Guild Wars 2

I’m going for meteorlogicus for my ele.
I have my 77 mystic clovers, the gift of battle, 99% world complete (kaineng needs to be green again in WvW), and the rest of the gift of mastery I’m not worrried about.
I got a lot of T6 mats from the clovers but I’m poor again so it’ll be a while.
At lteast the precursors not too expensive.

My biggest worry is buying the charged lodestones, since its like 280 gold for the stack of 100 I’d need..

Theres a guide somewhere in the ele forums for pve, and basically the writter (Neko.9021 I think) says that scepter/dagger builds are very very viable for mightstacking and lightining hammer DPS, so I would look for his guide, since he explains a lot there.

I play mainly necromancer and mesmer and I play ele a little bit but haven’t leveled one.
I was wondering how good a crit damage dealing fresh air using build would be? Probably using scepter/dagger and a 0/30/0/20/20 build set up. For gear down the road I’d probably use valkyrie and berserker/knights.

What do you guys think of such a build idea?

I feel like it would be okay, but at the same time I wouldn’t risk it. I guess you could jsut put in another sigil of rage if it didn’t work. Its really not a bad a sigil so if you want to use it before crafting it into the legendary, I would leave it as it.

You can preview what weapons and armor and dyes would look like on your character by previewing them on the trading post. Just control-click the link and the option to preview the item will appear.

The title says it all. Basically in a addition to a legendary Im creating on my necro, I’m thinking about making the staff called the crossing as well which would be around 50-60 gold, but I’m just wondering whether or not it would even be worth it to do so since eventually we’ll have ascended weapons.

What do you guys know and what would you do?

I’m going for howler all the way! I’m a sylvari so I feel like the wolf theme is naturey enough for them too. Besides it being one of the few cool warhorn skins, I feel like the foggy aura and footprints somehow do fit a mysterious necroey theme, and I use moonshank as my dagger skin, so I’ll get 2 lunaresque weapons.

I made my mystic clovers last night, and since its a cheap legendary in comparison to all of the others sans focus/underwater weaps I figure I’m only 300-400 gold away from getting it.

I’d reccomend dagger for its raw DPS and the occasionally usefulness of imobolize, with any of the offhands like the guy above said (I go with WH personally since I find that moving faster in melee range helps a lot to lockdown opponents).

I normally ran axe/focus in the offhand for single target DPS and boon removal mid range, but the AoE is still pretty bad, so I’m switching to staff for more utility, AoE, and the blast finisher and subbing dagger for axe during situations where I can’t melee.

Bhawb.7408:

They are the people that publish(?) the game, ArenaNet develops it for them.

Also, we will almost never see more finishers on weapons. The game is balanced around finishers and combo fields being accessible on the same way, and as such cannot stack finishers and combo fields with yourself (most people that talk about self-comboing have 1-2 fields and then lots of finishers that they drop all at once), minions being the exception (death nova makes every minion a combo field, and half of them have finishers built in).

Basically, there is a chance that we will see a single finisher added to a weapon set, but the more reasonable thing would be to expect them off utility skills; where we get our combo fields. And we really don’t have utilities that make sense to be finishers.

Not saying you are wrong or right, just stating that they are very unlikely to break the general thing they have going on right now.

Alright I see what you’re saying. I just meant it seemed a little gimpy how other classes have so many finishers of all types across different weapon sets while our class only has one weapon containing an actually decent amount of finishers. Also other things like how in order to make staff good, we need to take at least 1 or 2 of the 4 different improvement traits while other classes get say 2-handed 20% CD reduction and traits that reduce both cooldowns and increase damage or a stat, while our staff has needed traits all over the place.

Therefore in my power build to increase my usefulness to groups I’m going to drop axe/focus for a staff so I’ll have those finishers and all that extra-if not comparatively weak AoE, but trading axe mastery for spiteful marks and near to death for soul marks will make them a lot more useful for my build, plus I can just get greater marks by sacrificing shrouded removal, but I won’t be able to get staff mastery.

Thanks Bhawb!

Haha thats almost the same thing as my PvE build! I run shrouded removal over dark armor though for the extra condi cleanse and I also have might duration runes.

HiSaZuL.2843:

Axe 3 should be blast finisher… dark path and life blast as you said should be leap/projectile respectively. Marks should also kittening trigger on objects.
Too much wrong with this bloody class.

