Guild Wars 2

Cempa.5619:

Question though: Thoughts on a Giver Weapon (10% Condi Duration) + Pizza (40% Condi Duration) to get Fear up from 50% to 100%, is that worth the loss of stats from the weapon + 100 condo/70 prec food?

The link says you already have 10% on your runes, so no need for Giver’s.

Pizza vs Risotto: 40% duration or 30 cond dmg + 70 precision… definitely the pizza.

Ascii.9726:

One thing to remember with condition duration on Bleeding & Fear is the final bleed time must be a full 1 second or it will round down to the nearest second.

I assume what you mean is that durations are rounded down to 1/4 of a second, but the damage tick is only given on a full second.
Then again, only the first inflicted condition sets up the timer for all other conditions. That means if you start with a bleed skill at time 0, then add a +50% duration Doom 0,5sec later, you’ll still get 2 fear ticks.

So your example: 10.85 second bleed time rounds down to 10 second bleed.
Actually means that you have a 85% chance to get 11 ticks out of it.

Ascii.9726:

Earth sigil > Geomancy sigil for damage.
33% more Scepter damage > Enfeebling Blood for damage.

Earth vs Geomancy:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/engineer/Superior-Sigil-of-Earth-or-Geomancy

Lingering Curse vs Weakening Shroud:
Yes, if it’s about pure damage and you assume that your target doesn’t cleanse then the scepter’s auto attack + Grasping Dead profit more from a +33% duration than an extra Enfeebling Blood on a 15 sec cooldown could add.
But: Against other players who cleanse conditions, you can stack higher in a shorter amount of time with Weakening Shroud. Plus you can activate it even when you’re stunned. And it works under water too.

Haha, you really have a classic movie villain voice. 1min into the video and I was imagining you saying: “I’ve been expecting you, Mr. Bond”

Sorry Zzod, I somehow missed your post at first…

What do you mean that “having your marks on cooldown doesn’t mean you are reduced to just auto-attacking?” We have 4 marks and an auto-attack. If the marks are on cooldown, it means we just have an auto-attack left. What else are you doing with your staff?

I use a staff build. And with the way I picked traits and utilities, I can do a rotation with marks, utility skills and death shroud so that I rarely ever have to auto attack. And that only works because of Staff Mastery.

Zzod.5791:

Your point that Spiteful marks sucks and can “just forget it exists” doesn’t exactly serve to support the argument that our trait trees are fine. It should be changed and/or consolidated to actually do something useful (something that possibly affects both power and condition builds would be ideal).

It serves the purpose of showing that you don’t need every staff related trait to make the staff work. And Spiteful Marks is just one of those traits that you don’t pick either way, like so many other traits.

Zzod.5791:

If the traits were properly designed and though out, I should be faced with painful decisions as to what I should be choosing as my trait choices. I should have to do careful pro/con analysis with each trait choice to figure out which gives me maximum utility. Currently, there are way too many dominant choices (best choice for most or all situations) and too many dominated choices. (worst choice in most or all situations) This is the biggest issue plaguing lack of build diversity and its a class-wide problem.

If I didn’t have the context for this paragraph, I’d bet that it was about any class but the necro. We really are in a good place diversity-wise compared to other classes.
Could traits use impovement for even more build diversity? Absolutely.

Zzod.5791:

I realize that the Soul Marks trait affects life force gain, but I would argue it really is augmenting our staff because it is now adding a secondary effect to our staff abilities. Either way, whether you classify it as affecting our staff or whether your classification of “life force gain”, its a matter of semantics. The actual issue is that I need to spend 20 points accessing that tree to augment my staff, while other staff skills (even if they are weak), are located in 2 other trees. The first 10 point trait options in soul-reaping are all medicore and unwanted, and once I get 20 points into that tree, I would opt for the fear duration trait. So, basically, in actual practice, I have to spend 30 points to even access that trait AND at the cost of a grandmaster trait. Unrealistic and poorly designed. There needs to be consolidation.

I guess it is about semantics. But: The reason you go into Soul Reaping should never be for the sole purpose of getting more lf through marks. Much rather it should complement your gear, playstyle etc… and if you can pick up Soul Marks along the way then it’s a win-win.
Also (a little off topic), Master of Terror over Spiteful Marks might not be the obvious pick even in a Terror build. The whole life force you’ll get from Marks might be worth a lot more than the occasional extra fear tick.

Flowerpower.6795:

The Moment i got chaos armor by using a steal and heartseeker in the tutorial.. with only my first 2 abilitys ready and even twisting fangs not ready i thought something like: kitten . wasted over 700hours on my necro"

Spectral Wall + Putrid Mark. The access is a little trickier. But it’s aoe-chaos-armor and I use it all the time in WvW.

