Necro has limited options in defense. But the high hp pool is more than enough for everything in pve. DS acts as an emergency button and if you need extra evades you can take double energy sigils. Should be fine after that. Its much easier to survive on a necro than it is to survive on an ele or thief thats for sure.
Ive been seeing a lot of comments that “heavies are the best at x” recently. And its simply not true. The armour difference is neglibible and each class has differences when it comes to buffing and its not better for heavies. Its simply warriors have the best group offensive buffs. And guardians have better defensive boon access.
It just so happens that both heavy classes are well balanced and very useful in pve. The same goes for 2/3 light classes and 3/3 medium classes (engi and ranger are debatable).
Only buffs necro lacks is might and banner buffs. Vuln and fury both have pretty good uptime on a necro. Like i said before its not that necro is bad its that the buffs it has cannot be shared with party members except for vuln. This + the lack of cleave means necro is not the most desired class for organised groups.
@Vel
Thats something I considered doing. It does have a slight cast time so I am unsure if it will save any time in this kind of dps race/test. Its definately something to try next time though.
Anyway heres some old footage i had on my computer which i thought id share with you guys. The damage is pretty good considering i didnt have stacks or the best food and group buffing wasnt perfect (not much might).
On a single target and assuming necro is fully buffed just as much as the warrior then it is higher dps than warrior. You have to remember that axe auto takes 3.5 seconds to complete a chain and 100b takes around the same. In an average situation 100b hits for just over 40k which is about 11.5k dps which is no problem for the necro to match.
The issue necro has is that its completely selfish and doesnt share the buffs it has. Also lack of cleave is a problem when clearing trash. But on a boss necro is very good for sustained damage.
@Fungal
Necro beats warrior sustained dps without using any minions. You can use blood fiend and flesh golem to try and increase the damage a bit but sometimes its not worth it.
Heavy classes dont do more sustained dps than necro or ele. They dont do more burst than ele. And mesmer can do the best sustained dps in the game if you can maintain 3 phantasms up 100% (this doesnt work in practise though).
Soloing is not easier unless its a specific fight where newbies can make it harder for one experienced player by triggering certain attacks (lupi). Everything else is easier in a bad group because you essentially get 4 meat shields and aggro is shared.
Why are you so against people challenging themselves by soloing content? I think it would be a pretty good showcase of skill if you could 4-man a 50-man raid. And I like the idea of it being possible if the players are skilled enough. Restrictions like the cof p1 gate are just stupid.
Ran the 20/25/0/0/25 yesterday during a large scale guild run (tarnished coast Chains of duty crusade) I just picked the traits for damage that I could find. It felt different. but I did not really notice a whole lot of boost in damage. I have not been in a dungeon yet to compare so I would be interested in what you find Spoj.
that being said. it does however appear that the “new” build would be better for pugging as you are able to stack your might and vul easier on your own and become more self sufficient. but in a, even semi organized group environment the 30/25 may still be better as you would have more consistent buff access.
random thought though. Given that the dagger is preferred dungeon weapon of choice for us. would it not make more sense to go some points into Blood magic or is the offset in modifiers to minimal?
You dont get any modifiers in blood magic. You get cooldown reduction but that doesnt effect the auto attack so its useless to us. And yes to answer your question 30/25 should still be very slightly higher dps and 20/25 is a better pug build. I dont really see much point going 30/25 anymore because necro isnt a record run class so i dont mind losing a negligible amount dps to improve versatility. The dps lost is reduced by more frequent weakening shrouds aswell. Havent actually calculated how much the difference is made up for though.
Warrior and guardian are fast because they have very good burst. Also warrior has the best self/group buffing in the game. In an organised group with shared buffs necro will out dps both the warrior and guardian on a single target.
Well the only 3 gear types that would be useful in pve are rampager, beserker and assassins. Healing is a bad stat for pve and vit and toughness doesnt help anyone but yourself. All damage can be mitigated or dodged so theres no need for defensive gear once you are familiar with the encounters.
I would never recommend wasting laurels on defensive trinkets for pve. You can easily take defensive armour and replace that at any time. Trinkets are a bit more difficult to replace so I would recommend beserker or rampager trinkets for pve even for someone who is quite inexperienced.
A somewhat band-aid to our now nerfed aoe weakness, we can use the corrosive poison cloud, which should give above 20 seconds of weakness when you factor in enfeebling cloud. It’s not omg deepz but it’s something for those high end fractals maybe.
Good suggestion. Unfortunately I dont see myself taking my necro into fractals much anymore now that mob armour scaling has been reduced. Corrosive cloud is a skill id basically forgotten about but i can definately see it being helpful during the dredge fractal and maybe cliffside. Thanks for the input.
Close to death equates to about a 9% boost overall so its only 4% more than strength of undeath. The difference is kind of made up for by being able to get weakening shroud damage every 7 seconds instead of every 10 seconds. Plus you have better fury and weakness uptime like this. Sometimes when clearing trash in an organised group there isnt time to buff up and if you run with only one warrior the extra fury helps a lot.
For a typical group you should be able to easily maintain 4+ conditions permanently possibly more depending on what classes you take. If you were to take a grenade engi it would really help maximise the target the weak bonus. Life force should always be above 50%. The only time it would drop is if you screw up on a big hit but even then it might not drop below 50%. And even if it does you can gain it back from 0% very quickly with dagger + focus 4.
I originally wrote the guide on the assumption that we would have strength of undeath buffed up to 10%. So I kind of just decided to alter it slightly and keep the traits as they were because 20/25 is definately more suited for pug/casual dungeons than 30/25. The damage lost is not enough to worry about especially when necro isnt a class taken for record runs. Plus i find it a bit more fun being able to flash DS more often.
Using DS for dps isnt reliable and its less than using dagger. I tried theory crafting a valk build back when deathly perception first came about. It was pointless, you may aswell go beserker because the increased power/precision you get from converting vit with a consumable is barely anything.
If you need well of power for the situation you can take it. I mentioned you can use whatever utilities you need and you should adapt for each situation. Sometimes that means taking well of power and well of darkness.
The chest isnt ingame atm. Devs lied about it on stream. I got a fractal sword at 39.
Actually, I think this is wrong.
What the devs said on the live stream is that the chest would be available on higher level fractals. From the things I’ve heard, the chest, which is actually called the “Fractal Gear Box”, only drops in 41+ tier fractals in the boss chest. Anything lower and you always get a pre-selected skin.
I have yet to confirm this, and yet to see anyone confirm the contrary either as everyone complaining seems to be doing lower level fractals (pre-41).
If this turns out to be true, then what they said on the stream is 100% accurate, as they even said “higher level fractals”. How about waiting until its get confirmed either way before throwing the insults out there.
If it turns out you do not get the box 41+ either, then you have a legitimate reason for complaint.
According to the item code the fractal gear box isnt in the game and noone has had it drop. So yes, the devs lied. There are plenty of people doing 40+.
Thats exactly why im only expecting anything to be really improved when we get new utility skills. For now I will mostly be sticking to other classes in pve.
Having said that. Vampiric signet potentially is something in the right direction. Its a decent concept which isnt selfish for once. And I can already think of some ridiculously powerful burst combos using it if it doesnt have an icd on the active.
Didnt Nemesis vid and build show that it was fine in fractals? I cant remember what level fractals he did in the vid but I think it was in the 30’s?
Any class is “fine” in fractals. That doesnt mean they are good in fractals. Necro use to have some places in fractals where it was good. Now the only time necro is good in fractals is when you are doing 43 & 44 for progression. You will only do those once or you will skip them so yeah…
The active will heal the necro + allies that hit the target. Its pretty obvious how it would work, it would apply a unique debuff to the target which triggers lifesteal when hit by anyone. And it would take more complicated code to specifically exclude the caster from getting the active. I imagine you cant stack the debuff but it probably wont have a cap on world bosses. Everyone who hits the boss will recieve lifesteal.
They should change it so if you have 5 ar already slotted and you use another 5 ar infusion it should auto combine to become 6ar. Or they should allow us to pull infusions out of our ascended gear without the use gem store items. :P
Signets dont work in DS so theres no chance it will work while in DS for either the passive or the active. The passive could actually be good if it worked in DS. Hopefully the active will be fairly decent for heal and group dps.
It looks like its an invuln which heals you a small amount per hit. So it will be mostly useless in pve. Could be useful when destroying the gate on dredge fractal though.
They havent even acknowledged any of the bugs introduced in fractals. Or the lack of rewards / reward nerfs. Boss cameras broken, no fractal weapon chest, reduced relics, non infused rings at 30+ and agony being reapplied at certain points of molten duo and mai trin arenas. Theres more but those are the ones that I think need to be addressed first.
Seems like the only good ones for pve are necro, ele and mesmer. Guard one doesnt boost damage unless you have a bad build which gives fury on meditations.
The chest isnt ingame atm. Devs lied about it on stream. I got a fractal sword at 39. The chance of skins seems to be lower than it was pre patch. It use to be that 48 gave about 2-4 skins per group every day.
Many of the instabilities necro has no way of dealing with effectively. The only instabilities I actually used necro for was 43 and 44 because going condi/rampager allows you to deal decent consistant damage without killing yourself. Rest of them ive been progressing as warrior/ele. Once I hit 50 i may use the necro a bit because the 49 instability is pretty much non existant. The thing is, with the mob armour nerf and the life steal on jademaw fix i dont see a reason to take necro anymore. Ele is better at killing dredge now that we cant go to higher scales where the armour becomes an issue.
Its incredibly annoying when people undercut you especially when you have half the group filled already. You are essentially forced to keep them waiting for even longer. But destroying peoples instances is just sad. Ive been put off selling for now simply because of how inconsiderate some sellers are. Path 4 is the only path i consider worth selling atm but with the amount of people who undercut you as soon as you post just puts me right off. If lupi skip was fixed id start selling p2 every now and again though, atm the price is just too low because of the exploiters.
Just remember signet passives dont work inside DS so even if they fix healing in DS the signet wont heal while tanking in DS. Which is the only time I would allow myself to be hit in pve.
You can ignore the skill coefficient because those base damage numbers are the base damage each hit does according to the skills coefficient. If I wanted make a proper dps calculation then I would need to use the coefficients. But we are just comparing two skills so base damage on the wiki is fine (doesnt need to be multiplied by anything).
This is the formula for calculating base damage. The base damage shown on the wiki uses this formula with a set armour, power and weapon strength value. This does not include crits but that doesnt need to be included when comparing. So as you can see the skill coefficient is already accounted for if you just take the values straight from the wiki.
base damage = (Weapon Strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Armor)
Thats what I was thinking. But it depends on the cast time, the cooldown, the duration and the heal numbers. Quite a few factors that could make it a very bad skill.
Every skill could be bad depending on those factors :P
Well if the passive was on hit it would be good in pve even with really poor healing.
Having a ranger when using fgs is good because frost spirit will be very beneficial to fiery rush. Thats probably what you are thinking of. Its been casually mentioned that ranger + fgs is op. But its because of frost spirit, not because the ranger does the most damage with it.
hey i like this idea, at least they went for something more original than just another thief signet. and if the active “allies can heal hitting the target” works like the other skills of the same kind in the game, that could mean that YOU can heal hitting the target. pretty interesting. now if that had decent numbers this could be really interesting sustain-wise.
Thats what I was thinking. But it depends on the cast time, the cooldown, the duration and the heal numbers. Quite a few factors that could make it a very bad skill.
Can you go into more detail about why they aren’t good? or a link with more information?
I know that scholar runes won’t work for phantasms (well the 10% anyway), so I figured orbs was the next best choice.
Right: I was under the impression that even though scholar might be marginally better, it is much more marginal than for all other classes, and so might not be worth the cost of the scholar runes. Every respected guide I’ve read has indicated as such, anyway, but I would be curious about why you think otherwise! Thanks.
Ruby orbs are only 2% better than scholar runes without the 10% bonus. Thats a barely noticeable difference. You may aswell take scholar runes so your direct damage is better and your reflects are better.
