DO stack.

I can run 20 spite, master of terror, and two sigils of para and get two ticks of terror. I am going to try a build around this later.

No I didn’t even bother testing with daze because – as I said – you would need to get more than 100% stun duration to get 2 extra seconds.

I tested for fear and I just repeated the test to see if I made a mistake the last time.
So 20 spite, master of terror, 2 sigils: I still couldn’t get 2 ticks.

Quickness is cheating :P

No seriously, nice video but this is nothing a necro couldn’t handle in a 1v1.

Here’s also an interesting thread
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/The-Necroiest-Necromancer-D/

Btw if you want to see how an armor looks on your character you can always go to your pvp locker in the mists and preview everything.

Mammoth.1975:

If you’re built for attrition you should be winning attrition fights against everyone except eles and rangers.

The whole point here is that you really can’t build for attrition as a necro.
If you are too weak to beat an ele or ranger then you should maybe respec more aggressively because the attrition part just isn’t working for us.

Kravick.4906:

flow.6043:

It’s not nothing.
Also, other bleeding classes don’t have something like Deathly Swarm or Putrid Mark.
So in a battle of the bleeders the necro will always have the upper hand.

Thats not the point. The point was that there are classes that can stack bleeds faster, and to a higher number. Transferring has nothing to do with it.

I might agree on faster, but higher? Necros can hit the 25 cap even though it takes them an hour.

And transferring: their bleeds are yours to throw back at them, in a way this is a more effective stacking method than any other class is capable of.

I don’t think it’s a bug. Stun and daze durations just get rounded up, I believe that’s intended.
I guess it works like when you are dazed by one of those raptor mobs. You see each second ticking down seperately, not the full duration in one go.

The Sigil itself doesn’t add a full second, just 15%. This is also varifyable in combo with the 33% of the rune of the mesmer. Each gives you an extra second because it’s rounded up. Both will just add 48% and therefore also just add 1 second, not 1 each.

Adding more conditions to our arsenal or changing the effect of weakness won’t change that the necro is not an attrition class.

Imo the only way to improve this would be to have our heals and lf regen scale with the number of opponents we are facing, because in 1v1s there is absolutey no need to make us more resilient.

Kravick.4906:

Lolicia.6502:

How are we terrible at stacking bleeds? Staff 2 + mark of evasion + weakening shroud + geomancy is a quick 10 aoe stacks that can turn into 20 stacks on surrounding targets after epidemic. Add in scepter 2/dagger 5 and you can get even more.

I have multiple 80s. Trust me, thats nothing.

It’s not nothing.
Also, other bleeding classes don’t have something like Deathly Swarm or Putrid Mark.
So in a battle of the bleeders the necro will always have the upper hand.

We had a rather lengthy discussion about it last week in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Off-hand-dagger-is-meh-more-love-to-warhorn/

and I also updated this one with the fear info
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/stun-sigil-work-for-wh-daze/

I did the exact same test as you. In case you didn’t test 2 sigils: they don’t stack.

Interesting… I’m going to take a closer look myself.
I’m not sure if this exact thing happened to me, but I can remember a few times I was surprised to see some mobs cleanse their conditions. Maybe that was why.

It does not make any logical sense why marks wouldn’t trigger on downed players. They can still move while down and they take all the damage if a mark is triggered by someone else, so why not have them trigger it in the first place…?
It has always been like this and I doubt it will ever change.

It doesn’t really matter though because necros are the best class at stomping downed players /sarcasm -.-

And it certainly does not “work better this way”. Marks are highly visibly for enemy players, there’s no luring them into a trap here.