Guild Wars 2

hackks.3687:

lettucemode.3789:

DeathenShada.6397:

I pretty much agree dagger is decent. Life siphon however needs a 400% increase on healing….. Cause right now it’s frikin ridiculous…

Yeah man, a skill with a 12s cooldown should totally heal for 7200…

how are you getting those kinds of heal numbers on syphons?

Were you asking about the 5k heal I mentioned?

Short answer: Bloodthirst + Vampiric Precision + 50% crit chance + sigil of blood + omnomberry pie.

Long answer: With my build (power/crit) each tick of dagger 2 heals for 325, plus 41 per hit (with WvW bonus), plus 55 on half those hits. 325 * 9 + 41 * 9 + 55 * 4.5 = 3542, rounded up. Sigil of Blood heals for 450ish according to wiki, plus 20 from points in Blood Magic, so the total is 4012. Omnomberry pie heals 325 on one-third of my hits since I have 50% crit chance, so 325 * 3 = 975, bringing the total for one average channel of dagger 2 to 4987. That number will vary depending on your luck.

That’s an impressive number, but I don’t stick with the siphoning traits too much because they only account for 617 of that number. So if you didn’t use Vampiric or Vampiric Precision, you’d get an average of 4360 healing on a full dagger 2 channel, less some because of 10 less points in Blood Magic and thus less healing power.

With no points in Blood Magic at all, it goes down to 3258.

Bastion.2716:

intended

You say this, but what you actually mean is how you expect the necromancer to be, or how you interpret the designer’s intentions. For all you know the designers might intend the necro to be a broken class. No one is saying the necro does not have problems, such as broken minion AI. But myself and others have found builds that don’t just kill one or two people, as you tried to dismiss them, they work extremely well and play to the strengths of the necromancer. If you can’t see what we see, that’s fine, maybe the class is not for you.

Here is the up to date bug thread, please ignore the stickied one from now on: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-Bug-Compilation-Mk-II/ Note that 90% of remaining bugs are tooltip errors.

I’ve been playing a melee necro basically since release and I don’t think we need a gap-closer. We have a slow on every single weapon, besides offhand dagger. In my experience those have been sufficient to let me get close when I need to. If they dodge one just try the next, or Fear right before Dark Path hits them so they can’t avoid it. Spectral Grasp helps tremendously in this area too, it’s a lot better than it used to be, and gives you 10% life force to boot.

I like the immobilize on dagger 3 a lot. Spectral Grasp (knocks them down long enough that they can’t avoid whatever you do next) + dagger 3 + well of suffering + pain train is great fun in those zerg vs. zerg standoffs. If dagger 3 was nothing but a gap closer I’d have to abandon that style of play because there’d no longer be any good way to keep people in a well.

Thief’s heal-on-attack sigil scales with power, there was a recent patch note about it (not the patch two days ago, the one before that).

Necromancers can make good use of healing power with our perma-regeneration from staff. Additionally, Well of Blood scales by over 4x your healing stat, if you stand in it for the whole thing. To my knowledge it’s the strongest heal in the game in terms of numbers, and AoE to boot.

And the siphoning traits scale with something, I just don’t know what. Right after the WvWvW reset my regular hit siphons were leeching for 38 and the crit siphons for 51 (that’s with Bloodthirst). Now the regular hit siphons are 41 and the crits are 55. I haven’t changed my gear or anything, the only thing that’s changed is the WvWvW bonuses, but the only ones that directly affect your character is the extra HP and healing power. So maybe it does scale with healing power in certain situations? Not sure at this point.

Agree with everything said above, and check out that link to Sheobix’s guide to the PTV necromancer.

If you are looking for a variant with easier-to-obtain gear, try mixing Knight’s and Berserker’s gear, and make up for the lesser HP with siphoning food and sigils (and traits, if you’re crazy like me). From what I’ve seen it does more damage than the straight-up PTV build and has comparable survivability, though you do need to be actively attacking to gain the benefit of the extra life. My build has 50% crit, 60%-ish crit damage, 3k attack, 2.7k defense, and base HP unless I throw some siphoning traits in. Not sure if it’s strictly better but it fits my playstyle more.

hackks.3687:

lettucemode.3789:

DeathenShada.6397:

I pretty much agree dagger is decent. Life siphon however needs a 400% increase on healing….. Cause right now it’s frikin ridiculous…

Yeah man, a skill with a 12s cooldown should totally heal for 7200…

how are you getting those kinds of heal numbers on syphons?

