(if for example going zerker is more helpful for a dungeon party than going knights, then suggestions in that regard are also appreciated.)
2. The most ‘helpful’ gear/build is going to depend on who is in your team. Running zerkers with unknown noobs isn’t going to be very helpful if you have to carry them, even a bit. Zerkers will only be the most helpful if the rest of your team are highly capable of running dungeons and doing something similar.
Thats wrong. Its easier to carry a group when you have dps. If the group has low dps then the best you can do to support them is maximise your dps while providing blocks, protection, regen and reflects.
Arah P4 doesn’t require more than 3, and no, it isn’t exploiting. I’m going to assume that you’re referring to the Grenth encounter, in the first phase. It is a common misconception that you actually have to be on the wells that the wraith teleports to, you only have to attack the wraith, you can stand where ever you please.
Why does it reset when you move out of the circles then?
It is annoying. Ive been invited to the same dungeon in the same day multiple times recently. When its CoE i only accept the offer because of charged cores and its a dungeon i enjoy. But with others im less inclined to play it a second time because of the rewards. This prevents me from playing with different groups of people on the same day and leaves some people struggling to fill out a group because everyone has already done the paths.
I used beserker with no problems. Got the achieve with not too much effort aswell. The fears, daze and chill necro has with DS, warhorn and focus make it pretty easy to prevent chomper from eating. And dagger kills them so fast when you’ve eaten a few meat sticks.
Considering how boring Berserker got for me, I doubt I’ll go back any time soon. But I don’t use PVT, I’m using Celestial armor with zerk accessories and clerics rings.
Why is it boring? You can do exactly what your doing with your celestial gear, but you have less useless stats? Healing power scales really badly (except on necro well of blood).
You interpreted that wrong, spoj. He said he’s open to be proved wrong, as in if someone can present an argument that proves necros aren’t ‘bad’ like he thinks, then he’s fine with that.
I know that. But he tested all other classes except necro without other people presenting builds to him. Why has he completely ignored one class?
Warrior, ranger, engineer, last two slots optional. I think I’ve been saying that for a while.
Personally I think W/R/En/G/M, with the mesmer being the most flexible of the five, tends to be a good all around combo but there are different classes that are good for different situations. Eles blow up the First Flame thing in COF2 outrageously fast, mesmer sucks for Arah P1 entities, rangers suck for Brie, etc.
Honestly if there is a “bad” class in this game it is probably the necromancer. I am open to being proven wrong on that point, though.
Why do you need someone to prove necro to you when you had no problem trying to prove the other classes were good. Why is necro the only class you havent looked at?
I didnt want harder solo content. I wanted harder group content (dungeons). Aetherblade retreat was a step in the right direction, especially with the achievements that made you push yourself a bit harder in those encounters.
The scaling and the chain stuns and chills were far too much in candidate trials T4. Made it hard but also just annoying. I completed all 4 tiers solo early on, but I went to help some friends complete T4 later. We trio’d it and it was one hell of a challenge just to survive. Did feel pretty good about it afterwards. But honestly it should of been easier to complete but harder to get max reward. Not easier to solo, very hard to complete in a group and next to impossible to get the max reward.
I facepalmed. Only way I can see that being an issue is when experienced players force the others to skip trash mobs. …. There is no possible way that can take the enjoyment away from less experienced players.
Considering the attitudes I have seen in this thread, I doubt everyone who believes non-zerkers drag them down have as polite an attitude towards the non-zerker people they team as you seem to have. This is what I’m referring to.
Thats just forum trolling though. I think you will find most so called “elitists” on these forums are very tolerable and polite ingame when pugging. You cant be too picky when pugging some dungeons and being kitten doesnt get you anywhere.
I agree with what you’ve said but you also have to consider the people you are grouping with.
That goes BOTH ways. Your not going to enjoy being held back by non-zerker people, they aren’t going to enjoy being pulled through by full zerker people. The difference is that non-zerk people aren’t telling you how to gear and play while the zerker camp seems to have no problem doing that to everyone else.