Kravick.4906:

2 bad players can easily stomp a good necro. Necromancers do not have the tools to last in attrition or 1vX fights.

Panhauramix.2784:

and still have trouble handling 2-3 good upleveled in WvW

Even for a necro 2-3 upleveled or 2 bad players are not a problem.

Kravick.4906:

However, you will never see a Guardian, Warrior, Necromancer, Ranger, Engineer, or Elementalist be able to do this except against the most amazingly bad of opponents. This is why it is a terrible benchmark for anything but a thief build, because thieves, and to a lesser degree mesmers, are the only professions capable of doing this.

This is amazingly wrong on every point.

This is indeed wrong. Necros are the worst at handling outnumbered situations. And there really are a lot of videos of rangers, engis… but first and foremost elementalists who fight 5+ people for 10 min without dying.

Bhawb.7408:

And frankly, every 1vX video is a showing just as much of how terrible their opponents are as to how good they are. You will never see this happen when both sides are at a high level of play.

Yes, with equal skill/gear/lvl there simply is no 1vsX for any class.
But still, this just isn’t the reality of WvW.

KarlaGrey.5903:

description of necros by Jon sharp:

“The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights…”

… in 1v1s.
Against many opponents you’ll be able to mitigate the initial blow but there’s no way of recovering from that if the fight lasts longer.

Considering that, I wonder if necros were better of with an escape mechanism or with a way of recovering and staying alive mid fight. The latter would of course be more in line with the “attrition-class” theme, but then necros would be way overpowered in duels…
And with an escape mechanism… would necros be able to reset the fight and continue a 1vX? I still don’t see this happening, because we just can’t recover hp and life force fast enough.

Have a look at Nemesis’ “Necromancer Tutorials”. They are stickied at the top of the necro subforum.

The negative comments usually pertain to the necro’s solo roaming capabilities. If you’re using it for zergs only then it’s a good choice.

In regards to what Ascii said:
Epidemic cooldown is 15 seconds, wells: 45 or 60. And the potential damage as a condition mancer is higher than 3 wells combined.
If this is about tagging people for bags then wells might indeed be the safer bet.
But you could also just go with both epidemic and wells.

Skyro.3108:

the eSports weekly thing SOAC is doing next week with the devs

Wow, is this really happening? O_o
I’m very curious about how they would answer your questions…

Arianna.7642:

flow.6043:

I wrote the whole paragraph under the assumtion that I (as you set the premise) would fight my own clone, and therefoe be equally skilled.
And yes, I still believe that especially then necros can counter so many others in 1v1.

But you can not counter someone of equal skill level, assuming that they will counter you just as well. If you counter someone that is countering you, but has equal skill, it results in a fallacy. You can’t counter something that is equivalent to you.

I know what you’re saying, but still: I firmly believe that in an arranged 1v1 necros can counter other classes better than the other way aroud.

Arianna.7642:

The issue is that the other Professions can produce the same results, but in a more efficient manner. That is the whole premise of the entire topic, and has been the premise of all complaints in regards to this from the very get-go.

This is a very different issue from the hypothetical scenerio that you set up.

Arianna.7642:

flow.6043:

I actually believe that in such a scenario, where you build to counter the other class in a duel, the necromancer will be victorious in most fights. In fact the only classes who wouldn’t lose all the time would be those with the ability to stealth. All others could be countered and focused down rather easily.
Then again 1v1s were never really an issue with necros. And neither is it in this thread, it’s original post was about tPvP where teamwork outshines the dueling capabilities of a player. That’s where you need better mobility and boon access a lot more than in 1v1s.

Which would be fantastic if you could counter someone with the same skill levels as you, except you can not, based off of the assumption that they are capable of playing on par with you, which is what the entire topic is based off of; That is, assuming equal skill in the playing field, why bring a Necromancer into any form of PvP when a different Profession can accomplish the exact same manner of thing the Necromancer seeks to accomplish, but in a far more efficient way.

I wrote the whole paragraph under the assumtion that I (as you set the premise) would fight my own clone, and therefoe be equally skilled.
And yes, I still believe that especially then necros can counter so many others in 1v1.

Now, bringing a necro into a PvP team is a whole different story.

Arianna.7642:

Andele.1306:

Degen is 4% pre second, LF pool is around 59% up to 77% of your hp,

In regards to this, has anyone actually tested this since my topic about it?

The test in the link I posted is dated 31 March 2013.

Engels.8537:

Same with protection of the horde and reanimator, if you are a MM they are decent, any other build who decided to invest 20 points here is getting two useless traits

Sadly those two traits are also pretty lame for a minion mancer.

