Guild Wars 2

Josh Davis.6015:

Editing for clarity:

This behavior is working as intended. This could of course change in the future, but for now this is not classified as a bug.

Then what about the bug on the necromancer signet of undeath that causes the revive to fail if the target’s downed health is lower than 30%?

For me it’s weird. When I queue I often get matched with ESL players like olrun, phantaram, acandis, and some Mesmer from best team NA. I also get matched with forum people a lot too that tend to be on the higher end side of things.

But then I also get people who look like they’ve hardly ever played the game that do random things and are really rude. I even had someone ragequit and quit the game yesterday because someone ok our team didn’t Rez him while disengaging from a losing fight.

Well I guess those 7-8 minute queues have to be good for something….

manveruppd.7601:

I have wondered myself whether the Signets of Suffering necro might be better off running Soldiers. You’ll have less damage outside DS (if my maths is right: the extra crit chance from Celestial just about edges out the extra power), but I think you’ll have slightly better damage in DS if you took Pack runes: with decent fury uptime and Deathly Perception, your crit chance will be about 75%, and the extra power will make up for the lower ferocity and crit chance.
I really don’t think that the lack of healing power would hurt survivability that much. Life Siphon scales amazingly well with it, but the signets not so much. Plus it’s true that the condition damage from corruptions is not a big concern.
BTW are you folks sure that transferred conditions use the condition damage stat of the person who originally applied it? I was sure it used your own.

Transfers use the condition stat of the one who applied it originally. In fact the game treats it as their damage, so there’s even a game breaking bug in which people can rally off of transferred conditions.

Your assessment about soldiers necro with signets was correct. It’s so much better in team fights and the damage is very similar to celestial since it he twice as much base power and the same might stacking. It depends on what trait lines you take though. Curses will always be better in 1v1s and blood magic will always be better in team fights.

I also made a crusader version of the build as a middle ground between the two that has blood magic support, and as usual meta snobs berate me for playing it, saying that cele is undoubtedly better when they’ve never even played my build.

I also prefer to take flesh wurm over spectral armor in general so I can have a chance of escaping focus fire or disengaging if a 1v1 gets plused.

Well at least these changes will be carefully thought out instead of a random hotfix that overnerfs things. As we all know from the spirit ranger era of 2013, overnerfing ele is very easy to do, and the results are quite spammy (get it? ranger shortbow spam while permenantly evading under protection? xD)

I was talking about this with someone earlier. We both feel that one of the problems holding minion builds back is that they’re purely single target damage.

Since the AI was fixed the minions respond better than ever before. In particular ranged minions are particularly good and don’t have any trouble hitting a target, which is why I think its fair that they can stay single target.

The melee minions can be kited fairly easily, especially in fights with multiple targets with opponents running around constantly. Being able to cleave up to 3 targets would considerably help them deal damage in larger fights, and would help them hit something even if the actual target is kiting them. Since Robert Gee has been pretty good at explaining why or why not certain balance things like this are or are not happening, I’m asking to see if its possible that we can expect cleave damage on minions, or if its something that will probably never happen (like the blast finisher thread in the mesmer forum).

Besides the lack of cleave and the fact that moa kills them instantly (can you look at this too), minions are in a great spot, and I’m so happy that the AI was fixed!

Yeah I find it incredibly frustrating that there isn’t any visible MMR when games like Pokemon have it for god’s sake. I guess leagues will solve that problem to an extent though.

zapv.8051:

nearlight.3064:

All of those things that you mentioned can be done in various forms in builds that aren’t celestial. Make your own builds instead of blindly following Nos. he’s a great player, but he could honestly play any necro spec he wanted and still win because his teams rotations carry them each time despite the fact that their their team fight mechanics are quite weak compared to the few teams running team fight comps that have managed to take maps from them.

That’s why in recent tournaments against radioactive, he’s been running variants of his build with flesh wurm and even the bugged Rez signet. And that’s because even he realizes that the meta version of his build lacks support and disengage ability, so you have to change things up for it to work.

Anyway I hope you understand my point. I merely believe that while celestial necro is a good build, it fails when you aren’t 1v1ing. You can change this by changing your utilities and traits to remedy the issue, but that also means that cele loses viability because if you drop any of those 3 lines, the build fails, meaning that another amulet is better if you try to make a similar build that doesn’t rely on curses.