It heals for a bit over 200 per tick, and he suggested increasing it by 400 percent…200 * 4 * 9 = 7200

DeathenShada.6397:

I pretty much agree dagger is decent. Life siphon however needs a 400% increase on healing….. Cause right now it’s frikin ridiculous…

Yeah man, a skill with a 12s cooldown should totally heal for 7200…

Daecollo.9578:

Nirvash.3018:

Daecollo.9578:

Siphon Life channal time decreased from 3½ to 1¾.

Imo adding free power is considered unbalanced so If you add something like that you will have to take away something in return. (example: Increase cooldown from 12s to 16s)

So we have to be careful what we edit, but I think the dagger kit is really underpar with other kits we have ><. We want to stay in melee range and be awarded for it, but at the same time the longer we stay we become more susceptible to other attacks (it’s like a trade off kind of thing).

Not really, its dumb for having such a long channel time, it should have less to be compared to other classes abilities.

Compared in what way? Straight up damage? That’s not what the skill is for. Your suggestion would allow an opponent to avoid all damage (and negate any potential healing) of this skill with just 1 dodge or block. As it is now, they still get hit by about half the ticks. And if it DID hit, well…along with other siphons, I’ve had a full channel of this skill heal me for 5k before, while doing about 4k damage to another level 80 in WvW. Your suggestion either makes the skill OP or worthless depending on whether or not the opponent avoids it. That is too much risk/reward.

As for the main post, I’ve been using dagger mainhand for several months now and I don’t feel it needs any buffs. Your changes might work but there’s no need to spend time fixing and playtesting what isn’t broken IMO.

Levian, I’m confused. Last time you mentioned the Plague Signet bug, I corrected you, telling you that it was fixed over a month ago, and you admitted that you haven’t played your necro very much since October, when you last noticed the bug: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Necromancer-Bug-Compilation-Mk-II/first#post1272588

What’s changed? Have you noticed the Plague Signet bug occurring recently, as in, you tested it yourself within the past week?

The wells that do damage, corruption and suffering (and darkness?), scale based on power. You can tell from their tooltips, there’s an entry that says “damage” and has a number next to it.

However, if you use Well of Corruption to convert some boons to damaging conditions, like Burning or Bleeding, then those conditions will scale off of your condition damage.

ngel.9847:

Good to know about the wells.

As far as tooltips are concerned it feels like im reading a Warhammer 40k rulebook. They are quite vague. It doesnt actually say they dont work with each other but doesnt also say they do anywhere. Had the same issue with 30 Spite – Close to death. It says damage but doesnt affect conditions. Its more of an issue of clarity.

Fair enough.

Vampiric Rituals will siphon in addition to your other siphons. So if you drop well of suffering or corruption on an enemy and it crits you will get 3 siphons.

I’m curious what additional clearing up you think there needs to be. One description says “siphons when you hit”. The other says “siphons on crit” and the third says “siphons on well pulse”. They don’t say anything about NOT interacting with each other…

Yes, you will get two siphons if an attack crits. Regular attack siphon is 25/38 with Bloodthirst, crit siphon is 33/51 with Bloodthirst.

A “hit” is defined as anything that does direct damage, per enemy. So if you hit a guy with a scepter, you will get 1 siphon. If there are 3 people standing in your well of suffering, and it crits on two of them and normally hits the third, you will get 5 siphons. Same thing with marks.

There’s no such thing as condition criticals. Hope I helped

Pendragon.8735:

lack of solid life force generation

Baaaaahahahhaa. Nice one, mate ;-)

On topic, I think the point of Reaper’s Precision is it is meant to be used as a “crutch” to generate life force if you are not using any of the other options – Soul Marks, spectral skills, power weapons, etc. It’s not fantastic, but it helps. It seems weak to me, but I haven’t tried swapping it in and out of a build and taking note of the difference, so I’m reluctant to comment on how good or bad it is.