Engels.8537:

This synergy on the necromancer it’s only present with reanimator and protection of the horde

lol 20 toughness for jagged horror. Best synergy evaaar xD
You could make the same argument for the entire Curses line though:
Furious Demise helps you trigger Barbed Precision, and that stack of bleeding increases your damage by 2% because of Target the Weak.
I know… it’s a lame synergy, if any at all.

@natsos
1 tick of lf degeneration in DS is 4%
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Life_force
read the part about “life force value”

This guy made a test w/ and w/o a PvP Knight’s amulet.
Bottom line according to his test: life force is 41% of hp.
So on a full lf bar the Knight’s amu will not only give you give you an extra 9230 hp but also an equivalent in lf of 3784 hp.
Total of Rabid vs Knight’s: 25904 vs 38918.

And that’s a rather low estimate if you compare it to what Andele said (59 to 77%), that would make the difference a lot bigger.

Engels.8537:

barbed precision = average

furious demise = average

target the weak = useless

I bet most people disagree with this assessment. I certainly do on Target the Weak, which imo is one of the best minor traits we have.

Bhawb.7408:

Its easy to obtain LF when you have soul marks, which (gasp) is in the build. And you can use DS 2/3 in 10 seconds when your DS comes back up, not exactly a long time.

Dark Path and Doom CDs are 15 and 20 seconds. But yeah, still low.

Arianna.7642:

Now you fight each other.

The players here stating that Necromancers are in a good position mean to tell me that the end result of such a scenario would not be skewed in favor of the Profession that is not the Necromancer? And if such a stance is taken, how?

I actually believe that in such a scenario, where you build to counter the other class in a duel, the necromancer will be victorious in most fights. In fact the only classes who wouldn’t lose all the time would be those with the ability to stealth. All others could be countered and focused down rather easily.
Then again 1v1s were never really an issue with necros. And neither is it in this thread, it’s original post was about tPvP where teamwork outshines the dueling capabilities of a player. That’s where you need better mobility and boon access a lot more than in 1v1s.

Engels.8537:

And vitality doesn’t work well with an attrition class in my humble opinion, with a necromancer once your hp’s gone it’s not coming back, the idea of an attrition class is to outlast your oponent, not to survive a furious burst while doing little damage,

Of course, that’s a personal preference, in my build i didn’t add even a single vitality point and after hours and hours of gameplay I can assure that my survival increased

There’s no denying that a higher hp pool would increase your survivability even further. Not doing it though means you trait/gear for offensive attributes instead, in case of pure rabid: condition damage and precision.

Considering that, it’s weird that necromancers see themselves as the attrition class.
My build is not glassy at all. But I never feel like I have to outlast my opponents on low damage output, quite the opposite.

Afya.5842:

Our staff just can’t be a standalone weapon.

Really? This again? For the 50th time: yes, it can.

Ezeriel.9574:

…but at the end of the day, I do WvW, and a condition-mancer is flipping worthless when it comes time to take down a ram, or an arrowcart.

….and when people continue to say necros are good for wall fights in WvW, when we can’t even damage an arrowcart, I can only assume that those people work for Anet, and get paid to post nice things on the forums.

Because clearly the best WvW players are those who can take down arrowcarts the quickest.
Also, what kind of wall fights are you fighting? How can there be an arrowcart that could be destroyed if you had more direct damage at your disposal?

Brando.1374:

…since in WVW with all the cond removal I want to dish out as much dmg as I can in a short abount of time.

which is why I’d advise you to drop Hemophilia in WvW. Your extra bleeding duration would still be at 65% without it (98% for the scepter). Your shortest bleeds (Rending Curse and Dark Path) would last for ~8 seconds instead of 9. If you assume that other players cleanse about every 10 seconds then Hemophilia won’t even affect all your other bleeding skills.
Alternatives: Reaper’s Precision, Weakening Shroud, Master of Corruption.

First of all, what Bhawb said.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

Epidemic would require actually hitting the target (which rarely happens due to the long cast).
…
Scepter 2 and Dagger 5 don’t ever hit either due to dreadfully slow animations.

It’s not really fair to discount a theoretical scenario on the basis that a skill is going to miss. And in reality those skills are nowhere near as unlikely to hit as your dreadful depiction of them makes them out to be.
But since we’re at it, and the original comment was comparing to engis, the very same thing could be said about their granades.

Myrmidian Eudoros.4671:

In short, the potential for great AoE damage from a highly sustainable necro is an illusion. In threory there is potential there, but in practice it is all easily mitigated.

The illusion is that in a group fight your opponents could cleanse conditions as often as your team reapplies them. 7+ stacks of bleeding is nothing in a 3v3.