The amount of roles cele necro fills cannot be matched by any other necro build, you might do other individual things better, but as a whole you won’t be as good. Also, I was playing cele necro months before the june 23rd patch and I was playing cele sig on the day of the june 23rd patch (as in, I had figured out the build existed before it was widely posted everywhere). That whole part about nos is just ad hominem illogical bs, and if your argument had more real merit you wouldn’t be resorting to that.

Yes, people change things up constantly, doesn’t mean cele is any less powerful. You say the build lacks support and disengage, but people aren’t running necros for their support or their disengage because other classes do that far far better.

My point is that outside of that build, necros are still outclassed by other classes at the roles you seem to want. Why take a necro for burst, mobility, support, or tankiness? Other classes still do those things better.

The only role that cele signet necro does better than anything else in the game is dueling eles and condi builds. That’s literally it. The thing is, other necro builds can do that almost as well as the cele build, while bringing other things to the table.

I believe that the heals and rezzes from blood magic are quite good if you have even a little bit of healing power in your build. Yes a guardian is better for rezzing, but a guardian can’t fill the dueling niche that necro builds can not can they do as much damage.

I actually ran a variant of the cele build that took flesh wurm and master of corruption for disengage, and trained plague, and corrupt boon for more survivability and the ability to disengage focus fire. It worked really well and then I realized that it worked even better when I dropped curses for blood magic and took the the crusader amulet (death perception lets it work). I suggest you try that build and earnestly compare it to your cele build and try to see which one does which things better. If you pay attention, you’ll probably realize that the extra power makes up for the loss of condition damage several times over.

As someone who plays MM necro a lot right now, I think that drone minions on engi could have a ton of potential since the AI was fixed,

However, it will honestly depend on how easy it is to keep the drones alive. Cleric is the best amulet for MM because you can keep minions alive much longer than usual with two AoE heal traits. We will have to see if engineers will have this ability, since I’m pretty sure inventions healing traits won’t really cut it for drone sustain (plz let them walk into bunker down med kits lol).

Overall we will have to see the details and try it out, but if the drone skills and forge traits are good enough, and if soothing detonation is enough to sustain the kitten drones, then it could be a viable choice for sure.

I also think it’s a bit of BS that vamp rune mist form still lets you stomp, Rez, and go through portals. I mean I guess the ele version of the skill would be useless without it, but it’s still irritating that leakers can get a free portal escape off from a runeset, let alone the free peel to stealth up and get away.

Mesmer is probably my favorite other character. I also like ele but it’s too overpowered right now and that kind of sucks all the fun out of playing it.

I also have a lot of fun playing engi as well as an alt, but it takes a lot of skill and button pressing precision to work, which can be frustrating to learn, but the soldier elixir builds is almost as strong as ele imo. It just has kitten poor condi cleanse holding it back.

Personally OP I love the warhorn skills but hate the traits. The overlord aren’t terrible to me but I’m still worried about the cost benefit paradigm of their use.

Overall I’ll probably play tempest a lot for fun but I doubt I’d use it in tourneys where I play necro instead.

Well I think the main selling point of staff is the fear mark. That pretty much it, since axe/dagger does everything else the same with worse range, better damage, but it’s clunkier. The reason I usually take staff is because soul marks is easy to take in any build, while the axe trait is never taken because of chill of death, and it’s not even that great regardless.

zapv.8051:

nearlight.3064:

Silverkey and zapv, you are correct that might stacking holds the build together offensively, but I still don’t think that the build holds itself together very well outside of 1v1s for the reasons that I have mentioned. Cele necro can’t 1v2 at all and doesn’t end up doing much in team fights. The ways to remedy this are by taking other skills and trait lines that often move your build away enough that other amulets work pretty than celestial with it.

Unblockable aoe interrupts, boon corruption, plague, locust swarm, plague signet, signet of vampirism, doom and tainted shackles are certainly not nothing in teamfights. Also, winning 1vs2s isn’t gonna happen against anyone good and cele necro can stall them plenty long enough. It is currently the best build necros can offer and it mitigates our weaknesses better than anything else. Also, curses, spite, and soul reaping are still our best traitlines in pvp, so dropping them isn’t really worth it imo.

Anything bunkier than cele and you no longer fill a role other classes can’t do better. Glassier and you’ll be fodder under focus fire even more so than cele nec while still being outclassed at burst by thieves and mesmers. Cele necro hits a middle ground of offensive pressure, sustain and utility that isn’t matched by any other builds I’ve seen (outside of cele ele, which is an even matchup).