Dietzen.6127:

SupahSpankeh.8452:

If you like a slightly more DPS centric version of the juggermancer, try mine

WoC generates life force, can crit/proc effects AND flips boons on up to 5 people. Spinal Shivers has a 1200 range when traited, a lower cooldown and while it only affects 3 boons it does replace them reliably with a chill.

I’d go focus and WoC over Corrupt Boon tbh, especially with that 6s weakness. Never underestimate weakness, it’s a very dangerous condition.

Where do you get the weakness from? It’s not from focus, neither is it from WoC?

I think he meant Poison. Corrupt Boon applies Poison on self when you use it.

Eh, decent idea. I doubt it will be implemented because it’s part of the design that you can’t switch your skills in combat, which it seems like this would let you do if you timed it right.

Budchgon.2108:

Juggermancer seems to have a load of fractal/ascended crap on it (I am not a fractal farmer) so that’s out
I do like Lettuice’s build but wonder if it would work for 1v1’s and small group action so maybe knights or berserkers gear?
Does the damage rely on crit chance?

Yep, the build is designed for 1v1s and small groups. It’s mostly single target but you can get great AoE with Well of Suffering combined with DS 4, it’s just more of a spike rather than sustained.

I use Knight’s gear, Knight’s weapons, Knight’s rings with Berserker jewels, and Berserker amulet and earrings. I have knight’s earrings and amulet as backup as well in case I want to switch because I play with my traits a lot. Damage definitely depends on crit chance, however with just the gear you can get up to around 42%, then add on the precision from traits and food. Combine that with the on-demand, constant Fury and you won’t be wanting for crit chance.

Confirming what SeraphAnimo said. It does affect your dagger 2. The description says “siphon”, but if you look at the tooltip you’ll see that there is a value for “healing”. Oddly enough it is also affected by the Bloodthirst trait, which increases all siphons by 50%. So it appears that the dagger 2 skill is a mix between healing and siphoning.

Glad to see someone else using Spectral Attunement It’s a severely underrated trait in my opinion.

I recommend you change out Spectral Armor for Spectral Wall! The protection you get from it is increased from 5s to 7s when you take Spectral Attunement, so with Spectral Mastery you will have 14s of protection on a 32s cooldown (you can run through the wall twice, it sticks around longer also). Just put it down on a point and people will run through it to get to you, so you get lots of vulnerability stacked on them as well. If they are stubborn you can pull them through it with Grasp >:D

I object to moving Shrouded Removal to 15 points, it is a key part of my build and I’d hate to have to give something else up to get it.

That sequence isn’t hard to land at all on a point.

I still think this is targeted at elementalists, not necros. 17 or 18 of a D/D ele’s skills have an AoE component to them, even though the build is supposed to be a small-skirmish-single-target sort of thing. I think we will see changes that reduce AoE in certain builds that are not “supposed” to have such good AoE given the build, if that makes sense.

I usually wait to use it until the enemy has used their dodges on something else, for example, focus 5 since it’s easy to see coming. People usually use all their dodges if they’re straight up running away from you, too. Alternatively, you can cast it, wait until it’s within 300 range or so, then use a Fear. They won’t be able to avoid it since they’re disabled, and you can safely set up the combo.

They should fix it so that if you’re in a party with someone and they’re on an opposing team, you can’t see them in stealth. I was playing sPvP hot joins with my guild yesterday and I could see my friend’s mesmer when she stealthed, it made fights much more difficult for her. Other than that I don’t have a problem with partying up with enemies.

What was funny about the December culling trial was that the thread about was full of people who didn’t like it. Then after the original behavior was restored, the thread about that was full of people who liked it and wanted it back. Now that we’re going back to the way it was in the trial the majority of the responses to it are negative. Maybe everyone should actually contribute to the conversation rather than only coming out to post when you don’t like something.

For those of you who don’t like it, you only have to deal with it until culling is removed entirely. As Habib explained a thousand times this is a temporary measure, not a permanent change. As for me, I’m happy that thieves won’t be able to endlessly stealth around in zergs anymore.

I recommend staff too. Lots of regeneration, long range slow, great condition cleanse, better at building life force than scepter. Just make sure you take the Greater Marks trait for wpvp.

