Guild Wars 2

I personally think its a bit facetious to think that they deeply care about the “ele community” or any community. The game designers may consider it, but they want to make the game they make with their own ideas, whether or not those ideas are good or bad.

Velimere.7685:

Quadox.7834:

I think we can safely assume Necro Cele is the best at killing Cele ele while not losing the point in 5 secs. Even Noscoc feels confident 1v1ing top tier eles. The problem is that once the enemy team +1 the ele, the necro has NO chance of escape, unlike the ele who could easily escape.

Just make Dark Path a ground-target and the problem is solved.

There’s also flesh wurm which can help a disengage, but in cele signets, you have to run it over spectral armor, which is a very tough choice to make, but potentially more powerful if you take the time to master it.

Also since this is vaguely a thread about blood magic, do you guys know if mercy runes boosts the revive speed for transfusion and life from death?

Bhawb.7408:

nearlight.3064:

@manveruppd, what do you think necros will run when ele gets nerfed? Also I heard from a popular streamer that the ele balance dev is on vacation right now so thats why it hasn’t been nerfed yet… but I guess it will be soon since vacations can’t last forever.

They’ve been on vacation for two years? Man I want to work at ANet.

Hahaha yeah it sounds like a great job in all seriousness, but being a game designer is probably difficult when you get to crunch time before a release.

Anyway it was a streamer that talked to tons of devs intimatedly at the WTS, so yeah its just a rumour of a neverending vacation, but hopefully for the game’s sake it ends soon.

@manveruppd, what do you think necros will run when ele gets nerfed? Also I heard from a popular streamer that the ele balance dev is on vacation right now so thats why it hasn’t been nerfed yet… but I guess it will be soon since vacations can’t last forever.

Nick.7621:

DPS rampage warrior. Second to none in the cleave category, double quickness is cray, and more team oriented with CC chains.

Engi cleave is better because they have poison nades, and poison makes rez attempts much slower, plus they can do all the cleave from ranged and use toss elixir x when needed to stop a rez/stomp attempt without fail.

How good is shiro’s burst in a maruader/zerk amulet setup? While this is a longshot, mesmers are generally fine wihtout condi removal on burst specs…. but they also have stealth and mobility whereas rev doesn’t..

Yeah and considering how revenant has only two stunbreaks, (one from legend swap when traited, the other from shiro skill and they may not have energy to use it) and the other lack of invulns or long duration damage mitigation sources, after their breakbar is broken, they’ll be literally kittened.

Tempest defense squad, you rang?

Seriously though we all can agree that the warhorn is the best part of the elite sepcialization, as evidenced by the voting thread. And honestly all we really need to make tempest good is to make the overload storms actual storms in their potency and changing traits/skills/mechanics to be overall more impactful, and hopefully with a healthy dose of stability!

I think ring of fire should be changed so that it gives a spike of 4K damage every time you cross it. Doesn’t that seem much more balanced?

/sarcasm

The asura female shouts on every class always sound so sarcastic in a cute way.

I do wonder however, if GS buffs will be enough run it in place of dagger/warhorn on a bruiser type build. If the pull’s CD was lowered and made more reliable I could almost see it, but even then dagger/warhorn will always be better with blood magic for incidental life siphon, as soul eater doesn’t seem to be a strong enough trait.

I mean we get tons of stability in Reaper Shroud, which is arguably more useful than a breakbar since we don’t have to channel a long cast, high risk, questionably valued reward, skill in order to gain it.

Mines is the creepiest horror abomination in all of indie gaming…..

Springtrap from Five Nights at Freddy’s 3…

Lewis Burnell.2493:

So because I haven’t won WTS with my Necromancer, I have no right to logically argue as to why his build is poor? On that basis, some of the worlds best sports coaches shouldn’t be teaching because they haven’t won the competition they’re training their athletes for. What nonsense.

I argued above why Nos’ build was poor and I stand by it. The Abjured won the WTS not because of Nos but because of their own ability and the fact they dragged Nos and his build through it. He died almost twice as much as anyone else and as a result, regularly forced Abjured to waste cooldowns getting him up, or forcing them to fight 4v5.

As I previously stated, if he’d use Spectral Walk and Wurm, at the very least he’d be able to escape before needlessly dying. Being “tanky” doesn’t mean sitting there until you’re dead. Nos of all people should know the value of mobility in Guild Wars 2, with or without a “tanky” build and lets be honest, if he wanted to go tanky he’d have taken Blood Magic and Soldier’s like I suggested.