All of those things that you mentioned can be done in various forms in builds that aren’t celestial. Make your own builds instead of blindly following Nos. he’s a great player, but he could honestly play any necro spec he wanted and still win because his teams rotations carry them each time despite the fact that their their team fight mechanics are quite weak compared to the few teams running team fight comps that have managed to take maps from them.

That’s why in recent tournaments against radioactive, he’s been running variants of his build with flesh wurm and even the bugged Rez signet. And that’s because even he realizes that the meta version of his build lacks support and disengage ability, so you have to change things up for it to work.

Anyway I hope you understand my point. I merely believe that while celestial necro is a good build, it fails when you aren’t 1v1ing. You can change this by changing your utilities and traits to remedy the issue, but that also means that cele loses viability because if you drop any of those 3 lines, the build fails, meaning that another amulet is better if you try to make a similar build that doesn’t rely on curses.

Siva Mira.3546:

It is certainly bad just as the OP said. That’s why there is alot of Cele Necro out there because people like to play bad build. It is true, you can gauge the output of Cele Necro by AAing golem in the mist. It is also true, Berserker Amulet is OP and broken because it can AAing golem to dead in the fastest time record but we don’t really use it because we are all nice guy.

Anyway, why do we need to prove to him that Cele Necro is good just like how Ele saying their Cele Ele is balanced? Come on, get in the game and put on your Cleric Amulet and see if you can kill anything that move.

People play this build because they blindly follow a combination of Noscoc and metabattle and haven’t developed the ability to think outside of the box. The cele-cleric comparison I made was just to show people that the build is overly dependent on mightstacking and DS to do any damage because its base power is so low. Unlike cele ele, cele necro has only one damage modifier and can’t spam burning even if it can do a lot of other things. All of this, along with other weaknesses of the build that I’ve mentioned before has lead me to believe that cele necro isn’t as ideal as we all thought it was.

And cleric MM is probably one of our best builds right now, since the minion AI is good enough to let it kill things, and blood magic traits lets it heal and rez everyone even when all of its minions die. The only problem with it is the popularity of moa engis.

Personally I think soul comprehension should just be scrapped and replaced with something else entirely, something that either provides actual survivability/damage mitigation or better life force generation.

Like maybe change it into a trait that gives you 1% life force when hit with a 1 second per target ICD.

That would still be reasonable for a minor trait, while it would help necro’s scaling defenses when being focused in larger fights problem, although it wouldn’t be a true solution.

Or you could just make putrid defense a minior trait for the master tier and replace that trait with a weapon-based trait in the adept tier… in fact there are so many possibilities to remedy death magic.

Death nova I feel is mostly fine, but I feel that the explosion damage is kind of weak. You also forget that theres a CD (15 secs I think) on the jagged horror being summoned, so maybe that should be removed. Personally I usually take corruptor’s fervor for the tankiness when I go death magic, but thats just my personal playstyle.

I can’t really comment on reaper’s onslaught since it was bugged to not work, but we should probably wait to see how good/bad it is during the beta before we make suggestions regarding it.

As for your other suggestions, I feel like they’re pretty sound, but I think part of it the issue is that the death magic tree wants to be a tree about death and getting stronger from the deaths/kills around you (as well as minions since that makes thematic sense too), but due to gameplay design requirements of the larger game its shoehorned into being a “personal survivability through being tankier traitline”, since one traitline has to do that, and I don’t think that synergizes well with the overall theme for getting stronger from deaths around you.

Thats why I only ever go into death magic when I run minions, just because you need necromantic corruption and flesh of the master to make those builds work at all, while the GM trait is a tossup. Shrouded Removal, the minion traits, and corruptor’s fervor are great, but everything else, especially the minor traits and the non-minion master traits don’t really provide meaningful survivability that works well with the death-master theme.

Since the death magic staff traits got merged into soul marks and baselined, there also aren’t any weapon specific traits for the traitline, but since our weapon niches are poorly defined at best (staff on zerker well build in spvp, really?) a rework that creates better niches for exisiting weapons should occur before possibly adding a weapon based trait into death magic, which I think would help it too.

Anyway those are my thoughts, I apologize for getting a bit ranty about death magic, but those thoughts have been boiling for the past few days.