Levian.6742:

lettucemode.3789:

Am I the only one who uses Spectral Wall in WvWvW and PvP? It’s awesome – it gives me 14s of protection on a 32s cooldown with my build, and players with melee builds (D/D eles, thieves, warriors) will run through it if you stay close to it. They have to if they want to attack you, after all.

On topic: I’ve never used Signet of Spite, Spectral Armor, or Corrosive Poison Cloud.

I never really have much +boon duration, since we have few boons to take advantage of (or at least compared to most other classes). I used it a bit in PvE when kiting champions with adds, and I used it a little in sPvP as well for a little on demand protection, but I still find its just easier to use the trait for Spectral Armor.

I don’t have any boon duration either. Just Spectral Attunement and Spectral Mastery.

Am I the only one who uses Spectral Wall in WvWvW and PvP? It’s awesome – it gives me 14s of protection on a 32s cooldown with my build, and players with melee builds (D/D eles, thieves, warriors) will run through it if you stay close to it. They have to if they want to attack you, after all.

On topic: I’ve never used Signet of Spite, Spectral Armor, or Corrosive Poison Cloud.

Rennoko.5731:

I may be a huge noob, but I thought defense/mitigation was Armor + Toughness. While I realize conditions ignore defense/armor/toughness, I thought the formula was as simple as that for non-condition damage.

Every character has some base armor value, plus armor from gear, plus toughness. Those three things add up to create your Defense stat, and condition damage ignores all three of them.

Yea, he meant the total damage of one dagger autoattack combo is 3700, not that he gets 3700 dagger crits.

Nice build OP. I too had a full Knight’s set for a while and experimented with a vampirism build. High toughness in gear is definitely a great starting point for necro builds. The difference between us is that you went a more hybrid build whereas I went for crit damage. That’s just a difference of preferred playstyle though, your build is great. Good work.

Levian.6742:

Softspoken.2410:

Levian.6742:

What about Plague Signet’s active, transferring conditions from allies to yourself? Last I heard, it only copied the conditions to you, leaving them still on allies.

You mean the passive, I assume?

Whenever I pay attention to this in PvE events, I can watch conditions be fully transferred, curing allies. (Last time I followed around a thief fighting harpies. They would get a 7+ second cripple on them, which would eventually transfer to me (I can’t remember the delay, but often around two seconds and I was around 900 units away) without me entering combat prior.

I haven’t personally tested it, but from what I remember, the first condition transferred properly, and the rest were just copied. I don’t play this game much anymore, so chances are I won’t get around to testing anything again until the next patch.

How long ago did you play? My understanding is that this bug was fixed silently somewhat recently.

For information: I saw a post some time ago regarding testing Plague Signet, and it apparently transfers 1 condition per ally every 3s.

Regarding rallying: just yesterday in WvWvW I downed an enemy necro, and he targeted my Jagged Horror and killed it, but didn’t rally. That doesn’t necessarily prove it one way or the other, but it is a data point.

7. S-e-v-e-n. Five more than two and a bit less than eight. Seven.

EDIT: I’m driving home, will come back when I get there. This is fun in a weird kind of way.

/agree with thread title

Daecollo.9578:

lettucemode.3789:

Daecollo.9578:

lettucemode.3789:

Daecollo.9578:

lettucemode.3789:

I made a reddit post about it: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10wgz2/how_healing_affects_necromancers/

@OP, just because the siphon traits don’t benefit from healing doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be there. Given the layout of everything else it is the best place for them. That line also gives the regeneration when struck which benefits from +healing, bonus damage above 90% HP which more healing helps you achieve, mark of blood on dodge, lower well CD so you can use Well of Blood more, autocast well of blood on rez, Transfusion, and Deathly Invigoration. Plus if you are using daggers then you are probably using dagger 2 which benefits from +healing. It’s fine as is.

+healing in the Soul Reaping tree would be even worse, there is nothing in there, not even any minors, that benefits from it.

That makes a lot of sense, because half the traits they pick the tree for arn’t benefited by the tree.

And half of them are “benefited by the tree”. What’s your point?

And which of these traits are benefited by healing power?

I listed 7 of them, I’m not going to type it out again. Go back up and read.

You didn’t, I read your 2 topics.

I don’t even know how to respond to this. You quoted the post in which I listed them, for heaven’s sake.