But… the biggest problem is ncsoft. >_> Until someone can patch that. Or ninja transfer ip rights to someone compitent this will remain on the level “f2p” flop house games.

Yay people agree with me! Whats ncsoft?

haha thanks for the support! Yeah, the thing is my necro set up is a 30/0/10/0/30 might stacking power build (may switch to a 30/30/0/0/10 set up for more condition support or just get a set of condition gear forthright and whatnot). In dungeons I always survive much more than most of the other classes other than guardians when I know what I’m doing and I still have 2.5-3.5K lifeblasts even though I only have 2 pieces of ascended gear. I guess I’ll stick with necro, and mesmer for pvp/cof farming and maybe level up my guardian on the backburner. Thanks for your support!

Serval.6458:

It’s the new Zenith Avenger that can be obtained by reaching certain achievement point milestones (you get to pick one weapon every so often that you can get infinite skins of.)

Regrettably, ANet doesn’t seem to like greatswords very much and puts most of their artistic effort into highly detailed daggers, torches and warhorns; as well as a variety of large and imposing 2h hammers.

The only cool looking warhorns are the Howler, corrupted harbinger, and a few of the dungeon token warhorns. I don’t even think there are craftable mystic forge warhorns, and other random exotic warhorns are very plain and boring.

I have a level 80 necromancer and mesmer, and I while I love my power necro, my guid mates say that necro isn’t T1 like warrior guard or mesmer and I wouldn’t be able to use my necro in hard dungeons such as Arah p4.. I could just use my mesmer, but I find mesmer to be dreadfully boring outside of pvp (standthere dodge, shatter Time Warp feedback repeat). I’ve been thinking about leveling a guardian, but I have no idea how to play one effectively in dungeons. What traits, gear type, and weapons would you recommend? Since I have no idea how to play this class.

As a mainly power necro that uses dagger/WH and axe/focus, I think one of our biggest problems (other than lack of cleave) is that we have no combo finishers on weapon skills outside of staff, and lets face it, marks do kitten for aoe and staff autoattack is impossible to hit a moving target with.

Also the bone fiend/flesh wurm as blast finishers are way too situational and clunky to pull off normally. Looking at mesmer, every weapon save scepter has a finsher, letting them get free auras so easily. I also understand that it doesn’t make sense for any of our non-staff weapons to have combo finishers, so I would suggest that Life Blast and Dark Path become projectile and leap finishers respectively so we don’t lack that utility as much.

Forestnator.6298:

For anyone who is still wondering about chances:

One in 5 trys with rares give back an exotic on average.
One in 130 exotics is a precursor on average (=650 trys with 4 rares = 2600 rares)

So far my numbers – I noted more then 9k trys ( more then 36k rare items) and got 14 precursor so far.

Good luck.

So then according to your theoretical and empiracle evidence, there is a .15% chance to get a precursor from the mystic forge. So so slim.

You guys seem to be leaning towards Howler, which is great since that means less mindless CoF for me!

And yes Howler is probably the only actually cool warhorn skin in the game save from a few of the dungeon token warhorns.

I have two characters that I both a enjoy and use frequently, an Asura Mesmer and a Sylvari Necromancer. I want to go for a legendary but I’m not sure which one I should go for. For my mesmer I would go for the Bifrost, and for my Necromancer I would go for Howler.

What would you guys do? Keep in mind that the Bifrost costs around 1300 gold to make from scratch while Howler is more around 800, mostly due to precurser price differences.
Either would be amazing, so tell me which you’d go for and why.

You know the item that occasionally drops called Valuable Metal Scrap?
It is about 1 silver on the TP and if you salvage it with a master salvage kit you have roughly a 75% chance of getting 1-4 mithril ore, and a 25% chance of getting orichalcum ore.

Just a suggestion, as it probably is the cheapermethod in the long run if you’re lucky.

I did not expect that my question would lead to a fierce debate. When I have the time and money I’ll get condition gear for WvW, but right now I have other priorities. I only use a few zerker pieces on my power build, with the rest being valkyrie and knights and I still do a ton of DPS and I’m not as fragile.

Thankfully respeccing is cheap so I can run both sets. Does anyone have any advice on how to keep up condition pressure as a say 20/20/30/0/0 built condition spec?

Thank you all for your input and advice!