Silverkey and zapv, you are correct that might stacking holds the build together offensively, but I still don’t think that the build holds itself together very well outside of 1v1s for the reasons that I have mentioned. Cele necro can’t 1v2 at all and doesn’t end up doing much in team fights. The ways to remedy this are by taking other skills and trait lines that often move your build away enough that other amulets work pretty than celestial with it.

After doing some rudimentory testing, I discovered that cele necro dagger autoing a golem does roughly the same physical dps as a clerics necro. Golem tests aside, that opened my eyes to how worthless celestial is on necromancer, as we have said, those bleeds/torment do very little to boost that damage so the spec relies on spite might.

Cele also doesn’t really work on warrior/engi anymore either even though they can make it work offensively, because after the June 23rd match, running cele isn’t enough to handle zerker thief/mesmer bursts and coordinated focus fire in teamfights. The only way you can make cele work defensively is if you can heal through half of your health every 9 seconds with oodles of blind and prot (ele) or if you can spam weakness and life force generation to survive (necro, but this fails as soon as you do anything besides 1v1s).

I think that blood magic oriented builds are the way to go now, because you can, you know, not be worthless in teamfights because you can heal/rez people. Since theres a signet in blood magic, I’ve found much higher success revamping the cele signet build into a crusader build with blood over curses. I can still beat condi bombers 1v1 no problem even without plague sending, while I can actually help out in teamfights. I also take flesh wurm over spectral armor for good measure, so I can run away should the enemy team grow a brain and focus me.

So thats what I’ve gained from this discussion. The SR variant MM build (I take corruptor’s ferver since I can’t train my brain to not press f1 when unholy sant is about to proc) is similarly a good build because it has great healing and support even when minions die, and it handles 1v1s very well since you can overwhelm most non-moa users with AI spam.

Anyway those are the builds that I think are best for necro right now. Crusader signet and cleric MM.

Sagat.3285:

You would lose 1 really good line though I love Spite and Curses Soul Reaping is a must just like every unique line. I don’t see cele reaper being better than cele necro and no Dhummfire is not a bad trait it’s just wet trash with Life Blast.

This is true as well. You need spite might to deal damage with cele, you need curses to spam weakness to mitigate burst damage, you need SR to get burning for RS, and you need Reaper to be… a reaper.

This is 3 traitline syndrome at its finest. If you drop even one of the four traitlines, the build literally falls apart, so I think its fair to say that celestial reaper won’t be great, and my inital testing in the last beta confirmed that as well. I swapped to the soldier’s amulet so fast its not even funny.

Lily.1935:

zapv.8051:

Lily.1935:

zapv.8051:

Gimme a condition based sword, a cc based hammer, and a bow. I’d be happy.

we actually have a tone of CC weapons. Including Scepter, dagger MH/OH, warhorn, Staff, Axe, greatsword, death shroud, reaper’s shroud.

CC is love, cc is life. Anyway, yeah you aren’t wrong I just really love cc, specifically of the hard variety. As for support, I thought a shortbow+elixir combo would fill that role (Magehunter archtype).

For support I was thinking Shield and Torch. But that’s me. Shortbow eh? Kinda of an odd choice for a necro. Though I don’t disagree.

Since you alluded to minion specific shield skills earlier with glyphs for utilities, what specfic ideas did you have in mind? An offhand thats specific to minion builds would be really really cool, but I’d imagine a lot of people would get disapointed to due AI stigma in this game.

Mantra of pain focused Mesmer builds still do well, but mantra of distraction can’t really be abused anymore, which I think is a good thing personally.

Yet another misinformed forum warrior.

This is not a condi meta at all when most teams run so much cross cleansing (ele cleansing water, heal turret, power cleanse, pure of voice, settler trooper runes) that condition damage as a dedicated DPS stat is negligable in teamfights. Burn guard has a slight niche in the meta, but it loses to almost any necro build 1v1 and can’t fight so many other things.

The builds that are considered meta pretty much all have adequate condi clear aside from PU shatter mes.

Also you say that necromancer has to be nerfed? I’m pretty sure 90% of this game’s community would disagree with you on that, since so much of the necromancer’s basic weaponsets underperform.

Eles are over the top, but burn spam is only part of that problem. Still, calling this a condi meta is completely shortsighted.

zapv.8051:

You can totally spam burn, anytime you want burn on someone just find a guard or ele (really easy to do imo). Eat all their burns, and run through their fire fields then send it to someone.

Yeah except those burns use their condi damage instead of yours.

