Guild Wars 2

Does it exist?

Now I only play guardian/DH as an alt class for fun, but compared to my main necro that has so many different variations in viable builds, especially for condi, trying to do anything different than the metabattle copypasta build seems like you’re asking for failure.

I tried condi DH with and without traps, and it failed pretty hard, though I don’t think condi base guard would fare much better. It just felt like the virtues traits needed to have good condi application weren’t viable because you had to give up any form of sustain to do so.

I tried support builds. They can’t support in this meta. Too much cleave from revs or CC from other things to get rezzes.

Is there anything else I’ve overlooked? Are there any viable bruiser builds? Or is all we have “drop test of faith and hope that people walk through it more times than they should while spamming true shot?”

I made it for burn guard, because I like playing condi builds. I don’t play my dragonhunter much though because there doesn’t seem to be a strongman condi build for it.

I also dabbled with support and had a lot of fun with it, but I enjoy playing condi or hybrid builds the best.

Erzian.5218:

Even Viper + dagger/warhorn is not enough to actually kill a half decent tempest in 1v1. Necromancer/Reaper simply lacks power dps.

I can certainly tell you that it’s enough to melt a bad tempest 1v1

Part of the issue is geomancers freedom which makes your chill last a bit less, which is a fine and balanced trait on its own.

Fay.2357:

Cole.3824:

I honestly couldn’t possible care less about PvE. Welcome to MMOs where sometimes builds suffer in one area to address a concern in another? Don’t like it? Play a different genre.

PvP barely qualifies as a game mode at this point. The population has been minuscule for ages, the mode itself has been boring and stale for ages, the competition is nonexistent, and #esports is never going to happen regardless of how long Anet pays a salary to the abjured.

They’ve shown extraordinary resistance to making pve and pvp balance splits. A mistake, but their choice. Given that choice, they should be devoting their balancing efforts first and foremost to pve, and pvp secondarily since the population that does pve absolutely dwarfs pvp by comparison.

I disagree completely. PvP is competitive, PvE is not, or at least it isn’t in its basic form. In pvp a team would be hugely disadvantaged if they didn’t have a bunker mes or two but the enemy team did. In PvE, if you don’t have a bunker Mesmer, you may be disadvantaged do to lack of alacrity, but other classes can still tank well and still strip boons. From what I’ve seen and read, these nerfs won’t make Mesmer seriously weaker in PvE. The precog change should have no effect, and I don’t think losing a couple seconds of block will hurt their tanking ability too dramatically.

But anyway, I don’t agree that balance should be done through utilitarian means. Even if there is a smaller population in pvp compared to pve, anet, for its own reasons has chosen to place more value on pvp (pro league is basically a marketing thing to get greater visibility), so pvp should have more priority when it comes to balancing.

Curunen.8729:

I have 1 BL ticket to spend and I’m debating between the Sword, the Torch and the Shield.

I’m probably going to go for the Sword because it will see more use.

thats what I’d do. That sword is gorgeous.

Alekt.5803:

Nearlight, I think that I remember when I said to be careful not to give too much goodies to Tempest like baseline stability on overload. You told me that you did not agree about that. I am taking that your opinion changed on the subject?

Was that about stability to overload? I’m pretty sure I was always in agreement about that. I think I was mostly concerned with people asking for overall tempest buffs so much because tempest was ridiculed in the betas and then it turned out to be fairly strong in the game, so further buffing would be a little controversial outside of key QoL things. I still think that stability on overload is fine, as are warhorn buffs, but I do think certain aspects of the class, namely diamond skin and infinite protection might be worth looking into.

Ithilwen.1529:

I’m complaining about 2 things;

First that ANET reduced the shield block time inappropriately. Second that ANET broke it’s own rules and did an emergency fix to single out Mesmer for a heavy nerf.

This is a historical pattern with ANET. Hambow rolled on for weeks. ANET had no problem with that. Yet, they have even done hotfixes within minutes of releasing a new patch to make absolutely sure that Mesmer didn’t get a potentially strong skill.

ANET has a long history of carefully keeping Mesmer to minimum viability while letting things like Hambow and turret engi roll on for weeks.

I believe that one or more devs dislike mesmer and want it to do badly.

Turret engis and hambows didn’t singlehandedly ruin the pvp scene by making almost every match go to time and be decided by whoever got the first cap…

He/she could have been playing some other non-bunker chrono build that had precog on it that was nerfed, like idk, condi chronocancer, if anything that would just free up spot in your build to take something besides precog that will help you spread the aids.

Levetty.1279:

nearlight.3064:

You also seem upset that mesmer was slightly nerfed at tanking in PvE, based on your other posts in the mesmer forums. Well I’m sorry about that, but PvE is not competitive, and if anet refuses to split skill balance, PvP should take precendence, as real money is on the line in tournamnets. Do you think its fair that all these scrub teams would get a huge advantage over the better teams like the abjured for running bunker mes back when they didn’t? Do you think its healthy to have tournament games decided by whoever gets the first cap? I mean if that continued with tempests as the super bunker, you might have an argument, but since tempest is much easier to kill in a teamfight, I doubt that this will be the case.

I’ve had 3 years of Mesmer being at the bottom of the PvE pole and still recieve nerfs due to PvP whines. Now that Mesmer is acutally fun and useful in PvE (and behind kitten paywall) I have zero tolerance to PvP trying to ruin it again. It might be a slight decrease in tanking now but people still won’t be happy and come January it will be their Alacrity and Quickness ability then a hot fix to their boon sharing and then in April it will be cooldown on wells and Time Marches On.

I feel the same for all classes.