Rennoko.5731:

I agree with the staff cooldowns trait. Once you have burned your long cooldown staff marks, 20% reduction does nothing for you. You HAVE to swap out at that point, and you won’t want to swap back till all 4 marks are back up. I can stand to wait an extra 10 seconds for that to happen to avoid 10 more points in the garbage tree.

This might be true for most players, but for a staff build Staff Mastery is invaluable. It literally wouldn’t work without this trait, so in that sense the 20% reduction does everthing for you.

KarlaGrey.5903:

You cannot properly fix this class by listening to WvW players.

ManaCraft.5630:

As a WvW player, the above posts by Zzod pretty much explain why I abandoned the class long ago

lol
Also, in WvW necros are a lot stronger than in sPvP.

ManaCraft.5630:

What worries me the most, though, is the disparity that seems to exist between the actual state of the Necromancer and A.Net’s perception of the class.

I don’t think it’s wise to assume what anet’s perception of anything is.
And let’s not forget that there is also a big disparity in what a skilled player can do with one of the few viable tPvP builds out there in a premade team and the broad mass of players that might use subpar builds and/or don’t have the same skill lvl as the top tournament population.

ManaCraft.5630:

This thread explains, point by point, why that is not the case.

I already argued against most of the points in my earlier post, expect maybe the mobility and boon access issues. This truly is a shortcoming that seems unfair sometimes when compared to other classes. But that has already been discussed in hundreds of other threads in this subforum.

Just to complete the list:

Interrupted channeling attacks… really? That’s a problem that only necromancers have?? You can’t be serious about this one.

The aoe pressure:
This depends on the build, really.
But let’s assume that necros actually had the ability to reset fights and had more access to stability, vigor, aegis and what not… then we could potentially outdamage every other class aoe-wise by far. The only thing standing in our way atm is that we can be interrupted and distracted from dishing out as much pain as we could undisturbed.

He is wrong about the staff, of course. Having your marks on cooldown doesn’t mean you are reduced to auto attacking with necrotic grasp.

The axe: Dagger necros are so easy to kite because of their short range, so overall the axe might have a higher dps against non-npcs because you are more likely to hit them at all. But whatever…

Scepter: Grasping Dead, wrong tooltip, it actually inflicts 3 stacks of bleeding.
With enough extra condi duration (which every conditionmancer has) there is no need to prolong the poison on Putrid Curse. It also stacks in duration so without any cleanses you’re target will be perma poisoned anyway.

The “trait fragmentation”… old hat. This has been discussed so many times already.
The fact that staff related traits are spread over 3 lines is the worst example you could make. Greater Marks and Staff Mastery are in the same line. Spiteful Marks is probably even worse than Siphoned Power, the dps you gain from it is pathetic even in a glassy power build. So basically you can just forget it exists and wonder why Soul Marks is in a different line: It doesn’t profit the staff itself but your life force regen, that’s why it’s in Soul Reaping.
That’s all there is to it. It looks all over the place, but it’s really not. And that goes for most of the other traits as well.

Not a single answer in over 8 hours??

Tbh my guess would have been that a wells build would work better in pve since npcs don’t walk out of your wells. Maybe you should look up some other wellmancer builds on the forum and check what or if they are doing anything different.

Anyway, build for everything… here you go:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Build-Staff-Corruption/

When switching wvw/pve the only thing I change is a single utility skill, that’s all.
I believe that my gear combination is the best you can have with this build, but you can take it for a test drive with your current gear as well.

There’s already a new thread for our next tournement:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/EU-tournament-5

I might be available on saturday afternoon. Definitely not today or tomorrow.
Unless our EU tourney regulars can fill a full team without me I’m scheduling our 5th episode (or 3rd MM ep) for thursday next week, 7pm.

I was talking about trapping people in cc chains while they have conditions on them and dealing direct damage at the same time. Against top players of any class this is rather hard to pull off because they will use stunbreaks, blocks, invulnerability… but it’s still doable.
Of course this gets more effective with a glassy build (berserker or rampager only), but if and how you pull it off is not necessarily exclusive to a certain gear or trait combination.

Ah, what I forgot to mention: As a necro, you don’t need to be a glass canon to deal high damage.
You also don’t need to take the power/crit route for it.

Nemesis.8593:

flow.6043:

Maybe I should just buy a naga then ^^

And no, to everyone who’s wondering, BoC is not sponsored by Razer :P (…yet!)

I want to be sponsored by Razer… It would be easy to advertise a company you actually believe in… more or less. :P

I also have some razer products, cool stuff indeed.

So Razer! Hit us up with that colab!