In general though OP I think cele works only because of spite-might. And even then the build isn’t very good outside of 1v1ing eles and condi classes.

flow.6043:

nearlight.3064:

Cele signet necro is the best 1v1 build for the class hands down.

Imo cele signets is just the laziest way to deal with boon heavy classes played by mediocre players.
Also, a build without Blood Magic isn’t the best at anything.

Well my opinion of cele signers is that it’s only good for 1v1s. Outside of that it’s kind of bad because the mets version of the builds can’t disengage and isn’t very good in team fights.

As cleric MM I feel better in team fights than cele even if the minions die to AoE, since I can actually support the team through rezzes and heals.

Cele signet necro is the best 1v1 build for the class hands down.

Condi necro comes close, but only if there is life force, and things like diamond skin hard make them less fully versatile and amazing.

Both of these specs are horrible at 1v2ing though, and can only disengage if they modify their build for flesh wurm, and even then its not a full proof escape.

MM necro is also very good at 1v1s since the AI is fixed and can actually use wurm to try and run away should things get too much to handle. They do have to worry about soldier/marauder engis with moa in 1v1s, since they have a ton of cleave/CC ontop of their kill minion button. Mesmers are only a problem due to moa, but not an issue otherwise, while hammer/GS warriors can be a problem if they cleave your minions but CC your transfusion.

I get kind of annoyed when people complain about the same or similar traits popping up across different classes/specs. Necromancers complaining about DD weakening strikes is also irritating. Really things like incendiary powder being the same as the old dhuumfire and all these other proc based traits have always been similar across classes. It just sucks that the devs aren’t able to make traits that aren’t passive on crit, or on certain specific condition procs.

Robert Gee has been a bit better with that, since hes the only dev thats really trait that stack buffs on a proc like fencer’s finesse or corruptor’s fervor, which requires more active play. Or traits that change existing skill funcitonality like transfusion or even the DD dodge traits.

You can actually random dodge much of mesmers bursts since its actually a bit clunky rather than fluid unless done from stealth. Overall though, unless you play a marauder/zerk class that isn’t theif/mes, you should be able to do fairly well against shatter mesmer 1v1.

Soldier engi does fine because it has high sustained damage, can bait defensive cooldowns to lock the mesmer down, and can invuln through a burst if timed correctly.

Mesmers generally cannot survive against a tanky offensive class (meaning your engi build, cele ele, MM or sig nec) in a duel while sitting on the point, so they basically have to let you get a decap or even full cap, since they will die pretty quickly if they try to stand on the point. If you play anything condition based like trap ranger or burn guard, your chances will be really high against PU-shatter mes, although inspiration shatter with mantra of pain will be a harder matchup.

It probably would, although you may with to alter some things in order to run away better (like Swalk over Sarmor). I know many people run a terrormancer version of that build with almost identical traits but dire gear and a scepter, and do well with it because in WvW you can run around with full life force no problem.

Cele signet necro is very strong in 1v1s, and is possibly the strongest 1v1 build on necromancer (minions are strong in 1v1 too but things like moa engis counter them so they’re not as strong for purely 1v1 imo). However it doesn’t do very well when it fights multiple enemies since necro lacks disengage ability outside of things like walk and wurm, but even then most classes can still catch up to you if they’re really thirsty for the kill.

I’m not a WvW roamer at all, but I think it would work fairly well, as long as you try to not fight more than one competent opponent.

Lifesteal wells? What? That’s supposed to be sustain, that 43 healing per tick we get 2 or 3 times before people walk out of our wells?

The only build that has close to good life steal sustain is cleric MM, and that build is incredibly weak to burst.

Still I will say that you forum warriors should try to stop comparing classes based on 1v1 potential. The reapers kit is designed around having better damage, utility, and survivabikity in team fights, not 1v1s. Meanwhile thief is probably one of the worst classes in a dragged out team fight. They only go in, get a burst off, and get out before they’re focused (although evade spam thief did better there but with much less burst damage), or help out with an SR Rez/stomp or burst a fleeing target down. They can’t be in thick of the fight, on the point, dealing high damage while tanking damage like an appropriately built reaper can (base necro is somewhat weak there by comparison).

So yeah realistically, in a 1v1 the reaper just has to stay alive for long enough to get a reinforcement. And if built appropriately that should be very easy to do.

tldr: reaper is team fight based while dare devil is more 1v1 based so stop trying to make these obviously flawed comparisons.

Ara.4569:

Strong, I don’t think so. It will be fun to play though, until the frustration not to be competitive catches up.