I think I’m just going to stick with my power/crit shatter build for PvE and some WvW, and use the condition build for spvp and WvW (once I can devote the time to getting the gear).

Another reason why I’m not sure if I can use a condimes all the time is that while I’m glad the scepter/torch combo is buffed and has torment now, its still very clunky and hard to use, and the reason why say a necro condi build would be great is that their conditions have a ton of pressure to them. With scepter/torch its very hard to keep this pressure up, mostly because of the autoattack.

I see.. this is a tough choice. I already have zerker/valk/cavalier gear, so I could just use that for dungeons and rabid for WvW, but It’ll be a pain getting it all haha.

The title says it all. I really like the playstyle of condition mesmers in spvp/tpvp, and I know they could be very good in WvW, but would they be effective in dungeons? I’d still time warp and whatnot, I just want want to know how viable that’d be before I commit to getting gear, in part because I have to devote more time to my necromancer main for gear.

Thanks

spoj.9672:

The curses line isnt that bad for power builds. Warhorn cooldowns is good, adds to dps with locust swarm uptime. Weakening shroud adds some dps when flashing DS and contributes bonus damage to target the weak. After the Withering precision nerf its not really worth going 30 in curses though. Just go 25 in curses then 15 in soul reaping for the crit damage. So basically your two best options for dps builds are 30/10/0/0/30 and 30/25/0/0/15. If you are going for dps then I recommend beserker gear, it may take some getting use to but putting yourself in danger is the fastest way to improve as a player.

Basically I was thinking the same way as you were in regards to this. I feel like the fury trait, banshees wail, and target the weak would be very useful. Deathly Perception also seems too powerful to give up. My only concern would be whether to take near to death as the 20 point SR trait or something else like vital peristance or path of midnight, since unyielding blast will be on the build no matter what. Im also going to stick with my mix of knights and zerker gear. A party full of unskilled glass cannons is a wipefest.

I see. I feel like putting 30 into curses over soul reaping would be more effective because it boosts your DPS more outside of DS and gives more utility in the form of debuff conditions like weakness and vuln. That being said of miss the well CD reduction and HP from blood magic, but the tree just doesn’t provide enough sustainability for the DPS I’d gain fr curses. Any suggestions on gear? Since I just redlined my knight/zeroed armor with cultural I think I’ll stick with those and maybe pick up cavalier/zerker accessories (although I already use a knights amulet).

For PvP encounters condition builds are really strong right now. Since you’ll have 30 in spite, lingering curses wouldn’t really be worth it. Most bursts condition builds would either go 30/20/0/0/20 or 0/30/20/0/20 (sans burning) this is mostly for the master of terror trait, Since terror condition builds with torment and optionally burning crowd control things to death very quickly. Such a build is very powerful but tough to micromanage, especially with cooldowns.

Rabid gear would probably be fine, I wouldn’t see any reason to go Carrion unless you dropped staff for dagger/WH for more control but less fear and aoe

This is all theory to me, I usually only run power.

I run a power build with a mix of berserker and knights gear, with axe/focus and dagger/WH and I was wondering what an ideal trait spread could be.

Obviously 30 in spite is a must for close to death and axe training an either reapers might or spiteful talisman.

In the past of been putting at least 20 into blood for well CDs and sometimes 30 into blood for siphoning wells which makes me pretty tanky in AoE encounters and makes well of blood great for group support and siphoning since it lasts 10 seconds. Since I run Well of Blood a lot for dungeons I typically put the remaining ten for shrouded removal since I’d have no other condition removal. If I only go 20 into blood then unusually pick up unyielding blast for the vuln and pierce.

Do you guys think that blood magic traits are worth it for PvE and WvW to be tankier? Or would it be better to put points into either curses or soul reaping for target the weak or deathly perception, which would go great with the might stacking build I was considering. What do you guys think?

I’ve been told that tanky power builds are best served by a mix of knights and berserkers. The 30 in DS gives a lot of burst, but I find that burst difficult to sustain do the life force building restrictions.

Traits like terror aren’t really OP because they are cooldown limited and also require a relatively high skill cap to execute properly combining 3 different fear sources, tainted shackles and chill to be most effective at taking people down (considering high fear duration %s).
And even then thats just 1v1. Necros are still just as susceptible to focus fire due to their lack of escape mechanisms, so all in all I’d say the class is much more balanced with its new offensive buffs

First of all there are indeed viable Tanky Vampiric Builds useful mostly for PvE (WvW and Tpvp less so). You’ll probably want to drop the Off hand Dagger for a warhorn though due to locust swarm giving a lot of extra AoE and the useful interrupt, or even a focus for bouncing regen/vuln and the utilitiy of boon removal/chill. After talking to other players, the most effective builds for WvW and tPvP seem to be bursty condition fear-terror builds due to their mix of damage and control, but require a realatively high skill level to pull off.

Now for PvE. The 15 point Blood Magic Trait Vampiric was buffed a bit since it now scales off of power or healing power, I can’t remember which, but it really helps with sustain. I’d recomend going against PVT (soldiers gear though) as another player reccomended a mix of knights and berskers for burst and toughness. As far as traits though, you’ll want to go 30 into spite for close to death and 20 or 30 into Blood for siphoning and well CD/improvement traits, and the rest are probably best suited for death magic or soul reaping, as gear will give you enough precision to crit a lot. If use staff over axe, you could get greater marks or staff mastery, but if you do go with axe either dark armor or ritual of protection would be useful.

I’m wondering what would be more effective for PVE. Either a Hybrid Might-stacking Build using both scepter and axe to both apply all of our various conditions and still put out great burst damage (using strength or hoelbrak runes for might duration and epidemic for extra AoE), or a wellmancer build taking advantage of focused rituals’ new place in curses and the reduced CD times.

The trait set up would probably be 30/10/0/0/30 for the hybrid build, and 30/10/0/20/10 for the Wellmancer Build. Marks really don’t fit my playstyle so both builds will probably use axe and then either scepter or dagger in the offhand set.

And if so, what type of gear arrangement would be the best for each build? I’m close to 30 laurels and I want to buy an amulet I can be content with for a while, and I’m also starting to run dungeons to start getting exotic armor.

Djemo.7153:

Ok hold the phone… we only get Torment with DS?
How in the kitten am i supposed to epidemic this?

I feel somewhat betrayed really.
And can anyone give me a reason why anyone will use Life Transfer over DS 5 now?
Since this one targets EVERYTHING in its radius rather than just 5 like Life Transfer.

Step 1: enter DS
Step 2: press 5
Step 3: Exit DS
Step 4: Press Epidemic
Step 5: Congratulations, now you can get 6 torment stacks on a group of mobs.
Bonus Step: Use Life Transfer on Tainted Shackle Cooldowns to be really kittening cool mwhahaha.

based on the patch notes I think I may be leaning towards a 30/10/0/0/30 hybrid build using axe as the direct damage weapon, mainly because in PvE, the dagger damage is great, but I don’t want to risk taking more hits from melee range. Also in PvE I feel like the imobolize and life siphon can be a bit less important, so Axe 3s AoE/retal is very nice and I Axe 2 is very usable damage. Axe 1 is lacklustre sometimes, but I can probably just switch to scepter or life blasting during Axe 2 CD.

Given that the patch notes are relatively accurate, I’ll probably take Spiteful Talisman/Retal on on DS/Reapers Might for my 10 point spite trait depending on the build, Axe Training for the 20 point trait, and then the 30 point burning trait. Moving the trait really would make axe more useful than dagger for such a build. My only concern is lack of a staff, but its AoE isn’t that amazing when using epidemic or wells.. I’ll miss having a blast finisher though as axe/focus/warhorn and scepter/dagger have 0 combo finishers

The information posted in this thread is based on the assumption that the leaked patch notes are true for necromancers.

First of all, based on the new trait placement, I’d say that hybrid power/condition builds that follow a 30/10/0/0/30 or 30/20/0/0/20 set up could be very effective. With the new burning trait in Spite making Close to Death a lesser choice for hybrid builds, axe may be slightly more useful than dagger because Axe Training would now be a 20 point trait. This could be nice for PvE where melee can be bad and with the buffs to the soul reaping tree, one could simply sit in DeathShroud firing off life blasts and a Terror boosted fear, life siphon and torment whenever Axe 2 is on CD, and alternatively using the scepter (which now has a longer poison duration time) to apply conditions and spread them in epidemic. This weaponset combination also ignores the use of the staff, so gaining greater marks is not needed anymore. Using a mix of rampager and carrion gear for the extra precision, power, condition damage and vitality could make a hybrid build very powerful but still relatively squishy.

With a Might duration runeset (fire for burn duration, strength for dps, or hoelbrak for the -20% condi duration, might stacking hybrid or direct damage builds with Reapers Might, Blood is Power, and the proposed new 50% extra crit rate in DS trait could be extremely viable for PVE.

I can also see the use of permanent boon builds with boon duration gear that allow you to have near 100% uptime on retaliation, stability, and fury from DS and Near to Death becoming a master trait (and possibly regen from focus or staff), which could make tanky DS/MM builds very powerful if built right, but getting boon duration would be difficult as to get all of the boons from DS one could not a lot of boon duration from the Death Magic tree, unless fury or retal were given up for instance.

Another change that I really liked seeing was General Well CD reductions and adding stability and stun break to well of power. It might not be as useful as a mesmers blink, but a stunbreaker that clears your conditions is a very nice addition.

Those are just my thoughts on how I would build my necro after the patch if the leaked notes are true. What do you all think about new possible builds? Becuase of all the new options I don’t think theres any real imbalance because its impossible to create one build or one set of traits that would take advantage of all the great new changes to our profession. For example if you wanted permanent stability/fury/retal, you’d have to give up burning on crit for all those boons and whatnot, so its a matter of experimenting and finding the best new ways to make all of these buffs and changes fit our own individual playstyles.

Rennoko.5731:

nearlight.3064:

Arianna.7642:

leman.7682:

“Necromancer Death Shroud 5

As the professions in Guild Wars 2 continue to grow, we will continue to find ways to augment them and add potency to their arsenal of abilities. With the next balance update, necromancers will be unlocking their fifth ability within Death Shroud: Tainted Shackles. This skill will cause nearby enemies to be inflicted with conditions and controlled if they don’t take very quick action.

New condition

_With the introduction of Tainted Shackles, we’ll also be adding a new condition to the game: Torment. This condition is designed to play around with movement, one of our fundamental combat mechanics. Enemies under Torment will take damage periodically; as they move, they’ll take even more damage. In looking to expand the condition diversity of thieves and mesmers, we decided to include Torment skills for those two professions as well."

. On top of all of this, they are additionally giving two of the already extremely mobile Professions access to this condition. What in the kitten? I can guarantee, right here and now, that both the Thief and the Mesmer can and will be using this condition to an exponentially higher degree of viability than we will ever see possible.
.

If you looked at the supposed leaked patch notes in full detail, then you’d see that Mesmers would get torment through the OH sword 4 counter skill (its attack damage decreased) and Thieves would have torment replace weakness on their skale venom skill. Necromancers on the hand get this ability through an AoE, so I doubt that theives and mesmers would be able to cause as much torment damage as we will be able to. And besides condition thieves really needed a boost too, and condition mesmers will appreciate a viable OH other than torch.

If the notes are to be believed, it is on the sceptor 2 counter, not the sword 4 counter.

My mistake, I got the skill names confused. That certainly makes a lot more sense and makes the scepter a bit more viable for condition (read not shatter/phantasm burst) mesmers! To the person above me, I argue that giving the condition to theives is a great idea as well, because it won’t be able to do much damage in a typical backstab or pistol whip burst build. If the leaked patch notes are real then torment will do 75% bleed DPS when not moving and 150% bleed DPS when moving. It will be very nice for P/D condition builds which tend to be considered low threat at the moment becuase all they really have right now is caltrops, pistol autoattack and stealth attack, and death blossom/lotus strike. Having an extra condition will make condition specs (NOT burst specs) more playable and and won’t give burst specs anything extra as their utilities are already filled with shadow refuge, blinding powder and signets usually and they would lack the condition damage stat to do anything devastating with torment.

Arianna.7642:

leman.7682:

“Necromancer Death Shroud 5

As the professions in Guild Wars 2 continue to grow, we will continue to find ways to augment them and add potency to their arsenal of abilities. With the next balance update, necromancers will be unlocking their fifth ability within Death Shroud: Tainted Shackles. This skill will cause nearby enemies to be inflicted with conditions and controlled if they don’t take very quick action.

New condition

_With the introduction of Tainted Shackles, we’ll also be adding a new condition to the game: Torment. This condition is designed to play around with movement, one of our fundamental combat mechanics. Enemies under Torment will take damage periodically; as they move, they’ll take even more damage. In looking to expand the condition diversity of thieves and mesmers, we decided to include Torment skills for those two professions as well."

. On top of all of this, they are additionally giving two of the already extremely mobile Professions access to this condition. What in the kitten? I can guarantee, right here and now, that both the Thief and the Mesmer can and will be using this condition to an exponentially higher degree of viability than we will ever see possible.
.

If you looked at the supposed leaked patch notes in full detail, then you’d see that Mesmers would get torment through the OH sword 4 counter skill (its attack damage decreased) and Thieves would have torment replace weakness on their skale venom skill. Necromancers on the hand get this ability through an AoE, so I doubt that theives and mesmers would be able to cause as much torment damage as we will be able to. And besides condition thieves really needed a boost too, and condition mesmers will appreciate a viable OH other than torch.

Epidemic is a pretty useful utility for a conditonmancer, however the weapon skills just aren’t there yet..

Lets take a look at scepter damage
1: Slow auttoattack that stacks bleeds and poison at an okay rate but has trouble building
2. Slow AoE bleed/cripple skill that is hard to use against moving foes or when you’re being focus fired.
3. Rather Useless skill that does very little damage even with a ton of conditions.
OH Daggers passable..

Double Pistol Engineer on the Other Hand
1 Autoattack that stacks bleeds fairly fast and has a small AoE and can be traited to PIERCE.
2. Poison Dart Volley that gives a pretty good duration posion. can also trait to pierce
3. Bouncing blind/Confusion that is very useful.
4. A very very powerful burn skill when used point blank. I say no more.
5. An AoE snare/cripple. useful enough

Looking at traits we see an easy source of burn on crit, extra bleed on crit, possible swiftness on crit, vigor on swiftness and ways to get a ton of might and other boons in the elixer line.

In their current state necromancer can’t keep up with classes handed so many other ways to apply diverse and powerful damaging conditions and also maintain a huge array of boons.

Power Necromancers are in a bit better shape, but hopefully the balance patch will give the necromancer more potential to run powerful condition builds.

My reason for desiring a change in the profession is that I feel like some of the trait lines are a bit strange and lack usefulness. For example death magic and blood magic have very situational grand master traits and the most of the rest of the traits are nice for support/staff use/wells/minions and whatnot but don’t actually give that much extra survivability to the necromancer, causing us to rely on weakness from the other trait lines rather than our scarce amount of protection availability. I feel like the minor traits in all of the the trait lines other than Curses are some of the least useful in the game, which of course is arguable. For example a 5 point trait in Illusions for Mesmer gives them CD reduction on all clones summoning skills (so like half their skills) . A 5 point trait for Engineers in Elixers gives them an Elixer B (3-4ish long lasting boons) at 75% health, and whatnot. Necromancers instead get Reanimator which is kinda meh, Barbed Precision which is GREAT, Parasitic Bond which is underwhelming, Gluttony which should’ve been automatically programmed in LF generation, and the blood magic regen trait which is actually alright. Some of the 15 and 25 point traits are a bit better but tend to be minor situational DPS boosts or random stat boosts that scale with another stat. The one I hate the most is the 25 spite trait, since getting might with that little health probably won’t turn any fights..

Thankfully though it sounds like things are changing. I never played GW1 but I’d really like to know why they were so great in that game. I think another idea is that GW2 was built with movement, dodging, and speed in terms of using skills, in mind. Most other MMOs make it harder to move and cast things quickly, and I think the necromancer was created more in mind to lack this mobility and ease that thieves, mesmers, rangers have.

Probably the biggest thing I’d like to see is better ways to engage in combat, since disengaging really isn’t that awful with spectral walk and death shroud. I’d like to see a leap finisher skill on land for say a power dagger build. Since right now with daggers, you just run in, maybe use Dark Pact and hope the enemy doesn’t move away too quickly. Thieves and mesmers have way too many ways to evade and elude melee necro builds right now. Thieves and mesmers also have steal, shadowstep, and illusionary leap to close the gap, while we only have DS 2 or sprectral grasp, which make meleeing difficult.

I am happy for the imminent trait changes and the addition of burning, but I wish we had more specific details about the balance patch.