I facepalmed. Only way I can see that being an issue is when experienced players force the others to skip trash mobs. But thats common practise for most groups, and most people wont skip if the majority of the group says they think its too risky. The zerker players who tolerate other gear in pugs often run the dungeon how the whole group wants to, they just give advice and tips to make it easier. There is no possible way that can take the enjoyment away from less experienced players. Unless they are stubborn idiots who only want to do things their way no matter how bad it is.
Had a case of this months back when I was pugging TA for tokens. I was leading the group through, they all new the dungeon but I was able to provide strategies to make things a little smoother and easier. We got to the final boss (Up path tree with the mortar plants). I said we can melee this, as I have enough reflects on my guard. Everyone in the group except one agreed and they thought it would be fun to try (players that had never melee’d it before). The warrior decided that he would play how he wanted and call us idiots because its safer to range it. I counter argued its perfectly easy melee and faster. Anyway we preceded to melee it with no problems while the stubborn warrior sat at max range with a rifle. After that path, he raged calling us idiots for meleeing it and left the group. The other members shared their shock with his reaction and asked me to do another path with them.
I agree with what you’ve said but you also have to consider the people you are grouping with. It might be a mixed class and doesnt matter what build group. But some of those players might not want to spend hours in dungeons. The fun dissapears no matter how much you love your build if the content becomes frustrating. And the problem is many people are so selfish with their own priorities in a group environment that they cause frustration to their party members by making the dungeon far harder/longer than it needs to be.
You can have plenty of fun with your weird builds in open world pve and whatever, but in dungeons its really unfair to punish others just for your own personal enjoyment, regardless of whether your teammates are doing the same thing or not. I dont see how anyone can find completing content, where you actually have to be on your toes and dodge, boring.
The Elite “wear zerk and nothing else or you are useless” people are a minority. Yes they play well, yes they are obsessed about saving a few minutes on a run, yes they are narrow minded and arrogant and no amount of discussion and debate will ever change their mindset. So why bother even trying to have an intelligent conversation with them? We suck, play bad, and are completely selfish cause we choose not to be like them, end of story. Just ignore their party requests on LFG, block them in Game chat when you meet them, kick them from your party when they joi, pretend they don’t exist and disregard whatever they say when you see them on the forums. ThenTyria becomes world of tolerance and acceptance towards all races and professions where everyone can have fun without being judged by arrogant narrow minded intolerant people.
Honestly players who play how they want and dont give a kitten about the party in an mmo have no respect from me. Its the people playing with all these trash builds who are narrowminded. They refuse to listen to reason just because they’d rather play a lazy build face tanking everything and not learning to play the game.
You might think your helping with supportive tanky builds, but all your really doing is encouraging bad play from your group.
I would like you guys with proper organised teams to test necro a bit more tbf. I ran mine in coe the other day and some of the boss kill times felt faster than when i was using my warrior. Our group is far from perfect, we dont maximise might uptime to our full potential because were lazy. But I wakittenting 8-9k auto attacks (final strike) on the destroyer with about 15 stacks of might. Seems like pretty decent dps with such a fast auto attack, locust swarm and wells also add some serious damage to the mix.
@Spoj: There are 2 sets with fully offensive stats, and over twenty that are partly or mostly defensive. What does that tell you about how offence and defence were supposed to be balanced?
And they all have power or condition damage on them. I stand by my point.
Magi has prec,vit,healing :p
rofl didnt even know such a useless stat combo could exist.
Other popular build is 30/10/0/0/30. But as far as I can tell the extra crit damage doesnt make up for the lack of precision and target the weak. And seeing as that build usually involves sitting in DS using life blast its no good for dps. Also strength of undeath doesnt give a 5% boost, its just 90 power.
Generalized Aggro system: highest toughness target within 600 range > highest dps currently attacking > highest toughness within 1200 > lowest hp target > target that just used heal
Purely speculation though. It can act completely differently on different bosses.