A lot of people will tell you that the necro is this attrition class that needs to outlive the opponent on sustained and rather low damage. But that’s not true, there are some combos that can kill a player who doesn’t react to it quickly enough in a few seconds.
However, it still doesn’t come close to a few backstab crits of a thief of course.

Maybe I should just buy a naga then ^^

And no, to everyone who’s wondering, BoC is not sponsored by Razer :P (…yet!)

Ah, well now you both made my point and created a new one of your own:

Having a mouse like the razer naga means exactly what I said: you can relieve the hand you are moving with by shifting some of the workload to your other hand. That makes you more mobile. If you had to hotkey all razer bottons to your keyboard instead, you wouldn’t be able to move around so much.

Also keep in mind that I still do 90% of the action with my keyboard. I merely click the 5 utilities with my mouse. And those all have really long cooldowns, so maybe I divert my mouse every ~15 seconds from adjusting my camera. That really doesn’t make me slower at all. If it would, I’d change it on the spot… but it doesn’t.

On a different note, I’ve just watched your 2nd MM video. Sometimes there are some really dark spots on the map where it’s hard to tell what’s going on. Maybe next time you could increase the gamma in your recording software a little?

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

rizzo.1079:

Eh the projectile doesn’t go over 1200…I can’t hit the ice wall in front of Jormag with it, while I can with Mesmer GS#1.

That ice wall is not a good indicator since the targetting on it is janky. The staff 1 has a max range of about 1400, but anything beyond 1200 range won’t trigger the auto-attack chain, so you would have to mash 1. It is, however, quite useful in the harpy fractal.

Actually this has been fixed like two or three patches ago, Necrotic Grasp now really only has the indicated range.

I used to play a lot of RTS games before (like starcraft) so I’m very familiar with how important hotkeys are. Guild Wars on the other hand is a thousand times less apm taxing, almost relaxing in comparison. So there’s absolutely no need to worry about me not being efficient enough with my gameplay :P

And btw I did use different keybindings before, but I changed it back because it’s actually less convenient for the way you can move around.
As I said, it makes sense for skills that use ground targeting, then you’d have a point about having to move your mouse up and down all the time. But with minions the only thing your mouse would do otherwise is adjust the camera, so in that case there really is no delay in activating skills. And by shifting some of the action to my right hand I can have my left on WASD more often, hence be more mobily while I use utilities.

Also, Nemesis has the default 6-0 keybindings as well, but his recording program hides the mouse cursor. So it’s not that obvious in his POV, but I’m sure he clicks them too.

It’s not all that clear from nemesis’ point of view, but I went back to defend our lord almost immediately. I killed the thief but he managed to finish our lord from his downed state.

yroeht.5843:

flow.6043:

Chillblains also creates a poison field, drop Putrid Mark on top of that and you’ll have the same aoe weakness you’d get from Enfeebling Blood.

Though this is true, using staff#4 just for it’s blast finisher is a waste. You will want to save it for when it matters (aoe condition transfer), and the odds of a poison field being down at that exact time is low.

I usually spam staff#2&3 on cooldown, and keep #4&5 for the right moment.

Yeah sure, it would be a waste.
I (and some others as well) just wanted to point out that weakness isn’t exclusive to the dagger.
In fact you can have access to it with Weakening Shroud and Corrosive Poison Cloud as well. Plus it’s not even that good of a condition considering that the damage reduction only works on non-critical hits.

It’s on like donkey kong!

But: I’m not sure I can make it this thursday or friday.
Do you guys want to do an episode without me or just skip this week?

Also, Yski should we give you more breathing room than weekly intervals for the video editing?

Oh stop it, you ^^

Lol I’ve seen those comments now.

Different keybindings only make you more efficient with skills that use ground targeting.
So except for the wurm summon there’s no point in changing hotkeys, and that is used so rarely that it doesn’t matter to me.

I get that it looks weird, but I’m really not slower than anyone else.

Also someone wrote I should use tab to switch targets… that mechanic is horrible! so random and unreliable.

Epidemic follows the transfering principle, it copies the durations as well.
Corrupt Boon creates new conditions on a target, therefore the casters condition duration applies.

It only applies to conditions that are cast by the player.
Transfering already existing ones merely copies their remaining duration.

Blaine Tog.8304:

And actually, the ability to pre-cast your spells is extremely useful if you know the enemy’s coming through a choke point or if you’re fighting someone with stealth.

Yes, that is crazy good! Not only because of the mechanic itself, but also because the mark cooldown starts when it’s cast rather than triggered. So a mark that is triggered later will be reusable much sooner than the actual cd-duration suggests.

Ramiah.5648:

So, after much agonizing, I went with Necromancer for my main. I liked the Charr with a staff and was looking forward to it since everyone says staff is essential, but I am wondering why.