Daecollo.9578:

lettucemode.3789:

Daecollo.9578:

lettucemode.3789:

I made a reddit post about it: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10wgz2/how_healing_affects_necromancers/

@OP, just because the siphon traits don’t benefit from healing doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be there. Given the layout of everything else it is the best place for them. That line also gives the regeneration when struck which benefits from +healing, bonus damage above 90% HP which more healing helps you achieve, mark of blood on dodge, lower well CD so you can use Well of Blood more, autocast well of blood on rez, Transfusion, and Deathly Invigoration. Plus if you are using daggers then you are probably using dagger 2 which benefits from +healing. It’s fine as is.

+healing in the Soul Reaping tree would be even worse, there is nothing in there, not even any minors, that benefits from it.

That makes a lot of sense, because half the traits they pick the tree for arn’t benefited by the tree.

And half of them are “benefited by the tree”. What’s your point?

And which of these traits are benefited by healing power?

I listed 7 of them, I’m not going to type it out again. Go back up and read.

Daecollo.9578:

lettucemode.3789:

I made a reddit post about it: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10wgz2/how_healing_affects_necromancers/

@OP, just because the siphon traits don’t benefit from healing doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be there. Given the layout of everything else it is the best place for them. That line also gives the regeneration when struck which benefits from +healing, bonus damage above 90% HP which more healing helps you achieve, mark of blood on dodge, lower well CD so you can use Well of Blood more, autocast well of blood on rez, Transfusion, and Deathly Invigoration. Plus if you are using daggers then you are probably using dagger 2 which benefits from +healing. It’s fine as is.

+healing in the Soul Reaping tree would be even worse, there is nothing in there, not even any minors, that benefits from it.

That makes a lot of sense, because half the traits they pick the tree for arn’t benefited by the tree.

And half of them are “benefited by the tree”. What’s your point?

I made a reddit post about it: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10wgz2/how_healing_affects_necromancers/

@OP, just because the siphon traits don’t benefit from healing doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be there. Given the layout of everything else it is the best place for them. That line also gives the regeneration when struck which benefits from +healing, bonus damage above 90% HP which more healing helps you achieve, mark of blood on dodge, lower well CD so you can use Well of Blood more, autocast well of blood on rez, Transfusion, and Deathly Invigoration. Plus if you are using daggers then you are probably using dagger 2 which benefits from +healing. It’s fine as is.

+healing in the Soul Reaping tree would be even worse, there is nothing in there, not even any minors, that benefits from it.

Panhauramix.2784:

Be warned though, there are some internal cooldowns to spells cast when you switch to DS.

I know Fury works well with the 5 sec cooldown, but Weakening shroud has a 10 or 15 sec cooldown, can’t remember exactly. Don’t know if the other got that cooldown too.

I think Weakening Shroud is a 15s cooldown. All of the other DS-triggered traits (including Deathly Invigoration) have worked for me every time I DS-switch, even with Near to Death. So if they have a cooldown it is 5s or less.

Sho thing, suga.

Hey Swimsata, I have a build for you that you might like.

Spite: 10 points, take Spiteful Spirit.
Curses: 20 points, take Weakening Shroud and Spectral Attunement
Death Magic: 10 points, take Shrouded Removal
Soul Reaping: 30 points, take Spectral Mastery, whatever for the major and Near to Death.

Every time you DS switch you get retaliation, fury, remove a condition, and free cast of Enfeebling Blood. You already have permanent fury, with enough boon duration you could get permanent retaliation too. If you slot Spectral Walk and use a Warhorn, you will get permanent swiftness also. If you use a staff you will have permanent regeneration too, but in that case trade Shrouded Removal for Greater Marks since you will be able to remove conditions via Staff 4 anyway.

The reason to take Spectral Attunement and Spectral Mastery is that your utilities are Spectral Wall, Spectral Grasp, and Spectral Walk. Walk will give you 3% life force every time you are hit, so it is great with high toughness builds. I ran a full knight’s set for a while and it works very well at reducing incoming damage so you can gain life force effectively. The protection from Spectral Wall will last 7s with Spectral Attunment and no extra boon duration. Additionally you can walk through the wall twice for 14s total of protection on a 32s cooldown. Spectral Grasp will give you 10% life force when you hit someone with it. Also, Spectral Attunement will give you 5% life force each time you use those utilities. Something I like to do when I am low on life force is use Spectral Grasp on a rabbit, then kill the rabbit for a quick 28% life force. You can also cast it on random mobs as you run by; it doesn’t put you in combat and it chills the mob so they can’t catch up to you.