The best choice is driven by a number of factors, including the skill and gear of OTHER people on your team, if you are doing team-based content. I’m going to gear and trait according to who I’m playing with. If I know everyone is super skilled and full zerker, I will too. If I know my team mates are new, I’m not. They are going to need all the support I can give them AND I’m going to have to carry them more. I’m going to choose the gear most likely hedge the risk. That’s not zerker gear. Like I already said, if you are limiting your team choices to highly skilled players, zerkers is a favourable choice.
Good players adapt to situation.
I regularly help newer players in my guild through dungeons. If they require support I take my beserker guard. It helps more being able to block key attacks with aegis and contribute to dps than it does to just sit there healing them while they slowly kill things. Im less helpful running my old knights gear when running with new people.
@Spoj: There are 2 sets with fully offensive stats, and over twenty that are partly or mostly defensive. What does that tell you about how offence and defence were supposed to be balanced?
And they all have power or condition damage on them. I stand by my point.
Once you get the pattern down you hardly need to dodge. Other classes just have a bit more safety when they screw up and waste their dodges. Having lich for phase 2 is such an advantage though.
All gear has atleast one offensive stat on it. Which suggests what ODB mentioned about the intended design of the game. There is no full defensive gear but there are 2 full offensive sets.
@Blaine
There is no proven aggro system. It may have seemed to work for you but I can guarantee that is just RNG/chance. When I was getting used to guardian I was playing in knights with an AH build, rest of the group were full zerkers. Id never take aggro, it would always be a warrior. Theres speculation that some bosses prefer squishy targets and some prefer tanky targets. But theres no proof as it seems to be different each time you fight them. The factors people generally acknowledge has having an effect on aggro are proximity, dps, ressing, armour and first to attack. But even if we could work it out perfectly, you will never be able to 100% guarantee that you can hold aggro.
When i run fractals and we get the harpy fractal I attack the ettin and make sure my group doesnt hit it. I kite it around the other end of the room while they dps the other champs. Even though im the only one hitting it and near it, it still seems to wander off and go for my party on occasion until i leap at it and smack it a few times to regain its attention.
Few things that people mix up:
Reflects and exploiting/ignoring game mechanics with unintended use is not control
All zerkers that ever fought in AR with the same tactics as normally died, no full zerker group that wasnt using true techniquies (kiting, ranged/sub optimal dps combat) of the encounter survived.
Control is chill, cripple, immobilize and hard cc
Support (healing being part of it) is mostly boon spam and actually reviving downed people (thats why there are runes and traits for that)
Necro tanks kinda worked pre nerf, they were mostly just walls in case a idiot died to a obvious aoe, but it worked.
Fear is a good control mechanism, especially with the ability to permachill a enemy as a necro, they wont run out of the 130~150 cleave range of most skills.
its just encounters, perception vs reality and lazy devs that are kitten ing it up. Core system idea is good.
Why do you consistantly claim to think zerker groups exploit to win. I told you before, my group cleared AR full beserker with our usual tactics, only difference was we took traits and utilities more specialised for the final fight (extra condi removal). Infact every person I know who completed AR quickly and with little difficulty did it in a full zerker or atleast 4 zerker group.
You are only grasping the very basics of support and control. Positioning mobs into tightly packed groups and chain interrupting them is control, so is perma blinding them to prevent them damaging the party. Support comes from utilities like condi removal or boon stripping, blocks, invulns, boons and even reflects. You can consider ressing as support, but a good group doesnt need to res people. If its trash you can simply rally each other quickly enough, for bosses its not hard for the whole group to quick res 1 downed person. You dont need traits to do that.
ok, theres quite a bit too much talk about cash from dungeons being the reason we’re in there so lets clarify a bit. If i’m setting foot in a dungeon its because i want that sexy looking gear or stat combination of gear. If the mobs dropped nothing and the armour was unsalvagable or if salvaged only gave 2 mithril thats fine by me, i’m not running cof for anything except that armour for my new war/guar/rang/eng (i have 1 of each class). Now that the tokens are dropped to tiny tiny amounts after run 1 its extremely difficult to acquire those tokens by doing guild runs etc as frankly at 20 tokens per no-one else wants to set foot in there either. 60 tokens per alt was a great way to get the look you want (and you’d buy the trans crystals in the store to mix look with stats…just saying anet) and also meant the other folks in your guild would go “oh yeah, i’ll go as my ele, haven’t run him today” Now its back to dungeons being a ghosttown filled only with those there to grind out the gold from them.