Wise choice, charrs do indeed look good with a staff
But is it essential for every build? No.

Ramiah.5648:

Sceptre/dagger has lots of AOE as well (and it’s larger and recharges faster), and better debuffing, with the ability to weaken in addition to poison and cripple.

The only debuffing weapon skill a necro has would be Spinal Shivers (focus 5).

On the staff you have chill which is more powerful than cripple. Chillblains also creates a poison field, drop Putrid Mark on top of that and you’ll have the same aoe weakness you’d get from Enfeebling Blood.

The rest of the Scepter/Dagger AOE is bleeding:
Grasping Dead: 3 stacks for 7 sec / cooldown: 10 sec
Enfeebling Blood: 2 stacks for 10 sec / cooldown: 25 sec

Mark of Blood: 3 stacks for 8 sec / cooldown: 6 sec

Considering the cooldowns, without any duration buffs:
Scepter/Dagger: 3x(7/10) + 2x(10/25) = 2,9 stacks,
Mark: 3x (8/6) = 4 stacks of bleeding per second on avarage.

Bottom Line: Mark of Blood inflicts more bleeding than the other 2 skills combined.

Ramiah.5648:

Additionally, the staff seems to do less damage.

Depends on the build.
Also there are other factors to be considered: single target damage or aoe, does your opponent cleanse conditions, what utilities do you use to support it…

Ramiah.5648:

Is it the fear or condition cleanse that makes it essential?

Again, not essential, just awesome.
Reaper’s Mark: Aoe interrupt, that does a serious amount of damage with the terror trait.
Putrid Mark: it’s not just the cleanse, but throwing a huge stack of conditions
back to your opponent can be a game changer. And it cleanses all your allys who stand on the Mark as well. That’s a million times better and more reliable than Deathly Swarm.

Ramiah.5648:

Should I only pull it out when I am in a dungeon party or something?

Are you setting us up for a naughty joke? xD
No seriously, it again depends on the build.

Here’s a build for staff as a main weapon, plus other people discussing trait and gear variations for it:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Build-Staff-Corruption/

Hybrids are condition builds that pick gear in a way so they can deal a lot of direct damage as well. A condi/power-mix if you will…

The big commotion you’ve heard is probably coming from Nemesis: “ultimate damage hybrid”, it’s in the stickied “Necromancer Tutorials” thread.
Although it’s not the only hybrid build out there, the term “hybrid” in this context probably originated from the titel of his build.

Aaaw yeah, SpectralWalk/Worm-combo stomping like a boss ^^

I’m on Kodash, so I’ll keep an eye out for you now :P

Chesire.9043:

Right click switching my target or clearing it all together when I try to pan the camera.

Use the option “Promote Skill Target”.
This way the target stays locked in when you turn away your camera.

Kravick.4906:

flow.6043:

Actually you can land Corrupt Boon facing away from your opponent as well.
Still, sometimes it can miss without any apparent reason.

The initial casting you have to be facing towards your target though, or it goes on that dumb 5 second cool down.

I have been paying more attention to this since it has been brought up in a different thread before.
You can cast CB while running away from someone and it will work, without turning back when the casting animation is done. It seems to be similar to the Lich Form auto attack.

Xom.9264:

Its a decent build, I like having more conditions damage at least 1000 before I start putting more into power with my staff builds.

I do have 1200 before sigil and 10 stacks of might from BiP.
The soldier mix I have reduces my condition damage by 388, that’s ~19 less for each bleed tick. With a full sigil and the might stacks I’m still reaching 132/tick, that’s good enough for me.
I actually thought about switching some of the soldier trinkets back to the ones with prefixes like Plague Idol (cond dmg/toughness/vit/precision). But I just feel like I’m getting more out of power at this point.

Xom.9264:

Dont use pure carrion unless you are sitting far back you will be paper if some targets you. Better to mix rabid and soldiers with just one or two carrion.

I switched everything in the build calculator to pure rabid (only available with ascended trinkets) and then pure carrion (only exotic trinkets):

Rabid:
Effective Power 1695.67
Effective Health (EHP) 28158
Damage Reduction 34.75%

Carrion:
Effective Power 2185.37
Effective Health (EHP) 28804
Damage Reduction 11.98%

Even without ascended trinkets carrion provides a higher EHP. It’s not as fragile as people make it sound. Also your lifeforce pool is bigger and the Effective Power from pure carrion is much better for this build.
Going full rabid would make a lot more sense though if you were to invest into Soul Reaping for the added crit damage.

Anyway, theses are the stats with my current carrion/soldier mix:
Effective Power 2269.41
Effective Health (EHP) 33916
Damage Reduction 25.43%

Higher EHP, more power, less condition damage.