That should be a good starting point, feel free to experiment with it. You will be able to take tons of damage and have room to invest in more offensive gear than a normal attrition build.

Lifeblast doesn’t cost life force to use. I remember it used to in beta, but not anymore.

Also, what Attic said. +1

I’m leveling an Ele in WvW right now after playing a melee power necro for a few months. My thoughts are that the two classes are pretty similar in terms of innate defenses, healing (advantage to Ele), condition removal, and sustained damage (advantage to Necro). The primary difference is mobility. Eles are much more mobile and can easily escape a bad situation. With necros you can juke pretty successfully with Spectral Walk or Dark Path but it is nowhere near as effective. However, necros are better at standing their ground and can take far more damage. The problem is that this difference is much more pronounced in WvW, where mobility is needed and large groups of enemies are common. Eles get away and Necros just get pounded into the dust. It can be frustrating at times but it is a natural consequence of the class design.

Personally, after playing both, I still like the Necromancer more. I am one of the positive necro players, so I’ll throw in my answers to your questions from that perspective.

1) Yes, continue with your necro! I have not encountered any issues with any of the common complaints around here that could not be accounted for in a smart build BESIDES minion AI and lack of escapes. Minion AI will get fixed, however lack of escapes is by design. Not a big deal once you get used to it, Ele’s and thieves have their strengths, we have ours.

2) Mobility, not really. Skill synergy, yes, regardless of build (power or condition).

3) I have not had a problem with my necro’s DPS. I will agree that necros have low burst DPS compared to other classes; however, necros have an extremely high combination of sustained DPS and survivability. Whether or not you want that is a playstyle choice. Personally I love it and have tailored my build to take advantage of both those things.

4) Pets are the least common build, yes. The AI problem doesn’t help. I imagine once that is fixed minion builds will be pretty strong. Nothing wrong with playing your necro now so that it’s 80 by the time the problem is fixed imo.

5) I can’t speak for sPvP since I don’t do it much. Though from my understanding most of the top teams run a necro.
Necros are one of the least played classes in WvW because it is not easy to understand their purpose or strength from first glance at the class. Other classes are much more straightforward. Ele, ranged AoE or zip all around – cool! Thieves, stealth and high damage. Warriors, in-your-face damage. Guardians, boons everywhere. And so on. It’s difficult to sum up a necromancer in so few words, and it’s harder to find a build that is as effective as the other classes’ common ones. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
I always choose the lesser-played classes or strats in games and try to find a way to make them good. Whether it’s DotA or LoL or whatever I enjoy going where few other people do and finding the hidden thing that is secretly good. GW2’s necromancer has been the most enjoyable and rewarding of these by far.

6) Your survivability will continue to increase with your level, especially if you help it out with your spec. It doesn’t ever suddenly stop working.

Well, that was a wall of text. Hope I helped.

Yes and yes.

Fraeg.9837:

What do other necros think about crit% I roll with 61% crit chance and +57 to crit damage, and 3,243 attack power. Obviously I would like to see all those numbers go up, but at what cost?

It would cost you whatever toughness/vitality is currently in your build.

In my opinion, however much crit you want depends on what you want to do with that crit. Base crit chance means you have no intention to use the crit sigils or deal high damage. 30% crit is enough for the higher-chance-to-proc sigils, like Nullification, or a good damage boost without sacrificing much defense. For things like Sigils of Blood or Rage, or if you have over 50% crit damage, you want 50% crit chance or more.

Personally I don’t see any need to go above 50%, though. Necros have access to Fury on demand basically for free, so that frees up some Precision in your gear for other stuff.

XiL.4318:

Craptrain.7203:

TheAgedGnome.7520:

XiL.4318:

And to top that off not a single ArenaNet employee plays Necro and could prevent Necro from getting trashed by blanket changes. No one will be sitting in those balance meetings talking about Necro specific changes.