I don’t like the fact that Reaper is forced to take Dhuumfire to deal damage. Just staying in shroud depletes life force, so it should compensate by doing more damage than dagger on it’s own. but no, we’re still balanced around best case scenario (we can’t be 6/6/6/6/6 so we will always be subpar).

Reaper is crippled by core necromancer issues; it just uses a different flavor.

I’m more frustrated with being forced into soul reaping for vital persistence than anything else, but I do see your point considering my test where soldiers reaper did overall more damage with dhuumfire than with death perception on.

I’ve always thought stuff like that would be a good idea. Turn life force into a resource for using skills rather than using it to soak up damage. Then the deva would have to give us better mobility and active defenses as utilities to make that play style work well hahaha.

I’d say it’s quite strong, but unlike things like elementalist, it’s actually balanced with a clear set of strengths and weaknesses.

So yeah it’s strong, just not overpowered like things that typically get the mets label.

FrownyClown.8402:

During the first beta I ran celestial signet as reaper and it was my favorite specilization

I tried this too, but I quickly had to switch to soldiers because you can’t really run celestial without curses as the weakness is needed to survive burst classes in 1v1s. In fact that’s the issue, the current three trait lines that cele necro uses have so much synergy that you can’t really make a good cele build without each of them, imo.

Personally I’m most excited to try out MM reaper, but other ranks power builds entice me as well.

I think the autoattack chain needs to do more damage. On a soldiers build just autoattacking the golems down I killed the golems faster with dhuumfire equipped than I did with death perception, and thats with 0 condi damage aside from spite might.

So that either means that

1: Burning too stronk
2. RS auto base damage too weak

Or maybe both. Who knows.

Arkantos.7460:

nearlight.3064:

Can you necroforum warriors please stop the martyr complex already? So many people here complain about the necro/reaper to be weak as hell but they hardly ever play. I have high MMR and regularly face off against ESL players when I queue, and i do mostly fine against them, so I don’t see why everyone is crying about necro/reaper being underpowered in pvp just because of new toys that every other class is getting, while forgetting that our new toys are just as good, if not better.

also tested reaper and with a bit knowledge of how thiefs dodge working you can outplay thiefs, andnot every thief willtake Escapist’s Absolution or all other condicleans traits just to punish nekros ….
Always remember, they dont have stabi, so hard cc

Yeah after watching the livestream I honestly feel like it won’t such a huge problem. I mean the dash chill/cripple/immob cleanse should probably have a 9 second ICD to be consistent with other similar traits on other classes (like Stop, Drop and Roll).

Still I don’t think teh strongesr daredevil build will even take that trait. S/P with the leap finisher dodge trait will probably be used since it will let S/P builds have reliable stealth, which was always their biggest weakness. S/D could also make a come back using the dash-dodge trait, but I think S/P with the leap dodge will be stronger for better stealth access, better burst damage, and the fact that it hasn’t been nerfed a lot like S/D in the past.

Right now I’m more concerned about interrupt-based DD builds. S/P with the pulmonary impact proc and distracting daggers looks powerful with DD/Trickery/Deadly Arts (or maybe shadow arts but probably not). Basically it sounds like the “new” mantra mesmer. I think reaper stands a fair shot against that build due to having good stability uptime and melee pressure but it will be based on life force pool and skill differences between the two players.

Something similar happened to me as well, except my team was fine and it was the start of the game. The whole team had a 4 man DC, and it was embarassing tbh.

Probably not until the next Go4 ELS monthly

I personally can’t support this appreciation thread because Karl McLain’s dev skillz are inconsistent.

I mean yeah daredevil traits look amazing, if not a rehashed form of acrobatics, but kitten like latent stamina and imbued melodies and pretty much almost all of the tempest traits are literally the worst trait ideas I’ve ever even dared to imagine. I mean how can someone come up with traits that useless?

Honestly tempest wouldn’t be so bad at all if they completely redid the traitline to not suck kitten .

Part of the issue is that tempest doesn’t feel as OP as base ele, but I don’t think its that terrible.

If they just redid the traits so that each set of 3 tiers would have playstyle synergy, it’d be a good spec.

For example as I’ve said before:

Make one bruisery/sustain tier line with shouts/aura traits.

Make one line focusing on spamming protection and giving bonuses to protection such that tempest is the master of protection in the same way that reaper is the master of chill or berserker is the master of burn.