Xom.9264:

The terror/fear build is overrated its faceroll easy to play but kind of weak vs good players.

true ^^

Actually you can land Corrupt Boon facing away from your opponent as well.
Still, sometimes it can miss without any apparent reason.

Congratz guys
Watched the whole thing live. I really liked your match against rangers on Kyhlo.

I didn’t watch the stream for the second bracket, but when I switched for the finale and saw what the match-up would be I thought “nooooo…. this might end really bad”

I totally agree with Bhawb and Kravick here. As a necro mesmers are the hardest class to play. If there’s a full team of them who also know they will be encountereing necros only, then there’s just very little you can do :/

@MightyTroll: I’m not saying that mesmers are op. I definitely disagree that they (or thieves) are “unbeatable if played correctly”.
Sometimes matching classes against each other creates a rock-paper-scissor effect.
Not only is this most prevalent in mesmer vs necro fights but gets amplified once there’s a whole team of mesmers who knows they’re up against necros.

Apollo.7583:

Confused as to why a condition build wouldnt grab some of the other fears in traits or the fear duration. 5 more pts in blood and reapers protection or take the 15 from spite for fear on down or put 20 in soul reaping and have fear on down and master of terror or lf on marks. Just interested in whats so impressive in 3 seconds of retaliation for a condition build

The dealbreaker with Reaper’s Protection for me is the gigantic cooldown of 90 years, combined with how little control you have over when it triggers.

Going 20 into Soul Reaping would cripple the strenght of the staff and the utilities.
Taking either of the fear traits would give you an occasional spike in damage but make you weaker overall.
You would lose all of the very beneficial attributes of the Spite line and trade it in for a bigger lf pool and crit damage, which wouldn’t add much even if I had a higher crit chance (which I don’t).
Soul Marks is a really nice trait, but it’s just not worth the investment. I would probably take it if it was in the Spite line though.

However, Retaliation is not at all as weak as it sounds:
It scales with power and with the amount I have it deals ~360 dmg per hit. So, if I go into ds to absorb a burst, it can easily outdamage a fear-terror tick.
Plus: there is no aoe limit. Everyone who hits you gets damage. If you take a quick bath in the attacks of a hostile zerg, the damage adds up pretty nicely.
Also Spiteful Spirit gives me 4 seconds, because I have 25 in Death Magic. And That’s on a 10 second cooldown.

Cempa.5619:

Why not the 10% extra mark damage?

Ah yes, good question. Let’s see:

The mark cooldowns with Staff Mastery are 4,75, 16, 20 and 32 seconds.
Now… I’m not sure exactly how much direct damage each marks does on avarage, because there is always Target the Weak factoring in to some extent, also the occasional crit or the 10 might stacks from BiP.
But I believe it’s something like:
Mark of Blood: 400-500
Chillblains: 600-700
Putrid Mark: 1700-2000
Reaper’s Mark: ~400

So 10% for all of those would add far lower dps than a single stack of bleeding.
Even if I had 20 points in Spite in wvw/pve, I’m not sure I would pick Spiteful Marks.

The more interesting question is: why not 10 in Spite and 30 Death Magic for an additional trait?
1. Not a fan of the non-staff and non-minion traits in this line. So there was no real insetive for me to go all the way.
2. When I don’t have a rare veggie pizza, but mf food instead (or I simply forgot to eat more) I’d still like to have 25% instead of 20%. I’m aware of the condition tick mechanic, that even a 1,1sec fear can tick twice with terror. But I just feel more comfortable with an extra round quarter of a second.
Also with 80% bleeding duration (65 cond and 15 bleed) you will be able to maintain a constant 9 stacks of bleeding with Mark of Blood on up to 5 targets. That’s just a pve advantage of course, when conditions don’t get cleansed.

Andele.1306:

flow.6043:

It isn’t mentioned anywhere because it’s plane wrong.
Life blasting with this build is a huge waste of time and life force.
The only time I will ever use life blast is when I have to stay in DS and all other skills are on cool down.

You know life blast does double the damage Ngrasp in the same time if you are over 400~ range…

And again Necro condi damage spect without rabid = fail. With crits you got 2 additional bleeds, weakness and you yourself are protected from it making you way less ignorable.

Carrion is for a fill in with rampager or as a secondary condition caster (as in chill cripple weaken blind bot).

Yeah… this could only come from someone who isn’t familiar with this build.

Necrotic grasp/life blast: Yes, but that’s not how this build works. Auto attacking is the absolute last resort.

Condi damage spect without rabid: This build works because there is no precision.
Changing the prefixes, getting the Sigil of Earth or switching out any of the Curses traits for Withering Precision (I assume that’s what you meant by getting weakness) would make this build much (!!) weaker.