Xil, that’s kinda hard to believe (and scary if true!). What is your source for this? Is there a dev post or interview where they state (or imply) this?

It’s not true. I’ve played against Anet employees in tPvP on their necros. Just a few days ago, in fact.

Quality Assurance has no development role. There are no developers playing Necro.

Wrong again. During the karka event in LA, myself and several others were chatting with an Anet employee. He said he was a developer, and he was an 80 necromancer, and he was using minions. His minions even had the little Arenanet symbol next to their names, which was kind of funny.

On topic, if they are adjusting AoEs then it is a change that affects all classes. This is like when rogues in WoW complained back when attack power was normalized. It was one change that affected all classes and was meant for the long-term health of the game, yet they took it personally, just like many people in this forum are doing now.

Even if necro AoE is nerfed (as a part of the global AoE adjustment, remember), there will be other positive changes for us in the patch, just like there has been every other patch. Calm down.

ajm.2931:

Wait, people were complaining about AoE effectiveness? AoE’s aren’t affective enough as it is. With the 5 target limit, there is hardly a counter to zergs as it is.

And really why doesn’t Anet just go ahead and rename elementalists “daggerists”?

Now I want to play a game where classes are named because of the weapons they use. “Daggerist”, “Sworder”, “Axer”, “Spearist”, etc.

Dariroch.6482:

Also well of corruption> spectral grasp. You will have problems with opponents that have boons plus the dps from the well > something that misses 1/2 the time.

In my experience, Grasp misses far less than half the time and I don’t have problems against opponents with boons. I can get some of them off with Spinal Shivers and still deal damage through the rest. I’d say that wells miss far more than grasp does since people just blink/shadowstep/dodge out of them anyway. Also, well of corruption doesn’t give me 15% life force.

I run such a build.

Gear: half knight’s, half berserker’s.
Runes: 6/6 vampirism.
Weapons: dagger/warhorn + axe/focus
Sigils: Accuracy on main hands, blood on offhands.
Food: Omnomberry Pie, Superior Sharpening stones.
Slot skils: Consume Conditions, spectral grasp, well of suffering, spectral walk, whatever for elite. You can slot in spectral wall for spectral grasp if you want.

Traits: 10/20/10/0/30 taking Spiteful Spirit, Weakening Shroud, Spectral Attunement, Shrouded Removal, Spectral Mastery, Unyielding blast, Near to Death.
Alternatively, you can trade the 10 in Spite for 10 more in Death Magic and take Reaper’s Protection, then switch Unyielding Blast for Master of Terror. If you do this you can trade Near to Death for Foot in the Grave as well, depends on what you like.

Final stats: over 3.1k attack, over 50% crit, 60% crit damage, 2.6 to 2.7k defense depending on how much you put into Death Magic and your gear setup. No extra vitality but you make up for that with sigils of blood, omnomberry pie, the vampirism runes, and crazy life force regeneration. If that bothers you feel free to trade some of the crit chance for vitality by swapping out some berserker’s for valkyrie’s.

Playstyle
-each of your spectral skills will give you 5% life force on use. If you have 0 life force, use spectral grasp on a critter, then kill the critter, bam, 28% life force.
-The protection from spectral wall lasts 7s and the wall sticks around long enough for you to walk through it twice, more if enemies are removing the protection, just stay near it.
-6 ways to stop kiting/fleeing enemies. Grasp is the most fun.
-Perma-swiftness with warhorn and spectral walk. even without Banshee’s Wail and only 10% boon duration, just make sure to cast them as soon as they are up.
-Basic burst combo is dagger 3 + well of suffering + toggle DS for fury and enfeebling blood + dagger 1 spam.
-remove those annoying long, single conditions off of yourself with a quick switch-in-and-out of DS. works on fears. Very effective against P/D thieves, bleed warriors, confusion mesmers, or other builds that focus on stacking 1 thing on you. Helps against the multi-condition builds too cause you can wait a bit longer before popping heal.
-After using Axe 3, toggle DS for an extra few seconds of retaliation.

Another good build along what you’re looking for is Sheobix’s Juggermancer: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Juggermancer-Final-Blog-Link/first
All PTV gear though, which is harder to come by than what mine uses.

ermagerd, scerr erpdate.