LastDay.3524:

Andele.1306:

For short you are actually dealing damage only 1 out of every 1 seconds while on dagger. (since even with best positioning and soldier gear pre boss, some are just unable to be meleed).

Nonsense!

Just like Warriors you need to pick and choose which mobs to melee.
It takes a bit of getting brutally murdered before you learn which ones you can and cannot melee.

Most mobs in AC and CoF fall quite handily to old stabby stabby if you position yourself and dodge well.
Meleeing Alpha in CoE is pretty fun, too!
On that note my guildies melee him with Mesmers as well.
it’s tricky as Necro because you don’t have Vigor, but it’s definitely possibly to melee him for the whole fight, minus forward dodges and heals.
Not saying that I actually succeed at sticking to it every time, but the difficulty is what makes it fun.

Also mind you the Dagger has 1 melee attack, the rest are ranged!
So long as you don’t fiddle your thumbs while Life Siphon and off-hand skills are on cooldown you can easily make up for the time you spend not meleeing just by using Life Blast until 50% Life Force.

Life Blast above 50% has higher DPS than the Axe’s auto-attack does, so the same goes for Axe as well when Ghastly Claws is on cooldown.
(Well, except the Axe generates way less Life Force than the Dagger does so it’s not as easy to utilize often)

The Immobilize from Dark Pact is also great when you have a Zerker warrior or two in your party.
It’s the perfect setup for Hundred Blades.

Now whether you’d wanna use it in some super high lv Fractal I don’t know, because I rarely play fractals at all, but it’s certainly good in CoF and AC.
You can stick to many mobs for the entire duration in them, just not to all of them.

You’ve gotta learn by trial and error and if you make a mistake you are down, coupled with your downed health bug.
It’s risky for certain, but you deal way more damage than you would with the Axe.
I might switch to Axe if it gets a buff or two, however.

Thanks for the input! After thinking about gear and weapon choices and whatnot for a while, I think its best that I wait for the balance patch with the multiple trait changes before I make any definitive decision about gear/builds. Since its probably coming within the next 2 weeks or so, that won’t be long at all though.

Instead of carrion and rampagers, it might make more sense to go for a mix of rampagers and and valkyrie for the extra power, crit damage and vit, since valkyrie would provide more power. With ascended Berserker/Valk amulet, a rampager ring, and zerker/valk rings I can get 52.57% crit chance, 21K HP, 42% crit damage, 2136 power and 640 condition damage. Of course with 1016 toughness I’d still be pretty squishy..

This way I can use MH dagger as the main weapon and have barbed prec/sigil of earth procs, Marks, possibly utilities and the burning (however it gets implemented) to supplement the power DPS, and using withering precision and locust swarm I can maintain weakness on a group of mobs for a very long time. I feel like that set up would make more sense than using a scepter, which would be better if I went for a carrion/rampage gear set.

I’m thinking about running a hybrid build with a mix of power and condition damage, using some undecided combination of rampagers/carrion/zerker gear.

My question for y’alls is what weapon set would be ideal to run for this build. I really want to run a staff with greater marks for the utility and AoE ability, as well as a dagger/warhorn for power-melee DPS. Instead of a Staff, would a scepter/dagger be more useful for stacking bleeds at a slightly faster rate? Also what about axe over dagger so I don’t get murdered in melee range, however I know that the dagger wold give far more DPS.

As far as traits go, I’d probably do 30/30/10/0/0 with a staff, taking retal on DS, Spiteful Marks, Close to Death, Terror, Banshees Wail, Weakness on Crit trait thing, and Greater Marks.

If I went with scepter instead, I’d probably cry with how much more boring than a staff it is, and move the 10 points from death magic into soul reaping and pick up DS CDs and some noice crit damage.

One of the reasons I’m going for a hybrid set up is that the true rumors of Burning/weakness being buffed sound like something great to capitalize on, and that I feel like I could provide more DPS utilizing both power and conditions, however I’m not sure what the optimal way to go about this is. And if you guys think that power builds are just an all around better idea, then let me know.

Thanks for reading this.

Thanks! although for me it just randomly fixed itself and is now downloading the patch.

Thats basically it, and the launcher will not download the new patch. The launcher % bar says 100% but the red bar doesn’t move through it, and the login information and login button on the left part of the launcher doesn’t even show up?

Should I try reinstalling the client or some other outrageous remedy?