You can argue all you want, and your build is probably actually really good, (I’d probably only take wurm, not walk) but the definition of meta is complicated in that it attempts to describe both what is the most effective, and what is the most common and widely played at competitve levels. So while I like your build, and it looks like it could be very effective, until tons of other people play it, you won’t be able to call it meta. Personally I beleive that soldiers necro won’t be widely run until either HoT comes out (since it just works better with reaper than cele does due to 3 traitline syndrome), or until fire D/D ele and/or burning/burn application as a whole gets nerfed, since countering those condi bursts and D/D eles 1v1 is the primary niche of cele signet necro. If that niche isn’t needed, necro will probably adapt to tank builds, unless thieves/mesmer gets more nerfed, in which case zerker well or possibly condi builds would become used.

I honestly suggest trying your build out in low tier tourneys like pugquest or AG, and seeing how it really actually performs, and I’d be interested in hearing your opinion on it.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

I simply can’t fathom why the devs seems so unwilling to touch old ele skills, traits and of course elites.

I can’t fathom how they haven’t nerfed ele’s burn application yet.

Yeah, theres no way they’ll do a complete rework of the elite spec, as all of the skills/traits/animations are in the game. But I do expect them to tweak all of the skills/traits to offer something with more viable gameplay. I think it has potential, but all of that potential is buried under a lack of stability, non-impactful traits, and excessive time related costs to use overlaods.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

It absolutely INFURIATES me that people take Nos’ build as Meta. The reason why he died – constantly – isn’t for his lack of skill, it’s because his build:

1. Isn’t bunker
2. Lacks mobility

He sacrifices absolutely everything for boon strip and a slight damage boost. Heck, even his use of Spectral Armor is negligible if you choose the right traits.

What should be meta is this build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhZ6kGRozGsvGw4Gg/GcgLUzi4EWCYbGALANNajnF-TJRGwAAOFAg2fIaZADPBAA

1. Ridiculous mobility with Wurm and Spectral Walk
2. Still has strong life force gain from Spectral Walk
3. Still capable of stripping 4 boons when using Signets
4. Has much higher vitality, base power and toughness, without the need for relying on might stacking
5. Self sustain is much higher due to life stealing from Blood Magic trait line
6. Group support is higher due to no bleed out + Transfusion heal
7. You still gain the 25% speed buff when wielding a dagger, and get dagger cooldowns reduced significantly if played right

All you sacrifice is 20% extra critical hit chance and 4 extra boons removed. Honestly, it’s nonsense how his build is considered Meta.

gavyne.6847:

That build is made to hold points until help comes. Ironically the dd eles did the same jobs, but with less deaths, and they have great mobility to boot. This isn’t a knock on Nos at all, he did all he could given the toolset available to him, and he played well and made some great moves during the final. My problem is with the necro class and how they (devs and some players) think necros are so great at being tanky. When the tournament showed necros were getting destroyed left & right.

Nos got destroyed because he isn’t bunker… His build is damage orientated, with some survivability. There’s a huge difference.

Well maybe when you win the WTS, then maybe you’ll get your chance to decide whats meta and whats not. You can talk all you want, but without tournament results, you have no way to assert that your argument is credible.

Although I will say that the build you run is similar to the one I run right now, except I don’t do questionable things like swalk and wurm on a tank build. That type of build is more suited for teamfights while Nos’s build is more focused on 1v1s and +1ing smaller fights, like in the tourney today where Nos would break off to go 1v1 eles. Also since I’ve watched Nos stream a lot, he actually does run a soldier’s signet build with blood magic over curses, and he acknowledges it to be a great build, it just serves a different role that what is needed for his team most of the time.

@Nyth, I disagree with your reasoning. I view warrior, engi, and necromancer to be roughly equivalent in viablity right now, and light years ahead of ranger. The only reason that warrior/engi seems more common is because more people played them prepatch when they had faceroll cele builds. Engi basically died out in pvp on NA for a while after the realization that cele engi was nerfed into the ground, with chaith’s power builds being the exception. And honestly with zerker warrior, its literally a one trick pony that depends on rampage (easily countered by mesmer, necro, or engi) to do anything of real value. Also about mesmer, right now they’re only strong because they can trait PU and use portal, without either one of those, they’re nothing.

Yashuoa.9527:

Yashuoa.9527:

Nick.7621:

As an experienced engineer I’ve tried out the Marauder Rifle build, condi builds, and the Soldier Rifle build. I went back to Celestial a couple of days ago and I haven’t looked back. I’ve been able to beat all of the other engies that run Marauder Rifle, I have survivability because of Celestial Amulet, and because of the way the traits are set up now I do more damage than the last Celestial engi meta. Not to mention that if you use Mortar Kit it’s a whole lot more team oriented (combo fields and blast finishers). For example if I blast my Healing Turret with Elexir Shell and Orbital Strike that’s ~11k heal for my team. Blasting Healing Turret with Endothermic Shell gives my team a 10% damage reduction taken to them, and dropping Flash Shell is amazing for fighting on point with the blind outputs. Also if you go into Firearms and go bottom mid bottom the combination of High Caliber with Slick Shoes and grenades is amazing, not to mention that every 10 seconds when you crit you put out 2 stacks of burning which equate to just over 400 burn ticks for that extra DPS and the recharge reduction by 20% on rifle is amazing.

I am a new player. Could you explain to me how to do these combo’s with your healing turrent? Just shooting at it with the mentioned spells wont make it happen right?

Anyone?

Basically just use the water field with blasts (such as the shield blast or detonate, although don’t alwyas detonate) or leaps (rifle 5).

TheLastNobody.8319:

Burning is ridiculous right now, would be nice if they dropped it down and buffed bleeds a bit to compensate

I agree with this 1000000000%. Bleeds do kitten damage, while burning scales way to well.

Its hilarious in pvp trying to play a condi necro build and barely break 1K per second bleed ticks after 5+seconds of attacking, to have guardians running around putting more than ten stacks of burning on someone at once, doing several times the damage a condi necro does with a much shorter ramp up time.

Well at least necro can transfer the aids back…

Noodica.5428:

nearlight.3064:

Noodica.5428:

nearlight.3064:

This was a really nice video! The reaper/tempestorele combo looks really powerfu since you can literally sustain the reaper with boonspam.

Yep! you caught on to it Thats exactly what the aim was.

Also did you pull one of the songs near the end from the soundtrack of xenoblade chronicles X?

No all songs were from Attack on Titan.
First song is – Counterattack Mankind
Second song is – E.M.A

Oh that explains it, Hiroyuko Sawano wrote the music for both attack on titan and XCX, which is why they sounded so similar.

But yeah his music is so epic, you should check out his other work!

This song in particular sounds very attack on titanesque.

Knighthonor, they already added a blind the RS 2, it just applies on the “blast” at the end of the strike so its hard to land.

Right now that skill is best used for running away, which it actually deos fairly well. You can also engage with it and close a gap sometimes, but its really hard to hit with it, meaning that path of corruption is wasted on your build if you run curses.

Vydahr.4285:

nearlight.3064:

Vydahr.4285:

nearlight.3064:

Sagat.3285:

Azure.8670:

I still think minion mancer is superior to signet but what do I know

You are not the only one, only AI issues are holding MM back but cele signet is kind of overrated there is an even thread in PvP section saying it better than cele ele.

Yeah I am starting to see that cele signets is overrated. Mainly because, while it is amazing in 1v1s, it really isn’t that strong in teamfights since necro is so easy to focus. Due to that I’ve switched to a soldier’s variation of the build that uses blood magic instead of curses, although curses could might still be better since death perception lets you proc the curses proc traits.. hmmmm…

Yeah.. I’ve never really been into minion builds, but I do think that tanky power builds that are bruiser-esque in design and focus are our strongest choices, which MM technically classifies as, I just like the mightstacking and utility of signets for now.

Try a Soldier SR/BM/S Spectral Well build. That’ll give you a fair bit of durability and plenty of bruising power. I’ve been running one that I really like and unless my team kittens itself for some Grenth forsaken reason, it does really well, including in team fights (plenty of AoE and enough focus with dagger aa that you take down players too)

I see the advantage to using wells (protection) but I prefer signets. Other than that and utility based trait choices the builds we came up with are probably pretty similar.

It’s also a fair bit of damage in a large AoE. In a team fight where there’s more going on, you’re going to be hitting two or three (or more) people for somewhere around 6k damage, which is not fun for light armor classes, and not exactly negligible on heavy armor. And that’s base. If you make full bloodlust stacks, it bumps it to 7k (non-critting, mind.) And at 20 might stacks, the two damage wells will hit fro about 8500 damage over six seconds. To up to five targets. That can turn a team fight pretty well if timed right.

The build I use that I get those numbers from: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBIhZakjGapxaaw2G4wxBuQBbzAoFmFxJUF0zIOeWA-TZRBwAbOEA02focZgFnAAAPBAA

I’ll give it a try tomorrow if I have time. My build is basically the same thing with vamp/locust/plague signets, transfusion, blood bond, SoS, life from death, vital persistence, and unyielding blast, so actually its very different.

Since while my build is great for rezzing people with transfusion and whatnot, its downcleave isn’t as good since it doesn’t have wells, although the signet might helps with might stacking faster.

Samhayn.2385:

Endlos.4852:

For what it’s worth, a lot of comments in that article are fairly accurate. Namely: The Greatsword doesn’t do enough damage to justify its long cast times and relative lack of stability. Exact same deal with the Shouts. And the reach/range on a lot of Greatsword and Reaper Shroud skills could be bumped up a bit.

However, and this is the problem with a ‘prominent’ website publishing an article to act as pointed feedback, that guy’s build sucks. His trait choices are bad and lacking in synergy. By his own (clueless and ill-guided) “suggestions” he demonstrates that he doesn’t even know how Decimate Defenses actually works, but he lists ideas of how to “fix” it, even if his ideas being implemented would actually severely reduce the effectiveness of the trait.

TenTon guy took a metabattle build for live and Dagger+WH/Staff, ripped out one of the trait lines, dropped Reaper in, presumably replaced one of the weapons with Greatsword, changed nothing else, and ignored a lot of synergy opportunities within Reaper and with other trait lines he kept. He appeared to go for a Power/Condi mix (given his obsession with chill and chill damage) which is usually a no-no, but even then didn’t connect all the proper dots to make a chill-focused build.

Yes, Reaper needs some love in the math department, and maybe a little bit in the mechanics department (GS and Shouts need to hit like trucks if they’re going to remain that slow, and/or need to have a lot of built-in stability) but I’ve seen that bloody TTH article linked in multiple threads here, and on Reddit, and it needs to stop. While he makes a lot of valid points, they’re a little undercut by the fact that he really doesn’t know what he’s doing, given his bad build and ability to babble about fixing a trait he doesn’t understand. If 95% of what you say is factual, but 5% is demonstrably flawed, people are only going to remember the 5% and use that to discredit the 95%, no matter how legitimate it may be.

The problems he stated are general issues good build or not. Really right now most of the “good” necros on youtube and what not are all running the same three trait lines. Even after testing several builds even I came to the same conclusion. If your going reaper you need spite you want the vuln and you want the might and you want close to death. If you ate running reaper and you want to use reapers shroud (duh) you need to run soul reaping to buff your shroud because it decays to fast with out it.

If anything the fact that your really only run the same trait lines no matter what you want power or condi, tanky or burst is a problem too.

I allueded to this in the post I made today about how I think vital persistence should be made baseline so that ever build, and especially every reaper build ins’t shoehorned into soul reaping, I think that trait being baseline would help a lot, even though some people have argued against me.

Bhawb.7408:

nearlight.3064:

I’m fine with being proven wrong, but I just honestly can’t think of a viable necro build currently that doesn’t use the trait line as a whole, regardless of last gasp or not. Maybe with reaper and blighter’s boon, it won’t feel as mandatory to me though..

MM doesn’t need to use it, anything support related doesn’t have to either, and well builds don’t have to. Again, less an issue of the trait line itself being needed to make builds work, and more that you’re stuck using it because the other options don’t necessarily boost your build.

Okay, now I understand your point. So while it may not be needed to make a good version of one of those builds, it ends up being taken because theres say for example, little point in taking death magic for a well build or curses for a minion build or something of that nature.

Vydahr.4285:

nearlight.3064:

Sagat.3285:

Azure.8670:

I still think minion mancer is superior to signet but what do I know

You are not the only one, only AI issues are holding MM back but cele signet is kind of overrated there is an even thread in PvP section saying it better than cele ele.

Yeah I am starting to see that cele signets is overrated. Mainly because, while it is amazing in 1v1s, it really isn’t that strong in teamfights since necro is so easy to focus. Due to that I’ve switched to a soldier’s variation of the build that uses blood magic instead of curses, although curses could might still be better since death perception lets you proc the curses proc traits.. hmmmm…

Yeah.. I’ve never really been into minion builds, but I do think that tanky power builds that are bruiser-esque in design and focus are our strongest choices, which MM technically classifies as, I just like the mightstacking and utility of signets for now.

Try a Soldier SR/BM/S Spectral Well build. That’ll give you a fair bit of durability and plenty of bruising power. I’ve been running one that I really like and unless my team kittens itself for some Grenth forsaken reason, it does really well, including in team fights (plenty of AoE and enough focus with dagger aa that you take down players too)

I see the advantage to using wells (protection) but I prefer signets. Other than that and utility based trait choices the builds we came up with are probably pretty similar.

I’m fine with being proven wrong, but I just honestly can’t think of a viable necro build currently that doesn’t use the trait line as a whole, regardless of last gasp or not. Maybe with reaper and blighter’s boon, it won’t feel as mandatory to me though..

Ouch. Because of this post, I kind of hope that I never get really high MMR just to avoid queue times.

Maybe leagues will help fix this issue, if anything by getting more players to play the game?

Sagat.3285:

Azure.8670:

I still think minion mancer is superior to signet but what do I know

You are not the only one, only AI issues are holding MM back but cele signet is kind of overrated there is an even thread in PvP section saying it better than cele ele.

Yeah I am starting to see that cele signets is overrated. Mainly because, while it is amazing in 1v1s, it really isn’t that strong in teamfights since necro is so easy to focus. Due to that I’ve switched to a soldier’s variation of the build that uses blood magic instead of curses, although curses could might still be better since death perception lets you proc the curses proc traits.. hmmmm…

Yeah.. I’ve never really been into minion builds, but I do think that tanky power builds that are bruiser-esque in design and focus are our strongest choices, which MM technically classifies as, I just like the mightstacking and utility of signets for now.

Tim.6450:

nearlight.3064:

Yeah I could agree to that compromise as spectral bunkers could get a little out of hand that way. I just hate how necromancers have to put so much traiting into shroud that they lose out on other useful things.

Spectral bunker is a bit exagerated, even celestial signet necro gets a significant boost. Protection uptime from 24% to 45%, life force/cooldown from spectral armor/ last gap boosted with 87.5% and an extra 10 life force every 40 seconds.

I’m going to test out spectral mastery in place of vital persistence on my soldier’s build, which is basically cele signets with the rez signet and blood over curses, to see if the sustain is better or worse.

I guess what I’m getting at is while I have good build ideas that don’t have room for soul reaping, they tend to be ineffective because vital persistence is such a good trait, and while the traitline as a whole is great, I feel that vital persistence is the reason I can’t drop that traitline to try out other things.

How long is this grace period?

Tim.6450:

Well vital persistance has not always been mandatory. Terrormancers could run master of terror instead but I think that was more because it was a wvw build and starting with 100% life force in every fight was possible in wvw.

Now in this meta I think soul reaping is mandatory for 2 traits: last gasp and vital persistance. Last gasp is easily forgotten but the impact is huge: protection, stun break and life force. Removing one of them to baseline may help but we have to consider what can happen to our builds. The biggest issue with making vital persistance baseline is that necro’s may stay in soul reaping because last gasp is there plus they can take spectral attunement which is a huge sustain buff since especially since spectral armor isquite popluar as well.

So I suggest making vital persistance partially baseline. So we degenerate at a rate of 3%/second and vital persistance reduces it further to 2. Cooldown reduction is also boosted to 20% to make trait budgetting fit.

Yeah I could agree to that compromise as spectral bunkers could get a little out of hand that way. I just hate how necromancers have to put so much traiting into shroud that they lose out on other useful things.

I’m primarily a PvP player, and while I usually play the cele signet build, I get bored pretty easily, so I always try to switch things up and try out new builds every once and a while.

But one thing that irks me is that in every build I make, I take soul reaping, since in PvP I feel kind of helpless without it. And I don’t think thats a good thing, since it hurts necro build diversity overall. One of the main points of the specialization change was making half of the class mechanic buff that you got from a traitline like soul reaping baseline, so you could make more viable builds without that traitline. But I still feel inexplicably and irrevocably bound to soul reaping. And the reason is simple.

Vital Persistance.

That one trait is such a necessary trait, that without it, I don’t think I could make a pvp necromancer build that felt right to play. Its such an important part of sustain in general, that it feels horrible to play a necro build without it. While other traits, like death perception, or soul marks or foot in the grave have their strengths, I feel like I could play a good necro build without them, but I don’t think I could play a good necro build without vital persistence, since life force degeneration is too much without it to have decent sustain.

The other main reason that this is problematic, is that when Heart of Thorns comes out, our options will be expanded as we’ll also have reaper competing for a spot in our builds. Furthermore, as reaper is a very shroud-centric addition to the necromancer, soul reaping will still be entirely necessary to enhance reaper shroud, but mainly through vital persistence. To add to this, you’re also shoehorned into running spite to make better use of blighter’s boon. Hence I predict that the majority of non-condi Reaper builds will be reaper, soul reaping, and spite. And thats just not healthy build diversity.

I think that vital persistence, or at least the life force degeneration reduction part of the trait should be made baseline, while some other trait can fill its gap. PvP necromancers (and WvW necros and a great deal of PvE necros) will run soul reaping until the end of this game’s life as long as a trait so vital and necessary for basic survival is there.

So what do you guys think about this? Did you try reaper builds without soul reaping, and if so, do you think blighter’s boon provided enough sustain to make it a nonissue? Lets have a healthy discussion about necromancer build diversity for now and for the future.

Right now its just kind of depressing going back to base necromancer. I miss reaper shroud so much..

getzzzonked.7609:

nearlight.3064:

Salamander.2504:

nearlight.3064:

Blood magic doesn’t work very well with celestial. The siphons don’t scale well enough to be worth taking over the perma-weakness and PoC and plague sending in Curses. Transfusion is a good trait, but you honestly need to build much tankier if you want to take on the role of a primary rezzer.

Life from Death has a healing coefficient of 1.5, and works great with celestial.
Without celestial=747 aoe heal at full health, 972 below 75%, or 1197 below 50%
With Celestial=1587 aoe heal at full health, 1812 below 75%, or 2037 below 50%

This skill rocks. Blood magic with celestial rocks. I love rocks.

Regardless the role of the cele signet necromancer is to do 1v1s and +1 smaller fights. While blood gives you better support in teamfights, it fails to be as useful as curses in smaller fights, nor does it give any meaningful additional personal sustain in teamfights. If anything curses is better for teamfights simply for more condi bombs and weakening shroud to negate melee bursts.

But I can 1v1 better on a rabid Condi build, with all the benefits on signets and might stacking. I can also provide more pressure, albeit off point.
I’m not arguing Curses vs Blood for Celestial. Not at all. I’m saying celestial stats aren’t utilised properly by the build that is up on meta battle, because, as you can see above, they aren’t. Okay, yeah I left out regen from staff 2, and we do have access to some conditions obviously. But yeah, my reasons for saying celestial is not a great build seem to be standing still. Everything people are saying they use their Cele Signetmancer for can be done with other Necromancer builds but better and faster (Yes, possibly including dying faster for power necros :P)

Well I disagree that condi necro in its current state is better than cele, because condi is so weak to being focused and has very poor life force generation compared to celestial. It may be partially because I’ve grown used to playing tankier bruiser hybrids on other classes, so it makes more sense to me on necromancer.

Well then I guess regarding transfers, I can admite being wrong since I’ve heard so many different things about it. Still I think it should use the necro’s condi damage (and also not allow rallies from transferring condis to someone else and stomping them first in a double down….).

As far as cele necro goes, its worked the best for me. I’ve tried to do well with condi builds so many times, but whenever I use them, I get destroyed. Condi reaper felt a lot better though due to stability, but I just don’t see myself as using condi specs on necro until robert gee fixes the scepter like he has alluded to.

Salamander.2504:

nearlight.3064:

Blood magic doesn’t work very well with celestial. The siphons don’t scale well enough to be worth taking over the perma-weakness and PoC and plague sending in Curses. Transfusion is a good trait, but you honestly need to build much tankier if you want to take on the role of a primary rezzer.

Life from Death has a healing coefficient of 1.5, and works great with celestial.
Without celestial=747 aoe heal at full health, 972 below 75%, or 1197 below 50%
With Celestial=1587 aoe heal at full health, 1812 below 75%, or 2037 below 50%

This skill rocks. Blood magic with celestial rocks. I love rocks.

Regardless the role of the cele signet necromancer is to do 1v1s and +1 smaller fights. While blood gives you better support in teamfights, it fails to be as useful as curses in smaller fights, nor does it give any meaningful additional personal sustain in teamfights. If anything curses is better for teamfights simply for more condi bombs and weakening shroud to negate melee bursts.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

nearlight.3064:

I choreographed a contemporary dance routine to this song once, does that count for the contest?

Well you’re a Mesmer so.. I don’t see why not. (and I’d really like to see that)=P Got any vid/links?

We never recorded it, but I could possibly record a version of it with just myself, as I most remember the steps. We only got about halfway through it before scrapping it and doing a tap routine to a different song, which was recorded, albeit poorly hahaha.

The shatter me dance, it started off all puppetty (which would look weird by myself haha) then it went to amore modern lyrical section with turns and leaps and floor parts. If only I was a mesmer in real life that could just make clones dance for me!

I choreographed a contemporary dance routine to this song once, does that count for the contest?

getzzzonked.7609:

PlatinumMember.5274:

Apparently being brutally honest in this forum is bad. So let me trying being nice, you don’t know what you are talking about. Celes is a good NECROMancer build whether you agree or not.

The build on the meta battle website is not a good build. Celestial anything should utilise as many of the stats on the amulet as possible, but this build does not.
The toughness and vitality mean it can take a hit and some focus. The power, precision and Ferocity all obviously beneficial but still aren’t as high as they would be from a proper power build. The condition damage is wasted with such weak condition application. Cele Dhuumfire build for example can be useful, as can Cele Condi with a Scepter in the weapons. The healing power is wasted with only one skill passively benefitting from it, Signet of Vamp (which isn’t a well balanced skill), and 2 CD’s Dagger 2 and Signet of Locust. If a build is going to take Cele stats and try and be an all rounder it should invest in trait lines that benefit from the stats, such as Blood Magic maybe? Instead this build tries to do too many things at once and only succeeds at one, Boon Corruption. Yes, has excellent boon corruption: So do all Signet builds. Yes, it has good self might stacking: So do all power builds. Yes it can take a hit, so can a Rabid or Valk or Marauders. It isn’t a build that is properly utilising itself. So in my opinion, it isn’t a good build.
I won’t deny it worked for Abjured, but that was quite situational. Not many Necro’s can say they are going to have to hold their own against the best players in the world.
What are your reasons otherwise?

Your argument is wrong. The condi damage stat powers up the damage from transffered conditions, tainted shackles, dark path, corrupted boons, and the bleeding/poison from marks. Thats not wasted, in fact thats more condi pressure than celestial engi or war in their current state. Also, dhuumfire is plain bad on base necro, while good with reaper, this much is established fact.

Furthermore regarding healing power, you conveniently forget to mention that mark of blood gives 6 seconds of regen, a 1200 heal over time in AoE on a very low cooldown. And this is in addition to the heals from vamp signet, locus signet, and dagger 2. Blood magic doesn’t work very well with celestial. The siphons don’t scale well enough to be worth taking over the perma-weakness and PoC and plague sending in Curses. Transfusion is a good trait, but you honestly need to build much tankier if you want to take on the role of a primary rezzer.

And finally, I find it almost laughable that you think marauder and rabid can take a hit. If you go against a burst oriented comp with those amulets (or carrion/valk too), you’re literally going to be thief and mesmer food so bad that you’ll be a straight up liability to your team. While well pressure is extremely high, you honestly can’t survive focus fire at all compared to tankier setups. And condi necro.. lets not get started on how many problems it has.

Right now the meta in conquest is tanky bruisers (cele, soldiers, or more support oriented clerics) and highly mobile zerkers (thief/mes and warrior to some extent). Necromancer can fulfill the tranky bruiser role well and has a better chance of beating other tanky bruisers 1v1 than any other build out there right now. Power necro isn’t a good idea because necro simply lacks the mobility and mechanics to evade focus fire compared to thief and mesmer. Also warriors and guardians, while having flaws for that role, generally do better as zerkers than necromancer due to better cleave overall. And finally comparing rampage to lich is a joke. Using lich is basically putitng a big “please kill me” sign on your head, while rampage does even more damage to more people at once while having tremendous mobility and damage reduction and the ability to stomp/rez.

So in conclusion, cele signet necro is good. Power necro is not very good. I honestly hope your vote on metabattle gets overturned.

Noodica.5428:

nearlight.3064:

This was a really nice video! The reaper/tempestorele combo looks really powerfu since you can literally sustain the reaper with boonspam.

Yep! you caught on to it Thats exactly what the aim was.

Also did you pull one of the songs near the end from the soundtrack of xenoblade chronicles X?

Kicker.8203:

Amityel.5324:

good build for sure I just dont like signet of vampirism…….reaper will bring whole new gameplay tho.

Not at all, after playing around with different builds i settled with playing signet cele reaper, same weapons and same utilities as current meta, with these traits http://dulfy.net/gw2traits#build=AgQB1AWsBuQ~

I tried this reaper build, and honestly without curses for perma-weakness and the extra condi transfer, I found that I had to switch to soliders to survive. And overall it had better survivability than normal cele necro due to more tankiness and the bruiser traits in reaper, but I just felt like the debuff pressure and boon corruption, just wasn’t there.

Lewis Burnell.2493:

In all honesty, the Signet Necromancer build is much stronger if you drop Curses, remove Signet of the Locust, and put in Blood Magic. Add Wurm + Spectral Walk and you’ve a profession with lots of mobility and survivability but still with the ability to might stack and boon strip.