Some of us cant stand to farm events for money. We only do dungeons. As much as I disagree with the token nerf. The change overall has benefited me. I can make a lot of gold in a couple of hours now. I could never do cof p1 for longer than 30 mins or id die of boredom so making dungeon variety more rewarding has made me earn faster and enjoy myself while doing it.
This is why he made the hybrid build because it’s a mix of direct damage and conditions…
But thats only worth it in fractals because of the large amounts of trash. Burst aoe on a zerker necro doesnt last long enough and has high cooldowns so condi aoe is the only option when theres no cleave in fractals. Hybrid build single target damage falls off quite a bit though.
lol no one who has seen the devs play or talk about the classes in depth would suggest that they know more about the class mechanics than the top tier players.
Izzy_5sig_warrior.jpg
OP build, I dont know wat ur talking about. i play how i want.
PvE is all about dps and currently necro’s dont have enough to contribute to that
Exactly, the content itself is the problem. If the game had a little more depth and mechanics like defiant didn’t discourage support oriented roles, other classes (not just necromancer) would become more desirable to group compositions. Necromancer is not meant to deal the most damage just as guardian or engineer isn’t meant to deal the most damage. We all have specific mechanics and designs that let us excel at different areas of the game.
I dont agree with this. Support and control are both heavily used in speedruns. Players that are skilled enough should be able to run full beserker and do the content much faster. You dont need to build supporty or build control to use it. The problem is necro doesnt really do any support or control worth taking into dungeons. Other classes that do more damage and can contribute to buffing the team can do everything the necro brings. Even if and when they make the mechanics far more in depth and interesting, necro’s still wont be taken because they dont provide anything worthwhile. It will still be a dps game and thats fine aslong as different types of dps roles are encouraged. But frankly the necro wont ever see some love until we get something that makes us a good pick in dungeons (unique team buff, maybe aura skills).
Its your opinion that the problem lies with the game. But if ignore that factor the problem lies with the class. Necro doesnt contribute anything to group dps.
And theres no tanking in this game, saying necros are supposed to be tanks is just wrong. They are supposed to be more durable attrition based damage dealers. PvE is all about dps and currently necro’s dont have enough to contribute to that. In WvW and PvP they are fine.
As for the 28k… Im not sure how it happened! It’s usually 12-15k range. Felt awesome tho!
Was the 28k hits on risen beserkers or something which uses frenzy? Thats the only explanation.
Anyway I did some vet giant dps tests yesterday on my zerker necro. Got on average 18-19 second kills. Which compared to the dps vids Brazil from DnT did, its faster than guard and mesmer but not quite as fast as ranger and thief. Can assume its slower than warrior due to warrior burst. Necro dps is pretty impressive, just not high enough to warrant taking in a group for only dps.
We dont need more defensive group buffs. That wouldnt make necro picked for dungeons. The only way to make a necro popular is to allow them to contribute to group dps in a unique way or to provide monster dps (better than most other classes) when buffed up.
Edit: What necro mechanic zogyark used has been nerfed?
The death shroud damage overflow and minimum traited death shroud recharge time (traited used to be 5 seconds, now 7). Checking his video again he didn’t use the former as much as I expected, so I’d expect he could still do it (I used to use the overflow all the time for Lupicus, but I’m not as good a player as Orochi).
DS recharge could be 10 seconds and it wouldn’t matter. What is that DS damage overflow, though?
You used to be able to absorb any massive single hit in DS and it wouldnt effect your base hp. As of last patch it now overflows so necros can no longer cliff dive with DS. But DS is now tankier so i have a feeling its better for lupi’s multi hit aoe.
.