If they refuse to split skills then no, they have to go with the side that has the majority of players not the nearly dead mode full of people wanting to strip away all fun and complexity from all modes out of spite.

Utilitarianism is no way to balance a game. You need to look at the relative value of each game mode, the number of people involved is irrelevant if its value is small. PvP has more value for the game than PvE because:

1. It has a lot of money tied up in its a prize pool.

2. Proleague is the marketing division’s biggest way to try and market the game to new players.

3. PvP has been confirmed as the fastest growing sector of the game and the way by which most new players are being attracted to the game. Why would we want to turn them away from horribly imbalanced gameplay?

So I think you’re out of ammunition for your arguments Levetty. I also seriously doubt that you ever really watched pro league matches or played game either as a bunker mesmer or against them. You’re arguing that you’re upset that mesmer can’t be king of the world because it had to be at the bottom, but two wrongs don’t make a right. Being the best class in the game doesn’t make up for being one of the worst for a while, all it does is just shift the legacy of imbalance somewhere else. You have to look at the bigger picture.

Also, I doubt these nerfs will have much, if any real impact on PvE. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t have to stand in capture points in raids in anyway that precog would be needed to avoid major damage. And the loss in block duration isn’t a huge loss because it makes you pump out the shield phantasm faster.

lighter.2708:

nearlight.3064:

lighter.2708:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

lighter.2708:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

lighter.2708:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Aomine.5012:

Burtnik.5218:

Youre not supposed to beat necro with condi.

Olny necro is supposed to faceroll condi builds with condi -Anet 2015

Duuhm Fire with no ICD helps too.

People were complaining about old Duuhm Fire and Incendary Powder, but now Necro has a 2nd perma burning called chill, on top of AOE attack frequency burning from Reaper’s shroud. Stacking 7 stacks of Torments or 12 stacks of poison in ONE cast doesn’t help either.

Not to mention they can deal with conditions while spamming them like crazy while you can’t do anything about it.

You could try…I don’t know..avoiding some of the attacks? Soul Spiral should always be gotten out of ASAP since it hits as hard as Gravedigger before accounting for the poison. Executioner’s Scythe should also be avoided and don’t stand in the ice field. That is where the Chill comes from. This seems obvious, but I see people doing it all the time.

I know Mallyx Revenants have gotten used to just ignoring condition attacks, but it really isn’t impossible to beat a condi Necro with any profession. Mallyx Heralds should still have a strong shot at it, since they only observe the conditions about 40% of the time anyway. Necro boonstrip has cooldowns, after all.

doesn’t matter if you avoid executioner’s scythe or chill shout or all the reaper attacks

you die by no cast time plague signet, which transfer 5 conditions also corrupt 2 boons and it’s 1200 range…

So once that pops, hit Pain Absorption. Bam, you aren’t dying to those (up to) 7 condis. The more allies in the area, the less you have to worry about it. If they’re running Curses with Plague Sending, that one can be baited out with a single stack of 3 different condis. You know it’s coming, so save some energy for when it does. Or bait its stunbreak functionality early so they can’t use it for 24 seconds.

And yes, you can see when Plague Signet pops, as the icon appears over the Necro’s head.

doesnt matter if we hit pain absorption or not, just use another signet to corrupt the resistance
not to mention, necro can easily set up plague by corrupting one of the stab on dodge to fear then plague, shiro mallyx only have one chance to cover the resistance with one with nature for 8 seconds, every 25 seconds.
necro can easily chill or tickle the rev with bleed or weapon swap easy chill to force the mallyx resistance

That’s really not that easy to do, but it also requires blowing two signets, which have the same cooldown as Facet of Nature.

Which means yes, you can counter it just fine.

You have the tools to beat a condi Necro in the meta build, but it requires more thought and planning now. Using conditions to try to take down a Necro has always been an uphill battle by design, but far from impossible.

You don’t need to corrupt through one with nature, just kit for 8 second and their resistance is free to corrupt for the next 17 seconds.

Most necromancer builds can corrupt 6 boons in the span of 24-28 seconds. Boon corruption is regulated by RNG, meaning its completely random what gets stripped.

Your boon application is much higher as a herald with One with nature, skillful stability on dodge, and your resistance. I’m so sorry that you actually have to think about how you manage your cooldowns to beat a common build, but please don’t pretend that signet reapers are anywhere near the boon stripping machines that base cele necro with spite and curses was.

…..You say boon application is much higher, but your liste of boon is saying the same as i’m saying, when one with nature is off, you are free to corrupt everything and the effect is deadly.

You don’t understand that necromancer boon removal isn’t high enough to counter this. I mean with shared empowerment you get a cover boon in the form of might that buffers the list of the key boons to be corrupted and makes it harder. And like I said, even if I do corrupt resistance, you’re still able to reapply it if you’ve been managing your energy in a wise way.

I don’t mean to sound condescending, but if you practice I’m sure you can stand a fair chance against the necro. It just won’t be a hardcounter to condition reaper anymore.

Levetty.1279:

nearlight.3064:

1v1s against bunker mesmers

Well I was going to stop at this because complaining 1v1ing a bunker takes a long time is very stupid but I’m glad I carried on because I got to the even more ridiculous ‘Reapers and DH can’t beat revs and Tempests so lets nerf Mesmers to get more Tempests into PvP’.

Now if you can get over your blatant anti-mesmer bias you will see my only bias is about people like you, and how your refusal to actually learn how to play, are removing all complexity out of the game to the point PvP becomes a laughing stock among competitive games and PvE becomes spam 1 event zergs because Anet can’t make any class more complicated (thus can’t make any fight more complicated) then that without facing the wrath of this disgusting community and their selfish whines about one tiny mode in the game.

Look at my signature. Would someone who displays the fact that they have a champion illusionist title have an anti-mesmer bias? The only reason you have a blatant mesmer bias is because you’re blindly defending it. I on the other hand want the best for this game. If you asked me how I’d think of nerfing reaper chill damage from my main, I’d agree if it would help the health of the game.

When I mentioned 1v1ing a bunker mesmer, I meant in a situation where you do it to either prevent them from decapping your point (they may try to force decaps with gravity wells) or to prevent them from fullcapping a neutral point. I would never 1v1 a bunker mesmer on a point that they owned.

About rev and tempest. After the rev nerf, its more feasible to beat rev as a necromancer. Tempests are also able to be beaten as a necromancer if you just have help to strip the diamond skin. Tempests will die when focused far quicker than when mesmers are focused because they typically only one invuln (which prevents capture point contrib) instead of 1 evade skill, 2 blocks on a low cooldown and 2 distortions on a longer cooldown (formerly 2 evades and 1 distort of course).

You also seem upset that mesmer was slightly nerfed at tanking in PvE, based on your other posts in the mesmer forums. Well I’m sorry about that, but PvE is not competitive, and if anet refuses to split skill balance, PvP should take precendence, as real money is on the line in tournamnets. Do you think its fair that all these scrub teams would get a huge advantage over the better teams like the abjured for running bunker mes back when they didn’t? Do you think its healthy to have tournament games decided by whoever gets the first cap? I mean if that continued with tempests as the super bunker, you might have an argument, but since tempest is much easier to kill in a teamfight, I doubt that this will be the case.

lighter.2708:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

lighter.2708:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

lighter.2708:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Aomine.5012:

Burtnik.5218:

Youre not supposed to beat necro with condi.

Olny necro is supposed to faceroll condi builds with condi -Anet 2015

Duuhm Fire with no ICD helps too.

People were complaining about old Duuhm Fire and Incendary Powder, but now Necro has a 2nd perma burning called chill, on top of AOE attack frequency burning from Reaper’s shroud. Stacking 7 stacks of Torments or 12 stacks of poison in ONE cast doesn’t help either.

Not to mention they can deal with conditions while spamming them like crazy while you can’t do anything about it.

You could try…I don’t know..avoiding some of the attacks? Soul Spiral should always be gotten out of ASAP since it hits as hard as Gravedigger before accounting for the poison. Executioner’s Scythe should also be avoided and don’t stand in the ice field. That is where the Chill comes from. This seems obvious, but I see people doing it all the time.

I know Mallyx Revenants have gotten used to just ignoring condition attacks, but it really isn’t impossible to beat a condi Necro with any profession. Mallyx Heralds should still have a strong shot at it, since they only observe the conditions about 40% of the time anyway. Necro boonstrip has cooldowns, after all.

doesn’t matter if you avoid executioner’s scythe or chill shout or all the reaper attacks

you die by no cast time plague signet, which transfer 5 conditions also corrupt 2 boons and it’s 1200 range…

So once that pops, hit Pain Absorption. Bam, you aren’t dying to those (up to) 7 condis. The more allies in the area, the less you have to worry about it. If they’re running Curses with Plague Sending, that one can be baited out with a single stack of 3 different condis. You know it’s coming, so save some energy for when it does. Or bait its stunbreak functionality early so they can’t use it for 24 seconds.

And yes, you can see when Plague Signet pops, as the icon appears over the Necro’s head.

doesnt matter if we hit pain absorption or not, just use another signet to corrupt the resistance
not to mention, necro can easily set up plague by corrupting one of the stab on dodge to fear then plague, shiro mallyx only have one chance to cover the resistance with one with nature for 8 seconds, every 25 seconds.
necro can easily chill or tickle the rev with bleed or weapon swap easy chill to force the mallyx resistance

That’s really not that easy to do, but it also requires blowing two signets, which have the same cooldown as Facet of Nature.

Which means yes, you can counter it just fine.

You have the tools to beat a condi Necro in the meta build, but it requires more thought and planning now. Using conditions to try to take down a Necro has always been an uphill battle by design, but far from impossible.

You don’t need to corrupt through one with nature, just kit for 8 second and their resistance is free to corrupt for the next 17 seconds.

Most necromancer builds can corrupt 6 boons in the span of 24-28 seconds. Boon corruption is regulated by RNG, meaning its completely random what gets stripped.

Your boon application is much higher as a herald with One with nature, skillful stability on dodge, and your resistance. I’m so sorry that you actually have to think about how you manage your cooldowns to beat a common build, but please don’t pretend that signet reapers are anywhere near the boon stripping machines that base cele necro with spite and curses was.

Chaos Archangel.5071:

ty!

and thats interesting.. Anything new on the WvW/PvE front?

Any new builds pop up or high profile streamers ect.

And who is OP now? Revs still?

WvW seems pretty dead by the community and I think chrono is the meta tank in raids since they have alacrity and whatnot.

Basically helseth started the bunker Mesmer craze, and everyone modified his builds with mantras and glamours to be stronger. Power Mesmer doesn’t seem to be worth running and condition Mesmer seems questionable but could make something work with viper or wanderer, but only the team with the lowest proleague rating has been really experimenting with that.

Rev received slight nerfs but I expect them to still be common in all game modes, just that Mallyx will be easier to kill with condis and they won’t have the cheese Rez infuse light proc on down anymore.

Yay chaos, come backkkkkk.

Yeah basically every pro-leauge ESL team on both EU and NA ran 1 or 2, but usually 2 chronomancer bunkers and nearly every game either went to time or was decided with the first cap, creating a horribly boring to watch and play metagame at all levels of play. One team even forfeited after the first cap because they knew they couldn’t come back from it. Meanwhile in normal league queues it just became extremely unfun to fight against since chronomancer could hold points indefinitely and almost never die, while having the support potential to get almost any rez for allies.

I think it’d be fine if they removed the passive 20 second ICD boon proc and lowered vitality gain to +100 to be more consistent with other runesets (like soldier runes that give +100 toughness and +175 vitality and the functionality of shoutcleanse)

Saturn.6591:

Silverkey.2078:

The thing is all those things should be adjusted together in one massive nerf. Because if you look at the meta right now, you actually need those to survive. There is a reason why scrapper, rev, mesmer and tempest are the only classes left: they have absurd survivability which is their only way to deal with the absurd damage.

Hold on. Chronomancers need to use a tanky amulet. The other classes can do it, as you’ve said before, with Marauder/Zerker/Viper (and achieve the same, if not superior tankyness compared to bunker Chrono). Meaning while Chronomancers are that survivable but hit like a wet noodle, the other classes are that survivable (or even moreso) and can still do A LOT of damage. But obviously, it’s Mesmers/Chronomancers who get nerfed heavily. #yayforlogic

Add to that, that bunker was pretty much the only really viable build we could bring… as our main means of damage dies before it can actually do any damage nowadays. Other classes don’t have that problem either. But ya. Nerf Mesmers. They are not allowed to be playable in PvP!

There were other issues at fault. Of course mesmer damage is irrelevant to this discussion, but the main issue was the combination of support and point-holding that made it an unconditionally better pick in the support role and the point-holding role compared to every other build in the game.

If a bunker chronomancer was around in a fight, the chance you’d be able to get cleave/stomp any downed on their side was extremely low because bunker chrono can rez with quickness, 10% rez speed, stability, and resistance (which nullifies the effect of poison on slowing downed rez speed) which had almost zero counterplay, even less so if precog was used.

Group damage nullification from precog is very difficult to balance. Why should precog let a whole group hold a capture point when every other damage nullification in the game besides blurred frenzy does not? Additionally the increase in cast time made it more consistent with the cast times of other wells and increased the amount of choice you have to make when using f5, since you won’t have time to spam all of your skills anymore, you now have to make a choice.

So what would you rather have nerfed? Point-holding? Or support? If the support got nerfed, chronomancer would be the equivalent of a sentinel’s plague necro, just a sponge made to stall a point as long as possible without giving much or any support to allies. If the pointholding is nerfed you can justifiably keep your support potential, which is more fun and more useful than just braindead holding a point, and thats more fun for everyone involved in the match.

Laraley.7695:

Supreme.3164:

Malchior.5732:

Supreme.3164:

BlackBeard.2873:

Malchior.5732:

Supreme.3164:

StickerHappy.8052:

BlackBeard.2873:

I’m all for nerfing the crap out of terribly-designed passives. I want to see more passives nerfed too (all those offensive passive procs like panic strike and incendiary powder especially). I would love to see traits modify active skills in interesting ways to promote different skill usages, as opposed to making hard-counters.

My previous suggestion:
You become immune to the following conditions depending on your current attunement:
Fire: Chill, burning
Air: Weakness, torment
Earth: Cripple, bleed
Water: poison, confusion

It creates interesting play for both the ele and the enemy. No matter what your strategy, even something like a burn guardian, you have significant windows to do your thing (save all your burn burst for after they leave fire, profit), while as an ele you have new defensive options if you intelligently use your attunements. Both sides can know what is going on and adjust their play actively to respond to one another – this is good design.

You are forgetting to look at the other side of the coin.

How bout condi spammers?

Yeah….@BlackBeard “tends” to forget always about the other side of the coin :* ridiculous burst ( like 12k dmg with 1-2 skills on 8-10s CD); braindead condi spamm( chill/chill/chill/torment/torment/torment/confusion looolololo); CC/daze spamm etc etc*

Uh, that isn’t neglecting the other side of the coin.
Some condi builds being a little too strong doesn’t change the fact that Diamond Skin is poorly designed and could be HEAVILY improved.
He never said braindead condis are fine.

Pretty much this! I have been campaigning for EVERYTHING to be nerfed, and poorly designed traits/skills to be reworked. Diamond skin falls into that second category, but it doesn’t mean the first category should be ignored. This thread just isn’t about the first category.

Nerfing diamond skin won’t do anything except delete the auramancer build

So, change Diamond Skin and change Auramancer accordingly so it doesn’t need to rely on cancerous passive traits?

Was referring to meta auramancer, the concept itself won’t disappear, it will change to something less team support and more self-sustain…either way a skilled ele would still triumph over cancerous and effortless condi spam, meanwhile the true intent of these threads remains hidden to the masses these thread are not merely focused on diamond skin, the real aim is to destroy the last bastion of hope against condi spam.

The diamond skin nerf crusade is just a facade, I guarantee you that with the trait gone…the same necros(+ lone burn guard) will jump on the next nerf crusade which is ele sustain in general with more emphases on the ele ability to recover from mindless condi spam

100% wrong. If you read many of the posts, they’re not even talking about nerfing the trait, but changing it so it allows more counterplay. Right now the trait shuts down some builds completely, while is useless against other builds. Reworking it would also not change the amount of support auramancer has, since the trait is 100% selfish. You really need to stop defending badly designed traits if you actually want the game to be balanced.

I think I need to give you gold for this stellar rebuttal.

Levetty.1279:

Interpretor.3091:

Reaper counters Tempest with a coordinated team. As long as you have someone else to focus DPS the tempest and get it down past its passive condition immunity, a reaper condition and poison spamming a tempest will eventually be enough to take it down which is fine. Tempest has a counter, Chrono did not.

Reaper and DH were the counter to Chrono. We’ve gone from 2 counters to 1.

When are people going to admit it was never about how strong the builds were, just that Mesmer was in the meta.

Reaper and DH barely countered Chronomancer, only be being able to daze and chill through shield blocks, but not blurred frenzy or precog.

I’m a necro main so I know what I’m talking about. Just because I showed up to a fight didn’t necessarily mean that the chronomancer bunking mid would die in a reasonable time frame. The only way it would happen would be if he was running all wells and blew all of his cooldowns while I still had corrupt boon or well of corruption or what have you. Those bunker mesmers running null field, heal mantra, or temporal enchanter were much harder to take down because they had better condi clear and access to higher amounts of resistance, which is often too much general boon production to strip. Add a tempest with soldier runes and the condis will have even a lesser chance to stick.

I’ve won 1v1s against bunker mesmers, but it took over three minutes to happen. Yeah 3 minutes to bait out cooldowns until one side gives in sure sounds like an extreme hardcounter in the favor of the reaper to me. I mean at that point the fight would probably be turned by allies if there wasn’t bunker tumor metastes going on elsewhere..

Furthermore DH/reaper were pushed out of the meta by a combination of atributes from condi rev and tempest, including diamond skin, perma resistance, perma protection, and high group projectile hate and better condi pressure. I mean don’t get me wrong, tempest and rev need nerfs too, as do the majority of elite specs, except for maybe berserker.

But I encourage you to see beyond your blatant mesmer bias and see how pre-nerf bunker mesmer ruined to fun in pvp for anyone playing against it.

I would so buy these up if money wasn’t an issue and if I played my chronomancer more often. I’d just rather buy kitten for my necro.

SteepledHat.1345:

I don’t know what you’re talking about. Bunker meta hasn’t changed. Just swapped a class for another. Pushed mes out, replacing with two tempests. 2 Temps, 2 Revs, Reaper/DH/Scrapper.

That’s what I feel is going to happen. Something to expect when you barely touch the real issue. Revenant.

Even if we assume that you’re right, which you may or may not be, since we don’t know what the top players will advocate after the break in pro league, I’d much rather have a double tempest comp than a double bunker Mesmer comp.

The reasons for this are simple

1. Tempests are easier to kill when focused compared to bunker Mesmer, since they generally only bring one compared to 4 active defense skills (just focus invuln, no evades, blocks or precog or distort)

2. They can’t rez with quickness, 10% revive speed and resistance like chronomancer can, so down cleave can actually work to prevent a Rez and kill the rezzer.

3. Most builds are forced to run soldier runes for cleanse, meaning no durability.

4. Generally more weak to reaper after diamond skin gets exfoliated, due to lower health pool and greater weakness to chill.

So yeah, more bunkering isn’t ideal, but I’d rather fight a tempestuous team than a chronomancing team anyday because tempests are not gods of bunker and support even if they are strong in both categories.

They have a lot of personal and group-wide projectile reflection and destruction as well as infinite 40-60% damage reduction (pending auras and earth traits), meaning that dragonhunter a don’t do enough damage to them and can even kill themselves with their own true shot.

I killed a cele bunker mesmer 1v1 in a match yesterday playing a troll-ish settler’s reaper bunker build with poor boonstrip.

His main goal was to use gravity well as much as possible to try and decap the point from me, but he failed and I eventually took him down after several minutes of stalemate.

StickerHappy.8052:

Team Conquest is 5v5, not 1v1

• Why would you 1v1 an ele on point if you play a condition class?
• Rotate?

It doesn’t always work out that way. In an ideal setting, with perfect communications and rotations you won’t have to, but there have been a few times in coordinated teams where I’ve played wanderer’s and had to hold a point against a tempest until fights elsewhere on the map could be resolved so that I could switch off with someone or get a +1. Since switching to Viper reaper I haven’t noticed to be as much of an issue if I time my condi bombs in the very brief moment of vulnerability before the tempest heals up, but if I ran anything else, like cele, carrion, or wanderer especially it felt a lot harder to not be hardcountered.

kdaddy.5431:

Stop saying this cause its not.

If other classes could play dps this wouldnt even be a thing. Also in the abjured first match today int he por league the only player i think died was wakkey who was playing DS skin ele so please explain.

Wakkey played bunker mes today, abjured ditched tempest, though they might come back to it pending the “balance changes”.

I remember with the June Specialization patch, they states that they wanted to shift pvp towards slower, more strategic gameplay with longer fights. They got the slow part right, but not the strategic part with god-mode bunkers controlling the pace of the match by overly difficult to kill when focused and nigh on impossible 1v1.

Buran.3796:

The problem is that burn guard falls way worse than DH against condition Heralds, which has similar spike damage with better sustain, group support and mobility.- At least DH offers a ton of AoE and cc, which puts pressure in the control points.

So: yes burn guardian can be better at duels, but that alone will not asure that you take the point. Seems to me that daze + knockback + pulls are more important, and even then, guardian/DH is outside the meta.

Well considering the rev nerfs tomorrow will pretty much gut the main strength of condi rev, the playing field will be more even, though reaper will probably be the top dog condition build, followed by guardian, then engi/ranger/mesmer

Yeah after adapting my necro builds and generally getting used to the status quo, I don’t view bunker mesmer as much of an issue as I had originally thought. We’ll have to see how it plays out, since I don’t want too many surviability nerfs to gut non-bunker builds.

The big question should be if chronomancer support is too strong in pvp, since even though they are/were the best pointholder the game hath seen, they also have some of the best support, which is making old support builds like guardian completely outclassed, even though guardians have better ally cleanse in comparison.

Dristig.9678:

nearlight.3064:

Personally I like viper with shouts and well of corruption a lot

Share this build? It sounds interesting.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNBmOD7kZTobTsmGwvGgeTsQNYSBgBQKLuDWCXhUxgawlC-TJBIABAcRA2uMgAPBAw3fAA

Note that credit for most of this build goes to Salamander. He basically gave me the basic idea and I tweaked it a bit to fit my playstyle a bit better. Axe can be swapped to dagger or scepter, corrupt boon works over well of corruption, I just like the well for converting stability/quickness on chronomancer rezzes if their precog is up, making it a great source of downcleave. Dhuumfire works over death peception, and you can change runes/sigils as you’d like, though I’d generally reccomend either durability runes (the ones I go with since they’re OP) soldier runes for some more support, or berserker runes for more damage.

So far it works really well and has great sustained pressure and survivability, but it is weak against burst comps. I ate a 9K vault the other day, so I’d switch if you’re fighting double thief.

For viper and cele I feel that any mainland is viable, and yes chill is the bulk of your condi damage.

I personally don’t think signet corruption right now is much better than corrupt boon since our boon strip potential has been much weaker without being able to have both spite and curses.

So I guess your website discussing it is going by the wayside?

I probably won’t watch it since I’m really busy this week and don’t have time so watch people struggle to take down god mode bunkers with condi revs.

A little while ago I played a marauder durability time build that I really liked. However it was very bad in duels and had poor pressure against the super bunkers unless in downcleave. Gavyne is spot on in his advice. Right now it’s best to play a hybrid build with good condi pressure and good physical pressure (to deal with diamond skin and for More cleave and whatnot). Personally I like viper with shouts and well of corruption a lot, but I think cele with spite is good too if you’re fighting a bustier comp. basically spread cancer chill to everyone whole being able to cleave their faces with high damage reaper shroud attacks and you’ll be able to be very impactful in teamfights.

Alekt.5803:

Most people will righteously talk about the celestial auramancer tempest (D/F or Staff). Though, there are other forms of Tempest playing marauder amulet, which is usually accompanied with Conjure Earth Shield. The marauder one has not yet been proved in tournaments.

Marauder staff would probably be meta in stronghold, provided that stronghold tournaments ever happen and if we ever get to play it again

Then nothing can truly save you

Supreme.3164:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Supreme.3164:

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

hmm complain how u cant kill ele, what do you think of chrono bunker? you know those who use bunker amulet like soldier and sentinel?

GW2 rule n1: When the opponents wins…it’s never due to skill it’s always due to some “OP” aspect of his class.

A skilled ele can defeat a condi reaper without diamond skin, nerfing the trait would do little because necros will be here again asking for some other nerfs because they’re too skilled to lose to anything that’s not OP/broken

At 200% knowing the necro community, the day after ds get nerfed..they would be here asking to nerf the “OP” sustain, then they will come for the dmg…finally they’ll come because they don’t like the name “elementalist”

Hardly. Without Diamond Skin, eles have always been manageable by Necros. Never easy (aside from when Eles were the weakest class), but managable (or did you forget that post June 23, Cele Signet Necro was the only build that had a realistic chance of winning vs Celementalist, and even that was only about 50/50).

Right now, condi Necro vs Ele is decided by a simple yes/no check: Is the ele running Diamond Skin? If yes, then the Ele wins. If no, then there’s an actual fight to be had.

What most Necros (and other professions, including some Eles) are calling on for Diamond Skin isn’t a nerf, but a total rework to not make it binary in nature. Wouldn’t it be nice to pick it to ward off Soldier builds as well? This would come at the cost of being totally immune to condition builds, sure, but it would still be a strong condition defense trait, ideally.

Diamond Skin should be strong, but a single trait should never decide the fight before it’s begun.

Really diamond skin allows eles to use powerful aura and become support auramancer for the meta, should diamond cease to be useful, eles will simply use cleansing water and people would revert back to tanky roamer but this time using tempest.

In the end , the situation won’t change much for necros, when you rely on a single source of damage and typical youtube rotation (staff-staff-chill to the bone- spin to win)..you should expect to be hard-countered soon or later

Time would be better spent and changing builds rather than follow “metabattle” and youtube/twitch stream followed by copy/paste build/rotation

Your bias against necromancers is almost cringeworthy to watch. It’s a deeply intricate and complicated profession that’s had to rely on complex positioning and shroud management to work, and it’s currently being pushed out of the meta by diamond skin and perma resistance rev. You’d have to be blind if you couldn’t see that, what with all of the proleague necros rerolling to Mallyx or bunker mes.

Actually since moving to a glassier reaper build with more damage I’m less concerned about bunker mesmers. The only thing I have trouble with is there Rez potential if they build to get resistance/quickness for rezzes through trait synergies which is very hard to deal with.

Aenesthesia.1697:

naphack.9346:

A lot of these builds are still tuned to the old meta and would need some adjustments.

As for the list: Celestial staff is not “if you can’t play d/d”.
In the current meta, celestial staff is far stronger than d/d because it has far better group support. The advantage in offensive strength, d/d has to offer isn’t really all that strong when you consider, it has to measure up to revenant auto attacks and dragonhunter traps.

GS/Hammer simply can’t compete with the cc that’s currently around because it has ONLY cc, while any cc in the current meta is just as strong while having group support, instant cast and large AoE tacked on. It’s just silly to bring a cc focused build to a meta, where cc happens incidentally.
I found shoutbow to be really lackluster.
Add Greataxe to the list of warrior builds. It wrecks faces.

As you stated, Ranger is a horrible choice for non-HoT builds.

A friend of mine is currently tinkering with a boon corruption based carrion signet necromancer. It just eats tempests and revenants alive. Maybe once the testing is done, I will post it here.

Spite/curses/soul reaping?

Its something ive been playing around. The carrion frostfire build doesnt seem to pack enough condi transfer to deal with 2 mallyx revenants and, if the other team has a necro, its gg.

Can confirm. I’m a very experienced necro main and I’ve been looking into alternatives for the carrion reaper build. I like spite/curses/soulreaping with wanderer or carrion personally (though cele is still decent).

Spite/curses reaper builds count really hold together as well as they could so there wasn’t any point. I did make a viper-durability reaper build that a friend and I talked about for a bit, which makes up for less boon corrupt (no signets) with generally more condition pressure, and it does fairly well at killing bunker mesmers.

KrewGorilla.6491:

And u shouldn’t be 1v1ing as a necro anyways

Aui Contraire, the main reason to bring a necro has always been to win 1v1s since its conditionally the strongest duelist dependent on the amount of life force they have, meanwhile they’ll always been fairy weak in teamfights. In this meta, most reaper builds are hardcountered by diamond skin, decap druid, and mallyrevs (depending on luck), meanwhile pre-HoT there was a never a matchup I feared playing celestial signet necro, or even just normal power or condi.

In general tempest is really quite spammy and faceroll.

There are no wrong buttons to press, just press them until you lose or win. The only thing remotely challenging about tempest is positioning with overloads and wash the pain away. But everything else is just spamming AoE, spamming auras, and spamming heals.

Ye, the combination of diamond skill and infinite 50% damage reduction makes tempest a bit too sustainy.

If my boon corrupts would at least be coded to just remove the boons like protection above 90% health instead of being blocked altogether, I’d be less critical of it.

In return we can give warhorn tempest skills some condi cleanse if we need diamond skill.

I’d also like to point out that boon corruption mechanics will be stopped by diamond skin (no removal or conversion), so you can’t even use them to try and strip tempest’s infinite rote took to try and get them below 90%.

If you’re playing solo feel free to rotate around them, but in team play, if you have to give up the point to tempest because you can’t do anything or outsustain it over the long haul, you become a liability to your team.

I don’t think that the tempest components themselves are boring, but rather the way that the builds come together. Things like diamond skin lower the skill threshold a lot, while the actual concept of overloading based on careful positioning is fairly fun, its just being a super bunker thats not as fun.

Impact.2780:

nearlight.3064:

hey impact, I’m personally trying to look for solutions to necro’s current problem, which is not having as much of an impactful niche at countering the current meta flavors of the month.

That being said this build is a good start and has some very good ideas, but I don’t think its best per se (though I’m not yet sure of what the best really is yet myself). I’ve used grenth runes with the heal shout myself, and personally I preferred it with wanderer amulet for more duration and better trait synergy (target the weak/crit procs).

Well of corruption is strong for sure, and I’m testing out a build that uses it later tonight, however it wil be celestial since I’m making some more radical weapon/trait choices that aren’t ideal for the setup that full condi needs to thrive.

Hi. Aye it doesn’t work so well. Tested it further against proper team comps and the corruption, while more frequently done, can’t be chained like the signets, so it can’t get rid of resistance when there is a lot of boon support i.e. covering boons. Plus they can also be timed with Chill of Death with Spite. Maybe if Mallyx revenants weren’t a thing, or didn’t have so much resistance and covering boons, the extra survivability and damage from Curses would be viable over the stronger boon-hate of Spite.

Yeah thats why your best bet if you want to counter mallyrevs is to just play base class cele signets. I’m experimenting with spite/curses reaper builds, but I’m not quite ready to report its effectiveness yet. Too many boons, so few ways to corrupt in a build that can hold itself together well.

The big thing about well of corruption is putting it on a down so that the bunker mesmer’s stability/quickness/resistance all get converted (hopefully) however they have so many boons its not as certain as it was for countering bunker guard stability rezzes.

The reason I was asking, was because I don’t play warrior, so I thought it’d be ebtter to ask theorycrafters who knew more about the class than me for their insight.

first off, the forum search function never works properly

second off, I wanted to start a discussion

third off, two of the videos in the image you post are PvE builds

fourth off, you must be a total kitten if you’d go through all the effort of posting a screenshot just to belittle me. Thats so pathetic.

Fith, I guess I won’t play this class at all if people like you are just going to be a kitten about it.

Hey all,

I have pretty much no warrior experience but I kinda want to try out a condi berserker build (with viper amulet) so can you guys give me some expanses of builds you would probably use for this role?

I kinda want to try out a burn berserker viper build since I play cool things for fun mostly, but I don’t have any character slots

I do want to try it out though. I only tried it in beta 2 and couldn’t make it work, but I’d still like to at least try.

Impact.2780:

I’ve not played necro for… A long time. Yesterday however I found myself playing it in a group, and while admittedly we didn’t have anywhere near an optimal comp, I felt like I just wasn’t putting out enough pressure. I tried the previous meta’s corruption build first so I’d have more corrupts vs. revenants. It worked, but I felt like I lacked direct damage, sustain, and the chill pressure, so I went back to signet corruption – a build obvious to everyone the moment that trait was modified to make signets corrupt. However, I still felt powerless vs quickness resses, and of course experienced necros landed all of their transfers on me, and condi revs were stacking up a load of torment I couldn’t keep off while out-sustaining with resistance.

I never heard of anyone trying Curses since the signet necro became a thing, so I had the idea to try modifying the build to perform the same role – boon corruption and condi transferring – so not exactly what you’re talking about, aiming to see terror buffed. I made this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQNAW7YnMbC10gd2A22A0biljBL+G+DLiULhnwsKqnttCAA-TZhHwACOIAh2fAwFA4YZgAPBAA

It gave me a greater and more powerful heal skill with lower and reduced cd for greater synergy with grenth runes, AoE corruption on reaper shroud 2 and well of corruption for countering quickness resses (I drop this as soon as one goes down), and the well also counters reaper shroud #3 of other necros (lol one guy tanked the full well and got like 5 fears!). It has an extra transfer from the passive trait in curses, which gives the edge vs other necros and revenants, you get fury with curses so shroud skills have more pressure, and you get more weakness uptime from curses to nerf endurance regen and direct damage. The endurance nerf works nicely with path of corruption on reaper shroud 2 because the corruption is at the end of the cast and it’s very telegraphed. So it’s a threat now other than just a combo finisher, and with its low 5s cd it can be used twice per shroud so it forces dodges of which they have less, and hits up to 5 foes. Overall, despite the telegraphed reaper shroud 2, it has more corrupts, and I did feel I could do it more often, had more pressure in both condi and direct, more survivability, and and well of corruption is just awesome. The necro vs rev matchup goes more into your favour since the weakness and corruption on shroud 2 spam works to corrupt resistance and the fumble from weakness forces them into shiro for endurance, meaning they then don’t have access to resistance and are left to tank your condis and transfers. I also found it shut down eles very well, and the fury in shroud helped vs diamond skin.

Like I said, I’m far from a good necro so it could be the players I faced when I was on necro weren’t so good, and that this build is subpar. That’s why I came to the necro forum – to see if anything similar had been posted and to seek some opinions!

hey impact, I’m personally trying to look for solutions to necro’s current problem, which is not having as much of an impactful niche at countering the current meta flavors of the month.

That being said this build is a good start and has some very good ideas, but I don’t think its best per se (though I’m not yet sure of what the best really is yet myself). I’ve used grenth runes with the heal shout myself, and personally I preferred it with wanderer amulet for more duration and better trait synergy (target the weak/crit procs).

Well of corruption is strong for sure, and I’m testing out a build that uses it later tonight, however it wil be celestial since I’m making some more radical weapon/trait choices that aren’t ideal for the setup that full condi needs to thrive.

I think the key to countering bunker mesmer is to spam boon corruption, but with spite/SR/reaper we can’t do that very effectively. We need spite/curses or spite/bood with well of corruption to spam boon corruption more (since curses and blood each give a signet) so we need to drop either reaper or soul reaping.

I’ll be testing out some options later, but I think its either best to stay with base necromancer if using staff, or to drop soul reaping to use wepaons that aren’t staff, since untraited staff is trash tier for life force generation. I’ll probably use some combination of dagger, warhorn, axe, OH dagger, and scepter to see what works the best. Focus is also an idea for more chill and more boonremoval (is spinal shivers still unblockable? It doesn’t say so on the wiki). Anyway I think theres a hugely possible antimeta build for necro out there, we just haven’t found it yet.

As for the shout, I may try to incorporate it, but I think I’ll be focusing mainly on signets. Celestial will be a starting point, but I’ll also try out a full condi build with this setup, I’m just defaulting to cele to make up for the loss in sustain by not going soul reaping and to make up for damage lost from not having dhuum/death perception.

I’d say the the reason why dresses make you tankier than sexy armor isn’t because the dress itself, but rather by the fact that tempest and chronocancer can amass infinite amounts of protection, which at least for chrono is partially due to durability runes being overpowered.

Daniel Handler.4816:

nearlight.3064:

base necromancer with cele has a better time against bunk mesmers due to trait synergies. You’re too starved for utilities to make it work on reaper imo, since if you take signet heal you need locust to actually have good healing since vamp isn’t very good sustain. And plague signet is needed to not die to conditions and wurm or armor is needed for general sustain.

I’ll try it out though, since I usually don’t run untraited CB.

You need to overcome a deficit as each shatter removes 1 condition and applies 2 boons. Or you can just hope RNG works in your favour. It is possible to convert stab on the very first conversion, just not as likely given that they perma 6+ boons.

That’s the thing, the RNG makes it hard.

Not to mention so many teams with bunker mes take shout tempest and mally rev which both act to erase bunker mesmers weakness to heavy condition pressure.

Ario.8964:

Titan, here’s the build, similar to meta setup but has some traits swapped around for what serves the build better. Also made to have rifle swappable with hammer depending on your matchup, just gotta know which wep is better for which scenario. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFAUlUUh2tYJXw6KQ7FLTGF9cn37d42lMhl4zcABAA-TJBHwAAuAAGeAAl2fAZZAA
And ignore the narrow minded meta followers who say hammer is the only viable thing, they are wrong and their narrow mindedness will screw them over eventually. If you’d like me to explain choices let me know and I’ll give you a full run down.

Basz, I’d like to see your silly meta hammer take me down. Never lost to a hammer engi while playing my build, in fact I love fighting hammer engis because they think the same way as you and then they get destroyed and wonder why they didn’t win only to realize that hammer is NOT the only viable pvp weapon for engineer.

I tried out a build with basically the same kits and cele rifle pre HoT but I found It to suck a lot. Though with scrapper traits giving more sustain I think it’s worth revisiting.

I guess the main reason people like hammer is that it’s a simpler weapon to use than rifle and bundles might stacking together with the utility you’d lose by not having tool kit for the block. I like rifle a lot, but I can see this build being a keyboard cruncher for sure.