I’m inclined to disagree. I tried the cele signet build with blood, death, and even reaper, instead of curses, and each time it felt quite badsince without extremely high weakness uptime, you take way too much damage as cele vs. zerker warriors/thieves/mesmers. Plus path of corruption is amazing, and the passive signet proc is extremely helpful if you get condi-bombed in a teamfight since its your only transfer that works in DS.

The reaper build I tried really couldn’t survive well enough without weakness in my opinion, so I had to use soldiers instead. But granted RS2 in its current state is really hard to use path of corruption with, so it didn’t feel like I was losing too much after changing to a tankier amulet.

This was a really nice video! The reaper/tempestorele combo looks really powerfu since you can literally sustain the reaper with boonspam.

Silverkey.2078:

Ele is even a bit different because the core is OP, so having a bad elite specialization “comparatively” may just mean it is actually in a good spot. I haven’t tried myself, so I cannot say.

I would disagree with this, just because no one will have any reason to run tempest compared to using base elementalist traitlines. Maybe if tempest is borught up, but the fire line for ele is brought down, then things will be better.

But yeah, from my chronomancer testing, I basically just took the current tourney meta PU zerk shatter build and swapped out dueling for chronomancer and took the two resummon traits and time catches up. Basically the result was something a fair bit better than base mesmer, mainly due to double moas with the shatter reset, and as we all know, chronophantasma with GS is a bit over the top. But I didn’t miss dueling at all, since the stealth from PU was enough to offset the loss of blind.

Flumek.9043:

U mean meta as best possible necro build or meta in being top 5 pick for a team?

It is without doubt our best build you can run in a tourney or soloq.
Note its also considered a somewhat healthy build, like compared to condispam or onetrick proc power necro.
Still cele, but not ele level of kiten

Is it a must to bring necro in team?

Definetly nope. I think most accurate representation is necro/ warri/ engie are in same tier of competing for 5th slot.

Yeah I feel like that is true. Its basically a toss up between CC/decaps for engi, condi countering and 1v1 potential with necro, and teamfights/rampage with warrior, so each fills different roles, but aren’t necessarily better than one another.

My only problem with chronomancer is that the other elite specs revealed so far don’t packso many useful things into one new traitline.

Chrono gives you a powerful new shatter mechanic, easy to maintain alacrity, and then choices to get several other useful things, like slow, quickness, shatters that stop disengaging, or greater illusion management for shatters. Its just so great, and mesmer is also really strong as a base class.

Meanwhile reaper gives a great new mechanic (that needs more damage), but the traits don’t pack in all these new powerful tools. The only one you really get is a little bit more chill and blighter’s boon. Everything else isn’t a very impactful, and while the new ,echanics are very great, it feels partially held back by the flaws of the base class.

And then for Tempest, the traitline is even worse as the overload mechanic has proven to be bad, and the traits almost overwhelmingly focus on improving the overload mechanic, which in of itself is bad. All the non-overload traits like earthen proxy and latent stamina just aren’t very impactful new tools.

I’d say its meta on NA but not EU. I see a fair amount of cele signet necros on various teams in the NA ESLs, and even more in lower tier tourneys like AG. on EU, it hasn’t really caught on, but thats because there aren’t really any top tier necro pvpers that advocate for it.

Anyway, I’d say that cele signet necro is meta simply because it holds its own against every other meta build listed on that website. The build has extremely favorable 1v1 matchups due to mightstacking, great life force generation high sustained damage, and excellent debuff pressure with boon corruption and near perma weakness, and it also occupies the niche of making burn spam builds kill their own team. Honestly the build is so much better than the squishy well DPS or condi DPS builds because it handles focus fire much better in general, while having high sustained, rather than burst damage.

Basically in conquest the meta has mainly been bruisers and highly mobile zerkers (thief/mes). Cele signet necro feels more like a bruiser build than any other necro build we’ve ever really had, and thats a huge part to why its meta. Compared to other bruisers, necro can’t disengage reliably, although a similarly built soldier’s reaper would probably handle that better, but with less debuff pressure.

Jackalrat, power necro isn’t bad, its just that lich is more counterable than rampage, wells are pretty bad in smaller fights aside from downcleave, and not building tanky means that you fold to focus fire so easily that competiting in higher level play becomes very difficult. Condi necro shares a similar problem to power necro as well, and is probably even worse off overall. So right now I feel that cele and soldiers builds are our best choices, simply to tank damage better, since our lack of active defenses means we need the toughness and vitality to actually tank that damage.

Power necro might be better in stronghold where bruisers probably won’t be strictly superior to everything else.