Just to make one thing clear:
This post has been on the forum for over a month but I’ve been running this build for a long time before that.
At the time I didn’t post it to get input for improving or validating it (because it’s already as good as it gets).
I simply posted it because this build wasn’t on the forum yet.

Andele.1306:

One problem, Staff on itself is not even a weapon, its a extension of the necro utility bar and as a weapon has to be used with life blast/ds (since it gives it the strongest base damage/direct boost to scailing). That isnt mentioned anywhere on the entire post.

It isn’t mentioned anywhere because it’s plane wrong.
Life blasting with this build is a huge waste of time and life force.
The only time I will ever use life blast is when I have to stay in DS and all other skills are on cool down.

Andele.1306:

Also runes of undead + Carrion amulet in pvp = fail.

The pvp runes are certainly debatable. If you want to be tankier you can just choose a different one.
But keep in mind, the popular rabid+undead combo (with the same traits) increases your total condition damage by only 29. That’s right: 1339 instead of 1368. This means my bleeds are losing an incredible 1,45 damager per tick!!
So… yeah, huge fail -.-

I’m uploading my recording to rapidshare right now, should be done in 20 min.

CONTINUED GUIDE

INFUSIONS

WvW-Infusions for WvW, obviously. If you have the choice to go with a defensive or offensive infusion slot (back piece and amulet): pick defensive so you can add more vitality.

It’s a little more complicated for PvE, which is why I’ve left the infusion slots in the PvE build calculator empty.
Here’s the deal, the highest damage is possible if you forge versatile infusions which allows you to put offensive stats into defensive infusion slots. However, they cost an insane amount of gold which you’d be spending on a miniscule stat buff and agony resistance for a build that isn’t the best at running fractals anyway.
I wouldn’t recommend getting them, you might as well buy WvW-Infusions for PvE if you don’t need agony resistance and have a surplus of badges and laurels.

FOOD

Condition duration is easily the best food buff you can get for this build, and Prickly Pear Pie is the best condition duration food. It provides some extra healing (although it doesn’t work through Shroud) and the life steal damage adds up to more than you could get with the 70 condition damage of Rare Veggie Pizzas or Koi Cakes.
Utility nourishment are Master Tuning Crystals in WvW, and either Bountiful Sharpening Stones or Bountiful Maintenance Oil in PvE. Go with stones if you expect to play in groups with Banners or Spotter, during solo content you might get more damage with oils.

As a low budget option for both game modes you can use Super Veggie Pizzas and Quality Tuning Crystals.

UTILITY SKILLS

Consume Conditions is always our main heal, with very few exceptions in PvE where Signet of Vampirism can increase group dps.

Flesh Golem is always our elite skill, with very few exceptions in WvW zerg fights when you need the tankyness + stability and/or your allies can profit from the aoe blindness of Plague. Other than that Flesh Golem is a better skill, especially when combined with Mad Kind runes. More so in 1v1s or small scale fights of course, but it can also be more disruptive in big team brawls than the other elite skills because the hit box of Charge is rather big and there’s no aoe limit.
Also, Vampiric makes minions siphon hp for you (about ~50 hp and 90 dmg), and that not only applies to the regular attacks of the Golem but also every hit with Charge. So for example, if you make him charge into a zerg and he hits 15 targets, that alone can heal you for about 800 hp.

For PvE Epidemic + Blood is Power + Well of Suffering is the best dps combo, unless you’re fighting just one target, in which case Epidemic should be switched to another well, Signet of Spite for the passive bonus, Corrosive Poison Cloud, or even a racial skill like the Charr’s Shrapnel Mine.
Well of Power is a viable option for higher level maps like Silverwastes where cleansing and stun breaks become a necessity.
In PvP/WvW the choice of utility skills Corrupt Boon + Well of Corruption + Well of Power is primarily defensive. Of course CB and WoC can apply a lot of pressure too, but corrupting might into weakness, retaliation into confusion, or stability into fear has very high defensive value.
Also, Well of Corruption generates 1% life force per hit, so a potential 30% in total.

Keep in mind that – like with any other class – adapting to specific situations or opponents is part of fighting in WvW and PvE. Battlefield awareness and experience should dictate what utilities you have on your bar when you go into combat. Some 1v1s are much more manageable with Spectral Grasp or Spectral Armor, some zerg fights might require you to drop Corrupt Boon for Well of Suffering.
With the skills displayed in the build calculator you’ll be performing well overall, but cherry picking skills or even traits to adept to some situations can make a big difference, which will also make you a better and more experienced player in the long run.

Bonus Screenshot

In PvE, with a proper rotation and a lot of RNG luck, this is about as high as you can stack bleeding during the burst: