Guild Wars 2

Blaine Tog.8304:

Do you have any detailed mathematical analysis taking into account the patch changes to support this opinion? I’m not just being flippant: nothing anyone’s saying means anything here unless they can bring hard numbers to prove it. The Necro’s DS mechanics interact with both Vitality and Toughness, so you need to take it into account to determine which is better for the Necro over the course of a fight and initially.

The fact is simple and I’ve already said why.

There are mainly two kind of damage in this game: direct damage and condition damage.
Both of the damage can be cancelled in two ways. Direct damage can be cancelled through evasion, invulnerability, blocks etc, while condition damage is cancelled through cleansing and condition transfer.

Necromancer has great access to the second while not-so-good access to the first one (zero to be honest), which means they are less susceptible to condition damage while they suffer from direct damage, so stacking toughness first to counter that (has been proven that Toughness works better against direct damage) is a good choice.
All the mathematical calculations done until now has never taken into account the innate ability of professions to mitigate different types of damage, which is an huge factor, since you might want to be able to survive to both direct damage and condition damage.

Another fact you have to take into consideration is the base statistics of a profession. If you take into account a profession like Thief, they have low health and higher base armor, which means that stacking vitality for them makes more sense, since they are starting with more base toughness while being incredibly weak against condition damage.

Also, I’ve proven in my previous post that Toughness, on the long run, provides better EHP compared to Vitality, which makes you last quite a bit longer at the start, but the longer the fight goes, the worse is its effectiveness.

Those were the main points which lead to the conclusion that Toughness is the best choice for Necromancers.

The patch has changed pretty much nothing.
The situation is still the same.

The main difference is that, as before, in DS you can’t mitigate condition damage as you would outside DS, which means that Carrion is probably a better choice if you plan to stay in DS only.

So, let’s take two examples. The first one with rabid amulet (so 26% damage reduction and 18,372 DS HP) and the second one with carrion (24.812 HP according to tests while in DS).

We want to stay in Death Shroud for 1 second at least, which means that you naturally degen 4% of your LF:
- Rabid: 734 HP lost per second, 924 EHP against direct damage
- Carrion: 992 EHP lost per second against all damage

So, the more you stay in Death Shroud, the more Rabid has advantage over Carrion, but you need a lot of time to take over Carrion.

When you spend point in soul reaping, the situation is pretty much the same.
Let’s say we have 30 points into Soul Reaping.

- Rabid: 23,883 HP, 30,009 EHP against direct damage 955 HP loss per second, 1203 EHP loss per second against direct damage
- Carrion: 32,225 EHP/HP, 1289 HP/EHP loss per second

But, overall, the EHP difference is not so much noticable (we are talking about ~1000-2000 EHP difference at max) considering what you gain while outside Death Shroud.

Building full support is an horrible choice for Necromancers.
You can pick more support-oriented skills and utility, but gearing for support (Healing Power and Boon Duration) is just not worth the efforts.

flow.6043:

This assumption is wrong.
In sPvP, depending on the type of runes you are using and how many points you invest into Death Magic: you’ll have between 26% and 35% damage reduction with a rabid amulet, and 0-18% for carrion.
So the difference is somewhere between 17-26%. In your example: 35% damage reduction for rabid means 24k ehp, carrion with 18% dmg reduction: 29k ehp. So in that case you’ll need 3 heals to overtake carrion if you only take direct damage and don’t use Death Shroud.

I don’t know how I came up with 35% damage reduction.
Anyway, damage reduction is 26% with Rabid, so EHP are 23,148 against direct damage. One heal will put Carrion and Rabid on par.

Against 50/50 condition damage and direct damage, Rabid is 20,670 EHP and Carrion is again, 24,812 EHP. A Consume Condition with 4 condition consumed, heals effectively for 8136 HP on carrion and 9193 on Rabid (adjusted with half of the damage reduction of Rabid), which is 1000 HP of difference. 4 consume conditions only with only 4 conditions consumed (you probably consume more conditions on 50/50 situation), you have outperformed Carrion.

Also, keep in mind that using WoP, Putrid Mark, Deathly Swarm or Consume Conditions will put the situation again on 100% direct damage and 0% condition damage. In that case, Rabid is better.

Mixing both vitality and toughness is still the best solution.

Death Shroud benefits from carrion and rabid the same, as I’ve said before.
More vitality means also higher health degen.

At the end of the day, the longer goes the fight, the more you heal then the better is Rabid over Carrion defensive-wise. If you manage you cleanse your damaging condition frequently (which is something Necros can easily do), Rabid is definitely better than Carrion. The increase precision is another sweet addition.

flow.6043:

sorrow.2364:

Actually, having more natual HP means that you are less in need of stacking vitality.

This might be true for other classes, but the necro’s high hp pool is the only defense we have.

There have been so many threads on this topic already… the bottom line is: you need to heal several times until rabid overtakes carrion in effective health, and that is assuming that you take direct damage only. When taking condition damage carrion is a lot further in the lead. And then there’s the much higher direct damage with carrion.

That’s the point.
The fact that we have an high health pool allows us to stack toughness without any drawbacks as any other profession have.

The fact that you need to heal several times, I’d like to see the topic with that reference. As far I know, one heal might be enough to overtake vitality, especially if that heal is consume conditions.

Carrion is +6.440 HP, which means overall 24,812 EHP.
Rabid is +644 toughness, which means 35% extra damage reduction for overall 24,802 EHP.

So, by base, Carrion and Rabid offers the same EHP value without DS. A single heal allows Rabid do outperform Carrion against direct damage and by quite a good amount.

With Death Shroud, you have the same situation, since it is 100% of your HP, so the overall EHP are the same with both Carrion and Rabid. The only difference is that having higher health pool means higher natural degeneration as much as higher “DS healing”. So, as much as Rabid has no advantage in Death Shroud healing (see LF generation), carrion has the disadvantage of increased natural degeneration (while in DS), but increased DS healing capability (while out of DS). So, overall, Carrion and Rabid in DS perform the same.

If you take 100% condition damage into consideration, then Carrion is of course better, but with 50% condition damage input and 50% raw damage (so a real situation), we have always 24,812 EHP for carrion and 21,587 EHP (half of the damage reduction) for rabid.
A single Condume Condition will effectively close the gap between EHP of carrion and rabid for 458 EHP. If you manage to remove 3 condition (another real situation), then you close the gap between the two by 838 EHP, this assuming that your main heal is your only source of healing.

