Guild Wars 2

Ragnarox.9601:

How do you deal with carrion meta reaper? I have lots of problems with them and their conditions.

Using slight modified meta scrapper build. (elixir s instead of elixir b)

I know this is more niche since you’d probably prefer sneak gyro or mortar, but taking elixir x is strong since rampage kills necros easy and moaing them in a situation when they have full life force by low health lets you take them out of shroud and kill them (destroys minions and ends plague and lich too)

I think the AoE cleanse and protection spam builds are the strongest. With soldier runes and torrents and cleansing water and diamond skin, you basically delete condition pressure from the enemy team.

But yeah I do think maybe elemental shielding should be ICDed or something to at least give other people gaps in the tempest’s infinite protection rotation, since no one runs boon strip on mesmer anymore to play the much more braindead chronobunker. I do like things about tempest like the positional gameplay of overloads and wash the pain away. I like the skillful support it brings. I don’t like how it can easily hardcounter certain builds in many situations though.

Booitsaghost.3087:

i do use stealth gyro and elixir S for immune+more stealth

but yah i dunno, its nnot just the disengage, the blocks, dazes, and the evades + healing and NOT just outta of Shroud is what i think is the drawing point.

granted i love my necro/reaper , i can just stay in a fight longer and more efficiently imo as scrapper in this AoE filled meta lol

also side note: im sure either could work in a steady team, i do normally soloque with the freak chance that the moons and the stars are aligned and everyone is on i do a guild/group que

I think both have different advantages and disadvantages. Reaper for instance can do a lot of strong things with condi transfers since they use your enemies condition damage stat, while scrapper has a bit more support with heal turret and function gryo, and a bit more mobility (though not that much really). Necro has unblockable CC for herald busting too.

I just think that it’s cool that artificially tanky dps builds are possible thanks to durability being the new esports rune.

Booitsaghost.3087:

Elixir gun provides: range, stunbreaker, psn, 2 elixers(hgh), blast finisher(possible heal+retal) , standing on top of Super elixer’s passsive heal with swiftness+regen+prot+backpackregen alone is alot of sustain in a team fight, allowing you to psn and retal atleast in a steady melee rotation

but yah in terms of you making your necro a roam/dps

i have a necro with mara+durability and it does well for what its worth and its my original main/love(prior HoT was just zerk powermancer), but it does lack alot of defensive’ness and disengaging. when tables have turned you will probably die with no chance of making a run for it to heal back up and return fast, which left me very upset ESPECIALLY when solo’queing and not having good teamplay, squish~~~dead

but with some support in a team fight , i had no problem staying afloat and putting out crazy damage, definitely could lay someone out a bit faster than my engi

in the end tho i feel my engi is doing this role better with the utility it brings, rather than just raw dmg and then probably die

I think that’s mostly because of the stealth from sneak gyro rather than anything else. My reaper build could utilize flesh wurm to disengage much better instead of one of the shouts but I need to test this out further. With that it would be a little more competitive since the cleave and CC between the two builds is a bit better for necro imo.

The perma protection is a little bit overpowered, though without tempest would probably be too weak.

Firebird.8324:

nearlight.3064:

Firebird.8324:

btw, I have more losses after and before that. Also, I tried reaper, but nearly every group I face has 1-3 diamond skin tempests. Also, the desertion on there was because we were losing horribly and I just said kitten it, I’ll give the other 4 guys a bye and left.

I wouldn’t say dolyakhunter has that better of a match up against tempest since they’re perpetually in a state of protection and reflection. I’ve been trying out marauder reaper and it’s fared a lot better against them even if it gets countered by the rare zerker warrior.

I’ve honestly never done marauder reaper, you think it would be a good idea to go blood for wells or spite for mightstacking?

Spite all the way. I’ll PM you my build.

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

nearlight.3064:

Hello engi community,

I’ve noticed that a hammer based marauder scrapper build with inventions/alchemy and durability runes and egun is being used a lot in EU’s comp scene. I’m not all that well versed with engineer (only a little) and I had some questions about the strengths, weaknesses, role, and feel of the build, in the interest of trying to adapt a similar kind of build on necromancer.

So how does this build feel? Is it fun, or arduous to play?

What it’s purpose? Is it teamfight based or does it want to focus on 1v1s? What are some good and bad 1v1 match ups for it?

What team compositions is it most or least synergistic with?

How good is the damage? I notice a lot of mightstacking with a lot of base tankiness, protection, and healing. What are some particular highlights of high damage moments that you usually get?

And finally, is it better or worse than a similar celestial build for most situations, and why?

Thanks for any information you can give!

So many questions. But I run that euro build and it has so much versatility.

The sneak gyro offers you some amazing support. Preventing a stomp from stealthing your teammates used in conjunction with your gyro to rez quicker. Then you can also reveal enemies with that which counters the method I just described.

This build is amazing in 1v1. I’ve had pretty good success vs our cancerous rivals the reaper with it. You have sustain for days through all the regen and blocks/evades.

It is also a nice teamfight build as well. It’s tanky enough to go into the thick of things and use your slick boots to CC a necro so your team can do an EZ burst.

That’s all I will say on my phone for now. Way too many good things to type at work.

Hmmm yes please give me more details if you can. As I said I’m working on a marauder shout reaper build with durability runes that would fulfill a similar role on a team to this scrapper build. The thing is I need to be sure that my build can still compete with this one for a spot in an organized team. Reaper CC may be no slick shoes, but it is quite good.

One of my friends has an interesting shout build with death/spite, but I haven’t been able to try it out.

Personally for me it feels like with the builds I make and theorycraft I’d be going into soul reaping anyway, and since I’ve pretty much replaced spectral armor with rise in most builds, spectral mastery doesn’t do anything, and terror master isn’t worth it even with terror, since if I try to make a marauder build, death perception makes a lot of sense and I arguably don’t get anything valuable from blood/curse/death (since I dont use wells/corruptions/minions besides rise), or dhuumfire for condi etc.

It also makes sense because its synergistic with reaper. Most of us take reaper soley for reaper shroud and maybe some of the shouts. Pairing it with soul reaping maximizes our ability to use reaper shroud to its fullest, since there would be little point to running reaper without trying to be in shroud as long as possible.

And finally, as we all know, I find spite to be also quite mandatory in pvp right now. You can get away with curses if you run wanderer amulet and you can get away with death magic if you run soldiers, and you honestly can’t really get away with blood magic. Part of this is due to all of the might and vuln that are unconditionally good in any build, even if you don’t trait signets. The other part of it is that things like blighter’s boon were nerfed to only be worth it with spite. So why would you go for unholy sanctuary or blood magic vampire crap for health gain in shroud when blighter’s boon gives you more of it while being able to hit insanely hard with might stacks? Blood magic doesn’t offer enough on its own and death magic will never provide anything more than extra damage mitigation, so theres no point to them.

Anyway those are my thoughts on the complete stagnation of our trait diversity and the woes of the core class.

Firebird.8324:

btw, I have more losses after and before that. Also, I tried reaper, but nearly every group I face has 1-3 diamond skin tempests. Also, the desertion on there was because we were losing horribly and I just said kitten it, I’ll give the other 4 guys a bye and left.

I wouldn’t say dolyakhunter has that better of a match up against tempest since they’re perpetually in a state of protection and reflection. I’ve been trying out marauder reaper and it’s fared a lot better against them even if it gets countered by the rare zerker warrior.

You should play more necro just because I think people have adapted to shut down the dragonhunting.

I often make my own builds since I actually have the mechanically depth and understanding to do so with my main, necromancer, while builds I play on other classes end up being closer to the meta since I don’t have as vast of knowledge on those other classes.

But still I feel as though this meta superiority complex is foolish unless you’re a new player. Look at so many of the proleague players. Lots them are playing “snowflakes” like staff or dd tempest over df, playing wanderer’s durability reaper or cele builds on EU that don’t take the kittenty signet heal.

The fact is that rotations and individual mechanical depth and teamwork and communications have far more impact on the outcome of a match than the individual builds you run as long as those builds aren’t intrinsically bad. When you’ve been playing as long as I have you realize what non meta builds on our main work and don’t work.

Tempest is broken in some ways, and weak in others. I don’t like how it’s become a super bunker that needs to be trained down and focused (read CC spammed) in a teamfight to take it down.

I love tempest for the support it brings, especially things like the heal shout. It’s just problematic when that support translates into too much personal sustain.

Hello engi community,

I’ve noticed that a hammer based marauder scrapper build with inventions/alchemy and durability runes and egun is being used a lot in EU’s comp scene. I’m not all that well versed with engineer (only a little) and I had some questions about the strengths, weaknesses, role, and feel of the build, in the interest of trying to adapt a similar kind of build on necromancer.

So how does this build feel? Is it fun, or arduous to play?

What it’s purpose? Is it teamfight based or does it want to focus on 1v1s? What are some good and bad 1v1 match ups for it?

What team compositions is it most or least synergistic with?

How good is the damage? I notice a lot of mightstacking with a lot of base tankiness, protection, and healing. What are some particular highlights of high damage moments that you usually get?

And finally, is it better or worse than a similar celestial build for most situations, and why?

Thanks for any information you can give!

Multi classing is a valuable skill my friend.

Firebird.8324:

nearlight.3064:

Firebird.8324:

XxsdgxX.8109:

OH look, here we go with more complain threads.

The forums are basically anger management. It’s like having a suggestions box with a shredder under it; I just think it’s more fun than actually playing the game at this point.

Agreed. At least on the forums it’s more fun arguing with people about their logical fallacies of their view of the game, which infinitely more fun than actually queuing, only to get pooped on for not running an overtuned meta build that was introduced in the expansion.

Whoa buddy, ur making it sound like it is not a fun challenge to run a sentinel druid, or a cele tempest. I think this meta is PERFECT and they should keep it FOREVER (possibly if we adopt this attitude they will change things, hey, it works on children)

Maybe if durability wasn’t the best rune for 90% of builds in the game it’d be more fun.

Maybe if diamond skin didn’t make my creative and unique wanderer’s shout reaper run for the hills in 1v1, the game would be more fun.

Maybe all the bunker chronomancers will die off of brain cancer from too much spamming evades and heals and cleanses off cooldown, then the game WILL be more fun

Personally I dislike the immense amount of downtime in between matches with the casters rambling on and on and on and on about random crap related to the game while they wait for players to even just get ready.

Firebird.8324:

XxsdgxX.8109:

OH look, here we go with more complain threads.

The forums are basically anger management. It’s like having a suggestions box with a shredder under it; I just think it’s more fun than actually playing the game at this point.

Agreed. At least on the forums it’s more fun arguing with people about their logical fallacies of their view of the game, which infinitely more fun than actually queuing, only to get pooped on for not running an overtuned meta build that was introduced in the expansion.

Mechanix.8425:

nearlight.3064:

Use your wells pretty much off cooldown after you spam them during your first continuum split. Don’t think about using your shatters for offense, spam them for heals and condi clear and to spit out boons to your teammates! You can run chronomancer runes or durability runes, but durability runes make you artifically more tanky through boon duration! Also be sure to block or evade whenever you feel any form of offensive pressure!

As you can surely tell, bunker chronomancer is a highly skill intensive build that requires mere seconds of smashing your face on the keyboard before achieving total mastery of this new revered role in pvp society. Good luck!

Shatters! Which ones are the most important. I knew as power f1 was used for dmg. f2 i hardly used… f3 was The daze/cc/interrupt f4 was avoiding burst. But with the buffs involved and different traits i dont know how to use them outside healing nor do i know which buff i should try to get out first.

As the skillful bunker mes, use any shatter whenever you want however you want since the condi cleanse and boons aren’t affected by illusions you have up, only heal and quickness. Basically just spam them to stay alive and support your teammates.

Also be sure to get screened for brain cancer should you play this build for more than an hour or two per day.

Ashkew.6584:

“These runes artificially increase your build’s survivability and makes it less punishing to run non-cele amulets in pvp”

Isnt this a good thing, ppl cry about cele all the time.

That argument is flawed because cele can take them too.

I’m concerned because we’re at the point where it seems like dirability runes are ideal choices for so many builds because they off so much, and yes they are way stronger than pack runes becausebpck runes have 30% swiftness duration inst ad of the 20% boon duration, so they’re not as equal as you think. If durability runes offered 30% protection duration instead of 20% book duration, they’d be more on par with pack and less likely to be used for mightstacking in glassier builds.

Iohanna.4863:

Leadership Runes give +30% Boon Duration, +36 to all stats, +10% Condition Duration, and convert 2 conditions into boons for all nearby allies when you cast an elite (45 sec cooldown).

Durability runes give slightly more total stats compared to leadership runes and make you much tankier. Leadership may be more boon duration and has a cool 6 bonus, but it’s not as strong of a passive upgrade to a build’s sustain and defense as durability is. Leadership is only good if you’re already extremely tanky and have good boon sources from traits already, and even then durability will always be better for personal sustain. I’d consider leadership more seriously if durability got removed or significantly nerfed.

The other main issue is that glassy builds are taking durability to have more health and toughness while still ending able to stack might, protection, and resistance depending on the class or build.

Use your wells pretty much off cooldown after you spam them during your first continuum split. Don’t think about using your shatters for offense, spam them for heals and condi clear and to spit out boons to your teammates! You can run chronomancer runes or durability runes, but durability runes make you artifically more tanky through boon duration! Also be sure to block or evade whenever you feel any form of offensive pressure!

As you can surely tell, bunker chronomancer is a highly skill intensive build that requires mere seconds of smashing your face on the keyboard before achieving total mastery of this new revered role in pvp society. Good luck!

Lets face it, durability runes are the best runes in the game.

In fact, almost every build I can think of can get a decent amount of usage out of durability runes, and I’m not the only one who sees that. Not to rag on spookie, since they’re a great team and I respect them, but most of their team used durability runes, even wanderer reaper, and staff daredevil.

These runes artificially increase your build’s survivability and makes it less punishing to run non-cele amulets in pvp. Like I said, this isn’t a build that just bunkers/support are using, even zerkers and condi builds are using this rune instead of runes that boost their damage.

I think the main offender, besides the grossly high raw total stat boost compared to other amulets is the 20% boon duration. That amount is only a little less than say the 30% you’d get from strength/hoelbrak for might duration and applies for all boons you spit out, so it gives you increased sustain through stuff like longer protection, as well as better might stacking capability if you can get a decent amount of might through traitlines like spite if you’re a necro for instance.

Is this really what we want in our game? Vamp runes were very much overrused before they got reworked, since they artificially boosted the survivbility of glass builds (and some bruiser builds too like d/d ele or cele engi). Durability runes also artificially increase one’s surviability, but against sustained rather than burst damage that vamp would guard against. In addition, between the boon duration and the 125 vitality and 175 toughness, it offers more total stat gain than any other runeset I can think of (like cele amulet does for amulets), in addition to the free defensive boon proc. This rune is just blatantly stronger than any other rune in the game, and I feel as though build diversity will be hurt by it in the end. Sure I’d like to run scrapper runes on my bruiser builds or torment runes on my condi builds, but whats the point when durability gives me better mightstacking, better sustain, higher total stats, and lets me survive better on a glassier amulet? Whats really the point?

Discuss. Is this runeset healthy for GW2 pvp’s future?

More and more people will run shout rune tempest with cleansing water to completely nullify condition builds in teamfights again, I don’t know whether to be relieved, or sad that necro will get forced into a cele build again to still feel useful..

Morwath.9817:

nearlight.3064:

You guys are missing the point. The point is, that signets aren’t perfect, and other utilities can work in place of them.

Morwath, that counter argument isn’t valid, considering:

1. He played carrion signet build in the last ESL Sunday weekly before proleague
2. During the june-hot meta every other necromancer copied noscoc’ cele build with few variations, even when nos varied it up with flesh wurm and corruptions.
3. Or alternative hypothesis: pro players trust metabattle too much.

Either way, this doesn’t change the fact that the signet heal is bad, with only one of the signets being unconditionally good, and you can get significantly better sustain from using YSiM or CC. That is mathematical fact. And that’s before we even look at augury of death, traited plague, rise, or corrosive poison cloud.

And abc, the soloqueue factor isn’t as relevant as you think it is. Different builds are situational and matchup dependent. For example, (also answering speed Starr’s argument) corrupt boon is way better against Mallyx revs that signets are, while full on signets are better against things like burn guards and trap Rangers compared to corruptions.

Have you ever thought that Spite/Curses/SReaping before HoT and Spite/sReaping/Reaper after it is the best possible option for Necromancer?

Thats mostly because Spite = sReaping > Curses > Blood > Death.

It has nothing with Nos himself or metabattle.

That’s not exactly a catch all argument. Notice I talk about the utilities of the build more so than the actual traits. You’ll also notice that most of the carrion signetmancers running around take the exact build off of metabattle, which is the same build that noscoc claimed credit for by using it first in a major tournament while everyone else was trying to tack on reaper to his old celestial build with blighters boon without properly adapting it to be more condi based. So many players basically waited for noscoc to figure out the best builds before they adapted one, and that’s obvious if you look at the first ESLs after HoT and after the blighters boon nerf.

Just because you choose spite, it doesn’t mean you necessarily need to choose signets, if you’d prefer to use something like shouts for more sustain. You can take spiteful spirit and get something that doesn’t need signets to function well while still having all the night and vuln you’d need from spite (the real reason it’s always picked).

It also depends on the role of your build. Maybe you want to make a support bunker build, so blood magic would be more useful for you than spite. Is blood support necro the best build? Probably not. But it’d probably be competitive if blighters boon wasn’t nerfed as harshly as it was to make it only function with spite.

The other thug to talk about is the dependence on soul reaping for vital persistence and general life force a management, but notice that this doesn’t drive utility choices (except for turning people away from spectrals), so this isn’t the problem here that I’m trying to discuss.

Crinn.7864:

nearlight.3064:

Actually messiah, the jokes on us. I tuned into noscoc’ streak today and he was showing off his secret condi build that he doesn’t want to talk about. But I knew what it was because I he tried it out. It’s wanderer’s with master of corruption (cpc, cb, cc) and thorn runes of all things (I knew it was thorns because I tried that out the other day and it gives you a stacking buff icon). So yeah it’s too hard to be hipster with our own builds, but it looks like we’re going to see another curses necro build, possibly in tournaments, it’s just not the exact one we had originally wanted for ourselves.

I doubt it will get popular with other necros though, since corruptions takes more thought to play compressor signers and nos played with corruptions on celestial in the preHOT meta and no one really copied his build.

The 6pc on thorns is a stack? Huh, I was looking at it yesterday but figured there was no way that would be stackable.

It has the same icon as a corruption sigil stack. Each stack grants 50 condition damage, and since there’s a ten second CD and 60 second duration you can get up to 5 stacks, or 250 condition damage, but 3 stacks is what you’ll usually sit at. Still it outpaces undead runes for condition damage maximization with wanderer’s.

You guys are missing the point. The point is, that signets aren’t perfect, and other utilities can work in place of them.

Morwath, that counter argument isn’t valid, considering:

1. He played carrion signet build in the last ESL Sunday weekly before proleague
2. During the june-hot meta every other necromancer copied noscoc’ cele build with few variations, even when nos varied it up with flesh wurm and corruptions.
3. Or alternative hypothesis: pro players trust metabattle too much.

Either way, this doesn’t change the fact that the signet heal is bad, with only one of the signets being unconditionally good, and you can get significantly better sustain from using YSiM or CC. That is mathematical fact. And that’s before we even look at augury of death, traited plague, rise, or corrosive poison cloud.

And abc, the soloqueue factor isn’t as relevant as you think it is. Different builds are situational and matchup dependent. For example, (also answering speed Starr’s argument) corrupt boon is way better against Mallyx revs that signets are, while full on signets are better against things like burn guards and trap Rangers compared to corruptions.

abc.5790:

Nos can run whatever darn build he wants because aside from being a great necro, he has the full, unconditional support of equally skilled teammates….It’s something very very very very few of us have. Their camaraderie is what sets them apart from all the other teams.

So just coz Nos runs it doesn’t mean it’s optimized for your own best interests. And if you soloQ, his build is more likely to not be in your best interests.

So you’re saying that other teams that aren’t the abjured aren’t supporting their necromancers? Thats a huge, and quite wrong assumption. If anything certain reapers that aren’t doing well in certain teams aren’t doing well because of noticeable errors in their mechanical skill (one reaper in NA pro leauge used condi transfers with no condis on him). Signets and team support won’t make up for someone being a poor player..

The logic you’ve used to come to your conclusion is faulty.

On a personal level, I’ve used corruption builds off and on since June and I felt fine for soloqueue vs. team queue. Just because I decide to not use signets, it doesn’t mean I need a babysitter, or that I’m mechanically a worse player than a necro that does use signets, because theres more to the class than just signets.

Shiro is clearly the reason why rev is so good.

Yeah I can wreck face on condi reaper, but overall viper rev will be better since shiro lets it rotate from point to point faster, break stun, way easier, and disengage with super speed way better. Mallyx just lets it counter other condi builds and boosts its condi output a fair bit.

I agree with Dirame.

The reapers all bandwagoning signets are doing so because they can’t think for themselves. They just run around like a headless chicken and copy noscoc’s every move because he was the only one that stuck with the class and developed builds and played well in tournaments when it wasn’t strong, thats the ONLY reason why these signet builds are being used. You take that away, and they have nothing.

Lets look at the signets in greater detail:

Plague Signet: Potentially useful on any build because its cooldown is low and any build can gain from having this condi transfer. You don’t need Spite to make it useful.

Signet of the Vampirism: Utter kitten. The only thing keeping this very poor excuse for a heal skill in the meta is the fact that its bugged to work through LoS and evade frames. Without that, its passive heal has zero sustain potential due to its not-per-target ICD, and its active heal value is FAR too low for its cooldown. Any other heal skill provides better healing over time, with traited “You’re Soul as Mine” being the best heal for self-sustain over time, followed by traited Consume Conditions.

Signet of Spite: Its passive effect isn’t very useful, and its cooldown is too high for what it does, and its active effect is decent. I agree that corrupt boon is much better condition pressure, especially when traited to have nearly half the cooldown of traited spite signet.

Signet of the Locust: Its passive effect is nice for the movement speed as QoL, but its scaling heal effect is too weak in 1v1s, though good in teamfights. Still, something like well of corruption will give you a more relaible chance of corrupting stability from someone thats stomping or rezzing. Overall though I’d place it as the 2nd best signet (behind plague). Potentially useful if not traited, but at that point shouts would probably be more useful for a defensive build that wouldn’t go into spite.

Signet of Undeath: Okayish passive, active effect kitten by cast time and inability to rez beneath 25% health due to 3+ year old bug and limited by poison on downed body. Lackluster.

Signets of Suffering: Solid trait, if you want to use signets, this is what enables it to work.

Still, just to say so, I play condi builds with corruptions and shouts that have better sustain (due to better heal skills) and pressure than a similar signet build.

So Morwath, while I respect you for organizing all the information about the competitive scene, as thats a huge undertaking, I compel you to not let that accomplishment go to your head in the form of meta-snobbery. Just because people are using it, doesn’t mean its the only, or even best way to play. And your statement about it being fact instead of opinion is so snobbish and oppressive that I feel the need to put you in your place.

For example: Nos played his “secret” condi build (that doesn’t use a single signet) on his stream yesterday that he didn’t want to talk about. But I know what build that is because one of my personal condi builds is almost the same, even down to the very rune he used of all things. But no one will play it until Nos kitten s everyone in a major tournament with it, because the other bandwagon necros will only copy him. They don’t try out things on their own with very rare exceptions.

But I guess because none of the amazing pro-league bandwagon reapers like Oeggz, use it, by the laws of statistics, and casual inference, it must be bad. Hmmph.

And thats just for offensive condition builds. Theres a whole world of power builds that will probably be used if AoE cleanse/shout spam becomes meta again that none of them have been exploring.

I’d say burn guard and mantra-interrupt Mesmer would be the best base class builds to use since they don’t gain anything of value to their builds purpose from their elite spec (even having to lose out on meditations or heals or stuns from mantras to make it work) and these builds, especially burn guard, can be effective against the new powerful kitten.

For any other class is advise against running a base class build. Even for ele, tempest is just better than using arcane since you get more sustain and support and pointholding, and fire dd can’t 1v1 DH/rev and win assuming equal skill, whole earth dd just ends up with better pointholding power if it takes tempest instead of arcane.

Base cele necro could handle seeker warriors fairly well. Base condi necro back then was a free kill since base condi necro was pretty bad without reaper or scepter buff. And even before then after the dhuumfire incident, hambow and shoutbow have made condi necro hard, if not impossible (with shout cleanses) to play properly, which was just a bad meta.

Condi reaper is in a mostly good spot, though. Feel as though some aspects of spite are a bit too strong while some aspects of curses are a bit too weak.

I agree with these changes, though a simple merger would be enough to make terror stand out. I also feel that path of corruption isn’t that great with RS2 compared to DS2 since it’s less of a skillshot but harder to land since you can’t guarantee a hit with instant fear, so I’d Rebalance it someway to be less clunky with RS.

Also, parasitic contagion and lingering curses need to be less limited in their uses (PC in death shroud alone would be enough to make it a decent pick, since that’s when you need life siphoning the most).

Actually messiah, the jokes on us. I tuned into noscoc’ streak today and he was showing off his secret condi build that he doesn’t want to talk about. But I knew what it was because I he tried it out. It’s wanderer’s with master of corruption (cpc, cb, cc) and thorn runes of all things (I knew it was thorns because I tried that out the other day and it gives you a stacking buff icon). So yeah it’s too hard to be hipster with our own builds, but it looks like we’re going to see another curses necro build, possibly in tournaments, it’s just not the exact one we had originally wanted for ourselves.

I doubt it will get popular with other necros though, since corruptions takes more thought to play compressor signers and nos played with corruptions on celestial in the preHOT meta and no one really copied his build.

Shadow.1345:

nearlight.3064:

Shadow.1345:

I tried a build similar to this and Curses is just a weak traitline atm. The first minor depends on having precision and any of the amulets that give precision don’t have vitality. Running spite and using some signets with the boon conversion is better plus you proc vulnerability on chill which stacks another condition for scepter 3. In a 1v1 situation you need that extra HP because armor just doesn’t cut it.

Yeah, perma weakness is so bad man, I don’t know why you’d ever want to run something as horribly useless as that when you can just use your wonderful heal signet that’s only good because it’s bugged to go through walls and evades and so you can outplay people with skillful passive procs like chill of death.

It’s not bad at all but comparing might stacking, vulnerability on chill, increasing damage against opponents with lower health and boon corrupting on SoL and PS (I use the heal shout, not the signet, which I have never liked) to a 3s bleed, Fury when going into shroud and more precision just makes the traitline not worth it for me. Plus both have a skillful passive proc of some kind Spite has Chill of Death and Curses has Plague Sending. Wanderer’s is a cool amulet but all the condi duration increase is negated by a simple condi clear.

But if you have played Necro long enough that you find Curses better then keep playing it. More power to ya. I just found it under performs compared to might and burns on Shroud skill 1 and all the boon corrupting.

You’re more reasonable than I thought. The thing is that you’re somewhat right, curses isn’t better than spite, even though in theory it should be better for a condi build than spite, but its just not, unless you run corruptions like messiah, which are hard to use, even if they are very powerful skills.

As for wanderer vs. carrion: carrion does much better against other condi-heavy teams, so other reapers and revenants and what have you, however wanderer is a bit better against comps that don’t have a dedicated condi user, and in the current meta the extra condi duration is extremely strong because most teams aren’t running shout builds that can deny all condi pressure in a teamfight (like bunker guard or shoutbow warrior from older metas), so I’d argue that it does have its place, although carrion is better against other condi users.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

This pretty much sums it all up.

I’m friends with this guy. I lol’d!

Silverkey.2078:

nearlight.3064:

Yeah, perma weakness is so bad man, I don’t know why you’d ever want to run something as horribly useless as that when you can just use your wonderful heal signet that’s only good because it’s bugged to go through walls and evades and so you can outplay people with skillful passive procs like chill of death.

But in all seriousness, curses isn’t as bad as it seems and it does synergies well with wanderer’s stats. Though I would not recommend that the OP ever use terror or master of terror since the base fear durations and terror damage were nerfed all those years ago from the dhuumfire patch, and I don’t think it’s worth it anymore. Path of corruption may not be perfect, but it gives you a low CD source of boon tip, and if you get lucky enough to strip resistance you can win against a condi rev.

Likewise I wouldn’t use nothing can save you, and spectral armor is much less useful than flesh wurm. I run wanderer’s with traited shouts, grenth runes, heal shout, and rise, and my sustain feels better than carrion signet builds in the long run, and the condi pressure from this build is better as well because I have more sources of pressure and more ways to apply them and I’m not gates by signet cooldowns when trying to burst someone.and it’s not like carrion has enough power to get past diamond skin anyway. Based on my testing, the direct damage between carrion and rabid in the past was about equal comparing no crits with good power (unless with fury) to crits with no power, so that’s a nonissue. My builds damage mitigation tools make the extra vitality unneeded, as I’ve been laying necro long enough to know how to survive with it.

I tried to play without signets. It is tough.

• you can take care of condis by other ways (shouts, passive curses proc, etc…), so plague signet is not needed.
• signet of vampirism was never a good heal, it is just used because of the trait
• with RS2 you have low CD boon removal.

but

• necro is so sloooooooooooow without “Signet of the Locust”. Else you are forced to take warhorn which is restrictive and use it out of combat which is not optimal. Once, I did make a shout build but I ended up still taking signet of locust. Also, this signet in a sense feels like it fits with shouts as it offers scalability (heal per enemy hit).

Then, you took care of the utilities, but you still have this sad problem: your might and vulnerability building is not nearly as good without spite, so you loose damage. To gain what? Condi duration on scepter? weakness? I don’t see how this is worth it.

To gain weakness and the ability to use an amulet with a high expertise stat without giving up a significant amount of condition damage. Wanderer stats with spite doesn’t do enough damage off the bat.

Talyn Sneider.1825:

nearlight.3064:

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Curring.9752:

Perma 40% protection team wide opie.

It’s only on the ele…

Nope you can get Perma protection on your team if you run powerful auras, use sand squall, and earth overload (and allies stay in range) very easily with 0 boon duration from runes. You need warhorn though, or durability or leadership runes to work with D/F. I modeled the scenarios based on different skill rotations, runes, and and trait setups.

True and with a carrion frostfire reaper you can spam chill on enemy team and easily break diamond skin and make the ele life miserable.

A golden rule of conquest pvp is damage dealers push hard…bunkers resist harder, both dps increased and people started crying that bunkers got tankier…with great power comes a extra tanky bunker.

Meta is pretty balanced so far, tempest is strong but so are reapers, revenants, scrappers, chronos, DHs….

In my opinion only thiefs and warriors should receive buffs.

So stop asking for nerfs when your class spams chills and condies with great survivability…you need a bunker like tempest to deal with that in the current meta

Carrion signet reaper can’t break diamond skin any faster than a rabid or wanderer spec. Celestial, which people are still complacent enough to still use can break it though. But even then diamond skin gets broken so easily in teamfights (the place a tempest is supposed to be in, not 1v1s).

I’m not asking for tempest nerfs, I’m just stating the facts about their ability to maintain protection. Put some numbers in excel and you’ll get the same results, and considering that teammates can be out of range from your earth overload quite easily, and running powerful auras makes it so hard to deal with conditions, I wouldn’t say it’s as overpowered as people think. It’s powerful support, which is what it’s supposed to be. No amount of damage mitigation or stone heart or obsidian flesh will protect you indefinitely when 3+ people are focus firing you. I rest my case.

And yeah, I will agree that condi reaper chill damage is slightly overturned. But I’m more afraid that anet will nerf it around the same time that everyone will run AoE cleanse builds like shoutbow again and make it completely useless, again.

Fay.2357:

Condition builds aren’t op right now. They’re not meta and are infrequently played. The fact that you’re complaining about how strong they are just speaks volumes about the amount of thought and experience behind this complaint.

I’m not sure if you’re talking just about Mesmer or the meta as a whole, but condi reaper and condi rev are extremely powerful in the current meta and see lots of use in high tier pvp right now. Condi mes not so much (there’s one on NA) but I think it’d be foolish to junk that something like condi reaper isn’t meta at this point, even if people are squandering its potential by blindly copying noscoc.

Shadow.1345:

I tried a build similar to this and Curses is just a weak traitline atm. The first minor depends on having precision and any of the amulets that give precision don’t have vitality. Running spite and using some signets with the boon conversion is better plus you proc vulnerability on chill which stacks another condition for scepter 3. In a 1v1 situation you need that extra HP because armor just doesn’t cut it.

Yeah, perma weakness is so bad man, I don’t know why you’d ever want to run something as horribly useless as that when you can just use your wonderful heal signet that’s only good because it’s bugged to go through walls and evades and so you can outplay people with skillful passive procs like chill of death.

But in all seriousness, curses isn’t as bad as it seems and it does synergies well with wanderer’s stats. Though I would not recommend that the OP ever use terror or master of terror since the base fear durations and terror damage were nerfed all those years ago from the dhuumfire patch, and I don’t think it’s worth it anymore. Path of corruption may not be perfect, but it gives you a low CD source of boon tip, and if you get lucky enough to strip resistance you can win against a condi rev.

Likewise I wouldn’t use nothing can save you, and spectral armor is much less useful than flesh wurm. I run wanderer’s with traited shouts, grenth runes, heal shout, and rise, and my sustain feels better than carrion signet builds in the long run, and the condi pressure from this build is better as well because I have more sources of pressure and more ways to apply them and I’m not gates by signet cooldowns when trying to burst someone.and it’s not like carrion has enough power to get past diamond skin anyway. Based on my testing, the direct damage between carrion and rabid in the past was about equal comparing no crits with good power (unless with fury) to crits with no power, so that’s a nonissue. My builds damage mitigation tools make the extra vitality unneeded, as I’ve been laying necro long enough to know how to survive with it.

Supreme.3164:

nearlight.3064:

Supreme.3164:

nearlight.3064:

This is why torrents+cleansing water+soldier runes+all shouts feels like the best build right now compared to pure aurashare that has trouble with heavy condi teams (unless you magically happen to fight a team with poor condi pressure).

But then you can forget about overloading on a point.

I almost wish they would just delete cleansing water and give us actual condi clear on our weapon skills and utilities (only cleansing fire and water sig.. really?)

Not enough…..not even close to enough..not enough to escape perma chill

with this setup you can stall a 1v1 against viper revenant. Haven’t 1v1ed a condi necro enough to try that though but since they have way more poison and chill it would probably swing their favor. And honestly I think thats fair. The 1v1 oriented condi build should be able to kill the teamfight oriented support build. Thats why people bring condi necro at all, to kill super cele bunkers that marauders cannot.

Then it’s only fair for these condi specs to lose 1vs1 against diamond skin as no other set up work

I guess so, given that a tempest shouldn’t be 1v1ing unless holding the point (think like a bunker guard, support teamfights) and the fact that diamond skin is mostly useless in teamfights.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Curring.9752:

Perma 40% protection team wide opie.

It’s only on the ele…

Nope you can get Perma protection on your team if you run powerful auras, use sand squall, and earth overload (and allies stay in range) very easily with 0 boon duration from runes. You need warhorn though, or durability or leadership runes to work with D/F. I modeled the scenarios based on different skill rotations, runes, and and trait setups.

In my opinion the best condi amulets right now are viper and wanderer, which are squishier than rabid/rampagers, but do way more damage and have way better pressure to the duration added alone, since if you can’t cleanse, you won’t be able to mitigate as much damage by waiting the condis out, which forces you to cleanse or die.

Vipers works best on classes with a ton of active defenses (rev and in theory, mesmer).

Wanderer’s works best on classes that have novel ways of using that precision (necro) and have good ways to mitigate damage.

And as a general note, run inspiration on your build. I don’t think domination/dueling builds work in this meta unless you can count on cleanse from your teammates, so taking inspiration and the clone-generating traits in chronomancer, you’ll have enough cleanse to stand a chance at least (though they’ll win if you can’t burst them fast enough).

If you don’t have the expansion you can run dom/dueling/insp with mantras and do quite well vs. conditions 1v1. Thats the build synergy I ended up liking the most from pre-HoT, though it doesn’t really work well with chronomancer.

Yeah that is a crap ton of healing. Back when I was messing around with druid (before the changed CAF gain) I’d get around 350K healing to allies, and Tempest is generally 200-300K healing to allies and well chronomancer is 100-200K.

I think she can probably afford to take scepter with settlers now that its been buffed.

On my current wanderer condi build I usually do 500K condi damage per game.

Supreme.3164:

nearlight.3064:

This is why torrents+cleansing water+soldier runes+all shouts feels like the best build right now compared to pure aurashare that has trouble with heavy condi teams (unless you magically happen to fight a team with poor condi pressure).

But then you can forget about overloading on a point.

I almost wish they would just delete cleansing water and give us actual condi clear on our weapon skills and utilities (only cleansing fire and water sig.. really?)

Not enough…..not even close to enough..not enough to escape perma chill

with this setup you can stall a 1v1 against viper revenant. Haven’t 1v1ed a condi necro enough to try that though but since they have way more poison and chill it would probably swing their favor. And honestly I think thats fair. The 1v1 oriented condi build should be able to kill the teamfight oriented support build. Thats why people bring condi necro at all, to kill super cele bunkers that marauders cannot.

I do agree with the sentiment that full on AoE cleanse builds like shoutbow should never be able to come back into the game. Condition builds finally have a place in the meta, and while some of them may come off as too strong, individual condition cleansing on certain professions rather than group condition cleansing should be brought up to compensate instead of nerfing condi output or putting massive teamwide AoE condi cleanse back into viable builds again..

I just dueled a viper rev on my AoE shout tune cleanse warhorn build (no diamond skin) and we basically stalled. I kept cleansing his condis, but I couldn’t do enough damage to get him below 30%

Vapour.7348:

Is Carrion a good alternative to Viper for the Mallyx/Shiro build?

I imagine carrion would work. Back in beta weekend two when mallyx was way more interesting, I played carrion glint/mallyx and I loved it. Because of the high health and perma protection it felt like a condi support build that the game had never seen since prenerfed spirit ranger (carrion and perma prot). I haven’t tried that setup sense and I don’t think it would work as well as the more offensive builds.

Now looking at the current viper build that we’re all bandwagoning to, I think shiro is the main reason it’s so strong. Most condi builds have crap mobility and can’t break stun like crazy so shiro holds it together very nicely.

Now the viper and wanderer amulets are amazing in the current meta because tempests don’t usually run full AoE cleanse builds (cleansing water and soldier runes) yet in favor of aurashare, meaning that the extra duration from expertise lets you kitten up someone’s day further if they’re unable to cleanse.

The thing is that most classes can’t play something glassy like vipers and still excel. Only rev and in theory chronomancer have the active defenses needed to pull off a hyper offensive condi build. The wanderers amulet is a little more generalizable, but necromancer is ironically the only class with the right trait synergies to make wanderer work better than viper since the precision backed with 0 power is wasted on most builds.

As an aside, I’ve been able to get wanderer’s amulet to work fantastically on necromancer with shouts and curses (for the precision to condi damage trait).

87% chill duration may be overkill though..

For mesmer I think it’d just be better to go full out into alacrity support in some way, which doesn’t feel as good with conditions compared to power/support imo.

This is why torrents+cleansing water+soldier runes+all shouts feels like the best build right now compared to pure aurashare that has trouble with heavy condi teams (unless you magically happen to fight a team with poor condi pressure).

But then you can forget about overloading on a point.

I almost wish they would just delete cleansing water and give us actual condi clear on our weapon skills and utilities (only cleansing fire and water sig.. really?)

Hmm I’m going to try out some wanderer builds soon… but as of now vipers is really cool but only works on classes that can spam active defenses…