Make a final line more offensive in nature and focus on making the overloads more offensively potent. I had an idea for a triat called “Tempest Offense” that would boost overload damage and damage while in an overloaded attunement by 20%. Stuff like that would be really cool, and it wouldn’t totally disregard the support theme of the spec.

Wait, you think Terrormancer is still meta? Have you not played GW2 since 2013?

Even then, terrormancer fell out of favor nearly 8 months ago when shoutbow AoE cleanse spam became meta, and since then power, cele, and even minion necro have usurped condi necro completely.

Login.5102:

MM is the most hard counted build in the entire game

Elixer X and Moah still make MM almost unplayable in PVP.

Still waiting for the change where your minions turn into baby moahs that can be killed, instead of destroying all minions and put your heal, all utilities and elite on full cooldown.

Thats the main reason I don’t run blood fiend.

I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I just don’t like the negativity of thinking that every new elite spec is going to hard counter us. I think the argument is a bit skewed because much of the reapers kit is team fight oriented, while most people are comparing reaper to other classes purely through 1v1s. And that’s a fair assessment since most base necro builds are fundamentally stronger 1v1 than in team fights.

Anyway I just think we should keep that distinction in mind while discussing this.

Can you necroforum warriors please stop the martyr complex already? So many people here complain about the necro/reaper to be weak as hell but they hardly ever play. I have high MMR and regularly face off against ESL players when I queue, and i do mostly fine against them, so I don’t see why everyone is crying about necro/reaper being underpowered in pvp just because of new toys that every other class is getting, while forgetting that our new toys are just as good, if not better.

Still I find it incredibly restrictive to limit builds to basically condi or zerker power necro. I understand the need for strict regulation in duels, but this is a little bit much.

They are infinitely better after today’s change, especially in team fights where you can push them on a target to focus, whereas before they really couldn’t.

I personally find elixir based engine to be the best counter by far, not only because of Moa, but because of high CC, sustain, and damage pressure in general. dd ele and burn guard are also rough due to minions walking through the fire rings.

I wouldn’t compare MM necro to turret engis, because turrets were all about forcing decaps, which MM can’t effectively do. MM necro also requires micromanagement of minions and AoE heals and CC skills to work well. MM necro is very weak to CC and focus fire, since blowing up the flesh wurm is are only chance to escape, and it does a pretty good job at handling disengages, however its difficult to reengage after blowing it up.

I like the warhorn skills a lot, but I hate the traits. I don’t play too much ele now because necro is less face roll these days. I’ll probably play tempest casually when the expansion comes out but I’ll probably use reaper or the engi elite spec for tournaments and more serious stuff since I like necro and engi more these days because you actually need a brain to play them.

I used to run something almost identical to this builds in the past, however I ran staff over axe and has slightly different traits in spite. Overall it was a decent team fight builds because you could tank a point for a very long time and provide support through rezzes. I did feel that it was useless in smaller fights as it didn’t really have enough damage on its own to win the 1v1s that cele signet necro and MM can win with ease. Cele signet has the ele matchup going for it (its main strength) while Cleric MM has better team support and better sustained single target damage.

I also used locust over spite and strength runes.

So my verdict is that it’s a good build, but it’s not a great build.

Axe is my favorite necromancer weapon in terms of theme and aesthetics, so I eagerly await Robert Gees buffs for it. I just like the idea of some ghostly scary claw rending you from afar, I think it’s sooooo cool!

But I am not blind to its problems. Still I make it work as on offset to d/who on builds that can’t utilize staff very well, so I pretty much just use it on minion and yolo zerk wells builds.

Flesh when is a great minion because it serves as a disengage tool on any build, as disengage is the biggest weakness with necro. That’s why you have to find spots that let the warm contribute to the fight, while still giving you a gtfo button to escape when you get +1 or +2ed at a node.

Yup I’ll be free then. Let me know what your saying ideas of crazy builds are.

Pick meeeeeee speed Starr, I love weird necro builds!

Silverkey.2078:

So, is MM the (second) best necro build in sPvP now?

Thats what I’m trying to test out but I’m at my annual point of being fed up with GW2 so I doubt I’ll get very far in pushing the build to its limits.

Obviously diamond skin should be reworked to grant 2s of resistance on either swapping to earth (similar to rock solid) or resistance from using a glyph. We didn’t have resistance when this trait was made, but we have it now, so the trait should be reworked accordingly.

I mean this is the most obvious solution.