So, two well-placed consume conditions (so from 4 to 6 conditions removed) are enough to let Rabid surpass carrion in EHP AND they move the situation from 50/50 DD and condi to something more imbalanced toward DD, meaning that Rabid gains for a short time better EHP gain.

Obviously, I didn’t take into consideration that:
- Necromancer, because they are light armor wearer, are more susceptible to direct damage, which means that 35% damage mitigation of Rabid is higher than 35% damage mitigation on a ranger or a warrior
- Condition damage can be completely mitigated by condition cleansing (which Necromancer have quite much), while direct damage can’t be mitigated properly because of the lack of vigor/evades/invulnerabilities.

Actually, having more natual HP means that you are less in need of stacking vitality.

Before the DS buff, Necro needed to stack toughness over vitality because they had natural high health pool and low base armor. The situation after the DS buff is still the same, with the only exception that now Necromancers have even larger base HP pool than before.

Stacking vitality of course is good, but only when you have already stacked a decent amount of toughness first.

The only reason you might want to stack more vitality than toughness is because you know that you’re going to eat a lot of condition damage but, considering how necromancers are capable to manage conditions, how easily they can cleanse/transfer them and how susceptible they are to direct damage, well… toughness all the way.

Bhawb.7408:

Actually no, I’ve seen math to show why we benefit more highly from vitality. Due to base statistics I can understand why people would say toughness, however considering we get an additional eHP scaling of 1.2(?) with vitality due to DS it works out much better. Also Geomancy sigils are far more commonly used, as stacking/bursting bleeds has more value than throwing down a bleed here or there.

Source: I know for a fact that Gibbly and Zombify both use Carrion, or have only recently switched over. I can’t remember if the others I know do or not.

Keep in mind that toughness scale with DS just like vitality.
The main difference is that toughness increases also the effectiveness of your heals (so the overall sustainability), which is something Vitality doesn’t.
On the other hand, LF generation can be considered as DS healing and it is percentage-based, but you need obviously to stay out of deathshroud to “heal” your life force and when you are out of DS, you have less effective heals (CC will heal always for the same amount with increased vitality). Also, DS natural degen is percentage-based too, that means the higher is your health pool, the higher LF you’re loosing while in DS.

About Sigil of Geomancy vs Earth, it is a tough argument too. They aren’t commonly used as much as Sigil of Earth as far I know, pretty much because Sigil of Earth allows for better bleed application over time, which is something experience has taught us is better than stacking more bleeds with more duration in a single time. With SoG, you can stack 3 bleeds every 10s, with SoE, you can stack a single bleed every 2s.

Overall, you can mantain 3 bleeds for 7s with geomancy on a 9s window, with a total of 21 ticks,
while with SoE you overall apply about 4 stacks over 9s, which lasts 5s each, for a total of 20 ticks overall.

The difference is that you apply all the bleeds stack of geomancy all at once, so what if your enemy cleanse during the cooldown of geomancy? Well, you lose a considerable chunk of damage output. SoE does not suffer from the same problem because it applies bleeds constantly, so if an enemy cleanses during those 10s, you are capable to stack some extra bleeds on him without the need to wait for weapon swap.

I can understand that SoG works better with non-precision builds, but since you’re benefitting from Barbed Precision too when running precision builds, there is no comparisons imho.

Also, nothing forbid you to run both SoE and SoG on S/D, unless you have not enough precision.

Bhawb.7408:

You will never, ever see 10 stacks of bleeds sustained on any decent player in PvP unless they are 100% out of condition cleanses; and it just will never happen in team play. That is why burning is so strong.

Actually, if you are capable to manage your conditions decently (which means cover them properly), you can mantain 10 stacks of bleeds on your enemy, even if he’s a good one.
It is up on his cleanses, of course, but also up to how you manage your stacks on him.

Bhawb.7408:

Carrion has been run by the highest tier Necromancers for a long time, although it is possible they switched to rabid solely for the precision for Dhuumfire. I’ll have to talk to them again to see if anyone has changed, but I don’t see why they would when vitality scaling just got a buff.

Honestly, I was never aware of high tier Necromancers running carrion over rabid.
It has been proved mathematically that Necromancers benefit from toughness way more than any other profession in the game, so I still see no reason to stack vitality over toughness. Stacking it when you already have a decent amount of toughness makes more sense, but going straight for vitality over toughness is not a good choice.

Anyway, Dhuumfire isn’t the only thing which benefits from precision.
Sigil of Earth and Barbed Precision, which might look bad, add quite a lot of damage if paired with high precision because they have no internal cooldown (SoE may have 2s of IC, but the duration is higher).
The chance to have at least one extra bleed per attack are 88% (44% to trigger them both, 22% to trigger SoE only, 22% to trigger BP only) on each critical strike, which means that at 50% critical strike chance you have 44% chances to inflict at least an extra bleed per attack and 22% to inflict 2 more bleeds, which isn’t that bad at all.

Softspoken.2410:

Edit: Now I’m really curious. What profession can provide the best AoE / allied healing over 10 or 60 seconds? Maybe I’ll start searchin’.

In PvE, I’d say definitely guardian. They AoE heal for 129 + 1*HP on each dodge, which means 1600 HP each dodge with no internal cooldown with full clerics and they are also capable to mantain vigor permanently. This without counting the healing of Empower, Virtue of Resolve, Orb of Light, Shield of Absorption and some minor healing provided by other traits/sigil/runes.
Those heals I’ve listed are all AoE.

Elementalists have also some nasty AoE heals too. They can mantain Regen + Soothing Mist premanently on allies with enough points into arcana, plus Healing Ripple (heal when attuning to water), Cleansing Wave (including the one in Evasive Arcana) and Water Trident/Cone of Cold.
When running staff, Elementalists can still have quite good heals though blast finishing into water fields, which allows allies to self heal themselves too through leaps.

Bhawb.7408:

@sorrow this thread has nothing to do with the viability of support necros, only what we can do.

This is a thread about viability.
The OP asked explicitly for a comparison with the support provided by other professions.
I’ve highlighted what Necromancer can do better than other professions; regen maintaining and party healing are not in the list.

I still think Rabid is a better choice.
I’ve never felt I had problems dealing with conditions as a Necromancer to the point I needed extra vitality over toughness.
As a conditionmancer, you always have access to Putrid Mark and Deathly Swarm, plus I usually run with Well of Power as a stunbreaker to provide extra condition cleansing to teammates too.

Said that, Necromancers have an high health pool without any vitality, with the addition of Death Shroud. On the other hand, I found myself pretty susceptible to direct damage and fast burst, so I prefer to run with more toughness instead of vitality.

Saying that Rabid is not good for PvP as Bhawb did is kinda too much. As far I know, every necro in the last PAX qualifiers was running full Rabid.

Bhawb.7408:

We give huge sustained healing through easy 100% regen uptime, and WoB easily healing allies for 7k, twice if traited. DS 4, and leaving DS can both be traited to heal. We also have lots of ways to cleanse condis off allies (staff 4 isn’t working anymore though). But mostly we “support” offensively. Perma weakness, perma chill, lots of blinding, poison, cripple, fearing, etc. paired with I believe the highest sustained healing of any class is how we support.

100% regen uptime is nothing special. Mesmers, Elementalists, Warriors and Engineers can do the same.

About WoB, you need heavy amounts of healing power to get decent healing and it is the only skill which benefits from it. It is, also, unreliable since it requires your allies to be in an obvious circle to get healed.

So, the only support we can provide to our teammates is condition management (pretty much only through Putrid Mark and Well of Power) and some extra offensive support.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Zikory.6871:

How do you go about obtaining 100% uptime on regen?

Mark of Blood. Use on cooldown.

That based on the assumption that your teammates are on melee.

Shalla.3967:

I prefer using Carrion amulet + rabid jewel when running 30/20/0/0/20 given how things are set up at the moment. It’s far from “not even an option”. (tPvp)

I don’t know why you would do that.
You lose precision which is vital for on-crit traits and sigils and you also lose toughness, which is more valuable then vitality, even with the increase LF scaling. This only for gaining power you wouldn’t use since scepter and staff scale horribly with power (I can understand only Life Blast, but if you’re running vitality you wouldn’t use DS as damage output, but more as a defense) and a couple of vitality which is anyway quite high by base on Necromancers.

I can understand Rabid+Carrion jewel, but Carrion+Rabid jewel just makes no sense to me (and an huge portion of the Necromancer playerbase, apparently).

Haley.2390:

So Condition Necros are popular, right? And you said pretty much most Condition Necros are running full Rabid?

DS heavy builds are usually not Condition builds then, right?

How would a Condition Necro reliably generate Life Force against a Thief?

Condition necros are popular, of course. There are obviously many nuances of builds and I don’t exclude that someone would run with Spiteful Spirit instead of Reaper’s Might (I wouldn’t).

It depends on the build. Any condition necro will generate LF through Feast of Corruption for sure, then people might run a spectral utility for extra LF generation.

Haley.2390:

A Thief from the Thief forum told me this:

I disagree. With Necro’s high Health pool, they can invest all their gears and items to improve their Power. Also with their Death Shroud mechanic, they really don’t have to worry much about their survivability, thus they can focus more on improving their damage output.

It seems this statement goes against Necros who choose to go full Rabid and don’t get any Power.

This is just a false statement.
Necromancer’s can’t affort to invest everything into power because they lack damage cancelling capabilities (evades, invulnerability etc), so, considering that they are also light-armoured, they absolutely need to stack a decent amount of toughness to survive.

You can try it by yourself to see how much a berserker necro lasts.

After the patch, I refused to play conditionmancer and I’m sticking o 30/10/0/0/30 or general powermancer builds.

Haley.2390:

Oh, I see. I was just wondering. A thief from the Thief forum was telling me that Spiteful Spirit’s Retaliation is a good counter to CnD combos. I said that Rabid was popular and that it would mean Retaliation would suck as it would have low Power. He said that Rabid was not popular and told me to check the Necro forum.

None runs Spiteful Spirit, pretty much because it is worthy only in DS heavy build and because Reaper’s Might is always a better choice.
The only reliable access to retaliation is Unholy Feast from axe.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

The problem with hotjoin is not it’s absurd, abyssal niveau of play-level, but the rewarding itself for playing it. This has nothing to do with elitism if smn says tournament should be more rewarded than hotjoin. Tournament needs stricly organized teamplay, it needs strategical effort and has much more depth. Hotjoin on the other hand is for fun or casual players, who want to play 2-3 games a day. That’s absolutely fine. The problem overall is the distribution of rewards/points.

Casual-modes should never be more rewarding than competitive-modes. Compare that to a nurse and a medical deputy. A nurse should never earn more money than the deputy. This analogy shows you clearly, what is wrong with hotjoin at the moment. I hope you got it by now, Romek. The bad habbits you’ll get from hotjoin are just a side-effect and don’t bother me really.

That’s your opinion.
In my opinion both casual modes and organized modes should be rewarded, but differently. Casual modes usually reward individual skills and are actually less time eaters than organized team modes, that does not mean that they shouldn’t be rewarded as much as organized teamplay. Notice I’ve used the word organized instead of competitive, because, think what you want, but they are competitive too.

So the main mistake in my opinion is that tournaments and hotjoin share the same rank system, that’s all.

Haley.2390:

Are Condition Necros popular in PvP? Is there a large number of Necros who go full Rabid in WvW? How viable is full rabid in WvW?

Full rabid is the only and best option for necromancers in any form of PvP.
Any condition necro you see around is most likely running full Rabid.

Rabid is pretty much the only choice for condition Necros in PvP, carrion isn’t even an option.
First because Necromancers for sure don’t need vitality, second because precision is vital for on-crit effects and third because a discrete amount of toughness is required if you don’t want to implode.

In WvWvW, some popular stat spread are:
- Full Soldier (known also as Juggermancer)
- Half knight half berserker
- Hybrid (there are a lot of variations over this one, but the main stat spreads are rampager, berserker, celestial, carrion and rabid, tuning them at will)
- DS tank (not yet so popular since it is a new one, but it is pretty much cavalier, soldier and valkyrie, using deathly perception).
- Full rabid (conditions are viable in WvWvW)
- Mixture of Rabid and Carrion

In PvP:
- Rabid
- Some brave berserker runners
- Some soldier minionmancer/blood tanks

Sathyir.5139:

There were other non eu players who participated this weekend, xeph wasnt exceptional so stop this nonsense pls.

I have no informations about those people.
Can you please give us some examples?

Ascii.9726:

@sorrow.2364
Plague of Darkness is the only realistic use of Plague, traited or not. I don’t mean this in a this is the only option because i say it is but because the benefits of forcing an attack to completely miss vast out-weight simply reducing its damage. Plague of Pestilence would only be feasible if you know you are going to win the engagement and the enemy poses no risk to shutting down your backline.

The damage reduction would be nice don’t get me wrong, but it cant really compare to say blinding a stun, or burn condition or even some form of non-ground AoE like Wail of Doom.

If im absolutely truthfully honest on Chilling Darkness it could be swapped out but IMO only for Banshees Wail (mainly for the additional duration of Locust Swarms cripple & -kitten CD but also the +1 second onto daze.) This would still fill the role of being a movement impairment thats passive so you can still blind on plague but would still mean 20 points in Curses (with obviously the additional 5 for Target the Weak).

Lemongrass + Melandru is pretty hurtful for Plague but thats just a bi-product of how strong this combo is and why condition builds are best kept to a minimum and also why I’ve favored it over my previous build using beryl orbs.

Actually, Banshee Wail is a great choice. If you put a Sigil of Paralyzation on any of the two weapons, you have a massive 4s AoE daze (15% more stun duration is rounded up with daze) every 25s (if I’m not wrong) which is way more threatening than chill every 180s.

Ascii.9726:

@sorrow.2364
The other argument is that chill isn’t just a skill cooldown extender, its also a far superior version of cripple that can be gained by doing what Plague Necromancers should be doing which is blinding. Preventing people from regrouping or keeping them away from a caster of a water field by locking them down with chill are other reasons why Chilling Darkness is a superior trait.

Static Field is arguably the single most gamechanging skills there is in WvW, countless times my server has won an out-manned engagement by a beautifully placed Static Field followed by mass nuking Even if Chill wasn’t as strong as i thought it to be (x1.66 CD duration for skills used when chilled rather then x1.66 for every second whilst chilled) putting this on a max 13.2 second longer cooldown could affect the outcome of an engagement.

I may have thought chill worked differently, but i also thought boon duration affected AoE boons (and argued the 15% boon duration on AoE might) until i was corrected. As such i took that mistake on board and am actually testing a variation of the build right now, so don’t think i wont reevaluate chill as i use it over the next week, but as it stands chills benefits are still very clear to me and everyone else on this thread who have said Chilling Darkness is an almost mandatory trait.

You must also remember this build is a variation of a standard PTV Necromancer but uses precision instead of vitality, and Melandru + Lemongrass instead of Compote + other tank runes. The precision given from the Curses tree make up a fair chunk of the critical chance of the build whilst picking up very strong utility traits.

GvG’s arnt won by single people its a team effort, but a single person can massively effect its outcome.

That’s the kind of reply I wanted the first time I’ve posted here.

I know that Plague of Darkness is really strong, but chill isn’t a so much more stronger version of cripple regarding snaring, in my opinion. The movement reduction difference is only 16%, which isn’t that much after all.

The point is that you can try to test dancing between Plague of Darkness and Plague of Pestilence. With 20 points in Spite, Weakness and Cripple will stack, allowing you to have the advantages of both Plague of Darkness and Plague of Pestilence.

The main difference is that you have a slightly less snare and no cooldown reductions, but you also have the advantages of Weakness, which shut down the enemy dodging capability, which is vital to get out from an AoE or from a tough situation.

Also, since pretty much anyone in WvWvW runs Lemongrass and Melandru runes, I thought that probably having some extra condition duration might help to make sure that those conditions last enough time to do what they are supposed to do.

Ascii.9726:

I stand by what i said of Chill winning engagements though i thank you for the lesson.

Than it’s your opinion and it is something which might work for you, it is not an absolute truth as you’re saying it is, neither it is a must go in every situation.

I had all the rights to say that 5s or less of situational more cooldown on enemy skills every 180s is not worth 10 points spent without being dismissed as an “inexperienced player” or empty “theorycrafter”, especially as you seemed convinced that chill worked differently.

You have no way with your experience to effectively know how much kitten situational more cooldown on a 25v25 fight impacts the encounter’s outcome, so you can’t be sure that what you’re saying is absolutely true, like you’re the only one making a real difference in such an huge fight.
Good for you if you are sure about it, but people have the right to point out that probably there is an alternative to what you are proposing that might work better.

Ascii.9726:

@blutstein.2468
Chilling Darkness wins fights and its that simple. Chilling a static field, heal, enemy plague, null field even battle standard which would put this on a 399 second cooldown (which is gamechanging when skirmishing for a guild lord) it is huge for skill disruption. im speaking from months of GvG experience, sorrow is not.

Do you even know how chill works?
To make Battle Standard recharge on a 399s cooldown you have to mantain chill for 399s, from the time it goes on cooldown to the end of the recharge.

Are you capable to mantain Chill for that long? No. You can mantain chill for only 20s, which means that you’re increasing the recharge of Battle Standard for a whooping 13.2s, assuming you succeed to mantain Chill for the whole duration of the plague on your enemy and the AoE system does not decide to select another enemy to be hit by the plague (because all AoEs in this game have a cap of 5 players, if you didn’t know), which will happen in most cases. In a real situation, you rarely are capable to mantain chill on your enemies for more than four-five seconds because nothing garantees you that Plague will hit always the same 5 enemies, which means that you’re increasing their cooldowns for only 3s, 5 seconds if you are lucky enough and this assuming that those skills do not finish to recharge before the chill ends, because in that case the recharge increase is even less.

Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/how-does-chill-affect-skill-recharge-exactly/first#post988001

Ascii.9726:

“pending 10 trait-points to get a trait which makes a single skill slightly better which you have access to only for 20 seconds every 3 minutes " clearly shows you have no clue about Plaguing in GvG and how strong skill disruption is. There is not one person on this thread who has agreed with you about not taking chilling darkness so stop pushing for it. Your wrong.

Yep, great build Ascii! Keep going and thanks for making it public! You are a great player!
Great reasoning and astonishing experience!

@Ascii: where did I said that Plague of Darkness is “not worth picking at all”?
Please, tell me where I did.

I’ll again show you the trait distribution I’ve proposed to you, because it looks like you ignored it another time: 20/10/10/30/0.
Where do you see I’ve traded “all defences with all offence”? I’ve actually proposed you to go deeper into the Blood Magic traitline to get Vampiric Rituals.
Those 10 points into Death Magic that you define “mandatory” are still there.

All I said is that spending 10 traitpoints to get a trait which makes a single skill slightly better which you have access to only for 20 seconds every 3 minutes (so about 10% of the time) sounds like a waste to me, especially when you can invest those traitpoints to get increased sustainability and power in the remaining 90% of the time.

All the “I’ll dumb it down for you” argument just makes you look like even more arrogant as you’ve already proven to be.

KarlaGrey.5903:

I know it is hard for players new to GW and Anet to believe that the devs would apply double standards to certain guilds/players, so I’ll further elaborate on the whole [rawr] incident.

I’m not completely new to GW and ANet, but I was not aware of the GvG scene since back in GW1 I played mainly HA, which is completely automated, so those behavior are new to me.

Shar.3402:

One could also say that they weren’t even warmed up and had to play grand finals just like that.
There are two faces on each medal.

BTW, players who play all day long don’t feel tired after 8 matches with plenty of rest in between -.-

Nobody can’t say that TP did not warmed up before the match. They had all the time to do so.
On the other hand, CC obviously had no time to properly rest. With resting, I mean taking a break from PC, going for a walk, sleep a bit and something like this, not 15 minutes in which you have just the time to discuss the tactics for the next match.

Vuh.1328:

Doesn’t say in the rules you need citizenship tho.

Players must reside in the United States, European Union, Iceland, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, Canada, or Mexico to enter the Tournament.

It is all up on which is his official residence (the one listed in his documents). If he’s a student in NA, there is no reason to think that his main residence is in NA.

Sitkaz.5463:

Situations that were settled before the teams played each other—eg. a player’s nationality, having the final the same day, etc—are suddenly called into question again because TP won? Even members of CC have been into this thread saying they were not tired from their previous matches, TP won fairly, etc.

It makes sense the organizers can learn and improve from the first professional tournament, and I’m sure they will. It does not make sense to stir up settled issues because someone’s unhappy about the outcome. Both teams played extremely well, and it was a great match-up. This thread is becoming disgusting.

This discussion has been brough up again because there was another oddity in favour of TP, which is the change of Bo3 to Bo5 at the last moment.

We are not unhappy for the outcome, I liked the match and I would have been happy if any of the two contenders won. It’s just that I can’t ignore all of these coincidences.

Vuh.1328:

Didn’t Xeph bypass it by being a student in NA and having to pay flight himself or something like that? I swear i read it somewhere

I’ve read that too, Xeph said it in the topic opened to discuss this fact.
The point still remains, even if he’s a student in NA, he hasn’t the NA citizenship as far I know. Rules has been bended to let him join the tournament, while other players were not allowed.

ExaFlare.1390:

Oh please, like they never played 5 hours straight… And they had plenty of time to rest between the matches.
They played final just after semi-final, so what? When they organize Starcraft 2 tournaments they do it this way, and matches are longer.

They are human being. Human being are subject to tiredness, regardless how good they are and it is a crucial factor for the outcome of a competitive match. It lowers the concentration, the ability to take decisions and reflexes.

Fact is that TP were well rested and fresh and did not played 4 match before the finals.

Romek.4201:

wtf sorrow
1. it is not important where xeph comes from – he play in an european team
there are reasons why arenanet said only from some countrys and not all – cause not all allow tournaments like this – it has nothing to do when he is arab european american or chinese or whatver

2.
phantarm opened a thread – yes
he did write nothing, he asked for opinions and people gave – it was constructive postings and comunication from arenanet with players was fine so a change in fvour for all could be made
maby check forum there is big athread from xeph too about the meta we have and how bad it is – complain bout too?

3. again wtf
i watched stream too and he said atleast 30 min before the match started it would be bo5 and they even made a extra 15 min break for the teams – and again when the teams dont say tehy have a problem with this and agree with pressing the button " i am ready" than everything is fine and complaining now about is just WHINING

jsut stop this bull….. here . people are not stupid and see whats groing on the jealousy from people like this sorrow guy or mustafa from ulgyteam is insane and dont make you guys looking any better.

and @op from this tread here you dont make your team looking any better with this – atleast people will remember CC as bad losers.

have a nice day

Man, chill out.
There is no reason to get that angry, did I offended you or something?

1. It is important when Xeph comes from when the tournament rules explicitly says that only people resident in EU are allowed to partecipate.

2. The fact that there is a thread by Xeph too proves nothing. You did not get my point.

3. You missed my point again. It doesn’t matter when they said that the match would have been Bo5, I could have not paid enought attention. The point is that they changed the match on the fly, which is an extraordinary decisions who favoured (casually or causally, doesn’t matter) TP. That decision put CC in a bad situations because they played for 5 hours straight, while TP were fresh and rested. As I said, they could have refused to play and let TP win by forfeit, but they didn’t because of their reasons I can understand. Fact stays that changing the rules on the fly which favoured TP again, probably not intentionally, is another coincidence to add to the list.

Avead.5760:

Sorrow the topic phantaram about necro has nothing to do with him wanting to lower the competition of other teams using one or gain ANY personal benefit from it ..as you probably know he already had made the switch to necro himself and sticked to that throughout the tournament even after the (minimal) nerf to him by hotfixing dhuumfire.
If he feels his ele is not as viable anymore and that some classes are way too strong he has every right to say so..But dont think that any of the top teams especially in the future would have any (non solvable) problem changing comp and followqing the meta in a matter of weeks of adapting…
People think that tp is affcting balance changes..and yet 2 members were forced to drop their favourite classes after getting beaten up repeatedly by teams that followed the meta earlier..If it was for tp mesm and dps ele would still perform good enough but they dont

It isn’t as simple as you are depicting it.
TP has a specific build composition which is composed of 5 people. You can’t know how that those change has not affected the tournament, you can’t say it did not went in favour to TP at all, as you can’t say that the fact that they changed Dhuumfire only and leafing spirit rangers and engineers untouched did not favoured TP. But anyway it wasn’t my point.

My point is that the topic opened by Phantaram suddently got dev’s attention and in a really short time window got a fix according to what Phantaram said, completely ignoring all the constructive feedback that has been posted in the Necromancer forum and event the sPvP forum itself.
That’s the point.

We can blame CC because they did not refused to play Bo5 after they proposed that, but nobody can deny that changing the match from Bo3 to Bo5 at the last moment was a really bad move.
What those poor guys of CC had to do? Refuse to play and make TP win by forfeit?

I don’t know of course everything about the competitive scene and what’s behind it, but what I’ve gathered in the last few days are the following info:

1. Xeph is not an european resident. His attendance to the tournament was not sure because he did not fit the tournament’s rules but, at the end of the day, Xeph was admitted to play the tournament. Nothing strange if they wanted to allow a top EU player to join the tournament, but if they negated the access to the tournament at some other very good players, as far as I’ve read…

2. Phantaram opened a topic in the sPvP forum informing the developers about the meta and the high damage of Necromancer, in which he admitted he didn’t played that much and he doesn’t have that much experience with. Phantaram is a well known elementalist player and, as far as I know, he doesn’t like that much to go deep into the Water Magic traitline, which may suggests some sort of bias about his opinion.
His feedback was called “unbiased and constructive”, ignoring all the feedback about the Necromancer changes who has been proposed in the Necromancer forum in the past weeks, and an hotfix came few days after the feedback was submitted.
Again, nothing strange if they take into consideration the opinion of a top player, but what makes me wonder is the time the hotfix came out and the fact that it is, in fact, another TP member listened by the developers. What is even stranger is that KarlaGrey opened a topic some times ago (before the hotfix) saying that ANet had a similiar behavior with the [rawr] guild. That topic was dismissed by the ANet saying it spreaded false informations and then it was deleted. At first, I thought that probably ANet was right, but now… I’m not sure anymore.

3. Then we have the Bo5 situation. I’ve watched the tournament and I knew that the match should have been Bo3 but, after 3 match has been played, Grouch stated it will be a Bo5. It completely surpried me and, in fact, I’ve checked the tournament rules just in case I’ve misreaded something but, oddly, rules said everywhere that the final match is Bo3.
Now, changing the rules on the fly right before the match is not-so professional, but what surprises me is that CC won the Bo3 and, again, such an extraordinary action as been taken again in favour of TP.

Now I do now question that TP is a great team formed of great players and they have won because of their efforts, but all of these coincidence can’t be ignored.
If there is nothing behind all of this, then I don’t know what to think.

@Ascii:
You bashed my previous proposal of not going deep into the Death Magic traitline. I’ve also quoted the post when you did. Then when other people said it is not worth to go into the Death Magic traitline, here’s your answer.

Ascii.9726:

@LoRdZeRo.5364
Yes, i have been playtesting 5/25/10/30/0 and will admit it is very strong for sustain. It breaks my heart moving away from unblockable marks though as I’ve secured some amazing kills with it and nothing is more satisfying as fearing the head of an enemy melee train thats passed through and are on there block/ healing phase.

Your correct on them variations and i would agree these would be suitable variations if you did want to drop greater marks;
5/25/10/30/0
0/30/10/30/0
0/25/10/20/15

I don’t think i would ever consider going more then 5 points into spite and the 5 point itself has me split. The snowball effect it brings is nice but typically when people start getting stomped and this starts procing the fight usually begins to tip in your favor (unless some 30 spite point necro dies and rallies all the downed enemies :P)

Those 2 minor Death Magic traits are terrible and i would never call anything more then 10 points in DM mandatory.

OMG! Those builds have no Soul Reaping and no Death Magic but can be debated!
Then why did you said this?

Which has no Spite, and can somewhat be debated because of the DS pool. I disagree with the lack of Blood Magic and alot of my other posts explain why.

My proposal was 20/10/10/30/0. You dismissed that proposal mindlessly saying I had no experience… lol.

Also, Aphix said:

The build works great, at least with spectral armor, a fat DS life pool and traited armor. I dont die and I do insane damage. Ive been playing long enough to know that the most important thing in wvw/gvg is NOT DIEING. I would never run a build where I might be the reason 10+ people just rallied and completely turned the fight around. Its viable but I prefer my other build.

But I guess there his no reason to bash him because he said that a 30-spite build is quite tough to kill. He explitily said he played 2000+ hours and have over 360 WvWvW ranks, so he must be listened.

I understood that you are not interested in my opinion because I didn’t paired them with my credentials, but please, stop posting those ridiculous justifications that makes me feel forced to answer to debunk them and pretending that there is another logical reason behind your dismissal. Then we are fine, I won’t have any reason to post here in your topic anymore.

Craptrain.7203:

Sure you can fake credentials. You just as easily disprove those fake credentials. I honestly don’t see why anyone would take offense at being asked for credentials before their advice is seriously considered…unless of course they had none.

Now if you want to argue that someone is being hypocritical in what credentials they accept, that’s another argument entirely.

The point is that he did not asked my credentials. He just dismissed my opinions while accepting it when said by someone else who claimed to be an experienced Necro few posts later (who also joked about the credentials).

How do you call this behavior? I’ve a proper word in my language and I’m pretty sure there is one in english too, which I actually don’t know.

Craptrain.7203:

I’m a big believer in only taking advice from experienced/skilled people. Back when I ran track (like 10 years ago) I wouldn’t have taken training advice from someone running an 22 second + 200m, but if they were running a low 20, you better believe I’d take their training advice.

Everyone here can fake its credentials.
The fact that I’ve said the exact same things as some “Necro with high rank points and have spoken about guild fights” says much about how that method of evaluation of people’s opinion suck.

Ascii.9726:

Your opinions have been dearly noted and disregarded.

Yeah, you said the same thing few posts ago. I’ve understood that my opinions should be “noted and disregarded” nevertheless.

Ascii.9726:

Sorrow, you’ve already given us your opinions, if you have nothing more constructive to say stick to what you said earlier and stop posting, this thread is already filled with people who want advice or have opinions speaking directly from a large-scale WvW experience PoV, this is what i was after not theorycrafting.

Really?
I’ve suggested to do not go that deep into the Death Magic traitline and you dismissed that saying that I had not enough experience.
I’ve said that Death Shroud buff was huge and you don’t need that extra 150 toughness from Death Magic and you dismissed that too.

Once Aphix said that he tried 30/10/0/0/30 which is a way less defensive build compared to the alternative I’ve brought to you, you said the following:

And yes your opinions actually have more credit to me as i can clearly see you’ve spent alot of time in WvW on a high ranked server on a Necro with high rank points and have spoken about guild fights and i thank you for your calm and constructive feedback.

Amazing feedback, spoken about guild fights and so on! :O LOL

Then lordzero:

I’m thinking to remove the Death Magic trait line and and complete Blood magic grandmaster with Vampiric Rituals (in WoC for example it will heal 42 * 5 players * 5 pulses = 1050) you can say 3k if you use WoD, WoC and WoS which is not bad amount

Woot, that sounds familiar!

That’s what I said in the first posts:

The points invested into Death Magic are not worth the damage loss

and then I suggested to go 30 into Spite or:

You can also giving up on Close to Death investing 20 points only into the spite line and go deeper into Blood Magic for Vampiric Rituals.

We essentialy said the exact same thing: investing into Death Magic is not worth the traitpoints spent. The solutions are different, but the concept is the same. I guess that if I say that, I must be wrong.
In fact, you answered:

I’m not sure were your drawing your GvG wvw experience from, but 250 toughness and 25% boon duration for 200 power is not worth the trade in WvW. Let me put it another way, you cant deal damage if your dead and if you make bad trades like that you will be dead.

This has gone far too much ridiculous. Do I have to pair my opinion with my credentials to be considered worth reading?

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Blaming sPvP players.

Amaaaaazing.

Oh, by the way, there is a difference between sPvP player, and tPvP player. For future reference when you’re randomly targeting/insulting wide groups of people.

Don’t bother to answer this topic anymore, it’s not worth the time loss.
Since we play also tPvP and sPvP, we obviously lack the competence and the experience to express any from of opinion about a WvWvW build.

Tharium.7325:

When everyone is playing an asura the advantage minimises. But I just think the other races are much better to watch as a spectator which is the most important thing in esports.

That is another issue who fall into the “horrible design choices” part.
The fact that Asuras are allowed in PvP is an issue both for balance and, of course, spectating,
Watching rats jumping all around swinging their tiny swords is kinda ridiculous.

Daecollo.9578:

Its kind of silly that everyone plays one race, it just kind of shows you literally how much of a real advantage they have.

It doesn’t matter, it’s ESPORTZ AND CASH TOURNAMENT!!!!111
Who care about obvious balance issues and horrible design choices?

Allowing Asuras in a competitive gamemode is an horrible choice as much as allowing non-standardized character models’ dimension is, expecially if the game is that reliant on character animations.

Ascii.9726:

I play this build at least 6 hours everyday in T1 WvW both commanding and following, im in the highest ranked NA GvG guild fighting some of the best guilds in the game.

Maybe you shouldn’t be questioning my experiences and more informing us of yours which you still haven’t done.

And here we are again with the “I’m better than you” and “I speak only the truth” arguments.
I’m wasting my time here, I should have realized it before.

Ascii.9726:

Theorycrafting is also based alot on guessing as there not put into practice. I never said your opinion is worth nothing, just to me.

Nothing wrongs with theorycrafting either, just look at Altroll he theorycrafts alot. Until there proven effective thats all they are, theories, guesses at what you think will work.

When you prove to me 30 point Spite Wellomancers work and don’t get your team killed through countless enemy rallies because of your lack of defense then ill take your opinion as something other then theorycrafting guesswork.

I think you should “update” your experience.

The build you ran has been tested months ago, you don’t need anymore those 150 extra toughness you are claiming to be vital, since Necromancer got an huge buff into Death Shroud resilience. Neither Plague of Darkness is a must go anymore as it was prior the Weakness buff.

Ascii.9726:

I’m basing my opinions on my experience in WvW, I’ve been playing Wellomancer in WvW for over 10 months (the majority of that T1). You have yet to say anything about your experiences (both in GvG WvW in general and with a 30 point spite GvG build if you have even used such a build) because currently it just looks like your theorycrafting a build with nothing to back it up.

So it is safe to assume that my opinion is worth nothing and I’m completely inexperienced?

Theorycrafting is based on numbers and logical considerations and I’ve got my experience too, if you’re wondering. “My experience” alone is valid as much as ethic in a trial.

Ascii.9726:

Your opinions are dearly noted, and disregarded. Incase you cant read i pointed out what this thread was started for, here is it again;

“I’ve promised allot of people who keep up with my WvW builds that I would make a thread about my build and answer and questions people might have on it so here it is!”

Nowere did it say i was looking for advice on my build and especially by someone whose theorycrafting and most probably haven’t even used there ideas in live combat GvG.

I’ve proposed an alternative and clearly listed out pros and cons of both the alternatives. What you did is just ignoring everything I wrote and dismiss my opinion and claiming me to be an inexperienced player.

What I did is called constructive feedback, which is something you should have expected when you opened this topic. What you did is called arrogance and boasting.

I never claimed to be better than you, neither I said you should change the build according what I say. I’m just trying to discuss about alternatives and what I found effective in my experience.

This is a discussion forum, as I previously stated. I come here to discuss, share my opinions, read other’s opinion and gather informations. You should do that in a discussion forum too, otherwise you can still create your asciinecromancer.net website or a youtube video with disabled comments and share all the builds you want without everyone else annoying you with their “inexperienced” opinions.

Ascii.9726:

@sorrow.2364
You missed out big fundamentals such as Target the Weak, the Precision (seen as this is a high critical damage build) Condition damage and your lack of experience makes you think stuff like Chilling Darkness is not important.

I’ve thought about what you said and told you why IMO it would not work, take it or leave it but i was not looking for advice on my build when i started this thread. I was looking to give advice for people who use similar builds and take questions on it.

I did not missed Target the Weak. I’ve just considered the simple fact that the increased conditional damage output is compensated by the increased power, which is an unconditional damage boost.

I’ve mentioned the precision loss too, but it looks like you missed that too:

The loss of precision is just a loss of 7% critical chance, not a big deal after all.

In my 3rd post in this topic.

I explicitly said that condition damage is not important in a non condition damage build, exactly right after where I said that 7% critical chance is not that much.

Then you started making assumption on my hypothetic lack of experience, just because my opinion differs from yours.

As I said before, if you don’t like having any opinion about your build, say that in the OP. Since it is a discussion forum, people, you know, tend to discuss, unless you explicitly say that you don’t like opinions and discussions about your build.

Ascii.9726:

You evaluated the pros of your build, with no cons and the cons of my build, with no pros. This is not a discussion or debate its a biased opinion.

And yes, i claim to be a prophet of WvW compared to you. I’ve provided builds, videos and experience quotes, you’ve provided a negative criticism that nothing but your point of view is correct with nothing to back it up.

In the second post in this topic I’ve pointed out the advantages and disadvantages of both builds:

Doing so, you gain:
- Close to Death
- Increased mark damage
- 200 more power
- 30% more condition duration
- Healing on enemy death
While losing:
- Chill on blindness
- Greater marks (not needed anymore after the untraited size buff)
- 150 toughness
- 15% boon duration (not needed at all)

I don’t know how you can say that I did pointed out only the advantages of my version and the disadvantages of your version, but I guess that the real issue is here:

And yes, i claim to be a prophet of WvW compared to you.

There’s nothing to discuss if you don’t even take into consideration or think about what I say.

Ascii.9726:

Chill > Cripple.
Blind >= Weakness.
Shout guardians, warriors & water fields > long condition durations.

Your evaluations are based (i assume) on your opinions and not experience unless you can tell me otherwise. Simple fact is if your doing anything but blinding when you front-line dive an enemy backline you will be ripped to pieces and you will end up rallying the enemy zerg and cost your server the fight.

Remember that, this isn’t sPvP were your death rallies 1 maybe 2 people and you lose a point Your death in WvW could rally the 20+ people you tagged and downed and Necromancers tag more enemies then any other class in WvW.

You also seem to be viewing this from a solo and not a teamfight point of view, blind & chill is invaluable for your melee train to survive, if they die you die. Blinding 100 attacks straight out has much more of an impact then reducing there damage for slightly longer duration, any conditions/ stuns that would of been inflicted are also blinded remember.

Your evaluations and mine differ, i feel the situational damage spike at the cost of survivability and utility is too much to give up, you don’t. End of.

You are considering your opinion as invaluable truth while mine stays as, well, just an opinion.
That is not the right mindset to start a constructive discussion about your build.

If you claim yourself to be a sort of prophet of WvWvW Necromancers and nobody can question you, then specify it in the OP so everybody will refrain to make any kind of constructive criticism to your build as you want.

Sorry if I tried to start a discussion trying to improve your build.

Ascii.9726:

So your saying you would not use Plague of Darkness when in Plague…? You would take -50% damage vs. -100% damage by blinding the attack.

I think this alone covers your WvW experience, which is none.

Please, don’t make assumption based on nothing.
I’m just evaluating the pros and cons of both the options.
Weakness after the buff is a great condition and Plague of Darkness is no more a must go in every situations.

The simple fact that you have to invest 10 extra traitpoints to do something that Plague of Pestilence do without any investment (not as good, of course) is something you have to take into consideration. There is no need to bash your interlocutor if he points this out.

You’re not taking -100% damage. You make a single attack miss every second. If your enemy makes more than one attack in a second, the second one hits without any reduction.

Also, if you have enough condition duration, weakness lasts even when the plague is finished (about 16-18s if you hit them enough), which is another thing you have to take into consideration.

Ascii.9726:

@sorrow.2364
Chilling Darkness is worth it and there’s no question about it. It disrupts enemy movement by a huge amount, messes with skill rotations and cooldowns and keeps them in the Plague in the first place.

I’m not sure were your drawing your GvG wvw experience from, but 250 toughness and 25% boon duration for 200 power is not worth the trade in WvW. Let me put it another way, you cant deal damage if your dead and if you make bad trades like that you will be dead.

So does the Plague of Pestilence. It also mess the enemy endurance regen and, most important, you don’t need a trait to keep your enemy into the plague.

It doesn’t mess with skill rotation that much. To effectively do some harm to your enemy you have to keep them chilled for the whole duration, since Chill effects works only when the condition is on the enemy. Point is that in most cases, you manage to keep chill up for nothing more than a few seconds, since it affects only 5 enemies in its radius and nobody knows how those enemies are selected.

Also, 30 points into Spite allows you to stack higher duration of weakness, poison and cripple on your enemies. That means that you’re capable to make those conditions last even after plague is finished or they manage to get out of range (which is actually harder since the decreased endurance regen).

It’s not 250 toughness loss. It is just 150 toughness loss and 15% boon duration (which retaliation only benefits from it). Those 150 points into toughness does not make you survive, neither the 15% boon duration, neither the traits you are losing into the Death Magic traitline.

Ascii.9726:

@sorrow.2364
Both Chilling Darkness and Focused Rituals are required for this build. I’m not sure what you mean by Target the Weak isn’t required because this is not a damage build as this is usually a perm +8% damage boost by itself reaching anything up to 16% (with no requirements like enemies being below 50% life).

Chilling Darkness is not worth picking at all.
It forces you to go 10 points deeper into the Curses traitline to have just a single skill of your Elite, which you have access to for only 20 seconds every 3 minutes, working slightly better than it does.
That’s just my opinion, obviously.

As I said, spending 30 points into spite is much more worthy. You not only get 200 extra power (which is approx 20% damage boost), but you get 30% extra condition duration and 20% more damage when your enemy is under 50% health.

That means that you have 20% unconditional damage boost plus extra 20% damage boost when your enemy is under 50% HP. Spending points for target the weak, you have only 8% conditional damage boost which caps at 16% which is still less than the unconditional damage boost you get traiting into Spite.

Ascii.9726:

@sorrow Ground targetable wells is a must, it destorys siege placements on walls. You forgot to point out the loss of 150 precision and 2% damage per condition both of which impact this build alot. The 15% boon duration you classed as ‘not needed at all’ pushes Retaliation from axe to 18.5 seconds which almost fully covers the duration of Plague and you also forgot the 150 power from Deadly Strength.

You still have the ground target wells. Ground targeting wells is an adept trait now, you can pick it with 10 points into Curses.

The loss of precision is just a loss of 7% critical chance, not a big deal after all.

The damage per condition is still not needed. Since it is not a condition focused build that much, you might want to increase the condition duration instead to counter all the lemongrass and melandru runes. The damage per condition is easily compensated be close to death.

The retaliation with only 10 points into Death Magic is 16.5. The loss does not justify the amount of traitpoints spent.

I did not forgot about the power gain from Deadly Strength. In fact, I’ve listed only 200 power gain from spending 30 points into Spite (anyway, 5% of ~2000 is 100, not 150).